“There is an inverse relationship between the value of knowledge and what people are willing to pay for it. The most important things in life you’ve probably heard a hundred times before, but you’re not paying attention. When you’re in the right place and you hear it, you have that ‘aha’ moment and everything changes.”
— Mark Ford
In 2007, Tim Ferris published The 4-Hour Work Week.
The book had great kairos. It hit the New York Times Best Seller list, stayed there for four years, and sold over 2 million copies.
And it wasn’t just 4HWW. Around the same time, lots of marketers were telling you how to make good money online by building lots of tiny niche websites… or publishing dozens of crappy ebooks… or in general making some hit-and-run cash grab.
I’m sure you can still find these kinds of offers floating around the Internet. But my feeling is — and I could be wrong — that the zeitgeist has changed.
For a while now, the pendulum has swung in the other direction.
That’s the direction of building a real business, a personal brand, of creating an asset. Like Rich Schefren said recently (I’m paraphrasing):
“Why would you want to have a job that you hate so much you only do it for four hours a week? Why not build a business that you love to work in every day?”
The thing is, markets get saturated. People get bored of hearing the same message, even if it is completely on-the-money.
And my suspicion is, right now, the pendulum of “Build a sustainable business” is at its peak.
I hallucinate the pendulum will come swinging down soon. People will again be ready to hear the message that you can make passive income, and that money-getting can be reduced to an occasional unpleasant chore, much like going to the dentist.
That’s just my prediction. I’m sharing with you for two reasons:
1. If you haven’t been able to buy into the “Build a business you love” mantra, and you feel guilty about it (as I do), then better times might be ahead.
2. Like I said, it’s been over 10 years since The 4-Hour Work Week was published. Since then, there hasn’t been any money-making book that’s hit the mainstream and had the same impact.
In other words, there might be an opportunity here. If you get going on writing something right now, you might have it ready just as the world starts to emerge from its current months-long delirium.
You might even become the next Tim Ferriss. Only trouble is, much like Tim Ferriss, you’ll have to work much more than four hours a week to get there.
In other news, I have an email newsletter where I write about marketing and copywriting. Topics like what you just read. So if you want a regular daily diet of such essays, here’s where to go.