The Millionaire Fastlane review

I'm a compulsive reader.  The missus will often call up the stairs and ask what I'm what I'm up to and then sigh at the answer: "I'm reading". 

 The trouble is that after a while some of the books blur into one.  Was that killer quote in that book or this one?  And that brilliant idea - where exactly was it again?

Perhaps I am just getting old and forgetful. 

Anyhow I recently read something very useful. If you want to remember, you need to take action on the thing you read. And right next to it was another cool piece of advice - blogging about the key ideas in the book is a great way of installing (yep another computer analogy) the key ideas into your mind. 

This is all just a roundabout way of explaining the reason for writing this blog post.  The other reason is that MJ DeMarco has written an excellent book which deserves your reading consideration. 

The Millionaire Fastlane

The author is obsessed with fast cars - Lamborghinis in particular. Not the obvious choice for a diehard cyclist like myself but I'd heard a lot of good things so thought I'd persevere.  He uses this enthusiasm for fast cars and driving to tell the choices you can make in life about becoming wealthy:

• Sidewalk
  Basically credit junkies who spend everything they earn (and more). They hope the lottery will make them rich.

•  Slowlane
  Save 10% of your paycheck, take up a pension, be an employee. If you are lucky, you'll retire somewhat wealthy.

• Fastlane
  Create a business but make sure it has a large potential market (or a small one willing to pay a lot), isn't dependent on you (or ideally any other human resource).  Then look to sell for a mint and live off the invested income.

MJ spends quite a bit of time blasting some of the get rich quick competition (suggesting most of them either focus on the slowlane or actually made their fortune through telling others how to become rich ie the old selling wheelbarrows to prospectors in a gold rush trick).

Finally, he spends a bit of time giving Tim Ferris of the Four Hour Work Week some friendly cuffing. He slams Tim on customer service in particular.  This is a shame and not entirely justified. The Four hour work week is actually good on this as Tim gets his customer care team to work to particular rules and says they can spend several times the cost of the product to resolve unforeseen problems using their own initiative. I suspect in real life, Tim and MJ would actually get on like a house on fire - their style and material is highly complementary.

The book is quite a slow burner but a compellingly enthusiastic and fairly fluff-free read. You really do get the impression he has actually lived this (which is not that surprising as he did have a very successful internet based limo business which he started from scratch).

He is very mathematically minded and the book is sprinkled with formula so beware if maths is a weakness. If shouldn't stop you reading, but you could find your attention wandering...to that interesting piece of wall right over there.

But it's not until the later half that he starts to tell you the things he thinks you should focus on:

• Superb customer service.
• Working out what you can excel at (ie a USP).
• Meeting people's needs with your product or service.
• Creating a brand rather than a business.
• Focusing on benefits rather than features.
• One business - not many.
• Time. You can always earn more money, you can't get more time. 
• The income you need. Very similar to dreamlining in Four Hour Work Week - but much more in-depth.
• Repeating or replicating success.

His technique for turning features into benefits was pretty useful to me. Basically, put yourself in the mind of the consumer and ask yourself what are the advantages of each feature.

The internet side was very appealing to me because it mirrors what I've learned through experience.  An internet based business lends itself to automation (or systematizing), can be low on human resource, can scale fairly easily and has a global market.

 More challenging was hearing I should focus more. I am the archetypal business butterfly - I think perhaps because I treat them as hobbies rather than a source of income.  I like to experiment - see what works (and how it can be applied to my day job), automate or dump it and move onto the next thing. This is perhaps fine if I want them to stay that way.  

Secondly, I should move away from being an affiliate or a publisher dependent on one source of income. This makes a huge amount of sense. I have been shafted by the dreaded overnight change in T&Cs before.  It's contributed a lot to my treating the whole thing as a hobby rather than a serious activity. 

In summary, I got an awful lot of this book. It came at exactly the right time for me. Sure, it is quite pricey (perhaps try the US for a secondhand copy rather than the UK) but worth it in my opinion.  It is really refreshing to read someone who has actually done it and offers more than just inspiration.

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