I set a goal to read 24 books this year. This was the fourth book I read in 2019. Here are my notes from The Millionaire Fastlane:
This book is written by MJ DeMarco who is a semi-retired entrepreneur, self-made millionaire, investor, and international best selling author.
The author has a very unique tone and personality with his writing. He swears and sounds like someone who is bursting with ego.
The book starts with him talking about how “Getting Rich Slow” is the wrong way to go. It relies on you staying employed for 50 years, the stock market performing well, and you living long enough to enjoy it.
Opening
Chapter two talks about how he was a lazy kid. One day he went to the ice cream store and saw a man in his twenties getting into a Lamborghini. He could hardly believe it because the owner of the car was so young. He asked him what he did for work. The driver said he was an investor and drove off. This started a longing desire for the author to be rich.
For the next several years he got two business degrees and failed at a lot of gimmicky type entrepreneurship opportunities. He read a lot of books about young self made millionaires. He failed so much, he moved in with his parents and did entry level jobs.
One day he was driving a limousine. The weather was bad. He’d had enough. He needed to change his environment. He decided then and there to take control of his future.
He moved to Phoenix with $900 on his pocket. He had read books on programming and had started a website that gave prices for limousine rides in different cities. The website was slow to take off but people wanted him to build their websites. He did that for a while but knew he didn’t want to trade his time for money. He wanted to make a money tree.
His money tree started when he began selling the limousine requests as leads to limo companies. The business was quickly making thousands of dollars.
Soon a company offered to buy his company for $1.2M. He sold it. After the dust settled he only had $300k remaining.
The company that bought his company mismanaged it and he was and to buy it back 18 months later for only $250k.
He fixed the company and soon it was generating over $100k per month in profit. Some months as high as $200k per month in profit.
“What would you do if you made $200k per month?”
The business made money whether he worked 40 hours or 4 hours. It truly was a money tree. He decided to sell the company again in 2007 for somewhere between $3.3M and $7M!
This is the fast lane of millionaires.
The Road Trip to Wealth
Wealth is a formula, not an ingredient. It’s a process, not an event.
Process makes millionaires. Events are residual by-products of process.
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.
Focus on your roadmap: sidewalk, slow lane, fast lane.
The Roadmaps to Wealth
To force change, change must come from you beliefs, and your roadmap circumscribes those beliefs.
Each roadmap is governed by a wealth equation and predisposed to a financial destination: Sidewalk to poverty, slow lane to mediocrity, and Fastlane to wealth.
Poverty: The Sidewalk Roadmap
The Road Most Traveled: The Sidewalk
Disturbing sidewalk facts: (US Census data)
- 69.7% of people under the age of 55 has a zero net worth, or negative net worth.
- 54% of all households in the US have less than $100,000 net worth.
- 83% of all “under 55” households had a net worth less than $100,000
- A person in the 35-44 age range has a median net worth of $!8,197 excluding home equity
- A person in the age 45-54 group has a median net worth of $38,626, excluding home equity.
The Standard Sidewalker: Income Poor
A first class ticket to the Sidewalk is to have no financial plan.
The Sidewalk’s natural gravitational pull is poverty, both in time and in money.
“You cannot solve poor money management with more money.”
You can be income rich and still ride the Sidewalk.
If wealth is defined by income and debt, wealth is an illusion, because it is vulnerable to potholes, detours, and “bumps in the road.” When the income disappears, so does the illusion of wealth.
Poor financial management is like gambling; the house eventually wins.
Is Your Wealth Poisoned?
Society’s toxic definition of wealth. It’s all in the appearance and not in the reality.
The wealth trinity: The 3 fundamental “F’s”: Family, Fitness, and Freedom. You will find true wealth with these three things.
Faux wealth destroys true wealth.
Misuse Money and Money Will Misuse You
Money doesn’t buy happiness, neither does being poor. Money gives you the ability to enjoy life to the fullest and spend your time doing what you want. You get to watch your kids grow up, pursue your craziest dreams, make a difference in the world, build and strengthen relationships, and do what you love.
If you think you can afford it, you can’t. If you have to think about whether you can afford something or not, don’t buy it.
When people buy things they can’t afford they become servants to that thing. They work to pay it off.
Money when purposefully used can buy freedom and freedom leads to happiness.
The consequence of instant gratification is the destruction of freedom, health, and choice.
Hitchhikers assign control over their financial plans to others, which effectively introduces the probabilities of victimhood.
The law of victims: you can’t be a victim if you don’t relinquish power to someone capable of making you a victim.
Responsibility owns your choice.
Taking responsibility is the first step to taking the drivers seat of your life. Accountability is the final.
People believe they deserve things, yet they didn’t do a thing to earn them.
It has turned from “give me liberty or give me death” to “give me.”
Sidewalk people think wealth happens from an event and don’t recognize that the event comes after the process.
Sidewalk people are suckers for get rich quick schemes, the lottery, multilevel scams.
Don’t let someone else control where you go with your finances.
Sidewalkers have no financial plan.
They think people just get lucky or are born into wealth.
Mediocrity: The Slowlane Roadmap
The Slowlane is the antithesis of the Sidewalk: sacrifice today in hopes of a more comfortable tomorrow.
Work fifty hours a week for fifty years to die in a retirement home.
Slowlaners are the place Sidewalkers usually go after they learn to be responsible and accountable. They delay gratification and cut costs to eventually have enough money to retire at an old age.
“It’s better to be rich young than rich old.”
Slowlane people hate debt, they believe money is scarce, they focus on education, cutting costs, saving 10%, sacrificing their time now for freedom when they are 65. To them wealth equals job + market investments.
Slowlane weapons:
- Go to school
- Get good grades
- Graduate
- Pay yourself first
- Overtime
- Corporate ladder
- Save X% of your paycheck
- Diversify
- 401k
- Etc
Parts of the Slowlane are not bad as part of the plan, but not as the plan.
The Slowlanes problem is that it relies on your job + the market.
Have you sold your soul for a weekend? Life does not begin on Friday night and end Monday morning but so many people treat it that way. They fail to see the splendor during the week because they are in the rat race.
Tells a story of a world renowned violinist that played a $3.5M violin in the subway station. Only 6 people stopped to listen. People were too caught in the rate race to see the beauty. The night before he’d played to a sold out crowd that paid $100 per person at the symphony.
TGIF was born and bred in the Slowlane.
People prostitute their Monday through Friday for their freedom on Saturday and Sunday. Sad.
You give 5 days and they give you 2 back. How would that be a good deal with anything else? It’s not.
Work to change the equation. Put in 5-2 to eventually be able to put in 1 day and get 10 freedom days.
Wealth comes from freedom.
The Slowlane plan forsakes the now for the faint promise of wealth in the future.
We were not made to be bound to work. You’ve got to swap the Slowlane for a new plan.
The author gives 6 reasons why normal jobs “suck”:
- To trade time is to trade life
- Limitation on experience – you’ll learn more being an entrepreneur in months than years being an employee
- No control – it’s like you’re riding in the bed of a pickup truck. The driver is protected and makes the decisions. You get tossed around and might even get dumped overboard.
- Linda’s bad breath – you don’t get to pick who you work with. Office politics. Different places and faces, same BS.
- A subscription to “pay yourself last” – as an employee, taxes go out first and you’re limited to how much you can invest and deduct.
- A dictatorship on income. You’ll never get a 1000% pay raise being an employee.
In a job, you’ll sell your time for money.
Experience is gained in action. The environment of that action is irrelevant. Wealth accumulation is thwarted when you don’t control your primary income source.
To be wealthy you need to have:
- Control
- Leverage
Why formal education is not always a great option.
The Slowlane is rooted in Uncontrollable Limited Leverage
Peoples’ intrinsic value is measured in units of time by how much an employer is willing to pay.
You’ll never get rich young in a normal job because it requires a lot of time to get there.
Compound interest only works if the market performs well. In addition to that, your buying power 40 years from now will be much less per dollar than it is now. You might not even live that long.
Like a job, you can’t control compound interest. Wealth cannot be accelerated when pegged to mathematics based on time.
Time is your primordial fuel and it should not be traded for money.
Your time should not be an expandable resource for wealth because wealth itself is composed of time.
Your mortality makes time mathematically retarded for wealth creation.
If you don’t control the variables inherent in your wealth universe, you don’t control your financial plan.
“Anything that takes your time to build wealth is not an asset, its a liability.”
The Futile Fight: Education
Slowlaners become stuck in “education servitude” they have to get a job to pay back the college costs.
The average degree costs $100k. In a private college it’s over $200k. That’s a lot of money to start your adult life with.
Slowlaners attempt to manipulate intrinsic value by education.
Indentured time is time you spend earning a living. It’s the opposite of free time.
Parasitic debt is debt that creates indentured time and forces work.
The Hypocrisy of the Gurus
The gurus don’t get rich from their own advice. The Dave Ramsays of the world are rich from selling their books, not by working a 9-5 and investing in mutual funds.
Would you take health advice from a 300 lb overweight instructor?
Would you take skin care advice from a butter face?
Take advice from people with a proven, successful track record of their espoused discipline.
Slowlane Victory… A Gamble of Hope
Seven Slowlane dangers:
- The danger of your health
- The danger of your job – jobs come and go
- The Danger of your home – you can’t plan on your home bringing you wealth
- The danger of the company – companies go belly up and take your pensions with them.
- The danger of your lifestyle – “delayed gratification” turns into “no gratification”
- The danger of the economy – the economy has dips and 401ks will experience those dips.
- The danger of the Sidewalk- Frustrated Slowlane people often revert to the sidewalk. You feel powerless when you don’t have control. You buy expensive things to give you the sense that you have high control.
Cutting expenses does not create wealth. Exploding income and controlling expenses creates wealth.
People in the slow lane settle for mediocrity.
$10M is today’s version of yesterday’s $1M. $1M is just really upper class now.
Sometimes people get out of the Slowlane by becoming famous or being a corporate executive. Many slowlaners just end stuck in the middle.
Wealth: The Fastlane Roadmap
Wealth’s Shortcut: The Fastlane
What is the fastlane?
- Controllable unlimited leverage
- Business – you own your own business
- Lifestyle
- Rapid Wealth Creation
The Fastlane Mindposts
- Debt – debt is useful and it allows me to grow and build my system.
- Time – the most important asset I have
- Education – always learning
- Money – it’s abundant and everywhere. Money reflects the value I’ve created.
- Primary income source – I earn income via my business systems and investments
- Wealth acceleration- I make something from nothing. I give both to assets and make them valuable. Other times I take existing assets and add value to them.
Wealth- build business systems for cash flow and asset valuations.
Equation: wealth = net profit + asset value
Strategy – The more I help, the richer I become in time, money, and personal fulfillment
Destination – lifetime of passive income, either through business or investments
Responsibility- life is what I make it.
The fastlane takes time out of the equation allowing for quick growth. Get rich quick is possible. Get rich easy is usually a scam.
The Fastlane is a business system. The Slowlane is a job.
Build a contraption to build your pyramid with. Focusing on building bigger muscles and working harder is not the best solution.
Losing teams use losing playbooks. Switch teams to a winning team with a winning playbook.
We were born to be consumers. Switch teams and join the minority to be a producer.
“Become a producer first and a consumer second. Instead of taking a class, offer a class. Instead of buying a product, sell a product. Instead of digging for golf, sell shovels. Instead of taking a job, hire for jobs. Don’t borrow money, lend it.”
Watch infomercials not to buy but to see what the pros are doing. Consumers seek producers. Your job is to entice consumers to buy.
To consume richly, produce richly first.
Producers get rich. Consumers get poor.
To be a producer you need to become an entrepreneur and innovator. Vision and creation. Give birth to a business and offer the world value.
Some businesses masquerade as jobs. Make sure it’s unlimited and controllable. Build things that survive time and can make you money long after your original time investment.
Get wealthy by net profit and asset value which is
Net profit = unit sold x unit profit
And
Asset value = net profit x industry multiple
Controllable weapons:
- Raise conversion ratios to raise units sold
- Raise units sold by increasing web traffic
- Raise unit profit
Small numbers have a strong gravity toward mediocrity.
Almost all penta-millionaires made their money in a big lump sum not by saving 10% for 40 years. 80% of these people started their own business or worked for a small company that experienced explosive growth.
Fastlaners buy and sell appreciating assets: businesses, brands, cash flows, notes, intellectual property, licenses, inventions, patents, and real estate.
The valuation of your business is predicated on the subjective PE (price to earnings) for your particular industry.
Liquidation events transform appreciated assets into money that can be transformed into another passive income stream: a money system.
Divorce Wealth from Time
Create money trees. They are exclusive of your time and need little maintenance.
Money tree seedlings:
- Rentals – property, licensing, patents etc
- Computer/software systems – code once and distribute to millions. Internet and software companies are great examples.
- Content systems – YouTube, blogging, digital classes, social media, books, etc.
- Distribution systems – you need to use distribution to sell your products (Amazon, App Store) if you create a distribution system you can make millions. Turning a small business into a franchise is another great way to do distribution.
- Human resource systems – can add or subtract to passivity. Most expensive to manage and implement.
Change creates millionaires.
Money is the King of Money Trees
Savers are winners because they eventually become lenders. Certificates of Deposit and municipal bonds are easy and great examples of lending to others.
If you had $10M and lent it at 5% interest, you’d enjoy a passive income of $41,666 every single month without touching the principal. At 8% you’d make $66,666 per month. All passive.
Amass Your Army of Freedom Fighters
Every dollar saved is another freedom fighter in your army. Money is your army. The more you have, the more they will fight for your freedom.
Focus on the income variable not the expense variable. That’s opposite of what most people do.
Other currencies can yield better returns than the US dollar. Think globally, not locally.
Fastlaners don’t use compound interest or markets to get wealthy but to create income, preserve liquidity, and deploy capital.
A saved dollar is a freedom fighter added to your army.
The rich leverage compound interest at its crest, applied against large sums of money. Fastlaners eventually become net lenders.
Would you rather have $5M today or start with a penny and double your amount of money for 40 days? Doubling the penny would be worth 5.5B after 40 days.
“Impact millions. Make millions.”
The law of effection states that the more lives you affect or breach, both in scale and magnitude, the richer you’ll be.
Scale translates to units sold. Magnitude translates to unit profit.
The law of attraction is not a law but a theory. The “Law of Effection” is absolute and operates exclusively of a roadmap.
The Law of Effection’s absoluteness come from the direct access and control (you are an athlete) versus indirect access (you are the athletes agent).
To make millions you must serve millions in scale or a few in magnitude.
Your Vehicle to Wealth is You
Put yourself first is fundamentally impossible in a job because the government takes taxes first.
To own your vehicle (you), start a corporation that divorces you from the act of business. Your corporation is the body of your surrogate.
The recommended fastlane business entity is a C Corp, S Corp, or an LLC.
The author only does S corps, LLCs, and trusts.
The leading cause of poorness is poor choices.
The steering wheel of your life is your choices.
You are exactly where you chose to be.
Success is hundreds of choices that form process. Process forms lifestyle.
Choice is the most powerful control you have in your life.
Treasonous choices forever impact your life negatively.
Choices when your young are more potent than when you’re old.
Wipe the Windshield Clean
Your choices of action manifest from your choices of perception. What you choose to perceive, or not perceive, will manifest itself to a choice of action, or inaction. Align yourself with those who experience the perception as reality.
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.
The universe has no memory, only you do. Your past can be an accelerative or treasonous. You choose. If you’re focused on the past, you can’t focus on the future.
Deodorize Foul Headwinds
The natural gravity of society is not to be exceptional, but to be average.
Toxic relationships drain energy and detract from your goals to be extraordinary. The people in your life are like your comrades in a battle platoon. They can save you, help you, or destroy you.
Good relationships are accelerators to your process, while bad relationships are treasonous.
Your Primordial Fuel: Time
Fastlaners regard time as the king of all assets. Time is deathly scarce, while money is abundant.
Your lifespan is made up of both free time and indentured time. Free time is bought and paid for by indentured time.
Parasitic debt eats free time and excretes it as indentured time.
Lifestyle extravagances have two costs: the cost itself and the cost of free time. Parasitic debt has to be stopped at the source: instant gratification.
“Value your time poorly and you will be poor.”
Behind poverty’s tangled roots, you will find a poor valuation of free time, which breeds from bad choices.
Fastlaners are frugal with time while slowlaners are frugal with money.
Change that Dirty, Stale Oil.
Just like cars need to have their oil changed, we do too. Education is our oil. Make sure you use the right “oil”.
Fastlaners start their education at graduation, if not before it. A fastlaners education serves to advance their business system and their money tree, not to raise intrinsic value.
Fastlaners aren’t interested in being a cog in the wheel. They want to be the wheel. Infinite knowledge is everywhere and it’s free. What’s missing is discipline to assimilate it.
You can become an expert on any discipline not requiring physical skills. Don’t go to $50k seminars taught by people that don’t get rich from what they teach. Block out time to learn.
Don’t use the “don’t have time excuse.”
- Driving University
- Exercise University
- Waiting university
- Toilet university
- Jobbing University
- Tv-Time University
Hit the Redline
Interest is the first gear. Commitment is the redline. Hard work and commitment separates the winners from the losers.
Some choose short term mediocre comfort over long term meteoric comfort. To live like unlike everyone else, you have to do what everyone else won’t.
Arm yourself for hard work, sacrifice, and other bumps in the road. These are the land mines that remove the weak.
Failure is natural to success. Expect it and learn from it. Failure is the sweat of success. You can’t succeed without failure.
Home runs aren’t hit in the dugout. Sometimes all you need is one homerun.
Moronic risks have unlimited downside and limited upside. Intelligent risks have unlimited upside and limited downside.
There is never perfect timing and waiting for “someday” just wasted time.
Read a book once a month. The author reads one per week. I read at least 2 per month.
The Right Road Routes to Wealth
To light the law of effection, cross examine it against the five fastlane commandments, the CENTS framework:
- The Commandment of Control
- Entry
- Need
- Time
- Scale
Not all businesses are the right road. Few roads move at, through, or near the law of effection.
The best roads and purest fastlanes satisfy the cents framework.
The Commandment of Control
Hitchhikers relinquish control of their business to a fastlaner.
There is a difference between good money and big money.
The driver retains control, the hitchhiker is at the drivers mercy. Hitchhikers are subordinated to someone else’s plan.
You must have control. You don’t own a business if you don’t determine price, marketing, product line, etc.
Network marketing has little to do with entrepreneurship but more to do with sales, networking, training, and motivation. Network marketing is powerful distribution. Focus on creating/owning an MLM, not joining one.
The Commandment of Entry
As entry barriers fall, competition rises and the road weakens.
Easy access roads carry more traffic. More traffic creates more competition, lower margins for participants. Exceptionalism is required to overcome weak entry barriers.
If everyone were wealthy, “everybody is doing it” would work. “Everyone is doing it” is a signal to overbought conditions and the entrance of “dumb money.”
The Commandment of Need
To succeed as a producer, surrender your own selfishness and address the selfishness of others. They don’t care why you want to be rich. They want to know what’s in it for them.
“Stop chasing money. Start chasing needs.”
Chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions. Solve needs massively and money massively attracts.
Make 1 million people achieve any of the following:
- Make them feel better. (Entertainment, music, video games)
- 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 risqué (sexual)
- Make things easier
- Enhance their dreams and give hope.
Do this and you’ll be worth millions.
“What do I have to offer to the world?” Offer value and money becomes magnetized to you. Don’t do what you love. Find something that gives you passion and work hard to make that dream become a reality.
No passion leads you to mediocrity. No passion leads to unhappiness. No passion equals no wealth.
Ninety percent of businesses fail because they are based on selfish internal needs, not external market needs. People vote for your business with their money.
For money to follow “do what you love” your love must solve a need and you must be exceptional at it. Doing what you love for money can endanger your love.
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.
The Commandment of Time
This commandment requires that your business and it’s income detach from your time. Can your business work for you while you aren’t? Objective is passive income and a vibrant money tree.
Some business owners are married to their business. It’s a lifelong prison sentence.
- Can the business be automated and systematized to operate while I’m absent?
- Are my margins thick enough to hire human resource seedlings?
- How can I get the business to operate exclusive of my time?
You can start any business but you must strive for automation. Focus on businesses that are content systems, computer systems, software systems, distribution systems, and/or human systems.
You have much more than price to play with. Play chess, not checkers.
The Commandment of Scale
There are 6 business habitats:
- Local
- County
- Statewide
- Regional
- National
- Worldwide
Scale is hard to find at the local level. You need magnitude at a local level in order to become wealthy. Example: surgeon.
Your total pool of customers determines your habitat. The larger the habitat, the greater the potential for wealth.
A business can be a singles or a home-run based business. Its strength is determined by scale, which is derived by habitat.
The Fastlaners wealth equation is disarmed when you violate the Commandment of Scale
Scale is achieved in reach (units sold) and/or magnitude (unit profit).
The Law of Effection is the primary conduit to wealth, which can be road blocked by scale, magnitude, or source.
Achieving scale or magnitude can make you a millionaire. Achieving both can make you a billionaire. (Think iPhone).
Scale, magnitude, or source deficiencies create governors on the speed of wealth creation.
Rapid Wealth: The Interstates
The 3 Fastlaners interstates: The Internet, Innovation, and Intentional iteration.
Potent Fastlane #1: Internet
- 1. Subscription-based
- 2. Content-based
- 3. Lead generation
- 4. Social networks, communities, forums
- 5. Brokerage systems
- 6. Advertising
- 7. E-commerce
Potent Fastlane #2: Innovation
Two acts: Manufacture and Distribution
Manufacturing is half the process. You need distribution.
You don’t need to invent something. You can tweak things to make them better and cooler.
The Snuggie was a blanket with sleeves and went on to sell millions in sales because of its effective distribution.
Can be authoring, inventing, or services.
Potential Fastlane #3: Intentional Iteration
Iteration is profitable, singles-based business scaled to home runs. Think franchises.
The intentional iterator goes into business to cookie-cut his system across many successes.
Find Your Open Road
It’s hard to have an original amazing idea. Instead of trying to come up with a big idea, try to come up with a way of doing it better.
There will always be someone else doing what you are doing. That’s fine. Just do it better than them.
How to spot open roads, look for these phrases: “I hate…”, “This frustrates me…”, “I don’t like…”, “Why is it like this…”, “Do I have to…”, “I’m tired of…”, “This sucks…”
Fastlane success resides in execution, not in the idea. Make something better and/or expose it to more people.
Opportunities are rarely about inventing breakthroughs, but about performance gaps, small inconveniences, and pain points.
Give Your Road a Destination
The price of freedom is money.
Set your destination: Four steps to starting:
- Define the lifestyle you want to have, what does it look like?
- Assess the cost, know how much your desired lifestyle will cost to achieve
- Set the targets. Set the monthly money targets you need to generate for that lifestyle.
- Make it real. Don’t wait to go after your lifestyle.
Learn all you can about finance. You need to be literate with finances.
Live below your means; however, increase your means to live a better lifestyle.
Your Speed: Accelerate Wealth
The Speed of Success
The strategy for speed: play chess not checkers.
- The King: your execution
- The Queen: your marketing
- The Bishop: your customer service
- The Knight: your product
- The Rook: your people
- The Pawn: your ideas
Execution is King. Ideas are Pawns.
Potential speed is the idea. Actual speed is the idea accelerated and executed.
Your car has the potential to go 220 MPH but you need to push on the gas.
Execution divides winners and losers from their ideas. In businesses, execution is process. Ideas are events.
Burn the Business Plan, Ignite Execution
Business plans are useless because they are ideas on steroids. The marketplace will steer you in directions that were previously unplanned for.
The best business plan in the world is a track record of execution – it legitimizes the business plan. Investors are more likely to invest in something tangible and real; not ideas endlessly dissected on paper.
Pedestrians Will Make You Rich
The Bishop In chess is customer service in your chess game of business.
Complaints are valuable insights into your customers minds. Complaints of change are difficult to decipher and often require additional data to validate or invalidate. Complaints of expectation expose operational problems in either your business or in your marketing strategy. Complaints of void expose in met needs.
Go above your customers expectations.
Poor service from another business is a fastlane opportunity for you.
Satisfied customers will promote your business for free, they’ll repeat business and send you new business.
Looking big but acting small sets up customer service expectation violations in the positive. Looking big can scare away the potential competition.
Throw Hijackers to the Curb.
Business partnerships are very difficult. It’s like a marriage. Make sure you are on the same page.
A good accountant and attorney will save you thousands, perhaps millions.
Make sure you can trust your people.
Your employees communicate the public’s perception of your company.
Great customer service can overcome shortcomings, but amazing features can’t overcome poor customer service.
Be Someone’s Savior
Commoditization occurs when you get into business based on a false premise.
If you are too busy copying or watching your competition, you’re not innovating.
Use your competition to exploit their weakness, differentiate, and skew value.
Build Brands, Not Businesses
Get unique. Know and develop your Unique Selling Proposition
Develop your USP:
- 1. Uncover the Benefit
- 2. Be Unique – instead of language like “lose fat” use sayings like “obliterate fat”
- 3. Be specific and give evidence – “your car sold in 20 days or less or it’s free.”
- 4. Keep it short, clear, and concise
- 5. Integrate your USP into all marketing materials
- 6. Make it real
Marketing and branding is the most powerful Fastlane tool.
Businesses survive. Brands thrive.
Your message has to break above the noise.
People like talking about themselves. Think of “what’s in it for me” from their perspective.
Price implicitly conveys value and worth. Don’t allow your own perception of price lead your brand to mediocrity.In marketing, you must switch from the perspective of the producer to the consumer.
Choose Monogamy Over Polygamy
Cheating spouses are not good partners. Don’t cheat your focus on multiple things.
Once you get rich you can start to share your focus on multiple business opportunities.
Focus, focus, focus!
The end. There is so many ideas in this book that changed the way that I think.
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