The Millionaire Fastlane

by M.J. DeMarco

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.

Fastlane isn’t something you try, it’s something you live. It isn’t one choice but hundreds. And when you line a string of choices together, they create your process, and your process will create your lifestyle. Lifestyle choices will make you a millionaire.

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.

Good choices of perception translate into good choices of action. To change your perception is to change your future actions.

1)​Worse Case Consequence Analysis (WCCA) 2)​Weighted Average Decision Matrix (WADM) WCCA is designed to steer you away from perilous detours and treasonous choices. Conversely, WADM is designed to help you make better big decisions with multiple contingencies.

1)​What is the worst-case consequence of this choice? 2)​What is the probability of this outcome? 3)​Is this an acceptable risk?

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 (WADM) 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.

People are like roads—they can either bring opportunity or distress into your life. The quality of these roads solely depends on the quality of the person.

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.

Value your time poorly and you will be poor. When time is wasted as a lifestyle choice you will be stranded in places you don’t want to be.

“Indentured time” is the opposite: It’s the total time spent earning money and the consequences of that spent time.

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.

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

The acquisition and application of knowledge will make you rich.

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.”

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.

There is never a perfect time. Someday is today. Today is now.

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 land mines 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.

CENTS framework. 1)​The Commandment of Control 2)​The Commandment of Entry 3)​The Commandment of Need 4)​The Commandment of Time 5)​The Commandment of Scale

Not all businesses are the right road. Few roads move through, or near, the Law of Effection. ✓- The best roads and the purest Fastlanes satisfy the CENTS Framework; the Five Fastlane Commandments: Control, Entry, Need, Time, and Scale.

Fastlane drivers retain control. Those who violate the commandment do not. In general: ✓- Drivers create MLM companies; they don’t join them. ✓- Drivers sell franchises; they don’t buy them. ✓- Drivers offer affiliate programs; they don’t join them. ✓- Drivers run hedge funds; they don’t invest in them. ✓- Drivers sell stock; they don’t buy stock. ✓- Drivers offer drop-shipping; they don’t use drop-shipping. ✓- Drivers offer employment; they don’t get employed. ✓- Drivers accept rents and royalties; they don’t pay rents and royalties. ✓- Drivers sell licenses; they don’t buy them. ✓- Drivers sell IPO shares; they don’t buy them. ✓- Drivers don’t join the hottest trend, they serve the hottest trend.

Hitchhikers relinquish control of their business to a Fastlaner. ✓- There is a difference between “good” money and “big” money. Hitchhikers can make good money while Fastlaners make big money. Sometimes legendary money. ✓- In a driver/hitchhiker relationship, the driver retains control and the hitchhiker is at the driver’s mercy. Hitchhikers are subordinated to someone else’s Fastlane plan. ✓- Make the world your habitat of play in an organization you control. ✓- Network marketing has little to do with entrepreneurship but more to do with sales, networking, training, and motivation. ✓- Network marketing fails both the Commandments of Control and Entry, and sometimes, Need. ✓- Network marketers are soldiers in a Fastlaner’s army. ✓- Network marketing is a powerful distribution system. As a Fastlaner, seek to own one, not join one. ✓- Network marketing can have some excellent education value in the realm of sales, motivation, and team building. ✓- If you can succeed at network marketing, you should be able to succeed in a Fastlane venture.

The Commandment of Entry states that as entry barriers fall, competition rises and the road weakens. ✓- Easy access roads carry more traffic. More traffic generates higher competition, and higher competition creates lower margins for the participants. ✓- Businesses with weak entry often lack control and operate in saturated marketplaces. Exceptionalism is required to overcome weak entry barriers. ✓- Access to a business road should be a process with a toll, not an event. ✓- “Everyone” consists of the general populous and is served by the mainstream media. ✓- If everyone were wealthy, “everybody is doing it” would work. And if everyone is wealthy, then no one is wealthy. ✓- “Everyone is doing it” is a signal to overbought conditions and the entrance of “dumb money.”

People care about what your business can do for them. How will it help them? What’s in it for them? Will it solve their problem? Make their life easier? Provide them with shelter? Save them money? Educate them? Make them feel something? Tell me, why on God’s green Earth should I give your business money? What value are you adding to my life?

Reflect back to our producer/consumer dichotomy. Consumers are selfish. They demand to know is “what’s in it for me!” To succeed as a producer, surrender your own selfishness and address the selfishness of others.

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.

Money isn’t attracted to selfish people. It is attracted to businesses that solve problems. It’s attracted to people who fill needs and add value. Solve needs massively and money massively attracts.

The amount of money in your life is merely a reflection to the amount of value you have given to others. Ignore this symbiosis and money will ignore you. Successful businesses share one common trait: The satisfaction of consumer needs as reflected by sales in the marketplace.

For “do what you love” to work, you need two things: 1) Your love must solve a need and 2) You must be exceptional at it.

Money and the demands of life cast a cloud over the love and darken it into a burden.

The motivational fuel for the Fastlane is not love, but passion—passion for your future vision and passion from personal growth.

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

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 you...

The Commandment of Time asks: ✓- Can this business be automated and systematized to operate while I’m absent? ✓- Are my margins thick enough to hire human resource seedlings? ✓- Can my operation benefit from the introduction of a money tree seedling? ✓- How can I get this business to operate exclusive of my time?

When you fail the commandment of time, the failure is cause by one of two obstacles. They are: 1)​The seeds are inaccessible because your business road started with a deficiency. 2)​The seeds won’t grow in infertile soil. If your business is based on a money-tree seedlings, it should be capable of growing a money tree. Content systems, computer systems, software systems, distribution systems, and human resource systems are all seedlings to money trees.

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.

Scale is about leverage and leverage is what gives the Fastlane wealth equation its power.

To achieve scale, magnitude or reach must increase. Magnitude is naturally increased with price or cost.

Commandment of Scale? Ask: => Can the net income of this business scale limitlessly, say, from $2,000 per month to $200,000? => Can the asset value of this business scale into the millions? => Can this business impact millions? Or does it impact hundreds? Is its customer pool the world or a small community in the city? => Can this business be replicated and expanded beyond the local trading area by franchising, chaining, or additional units? => Best-case scenario, what is the units-sold potential? One hundred or one hundred million? => Best-case scenario, how pliable is unit profit? Does it have magnitude?

Effection always is biased toward the architect of the system.

If you want access to the Law of Effection, drive a road that can break through scale or magnitude while controlling its source. If you can’t be the source, serve the source.

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 road-blocked 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.

Thou shalt not invest in a needless business. Thou shalt not trade time for money. Thou shalt not operate on a limited scale. Thou shalt not relinquish control. Thou shalt not let a business startup be an event over process.

The three Interstates are: 1)​Internet 2)​Innovation 3)​Intentional Iteration

Internet business models (roads) fall into seven broad categories:

1)​Subscription-based Offer users access to data, information, or software (SAAS), and charge a monthly fee. Data can be leads, sales information, management services (social media dashboards) a proprietary database, or good old-fashioned pornography.

2)​Content-based Content-based models are online news magazines and blogs that disseminate information to a particular niche or industry. These services provide content for free consumption and sell advertising to parties who want to reach those eyeballs.

3)​Lead generation Lead generation services often provide a service to consumers while simultaneously aggregating a non-homogeneous industry.

4)​Social Networks / Communities / Forums Community building is a cousin of content systems. Instead of pooling content for eyeballs, people are pulled into groups, or tribes.

5)​Brokerage Systems Brokers bring buyers and sellers together and facilitate transactions. They are market-makers for a particular industry and earn money typically on each transaction.