The Millionaire Fastlane

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🎯 The Book in 3 Sentences

💡 Key Takeaways

“Get rich slow” is not an effective way to build wealth. It involves sacrificing your dreams, life, and youth for a plan that may not pay off until retirement age.
Wealth is not an ingredient but a formula that consists of four key elements: your roadmaps, vehicle, roads, and speed.
Poverty is the Sidewalk roadmap. Sidewalkers have no financial plan, spend all their surplus money, and have an insatiable need for instant gratification.
Many personal finance strategies such as paying yourself first, investing in mutual funds, and contributing to a 401(k) are considered “Slowlane weapons.”
The Fastlane is a business system that involves producing instead of consuming. Fastlane’s wealth equation is Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value, with Net Profit = Units Sold x Unit Profit. The key is to have an unlimited range of values for units sold.
To escape the Slowlane, you need to become a business owner. The four money-tree seedlings are rental systems, computer systems, content systems, and distribution systems.

✏ Top Quotes

If you want to keep getting what you’re getting, keep doing what you’re doing. The translation? STOP!

Wealth is built with time as an asset, not as a liability.

Value your time poorly and you will be poor.

📝 Summary + Notes

Part 1 - Wealth in a wheelchair: “Get rich slow” is get rich old

The Fastlane is hard work. Don’t expect a four-hour week here.
Get Rish Slow = Go to school, get good grades, graduate, get a job, invest in the stock market, and then someday at 65 years old you will be rich.
The “Get Rich Slow” message is: Sacrifice your today, your dreams, and your life for a plan that pays dividends after most of your life has evaporated.
The real golden years of life are when you are young, sentient, and vibrant.
Fame or physical talent is not a prerequisite to wealth.
Fast wealth is created exponentially, not linearly.

Part 2 - Wealth is not a road, but a road trip!

All self-made millionaires create their wealth through a carefully orchestrated process and not by events.
Wealth is a formula, not an ingredient.
There are 4 ingredients that make up the winning formula: your roadmaps, roadmap, vehicle, roads, and speed.
The roadmaps to wealth:
- The Sidewalks: Poverty.
- The Slowlane: Mediocrity.
- The Fastlane: Wealth.

Part 3 - Poverty: the sidewalk roadmap

A Sidewalker’s financial destination doesn’t exist. The plan is to have no plan.
Surplus money is immediately spent. They have an insatiable need for pleasure, image, and instant gratification.

Sidewalking facts:

A person under the age of 55 is 69.7% likely to have zero or negative net worth.
An estimated 54% of all households in the US have less than $100,000 in net worth.
83% of all “under 35” households had a net worth of less than $100,000.
A person in the 35-44 age range has a median net worth of $18,197 excluding home equity.
A person in the 45-54 age range has a median net worth of $38,626 excluding home equity.
60% of people are Sidewalkers.
Life on the sidewalk naturally pulls you to poverty.
The Sidewalkers wealth equation: Wealth = Income + Debt

Is your wealth poisoned?

Hapiness = True Wealth = family (relationships) + fiitness (health) + freedom (choice).
Looking wealthy is the opposite of being wealthy.
It is often said that “money doesn’t buy happiness”. But the truth is money can buy freedom, and freedom is an ingredient of happiness.
Taking responsibility is the first step to taking the driver’s seat of your life. Accountability is the final.

Part 4 - Mediocrity: the slow lane roadmap

The Slowlane as a total plan is the problem, not being a piece of the plan.

The author can get a little hate here as he classifies some things proposed in other personal finance books as “Slowlane weapons”.

The list is as follows:

Go to school, get good grades, graduate
Pay yourself first
Overtime
Corporate ladder
Save X% of your paycheck
Contribute to your 401(k)
Invest in mutual funds
Buy and hold
Paychecks, pensions, benefits
Diversify
Raise your insurance deductible
The stock market, preferably index funds
Say “no” to expensive lattes
Be frugal
Get out of debt
Clip coupons
Cancel your credit cards
Dollar-cost averaging
Get an advanced degree
Pay off your house early
Your home is an asset
Individual retirement accounts (IRAs)
Live below your means
Understand compound interest
Slowlane’s wealth equation: Wealth = Intrinsic Value + Compound Interest
Six reasons your financial plan shouldn’t revolve around a job:
- To trade time is to trade life: You sell your life for money.
- Limitation on experience: Experience comes from what you do in life, not from the job. You don’t need a job to get experience.
- No control: If you don’t control your income, you don’t control your financial plan. There is neither safety nor security in a job.
- Office politics: You can’t escape it. It is in every job.
- Pay yourself 1st: Taxes get your money first.
- The dictatorship of income: As an employee, your value is dictated, diminished, and delimited.
Wealth acceleration with compound interest is deficient because its variables are deficient. Neither time nor yield can be leveraged or controlled.
Buy and hold and compounding interest need a lot of time to work.
Five Slowlane dangers:
- Your health: will you be healthy at 65 to enjoy your wealth?
- Your job: can you be employed at all times, safely climbing the corporate ladder, and avoid layoffs, politics, poor industry cycles, and bad job markets?
- Your home: the Slowlane hopes that real estate values always rise.
- Your lifestyle: you are pushing yourself to no gratification to save more.
- The economy: there is no guarantee of the yearly 8% increase in the markets.

Part 5 - Wealth: the fast lane roadmap

The Fastlane is about “Get rich quick” but not “Get rich easy”.
The Fastlane is a business system, while the Slowlane is a job.
Reframe life’s focus on producing, not consuming.
Fastlane’s wealth equation: Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value, with Net Profit = Units Sold x Unit Profit
The key is to have an unlimited range of values for units sold.
To escape Slowlane you need to become a business owner.
The 4 money-tree seedlings are:
- Rental systems: real estate, licenses, and patents.
- Computer systems: internet and software businesses.
- Content systems: authoring books, blogging, and magazines.
- Distribution systems: franchising, chaining, network marketing, and television.
The rich aren’t using compound interest to get wealthy but to receive income.

Part 6 - Your vehicle to wealth: you

To own yourself, start a corporation that formally divorces you from the act of business.
Assuming a US-based business, the best business structure for an individual are: C Corporation, S Corporation, and Limited Liability Corporation.
Your choices of action manifest from your choices of perception.
Toxic relationships drain energy and detract from your goals to be extraordinary.
Everything we buy has two costs: 1) the actual money, and 2) the free time transformed into indentured time. Just like in Your Money or Your Life.
Time is the king of all assets.
Time is deathly scarce, while money is richly abundant.
Parasitic debt eats free time and excretes it as indentured time.
Continue your education after graduation.
Money trees, businesses, and systems aren’t built overnight. They need commitment.
Failure is natural for success.
There is never perfect timing, and waiting for “someday” just wastes time.

Part 7 - The roads to wealth

To make millions you have to impact millions.
You must have absolute control of your business and the income it produces. For example, if you live by Google AdSense ads, Google can ban your site for whatever reason whenever they want.
As entry to any business road fall or lessen, the effectiveness of that road declines and competition strengthens.
Businesses that solve needs and provide value win.
Stop thinking about business in terms of selfish desires. Instead, chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.
“Doing what you love” sets the stage for crowded marketplaces with depressed margins.
The business should eventually be automated and transform into a money tree that does not consume your time.
The business should scale. Scale is achieved in reach (units sold) and magnitude (unit profit).
The Internet is the best Fastlane available because it naturally scales to a worldwide audience, it systematizes to automation, it is a medium you can control, and its barriers are still strong enough to prevent everyone from entry.
Internet business models:
- Subscription-based: charge a monthly fee to offer users access to data, information, or software.
- Content-based: blogs or magazines that give information to a particular niche or industry. Succeeding here is difficult as the entry barriers have lessened and income is usually dependent on others via affiliated programs.
- Lead generation: Provide a service to consumers while simultaneously aggregating a non-homogenous industry.
- Social networks/communities/forums.
- Brokerage systems: bring buyers and sellers together and facilitate transactions.
- Advertising.
- E-Commerce: Sell goods or services via the internet.
Innovation is another important part of Fastlaners and includes manufacturing and distribution.
Distribution is the hardest path. Writing a book is not a business; selling the book is.
“Someone is doing it” is an illusion. Someone is always already doing it. Do it better.
Success resides in the execution, not in the idea.
The 4 steps to find out the price for the freedom and lifestyle you want:
- Define the lifestyle: Write down what you want and its associated costs.
- Assess the cost: Determine the monthly cost for each including taxes, utilities, maintenance, insurance, etc. Add to that your monthly allowance and other unknowns like clothes, gadgets, toys for the children, entertainment, etc. This is the Gross Living Cost. Divide by 0.6 to account for potential taxes. This is the Net Living Cost
- Set the targets:
  - Money System Target = (Net Living Cost x 12) / 0.05
  - Business System Target = (Gross Living Cost x 5)
  - Create a business system that generates that money in passive income monthly. Of this income, 40% goes to taxes, 40% goes to fund your money system, and 20% pays your lifestyle.
- Make it real.

Part 8 - Your speed: accelerate wealth

Ideas are worthless; Execution is priceless.
The world gives clues to the direction you should be moving.
The best business plan in the world is a track record of execution; it legitimizes the business plan.
Complaints are valuable insights into your customers’ minds.
Complaints of void expose unmet needs, raise the value of your product and expose new revenue opportunities.
Your customer’s satisfaction holds the key to everything you selfishly want.
A business partnership is as important as a marriage.
A good accountant will save you thousands.
If you are too busy copying or watching your competition, you are not innovating.
Build a brand, not a business; businesses survive, and brands thrive.
5 steps to create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for your brand:
- Uncover the benefits.
- Be unique: use powerful action verbs. “Lose weight” → “Obliterate fat”.
- Be specific and give evidence. “Delivered on time” → “Delivered within 30 minutes or it’s free”.
- Keep it short, clear, and concise.
- Integrate your USP into all marketing materials. Include it everywhere. Customers need to see and learn it.
5 ways to rise above the noise:
- Polarize: It is a good strategy to make some people love you and others hate you.
- Be risque: Sex sells.
- Arouse emotion: Make them care.
- Be interactive: Use surveys, polls, and tease with incomplete messages.
- Be unconventional.
In order to sell anything: switch places by being the buyer, identify features, and advantages, and translate them into benefits.
Price implies value. The more expensive your product, the higher its implied value.