Who else have I spoken with at Supernova who has interesting projects underway?
Well, I really enjoyed Tim Ferriss’ brief presentation, during which he sold us on outsourcing individual work. Tim just finished a book called The Four-Hour Workweek which suggests that we can each reduce our workload professionally by farming out the boring details. This twist on the classic "get rich quick" books interests me. Make the same amount of money, but work less hard, enjoy yourself more, and spend more time with family and friends. Of course this is technically a type of Ponzi Scheme because eventually there is no poorer person to turn to for service, but it will be a while before the iniquities in the world are worked out. I’m looking forward to scanning it for useful tidbits.
Now, you might think that someone who recommends we only work 4 hours a week, while paying other people micro-amounts of money to bust their butts on our behalf, would be lazy or demonic or both. In fact, Tim seems really energetic and friendly. He likes the idea of making a financial difference in the lives of the less fortunate by hiring them for his odd jobs. The only weirdness about him is the strange sense that he could so easily start a cult and enjoy the feeling of thousands of fans gazing at him in adulation. But how is that different from any other rock star?
Tim told the story of hiring, for a small sum, some freelancers to find single women and set up 30 dates for him in three days – with mixed results. I have friends that should farm out this task. It makes so much sense from a time perspective. Then, perhaps taking a cue from Seth Godin’s advice to be remarkable, he said he’d give a free trip around the world to the person in the room who sent him the most compelling story of a personal outsourcing initiative they’d undertaken as a result of his talk. It’s a good way to keep himself on peoples’ minds.
The most important thing he did though, was give his books away at the end of the session. Supernova attendees are early adopters, innovators and connectors. Some people think you come to a group of people and make some fans so you can sell some books to them. Wrong! You give your book to fans, they read it and recommend it, and you’ve exponentially increased your word of mouth capacity by eliminating the barrier that keeps powerful viral word-of-mouth spreaders from reading your book – the act of having to pay for it.
This might seem counter-intuitive for those with a profit-making mindset, but in fact it is only counter-intuitive if you don’t really believe in your product. If you have to sell as many copies as you can because you don’t think you’ll sell quite enough copies, then you’re right, you should do what you can to sell it to as many of the people who heard your talk as possible. But if you know your book is good, when you launch it you want to get it into as many hands as possible however you can. That is what is going to make it, and you, famous, and there’s no point in slowing it down unnecessarily by building a wall between eager fans and your fame. Tim knows his book is good. The only remaining question is: Do we agree?
