Sunday, December 23, 2007

What I have done to date

If you haven't read the Introduction yet, please do! To the right, you will see categories, then introduction. Click on it and read first.

Now that you have read the introduction, I want to give a really quick overview of what I have done to validate this experiment to date. You may well be aware that I'm less than a week into this adventure and I will start posting once a day for status updates. For now:

  1. Read the book "The 4-Hour Workweek", by Timothy Ferriss. I finished my first complete read-through on the night of Friday, December 21, 2007 - the third day of ownership.
  2. Started reading the book "The Magic of Thinking Big" by David Schwartz. I purchased this book on Saturday, December 22, 2007. As of now, I have only read to the end of page 74. Will start reading more tonight, starting on Chapter Four.
  3. Contacted a Contract Manufacturer. You know I have an idea. You know I have no clue how to bring it to market. I suppose the first step is to figure out how much the physical device will cost. I have a conference call setup with them on December 26th. I don't know what to expect from this call. I already emailed them the details of what I need, but it's probably too generic for them to give an accurate quote. This is the FIRST company that I have contacted for a quote. I will contact at least three more companies. I found the company from a link in Tim's book (anything you need manufactured....). This very well may be a task that I offload to a VA when the time is right. For now, I'll do the initial grunt -work and then let them shop around. I need to put a business plan together and knowing how much this thing is going to cost me to have manufactured is a huge missing link. BTW, I haven't started the Business Plan yet - it's only in my head.
  4. I did some prototying BEFORE ALL OF THIS, for what I think is the most difficult aspect of the software design. I spent probably a few days on it, but just an hour here or an hour there - not full days.

That's it! Pretty much starting from scatch. As I do and learn more I'll let you know!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great stuff. Still motivated! Two questions:

1) Which contract manufacturer did you choose?

2) Why do you recommend "The Magic of Thinking BIG"? What / how does it add ot the FHWW concepts? I'd love to expand my library, but have so many books on my to-read list that I have to be careful what I add!

The Four Hour Trial said...

1) Can't say! ;-) Don't mean to be like this, but I don't know how much value they would be for your project anyway because they are FOCUSED in a specific type of thing I'm manufacturing. I would place 10,000 to 1 odds that you aren't manufacturing anything close to this device! :-)
2) I think Tim probably borrowed some good ideas from this book. It's not expensive. It's a classic. I think it was first published in the 60's. 80/20 rule is discussed. Competition being less for bigger thinkers is focused on. Didn't Tim say something like that? Less competition at the top? Every man is basically the same - similar needs, insecurities, etc... Just good, solid stuff. I have not finished it yet, but from what I have read I liked it. I'm not so much pushing that book though. Otherwise this would be a blog about thinking big! LOL... well, I am thinking big, but because of the 4HWW work. BTW, Tim mentioned this book in his references section of HIS book! That's the only way I knew about it. Cover says more than 4 million copies sold - it must be good for something!

Enjoy!

-M