Who's Giving You "Millionaire" Advice?
Is an anonymous shadowy fat man giving you fitness advice?
LOL X 100.
This is how I feel when I read one of those "how to become a millionaire" or "how to get rich" articles you see plastered on the front page of Yahoo Finance every so often.
While my initial reaction is often a combination of severe LOLage and bewilderment, this feeling often gives way to sadness: First, people are reading this garbage in droves and second, they are believing it without question.
If the road to becoming a millionaire was just so simple as a good 401(k), home ownership, saving 10% of your paycheck and dropping it into an indexed mutual fund, wouldn't we be awash with 60 and 70 year old millionaires by now?
The fact is, after suffering through umpteen articles about "how to become a millionaire" it's clear to me that none of these articles have actually been written by millionaires, or anyone who actually knows what it feels like to be truly rich. (And I mean "rich" in terms of TIME, not just MONEY!)
From my multimillionaire standpoint, these people don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about! They're simply regurgitating age-old concepts evolving from an outdated template on life, one that leads to either failure or middle-class mediocrity.
So that said, if you ever aspire to become a millionaire, let me give you the 11 poverty traps that ultimately hold the key to you remaining in poverty, mediocrity, or wealth.
Financial Hypocrisy
#1 — Escape the Trap of “The Fiscal Tricycle.”
All aboard!
The millionaire train is leaving!
Except there's one problem: You've bought the WRONG ticket!
Instead of climbing aboard the millionaire train, you've hopelessly climbed aboard a fiscal tricycle of poverty, an erroneous financial belief that the stock market, the housing market, and the job market will someday, make you rich.
OMFG.
Excuse me while pull out the Brawny and clean up the coffee I just threw-up.
This 3-wheeled financial trinity, pitched and peddled by the mainstream, has proven to be a gross failure. And sadly, that failure doesn't show it's incompetence until you've given it 40 years of allegiance.
The problem with the fiscal tricycle as a plan for wealth is that you cannot control or leverage anything within the trinity.
If you lose your job, or go underemployed, you're screwed.
If the stock market loses 40% after a 4 year recession, you're screwed.
If your home loses 50% of its value in 2 years and interest rates go up on your variable mortgage, you're screwed.
You're at the mercy of the markets.
Sound familiar?
It should because that's what happened in recent years.
For fuck sake, look around you!
Most people are struggling. MBA's are selling shoes during the day and waiting tables at night. College grads are pouring coffee and living at home until 29. Retirement age has morphed from 65 to 6 feet under, till death does employment part.
You're witnessing firsthand the dire consequence of the fiscal tricycle as a financial plan.
When the tricycle is your strategy for wealth, your plan is nothing more than a 40 YEAR PLAN OF HOPE.
Gee, hope I don't get pink slipped! Gee, hope I get a raise! Gee, hope the markets make me 8% this year! Gee, hope that stock goes up! Gee, hope my 401k benefits aren't slashed! Gee, hope my house is a good investment! Gee, hope I'm alive at 65 when I'm a millionaire!
Hooray for hope, hope, and hope! In other words, good fucking luck.
If you cannot control your financial plan, sorry bro, but YOU'RE NOT IN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE.
Hope is not a plan. Leave the tricycles to children on the playground— dump hope, then demand control.
Millionaire Action #1
Dump your misguided belief that a holy trinity of uncontrollable financial apparatuses will someday make you rich. I don't care who you are: the value of home, the value of your stock portfolio, or the value your employed salary will never increase by 500, 5000, or 50,000% next year. It is mathematically impossible. As a Fastlane entrepreneur, you're not bound by the limitations of mathematics — you could be broke today and a millionaire next year.
Financial Futility
#2 — Escape Mainstream BS; “The Message of Mediocrity”
Sorry, but saving ten bucks a week for the rest of your life just because you stopped drinking Starbucks isn't going to make you rich.
This crap advice is apart of the typical the mainstream mediocre BS that you're fed daily. This shitty advice is everywhere: TV, radio personalities, bloggers, magazines articles, and on the front page of Yahoo Finance, a daily smattering of mediocre advice dispensed from mediocre people, all designed to keep you pinned down to a miserable existence of lack and deprivation.
If you want a different type of life, you're going to need a different type of strategy, one that goes beyond the mainstream boondoggle of jobs, stock market investing, 401(k)s, and soul-killing frugality.
So what makes me qualified to give you such advice?
Well, for starters I have financial freedom; a type of freedom that very few have and guess what? That freedom has nothing to do with jobs, stocks, or the house I own.
In fact, when I look back on my biggest financial losses, guess what? All of them trace back to either the stock market (OMG the markets are crashing!) or to the housing market (OMG X 2 - that house I bought is worth half as much!)
The fact is, these mainstream financial structures played no role in the dream I'm living. And most multi-millionaires will tell you exactly the same — that your rapid ascent of going from "broke" to "multi-millionaire" will have nothing to do with your great job, your awesome 401(k), or your 3 bedroom house on Main Street.
Get fucking real.
If you want to take control over your life and freedom-filled millionaire track, you need to start your own business, one that you can control and leverage by virtue of your own good decisions and hard work. It's the cornerstone to the Fastlane plan.
Simple eh?
Well, not exactly.
To put your finances into the "no-limit lexicon", you once again have to step off the fiscal tricycle. You need to create and control a business that adheres to the 5 Fastlane Commandments of startup business: Need, Entry, Control, Scale, and Time.
If your business falls short on these Commandments, you'll likely fall short on the scales of wealth accumulation as well. Don't replace one fiscal tricycle for another.
Driving a 650 horsepower Lamborghini and peddling a tricycle are both exercises in control, and yet, both yield different outcomes. Not only do you want control, but you want control over something powerful.
Millionaire Action #2
Aim to create a Fastlane business which has the potential to blossom into something powerful: Target a Lamborghini, not a tricycle.
Financial Futility
#3 — Escape the Trap of Lofty Expectations; Adjust Downward
Sorry to ruin your fairytale, but nothing great in your life will ever come easy. All great accomplishments don't happen overnight or in just a few weeks. They will take years of constant action marred by failure, sacrifice, and discipline.
Starting a business from ZERO is like doing to hard time in a North Korean prison camp. And yet, most people approach the monumental task like a cursory trip to the beach with a laptop. Sorry, but these people have watched one too many Don Lapre informercials.
When I look at every worthwhile accomplishment in my life, from creating a profitable business, to selling the business in 2001 and again in 2007, to creating one of the web's top forum on entrepreneurship, to self-publishing my first book and selling thousands, I realize that each and every one had a significant price attached to it and that price was paid by hard work.
If you want substantial changes in your life, EXPECT that your actions will also need to be substantial.
EXPECT difficulty, challenge, and failure to thwart your journey — realistic expectations will help you withstand the coming storms— those lonely canyons of tribulation that echo apprehension and doubt such as "Will this ever work?" or "Why is no one visiting my website after 2 weeks?" or "Will this invention even sell?"
These doubts are normal and they'll shatter your dreams if you allow them.
Expect doubt. Expect apprehension. Expect the journey to be rough. Expect pain. Expect failure. Expect everything that will test your resolve.
If you expect your millionaire journey to be as simple as buying some dumbass "program" from some random Facebook ad, or registering a few domain names, downloading Wordpress and making a few posts, LOL — don't even bother. You'll be disappointed. And following your disappointment, I'm sure to hear "this Fastlane shit is a total scam."
It Fastlane business success was easy, everyone would be on the beach with an umbrella drink, sporting shit-eating grins with open laptops, cuz you know, you're making bank from that fresh install of Wordpress.
Get freaking real.
Millionaire Action #3
Warped expectations will kill your dreams: Listen up! It's not going to be easy! Expect the ride to be rough and the journey to be purifying: Those in it for the long-haul stay the path and move closer to the goal— those who aren't are filtered back to the cubicle of mediocrity and the pipe-dreams of a mindless MLM.
The Cold Reality...
#4 — Escape The Darn Video Game Trap and Get Started
Still with me?
Great.
Unfortunately it don't mean a damn thing. Your agreement with me on points 1, 2, and 3 doesn't mean jack-shit because likely you won't do a darn thing about it.
The fact is, your priorities are too fucked-up to ever succeed at the entrepreneurial game.
American Idol is just too damn important.
The NY Yankees 83rd game of the year is just too "must see".
Kim Kardashians' latest bikini Instagram is just too jaw-dropping to ignore.
If this is your case — I can save you ten bucks right now! Do not buy my book because it won't change a damn thing!
If you truly have the desire to create something powerful, your addiction to entertainment and other mindless distractions must be retired and replaced with meaningful action.
As I write this, I have no clue who won the World Series last year. I could be sitting on a plane in 1st class next to the latest winner of The Voice and not have a fucking clue who he or she is. I can't recall the last time I went to a movie theatre.
The fact is, I don't give a shit. These things aren't important in my life.
Want to know what's important to me?
Freedom.
Family.
No boss and no alarm clock.
Doing what I want, where I want.
Having NO mortgage without a freaking Gestapo HOA.
Walking into a store and not having price be an issue.
No debts.
No
bills.
Contributing.
Writing and not worrying who I offend, or how many of what will sell.
Making a difference.
Reading an email from someone who said The
Millionaire Fastlane has changed their life.
THIS IS WHAT'S IMPORTANT TO ME; not some hip hop mogul's love child conceived atop a mountainside in Tuscany.
If you lack the will to get started, perhaps you need to taste the addictive flavor of entrepreneurship.
Try this experiment to its conclusion: Create and invent something by virtue of your own skill and ingenuity. It could be as simple as buying something from the thrift/goodwill store, cleaning, fixing, and/or repainting it, or something more extensive like a short eBook or a painting. Get creative.
Then after your act of creation, sell it online at eBay, Craigslist, Etsy, or some other marketplace. After you sell your little project, pay close attention to how you feel. Feel that incredible sensation? That's the addictive drug of accomplishment and achievement. Once you get a taste of production by your own creative processes, NOTHING on the boob-tube can compete with it, not even an angry bird.
Millionaire Action #4
Fucking do something today. Then tomorrow. Then the next day. Keep it up and suddenly you'll create something that will change your life, assuming you read what comes next...
How You Spend Your Time NOW Will Determine How You Spend Your Life LATER.
#5 — Dump "Do What You Love" BS;
Be Guided by External Need
Important shit right here: Be guided by external need, but be driven by internal passion.
A close second to these atrocious "how to become a millionaire" articles is the equally atrocious guru advice of "do what you love", "follow your passion" and other narcissistic self-loving platitudes.
Ahh, yes another Brawny moment for my coffee.
So let me get this straight: you love knitting? Or playing video games all day? Or underwater basket weaving? And you expect someone to pay you for that bull-shit?
Well... guess what?!
No none gives a fuck!
Honey badger don't care!
Your personal motives and "loves" to starting a business are absolutely irrelevant to the marketplace. Doing so is a predictor of failure.
I can spot self-centered "do what you love" entrepreneurs a mile away; their businesses drown in entrenched marketplaces, often solving no genuine needs or problems, rotting into a "sell your soul for the best price" existence — call it for what it is — a selfish entity conceived from a selfish mindset.
Seriously, do you think anyone gives a fuck about your love for video games if it isn't solving my problem spectacularly?
So, do you know what the markets REALLY care about?
Solutions! Value! Convenience! Satisfaction! Mindless entertainment! Feeling good! Looking good! Making money! Saving money! Problem avoidance! The list is endless!
And yes, these market demands exist in a vacuum, exclusive of anything "you love" — that's right — the market is an abso-fucking-lutely selfish place, chewing up and spitting out "do what you love" businesses for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The market dines at the buffet of failure, a bountiful harvest served up from entrepreneurs who just don't get it — the market is not your bitch! You're his!
If you want to succeed in the cut-throat market, be led by any of the aforementioned market points — your solution needs to be your destination.
For example, if you confirm a need in the publishing business your actions should be LED by that specific need.
What do you need to do to solve the problem?
What do you need to learn? Research?
What are the first steps?
Second?
Third?
Let the solved problem guide you. After you put your solution to market, what does the market echo back to you? Assess. Adjust. Act. Rinse. Repeat.
As for this entire process, it should be fueled by your internal passion for freedom, autonomy, achievement, or whatever else motivates you — the manner of the work is a by-product of those passions. As Marc Cuban says, to hell with follow your passion — follow your effort. Of course, WTF does Marc Cuban know — he's a billionaire and your broke-blogger-buddy (the one who says "do what you love") rakes in $353/mo arbitraging Adsense, yea, keep listening to him.
In other words, what does the market WANT AND WILL PAY FOR? Why on earth should the market give a fuck-face like you money? What value are you bringing to the world? If I'm suffering from cancer and you have the cure, I don't give a shit about your personal ambitions or that you're a fuck face — here, take my damn money! Give me the cure!
So before you jump off a cliff and create a business, STOP AND THINK — are you getting in business to become a producer and a problem solver? Or a selfish "do what you lover" who doesn't give a shit about anything but himself?
Quit doing what you love and start doing what the market wants done. Give the market what IT wants and I guarantee you this— you will get what YOU want.
Millionaire Action #5
Start a business fueled by your desire to solve a problem better than anyone else — it will serve as your compass along the journey.
Internal Destinations are Driven By External Demand
#6 — Escape the Trap of the Corporate Gulag
If your job doesn't serve any aspect of your entrepreneurial dreams, you need to QUIT NOW.
You're unwillingness to quit is simple bribery — an excuse financed by the illusion of comfort and security.
I know I know: The steady paycheck, the cool BMW 3-series, the rocking 2-bedroom loft on the nice side of town. If these material accoutrements are all you need to give up on your dreams, you don't have a chance because your entrepreneurial dreams are not the priority — your immediate comfort and security is.
Yup that's right bro, you've sold out.
However, since you're reading this, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have the required entrepreneurial fire. But understand the risks of the gulag: The cubicle dredge of Monday through Friday is like putting your soul through a meat grinder that hasn't been cleaned since the Bush administration. After work, you're drained and dirty. Your motivation pays the price with your dreams choked into the purgatory of "someday".
I get and I've been there.
The only thing that will set you free is a "fuck this" attitude where your dream is the ONLY option. There is no alternative other than forward. Nothing will stop you — not that small apartment on the bad side of town, not that crappy Subaru with 159,000 miles, not that overbearing "get a good job!" Asian parent — NOTHING!
Until then, everything else before you is an excuse — your present reality will shout a startling tale of truth: The most important thing in your life will always lay claim over your time.
Millionaire Action #6
If the most important thing in your life is NOT what is consuming your time, you need to make it so.
The Strangulation of a Dream
#7 — Escape the Trap of Entrepreneurial Masturbation
(And For the Love of God, Find A Customer!)
Most entrepreneurs never succeed because they're too busy jacking-off to things that aren't important. I call this common art-form "action-faking" — or, since we're being quite vile here, "entrepreneurial masturbation" .
"Entrepreneurial masturbation" is ineffective busywork — insignificant action designed to make you feel good, a temporary psychological massaging that convinces you that you're making progress, when in fact, your doing nothing but fucking around.
Such "busy work" is varied.
Some of you will engage in self-help porn; you'll read countless books and do absolutely nothing after completing each one.
Some of you will register a few domains at GoDaddy and proclaim "I'm on my way!"
Others enter a paralyzing road of analysis and research with one destination: To prove to yourself that you cannot do it, that the idea is bad, or that competition is too stiff. In other words, you're not in search of a business, you're in search of excuses.
If you're an entrepreneurial masturbator the bottomline is this: Quit fucking around, identify your need and then define your customer path — the shortest route to your first customer. If that involves a simple website, a logo, and a Craigslist ad, DO IT.
Find someone who will give you money.
Find someone who commits to your product or service.
Find someone who submits a form!
Get on the phone.
Start tweeting.
Chat things up on Facebook.
Your road is the solution and your roadmap is the customer path.
Wow, I love those great business cards that proclaim your CEO status! How much revenue are you generating? Cash flow? Oh really? Nothing?
For fuck sake, throw away the swanky business cards, zip up your pants, and get moving with EFFECTIVE, customer-paying action. Any action OUTSIDE of the customer path is just self-flagellation Fast Times at Ridgemont High style.
Find ONE customer who will pay you money. Just one! Not 100 or 1000, ONE!
Accomplish that and you will be leaps and bounds of ahead of everyone else.
Why?
Because everyone else is NOT working their customer path — they're busy fooling themselves with logos from 99Designs and fancy business cards from Vistaprint. Oh stop, I know I know - how can you get clients without a business card or a logo? Puhleeze — if your best sales tactic is a logo and card, you've got bigger problems to tackle.
Carry forth.
Millionaire Action #7
Identify your shortest customer path and only take actions that are required along that path.
Are You an Entrepreneurial Masturbater?
#8 — Escape the Fear of Sales and Put That Coffee Down! Coffee's For CLOSERS Only.
The leads are weak.
The leads are weak? No, you're weak!
And you call yourself a salesman you son of a bitch?
I'm from downtown. I'm from Mitch and Murray and I've come on a mission of mercy: To give you the straight-shitting truth: If you want to succeed in the game of entrepreneurship you need to know how to SELL! SELL! SELL!
The nucleus to your success won't be your idea, your execution, or your value proposition: It will be your ability to SELL IT!
Selling is the act of persuasion: You convince someone of value, and in return, they give you money, time, or an investment.
Got a great idea? You must sell it to a potential partner!
Got a great product? You must sell it to potential customers!
Got a growing business? You must sell it to potential investors!
Got a great job opening? You must sell
it to potential employees!
Got a great employee? You must sell them on staying!
Got a great business? You must sell it to potential buyers!
Got a great story? You must sell it to a publisher!
The bottomline is that your bottomline will reflect how good (or bad) you are at SELLING! If you're goal is to be worth $10M in the next 10 years, guess what? You're probably going to need to sell 1,000,000 of SOMETHING. Explosive wealth comes from explosive growth which comes from explosive sales!
A - B - C: A; always, B; be, C; Closing. ALWAYS BE CLOSING!
Millionaire Action #8
If you're not good at selling, writing, or communicating, hop to it. Buy a book, learn, practice, and put the fucking coffee DOWN.
A - B - C - Always Be Closing.
#9 — Escape the Time Trade,
Start Buying Your Time Instead of Selling It.
If you woke up this morning and said "How freaking cool, I already made $500 today and I haven't been awake but for 10 minutes" congratulations, you're a buyer of time where time is your friend, not your enemy.
The fact is, millionaires buy time through legacy creation while the poor sell it through jobs.
If you want to get rich (which is a function of time) you not only need to own your own business, it must be the right business where TIME is subordinated and becomes your ally.
How do you do this?
You start by creating and innovating legacy structures — structures that exist in time, separate from your time.
For example, this cute little article exists in internet space 24/7. It doesn't require my time after I create it. When I founded and created my internet company, it worked 24/7. My discussion forum, The Fastlane Forum, runs 24/7. My book, The Millionaire Fastlane, exists in space time without my time. As I write these paragraphs, I have hundreds of legacy structures and distribution channels working for me. Just think ... as you're reading this I could be sleeping, snorkeling in the Caribbean, or stuck in a horrific line at the DMV; regardless of which, this piece of content works for me all day, every day.
That is legacy.
And legacy makes money and puts time on your side, instead of against you.
This is crucially important because most businesses are just poor disguises for jobs. To call them Fastlane would be like calling your boss "the great motivator."
If you own a business where you trade time for dollars, quit fooling yourself: You have a job. Your business simply employs you instead of someone else. If the clients disappear, so does your job and so does your income. That's NOT legacy.
A legacy exists when you are checked out. I had my biggest month of the year in December and I spent most of it bedridden recovering from surgery. That's legacy baby.
Millionaire Action #9
Quit going to war with time and make it your ally. Start creating and innovating legacy structures that exist on their own.
Are You Earning a Negative 60% on Your Time?
#10 — Escape the Entitlement Trap that Came Attached to Your College Degree.
Congratulations on that 4.0 GPA you had in college! And wow, look at that fancy liberal arts degree on the wall, and hey, from a prestigious Ivy League university! Aren't you the bomb?!
Well guess what?
Your degree ain't worth shit.
And to ice that cake, no one gives a shit that you have one either. Not impressed.
Yup, THE REAL WORLD doesn't give you a trophy simply because you exist.
Those days of a college degree being a great differentiator between you and anyone else are LONG GONE.
Instead of that degree making you stand out, it actually makes you apart of the faceless crowd, a growing mass of sheeple machined and milled from centurion-old factories of education that brainwash it's students into mediocrity and conformation — all in the name of "the American dream" — a dream in which you will find years, perhaps decades later, IS NOT YOUR DREAM.
For most, that college degree guarantees you nothing other than a shit-ton of backbreaking debt and a lifetime of slave labor into a system designed to befit that illusion.
The fact is, your college degree is a red flag that you've been deceived. You've been deceived into the idea that a decent job powered from a good education, a good indexed mutual fund, and nice car, and a $500K mortgage is the key to wealth and happiness.
It isn't.
Your college degree doesn't entitle you to a job. It doesn't entitle you to a paycheck. It doesn't entitle you to VIP service. It entitles you to nothing other than the realization that you've been duped by a trillion dollar industry that survives by keeping you shackled to an age-old ideal that no longer works in the modern age.
Millionaire Action #10
Your college degree doesn't signify a education, it signifies a brainwashing. Your education doesn't end at graduation, it begins. The sooner you learn that all the skills you need to learn to succeed will occur after you leave the confines of educational conformation, the sooner you will succeed.
Wow! A Liberal Arts Degree!
#11 — Stop Giving a Fuck What Other People Say...
Unless They Constitute A Market
The wolves don't give a fuck about the opinions of sheep.
I have a YouTube channel with probably 1000's of comments. I'm sure most of them are negative.
I've read none of them.
I simply refuse to engage my time and energy with such nonsense. I don't give a fuck what some minimum-wage YouTube douchebag thinks. I simply don't give a fuck what your opinion is on my haircut, my "slow ass Lamborghini", or my shirt. If such trivial matters are important to you and worthy of 17 seconds of your time to warrant a comment, it speaks volumes to how you value your life.
I've come to realize that no matter what anyone says on YouTube or on some blog, it doesn't change my reality and it need not change yours.
So if you're shacked up in a Vegas penthouse on a month long vacation, does it really matter that Gary over in Cleveland comments that you're an idiot? Hey look! I still don't have a mortgage! Or a car payment! The reality of the life I created does not change, unless I allow it.
Yup, the champagne is still flowing and Gary is still pounding his alarm clock at 6 AM slaving at some thankless job, venting his frustrations about how "the man" is holding him back.
That fact is, anytime you put yourself "out there", you set yourself up for attack. It's part of the process and apart the game. You can't let this stuff stop you. Yes, sometimes it isn't easy but take heart: every successful person has to deal with it. Think about Lebron James. The President. Entertainers. Newscasters. They all deal with attacks on their persona. Expect it and learn to ignore it.
Stop giving a crap what anyone else thinks, unless they constitute a market. And if they do constitute a market bearing feedback on your product or service, listen, then adjust.
Millionaire Action #11
Stop giving a shit what anyone else says, thinks, or writes — unless they are your market and/or your customers. For example, twenty people saying "MJ DeMarco is an idiot" means nothing to me while twenty people saying "MJ DeMarco's writing is too verbose" does.
If You Know Everything About Anything, Why Are You Broke?
Conclude to Exclude
If you haven't noticed, much of the advice above fits the form of "anti-advice", or things you should STOP or QUIT doing. You see, success is more about what you ARE DOING versus WHAT YOU ARE NOT.
Take these 11 items and burn them into your head so it becomes your lifestyle, not something you do for a week or two. Conclude to exclude these detrimental mindsets from your process.
And remember, nothing great happens by virtue of 1 solitary decision: Eating a piece of broccoli, going to the gym, reading 1 book; all noble decisions, but nothing that will produce life-altering change. Permanent change occurs through process — hundreds of decisions made over time that engineer a lifestyle ... and that lifestyle is what creates the change you seek.
Think about it ...
Can you expect to obtain a bodybuilder physique by going to the gym once?
Can you expect to lose weight by eating healthy for just one day?
One decision is an action-fake while thousands of decisions is a lifestyle.
Make the Fastlane your lifestyle and I promise, you will not regret it.
My best wishes,
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