Readers of Small Business Booster may be interested in a piece over on Syntagma taking up Timothy Ferriss’s idea of a “low information diet” to boost personal productivity and quality of output :

The problem is, information makes us feel important, connected, in league with “where it’s at”. If we don’t get any, we’re sure to look inadequate at the XYZ Conference. We never stop to think that the XYZ Conference is just another vehicle for more useless information, as is that so-vital podcast, video hookup or blog post (present post excepted because of its essential nature).

Ferriss’s chapter with the same title as this post is the best eight-page sequence in his book. Alone it will change your life. If you’re a Techmeme groupie or a news junkie — as I used to be — read it and learn about “selective ignorance” and the trial one-week media fast.

Read the whole article here.

More than half of small business owners think that their enterprises are harder to run than three years ago, according to a survey commisioned by T-Mobile.

A third believed customers, suppliers, and even co-workers now demand faster response times. This has increased the pressure on smaller businesses, which often have fewer resources than larger outfits.

Dead time, defined as time wasted by travel and meetings, cost small concerns around $120,000 (£60,000) a year.

Head of T-Mobile’s business marketing said, “The rise of the internet has given rise to a ‘want it now’ culture — customers expect an immediate response to every inquiry. This is forcing smaller firms to operate in a different way and use all the tools at their disposal to be more productive and efficient”.

Small Business Booster suggests a careful reading of : Take a Nap! Change Your Life by Dr Sara Mednick, previously reviewed.

The subtitle of this book is, “Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich”, which just about sums it up. You should, however, factor in the author’s weird way of doing just about anything.

That’s not necessarily a deal-breaker though, as Timothy Ferriss uses counter-intuition as a positive business tool.

The core message of The 4-Hour Workweekis a powerful one, and it contains much food for thought for anyone stuck in a boring career, or running an ailing business.

A few questions emerge as you start to read. Did Timothy Ferriss really become national kickboxing champion of China by using a loophole in the rules allowing him to push his opponents out of the ring a number of times to disqualify them from the contest? And why did the judges allow such a pathetic bending of the rules?

He also claims to have been a motorcycle racer in Europe, Argentine Tango champ in Buenos Aires, a scuba diver in Panama and a skier in the Andes. Oh, and a language teacher in Thailand and Japan and … much more. Bear in mind he’s only 29, or was when he wrote the book.

Ferriss is a very smart cookie. His main ideas, like the low-information diet, outsourcing the boring stuff, reducing work to what you do best, have much in common with the 80/20 principle, but go that extra mile to the very limits of absurdity. The brakes screech on at the last moment, though, and he avoids complete overturn — just. Maybe that’s his motor-racing experience coming through.

The book is also interestingly interactive. We’re referred to his website for the latest, or most detailed information. It’s a good way to drive traffic as those of us who advocate print/online synergy have been saying for a while. Be aware, he also embeds passwords in the text for the most intriguing documents online. This is a total tease, but one way to make sure you read the whole book.

By now you will have realized that Timothy Ferriss is a bit of a flamboyant sort of chap. While that may be the new blue in business book style, the main question for this reviewer is : does it contain enough meaty nuggets of new ideas and information to justify trawling through the whole book with umpteen visits to the website?

I would say, yes. It certainly made me rethink many of my lazy, received-wisdom notions about business. That’s what Ferriss does to you, he gets you branching out laterally in ways you never intended.

Whether any of his schemes will stick enough to actually change anything remains to be seen. I also have to say, that some of them appear to be marginally illegal. You must make up your own mind whether you want to be as batty as he is.

However, I would recommend this book if you have a taste for out of the ordinary activities and don’t mind flouting conventions. Of course, if you do things his way, you may find yourself perched on a giant Ferris wheel unable to get off. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A New Series on Business Startups — Part 5

From time to time in this series, we’ll slot in a case study to add a sense of reality to the often academic nature of the learning curve of starting a business. Here’s one from the UK.

While still a student at West of England University, Jamie Murray Wells used his student loan to start Glasses Direct from a disused stable block on his father’s estate. He negotiated deals with the spectacle-frame manufacturers which allowed him to undercut the high-street chains in the UK, like SpecSavers, by a substantial amount.

James Murray Wells, 23, now runs a multi-million pound internet company, which sells a pair of specs every eight minutes. He has netted sales of over £2.5 million ($4.8m) in less than two years

Jamie says: “It’s an exciting time. There’s an army of people wearing my glasses every day, and that’s an incredible feeling.”

Until this young entrepreneur turned his gaze on the industry, the £2.5 billion market was dominated by four giants: SpecSavers, Vision Express, Boots and Dollond & Aitchison. Needing a new pair of glasses while revising for his English finals, he was shocked at the price.

“I couldn’t believe there was nothing cheaper than £150 ($290) for what was essentially a piece of wire and two pieces of glass.”

He began contacting glazing labs to try to get a cheaper pair direct. He was told that the cost would be around £7 and that the process was done automatically in under 20 minutes.

“The mistake of high-street opticiancs,” he says, “is that they subsidize eye tests in the hope of clawing back margins on dispensing glasses.”

He used the last £1000 ($1,950) instalment of his student loan to develop his idea.

But time doesn’t stand still in the rarified air of this entrepreneurial eagle. Looking ahead a few years he sees himself as a billionaire buying himself an island.

“I didn’t grow up dreaming of being an optician, so it’s not going to be long before I move on and attack other industries — knock the bottom out of the property industry or pharmaceuticals, or whatever.”

Go to Part 6.