The Millionaire Fastlane

by M.J. DeMarco

I confronted its young owner and asked a simple question: “How can you afford such an awesome car?” The answer I received, unveiled in chapter 2, was short and powerful, but I wish I had more. I wish that man had taken a minute, an hour, a day, or a week to talk to me. I wish that young stranger would have mentored me on how to get what I thought the Lamborghini represented: wealth. I wish that man had reached into his car and given me a book.

Expect a price to be paid. Expect risk and sacrifice. Expect bumps in the road. When you hit the first pothole (and yes, it will happen) know that you are forging the process of your unfolding story. The Fastlane process demands sacrifices that few make, to resolve to live like few can.

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 do...

Money secures one agent of the wealth formula, freedom, which is a powerful guardian to wealth’s sibling ingredients: health and relationships. Money buys the freedom to watch your kids grow up. Money buys the freedom to pursue your craziest dreams. Money buys the freedom to make a difference in the world. Money buys the freedom to build and strengthen relationships. Money buys the freedom to do what you love, with financial validation removed from the equation.

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 you...

Psst . . . Wanna Get Lucky? I once overheard someone call me a “lucky bastard.” What a sad, delusional Sidewalking belief. I’m not lucky; I’m a player of the game. While Mr. Lucky-Bastard-Hater uttered that under his breath and sat his ass in the dugout, I was at the plate taking swings.

“Rich people got lucky” is a Sidewalker’s creed and a disempowering belief that strips you of your free will. While luck can create riches by way of lotteries, casinos, and rich parents, it rarely creates long-lasting wealth. To take advantage of The Millionaire Fastlane understand that 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

John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” has maligned into “What can my country do for me?” While I can’t comment on the societal deterioration outside of the United States, within the last 20 years Sidewalking has become a way of life in America. Americans once loyally proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Now we just say, “Give me.”

In 1997, I opened a Roth IRA with $1,000 and invested the monies in a growth mutual fund at a major investment

Anything that steals time and doesn’t have the power to free time is a liability.

Looking back, it wasn’t easy. I worked 12–16 hour days for four years, almost always six days a week, and always a few hours on Sunday. We created an awesome service and sold the crap out of it. [THE BUSINESS WITH CUL] I remember tough times,

and I had to put every dime of my money into the company . . . we had less than 50 bucks in our account at least five times. Except for my family during those startup years, I sacrificed plenty; I canceled cable TV and I temporarily stopped doing a lot of things I enjoyed because I was committed to a goal and a dream of something far greater than a lifetime job. [THE LIFESTYLE]

The Fastlane Mindposts Like the other roadmaps, the Fastlane Roadmap contains the same mindposts or behavioral characteristics that drive the Fastlaner’s actions along the journey. They are: 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 Equ...

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 ...

These mindposts are what formulate the Fastlaner’s lifestyle. It drives action. The Fastlane Roadmap: Predisposed to Wealth The Fastlane Roadmap is predisposed to wealth because it operates under a wealth equation with controllable, unlimited variables, and the mathematical cage of time is removed. ULL is replaced wit...

mathematics evolving via “profit” or “asset value” or both. This rapid wealth accumulation expunges years from the journey to wealth because time is removed or exploited during the process. The Fastlane produces wealth in short periods—millions, some...

Likewise, financial freedom via the Fastlane Roadmap is like an industrial revolution for wealth. The default road to wealth is manual labor, a fight against time and intrinsic value. The rapid road to wealth is to industrialize the wealth process, to systematize it like our ancestors systematized production. The differences between the default road (the Slowlane) and the shortcut (the Fastlane) are best demonstrated in an Egyptian parable.

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

Seedlings There are five business seedlings to money trees. Mind you, these aren’t absolute and they interbreed with each other. Each system inherently has a grade that rates its level of passivity. A higher grade means a greater potential for passivity, but not necessarily a greater income. Rental Systems Computer/Software Systems Content Systems Distribution Systems Human Resource Systems Seedling 1: Rental Systems (Passivity Grade: A)

Real estate is one “rental system.” I consider real estate money trees as Fastlane 1.0 or Wealth 1.0. It is the old way and still very much a road to wealth. For example, I own a single-family rental home with a great tenant. I could be living on the moon and each month I get a check in the mail because my time is detached from its income. Real estate is a perfect example of Wealth 1.0 because real estate is its own system. It is 95% passive. As time passes, tenants pay landlords to use their property. From single families to apartment buildings to massive commercial office

buildings, real estate has always been the default choice for seedling money trees. Furthermore, real estate is an asset that can be manipulated and its value appreciated. Appreciative assets (asset value) are cornerstones in the Fastlane wealth equation. Don’t want to get involved in real estate? No problem. Rental systems aren’t just reserved for re...

Leases, royalty payments, and licensing are other forms of “rent...

produce reoccurring monthly income. For example, when you own the rights to a music collection, corporations have to pay you a royalty to use the music. The work might have been recorded...

Savers Become Lenders, Owners, and Producers I heard a radio commercial the other day from a self-proclaimed “Double-Dad” guru who declared: “Savers are losers!” I couldn’t believe my ears.

Savers are losers? And who are the winners? The people you advised to borrow millions on risky real-estate investments? Savers aren’t losers. Savers are winners because they eventually become lenders. Savers are winners because they become owners in companies. Savers are winners because they become producers and build assets. Open your wallet and look at a dollar. One buck. It doesn’t buy much but it is the embryonic start to a passive income stream. One dollar has the power to give you a nickel of passive income for life. Yes, for

life. While one nickel buys squat, it unlocks the DNA implicit in money—it’s fully passive. I retired in my thirties because of this simple reality. I’m a lender, and when you have a lot of money to lend, you live free because passive income arrives every month. 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 ...

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. Unrealistic? It isn’t. This is how I live. Even in this low-interest-rate environment I can find safe investment yields in the 4%–6% range, some tax-...

raise. A 1% interest rate hike translates into thousands per month for me. And since inflation rises in unison with interest rates, my income has an element of inflation protection. If inflation rises, so do interest rates. So how does all of this become a reality? I 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 ...

and the checks arrive. Instead of trading my time for dollars, I invested my time into an autonomous system simultaneously capable of passivity and capable of funding my money system. It was a dual-flanked attack w...

If you want to get rich, start observing the true law of the universe—MATH—and not some hocus-pocus law that can neither be proved nor documented. Singing positive platitudes around the campfire isn’t going to make you rich. Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad; I know the Law of Attraction sounds great and has practical applications. For those not familiar with The Law of Attraction (“LOA”), it’s a

mystical philosophy that states you become what you think and that your conscious and unconscious thoughts make your reality. The LOA contends that if you know exactly what you want, ask the universe for it, see it coming, then you will eventually receive it. Think riches and you will have riches! Sounds easy, huh? I won’t hide my candid sacrilege to the LOA crowd; I think it’s a bunch of baloney orchestrated to sell books to those who think “thinking” will make you rich. In fact, the LOA is nothing but old principles of belief and visualization repackaged and

remarketed for mass consumption. Who are the true Fastlaners? The LOA marketers! Bake a Cake Without Sugar? Why did this book take me so long to write? I spent two years wishing and thinking positively about it. I let the Law of Attraction do the work. I asked the universe for this book. I was open to it. I saw it before my eyes. I even sn...

Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. The universe never gave me my finished book. The fact is, despite all my positive thinking and meditations to the universe for my book, it never materialized until I sat my butt down in a chair and started to write it. I made a coordinated commitment to ACTION, a conscious choice, and then a commitment to that choice in the form of massive action. If you’re a Law of Attraction fan and find ...

engagements about being a positive thinker. I wrote it to tell you exactly what you need to do to get rich. Thinking never made anyone rich, unless that thinking manifests itself into consistent action toward application of laws that work. In fact, I find it insulting that someone might assume my success is due to positive thinking. I’m a realist who understands human nature, and that nature is to take the path of least resistance. It doesn’t...

because, like sex, easiness sells. Events of wealth sell....

Yes, positivity is favored over cynicism. Belief is the starting point to change. Visualization is crucial. Yes, if you don’t believe you can do it, I’ve got news for you—you can’t. This stuff isn’t new, it’s OLD. While The Law of Attraction is a nice hammer in the toolbox, its flaw is that it ignores the real secret behind wealth, the real secret that transcends all wealth, all people, all cultures,...

The Leading Cause of Poorness If poorness were an illness, take a guess as to its cause. Of course, lack of money. But is that a cause or a symptom of the underlying problem? Lack of education? Lack of opportunity, positive role models, or determination? Nope. Those are all symptoms. If you retrace poverty’s footprints you will find that poorness starts at the exact same place: choice. Poor choices are the leading

cause of poorness. The Heart of the Problem As my income elevated, so did my cholesterol. The road of good living runs parallel to a cliff of gluttony. My doctor’s preferred method of attack was prescription drugs. I refused because I wanted to fix problems, not mask symptoms.

The fabric of your life is sewn by the cumulative consequences of your choices—millions of them—that you set into motion. You act, react, believe, disbelieve, perceive, misperceive, and all of it engineers your existence. If you’re dissatisfied with life, your choices take full responsibility. Blame yourself and the choices you’ve made. Yes, you are as you have chosen.

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.

If you want extraordinary results, you’re going to need extraordinary thinking. Unfortunately, “extraordinary”

Education Is Freely Available The greatest travesty of the free world is the under use of knowledge. Walk into your local bookstore and inhale. Smell that? That’s the smell of infinite knowledge. Walk into your local library and look around. Amazing. Wall-to-wall books, free for the taking. Imagine if you could digest every book, every paragraph, and every sentence. Would “I don’t know” be a detriment to your success? I’m astonished that education is

freely available, yet most choose not to take it. Education is unplucked fruit from a tree, and all it needs is a ladder. Yet, people cling to the limiting belief that “I can’t afford education.” Sorry, but it’s an excuse to be lazy. Education is free for your consumption. Infinite knowledge is at your fingertips and the only thing preventing you from getting it is you. Yes, YOU. Turn off the TV, pick up a book, and read it. Quit playing Guitar Hero and hit the library. Quit playing Gameboy grab-ass

and hit the books. A committed Fastlaner has his nose in a book weekly. He attends seminars. He trolls business forums. He’s on Google, searching different topics and strategies. You have the innate power to become an expert at anything not requiring physical talent. Anything! No book in the world can make me a professional basketball player or a professional singer, but books can transfigure novices to experts in nonphysical...