The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime
Last read June 14, 2022
View on Amazon
Highlights
56 highlights.
That road? It’s financial mediocrity, known as “Get Rich Slow,” “The Slowlane,” or “Wealth in a Wheelchair.” That tedium sounds like this: Go to college, get good grades, graduate, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, invest in the stock market, preferably in a low cost indexed-fund, max your 401(k), slash your credit cards, and clip coupons . . . then, someday, when you are, oh, 65 years old, you will be rich.
Location: 123
I’m not going to tell you every nuance about “how I did it” because how I did it isn’t relevant. This book doesn’t contain a list of websites that outline ways to “outsource” your life. Success is a journey, and it can’t be outsourced to the Philippines in a four-hour workweek.
Location: 201
The Slowlane prognosticators—people who make a fortune on investment management fees, seven-figure book deals, and ancillary financial programs and subscriptions— know something that they aren’t telling you: What they teach doesn’t work, but selling it does.
Page: 4
Wealth eludes most people because they are preoccupied with events while disregarding process. Without process, there is no event. Take a moment and reread that. Process makes millionaires, and the events you see and hear are the results of that process.
Page: 23
When you are granted gifts without any effort, you effectively handicap process. The person I needed to become would have been dwarfed because process would have been outsourced. There is no wisdom or personal growth gained in a journey that someone else does for you. The journey is yours.
Page: 25
When you’re the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you’re basically saying, “I’m right, and everyone else is wrong.” That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilarating and at the same time, an invitation to be attacked.
Page: 33
Sidewalkers come from all walks, even those with conspicuous wealth. They own businesses, work high-paying careers like medicine or law, or live as successful actors or musicians and earn big incomes. The common denominator is consistent: There is no plan and no savings—spend more than you earn and trade a secure tomorrow for a “living large” lifestyle of today.
Page: 39
more money is not a solution to poor financial management. Poor money management is like gambling at a casino, because, over time, the house always wins.
Page: 40
Wealth is not authored by material possessions, money, or “stuff,” but by what I call the three fundamental “F’s”: family (relationships), fitness (health), and freedom (choice).
Page: 42
Some want to look rich, others want to be rich.
Page: 43
The irony of looking wealthy is that it is an enemy to real wealth: It destroys freedom, it destroys health, and it destroys relationships.
Page: 44
After basic needs are met (security, shelter, health, food), our happiness quotient is most significantly impacted by the quality of our relationships with our partners, our family, our friends, our spirituality, and ourselves. If we are too busy chasing the next greatest gadget to strike down the competitive opulence of the Joneses, we finance our misery. Numerous studies, including The World Value Survey, concluded that “consumerism” is the leading obstacle to happiness.
Page: 46
Like wealth, society, through its “Get Rich Slow” mandates, has defined “normal” for you. Normal is waking at 6 a.m., working eight hours at a tolerated job Monday through Friday, save 10%, and repeat for 50 years. Normal is to buy everything on credit. Normal is to believe the illusion that trusting Wall Street and their cohorts will make you rich. Normal is to believe that a faster car and a bigger house will make you happy. You’re conditioned to accept normal based on society’s corrupted definition of wealth, and because of it, normal itself is corrupted. Normal is modern-day slavery.
Page: 46
We’re taught to strive for the latest and greatest regardless of consequence. It leaves us indentured for years, condemning us to lifestyle imprisonment… and the more stuff you buy that you can’t afford, the longer your jail sentence becomes.
Page: 48
If you have to think about “affordability,” you can’t afford it because affordability carries conditions and consequences.
Page: 48
So how do you know if you can afford it? If you pay cash and your lifestyle doesn’t change regardless of future circumstances, you can afford it.
Page: 49
To overcome wealth impersonation, know what you can and can’t afford. There is nothing wrong with buying boats and Lamborghinis if you can truly afford them.
Page: 49
To take advantage of The Millionaire Fastlane understand that luck is a product of process, action, work, and being “out there.” And when you are “out there” you stand a chance at being in the right place at the right time.
Page: 52
Sidewalking has become the American way to the point they are now a political constituency. Americans once loyally proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Now we just say, “Give me.”
Page: 57
Accountability is culpability to consequences and modifying your behavior to prevent those consequences. You can be responsible while not being accountable.
Page: 58
We’re being methodically brainwashed to believe that we deserve everything without obedience to process, or accountability.
Page: 60
While people easily recognize and reject a negative 60% return on their money, they do it willingly with their time.
Page: 70
According to research and marketing firm The Harrison Group (HarrisonGroupInc.com), only 10% of penta-millionaires (net worth $5 million) report that their wealth came from passive investments. Age data was not provided but you can guess that none of the 10% were under 30.
Page: 83
The Paradox of Practice asks, “Do you practice what you preach? Are you a model, an exemplification of what you teach?”
Page: 91
Folks, the rich use the markets for income and wealth preservation—not to create it!
Page: 93
If your retirement faith is put into one company in the form of either 1) your job, 2) your pension, or 3) their stock, you HOPE the company survives. You make a bet. Many retirees discover too late that their retirement pensions are lost to mismanagement by company executives.
Page: 96
The Slowlane can be defied if you find its “secret exit,” its “get out of jail free” card that neutralizes the limitations of Uncontrollable Limited Leverage. That secret Slowlane escape? Fame.
Page: 100
Contrary to this, Fastlaners buy and sell appreciating assets: businesses, brands, cash flows, notes, intellectual property, licenses, inventions, patents, and real estate. As it relates to the Fastlane wealth equation, the power of “Asset Value” lies in your ability to control the variable in a virtually limitless fashion.
Page: 123
Money trees are business systems that survive on their own. They require periodic support and nurturing but survive on their own, creating a surrogate for your time-for-money trade.
Page: 129
Effection of scale or magnitude always precedes money, either directly or indirectly. The more lives you impact, directly or indirectly, the more wealth you will attract.
Page: 146
Determination is not a solitary choice but thousands of them. You cannot decide to be determined; it must occur repeatedly, concertedly, and with commitment. The point of this rant is that Fastlane isn’t something you try, it’s something you live. It isn’t one choice but hundreds. And when you line a string of choices together, they create your process, and your process will create your lifestyle. Lifestyle choices will make you a millionaire.
Page: 156
Our choices have consequences that transcend decades. This transcendence is horsepower.
Page: 160
The goal of this book is to change your perception about wealth and money. Believe that retirement at any age is possible. Believe that old age is not a prerequisite to wealth. Believe that a job is just as risky as a business. Believe that the stock market isn’t a guaranteed path to riches. Believe that you can be retired just a few years from today.
Page: 165
Sly was no stranger to the Law of Effection. One of the telling elements of Sly’s success story was his resistance to getting a “normal” job. He mentioned that if he’d taken a corporate job, his dream would have died because he knew the gravity of a job was inescapable for him. He recognized a corporate environment was a headwind.
Page: 177
A major fast-food restaurant offered a free bucket of chicken to anyone who had an Internet coupon. People flocked to restaurant locations and waited for hours, all for a free $6 bucket of chicken.
Page: 179
These people value their time at zero. It’s free. Like the air we breathe, they’re convinced that time is abundant and in endless supply.
Page: 179
Show me someone who spends hours online playing Clash of Clans or Candy Crush, and I’ll show you someone who probably isn’t very successful.
Page: 180
Everything we buy has not one cost, but two: 1)The actual dollar cost 2)The free time transformed into indentured time.
Page: 183
While some choose servitude behind iron bars, others choose servitude behind velvet walls. Both are the same. The ultimate wealth is having the free time to live how you want to live.
Page: 184
The best investment you can make is in yourself. So be willing to pay for your education now, or be prepared to pay a much bigger price for your lack of education later.
Page: 191
Most people aren’t willing, and it separates the winners from the losers. The idea of living in the rat race for 50 years has to be more painful than the idea of working your ass off to escape it. You can have mediocre comfort now or meteoric comfort later. The Fastlaner trades short-term comforts with the foreknowledge that long-term extraordinary comfort is to be gained.
Page: 196
Great. I’d rather be a one-hit wonder than a no-hit wonder. One hit is all it takes, and you could be set for life.
Page: 198
If you want to hit home runs, you’ve got to get up to the plate and swing.
Page: 198
Intelligent risks have a limited downside, while their upside is unlimited. Moronic risks have a bottomless downside and their upside is limited, or short term.
Page: 198
He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end. ~ Henry Emerson Fosdick
Page: 205
as entry barriers to any business road fall, or lessen, the effectiveness of that road declines while competition in that field subsequently strengthens.
Page: 216
Want to know if your business violates entry? The answer is simple: Is getting into business an event or a process? Real business startups are processes, not events.
Page: 217
Reflect back to our producer/consumer dichotomy. Consumers are selfish. They demand to know is “what’s in it for me!” To succeed as a producer, surrender your own selfishness and address the selfishness of others.
Page: 221
Stop thinking about business in terms of your selfish desires, whether it’s money, dreams or “do what you love.” Instead, chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.
Page: 221
Successful businesses share one common trait: The satisfaction of consumer needs as reflected by sales in the marketplace.
Page: 223
In business, to be a success you only have to be right once. ~ Mark Cuban
Page: 235
Solve other people’s problems and you will solve your own money problems!
Page: 254
Successful entrepreneurs don’t start in flashes of brilliance; no, they take that flash of an idea (the event) and transform it into massive execution (the process). Execution is the great divider separating winners and losers from their ideas.
Page: 267
Angels to private equity never invest in business plans—they invest in people with track records of execution. That is your best business plan!
Page: 273
Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important.’ Never forget that message when working with people.
Page: 294
As consumers, we buy things to solve needs. We participate in transactions to fill voids. You don’t buy a drill; you buy a hole. You don’t buy a dress; you buy an image. You don’t buy a Toyota; you buy reliability. You don’t buy a vacation; you buy an experience.
Page: 302