30 insights from the book The Millionaire Fastlane.
WEALTH IS A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT
Wealth is a process, not an event.
Process makes millionaires, and the events you see and hear are the results of that process. For our chef, the cooking is the process, while the meal is the event.
When you are granted gifts without any effort, you effectively handicap process.
There is no wisdom or personal growth gained in a journey that someone else does for you. The journey is yours. And unless you find like-minded Fastlaners, you will walk it alone.
To seek a “wealth chauffeur” is to seek a surrogate for process. Process cannot be outsourced, because process dawns wisdom, personal growth, strength, and ultimately, events.
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. ~ HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Events of wealth (lotteries/casinos) are long shots and not process.
SELLING YOUR TIME FOR MONEY IS NOT WEALTH
My income was tied to my time, website construction. More websites jobs meant more time spent, and if I didn’t work, my income would stop.
My time was being sold off for money.
If you earned $200,000 every month, how would your life change?
Sidewalkers are carelessly trapped in a “Lifestyle Servitude” fed by an urgent, insatiable need for pleasure, image, and instant gratification.
You don’t have to look hard to find an “Income-Rich” Sidewalker. These are people who look rich, but in reality are one paycheck, one album, or one movie failure from broke.
If you can’t live on $40,000 a year, you won’t be able to live on $400,000 a year. While you might fret about your $900 mortgage payment, the income-rich Sidewalker frets about his $9,000 mortgage payment.
The ultimate insanity is to sell your soul Monday through Friday for the paycheck of Saturday and Sunday. Yes, give me $5 today and in return I’ll give you $2 back tomorrow. 5-for-2. No? The 5-for-2 return on investment is a negative 60%.
Kids and relationships don’t wait for the weekend to grow, and while you’re out trading 5-for-2, guess what—the kids get older and so do you.
By working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually get to be the boss and work 12 hours a day. ~ ROBERT FROST
THE THREE F’S OF WEALTH – FAMILY, FITNESS AND FREEDOM
Wealth is not authored by material possessions, money, or “stuff,” but by what I call the three fundamental “F’s”: family (relationships), fitness (health), and freedom (choice). Within this wealth trinity is where you will find true wealth and, yes, happiness.
FREEDOM DETACHES TIME FROM INCOME
Some want to look rich, others want to be rich.
When you don’t have freedom, it assiduously gnaws at wealth’s other elements, health and relationships.
Only you can define your freedom and how you see your life. If you want the freedom to fly private jets, that’s it. If you want to live a minimalist lifestyle in Thailand, then that is it. Everyone’s freedom is different!
MONEY DOESN’T BUY HAPPINESS … DOES POVERTY? People who declare, “Money doesn’t buy happiness” have already concluded they will never have money.
The fact is, there are many millionaires and well paid career folks who are absolutely miserable, and it has nothing to do with the money. It has to do with their freedom.
The well-salaried workaholic who is never home to strengthen the relationship with his wife and kids is likely to be less happier than the poor farmer in Vietnam who spends half his day tending to his fields and the other half with his family.
If you’re held hostage to your lifestyle, you aren’t wealthy, because you lack freedom.
The fact is, there are plenty of poor people who live richer than their overworked upper-middle-class counterparts because the latter lack freedom, they lack solid relationships, and they lack health—all deleterious effects of working a hated job five days a week for 50 years.
Money buys the freedom to watch your kids grow up.
Affordability is when you don’t have to think about it. If you have to think about “affordability,” you can’t afford it because affordability carries conditions and consequences.
If you don’t control your income, you don’t control your financial plan. If you don’t control your financial plan, you don’t control your freedom.
In a job, you sell your freedom (in the form of time) for freedom (in the form of money).
JOB [Intrinsic Value] = Hourly Rate of Pay × Hours Worked ~ or ~ JOB [Intrinsic Value] = Annual Salary
Your time is limited to 24 hours of exchange. If you earn $200/hour, you can’t miraculously demand to work 400 hours in one day. If you earn $50,000/year, you can’t miraculously demand to work 400 years in your life. Time has no leverage. Of course, working 24 hours a day is humanly impossible, so 8 to 12 hours per day are traded.
For the salaried worker, the prohibition is the same. You can’t work more years than your normal life expectancy. What is the upper limit of this exchange? Forty, fifty years?
Both variables within the Slowlane wealth equation are anchored by time—time traded in a job and time traded in market investments.
Not a week goes by when I don’t hear about a freshly minted MBA grad who struggles to pay his student loans while working a job he could have secured out of high school.
The rich use the markets for income and wealth preservation—not to create it!
Slowlane millionaires are cheap with money. Fastlane millionaires are cheap with time.
For the rich, Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value
Lifetime passive income, either through business or investments.
YOU HAVE TO DELAY GRATIFICATION
If you can’t immunize yourself from the temptations of instant gratification, you’ll be hard pressed to find success in either health or wealth. Both demand a lifestyle shift from short-term thinking (instant gratification) to long-term thinking (delayed gratification).
Wait until you can truly afford your lifestyle luxuries.
LUCK HAPPENS WHEN YOU ARE OUT THERE
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 time.
To create luck, engage in processes so probabilities move from NOTHING, to SOMETHING. Luck is introduced when you play. If you don’t play, you can’t win.
I’d rather live in regret of failure than in regret of never trying. ~ MJ DEMARCO
PEOPLE WHO DON’T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY ARE VICTIMS
Responsibility is the price of greatness. ~ WINSTON CHURCHILL
The Law of Victims says you can’t be a victim if you don’t relinquish power to someone capable of making you a victim.
No one can steer you off course, because you are in the driver’s seat. And when you own your decisions, something miraculous happens. Failure doesn’t become the badge of victimhood—it becomes wisdom.
RESPONSIBILITY HAS TO BE FOLLOWED BY ACCOUNTABILITY
I’ve seen people being “responsible” for the actions their drinking and driving caused only to do it again! I am sick and tired of people being “responsible!” I want people to be accountable.
Responsibility: It was my fault that my purse was stolen. Accountability: In the future, I will take precautions to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
SIDEWALK VS SLOWLANE VS FASTLANE
While the Sidewalk is a lifestyle that mortgages the future for a comfortable today, the Slowlane is the antithesis: a sacrificial today in the hopes of a more comfortable tomorrow.
The driving force behind Get Rich Slow is time—time employed at the job and time invested in the markets.
Rich at 25 years old beats the snot out of rich at 65 years old.
The Slowlane plan forsakes the now for a faint promise of a wealthy future.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP = THE FASTLANE
In a job, you sell your life for money.
I learned more as an entrepreneur in two months than I did working 10 years at dozens of dead-end jobs.
Income explosion and relative expense containment created wealth.
If millions seek you, you will be paid millions.
Extreme talent is paid extremely well.
Slowlane millionaires are employees. Fastlane millionaires hire employees.
THE FASTLANE IS A BUSINESS SYSTEM: THE SLOWLANE IS A JOB
In the Slowlane, you are the source of heavy lifting, while in the Fastlane, you construct a system that does it for you.
It starts with a producer mindset.
When you encounter an advertising message that coaxes you to buy something, examine it from the producer perspective. How does this company make money? What psychological tactics are used in its marketing messages? What kind of operational processes are involved in offering this product or service? Is this company making a profit? What is the revenue model? Is this product manufactured overseas or locally?
As a producer, I see the infomercials for what they are: producers (the minority) serving the consumer (the majority).
The “act nows,” the “but wait, there’s more!” the “free bonuses”—these are marketing weapons in a producer’s arsenal. I watch infomercials not to buy, but to see what the pros are doing.
From start to finish, this book cost roughly 1,000 hours of my time. If I sell 100,000 books at $5 profit each, I earn $500,000, or roughly $500 per hour invested. If I sell 500,000 books, I will earn $2,500 per hour invested. The more I sell, the greater the return on my original time investment, as I already paid the time.
To divorce yourself from the Slowlane’s transactional relationship of “time for money,” you need to become a producer, specifically, a business owner.
YOUR BUSINESS GIVES YOU LEVERAGE
Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value
Net Profit = Units Sold × Unit Profit ~ and ~ Asset Value = Net Profit × Industry Multiple
The beauty of passive income is it doesn’t care if you’re 20 years old or 80. If your monthly income exceeds your lifestyle expenses including taxes, guess what? YOU’RE RETIRED!
When inventing any product, the invention is always half the battle. Distribution is the other. The greatest product in the world goes unused if it isn’t leveraged into the proper distribution system—either one that exists, or one that you create.
If your business operates in limited scale, it can be conquered with chains and franchises. If you own one hot-dog cart and sell at one location, there is no leverage. If you own 500 hot-dog carts and sell at 500 locations through 500 owner-operators, suddenly leverage appears.
THE 5 TYPES OF SYSTEMS
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.
SAVERS ARE WINNERS
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.
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 per month—fully passive. Over $60,000 every month! This is WITHOUT touching the principal. You can do this for years and still have 10 million dollars left over!
Slowlaners (the middle-class) use compound interest to get wealthy while Fastlaners (the rich) use it to create income and liquidity. Slowlaners start with $5; Fastlaners start with $5 million.
Fastlaners aren’t using compound interest to build wealth, because it’s not in their wealth equation. The heavy lifting of wealth creation is left to their Fastlane business.
Compound interest weapon is most effective with large sums of money.
GO FOR SCALE AND MAGNITUDE
NET PROFIT = Units Sold (Scale) × Unit Profit (Magnitude)
Scale creates millionaires. Magnitude creates millionaires. Scale and magnitude creates billionaires.
A rapper sells millions of songs and is paid millions. A housewife sells a million kitchen gadgets and earns millions. A lottery winner wins millions because millions entered the drawing. Daddy Warbuck’s son inherits millions because Warbucks Company served millions. A plastic surgeon earns millions because he serves many in magnitude. A star athlete’s agent earns millions because his clients serve millions. Retrace the source of millionaire money and you will find millions of something.
If you want to get rich via intrinsic value, you must do it via the Law of Effection. Get into a position to impact millions. Become indispensable and irreplaceable like an athlete, entertainer, or a top-brass executive.
Make a giant impact a few times or make a small impact millions of times.
Joe Magnitude owns a company that develops commercial real estate. He develops 14 office complexes and partitions the offices into condos. Each fully sold complex profits him $400,000 (magnitude) × 14 (scale) equals $5,600,000.
Joe Scale writes a book detailing a diet of the stars. He sells 800,000 copies (scale) and earns $7 per copy (magnitude). He earns the same amount: $5,600,000.
To serve millions is to make millions.
Think big to earn big.
WHAT YOU BELIEVE FOLLOWED BY HOW YOU ACT DETERMINES WHAT YOU BECOME
“I gotta get as many pictures as possible cuz I’ll never be able to afford one of these.” See a problem in that conclusion? This young man made a choice to believe he would never own a Lamborghini.
What motivates you to act and choose? We have two types of choices: 1) Choices of perception (thought patterns) 2) Choices of action (choosing to read)
The difference between the teen at the gas station and me was this: When I witnessed my first Lamborghini as a kid, I thought, “Some day, I’m gonna own one of those!” My choice of perception was strong and manifested into choices of action that reflected that perception.
Your internal language carries weight.
If your world is canvassed with words like “never” and “can’t,” guess what? It’s true—you can’t and you never will!
To change your perception is to change your future actions.
WHAT’S THE WORSE THAT CAN HAPPEN?
Answer three questions about every decision of consequence:
1) What is the worst-case consequence of this choice?
2) What is the probability of this outcome?
3) Is this an acceptable risk?
MAKE BETTER DECISIONS USING A MATRIX
Make three columns on your paper, one headed “Factors” and the other two for each choice
Second, what decision factors are important in your decision? Weather? Schools? Cost of living? Being near family? Write down all factors relevant to the decision, no matter how small.
Thirdly, next to each decision factor, weigh its importance to the decision from 1 through 10, with 10 being the most important.
After each criterion is ranked 1 through 10, grade each choice 1 through 10 for each decision factor.
The school system in Detroit? You give it a 2. In Phoenix, you give the school system a 3, as you determine it is slightly better.
Next, for each row, multiply the weight times the grade and put that number next to the grade in parentheses. For example, in the entertainment row, Detroit receives a 40 (8 weight × 5 grade), while Phoenix receives a 16 (8 weight × 2 grade). Do this for all rows.
THE CENTS FRAMEWORK
CENTS:
1) Control
You must sit atop the pyramid and serve the masses. Stop climbing pyramids and start building them.
2) Entry
Higher entry barriers equate to stronger, more powerful roads with less competition and need for exceptionality.
A decade ago the big buzz was “Make millions on eBay!” It didn’t last long because this opportunity eventually violated the Commandment of Entry. If you could create an eBay business in 10 minutes, guess what? So could millions of other people. And who made the millions? The early adopters, eBay, and eBay’s founders.
Another big buzz years ago was Internet blogging. Bloggers are making thousands! True, but nowadays, the multimillionaire blogger is now the exception.
If you violate the Commandment of Entry, be prepared to be exceptional. Exceptionality breaks the odds of entry. Unfortunately, exceptionality is a long shot, much like an above-average high school athlete going pro.
Could I be exceptional among 50,000 like-minded “distributors”? I was doubtful. Conversely, when I started my Internet business I had roughly 12 competitors. Could I be exceptional among 12? Absolutely.
There’s an old saying, “In a gold rush, don’t dig for gold, sell shovels!”
History is littered with “everyone is doing it” booms and busts. How do I know when “everyone is doing it?” Simple. When there is irrational exuberance about any investment that pervades to Team Consumer—the general populous—that’s when I know it is time to GET OUT AND STAY OUT.
3) Need
Businesses that solve needs and provide value win. Businesses that solve problems win profits.
Tell me, why on God’s green Earth should I give your business money? What value are you adding to my life?
Chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.
Joe was a martial arts expert and he loved his craft. Following the advice of gurus, he set out to “do what you love” and opened a martial arts studio. Within 10 months, his studio closed, as he could no longer support his family on his $21,000-per-year business profit. Instead of selfish motives, what should have Joe been thinking? Is there a NEED in my neighborhood for a martial arts studio? What are existing martial arts studios doing wrong that I could do BETTER? What improved VALUE do I offer the martial arts student? What ASSETS do I bring to this community?
The amount of money in your life is merely a reflection to the amount of value you have given to others. If you sell 10 million anything, 10 million people have VOTED that your product will help them, or satisfy one of their needs.
If you own a website that services 10,000 people daily, you’re making an impact. If you own a real estate company that provides housing to 1,000 people, you’re making an impact.
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.
I love to play basketball, but I suck at it. I can’t parlay my love of basketball into a career. I love to play piano, but again, I suck at it. I love many things, but I suck at them! If I wanted a career in any of these “loves,” I’d need unlimited time and money because no one would pay me a dime to do it. Who wants to endure that ineptness?
What is your WHY? Why are you doing this?
Ninety percent of all new businesses fail because they are based on selfish internal needs, not external market needs.
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.
“Doing what you love” for money can endanger your love.
4) Time
The Commandment of Time requires that your business and its income detach from your time. Can your business work for you while you aren’t?
Can this business be automated and systematized to operate while I’m absent?
5) Scale
Scale is about leverage and leverage is what gives the Fastlane wealth equation its power.
If you own a tanning salon, your habitat is local. If you own an upscale restaurant, your habitat is county/city. If you own an Internet company, your habitat is worldwide. The larger the habitat, the greater the potential speed, or leverage, of your Fastlane.
Open more stores, sell franchises, or sell on the Internet.
If “units sold” has a ceiling, you stifle leverage. Without leverage, you can’t create wealth exponentially.
REACH OR MAGNITUDE = SCALE
To achieve scale, magnitude or reach must increase. Magnitude is naturally increased with price or cost. If you sell Lamborghinis over Hyundais, you have greater magnitude simply by the implicit price of Lamborghinis. You are near Effection (Lamborghini owners most likely exploit the Law of Effection). If you are a real estate agent for the rich and sell multimillion dollar estates, you achieve magnitude implicit by price. Higher prices and cost implicitly drive magnitude. If you successfully sell the most expensive apartment building in Manhattan, you have had an effect of magnitude and realize scale.
Reach, exclusive of magnitude, also achieves scale. Reach is massive numbers. The more people you reach, the greater scale potential. Who does your business serve? The local neighborhood? Or the world? The bigger your pool of play, the bigger your potential for wealth.
The guy stuck on Main Street selling sandwiches has no scale and no magnitude. Is there anything this guy can do to turn his $40,000-per-year profit into $400,000? Nope. He’s done before he even started. He didn’t buy a franchise; he bought a job. He will never get rich until he wakes up and realizes that scale is not reached selling one-buck-margin sandwiches to 100 people a day.
How do you know if your business (or potential business) honors the Commandment of Scale? Ask: Can the net income of this business scale limitlessly, say, from $2,000 per month to $200,000?
For the Slowlaner, the LOE has to be hit by massive intrinsic value explosion: Sing in front of millions, entertain millions, play ball in front of millions. For the Fastlaner, the LOE is leveraged by scale or asset value explosion: Sell millions, help millions, serve millions, impact millions.
Whatever your road, regardless of roadmap, can it directly scale to impact millions (scale)? Can it tremendously impact a few (magnitude)?
Think big, but think scale and/or magnitude.
Analyze your Fastlane equation and examine the variables. What are your maximum units sold and maximum profit per unit?
What is the size of your customer pool?
THE 3 INTERSTATES
The three Interstates are:
1) Internet
When 10,000 people pay you $9.95 per month for your information, you’re balling the Fastlane!
2) Innovation
Innovation covers any act of creation followed by distribution. Let me repeat that: Innovation involves two acts: 1) Manufacture and 2) Distribution.
Invent a product, then sell it by infomercial, sell it on the Internet, sell it on QVC, sell through 10,000 network marketing distributors, or sell it to 20 wholesalers that then sell it to 20,000 retailers.
Distribution channels: infomercial (sell via mass media), retail (sell to distributors and wholesalers), and direct marketing (sell via print media, postal mail, Internet).
Like all innovation roads, manufacture is one tiny battle in a larger war. Distribution is where the war is won. A great product is worthless if it doesn’t get into the hands of people, and that requires distribution. For my book, I will need to leverage Amazon (a distribution system), book distributors (wholesalers), and the Internet (another distribution system) if I am to succeed.
Writing a book is not a business; selling the book is.
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. To leverage the Fastlane wealth equation and get near the Law of Effection, I have to strap on my commitment helmet and work, work, work …
Failures that drive you into new directions are often the most productive forces for invention. The heart pacemaker, microwave ovens, penicillin, and vulcanized rubber are all inventions that are the profound results of failures and accidents. Failure cracked the road open, and in that failure, the inventors had the fortitude to recognize it.
3) Intentional Iteration (II)
Instead of buying one home, he buys 50. Yes, easier said than done, and it can be incredibly slow. In effect, the investor has chosen to play on a field of “singles,” and to hit the home run, II needs to become the strategy. Iteration is a profitable, singles-based business scaled to home runs. Franchising is another example of II.
If you build a small store with intentional iteration in mind, your goal isn’t one store, but hundreds, perhaps thousands, through the act of chaining or franchising.
The Fastlane franchising premise is to build a local business defined by systematic processes, then franchise the concept nationally or worldwide. The iterator’s goal is to replicate and sell a concept, a brand, and a system and remove himself from operations. While your little deli might not be particularly Fastlane it could be turned Fastlane by the process of II, through franchise or chaining replication.
SOMEBODY IS ALREADY DOING IT? SO WHAT?
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? Can you fill the need better, offer greater value, or be a better marketer?
FORGET THE BIG IDEA; GO FOR BETTER
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, Alta Vista—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.
Hamburgers were around for decades, but that didn’t stop Ray Kroc from blowing up McDonalds after joining the company. It was an open road when the road seemed closed.
Coffee had been around for a thousand years when Howard Schultz bought into the Starbucks concept. A new idea? Nope, Starbucks made coffee fashionable and invented a brand, an ambiance, and an emotion and attached it to coffee.
DVD rental stores were around 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.
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, nor 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 seemed closed.
A blanket with arms? It’s been around for years, but that didn’t stop Snuggie from selling 40 million blankets via infomercial marketing. An old idea better marketed and better executed.
MySpace was thriving well before Facebook, but that didn’t stop Mark Zuckerberg. He saw a niche need and solved it. And then adjusted as growth followed.
Poorly met needs are open roads often appearing closed. Successful businesses take existing ideas, services, and products and simply make them better, or spin them in new directions.
HOW TO TELL WHEN THERE IS AN OPPORTUNITY
When you catch yourself (or someone else) in these words, you’ve just uncovered a possible opportunity. Here are the most common phrases: “I hate …” What do you hate? Solve the hate, and there’s your open road. “I don’t like …” What don’t you like? Remove the dislike, and there’s your open road. “This frustrates me …” What is frustrating? Remove the frustration, and there’s your open road. “Why is this like this?” I don’t know, why is it? Remove the “why,” and there’s your open road. “Do I have to?” Do you? Remove the “have to.” There’s your open road. “I wish there was …” What do you wish? If you wish, others wish too. Make wishes come true, and there’s your open road. “I’m tired of …” What are you tired of? Fix someone’s tiresomeness, and there’s your open road. “This sucks …” What sucks? Remove or reduce suckage, and there’s your open road.
The opportunities of open roads come in easily painted language: Discomfort, distress, inconvenience, complaints, problems, and performance gaps.
FREEDOMS PRICE IS MONEY
The end of the Fastlane road trip is to crown your happiness with freedom. Freedom from financial encumbrances, freedom freedom from bosses, alarm clocks, two-hour commutes; freedom from bad ratios (9-to-5, 5-for-2, 2 weeks every 52 weeks and 8% over 40 years) and freedom to enjoy the world as your playground.
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.
Life is not about money, it’s about time
Money doesn’t change people; it just makes them more of what they already are.
I’ve run into a series of people who hate money and everything having to do with money, but they still want the end result: free time and the ability to live their dream.
No matter how big or small, dreams have a price, and that price is money, responsibility, accountability and commitment.
FREEDOM IS A 4 STEP PROCESS
(1) DEFINE THE LIFESTYLE: WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Three cars: a Mercedes, a hybrid, and a minivan
A 6,000-square-foot house with a fountain, pool, and waterfall.
A small cabin in the mountains.
The ability to travel three months in a year.
Private school for my children…
(2) ASSESS THE COST
Three cars: $2,000 House: $5,000 Cabin: $1,000 Travel: $ 1,000 Private School: $1000. Lifestyle cost = $10,000/month
Next, determine your monthly allowance and other unknowns. This is for stuff like clothes, gadgets, toys for the children, entertainment, etc. Add this to your Lifestyle Cost to arrive at your Gross Living Cost.
Gross Living Costs = $10,000/month (lifestyle costs) + $4,000/month (allowances) = $14000/month
Account for taxes to come up with Net Living Costs. (this would be different for every country!)
Net Living Costs = $14,000/month / 0.6 = $23,333/month
(3) SET THE TARGETS
The goal of this step is to set your two targets: the business system income target and the money system target. To calculate your money system target, multiply your Net Living Cost by 12, then divide by .05, or 5%. Five percent is the minimum expected yield on a money system (this would be different for every country!)
Money System Target = ($23,333 × 12) / .05 = $5,599,920
For your business system target, multiply your Gross Living Cost by 5, the required parameter to achieve a similar result by a money system. 20% of the business income pays for your lifestyle.
Business System Target = $14,000 x 5 = $70,000 / month
(4) MAKE IT REAL
The key to achieving enormous tasks is to break them down into their smallest parts. You can’t run a 26-mile marathon by focusing on the 26th mile. You attack the first, then the second, third, and so forth.
IDEAS ARE WORTHLESS. EXECUTION IS PRICELESS.
You see, the world tells you which direction you should be going at all times. Heed the signs. How do you get the world to tell you? Put your executed ideas and concepts out into the world and let it tell you. Paint the world with your brush of genius so they can tell you how right or wrong you are.
Interview any successful entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that they started off with intention A and ended at intention B. They sell product X and ultimately end selling product Y.
Figure out what needs figuring and just go do it. The world will do its job and tell you the directions to travel.
The best business plan in the world will always be a track record of execution.
If you are a successful entrepreneur, suddenly people will want your business plan because they know you can execute. If I received a business plan from an entrepreneur who sold his company for $20 million just two years earlier, you can bet your sevens I’d read it. The value is not the plan, but the person giving it and his track record of execution.
If you want investors, get out and execute. Create a prototype. Create a brand. Create a track record that others can see or touch. Dive into process.
LOOK BIG ACT SMALL
Looking big can scare away potential competitors.
MARKETING IS A GAME OF PERCEPTION
Marketing is a game of perceptions, and whatever the perception is, that’s the reality.
(1) BUILD A BRAND, NOT A BUSINESS
Businesses survive. Brands thrive. A brand is the best defense to commoditization.
People tend to make buying decisions for commoditized goods and services based on one metric: PRICE. If you don’t, it’s because the business has done a good job differentiating its product from the alternatives. If your product isn’t unique, it doesn’t stand a chance and you’re forced into the strategy of “cutting prices to stand out from the crowd.”
(2) GET UNIQUE: THE USP
What makes your company different from the rest? What will compel a customer to buy from you over someone else? My USP was powerful: “No-risk advertising: If we send you nothing, you pay nothing.”
5 STEPS TO DEVELOP YOUR USP
Step 1: Uncover the Benefit(s) Get into business for the right reason: to add or create value, solve problems or fill a need. That creates your first USP.
Step 2: Be Unique
USPS should use powerful action verbs that create desire and urgency. “Lose weight” should be changed to “Obliterate fat” or “Shred pounds.”
“Grow your business” should be dropped in favor of “Explode revenues” or “Shatter sales records.”
Step 3: Be Specific and Give Evidence
WEB SITE: “Your car sold in 20 days or less or it’s free.” PRODUCT: “Drop 20 pounds or you don’t pay a dime.” SERVICE: “Your home sold in 30 days or I own it.”
Domino’s Pizza didn’t say “Delivered on time,” they said, “Delivered within 30 minutes or it’s free.”
Step 4: Keep it Short, Clear, and Concise
Step 5: Integrate Your USP into ALL Marketing Materials
5 WAYS TO STAND OUT
There are five ways to get your message above the noise:
1) Polarize
Polarize Polarization probably isn’t the best business strategy for a mass-market brand, because polarization involves extreme viewpoints or messages.
Polarization works because it involves an extreme viewpoint, which forces people to either love or hate you. Donald Trump is polarizing.
2) Arouse emotions
Arouse Emotion Most consumer buying decisions are driven by emotions. You and I buy stuff because we want to feel something. I don’t buy a Lamborghini to go from point A to point B; that’s practicality. I buy to feel something—pride, achievement, uniqueness, adrenaline, and fame.
3) Be risqué
Be Risqué Sex sells, and it is the most used get-above-the-noise technique.
In 2005, GoDaddy aired its first Super Bowl ad by using sex as weapon to get above the noise. The now-infamous GoDaddy Girl ads followed in subsequent years. I never thought the ads were that good, yet they got above the noise and got people’s attention. The result? Increased sales and GoDaddy’s market share surged to 32% after 2006.
Why do the bikini lectures do better than the normal ones? Simple: Sex gets above the noise.
But be careful: leveraging sex as an attention grabber can also tarnish your brand if it isn’t tasteful or within a reasonable spectrum of cultural sensitivity.
4) Encourage interaction
If you can taste it, feel it, or use it, you will be more likely to buy it.
5) Be unconventional
WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?
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.
As consumers, we buy things to solve needs. We participate in transactions to fill voids.
You don’t buy a drill; you buy a hole.
You don’t buy a dress; you buy an image.
You don’t buy a Toyota; you buy reliability.
You don’t buy a vacation; you buy and experience.
FEATURES MUST BE TRANSLATED INTO BENEFITS
A four-step process accomplishes this.
1) Switch places.
Who are they? What is their modus operandi? Are they affluent eEO types? Or price-sensitive Wal-Mart shoppers? Cash-strapped students? Or single moms? If you can’t identify your typical buyer, your results will be flawed and your benefit hidden. Once you identify your buyer, ask: What do they want? What do they fear? What problems do they need solved? Or do they just want to “feel” something.
2) Identify features.
3) Identify advantages
4) Translate advantages into benefits
For my web service, the seemingly simplistic feature of “upload pictures” translated to: “Quit wasting time with client meetings at garages. Upload photos of your fleet and show your clients your product!” The “target” feature translated to: “Target the clients you want—right down to the day, service, and vehicle type.”
Each feature transcribed to a specific benefit that would compel my buyer to join. I didn’t let them fill in the blanks
QUOTES I LOVED
Extraordinary wealth will require you to have extraordinary beliefs.
What you choose to perceive, or not perceive, will manifest itself to a choice of action, or inaction.
The ultimate wealth is having the free time to live how you want to live.
Fastlaners are frugal with time, while Slowlaners are frugal with money.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. ~ ALBERT EINSTEIN
If you avoid failure you will also avoid success.
You have to take risks. Get uncomfortable and fail into progress.
In business, to be a success you only have to be right once. ~ MARK CUBAN
You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. ~ JOHN WOODEN
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
“Competition is everywhere. Just do it and do it better.”
Everyone fails on the road to success. What separates the winners from the losers is what happens when failure arises. How are you going to react? Will your road trip end with the verdict being, “This Fastlane shit don’t work,” or will you switch roads? Or keep going?
Quitting only happens when you give up on your dream.
The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. ~ BENJAMIN MAYS
Live below your means with the intent to expand your means.
“Live below your means” is relevant at any income level.
IDEAS ARE WORTHLESS; EXECUTION IS PRICELESS
If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. ~ JEFF BEZOS
My black book wasn’t a treasure trove of telephone numbers from female hotties but a written record of all complaints, grievances, and issues my business experienced daily. This book has served as my guide for over a decade.
There’s an old saying, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
Imagine the potency when you have not just one raving customer, but 10,000. Will your business grow 2% in one year? Or 200%?
“The customer pays your paycheck, not me—keep them happy.”
People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn’t make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps. ~ MARY KAY ASH
All the intangibles in the world can’t change a poor customer service experience.
A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one. ~ HENRY FORD
Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important.’ Never forget that message when working with people. ~ MARY KAY ASH
For example, if you want a cabin on a mountain creek, find a picture of that vision and put it on computer so you have to see it every day. Make your future visions real and force them into your psyche so you’re constantly reminded. Make those dreams tangible and inescapable!
Some passions are selfish (I want a Lamborghini) and other passions are selfless (I want to help orphaned children). It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as the passion burns hot enough to burn a hole in your pants and gets you stoked for process.
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