Thanks 4HWW for an awesome year.

[phil]

Been applying 4HWW techniques, and its been a great year. THANK YOU 4HWW.

I can count the number of days I visited my office on two hands. And when I did go in, it was for no more than a few hours at a time. Just to make an appearance.

My office is now just my MacBook Air + iPhone. And if I'm in one location for more than a few weeks, I'll get hook it up to a 24" screen + keyboard + mouse for more productivity.

Some highlights:

* Spent the winter months of January/February in Maui, drinking fresh coconut juice, eating dried mango slices, and doing Bikram yoga.

* Rented a last minute 1-month furnished apartment 1 block from Central Park in NYC on a whim while I was passing through on a last minute coast-to-coast road trip from California.

* Sold 4 cars. Now, don't own any cars.

* Gave away tons of useless crap. Now, all my possessions fit in a few small boxes.

* Drove an Aston Martin DB9 for 4 days. Drove a Bentley Flying Spur for 4 days. Learned to drive stick in a Lotus Elise and drove it for 4 days.

* Almost went boating with Bobby Kennedy on the Hudson, but the weather turned bad.

* Flew to Hawaii on a whim, and booked the beach-front condo on the way to the airport.

* Flew to London on a whim.

* Scuba diving down to 108 feet off the coast of Cyprus to see one of the worlds best wreck dives.

* Went skydiving three times.

* Learned to juggle fire with locals in Copenhagen

* Went jet skiing in the Mediterranean off the beautiful Santorini, Greece (twice! once in June, and once again in August).

* Never set up voicemail.

* Went paragliding off Haleakala in Maui.

* Finishing up the year on the tiny island of Koh Samui, Thailand. Pre-booked a room in a secluded villa for 6 months for $1500. It was nice, but I wanted something a bit larger, so I found another last minute villa rental. Huge, beautiful villa with infinity pool owned by an Italian senator from Rome, and designed by his good friend, the famous Renzo Piano. Includes a live-in staff of SIX, all for less per month than it cost to rent that NYC apartment. Full time driver, cook, laundry, pool, garden, etc.

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124 days at "home" in San Francisco (34%)
241 days away from home (66%)

6 foreign countries: Thailand, China, England, Denmark, Greece, Cyprus
28 cities
36 flight segments
54,515 total miles flown ~ 2.2 x earth's circumference

[Merlin]

Phil, this is inspirational!

[Mfree]

Great!

Could you share some of your things that worked and didn't work for you?
And maybe a bit about your muse?

Would love to hear and would be helpful...

Thanks M

[Tom84]

Sounds wicked! Glad you're having a kickass time : ) I just got approved for Thailand ecconomy on my APEC card, What was the name of the place in Koh Samui for $1500/6months? I was looking at http://www.samuibkjresort.com/index.html but it's close to $1000 a month and I thought that was cheap! lol

[phil]

Actually found the $1500 / 6 months on Travbuddy.com.

The room is available if you want it from now until around April 1st (and then probably still available after that). Its just one room in someone else's villa. Let me know if you're serious about Thailand and I'll be happy to help out.

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The business is an e-commerce website that buys (and designs) things from suppliers in China, and re-sells to the end user. Its been going for 7 years, so it has hit a critical mass now, and with a focus on customer service, gets really good results from word of mouth and search engine optimization.

Automation is huge. I build systems to automate routine tasks.

- PHP cUrl "robots" to login to all my bank / credit card accounts and handle a variety of tasks: download and parse transactions into my accounting system, transfer money automatically to a tax reserve account, savings plan, and pay credit balances down once a week.

- Advanced phone system that lets me keep track of how employees are doing. I review recorded phone calls, view their call notes. And email ticket system so I can review their email customer service. I still need to automate this further, and outsource most of the reviewing to a small team of customer service experts. So that feedback and improvements are given to my customer services guys.

- I swear by http://www.earthclassmail.com/ I haven't checked a physical mailbox in over a year. Occasionally I'll have them forward a physical piece of mail (like a new credit card), but 99% of mail is either recycled, archived, or passed off to an assistant in India with the click of a button. Only complaint is their interface is kind of slow, and not very user-friendly. They now have a check deposit option which lets you deposit checks to any bank account.

- Of course, you should set up automatic recurring billing with companies wherever possible to take out of your credit card or bank account. I don't understand how people can spend hours each month opening bills, and mailing in checks.

- Elimination: I only accept the four major credit cards. No paypal, no checks, no money orders, no COD, no cash. For orders over $5000, I'll accept a wire transfer. And I never extend credit or terms. I'm not in the business of loans, and if a customer can't pay now, they aren't fit to be doing business with me, or they can get a loan from a bank.

Travel:
- I never bring more than either a small backpack, or a small laptop bag.
- If I'm going to a cold climate and need a few more clothes, I'll sometimes ship a box of clothes ahead. It makes traveling so much more pleasant.
- Or I'll just buy some new clothes when I arrive at my destination. I'll usually want to shop anyways, and enjoy trying out new styles (found some sweet stuff in London and Copenhagen recently!).
- One way, first class, or refundable tickets seem to work best. It sucks having a non-refundable return ticket back home, and wanting to stay another week, or go somewhere else instead.
- First class benefits go much farther than the airplane seat size. I've found I get sick less (less chance of a sick person nearby), probably better air quality, and better sleep. Would you rather pay $1000 for economy and be really sick for the next 2 weeks, or pay $3500 and be well rested, healthy, and productive for the next 2 weeks? Faster, less stressful airport check-in, relaxing lounges, expedited immigration lanes.

[johnnywolf]

Hey Phil, congratulations on living an excellent 4hww year!

Sounds like a very posh life! It's an inspiration to us all, and for me to start taking my business seriously and making enough money to fly first class.

I've been taking the cheap route and have been living in Thailand for the last 14 months. Koh Tao and Koh Lanta now. I work as a divemaster but mainly so I can go diving for free since I love it.

Keep us updated and enjoy the life!

[Merlin]

Phil - I use earthclassmail.com as well. I eliminated every catalog and piece of junk mail using the 'do not mail' list + catalogchoice.org, and earthclassmail is a DREAM come true!

Question: Who do you use for your phone system? That sounds like exactly what I need for my business. At the moment all I'm using is Google Voice, and in the spirit of elimination I force customers to use email instead of calling. As my business grows, I'm going to need a phone system.

Thanks!

[phil]

>>divemaster in koh tao = epic job. Congrats to you too

Which dive company in Koh Tao? I've got to head over there soon as I hear the diving is amazing.


>>Who do you use for your phone system?

Here's a bit more detail on the phone system.

I found Asterisk to be way too confusing to set up and install. For my toll free business line, I’m currently using RingCentral. I made a bunch of CURL “hacks” that log into their web interface and parse live call log data and voicemail’s.

I then store the call log data in my own database, and cross reference the incoming caller id’s to the phone number’s of customers orders. If no match is found, the script looks at Google Phone Book and then tries to match the customer based on their name, city, and state.

When employee’s answer a call, they look at the call log page which shows the call detail, any previous calls from that number, and a comment field. Before they even answer the phone, they can see who the customer is, what orders have been placed, when the customer called last, and what was discussed.

For example:

Customer: “Hi, I’d like to place an order”
Employee: “Ok, I’ve identified your account based on your phone number. Is this order shipping to 123 Main St? Go ahead with the items you’d like to order.”

Instead of voicemail’s coming through as email attachments, I use CURL to transfer the MP3 file to my server. There’s a nice page which shows unanswered voicemail’s, and lets my staff add comments and manage each voicemail until the issue is resolved. It’s a lot less messy than before when we were just marking an email voicemail as read.

I also tie in all outgoing calls through the same call logging system, so I can see that voicemail’s are actually getting replied to.

I’ve been recording this call data for a year, and have a bunch of awesome statistics and reports which really help with business decisions. What gets measured gets managed

I’m currently looking at http://www.twilio.com/ as a more versatile solution than RingCentral. If you are a programmer, or are comfortable hiring/managing a programmer, then the Twilio route would be ideal. You could tie it into your existing systems very easily.

If you want something easy to set up and just run with it, then RingCentral is a good option.

One feature I want to build: When we are on the other line or unable to answer a call, rather than asking the customer to leave a voicemail (most people don't like to leave voicemails), we say we've recorded their phone number and will call them back as soon as a representative is available. Perhaps let them press 1 to cancel this call back, or press 2 to enter a different number than what we picked up from caller id.


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farang with five fingers
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/813075/thailand2010/IMG_1875.JPG

tiny golden people holding buckets
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/813075/thailand2010/IMG_1899.JPG

fresh ingredients at the spa
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/813075/thailand2010/IMG_1941.JPG

brutal muay thai match
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/813075/thailand2010/IMG_2040.JPG

[Merlin]

Woot, another five fingers devotee here! Wear them all the time.

Your phone system is badass. That is a great system you've got set up. Did you do all the programming yourself?

Right now I'm running Google Voice with forwarding numbers coming from Callcentric, however it's quite cumbersome. I only use this for personal calls, and thus far am not allowing customers to call/place phone orders. Due to the nature of my business (ecommerce, over 500 items, specialty niche) and the rate that it's growing, in the next six months will have to train CS reps and sign up for ringcentral or similar.

Thanks for the info Phil!

[ScottVA]

This is so inspiring to me to move as fast as I can to live like this as well.

I would be happy with a trickle of income and then move forward fast!

I know it is sort of taboo to ask, but i would love to get a mentor that started
with near $0 income coming in from a business online and now seeing $1000+. I would simply nbe happy with an additional $100-$200 a month at the moment.

Or a "Study Buddy" would also be great with someone just starting now.