More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
M.J. DeMarco
Read between
May 8 - May 28, 2024
“I don’t know how!” Well, why don’t you know how? I’ll tell you why. You don’t know because you haven’t taught yourself how, nor have you wanted to “know how” badly enough. You see, it is easier to relent under the weight of “I don’t know how” than it is to actively pursue the knowledge.
A $50,000 seminar is exploitation of what we producers know: People are lazy. People want it handed to them. They don’t want to read and connect the dots. They want to be steered and hand-held, or even better, have it done for them entirely.
If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough. ~ MARIO ANDRETTI
Interest reads a book; commitment applies the book 50 times. Interest wants to start a business; commitment files LLC paperwork. Interest works on your business an hour a day Monday through Friday; commitment works on your business seven days a week whenever time permits. Interest leases an expensive car; commitment rides a bike and puts the money into your system. Interest is looking rich; commitment is planning to be rich.
Interest is quitting after the third failure; commitment is continuing after the hundredth.
You can have mediocre comfort now or meteoric comfort later. The Fastlaner trades short-term comforts with the foreknowledge that long-term extraordinary comfort is to be gained.
You have to take risks. Get uncomfortable and fail into progress. What causes fear of failure? Answer: an overestimated worst-case consequence analysis.
Failure is natural to success. Expect it and learn from it.
CENTS is a Fastlane litmus test and validates your road. Does your road (or potential road) route to wealth? Is it Fastlane? Can it be made Fastlane? Can it hit Effection? Can your road route to a multimillion-dollar enterprise, generate passive income, and end at a final liquidation event?
You must create the company people are dying to join. You must control the product and the policy. Take the producer’s role.
Higher entry barriers equate to stronger, more powerful roads with less competition and need for exceptionality.
Low-barrier-entry businesses are weak roads because easy entry creates high competition and high traffic, all of which share the same pie. And where there is traffic, there is no movement.
When the frenzy is buying, you should be selling. When the frenzy is selling, you should be buying or staying pat.
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.
Offer the world value, and money becomes magnetized to you!
Think about what you love and then think, will someone pay for it? Is it going to solve a need? Are you good enough to make money doing it? Most likely, you aren’t. 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.
This book is possible because I didn’t need the confirmation of money to authenticate my skill.
In other words, money led to “do what you love,” it didn’t follow.
First, “do what you love” rarely creates money fast because more than likely, not only are YOU doing what you love but thousands of others are too (just tune into the first-week auditions for American Idol for proof). The need is weak. This saturates markets and makes profit margins shallow.
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.
What is your WHY? Why are you doing this? Why go Fastlane? Whom do you want to prove wrong?
Help one million people and you will be a millionaire.
“Doing what you love” for money can endanger your love.
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?
You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. ~ JOHN WOODEN
Take something old and stale and make it better. Take an underexposed product, make it your own, and reintroduce it to the world. Take something unconventional and make it conventional.
If I’m obsessively intent on selling this book to millions, I have to manufacture, then distribute. I have to sell, market, promote, appear, speak, interview, and write; I have to invest in the business of distribution.
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
Failures that drive you into new directions are often the most productive forces for invention.
But be mindful of the distinction between “quitting” and “quitting your road.” Quitting is leaving your dreams for dead and putting them into the bin of impossibility. “Quitting your road” is changing course and turning down a new road.
Competition is everywhere, and your objective should be to “do it better.”
money doesn’t change people; it just makes them more of what they already are.
What is the price for the freedom and lifestyle you want? Find out with this four-step process: 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!
Get started today by looking three feet in front of you, not three miles.
The owner of an idea is not he who imagines it, but he who executes it.
you NEVER know what works until you put it out to the world. In business, I call this “putting it out into the box.”
the world tells you which direction you should be going at all times. Heed the signs.
Put your executed ideas out into the box.
Complaints of change 2) Complaints of expectation 3) Complaints of void and 4) Complaints of fraud.
Look big, but act small.
Spectacular product features can’t overcome poor service.
Nothing overcomes poor human experiences!
Another “dead professor” moment: Forget about your competition 95% of the time. The other 5% should be used to exploit their weaknesses and differentiate your business. If you forget about your competition, you’re forced to focus on your business, which is to innovate, skew value, and win over the minds of your customers. And when you fill needs and your army of customers grows, something suddenly happens: Everyone follows you.
Marketing is a game of perceptions, and whatever the perception is, that’s the reality.
Get into business for the right reason: to add or create value, solve problems or fill a need. That creates your first USP. If you are already in business, find your greatest product benefit, one that sets it apart from the competition. If you don’t have a distinct benefit that’s obvious to your potential buyer, you’re operating without a USP.
Once you identify your buyer, ask: What do they want? What do they fear? What problem do they need solved? Or do they just want to “feel” something?
The Tekel Syndrome is a compulsion to scatter your focus across different projects and opportunities. It’s also a symptom of money chasing versus need filling. When you invest your time into five different businesses, you become a polygamist-opportunist.
A scattered focus leads to scattered results.
