business tips

The 4-Hour Vendor Workweek: A Deeper Look at Tim Ferriss' Playbook

Tim Ferriss built a framework for escaping busywork. Here's how to apply it to your wedding business, one task at a time.

The StyleMePretty Team

The StyleMePretty Team

— 9 min read
Share
The 4-Hour Vendor Workweek: A Deeper Look at Tim Ferriss' Playbook
Little Black Book Photography: 5.15 Photo Co.
💍
TL;DR: Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek runs on a four-step framework called DEAL: Define what matters, Eliminate what doesn't, Automate the repetitive, and Liberate yourself from the desk. The goal is to stop spending forty hours (or more) on work that a system, a tool, or another person could handle better.

In 2007, Tim Ferriss published The 4-Hour Workweek. The title sounds absurd, and Ferriss would be the first to admit that. But the book wasn't really about working four hours. It was about a question most business owners never stop to ask: of all the things you do in a week, how many of them actually require you?

For wedding vendors, the answer is almost always fewer than you think.

Little Black Book Photography: 5.15 Photo Co.
Ferriss didn't invent outsourcing. He built a decision-making framework for figuring out what to outsource, in what order, and why most people get it wrong.

The framework is called DEAL. It has four steps: Definition, Elimination, Automation, and Liberation. Ferriss insists on that order for a reason. Most people jump straight to hiring help or buying software. That's step three. If you skip steps one and two, you end up paying someone else to do work that shouldn't exist in the first place.

Here's how each step applies when you're running a wedding business.

Read more