The Millionaire Fastlane

by M.J. DeMarco

speaker. The expertise for any discipline not requiring physical coordination is out there. What does it take? Your commitment of purs...

When I remodeled my house, the walls of my grand foyer needed to be faux painted. Faux finishing is a complicate...

to create lavish surfaces with depth and luminance. I had two choices: Call a professional or learn to do it myself. Since I was retired, I viewed this as a fun challenge, so I opted to do it myself. I hit the Internet and watched a few hours of video tutorials. Then I hit The Home Depot and bought supplies. Over the next several days I practiced on cardboard boxes. Within a week I became proficient at faux painting. I built myself a skill in one week. ...

if I wanted. The best faux painters earn $10 per square foot. In one week, I built myself a skill that opened a tiny road into the Fastlane equation. 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. So where do you find infinite knowledg...

Bookstores: Books possess the greatest return for your educational dollar. Buy them, borrow them, or steal them. Just read them. The library: The greatest free repository of knowledge and the disabler of the “I can’t afford to buy books” excuse. I got my start at the library. Internet forums: Find like-minded congregations and learn from those wh...

blogs/podcasts/screencasts/Web casts: Another excuse destroyer. Seminars: Good seminars bring good value, assuming they are sponsored by the right entities and not get-rich-quick gurus. Television: Cable TV has turned television educational. Deviate from the mindless reality TV garbage and tune in to channels with educational value: History, Discovery, Science, HG...

colleges, these classes offer a wide array of formal training in specific disciplines. Free magazines: Visit TradePub.com and FreeBizMag.com and sign up for free magazines subscriptions pertaining to your topic of interest. Unfortunately, while infinite knowledge surrounds us, most people ignore it. Take for example this comment about education from successful real estate investor Lon...

how to put my money to work, I was doing all the work. I was so uneducated back then that I thought the answer to financial freedom was working two jobs. And that’s what I did for many years. Finally, I realized there weren’t enough hours in a day and I couldn’t work enough hours in a month to reach financial security. There had to be a better...

answer, I made up my mind to get an education. Before that, all I had was some “schooling.” Now I realized I needed some education. Now I can look back and see that I didn’t do all the easy and fun things like many people were doing, but I did all the right things. And today, we enjoy financial security and financial fr...

for financial security that they will never know. They had the same chance to make choices that I had; they just made the wrong choices. They all had schooling but they didn’t have the necessary education that provides financial freedom. Now they tell me how lucky we are. The best investment you can make is in yourself. So be willing to pay fo...

later. The choices you make today will determine your financial future. Be sure you make the right choice, because you will have to live with the results of that choice. The rich understand that education doesn’t end with a graduation ceremony; it starts. The world is in constant flux, and as...

I’d spend 12 hours a day for weeks perfecting and building my system. I’d forgo nights drinking with friends. I lived in a cramped studio apartment. I’d eat cheap pasta for lunch and dinner. I was ready to wash dishes to work my plan. While my friends were more concerned with bragging rights for having the fastest car on a racing videogame, I wanted financial freedom. I wanted a fast car in reality, not on a videogame. My friends were committed to being winners in a fantasy world, while I was committed to being a winner in the real world. Fastlane winners are forged at the Redline.

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 Chasing Money—Chase Needs Never start a business just to make money. Stop chasing money and start chasing needs. Let me repeat that, because it’s the most important thing in this book: Stop thinking about business in terms of your selfish desires, whether it’s money, dreams or “do what you love.” ...

The second danger of derivatives is that your love becomes vulnerable to contamination when you do it for money. If you are forced to do anything, even something you purport to love, in exchange for a paycheck, that love is put in danger.

Your Ignition: Moving from Love to Passion 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. I had a passion for Lamborghinis and was willing to do anything for it. Pick up dog shit, mop floors, work at 3 a.m.—whatever it was going to take, I had the passion to do it.

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.

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

Forget the Big Idea; Go for Better Successful businesses rarely evolve from some legendary idea. Nope, successful entrepreneurs take existing concepts and make them better. They take poorly met needs and solve them better. Skip the big idea and go for the big execution. You don’t need an idea that has never been done before. Old ideas suffice; just take it and do it better! Execute like no one has!

Years ago, what if Sergey Brin and Larry Page looked at the Internet landscape and said “Gee, there are plenty of search engines out there—Yahoo, Snap, AltaVista—why start Google? It’s being done!” Thankfully, they didn’t, and now Google is the most used search engine, and because of it, Brin and Page are now billionaires. A brand-spanking new idea? Nope, a need solved better with big execution. Department stores have been around for decades, but that didn’t stop Sam Walton from creating Wal-Mart. It was an open road when the road

seemed closed. Hamburgers were around for decades, but that didn’t stop Ray Kroc from starting McDonalds. It was an open road when the road seemed closed. Coffee had been around for a thousand years when Howard Schultz found and purchased the first Starbucks in Seattle. A new idea? Nope, he was a visionary and made coffee fashionable and invented a brand, an ambiance, and an emotion and...

for a long time, but that didn’t stop NetFlix or RedBox from starting a company and adding “convenience” to the need equation. It was an open road when the road seemed closed. Beer has been brewed for thousands of years, but that didn’t stop Jim Koch from starting Sam Adams or Sam Calagione from starting Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, now the fastest growing brewery in America. Dogfish was started back in...

Garbage has been around since men have walked the planet. Yet that didn’t stop Brian Scudamore from starting and then franchising 1-800-GOT-JUNK, or did it stop Wayne Huizinga from founding Waste Management with just one truck and a handful of customers. He later built Waste Management into a Fortune 500 company. Is garbage a new need? Or a need that needed better fulfillment? It was an open road when the road ...

million blankets via infomercial marketing. An old idea better marketed and better executed. It was an open road when the road seemed closed. MySpace was thriving well before Facebook, but that didn’t stop Mark Zuckerberg. He saw a niche nee...

The Rules of the Road: Financial Literacy After my sister turned 21, she bought her first new car—a Nissan Pulsar. It was her first mistake in the world of finance and my first exposure to the world of financial illiteracy. My

sister had trouble making the car payments, and when I asked to read her loan documents, I was floored. I investigated. I asked, “How did you buy this car? How did you negotiate?” She replied, “I told the dealer I wanted a payment of $399 per month.” Her tragic mistake wasn’t negotiating weakness, but financial illiteracy. The dealer gave her exactly what she requested, and by doing so, she got ripped off. She bought a car for thousands above sticker and borrowed at near illegal rates. The dealer gave my sister exactly what she wanted: a car payment at $399/month, and

all they did was fill-in the blanks. Her loan was 60 months (when it should have been at 48) and at an interest rate of 18.8% (when it should have been 9%).Ultimately, she’d pay twice the cost of the car becaus...

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

When you think about the automobile Volvo, what do you think of? I think safety. How about Porsche? I think speed. How about Ferrari? I think rich. Volkswagen? Practical. Toyota? Reliability. Yet, when someone mentions Chevrolet, nothing clear comes to mind other than looming bankruptcy, union squabbles, and unpredictable reliability. Some auto manufacturers have carved out strong brands, while the others fortify a business.

What’s in It for Me? It’s ironic: To succeed a Fastlane we must forsake selfishness yet satisfy the selfishness of others. Did I say this would be a nice cozy stroll down the beach? The first human behavior you

can count on is selfishness. People want what they want. People don’t care about you, your business, your product or your dreams; they want to help themselves and their family. It’s human nature. Therefore, our marketing messages must focus on benefits, not features. People need to be told exactly what’s in it for them. How will your product or service help them? What’s the benefit? In marketing speak, it’s called the “What’s In It For Me?” (WIIFM) principle.

Price is one of the many ways to get into the consumer’s head. To use price for your brand, you have to convince the consumer of value beyond the cost of its practicality. What makes you different from the rest? Why should someone pay you more? As a marketer you have to drill into your buyer’s mind and get your brand differentiated. Own the consumer’s mind and you own the consumer.

Marketing and branding (the queen) is the most powerful tool in your Fastlane toolbox. Businesses survive. Brands thrive. Businesses have identity crises, brands don’t. Identity crises force business owners into price commoditization. Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) are the keys to your brand and differentiate your company from the rest. People have a natural disposition to be unique

and unlike everyone else. To succeed in marketing, your messages have to break above the advertising clutter, or noise. Polarization is a great above-the-noise tool if your product targets a polarized audience—usually politics, minority opinions, and even sports teams. Sex sells and always draws eyeballs. Consumers make buying decisions based on emotions before

practicality. If you can arouse emotions in your audience, you will be more likely to convince them to buy. People have a natural disposition to talk about themselves. If you can incorporate interaction into your campaigns, you will have better success. To be unconventional means to first isolate and identif...

Consumers are selfishly motivated. Always target your messages toward the predisposition of “What’s in it for me?” Features are translated to benefits when you switch positions from producer to consumer, identify the feature’s advantages, and extrapolate those advantages into a specific result. Price implicitly conveys valu...

Know when it’s time to get off the horse and learn to ride a new one.