The Millionaire Fastlane By MJ DeMarco

My Notes

• Speed is execution and your ability to go from idea to implementation. You could sit in a Ferrari on an empty, straight road, but if you fail to hit the accelerator, you fail to move.
• A first-class ticket to the Sidewalk is to have no financial plan. The Sidewalk's natural gravitational pull is poorness, both in time and money. You cannot solve poor financial management with more money. You can be income rich and still ride the Sidewalk dirty. If wealth is defined by income and debt, wealth is an illusion, because it is vulnerable to potholes, detours, and “bumps in the road.” When the income disappears, so does the illusion of wealth. Poor financial management is like gambling; the house eventually wins.
• Wealth is making a difference. Wealth is community and impacting the lives of others. Wealth cannot be experienced alone in a vacuum. Believe me, the richest moments of my life occurred when I was surrounded by a family of friends and loved ones. Second, wealth is fitness: health, vibrancy, passion, and boundless energy. If you don't have health, you lack wealth. Ask any terminally ill person what they value. Ask any cancer survivor how they suddenly feel reborn and happiness is displaced from “stuff” to people and experiences. There is no price on health and vibrancy. And finally, wealth is freedom and choice: freedom to live how you want to live, what, when, and where. Freedom from bosses, alarm clocks, and the pressures of money. Freedom to passionately pursue dreams. Freedom to raise your children as you see fit. And freedom from the drudgery of doing things you hate. Freedom is the liberty to live your life as you please.
• Work creates income. Income creates lifestyle/debt (cars, boats, designer clothes). Lifestyle/debt forces work. Repeat … I learned about Lifestyle Servitude in my early 20s. After college graduation, I took a hellacious job as a construction laborer in Chicago and fought city traffic daily. The pay was more than I had ever earned at my young age, and with my increase in income, I felt wealthy. So what did I do? I elevated my lifestyle and financed the illusion of wealth. I bought my first sports car, a Mitsubishi 3000GT. It didn't take long for me to realize that my dream car wasn't an icon of wealth, but a parasite that fed on my freedom. I hated my job, it was stressful, and it drained my energy, leaving my entrepreneurial dreams tethered. I couldn't quit. I had responsibilities: car payments, gas, and insurance. Because of my obligations to “stuff,” I had sentenced myself to imprisonment in a job I loathed. Yet, this type of servitude is normal. We're taught to strive for the latest and greatest regardless of consequence. It leaves us indentured for years, condemning us to lifestyle imprisonment… and the more stuff you buy that you can't afford, the longer your jail sentence becomes.
• luck is a product of process, action, work, and being “out there.” And when you are “out there” you stand a chance at being in the right place at the right time.
• The Law of Victims says you can't be a victim if you don't relinquish power to someone capable of making you a victim.
• People who don't take responsibility are victims. Some of them are born victims and, instead of trying to improve their hand, they fold and give up. For them, everyone has the solution to their problems but them. And their problems? Not their fault. Nope, someone else is to blame. Instead of looking within, they look outward and project responsibility to some other entity. Victims are Sidewalkers who refuse to take the driver's seat of their own lives and live under a dark cloud of “theys” reflective of a “me against them” attitude.
• When the markets crashed, I didn't lose a lot of money because the markets weren't my wealth acceleration vehicle! The Fastlane is about control, and if you live like a Sidewalking hitchhiker, you have no control.
• Instead of 5-for-2 for life, how about a 5-for-2 trade that has the potential to blossom into a better ratio? Like 1-for-2 or 3-for-10? Would you make a 5-for-2 trade knowing that it could transform into a 1-for-10? Would that be a something to invest in?
• you want to escape the Slowlane, find wealth and freedom fast, you've got to dump the job. Let me repeat. Dump the damn job!
• Wouldn't it make sense to get paid regardless of what you're doing? Get paid while you sleep, while you have fun, while you poop, while you sit on the beach? Why not get paid with the simple passage of time and make time work for you instead of against you?
• If you don't control your income, you don't control your financial plan. If you don't control your financial plan, you don't control your freedom.
• “Pay yourself first” is a Slowlane doctrine. The problem is that it's near impossible in a job. Local, state, and federal governments heavily tax earned income and your options to shield that income from taxation is limited to contributions to 401(k)s and IRAs-which are also limited-10% of your income or a maximum of $16,500, whichever is less.
• Folks, the rich use the markets for income and wealth preservation-not to create it!
• Azur was destroyed. He spent years doing the heavy lifting while Chuma built a machine to do it for him.
• This mindless prescription leads Azur to a lifetime of toil. He never finishes his pyramid promised to Pharaoh simply because he decides to do the heavy lifting himself when he should have focused on a system to do it for him.
• Applied, this means instead of buying products on TV, sell products. Instead of digging for gold, sell shovels. Instead of taking a class, offer a class. Instead of borrowing money, lend it. Instead of taking a job, hire for jobs. Instead of taking a mortgage, hold a mortgage. Break free from consumption, switch sides, and reorient to the world as producer.
• To switch teams and become a producer, you need to be an entrepreneur and an innovator. You need to be a visionary and a creator. You need to give birth to a business and offer the world value.
• example, the sale of this book extricates me from the Slowlane wealth equation and its universe. This book puts me into the Fastlane universe, which is governed by its wealth equation of net profit and asset value. This book is a business system that has unlimited leverage in both time and money! First, it survives time and it is capable of earning income long after my original time investment. This book effectively transfers the act of income generation from me (the human asset) to the book (the business asset). From start to finish, this book cost roughly 1,000 hours of my time. If I sell 100,000 books at $5 profit each, I earn $500,000, or roughly $500 per hour invested. If I sell 500,000 books, I will earn $2,500 per hour invested. The more I sell, the greater the return on my original time investment, as I already paid the time. Imagine 10 years from today I sell one copy of this book. Suddenly I earn $5 from a time investment I made years ago!
• If I guest-speak on a radio show for 10 minutes and that appearance yields 1,000 book sales, this 10-minute investment yields $5,000 in income (1,000 books X $5 profit) and yields a return on my time at $30,000 per hour. Can you get rich trading your time for $30,000 per hour? Yes you can, and awfully fast.
• In the Fastlane, your Wealth Accelerator is based on creating or buying appreciative assets, adding value and manipulating the variables, and then selling. Or you can opt for the Slowlane alternative-dump $200 a month into a mutual fund and pray for 8% per year and 40 years of employment. Excuse me while I laugh.
• If the company you build from scratch has a paper valuation of $60 million and your bank account only has $10,000, are you really a millionaire? Not really. Illiquid, paper-millionaires can't buy Italian sports cars and palatial estates; money does. And to get the money, you have to increase profit and save it, or go for the big exit: liquidation.
• Rental Systems Computer/Software Systems Content Systems Distribution Systems Human Resource Systems
• Computers are miraculous inventions and fertile seeds to money trees. They work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and they don't bitch about working conditions. They don't bitch that you don't pay them enough. They don't bitch and moan about co-workers like Lazy Joan or Same-Shirt Bob.
• Of course, the road to the Fastlane wasn't easy for Nicholas. An engineer at Sun Micro Systems, he worked on his application after working eight-hour days, cradling his one-year-old son in one hand and coding with the other. How did he learn how to code an iPhone app? Nicholas couldn't afford books so he taught himself by scouring websites. Hmmm … do you smell process behind the event?
• In my case, human resource additions would have subtracted to passivity, not added. While I would have made more money hiring more people, I wasn't willing to forgo my free time for it.
• Human resource systems can add passivity or erode it. Good employees nurture money trees. Bad employees pluck the fruit of money trees and require pruning. However don't let that scare you. If you want to make millions of dollars, or billions, human resource systems are needed, because you can't do everything yourself.
• The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.
• “Thanks to municipals and treasuries, I never have to work another day of my life.”
• If you had $10 million and lent it at a mere 5% interest, you'd enjoy a passive income of $41,666 every single month. At 8% your monthly income would be $66,666 per month-fully passive. Over $60,000 every month! This is WITHOUT touching the principal. You can do this for years and still have 10 million dollars left over! Imagine opening your mailbox every month to a $40,000 check-and you didn't have to do anything for it. What kind of trouble can you get into earning $40,000 per month? I bet a lot.
• created a passive income stream via my Internet businesses (a business money tree seedling), which funded my passive income system from lending. While my Internet business was 85% passive (yes, I had to work several hours per week), my lending passivity is 99.5%. I do virtually nothing and the checks arrive.
• Every dollar saved is another freedom fighter in your army. If your money is fighting for you, your time is freed and you break the equation of “time for money.”
• Compound interest pays my bills. It's my tool. It's my passive income source. Yet, compound interest is not responsible for my wealth. This is critical.
• When a rich politician or public figure comes forth and discloses his finances, notice the common themes. The source of their wealth comes from their business interests, while their liquid cash reserves are tied into fixed-income securities like municipal bonds, treasuries, and other highly liquid and safe investments. The rich aren't using the markets to create wealth; they're increasing their existing wealth with leveraged business assets.
• The Fastlaner observes the tidal forces near land and seeks to meet it at the shore. At the shore, the tidal wave can be ridden with impact. To actuate compound interest's power, start at the shore, with a large number that can be leveraged. Ten percent interest on $10 million is $1 million a year-$83,333 every single month. Exploit compound interest at its crest, not a million miles out to sea.
• Thinking never made anyone rich, unless that thinking manifests itself into consistent action toward application of laws that work.
• If you're working the front desk at a hotel, you simply aren't making much of an impact, and your bank account will represent that same fact. The
• If you sell 20 million pens and make 75 cents profit on each, you just earned $15 million. This is having an impact on SCALE with tiny MAGNITUDE. Obviously, selling a writing pen doesn't have a major impact on anyone's life. The wealth is transmuted via SCALE, not magnitude.
• If your primary income source comes from a job, your ability to pay yourself first is paralyzed because the governments are paid first! For “pay yourself first” to be legitimate, you truly need to pay yourself first in infinite amounts and the government last. You must own your vehicle.
• When you have a job, someone owns you. And when someone owns you, you aren't paid first, but last.
• The first step to controlling your vehicle-you-is to own yourself so you can truly pay yourself first and the government last. That is accomplished by shelling your business into a corporation that you control.
• The best business structures for your Fastlane business are: C corporation S corporation Limited liability corporation Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but all share two common benefits: limitation of liability and tax efficiency.
• Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.
• Poor choices are the leading cause of poorness.
• If you approach wealth like a big pharmaceutical company and attack symptoms while neglecting problems, you will not succeed.
• your car's fuel tank had a small leak, how would you fix it? The symptomatic solver would increase his trips to the gas station to ensure a steady inflow of fuel. The problematic solver plugs up the hole.
• you aren't where you want to be, the problem is your choices. Your circumstances are the symptoms of those choices.
• People don't choose to be poor. They make poor decisions that slowly assemble into a poorness puzzle. Retrace the footprints to poverty and it happens slowly, systematically, and methodically, under a steady diet of poor choices.
• Think of it like a golf club striking a golf ball. When the clubface hits the ball square, the ball goes straight and heads toward the hole. But when the clubface is rotated a fraction of one degree, the ball's trajectory lands far off course. At impact, the divergence is minor, but as the ball travels further it widens and widens until the gap is so large that getting back on track is nearly impossible. A bad choice can set your trajectory off by only one degree today, but over years the error is magnified.
• When you are under 25 you have maximum horsepower and your choices discharge an incredible amount of firepower. A simple choice I made more than 20 years ago is still felt today. That's a lot of torque! If you reflect on your choices, you make them in an instant, yet their consequences transcend a lifetime, especially ones made early in life.
• Until we see what we are, we cannot take steps to become what we should be. ~Charlotte P. Gilman
• Today is the starting line for the rest of your life. Yes, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. The problem with the past is that we remember memories we shouldn't, and we don't forget what we should. If your eyes are stuck in the rearview mirror, you're stuck in the past. If you're stuck in the past, you're not looking ahead. If you're not looking ahead, you can't hit the mark of your future.
• People who don't empower your goals are human headwind bloviators. They add friction to the journey. When you spout excitement over actions or ideas, bloviators react with doubt and disbelief and use conditioned talking points such as, “Oh that won't work,” “Someone is already doing it,” and “Why bother?”
• This dichotomy makes you a blossoming flower that needs protection, water, and plenty of sun. Negative friends, family, or coworkers are dark clouds. Defend yourself or suffer the consequence of slow assimilation to mediocrity.
• My headwind was my environment. For you, it might be negative friends or other Slowlane influences. When you turn your back on these people, you break the headwind. When you associate with people who empower your goals, you create a wind at your back and build momentum. Positive people nurture your growth, sooth your failures, and invest in your dreams. Good people are conduits to your dreams, not just in motivational fuel, but in extending your opportunity reach.
• Think of the relationships in your life like an army platoon readying for battle. Who are you going to war with? Your friend Mark who is always late, lies, and passes out drunk every Saturday night? Your friend Lucy who has a new job every three weeks, was caught stealing at the mall, and is only looking for a super-rich guy to carry her off into the sunset? Are these people you can count on? Are these the people you want to go to battle with? If not, you need to pick better warriors to have on your team.
• How? Join entrepreneur clubs, attend networking events, ally yourself with like-minders, get yourself around people who subscribe to a Fastlane, anything is-possible mindset, and decide who you want on your team of warriors. Read books and autobiographies of those who have the kind of success you want. Find a mentor. Join entrepreneur forums with a Fastlane mindset, like the Fastlane Forum! Not a week goes by when someone doesn't email me, “This forum changed my life!” That's a tailwind!
• Reflect on your environment and your relationships, and recognize the headwinds. Then choose accelerative action: Can these headwinds be removed, ignored, or managed? Unlike natural wind, you are the arbiter of your headwinds. Success follows those who break the headwind and put it at their back.
• Having a life partner who doesn't ascribe to your life's ideals and philosophies is like towing a trailer full of wet manure. If your partner doesn't subscribe to an entrepreneurial philosophy and toes the Slowlane road, can you expect to grow together in unison? Someone fighting with you in your corner is accelerative; if they serve as the opposition, they become treasonous.
• we just were two different people on two different paths.
• Bad relationships are roadblocks to Fastlane success. They drain energy and dim dreams. It's like rowing a boat upstream. Unwilling passengers add weight, distract, and sometimes are expensive to remove. Yes, divorce is treasonous and expensive, both emotionally and financially. Traveling down the road less traveled is already difficult. Why compound the journey by weighing down the car with someone who doesn't share your destination? Are you in the right relationship with a person who believes in you and your goals? Or is your relationship just like lukewarm water, not bad, not good, just comfortable enough to stand pat? If so, it might be time to evaluate your passenger.
• The natural gravity of society is not to be exceptional, but average. Toxic relationships drain energy and detract from your goals to be extraordinary. The people in your life are like your comrades in a battle platoon. They can save you, help you, or destroy you. Good relationships are accelerative to your process, while bad relationships are treasonous.
• When time is wasted as a lifestyle choice you will be stranded in places you don't want to be.
• You see, once your time is gone, you're dead. And when your clock ceases to tick, no amount of cash will save you from the end.
• The greatest theft of all humanity is to act as if our time on this Earth is infinite when it isn't.
• money is an abundant resource while time is not? You can always acquire more money, but you cannot defy mortality.
• “Free time” is yours to spend as you please: TV, a jog in the park, video games, sleeping, eating, vacation. If you're like most, your free time is lumped on evenings and weekends, where time is not exchanged for money.
• Guess the behaviors-rich or poor? This person sleeps until noon. This person watches hours of reality TV. This person drives two hours to save $20. This person buys airline tickets with multiple layovers to save $100. This person spends hours surfing social networks and gossip blogs. This person is a Level 10 Druid in World of Warcraft. This person watches every Chicago Cubs game (just kidding, all you loyal Cubs fans).
• Behind the tangled roots of poorness, you will find a poor valuation of free time, which breeds from bad choices. “Time losers” are poor evaluators of time. These are the people camped out at Wal-Mart at 4 a.m. waiting to grab the early bird sales. These are the people sleeping outside Best Buy hoping to score a free 32" HDTV. These are the people waiting outside IKEA hoping to get a free breakfast.
• The inconvenient saver gladly wastes time to save money. From plane tickets with multiple stops to shared-shuttle airport service, inconvenience is no match for saving a few bucks an hour.
• From plane tickets with multiple stops to shared-shuttle airport service, inconvenience is no match
• If you want to be rich, you have to start thinking rich. Time is king.
• Fastlaners regard time as the king of all assets. Time is deathly scarce, while money is richly abundant. Indentured time is time you spend to earn money. Free time is spent as you please. Your lifespan is made up of both free time and indentured time. Free time is bought and paid for by indentured time. Fastlaners seek to transform indentured time into free time. Parasitic debt eats free time and excretes it as indentured time. Lifestyle extravagances have two costs: the cost itself and the cost to free time. Parasitic debt has to be stopped at the source: instant gratification.
• The Fastlane road trip demands fresh oil changes. But what is oil? Oil is education. Knowledge. Street smarts. But be careful … it must be the right oil and for the right purpose.
• Skills and expertise are waiting just for you. No one drops a book on your lap and gifts knowledge. You have to seek it, process it, and then use it. The acquisition and application of knowledge will make you rich.
• A $50,000 seminar is exploitation of what we producers know: People are lazy. People want it handed to them. People don't want to read and connect the dots; they want it done for them. People want to be steered. They want someone to drive their vehicle. People want events, not process, and what better event than a $50,000 seminar!
• The Fastlaner trades short-term comforts with the foreknowledge that long-term extraordinary comfort is to be gained.
• Their goal was to take my small company and transform it into a $100 million company. If they succeed, my small $100,000 investment would then be worth $2 million. The downside? The company could fail and the liquidation value of my investment would lose about 50%. My downside is limited while the upside is substantial. This is an intelligent risk.
• Waiting for all green lights is waiting for the skies to turn purple on the third Wednesday in November.
• The Commandment of Need The Commandment of Entry The Commandment of Control The Commandment of Scale The Commandment of Time
• Make a freaking impact and start providing value! Let money come to you! Look around outside your world, stop being selfish, and help your fellow humans solve their problems. In a world of selfishness, become unselfish.
• Make them feel better. Help them solve a problem. Educate them. Make them look better (health, nutrition, clothing, makeup). Give them security (housing, safety, health). Raise a positive emotion (love, happiness, laughter, self-confidence). Satisfy appetites, from basic (food) to the risqué (sexual). Make things easier. Enhance their dreams and give hope.
• A road that doesn't converge with your dreams is a dead end.
• “In a gold rush, don't dig for gold, sell shovels!” When
• When you control your business, you control everything in your business-your organization, your products, your pricing, your revenue model, and your operational choices. If you can't control every aspect of your company, you're not driving! And if you can't drive, you set yourself up for sudden, unexpected crashes.
• Big money is $200,000/month. Now we're talking-$200,000 every month will make a dent into your lifestyle. When you earn this level of income, life changes. And then there is legendary money, where you earn more than a million dollars every month. Outrageous? Not at all. When you leverage all five commandments and control your company, one million a month is not impossible.
• I can't imagine running a company in which another entity has the power to instantaneously kill your revenue stream. If someone can “flip a switch” and destroy your business, you're playing roulette with your financial plan. The congenital danger of hitchhiking is that you relinquish control to the driver. If the driver crashes into a wall, guess who goes with them.
• You've got a great idea, but someone is already doing it? So what. Do it better. “Someone is doing it” is a monumental illusion imposing as an impassable obstacle. Someone is always already doing it. The bigger question is, can you do it better? Can you fill the need better, offer greater value, or be a better marketer?
• “Competition is everywhere. Just do it and do it better.”
• When you catch yourself (or someone else) in these words, you've just uncovered a possible opportunity. Here are the most common phrases: “I hate …” What do you hate? Solve the hate, and there's your open road. “I don't like …” What don't you like? Remove the dislike, and there's your open road. “This frustrates me …” What is frustrating? Remove the frustration, and there's your open road. “Why is this like this?” I don't know, why is it? Remove the “why,” and there's your open road. “Do I have to?” Do you? Remove the “have to.” There's your open road. “I wish there was …” What do you wish? If you wish, others wish too. Make wishes come true, and there's your open road. “I'm tired of …” What are you tired of? Fix someone's tiresomeness, and there's your open road. “This sucks . . .” What sucks? Remove or reduce suckage, and there's your open road.
• They make money on planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence is a marketer's expectation that whatever they're selling you, you won't use it. And if you don't use it, you are unlikely to ask for your money back.
• The King: Your execution The Queen: Your marketing The Bishop: Your customer service The Knight: Your product The Rook: Your people The Pawn: Your ideas.
• Complaints of change are the least informative and therefore are the ones most difficult to decipher. For my redesign failure, data confirmed that the complaints were substantial. Bounce rates tripled and my conversion ratio suffered. I had to suck up the failure, revert back, and start over.
• My repeated, and often preached, motto to my employees was, “The customer pays your paycheck, not me-keep them happy.”