The Millionaire Fastlane (49 page)

• Marketing and branding (the queen) is the most powerful tool in your Fastlane toolbox.
  
• Businesses survive. Brands thrive.
  
• Businesses have identity crises, brands don't. Identity crises force business owners into price commoditization.
  
• Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) are the keys to your brand and differentiate your company from the rest.
  
• People have a natural disposition to be unique and unlike everyone else.
  
• To succeed in marketing, your messages have to break above the advertising clutter, or noise.
  
• Polarization is a great above-the-noise tool if your product targets a polarized audience-usually politics, minority opinions, and even sports teams.
  
• Sex sells and always draws eyeballs.
  
• Consumers make buying decisions based on emotions before practicality.
  
• If you can arouse emotions in your audience, you will be more likely to convince them to buy.
  
• People have a natural disposition to talk about themselves. If you can incorporate interaction into your campaigns, you will have better success.
  
• To be unconventional means to first isolate and identify what is conventional, then doing the opposite, or interrupting that convention.
  
• Consumers are selfishly motivated. Always target your messages toward the predisposition of “What's in it for me?”
  
• Features are translated to benefits when you switch positions from producer to consumer, identify the feature's advantages, and extrapolate those advantages into a specific result.
  
• Price implicitly conveys value and worth.
  
• Don't allow your own perception of price direct your brand to mediocrity.
  

CHAPTER 44: CHOOSE MONOGAMY OVER POLYGAMY

No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

Cheating Spouses Aren't Good Partners

As we near the end of our conversation; I must address the Fastlane's need for faithfulness …
monogamy.

In college, my friend Markus Tekel was quite the ambitious entrepreneur. And Markus, if you're reading this, I apologize for the call out. But what the hell were you thinking? Markus would get involved in a different business every week. One week it was some moronic MLM program, the next it was some turnkey ad scheme found in the back of an entrepreneur magazine, and the next it was some classified ad program. Different week, different opportunity. My friends eventually coined this opportunity-hopping neurosis the “Tekel Syndrome.”

The Tekel Syndrome is a compulsion to scatter your focus across different projects and opportunities. It's also a symptom of money chasing versus need filling. When you invest your time into five different businesses, you become a polygamist-opportunist. The idea is to toss as much shit on the wall as possible because something's gotta stick. Something's gotta make me some money!

A scattered focus leads to scattered results.
Instead of one business that thrives, the polygamist-opportunist has 20 businesses that suck. 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
. Weak assets don't do heavy lifting, and they don't build strong pyramids. Weak assets do not generate speed. Weak assets do not scale to multimillion-dollar valuations. Weak assets do not accelerate wealth; they build income to pay the month's bills only to start over again next month.

I forayed into polygamy when I started another Web business that mimicked the model of my current company. Once launched, the new Web business siphoned time away from my core breadwinning company. In effect, I cheated on my spouse and it showed. Time once allocated to my thriving company now went to my infant company. The results were not good, and I had four options:

1. Continue cheating on my existing business,
   
2. Hire someone to manage the existing business.
   
3. Hire someone to manage the new business.
   
4. Discontinue the new business.
   

Ultimately, I discontinued the new company, because I reasoned that hiring additional employees would inject management time into my life.

Monogamy Leads to Crazy Fun Polygamy!

I don't know any highly successful polygamist-opportunists unless they were monogamous first.

Seriously, think about it. The richest people in the world got rich by focusing on one core purpose, not by diverting focus. Lebron James wouldn't be any good at basketball if he spread his interests around. He focused on one thing and one thing only: basketball. He ate, slept, and shit hoops. Now, with his legendary status and millions in net worth, he can afford to be polygamous with his interests.

To hit the top of your game, business or otherwise, you have to eat, live, and shit your thing. If you're dabbling in 10 different things, your results will be dabbling and unimpressive. Focus on one thing and do it in the most excellent way. Some of the greatest tech entrepreneurs built impressive companies by 100% committed focus, not diverted attentions into other ventures. After successful entrepreneurs hit the mother lode of wealth, then, and only then, do they divert into other ventures that deviate from their core business. In other words,
their monogamy led to polygamy.

What's usually the first thing an entrepreneur does after they sell their company for $50 million? They go out and invest in multiple companies, get involved in philanthropy, and spread out their passions. Why is polygamy now possible? Money. Money buys systems, like human resource systems, and money systems that buy time.

Fastlane success comes from monogamy; not split attentions among wives and mistresses. It's marriage. Yes, good old-fashioned monogamy. Focus on one Fastlane business and kick ass at it.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• Tekel Syndrome sufferers are polygamist-opportunists who opportunity hop.
  
• A weak business commitment commits you to weak assets.
  
• Weak assets do not accelerate wealth.
  
• The most successful entrepreneurs lived their business and were 100% committed to it.
  
• Successful business monogamy can lead to successful business polygamy.
  

CHAPTER 45: PUT IT TOGETHER:SUPERCHARGE YOUR WEALTH PLAN!

Your choices are made in a moment, but their consequences will transcend a lifetime.
~ MJ DeMarco

Give Wealth a Supercharger

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. I've spun a lot of information your way and it's time to put it together and take your first step. It's time to unfold your process with concerted action. You now have the necessary psychological and mathematical framework that will give you better probabilities for wealth. To start your Fastlane financial road trip strap on the F-A-S-T-L-A-N-E S-U-P-E-R-C-H-A-R-G-E-R, which is an acronym for the Fastlane process.

1. Formula (Fastlane supercharger)
Wealth is a Formula and a systematic process of beliefs, choices, actions, and habits that form a lifestyle. Wealth is a process, not an event.

2. Admit (fAstlane supercharger)
Admit that the preordained path to wealth, “Get Rich Slow,” is fundamentally flawed because of Uncontrollable Limited Leverage, weak mathematics predicated on time (Wealth = Job + Markets). Admit that “Get Rich Quick” exists. Admit that “no plan” is not a good plan. Admit that luck is the residue of engagement.

3. Stop and Swap (faStlane supercharger)
Stop following the wrong roadmaps. Stop doing what you've been doing. Stop selling your soul for a weekend. Stop thinking that 401(k)s and mutual funds will make you rich. Swap ineffective roadmaps for the Fastlane roadmap. Swap your allegiances from consumer to producer.

4. Time (fasTlane supercharger)
Time is the king asset of the Fastlane-specifically, free time. Invest in activities that will grant free time. Avoid time thieves, such as parasitic debt that transfigures free time into indentured time. Invest time into a business system that can transform indentured time into free time. Make decisions with time as a key decision factor.

5. Leverage (fastLane supercharger)
Leverage controllable and unlimited mathematics to create wealth. There is no leverage within the Slowlane wealth equation, an equation predicated on time (hourly pay, annual salary, annualized return, years invested). If you can't control the mathematics that predetermine your wealth, nor accelerate them into large numbers, you can't control your financial plan. Leverage is harnessed by a system that does the work for you.

6. Assets and Income (fastlAne supercharger)
Wealth is accelerated by exploding income and Asset value via a business that can be systemized and eventually sold in a liquidation event. 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.

7. Number (fastlaNe supercharger)
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. Make your visions of the future real and force them into your psyche so you're constantly reminded. If your dream is a Ferrari, buy a die-cast Ferrari model and put it in your car or on your desk. Make those dreams real and inescapable!

8. Effection (fastlanE supercharger)
Grace Effection and you shall be graced with wealth. 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.

9. Steer (fastlane Supercharger)
Life's Steering is choice. At some point, you must commit to the Fastlane ideology, and that commitment forms your process. Wealth is not a choice of event, just like you cannot choose to lose 100 pounds and suddenly wake up 100 pounds lighter.

How you steer determines whether the Fastlane is a lifestyle or a hobby. To enforce good decisions at the extremes, deploy WCCA and WADM. Decision horsepower is strongest in youth and bleeds with age. Examine your past choices. Why are you where you are? What has been treasonous to your life? Why are you drowning in debt? If you don't rectify the mistakes of your past choices you will be destined to repeat them. Behavior change begins with a reflection of your past choices and modifying them for the future to reflect a Fastlane mindset. Become responsible, followed by accountable.

10. Uncouple (fastlane sUpercharger)
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.

11. Passion % Purpose (fastlane suPercharger)
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.

12. Educate (fastlane supErcharger)
Education begins at graduation. Pledge to never stop learning. What you know now is not enough to become the person you need to be tomorrow. Seek Fastlane knowledge that fosters the construction and operation of business systems in an environment that you control. Get to the library and get on the Internet. Information is the oil on your financial journey. Ensure daily reading in short bursts by leveraging existing blocks of time often squandered: the train, the plane, while exercising, on lunch break, an hour in the morning before work, or while waiting at the post office.

13. Road (fastlane supeRcharger)
Get onto a Fastlane Road. But don't worry if you can't decide which road to travel; the road can pick you. 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.

14. Control (fastlane superCharger)
Control your financial plan as this refers to the Commandment of Control. Engage in an organization that you fully control, from pricing to marketing to operations. Fastlane entrepreneurs don't cede control over critical business functions to hierarchical control structures, because they are the control structure. Swim as a shark, not a guppy.

15. Have (fastlane supercHarger)
HAVE what others NEED and money will flow into your life. This reflects the Commandment of Need. You can't explode your income by chasing money. Stop chasing money, because it eludes those who try. Instead, focus on what attracts money, and that is a business that solves needs. Money comes from providing value. Cast aside selfishness and seek to HAVE what your fellow man WANTS. When you do, money flows into your life because money is attracted to those who have what others want, desire, crave, or need.