Tag: MJ Demarco

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (36-37) Summary

This post contains Amazon affiliate links which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through links.

Find Your
Open Road

At first, people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done,
then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—
then it is done, and all the world wonders
why it was not done centuries ago.
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

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?

Skip the big idea and go for the big execution.

Unfortunately, the least-traveled Fastlane roads are paved in failure, not smooth asphalt. This means stalls are guaranteed. Everyone fails on the road to success.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Opportunities are rarely about inventing breakthroughs, but about performance gaps, small inconveniences, and pain points.
•• Competition should not impede your road. Competition is everywhere, and your objective should be to “do it better.”
•• Fastlane success resides in execution, not in the idea.
••The world’s most successful entrepreneurs didn’t have a blockbuster ideas; they just took existing concepts and made them better, or exposed them to more people.
•• Opportunity is exposed in your language and your thought processes, as well as other people’s language.
•• Failure cracks open new roads.
•• Quitting only happens when you give up on your dream.

Give Your Road
a Destination

The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal.
The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
~ Benjamin Mays

The end of the Fastlane road trip is to crown your happiness with freedom.

The Price of Freedom: Money

Freedom has a price, and that price is money. Big dreams, from materialistic Ferraris to altruistic nonprofit foundations, cost money. You can’t travel the world by swimming in the oceans. You have to pay your way, and if you think money is evil, you’ve already lost.

Set Your Destination: Four Steps to Starting

1) Define the Lifestyle: What do you want?
2) Assess the Cost: How much do your dreams cost?
3) Set the Targets: Set the money system and business income targets.
4) Make It Real: Fund it and open it!

The Rules of the Road: Financial Literacy

Managing a Money System Demands Financial Literacy

You can’t build a financial empire if you’re ignorant of basic finance and economics. These disciplines are the building blocks to a financial empire, and without them the Sidewalk becomes a danger. Remember, more money doesn’t solve money problems. To successfully leverage a money system for passivity, you have to familiarize yourself with financial instruments that fuel the money system.

Live Below Your Means—Slowlane?

The first rule of financial literacy: “Live below your means.” Yes, a pragmatic doctrine echoed from Slowlane dogmaticians that is an affable replacement for its mathematical equivalent of “Keep expenses under your income.” Earn 10 bucks and don’t spend 20. But is it Fastlane relevant? Absolutely, with one distinction: Live below your means with the intent to expand your means.

Slowlaners seek to minimize expenses while the Fastlaner seeks to maximize income and asset values.

“Live below your means” requires above-average discipline.

A Financial Adviser Doesn’t Fix Illiteracy

Literacy gives you the power to evaluate your adviser’s advice. literacy is insurance

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Fastlane is the means to your end because dreams cost money.
•• Conquer big goals by breaking them down to their smallest component.
•• Daily saving reinforces your relationship with money; it is your passive system that buys freedom and another soldier added to your army.
••A money system isn’t used to grow wealth but to grow income. Growing wealth should be left to your Fastlane road.
••You will struggle to build a financial empire if you are financially illiterate.
••“Live below your means” is relevant at any income level.
•• For the Fastlaner, “Live below your means” means to expand your means.
••A financial adviser doesn’t solve financial illiteracy and literacy is insurance.
•• Financial illiteracy dilutes your control, especially when evaluating the advice of a financial adviser.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (33-35) Summary

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through links.

The Commandment
of Scale
In business, to be a success you only have to be right once.
~ Mark Cuban

When your business road violates the Commandment of Scale, wealth acceleration is incarcerated within constricting speed limits. Drive any road with a speed limit of 15 and you aren’t going to get anywhere fast.

Swing for Home Runs, Not Singles. be in the business of home runs.

The Fastlane Wealth Equation: Disarmed

Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value

Net Profit = Units Sold × Unit Profit

Tiny habitats create tiny wealth.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••Your total pool of customers determines your habitat. The larger the habitat, the greater the potential for wealth.
••A business can be a singles or a home-run-based business. Its strength is determined by scale, which is derived by habitat.
••The Fastlane wealth equation is disarmed when you violate the Commandment of Scale.

•• Scale is achieved in reach (units sold) and/or magnitude (unit profit).
••The Law of Effection is the primary conduit to wealth, which can be roadblocked by scale, magnitude, or source.
•• Effection consequences trickle up to owners and producers. Breaking scale or magnitude indirectly in an uncontrolled entity is not a guarantee of wealth.
•• To gain access to Effection, you have to break the barrier of scale or magnitude in an entity you control.
•• Scale, magnitude, or source deficiencies create governors on the speed of wealth creation.

The Commandment
of Time
I am long on ideas, but short on time.
I expect to live only about a hundred years.
~ Thomas Edison

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••A business attached to your time is a job.
••A business that earns income exclusive of your time satisfies the Commandment of Time.
•• To satisfy the Commandment of Time, start with a business that uses a money system seedling, or introduce one.

Rapid Wealth:
The Interstates
You can’t live a perfect day without doing something
for someone who will never be able to repay you.
~ John Wooden

The Three Fastlane Interstates:

1) Internet
2) Innovation
3) Intentional Iteration

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The best Fastlanes satisfy all five Commandments: Control, Entry, Need, Time, and Scale.
••Assuming a need-based premise, the Internet is the fastest interstate, because it overwhelmingly satisfies all Commandments.
•• Innovation can be any variety of open roads: authoring, inventing, or services.
•• Inventing success needs coupling with distribution.
••A singles-based business is scaled to a home-run business by intentional iteration. With iteration, scale is conquered.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (29-30) Summary

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through links.

The Right Road
Routes to Wealth

He who chooses the beginning of the road
chooses the place it leads to.
It is the means that determines the end.
~ Henry Emerson Fosdick

The Road to Effection: The Five Fastlane Commandments:

1) The Commandment of Need
2) The Commandment of Entry
3) The Commandment of Control
4) The Commandment of Scale
5) The Commandment of Time

A road meeting all five commandments can make you filthy rich fast.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Not all businesses are the right road. Few roads move at, through, or near the Law of Effection.
••The best roads and the purest Fastlanes satisfy the Five Fastlane Commandments: Need, Entry, Control, Scale, and Time.

The Commandment
of Need

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
~ George Eliot

Sand Foundations Crumble Houses
Ninety percent of all new businesses fail within five years, and I know why they fail. They fail because they fail the Commandment of Need.

Businesses that solve needs win. Businesses that provide value win.

To succeed as a producer, surrender your own selfishness and address the selfishness of others.

Stop Chasing Money—Chase Needs.

Stop thinking about business in terms of your selfish desires, whether it’s money, dreams or “do what you love.” Instead, chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.

You and your business attract money when you stop being selfish and turn your business’s focus from the needs of yourself to the needs of other people. Give first, take second. Money Chasers Chase Money, Not Needs.

💰 To Attract Money Is to Forget About Money 💰

Solve needs massively and money massively attracts. The amount of money in your life is merely a reflection to the amount of value.

Make 1 million people achieve any of the following:

1) Make them feel better.
2) Help them solve a problem.
3) Educate them.
4) Make them look better (health, nutrition, clothing, makeup).
5) Give them security (housing, safety, health).
6) Raise a positive emotion (love, happiness, laughter, self-confidence).
7) Satisfy appetites, from basic (food) to the risquĂŠ (sexual).
8) Make things easier.
9) Enhance their dreams and give hope.

. . . and I guarantee, you will be worth millions.

Beware of another guru-speak: “Do what you love and the money will follow!” Bullshit.

The motivational fuel for the Fastlane is passion, not love. Passion gets you out of the garage and onto the road. If you have a passion for a specific goal, you’ll do anything for it. 💖

Passion beats “do what you love,” because passion fuels motivation for something greater than yourself and is generalized.

I repeat: Passion for an end goal, a why, drives Fastlane action.

Passion Erases the Suffering of Work

The Fastlane isn’t a destination but a personal journey.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Commandment of Need states that businesses that solve needs win.
Needs can be pain points, service gaps, unsolved problems, or emotional disconnects.
•• Ninety percent of all new businesses fail because they are based on selfish internal needs, not external market needs.
•• No one cares about your selfish desires for dreams or money; people only want to know what your business can do for them.
•• Money chasers haven’t broken free from selfishness, and their businesses often follow their own selfish needs.
•• People vote for your business with their money.
•• Chase money and it will elude you. However, if you ignore it and focus on what attracts money, you will draw it to yourself.
•• Help one million people and you will be a millionaire.
•• For money to follow “Do what you love,” your love must solve a need and you must be exceptional at it.
••“Do what you love” sets the stage for crowded marketplaces with depressed margins.
••When you have the financial resources, you can “do what you love” and not get paid for it, nor do you have to be good at it.
•• Slowlaners feed “do what you love” with “do what you hate.” Five days of hate for two days of love.
••“Doing what you love” for money can endanger your love.
•• Passion for an end goal, a why, drives Fastlane success.
•• Having a passionate “why” can transform work into joy. ••“Doing what you love” usually leads to the violation of the Commandment of Need.
••The right road for you is one that will converge with your dreams.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (24-28) Summary

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through links.

Choices of perception serve as the impetus to choices of action. If you believe and perceive a certain idea, you are likely to act in accordance with that belief.

You see, you choose to interpret events in your particular frame of reference. Your mind labels and categorizes events that surround you. If you lose your job, you can frame it as a negative or a positive. When you’re caught speeding, you can be angry or thankful. The choice of perception and its choices start right between your ears and drive themselves into choices of action.

The universe doesn’t care about your past. It is blind to it. The universe doesn’t care that I wore pink pants in high school. The universe doesn’t care that I got in a fight with Francis Franken and lost. The universe
doesn’t care about your MBA from UCLA, your drug-dealing father, or that you wet your bed in junior high. The universe simply doesn’t care. One person and one person only weaponizes past transgressions: you.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••Your choices of action manifest from your choices of perception.
••What you choose to perceive, or not perceive, will manifest itself to a choice of action, or inaction.
••You can change your choice of perception by aligning yourself with those who experience the perception as reality.
••Worst Case Consequence Analysis helps avoid treasonous choices.
••The Weighted Average Decision Matrix can help you make better big decisions by clarifying alternatives and their internal factors.
••The universe has no memory, only you do.
••Your past can be accelerative or treasonous. You choose the classification.
•• If your eyes are transfixed to the past, you can’t become the person you need to become in the future.

Extraordinary wealth will require you to have extraordinary beliefs.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••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.

Fastlaners understand that time is the gas tank of life. Time is the great equalizer. You were born with a full tank of gas. There are no refilling stations, and your one fill-up occurred the moment you took your first breath. There are two types of time that will make up your lifespan: Your free time and your indentured time.

Your Lifespan = Free Time + Indentured Time

Money buys free time and eliminates indentured time. However, the irony of your free time is it isn’t FREE; it’s bought and paid for by your indentured time. Indentured time becomes the ransom of your free time. The leading cause of indentured time is parasitic debt.

A Poor Valuation of “Free Time” Leads to Poorness

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.

⏳ Fastlaners are frugal with time, while Slowlaners are frugal with money. 🤑💰

Sidewalkers and Slowlaners use money as the sole criterion in decision-making: Which job pays the most? Where is the cheapest item? How can I get some free chicken? Money is scarce and time brings up the rear and sweeps up the mess. If you want to be rich, you have to start thinking rich. Time is king. 👑

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• 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.

Graduation Is Not the End; It Is the Beginning

What you know today is not enough to get you where you need to be tomorrow.

The purpose of education within the Fastlane is to amplify the power of the money tree and the business system. You’re not a cog in the wheel; you learn to build the wheel.

Make the real world your university. Yes, you are your own university.

In today’s information society, there is absolutely no excuse not to find out how.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Fastlaners start their education at graduation, if not before.
••A Fastlaner’s education serves to advance their business system and their money tree, not to raise intrinsic value.
•• Fastlaner’s aren’t interested in being a cog in the wheel. They want to be the wheel.
•• I don’t know how” is an excuse dismantled by discipline.
•• Infinite knowledge is everywhere and it’s free. What’s missing is discipline to assimilate it.
••You can become an expert in any discipline not requiring physical skills.
•• Educational recharges can occur within time blocks already allocated for other objectives.
•• Organizers of expensive seminars take advantage of Sidewalkers and disenfranchised Slowlaners by marketing empty promises as “events.”

Fastlane Risks Can Have Lifelong Returns

When it comes to risk analysis, there are two types of risk designated by best- and worst-case outcomes or consequences: intelligent risks and moronic risks.

Intelligent risks have a limited downside, while their upside is unlimited. Moronic risks have a bottomless downside and their upside is limited, or short term.

Opportunity Doesn’t Care About Timing

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Interest is first gear. Commitment is the Redline.
•• Hard work and commitment separates the winners from the losers.
•• Some choose short-term mediocre comfort over long-term meteoric comfort.
•• To live unlike everyone else, you have to do what everyone else won’t.
••Arm your expectations to hard work, sacrifice, and other bumps in the road. These are the landmines where the weak are removed from the road and sent back to the land of “most people.”
•• Failure is natural to success. Expect it and learn from it.
•• One home run could set you financially secure for your life, perhaps generations.
•• Home runs can’t be hit in the dug out.
••Moronic risks have unlimited downside (long term) and limited upside (short term).
•• Intelligent risks have unlimited upside (long term) and limited downside (short term.)
••There is never perfect timing and waiting for “someday” just wastes time.

👉🏽 Millionaire Fastlane 👈🏽

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (21-23) Summary

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through links.

The Real Law of Wealth

Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value.
~ Albert Einstein

The Law of Effection states that the more lives you affect in an entity you control, in scale and/or magnitude, the richer you will become. Impact millions and make millions. It doesn’t get any simpler than that!

NET PROFIT = Units Sold (Scale) × Unit Profit (Magnitude)

Scale creates millionaires. Magnitude creates millionaires. Scale and magnitude creates billionaires.

Retrace the source of millionaire money and you will find millions of something.

The closer you get to the source of large numbers, the closer you will get to wealth. To serve millions is to make millions. Think big to earn big.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Law of Effection states that the more lives you affect or breach, both in scale or magnitude, the richer you will be.
•• Scale translates to “units sold” of our profit variable within our Fastlane wealth equation. Magnitude translates to “unit profit” of our profit variable within our Fastlane wealth equation.
••The Law of Attraction is not a law, but a theory. The Law of Effection is absolute and operates exclusive of a roadmap.
••All lineages of self-made wealth trace back to the Law of Effection.
••The Law of Effection’s absoluteness comes from direct access and control (you are the athlete) versus indirect access (you are the athlete’s agent).
•• To make millions you must serve millions in scale or a few in magnitude.

Own Yourself First

Events and circumstances have their origin in ourselves.
They spring from seeds which we have sown.
~ Henry David Thoreau

To Pay Yourself First, You Must Own Yourself. When you have a job, someone owns you.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••“Pay yourself first” is fundamentally impossible in a job.
•• To own your vehicle (you), start a corporation that formally divorces you from the act of business. Your corporation is the body of your surrogate.
••The recommended Fastlane business entity is a C corp, an S corp, or an LLC.

Life’s Steering Wheel

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.
~ Robert F. Bennett

Poor choices are the leading cause of poorness. The problem is poor diet; cholesterol is the symptom.

If you aren’t where you want to be, the problem is your choices.

••The will to persevere is often the difference between failure and success.
•• Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.

Your choices spark the fires of future circumstances.

What’s Chosen Today, Impacts Forever. Our choices have consequences that transcend decades.

A Fastlane process is hundreds of choices.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The leading cause of poorness is poor choices.
••The steering wheel of your life is your choices.
••You are exactly where you chose to be.
•• Success is hundreds of choices that form process. Process forms lifestyle.
•• Choice is the most powerful control you have in your life.
•• Treasonous choices forever impact your life negatively.
••Your choices have significant horsepower, or trajectory into the future.
••The younger you are, the more potent your choices are and the more horsepower you possess.
•• Over time, horsepower erodes as the consequences of old choices are thick and hard to bend.

💸💲🧠

💸 Pave your road to abundant wealth 💰⃤

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (16-20) Summary

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through links.

Wealth’s Shortcut::
The Fastlane

People would do better, if they knew better.
~ Jim Rohn

The Fastlane Mindposts

Debt Perception: Debt is useful if it allows me to build and grow my system.
Time Perception: Time is the most important asset I have, far exceeding money.
Education Perception: The moment you stop learning is the moment you stop growing. Constant expansion of my knowledge and awareness is critical to my journey.
Money Perception: Money is everywhere, and it’s extremely abundant. Money is
a reflection of how many lives I’ve touched. Money reflects the value I’ve created.
Primary Income Source: I earn income via my business systems and investments.
Primary Wealth Accelerator: I make something from nothing. I give birth to assets and make them valuable to the marketplace. Other times, I take existing assets and add value to them.
Wealth Perception: Build business systems for cash flow and asset valuation.
Wealth Equation: Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value
Strategy: The more I help, the richer I become in time, money, and personal fulfillment.
Destination: Lifetime passive income, either through business or investments.
Responsibility & Control: Life is what I make it. My financial plan is entirely my responsibility and I choose how I react to my circumstances.
Life Perception: My dreams are worth pursuing no matter how outlandish, and I understand that it will take money to make some of those dreams real.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The risk profile of a Fastlane strategy isn’t much different from the Slowlane, but the rewards are far greater.
••The Fastlane Roadmap is an alternative financial strategy predicated on Controllable Unlimited Leverage.
••The Fastlane roadmap is predisposed to wealth.
••The Fastlane Roadmap is capable of generating “Get Rich Quick” results, not to be confused with “Get Rich Easy.”

Switch Teams
and Playbooks

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Producers are indigenous to the Fastlane roadmap.
•• Producers are the minority as are the rich, while consumers are the majority as are the poor.
••When you succeed as a producer, you can consume anything you want.
•• Fastlaners are producers, entrepreneurs, innovators, visionaries, and creators.
••A business does not make a Fastlane—some businesses are jobs in disguise.
••The Fastlane wealth equation is not bound by time and its variables are unlimited and controllable.

How the Rich Really Get Rich

Only those who will risk going too far
can possibly find out how far one can go.
~ TS Eliot

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The key to the Fastlane wealth equation is to have a high speed limit, or an unlimited range of values for units sold. This creates leverage. The market for your product or service determines your upper limit.
••The higher your speed limit, the higher your income potential.
••The primary wealth accelerant for the rich is asset value, defined as appreciable assets created, founded, or bought.
••Wealth creation via asset value is accelerated by each industry’s average multiplier. For every dollar in net income realized, the asset value multiplies by a factor of the multiple.
••Your industry of specialization will determine the average multiple that determines your wealth accelerant factor. If the multiple is 3, your WAF is 300%.
•• Liquidation events transform appreciated assets (“paper” net worth) into money (“real” net worth) that can be transformed into another passive income stream: a money system.

Divorce Wealth from Time

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have,
and only you can determine how it will be spent.
Be careful, lest you let other people spend it for you.
~ Carl Sandburg

The Five Fastlane Business Seedlings:

1) Rental Systems
2) Computer/Software Systems
3) Content Systems
4) Distribution Systems
5) Human Resource Systems

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• To divorce yourself from the Slowlane’s transactional relationship of “time for money,” you need to become a producer, specifically, a business owner.
•• Business systems break the bond between “your time for money” because they act like surrogate operatives for your time trade.
•• If you have a passive income that exceeds all your needs and lifestyle expenses including taxes, you’re retired.
•• Retirement can happen at any age.
••The fruit from a money tree is passive income.
••A Fastlane objective is to create a business system that survives time, exclusive of your time.
••The 5 money-tree seedlings are rental systems, computer systems, content systems, distribution systems, and human-resource systems.
•• Real estate, licenses, and patents are examples of rental systems.
•• Internet and software businesses are examples of computer systems.
••Authoring books, blogging, and magazines are forms of content systems.
•• Franchising, chaining, network marketing, and television marketing are examples of distribution systems.
•• Human resource systems can add or subtract to passivity.
•• Human resource systems are the most expensive to manage and implement.

Recruit Your Army
of Freedom Fighters

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.
~ Proverbs 22:7 (NIV)

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• One saved dollar is the seed to a money tree.
••A mere 5% interest on $10 million dollars is $40,000 a month in passive income.
••A saved dollar is the best passive income instrument.
•• Fastlaners (the rich) don’t use compound interest or the markets to get wealthy but to create income and preserve liquidity.
••A saved dollar is a freedom fighter added to your army.
••The rich leverage compound interest at its crest, applied against large sums of money.
•• Fastlaners eventually become net lenders.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (11-15) Summary

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through links.

The Criminal Trade: Your Job

By working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually
get to be the boss and work 12 hours a day.
~ Robert Frost

Jobs: Domestication into Normalcy

To Trade Time Is to Trade Life. In a job, you sell your life for money.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• In a job, you sell your freedom (in the form of time) for freedom (in the form of money).
•• Experience is gained in action. The environment of that action is irrelevant.
••Wealth accumulation is thwarted when you don’t control your primary income source.

The Slowlane:
Why You Aren’t Rich

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying.
Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say.
Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.
~ Michael Landon

For compound interest to be effective, you need three things:
1) TIME, as measured in years.
2) A favorable YEARLY INVESTMENT YIELD within those years.
3) An INVESTED SUM, repeatedly invested.

Wealth is built with time as an asset, not as a liability!

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Slowlane wealth is improbable due to Uncontrollable Limited Leverage (ULL).
•• The first variable in the Slowlane wealth equation evolves from a job that factors to intrinsic value that equates to your nominal value for each unit of your life traded.
•• Intrinsic value is the value of your time set by the marketplace and is measured in units of time, either hourly or yearly.
•• In the Slowlane, intrinsic value (regardless of its time measurement) is numerically inhibited because there are only 24 hours in the day (for the hourly worker), and the average lifespan is 74 years (for the salaried worker).
•• Like the Slowlaner’s primary income source (a job), the Slowlaner’s wealth acceleration vehicle (compound interest) is also pegged to time.
•• Like a job, compound interest is mathematically futile and cannot be manipulated. You cannot force-feed the market (or the economy) to give you phenomenal returns, year after year.
••Wealth cannot be accelerated when pegged to mathematics based on time.
•• Time is your primordial fuel and it should not be traded for money.
••Your time should not be an expendable resource for wealth because wealth itself is composed of time.
••Your mortality makes time mathematically retarded for wealth creation.
•• If you don’t control the variables inherent in your wealth universe, you don’t control your financial plan.

The Futile Fight:
Education

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
~ Albert Einstein

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Slowlaners attempt to manipulate intrinsic value by education.
•• Indentured time is time you spend earning a living. It is the opposite of free time.
•• Parasitic debt is debt that creates indentured time and forces work.

The Hypocrisy of the Gurus

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted,
but now it happens to everybody.
~ Adlai Stevenson

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Take advice from people with a proven, successful track record of their espoused discipline.
••Many money gurus often suffer from a Paradox of Practice; they teach one wealth equation while getting rich in another. They’re not rich from their own teachings.

Slowlane Victory…
A Gamble of Hope

I’d rather live in regret of failure than in regret of never trying.
~ MJ DeMarco

12 Distinctions Between Slowlane and Fastlane Millionaires
1) Slowlane millionaires make millions in 30 years or more. Fastlane millionaires make millions in 10 years or less.
2) Slowlane millionaires need to live in middle-class homes. Fastlane millionaires can live in luxury estates.
3) Slowlane millionaires have MBAs. Fastlane millionaires hire people with MBAs.
4) Slowlane millionaires let their assets drift by market forces. Fastlane millionaires control their assets and possess the power to manipulate their value.
5) Slowlane millionaires can’t afford exotic cars. Fastlane millionaires can afford to drive whatever they want.
6) Slowlane millionaires work for their time. Fastlane millionaires have time working for them.
7) Slowlane millionaires are employees. Fastlane millionaires hire employees.
8) Slowlane millionaires have 401Ks. Fastlane millionaires offer 401Ks.
9) Slowlane millionaires use mutual funds and the stock market to get rich. Fastlane millionaires use them to stay rich.
10) Slowlane millionaires let other people control their income streams. Fastlane millionaires control their income streams.
11) Slowlane millionaires are cheap with money. Fastlane millionaires are cheap with time.
12) Slowlane millionaires use their house for net worth. Fastlane millionaires use their house for residency.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Slowlane has seven dangers, five of which cannot be controlled.
••The risk of “lifestyle” is the one risk Slowlaners will try to control.
••The Slowlane is predisposed to mediocrity because its mathematical universe is mediocre.
•• Slowlaners manipulate the “expense” variable because it is the one thing they can control.
•• Exponential income growth and expense management creates wealth—not just by curtailing expenses.
••You can break the Slowlane equation by exploding your intrinsic value via fame or insider corporate management.
•• Successful Slowlaners not famous or in corporate management end in the middle . . . middle class and middle age.
•• Slowlane millionaires are stuck in the middle class.
•• $5 million is the new $1 million.
••A millionaire cannot live a millionaire lifestyle without financial discipline.
•• Lottery winners fall into the millionaire trap and go broke because they attempt to live a “millionaire” lifestyle, not understanding that a few million doesn’t go very far.

The Millionaire Fastlane: Chapters (1-10) Summary

This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through links.

Part 1
Wealth in a Wheelchair:
“Get Rich Slow” is Get Rich Old

The Great Deception
Normal is not something to aspire to,
it’s something to get away from.
~ Jodie Foster

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••“Get Rich Slow” demands a long life of gainful employment.
••“Get Rich Slow” is a losing game because it is codependent on Wall Street and anchored by your time.
••The real golden years of life are when you’re young, sentient, and vibrant.

How I Screwed “Get Rich Slow”
The object of life is not to be on the side of the masses,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
~ Marcus Aurelius

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Fame or physical talent is not a prerequisite to wealth.
•• Fast wealth is created exponentially, not linearly.
•• Change can happen in an instant.

Part 2
Wealth is Not a Road,
But a Road Trip!

The Road Trip to Wealth
The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
~ Lao Tzu

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••Wealth is a formula, not an ingredient.
•• Process makes millionaires. Events are by-products of process.
•• To seek a “wealth chauffeur” is to seek a surrogate for process. Process cannot be outsourced, because process dawns wisdom, personal growth, strength, and events.

The Roadmaps to Wealth
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.
~ Lewis Carroll

Debt Perception: Does debt control you or do you control your debt?
Time Perception: How is your time valued and treated? Abundant? Fleeting? Inconsequential?
Education Perception: What role does education have in your life?
Money Perception: What is money’s role in your life? Is money a tool or a toy? Plentiful or scarce?
Primary Income Source: What is your primary means of creating income?
Primary Wealth Accelerator: How are you accelerating your net worth and creating wealth? Or are you?
Wealth Perception: How do you define wealth?
Wealth Equation: What is your mathematical plan for accumulating wealth? What wealth equation defines the physics of your wealth universe?
Destination: Is there a destination? If so, what does it look like?
Responsibility & Control: Are you in control of your life and your financial plan?
Life Perception: How do you live your life? Do you plan for the future? Forsake today for tomorrow? Or tomorrow for today?

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• To force change, change must come from your beliefs, and your roadmap outlines those beliefs.
•• Each roadmap is governed by a wealth equation and predisposed to a financial destination—Sidewalk to poorness, Slowlane to mediocrity, and the Fastlane to wealth.

Part 3
Poorness:
The Sidewalk Roadmap

When you’re the first person whose beliefs are different
from what everyone else believes, you’re basically saying,
“I’m right, and everyone else is wrong.” That’s a very unpleasant position to be in.
It’s at once exhilarating and at the same time, an invitation to be attacked.
~ Larry Ellison

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••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.

Has Your Wealth Been Toxified?
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••Wealth is authored by strong familial relationships, fitness and health, and freedom—not by material possessions.
•• Unaffordable material possessions are destructive to the wealth trinity.

Misuse Money and Money Will Misuse You
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable.
~ Clare Boothe Luce

1) Money buys the freedom to watch your kids grow up.
2) Money buys the freedom to pursue your craziest dreams.
3) Money buys the freedom to make a difference in the world.
4) Money buys the freedom to build and strengthen relationships.
5) Money buys the freedom to do what you love, with financial validation removed from the equation.

If You Think You Can Afford It —You Can’t. Affordability is when you don’t have to think about it.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••Money doesn’t buy happiness because money is used for consumer pursuits destructive to freedom. Anything destructive to freedom is destructive to the wealth trinity.
••Money, properly used, can buy freedom, which can lead to happiness.
•• Happiness stems from good health, freedom, and strong interpersonal relationships, not necessarily money.
•• Lifestyle Servitude steals freedom, and what steals freedom, steals wealth.
•• If you think you can afford it, you can’t.
•• The consequence of instant gratification is the destruction of freedom, health, and choice.

Lucky Bastards
Play The Game
I’m a great believer in luck,
and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Like wealth, luck is created by process, not by event.
•• Luck is created by increased probabilities that are improved with the process of action.
•• If you find yourself playing the odds of “big hits,” you are event-driven, not process-driven. This mindset is conducive to the Sidewalk, not the Fastlane.
••“Get Rich Quick” infomercial marketing is a Fastlane because savvy marketers know that Sidewalkers place faith in events over process.
••Moneymaking “systems” are rarely as profitable as the act of selling them to Sidewalkers.

Wealth Demands Accountability


Responsibility is the price of greatness.
~ Winston Churchill

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
•• Hitchhikers assign control over their financial plans to others, which effectively introduces probabilities to victimhood.
••The Law of Victims: You can’t be a victim if you don’t relinquish power to someone capable of making you a victim.
•• Responsibility owns your choices.
•• Taking responsibility is the first step to taking the driver’s seat of your life. Accountability is the final.

Part 4
Mediocrity:
The Slowlane Roadmap

The Lie You’ve Been Sold:
The Slowlane
What if I told you ‘insane’ was working fifty hours a week in some office
for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to piss off;
ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering
the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time?
Wouldn’t you consider that to be insane?
~ Steve Buscemi (Con Air, paramount pictures, 2003)

Have You Sold Your Soul for a Weekend?

Life does not begin on Friday night and end Monday morning.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
••The Slowlane is a natural course-correction from the Sidewalk evolving from taking responsibility and accountability.
••Wealth is best experienced when you’re young, vibrant, and able, not in the twilight of your life.
••The Slowlane is a plan that takes decades to succeed, often requiring masterful political prowess in a corporate environment.

•• For the Slowlaner, Saturday and Sunday is the paycheck for Monday through Friday.
••The default return on your time in the Slowlane is negative 60%—5-for-2.
••The 5-for-2 trade inherit in the Slowlane is generally fixed and cannot be manipulated, because job standards are five days a week.
••The predisposed destination of the Slowlane is mediocrity. Life isn’t great, but it isn’t so bad either.