Our fifth blog article is about our favorite book called The Millionaire Fastlane written by MJ DeMarco.
We highly recommend to buy this book yourself by using the link provided above!
The basics of this genius book are really simple:
- The sidewalk is working as a “slave” for an employer for a fixed income every month;
- The slowlane is investing a part of your monthly salary into the stock market to retire as a millionaire with a “golden wheelchair”;
- The fastlane is starting your own business and have full control over your finances and become a millionaire early in life;
The author MJ DeMarco truly is a genius writer and we promise you that this book will change the way you look at your own life.
The Millionaire Fastlane was first published in 2011 and contains more than 300 pages.
This book is definitely a must read for everyone that wants to become financially independent!
This book is truly an eye-opener for everyone. MJ DeMarco claims that wealth is not created primarily by saving, budgeting or long-term investing. It is instead created by controlling scalable business systems that produce large income quickly.
The traditional way to financial independence is as follows:
- Go to school and study hard;
- Get a good job that pays well;
- Save more than 10% of your income;
- Invest monthly in the stock market;
- Retire at about 65;
This could be a proven way to become financial independent, but the major problem is that this method uses time as the main ingredient. You spend your time at school, you sell your time earning money, and than you wait your whole life for your investments to grow.
MJ DeMarco suggests an alternative system of rapid wealth creation through leverage and value creation.
Wealth is a process, and not an event. It doesn’t happen in an instance. True wealth is created by creating your own business which you have full control of. This way you are not fully dependent on time and you can scale your business in any way you want.
This you will never get at work. Try to ask your boss for a pay rise for example. It’s most likely not going to happen
The Millionaire Fastlane focuses on entrepreneurship, risk-taking and strategic control of income sources.
MJ DeMarco describes his so-called “CENTS framework”, which basically is a checklist for evaluating business ideas.
C – Control
The first and possibly the most important criterium is that you must have full control over your business and income. At work you have little to no control over the outcome of your income. Creating your own business system gives you full control over your plans, your execution and your results.
E – Entry
There should be entry barriers in the market that you wish to enter. This basically means that if anyone can do it, there is a lot of competition. Entry barriers prevent anyone from entering the market, since a certain skill is required. The higher the entry barrier, the higher the possible rewards.
N – Need
MJ DeMarco discusses the “Law of Effection”, which simply means that if you sell a million products, you will make a million Dollars. If you provide a service to a million people, you will make a million Dollars. And so on. He states that there must be a need for your products or services in the world that you could provide a solution to.
T – Time
Income must be detached from hours worked. As we have already said in the beginning of our website, our time is extremely limited. If we can only earn $15 per hour, we would be spending all of our precious time chasing money. Our own business systems detach us from time and will allow us to earn much much more depending on the need that we solve and on the way that we execute our ideas.
S – Scale
Scale is an extremely important factor in your business idea. A local coffee shop has real trouble to scale, since they would have to open shops all over the world to reach a global audience. Thanks to the internet, we are now able to scale easily all over the world, with little to no extra costs.
Take a look at Skills to Mills and learn a thing or two about all the things that we have just discussed!
MJ DeMarco also states that you should always try to be the driver, instead of the hitchhiker.
What he means by this is that Amazon is a driver (which does everything self), and we are a hitchhiker (who refer to books on Amazon).
We highly recommend to buy and read The Millionaire Fastlane!