The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
How strongly I recommend this book: 7 / 10
Date read: May 13, 2025
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Summary
This is a great book. I really liked the author’s definition of the “slow lane” versus the “fast lane,” and he makes a convincing case for how to build towards the latter. For me, the most critical point was the big identity shift he describes: moving from a consumer who asks, “What can I get?” to a producer who asks, “What can I offer?” I thought that was a super important concept.
The book explains how your income is directly tied to the value you provide to the marketplace, which comes from solving other people’s problems instead of just following your own selfish passions. He also emphasizes that ideas have little intrinsic value; what the market really needs is the brilliant execution of a business.
There are so many interesting points in this book. I would highly recommend reading it if you are wanting to start your own business.
Favorite Quotes and Chapter Notes
I went through my notes and captured key quotes from all chapters below.
P.S. – Highly recommend Readwise if you want to get the most out of your reading.
Highlights and Notes
PART 1: Wealth in a Wheelchair… “Get Rich Slow” is Get Rich Old
From that point forward, things changed. The Lamborghini encounter lasted 90 seconds, but transcended a lifetime of new beliefs, directions, and choices. I decided that I would someday own a Lamborghini and I would do it while I was young. I was unwilling to wait until my next encounter, my next chance experience, and my next poster: I wanted it for myself.
My income was tied to my time, the construction of Web sites. More Web sites jobs meant more time spent, and if I didn’t work, my income would stop. My time was being sold off for money.
The workdays became long and challenging. Forty hours was a vacation; typical workweeks were 60 hours long. Days and weekends blurred together. While my new friends were out drinking and partying, I was hunkered down in my tiny apartment, regurgitating code. I didn’t know if it was Thursday or Saturday, and it didn’t matter. The glory of the hard work was this: It didn’t feel like work; in fact, I enjoyed it. I didn’t have a job; I had a passion to make a difference. Thousands of people benefited from something I created, which addicted me to the process. I made a difference! I started to compile testimonials from clients.“Because of you, my business grew ten fold.”
PART 2: Wealth is Not a Road, But a Road Trip
Wealth eludes most people because they are preoccupied with events while disregarding process. Without process, there is no event. Take a moment and reread that.
If you want to change your life, change your choices. To change your choices you must change your belief system. Your belief system is defined by your roadmap. How do beliefs affect finances? Beliefs preceded choices, which precede action. For example, if you believe“rich people got rich investing in mutual funds” your actions will reflect that belief.
To force change, change must come from your beliefs, and your roadmap outlines those beliefs. Each roadmap is governed by a wealth equation and predisposed to a financial destination- Sidewalk to poorness, Slowlane to mediocrity, and the Fastlane to wealth.
PART 3: Poorness–The Sidewalk
89% of all“under 35” households had a net worth less than $ 100,000.
A person in the 35– 44 age range has a median net worth of $ 13,000 excluding home equity. A person in the age 45– 54 group has a median net worth of $ 23,000, excluding home equity.
At the end of the iconic movie It’s A Wonderful Life we’re given the final lesson:“Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.” This reflects on the importance of having your life shared with friends, family, and loved ones. Wealth is making a difference. Wealth is community and impacting the lives of others. Wealth cannot be experienced alone in a vacuum. Believe me, the richest moments of my life occurred when I was surrounded by a family of friends and loved ones.
Unaffordable material possessions have consequences to our health and relationships. The irony of looking wealthy is that it is an enemy to real wealth: It destroys freedom, it destroys health, and it destroys relationships. Foremost, The Millionaire Fastlane addresses the FREEDOM portion of the wealth trinity, because freedom offers protection to health and relationships. Only you can define your freedom and how you prefer to live. If you want the freedom to fly private jets, that’s it. If you want the freedom to live a minimalist lifestyle, then that is it. Everyone’s freedom is different!
Wealth is authored by strong familial relationships, fitness and health, and freedom- not by material possessions.
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. Money owns them, instead of them owning their money. 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 Thailand who spends half his day tending to his fields and the other half with his family.
Yet my lifestyle is not“normal.” Like wealth, society, through its“Get Rich Slow” mandates, has defined“normal” for you. Normal is waking at 6 a.m., fighting traffic, and working eight hours. Normal is to slave at a job Monday through Friday, save 10%, and repeat for 50 years. Normal is to buy everything on credit. Normal is to believe the illusion that the stock market will make you rich. Normal is to believe that a faster car and a bigger house will make you happy. You’re conditioned to accept normal based on society’s already corrupted definition of wealth, and because of it, normal itself is corrupted. Normal is modern- day slavery.
Happiness stems from good health, freedom, and strong interpersonal relationships, not necessarily money.
PART 4: Mediocrity–The Slowlane Roadmap
While the Sidewalk is a chronic lifestyle that mortgages the future for a pleasurable today, the Slowlane is the antithesis: a sacrifice of today in the hopes of a brighter and freer tomorrow.
Wealth is best lived young and enjoyed while you have health, vibrancy, energy, and yes, maybe even some hair. Wealth is best lived in the prime of your life, not in its twilight after 40 years of 50- hour workweeks have pulverized your dreams into surrender. Deep in our soul we know this, yet we continue to faithfully pledge obedience to a financial roadmap that promises wealth after four or five decades.
Time Perception: My time is abundant and I will gladly trade my time for more dollars. The more hours I can work, the more I can pay off my debt and save money for retirement at 65.
This experiment, conducted by the Washington Post, uncovers something incredibly powerful- and disturbing. Not even the greatest musician in the world can illuminate the blinding depths of the rat race and those entrenched by its indifference. Have you become so numbed by making a living that the living has been sucked out of your life? Are you so blinded by Monday through Friday that any beauty that sings before you is muted? The train commuters come and go like zombies- they’re oblivious to the splendor of Monday through Friday. Yet, what if this experiment occurred on Saturday; would its outcome be any different?
Friday evening is glorified because people celebrate the dividends of their trade: five days of work- bondage exchanged for two days of unadulterated freedom. Saturday and Sunday is the paycheck for Monday through Friday, and Friday evening symbolizes the emergence of that payment, freedom for two days. The prostitution of Monday through Friday is the reason“Thank God it’s Friday” exists. On Friday, people are paid FREEDOM in the currency of Saturday and Sunday!
When you accept the Slowlane roadmap as your strategy, you accept 5- for- 2. You give five days of work servitude in exchange for two days of weekend freedom. Yes, Monday through Friday is prostituted for Saturday and Sunday. While people easily recognize and reject a negative 60% return on their money, they do it willingly with their time.
While I worked my plan, I gave 7- for- 0(I worked seven days and didn’t take a day off) because I knew the roads on my roadmap converged with dreams. I worked for a better ratio in the near future, not in 40 years. I controlled my destiny and eventually my time trade investment yielded a dividend of 40 years. Now I do 0- for- 7. I work zero days and get seven days of freedom.
By working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually get to be the boss and work 12 hours a day. ~ Robert Frost
Whether you’re an electrician or a store manager, you hold a job. Jobs suck because they’re rooted in limited leverage and limited control. Sure, you can have great job(and a fun one too!) but in the scope of wealth, they limit both leverage and control- two things desperately needed if you want wealth.
Suckage #1: To Trade Time Is to Trade Life
Suckage #2: Limitation on Experience
After the initial learning experience, the job becomes regimented and accumulation of new knowledge creeps to a crawl. A job limits learning and mutates into life’s death knell: a trade of life force for money.
Ask yourself this: Which experience is more important? The experience of a menial job designed to pay your bills? Or the experience(and failures) of creating something that could provide you financial freedom for a lifetime without ever having to hold a job again?
Suckage #3: No Control
The only defense to office politics is to control the playing field, and to do that, you have to be the boss. And to be the boss, you not only need to run the show, you need to own it.
A job seals your fate into a criminal time trade: five days of life traded for two days of freedom. A job chains you to a set grade of experience. A job takes away your control. A job forces you to work with people you can’t stand. A job forces you to get paid last. A job imposes a dictatorship on your income. These limitations are counter- insurgencies to wealth.
Uncontrollable Limited Leverage(ULL)– Part 1 Why is ULL so important? To accumulate financial wealth, you need to attract large sums of money. To attract large sums of money, you need two things: 1) Control and 2) Leverage. The Slowlane has neither and that truth is exposed when you reverse engineer the strategy into its mathematical equivalent, or its wealth universe. Uncover the mathematics behind the plan and you uncover its weakness!
JOB [Your Intrinsic Value] = Annual Salary Notice that intrinsic value is measured in units of TIME. This“time attachment” introduces the Slowlane’s first punitive element of wealth creation. Can you control time? Can you leverage time? You can’t.
Compound interest and a job have the same disease: the sinful and gluttonous consumption of your time while forsaking control. Both variables within the Slowlane wealth equation are anchored by time- time traded in a job and time traded in market investments. Time becomes the lynchpin for wealth that congenitally ties to the mathematical handicaps of mortality: 24 hours in a day and a 50- year work- life expectancy. Yes,“getting rich” is a function of time. Unless you plan on living forever, this relationship is dubiously foolhardy. Why? Because to trade your time away is to trade your wealth away.
Like the Slowlaner’s primary income source(a job), the Slowlaner’s wealth acceleration vehicle(compound interest) is also pegged to time. Like a job, compound interest is mathematically futile and cannot be manipulated. You cannot force- feed the market(or the economy) to give you phenomenal returns, year after year. Wealth cannot be accelerated when pegged to mathematics based on time.
Many money gurus often suffer from a Paradox of Practice; they teach one wealth equation while getting rich in another. They’re not rich from their own teachings.
I’d rather live in regret of failure than in regret of never trying. ~ MJ DeMarco
Except these visions of opulence describe a lifestyle of a millionaire elevated by the Fastlane, not the Slowlane. Slowlane millionaires who don’t escape by fame or corporate bastardization live differently. They own homes in innocuous middle class neighborhoods. They drive unassuming cars like Hondas or Toyotas, they vacation infrequently, they limit their dining expenses, they cut coupons, and they max out their 401( k) s. They work five days a week at jobs they most likely hate and diligently save 10% of their paychecks. Others own small businesses, franchises, and retail stores. Several national best- selling books have enlightened us: Yes, these are the“millionaires next door.” Sadly, in today’s terms, a“millionaire”(net worth of $ 1,000,000) is simply upper middle class. A millionaire is not rich. Five million is the old one million. Depressing, I know.
Slowlane millionaires work for their time. Fastlane millionaires have time working for them.
Slowlane millionaires are cheap with money. Fastlane millionaires are cheap with time.
Slowlane millionaires use their house for net worth. Fastlane millionaires use their house for residency.
The Slowlane is predisposed to mediocrity because its mathematical universe is mediocre. Slowlaners manipulate the“expense” variable because it is the one thing they can control.
PART 5: Wealth–The Fastlane Roadmap
Decoding the Fastlane roadmap is as simple as joining the team that is custodian to the decryption key. The winning team is Team Producer. Reshape life’s focus on producing, not consuming. When you reframe your thinking from majority thinking(consumer) to minority thinking(producer), you effectively switch teams and allegiances. Yes, become a producer first and a consumer second.
I know; it’s not easy. However, once you see the world from a producer perspective, your perception sharpens like a fine- tuned radio frequency, from static to clear stereo sound. Suddenly, opportunities have clarity, ideas surface, and scams are exposed. This new minority status is critical to strengthening your wealth creation temperament. Remember, the rich are a minority, and you want to be in that minority. 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 is the aim of its message? What kind of business 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?
Producers are indigenous to the Fastlane roadmap. Producers are the minority as are the rich, while consumers are the majority as are the poor.
Compound interest pays my bills. It’s my tool. It’s my passive income source. Yet, compound interest is not responsible for my wealth. This is critical. 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.
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.
To make millions you must serve millions in scale or a few in magnitude.
PART 6: Your Vehicle to Wealth–YOU
The first step to controlling your vehicle- you- is to own yourself so you can truly pay yourself first and the government last. That is accomplished by shelling your business into a corporation that you control.
The corporation serves as the Fastlane frame because it offers the immediate tax benefit of“pay yourself first” versus“pay yourself last.” When you own a corporation, net profits are reduced by expenses. The remaining profit is taxed, and those taxes are paid to the government. Additionally, corporations exist separate from their owners and survive time. It’s the surrogate structure that serves as your business system.
The best business structures for your Fastlane business are: C corporation S corporation Limited liability corporation
While C corporations and their owners are subject to double taxation(tax on corporate profits and dividends to shareholders), they are advantageous for larger corporations and corporations with an“asset growth” strategy. In other words, if you don’t plan on distributing profits and are focused on building“asset value” over“net profit,” C corporations do the job.
The S Corporation An S corporation is like a C corporation except that it isn’t taxed as a separate entity. Considered a“pass- through” entity, taxes aren’t paid at the corporate level, but at the individual level and reflected on the owner’s personal tax return. S corporations also have some tax advantages because profits are not subject to the hefty self- employment tax that comes with sole proprietorships. However, unlike C corporations, which can have limitless owners, S corporations are limited to 100 owners and will have additional filing requirements.
The Limited Liability Corp(LLC) An LLC operates just a like a corporation with the benefits of a partnership or a sole proprietorship. LLC profit passes through to its owners, called members, and is reflected on their personal income tax. LLCs are also considered“pass- through” entities because profit passes directly to the owners. For partnerships, the LLC or the S corp is the recommended structure in lieu of a general partnership, which, again, does not offer liability protection. For small startups, I recommend either an LLC or an S corp. Stay away from partnerships and sole- proprietorships, as they do not limit liability. Creating a corporation is not as daunting as it seems. Depending on your state, it shouldn’t cost more than $ 1,000. In Arizona, one can be created for less than a few hundred dollars.
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.
The first step in making better choices starts with your choice of perception, because your actions evolve from those perceptions. If you lose your job, you can frame it as a negative or a positive. When you’re caught speeding, you can be angry or thankful. The choice of perception and its choices start right between your ears and drive themselves into choices of action.
If you want extraordinary results, you’re going to need extraordinary thinking. Unfortunately,“extraordinary” is not found trapped in society’s gravity of thinking and the beliefs that fuel them.
Worse Case Consequence Analysis(WCCA) The first decision tool is Worst Case Consequence Analysis(WCCA), which requires you to become forward- thinking and an analyzer of potential consequences. WCCA asks you to answer three questions about every decision of consequence: What is the worst- case consequence of this choice? What is the probability of this outcome? Is this an acceptable risk?
Worst Case Consequence Analysis helps avoid treasonous choices. The Weighted Average Decision Matrix can help you make better big decisions by clarifying alternatives and their internal factors.
If you want to push beyond average results produced by average people, you’ll need to adopt an uncommon approach that doesn’t fall in the favor of“everyone.” The more uncanny and exceptional you strive to be, the more you need to fight through social indoctrination. Extraordinary wealth will require you to have extraordinary beliefs.
Time isn’t a commodity, something you pass around like a cake. Time is the substance of life. When anyone asks you to give your time, they’re really asking for a chunk of your life. ~ Antoinette Bosco
The irony of financial fortune is that no matter how much you have, you’ll die flat broke. You cannot escape the continual combustion of time as your tank drips time every second. You can live in blissful happiness or in a miserable depression- time is indifferent and it just bleeds away. Since time is scarce, wouldn’t it make sense not to waste 3 hours of your life for a $ 6 bucket of chicken?
Fastlaners are frugal with time, while Slowlaners are frugal with money. Sidewalkers and Slowlaners use money as the sole criterion indecision- making: Which job pays the most? Where is the cheapest item? How can I get some free chicken? Money is scarce and time brings up the rear and sweeps up the mess. If you want to be rich, you have to start thinking rich. Time is king.
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. ~ Albert Einstein
Set a goal to read at least 12 books per year, or one per month. If you are aggressive like me, you’ll read a book every week. I can’t stress enough that the more knowledge you consume, the more torque you create on the Fastlane road trip.
To get out of first gear, you must make a concerted effort and a lineage of good choices to exploit the power of the Fastlane. There’s a profound difference between interest and commitment. 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.
The sweat of success is failure. While you can’t build cardiovascular endurance without sweating, you can’t experience success without failure. Failure is simply a natural response to success. If you avoid failure you will also avoid success.
Risk involves careful stewardship of choice. Minimize moronic risk and take advantage of intelligent risk. As for failure, trust me- it is easier to live in regret of failure than in regret of never trying.
Let me be clear if I haven’t been: There is never a perfect time. Someday is today. Today is now. A week is 7 todays strung together while a year is 365. Today is all you’ve got! And if you wait, opportunity passes. Your Fastlane journey never starts and year after year passes with new preconditions being added while the old ones are satisfied.
PART 7: The Roads to Wealth
Not all businesses are the right road. Few roads move at, through, or near the Law of Effection. The best roads and the purest Fastlanes satisfy the Five Fastlane Commandments: Need, Entry, Control, Scale, and Time.
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.
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.” Instead, chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.
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.
Make 1 million people achieve any of the following: Make them feel better. Help them solve a problem. Educate them. Make them look better(health, nutrition, clothing, makeup). Give them security(housing, safety, health). Raise a positive emotion(love, happiness, laughter, self- confidence). Satisfy appetites, from basic(food) to the risqué(sexual). Make things easier. Enhance their dreams and give hope.… and I guarantee, you will be worth millions.
So the next time you’re trolling the Web looking to make money, sit back and ask yourself,“What do I have to offer the world?” Offer the world value, and money becomes magnetized to you!
In a magazine interview, billionaire RJ Kirk was asked about the benchmark to his success. He replied,“It is for others to say whether I am useful or not.” It isn’t for you to decide whether you are useful. The marketplace makes that determination. People pay for their satisfaction; they don’t pay to satisfy your need of“do what you love.” People pay for solutions, not for your enjoyment. People pay for solved problems.
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 love doing the same thing 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.
Fastlaners work unlike everyone else so they can live unlike anyone else. Take four years of hard work in exchange for 40 years of freedom. Unfortunately, most people take 40 years of hard work for four weeks of freedom, or however long their paid vacation time lasts.
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.
Help one million people and you will be a millionaire.
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. ~ Seneca
The Commandment of Entry states that as entry barriers to any business road fall, or lessen, the effectiveness of that road declines while competition in that field subsequently strengthens. Higher entry barriers equate to stronger, more powerful roads with less competition and less 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. In other words, if“getting into business” is as simple as paying $ 200 for a distributor kit, there are no entry barriers, and the opportunity should be passed.
Conversely, when I started my Internet business I had roughly 12 competitors. Could I be exceptional among 12? Absolutely.
I spotted the signs of“everyone is doing it,” because if everyone were rich,“everybody is doing it” would work. While this logic might seem spurious, it has never failed me. 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.
But some shrewd people have mastered the Rule of Everyone. Instead of getting out, they short the other side and profit from the downfall. With every busted boom, new millionaires and billionaires are created because they saw the impending collapse inevitable in every meteoric irrational ascension. While the stock market imploded in early 2009, who was buying and who was selling? Everyone was selling. I was long gone and sold a year earlier. Warren Buffet was buying. Everyone sells and the richest man in the world buys.
When you blindly invest your life and time into someone else’s brand, you become a part of their marketing plan. You become a swab of paint in their big picture. You resign yourself to the slim possibility of making good money vs. big money. Not investing in my own brand was one of my most serious mistakes as a young entrepreneur.
In business, to be a success you only have to be right once. ~ Mark Cuban
Net Profit =(Units Sold) X(Unit Profit) If“units sold” has a ceiling, you handcuff your ability to create leverage. Without leverage, you can’t create wealth exponentially. When you travel a business road incapable of scale, you render the Fastlane wealth equation impotent.
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?
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.
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?
Jobs are time trades for income, and yes, so are some businesses. The goal of the Fastlane is a disconnection of your time from income, even if that income isn’t millions. Would you rather work 10 hours a week and earn $ 60,000, or work 70 hours a week for $ 140,000? I’d take the former over the latter every time.
A business attached to your time is a job. 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.
Competition is a staple of business. This opportunity was an open road, not a closed one. These existing Web directories weren’t easily found and, for the most part, weren’t user friendly. I recognized a poorly met need and I decided to drive this road of opportunity, despite the numerous barricades that warned“Road Closed.” A decade later, every one of those companies I feared disappeared or became insignificant. In fact, the industry leader, unable to respond to my domination, diverted into an alternative service.
Poorly met needs are open roads when they often appear closed. Successful businesses take existing ideas, services, and products and simply make them better, or spin them in new directions.
Slowlaners seek to minimize expenses while the Fastlaner seeks to maximize income and asset values.
PART 8: Your Speed–Accelerate Wealth
The fact is, most people- whether they agree with Fastlane strategy or not- will do nothing with the information. They’ll stare at the roadmap but never take the road and hit the accelerator. It’s one thing to possess the treasure map; it’s another to get out of the house and follow it. Doing nothing is normal when it’s normalcy that you seek to avoid!
If you notice, a brilliant idea and no execution are worth all of 200 bucks. Awesome potential speed(idea) is married to weak accelerator pressure(execution). Yet a so- so idea with brilliant execution could be worth $ 350 million.
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. Put your executed ideas out into the box.
When business owners hear a complaint, most of them ignore it. Most of them pass the buck to an employee and pray the issue goes away. Not in the Fastlane. Complaints are a beautiful thing. They represent free feedback and expose unmet needs in your business. They represent the journey’s road noise. I logged my customers’ complaints because they provided a kaleidoscope into the mind of my customers. One complaint meant there were 10 others who felt the same way. When my black book accumulated similar complaints weekly, I had to evaluate the issue and take corrective action. Complaints are the world’s whispers hinting the direction you should be moving.
Complaints of change are the least informative and therefore are the ones most difficult to decipher. For my redesign failure, data confirmed that the complaints were substantial. Bounce rates tripled and my conversion ratio suffered.
Complaints of void are when your customer continually requests something and you simply don’t have it. Complaints of void are extremely valuable, as they expose unmet needs.
Any time you violate your customer’s expectations to the positive, you get a dual benefit. First, they buy from you again. Second, raving customers become liaisons and disciples for your business and unpaid human resource systems. Both build speed. Speed builds wealth.
Your customer and their satisfaction hold the key to everything you selfishly want. Looking big but acting small sets up customer service expectation violations in the positive.
A good accountant and attorney will save you thousands, perhaps millions. Accountants and attorneys have the keys to your castle; make sure you trust them fully because they have the power to right or wrong you.
The point of having a need- based premise is to avoid the industry entirely, or to get in it to solve a specific problem, not to change it after the fact. If your product isn’t someone’s knight, standing out from the crowd and differentiating, it stands to be commoditized.
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 and win over the hearts and minds of your customers. And when you fill needs and your army of customers grows, something suddenly happens: Everyone follows you. In my industry, I lead the pack. I innovated and everyone followed me.
On the rare occasions you peek in at your competition, do so for exploitation. Mine their weaknesses and differentiate your product. Uncover what you should be doing that they aren’t. Find the need. Exploit their customer service gaffes.
The first step at building a brand is to have a Unique Selling Proposition or a USP. As a business without one, you’re adrift in a sea of me- too businesses without a rudder, unmoored to the trade winds of the marketplace. USP- less businesses offer nothing distinct, nothing unique, no benefit, no logical reason that someone should buy from them other than hope or circumstance wrapped around a cheap price. Your USP is the anchor to your brand. What makes your company different from the rest? What sets your business apart? What will compel a customer to use you over someone else?
Developing Your USP
Step 2: Be Unique The objective of a USP is to be unique when compared to the alternatives. This impregnates the consumer with a logical argument for choosing your company, because, without your company, they are forgoing the benefit.
Step 3: Be Specific and Give Evidence Noise is everywhere, and if you are going to rise above it, you have to alleviate natural consumer skepticism. Do so by being specific, and if possible, offer evidence. WEB SITE:“Your car sold in 20 days or less or it’s free.”
Step 4: Keep it Short, Clear, and Concise The best USPs are short, clear, and powerful. Long phrases get skipped over.
Step 5: Integrate Your USP into ALL Marketing Materials A USP is worthless if it isn’t conveyed throughout every aspect of your business.
Step 6: Make It Real A USP has to be strong enough to convince people to buy or, even better, switch brands. If it doesn’t capture your audience’s attention, or the benefit/ hook is too weak, it won’t work.
There are five ways to get your message above the noise: Polarize Arouse emotions Be risqué Encourage interaction and Be unconventional
Polarization probably isn’t the best business strategy for a mass- market brand, because polarization involves extreme viewpoints or messages. You don’t want to piss off half your customer base! However, polarization works fabulously for Websites in need of traffic or books in need of readers. Polarization works because it involves an extreme viewpoint, which forces people to either love or hate you.
If you can move your audience’s emotions and make them care, they will buy. Exhilarate people, make them cry and make them laugh. Your message will rise from the ashes of noise and compel people to buy.
By teasing audiences with messages or stories that are incomplete, potential customers are forced to complete the story by visiting a Web site, and Web sites foster interaction.
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.
Translating Features into Benefits
For my Web service, the 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 leads feature translated to:“Target the clients you want- right down to the day, service, and vehicle type.” Schedule vehicles translated to:“Maximize your fleet’s road time and receive leads based on your vehicle availability!” Each feature transcribed to a specific benefit that would compel my buyer to join. I didn’t let them fill in the blanks; I filled in the blanks for them.
Price is a brand- builder because price implies value. The more expensive your price, the higher its perceived value. The cheaper your price, the cheaper its perceived value. Price isn’t simply a number that tells someone what something costs. It conveys value and worth.
Unless price is your brand(Wal- Mart, Southwest Airlines), don’t let price steal your brand when it should be defining it. Price is more than just a competitive metric that slides up and down to sell goods faster. It also indirectly conveys the value of your product or service. I had multiple competitors who undercut me by 10%, sometimes even 20%. Yet I continued to prosper. I wasn’t the cheapest, so why did I do well? My service had better value, and I kept my price correlated to that value. My leads were better targeted. I had better joint venture partners. I had great support. I was running a brand while my competitors were running businesses.
How does a handbag sell for $ 4,000 when it probably costs them less than $ 100 to produce? Branding and marketing. Price is apart of the brand build. 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.
Don’t allow your own perception of price direct your brand to mediocrity.
Ten businesses earning $ 10,000 cumulatively are not better than one business that does it singlehandedly. When you segregate your effort among assets, you build weak assets.
Invest time into a business system that can transform indentured time into free time. Make decisions with time as a key decision factor.
Live below your means but seek to expand your means by focusing on income while simultaneously controlling expenses. Exponential growth of income and asset value, not slashing expenses, creates millionaires.
What’s your Number? How much money will you need to live a lifestyle of your choosing? Determine your number, break it down by the penny, and make it real today. Start saving your loose change, open a brokerage account, and put a chart on your office wall that continually monitors your number’s progress. Make your dream lifestyle real by posting photos of that lifestyle at your workspace. 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.
The Law of Effection states,“The more people whose lives you affect in an environment you control, the more money you will make.” Impact millions and you will make millions. When you solve needs on a massive scale, money flows into your life. Money reflects value.
Officially Uncouple from the Slowlane wealth equation by creating your business structure in a favorable Fastlane entity: a C- or S- Corporation, or an LLC. Thereafter, your entity is the body of your surrogate business system. It“pays itself first” and the government last. It survives time separate from your time. It is your first step at creating an asset.
With a business entity and a dollar figure that outlines your dream life, you will need a Passion and a Purpose to fuel you into habitual action. Don’t confuse“passion” with“do what you love.” Passion burns your soul and drives you to do whatever it takes. Passion revs you with excitement and enrages you with discontent. 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 embroiled into process.
Train your mind to see needs and problems. Observe your thoughts and language, because they expose unmet needs, or needs met poorly. You don’t have to find the next breakthrough; just find a problem, a pain- point, or a service gap, and solve it. Many of the best businesses in the world are based on products that already existed; the owners solved the problem better. When you focus on needs, problems, inconveniences, and issues, roads open. Yes, the road chooses you.
Automate your business and honor the Commandment of Time. Get your time detached from your business.
Replicate your system and honor the Commandment of Scale. Get on a playing field where home runs can be hit. To make millions, you must impact millions. To impact millions, you must be on a field capable of affecting millions! Can your product, service, process be replicated on a global scale to tap the Law of Effection?
Grow your business by treating it multi- dimensionally, like a game of chess. Build a brand, not a business. Treat customers like your boss and reposition complaints to opportunities. Listen to the world as they offer the best directional clues. Resist commoditization. Differentiate yourself from the competition. Get above the noise. Focus on one business and one business only.
Have an Exit strategy. Full passivity accomplished by a money system is one Fastlane destination. Money systems are best funded by liquidation events of massive asset values. Know when it’s time to liquidate your assets, transforming paper money into real money. Know when it’s time to get off the horse and learn to ride a new one.