The Millionaire Fastlane (33 page)

PART 7:
The Roads to Wealth

CHAPTER 29: THE RIGHT ROAD ROUTES TO WEALTH

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

Is Your Road-to-Wealth a Dead-End?

What is the road as it relates to wealth journey? If you're a Slowlaner, your road is your job: doctor, lawyer, engineer, salesman, hairdresser, pilot. If you're a Fastlaner, your road is a business: Internet entrepreneur, real estate investor, author, or inventor.

Your road is your career or business path, and that road must be the route to wealth. Unfortunately, most jobs can't route to wealth because of their mathematical limitations and, surprisingly, most businesses don't either! A road that starts in Chicago and leads east will never hit Las Vegas. It's a dead end! If you're on an errant business road you have to use your steering wheel and make a course correction: Exit the road, take a turn, or turn around.

This impasse confronts millions of business owners. They fool themselves by journeying the wrong road and then wonder why wealth has eluded them. Instead of fighting eight-hour workdays, they fight 12-hour store hours. Instead of leveraging the surrogacy of a system, they trade time for dollars. Instead of trading five days of work for two days off, they trade 6-for-1, or 7-for-0, in lifelong perpetuity.

If you heed the Fastlane philosophy and start a lemonade stand on the street corner simply because the Fastlane said, “Start a business,” I have failed. That road is the wrong road because it doesn't route to wealth. The road to wealth must route to wealth! How? Your road must go near or through the Law of Effection.

The Road to Effection: The Five Fastlane Commandments

The Law of Effection says to make millions you must impact millions. How can you impact millions? In the Slowlane you explode intrinsic value, become enormously indispensable, and earn millions. In the Fastlane, you engineer a business that touches millions of lives in scale, or many lives of magnitude. If your road doesn't lead through Effection's neighborhood or have an off-ramp onto it, sorry, you're on the wrong road.

The power of the Fastlane wealth equation is ignited by a business that drives to the Law of Effection. Business opportunities are plentiful, and unfortunately most of them aren't Fastlane roads. If you're stuck in a retail store selling $10 haircuts, can you reasonably expect to serve millions? To make millions, you must serve millions. A kick-butt attitude is negated if your road is directionally challenged toward Effection, because Effection is the gatekeeper to wealth.

To light the Law of Effection and illuminate your Fastlane road, cross-examine it against the Five Fastlane Commandments (
NECST
, pronounced “next”).

1. The Commandment of Need
   
2. The Commandment of Entry
   
3. The Commandment of Control
   
4. The Commandment of Scale
   
5. The Commandment of Time
   

NECST is a Fastlane litmus test and validates your road. Does your road (or potential road) route to wealth? Is it Fastlane? Can it be made Fastlane? Can it hit Effection? Can your road route to a multimillion-dollar enterprise, generate passive income, and end at a final liquidation event?

A road meeting all five commandments can make you filthy rich fast. As violations accrue, the road degrades in its wealth potential, and with it, your ability to get near Effection also degrades. While it's possible to violate one or more commandments and still create wealth quickly, you should aim for a road that satisfies all five commandments. Potent roads are potent wealth creators. Sadly, most business opportunities fail the commandments, and, if they fail, they don't deserve your respect or attention.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• Not all businesses are the right road. Few roads move at, through, or near the Law of Effection.
  
• The best roads and the purest Fastlanes satisfy the Five Fastlane Commandments: Need, Entry, Control, Scale, and Time.
  

CHAPTER 30: THE COMMANDMENT OF NEED

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
~ George Eliot

Sand Foundations Crumble Houses

Ninety percent of all new businesses fail within five years, and I know why they fail. They fail because they fail the Commandment of Need.

(Need) – E – C – S – T

When you build a business on a flawed foundation, it will fail. Sand foundations crumble houses. Businesses that violate the Commandment of Need either belong to the 90% failure category or masquerade as a job. Gravity cannot be defied, and the winning premise of business is a simple yet often forgotten by most business owners:
Businesses that solve needs win
. Businesses that provide value win. Businesses that solve problems win profits. Selfish, narcissistic motives do not make good, long-term business models.

Think about the purpose of businesses. Why do they exist?

To satisfy your selfish desire to “do what you love?”

To satisfy your craving for wealth and financial freedom?

Seriously, no one cares about your desires, your dreams, your passions, your “whys” and your reasons for wanting to be rich. No one cares that you want to own a Ferrari and prove your parents wrong. No one cares that corporate America wronged you. No one cares! Yes, the world is a selfish place and nobody gives two shits about your motives to “go Fastlane.”

So what do people care about?

People care about what your business can do for them. How will it help them? What's in it for them? Will it solve their problem? Make their life easier? Provide them with shelter? Save them money? Educate them? Make them feel something? Tell me, why on God's green Earth should I give your business money? What value are you adding to my life?

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.

Stop Chasing Money-Chase Needs

Never start a business just to make money.
Stop chasing money and start chasing needs
. Let me repeat that, because it's the most important thing in this book: 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.

Entrepreneurs fail because they create businesses based on selfish premises, and selfish premises don't yield profitable businesses; they lead directly into the 90% failure wastebasket.

• “
  I need a new income stream.”
  
• “
  I'm an expert in [blank] so I'll do that.”
  
• “
  I read a 'get rich' book and it says to start a business.”
  

Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.

Again, selfish, narcissistic premises are VIP invitations to violate the Commandment of Need.

You and your business attract money when you stop being selfish and turn your business's focus from the needs of yourself to the needs of other people.
Give first, take second
. Needs come first, not money! Needs precede money! Engage the marketplace with your own selfish need and my bet is placed on your failure.

Joe was a martial arts expert and he loved his craft. Following the advice of gurus, he set out to “do what you love” and opened a martial arts studio. Within 10 months, his studio closed, as he could no longer support his family on his $21,000-per-year business profit.

Before Joe started, he was destined for failure. He got into business based on a faulty entrepreneurial road paved with sand, a premise based on selfish needs and selfish desires: “I'm an expert in martial arts and love the art, therefore I should open a studio.” The correct foundation is externally based on needs in the marketplace, not on internal selfish needs. Instead of selfish motives, what should have Joe been thinking?

• Is there a
  need
  in my neighborhood for a martial arts studio?
  
• What are existing martial arts studios doing wrong that
  I could do better
  ?
  
• What improved
  value
  do I offer the martial arts student?
  
• What
  assets
  do I bring to this community?
  

Joe failed because there wasn't a genuine need in the marketplace and his motives were selfish. Had Joe analyzed these questions foremost, his odds of driving a successful road would have dramatically improved.

Several years ago, during the economic expansion, I noticed a standalone storefront being built in my mother's neighborhood of Chandler, Arizona, a white, middle-class suburb of Phoenix. As the building went up and the store tenant moved in, the heat of failure percolated. How did I know?

This new store was a hip-hop apparel boutique. Fasten your seat belt here comes failure! Why? The store violates the Commandment of Need. The neighborhood doesn't need a hip-hop store. The area isn't urban, there are no dance clubs nearby, and nothing looks remotely hip-hop. In fact, not 100 yards away there is an eldercare retirement home. Is a 91-year-old grandpa the target market for hip-hop gear? The obvious problem here is selfishness. The owner is following his passions, and his love for hip-hop music and culture. Maybe a life coach told him to “do what you love.” Whatever the motive,
the need is internal and not externally based on the marketplace
. I predicted the business would last 12 months. After 18 months, the business disappeared. The road was paved with sand because no need existed.

Money Chasers Chase Money, Not Needs

Frequently I read posts from aspiring entrepreneurs with grandiose goals of making a fortune by starting a business. Hang out at any business forum and you will see the misdirected, selfish foundation poisoning the well.

• How can I make money starting a business?
  
• What business can I start with $200 and still make $5K per month?
  
• What home-based business can I start?
  
• I have a friend who manufacturers widgets; you think I can make money selling them?
  
• How can I make a passive income?
  
• What's a good product to sell on eBay?
  
• What's the best business to start on a shoestring?
  

If you sit around and ask yourself these types of questions, you'll likely end in the failure category because these dialogues expose your preoccupation with money, and not needs or value.

You've got it backward!

I call these entrepreneurs “money-chasers.” They hop from one business to the next, scalping and arbitraging market imbalances, rarely solving needs or creating momentum. Sometimes these selfish business owners use questionable business practices as customer needs are neglected and money is pursued with relentless zeal.

Money chasers are consumers who haven't quite made the transition to producer. They want to be producers, but they selfishly think like consumers.

For example, in the housing boom, money chasers became mortgage brokers and real estate agents. The burst of the bubble purged the industry clean of the excess. Now with foreclosures at an all-time high, “loan modifiers” are the newest money chasers. Every boom and bust brings forth the money chasers who are selfishly motivated to hop aboard a train of trends, but are in business solely to serve themselves. With plenty of selfish consumers to prey upon, money chasers survive and thrive until the next bust or they're exposed for fraud. In times of excess, scams, schemes, and rip-offs pervade because money chasers invade and imbalances are created.

To Attract Money Is to Forget About Money

Want to make big bucks?
Then start attracting money instead of chasing it
. Money is like a mischievous cat; if you chase it around the neighborhood, it eludes you. It hides up a tree, behind the rose bush, or in the garden. However, if you ignore it and focus on what attracts the cat, it comes to you and sits in your lap.

Money isn't attracted to selfish people.
It is attracted to businesses that solve problems
. It's attracted to people who fill needs and add value. Solve needs massively and money massively attracts.

The amount of money in your life is merely a reflection to the amount of value you have given to others.
Ignore this symbiosis and money will ignore you. Successful businesses share one common trait: The satisfaction of consumer needs as reflected by sales in the marketplace. The marketplaces and consumers, not you, determine if your business is viable. If you sell 10 million anything, 10 million people have voted that your product will help them, or satisfy one of their needs.

The only Fastlane road that works is a road paved with cement-rock hard needs, wants, and solutions-not sand. A rock hard pavement gives you the unfair odds. Solve needs on a massive scale or in magnitude. It could be as fantastic as starting a software company as Bill Gates did, or something seemingly minute like putting a new spin on something old. If you own a Web site that services 10,000 people daily, you're making an impact. If you own a real estate company that provides housing to 1,000 people, you're making an impact.

Make a freaking impact and start providing value! Let money come to you! Look around outside your world, stop being selfish, and help your fellow humans solve their problems. In a world of selfishness, become unselfish.

Need something more concrete? No problem. Make 1 million people achieve any of the following: