The Millionaire Fastlane (5 page)

• Offer 1: $250,000.
  
• Offer 2: $550,000.
  
• Offer 3: $1,200,000.
  

I accepted offer three and became a millionaire … instantly … well, almost.

It didn't last.

At the time, I thought $1.2 million dollars was a lot of money. It wasn't.

Taxes. Worthless stock options. I made mistakes and invested poorly. I bought a Corvette, hoping it would make me look rich. I thought I was rich, but I really wasn't. By the time it was over, I had less than $300,000 left.

The tech bubble arrived with unforgiving consequences, at least for buyers of my company. Against my recommendations, they made poor decisions, decisions that were good for short term revenue but horrific for long-term growth. They flushed money down the toilet as if there were an endless supply. Do we really need custom-branded water bottles? And logo T-shirts? Are these revenue generating actions?

Decisions were made slowly and by committee. Customers were ignored. Incredulously, most of the company's executive management had Harvard MBAs, proof that the business logic doesn't come with expensive initials after your name. Despite having $12 million in venture capital to buoy the storm, my Web site slowly started to die.

A few months later, near the cliff of bankruptcy, it was voted that my Web site would be dissolved, even though it was still profitable. Tech buyers dried up and stocks were in the tank. Everyone was on life support, including them.

Unwilling to watch my creation fade into oblivion, I offered to repurchase my Web site at a fire sale price-a mere $250,000, financed by its own profit. The offer was accepted and I regained control of the same company I had just sold a year earlier. Essentially, I'd operate the business, take the profit and pay down the carry-back loan. What was left over I reinvested into the business. With my company back in my control, a new motivation surfaced-to not only survive the dot-com crash, but to thrive.

The Birth of the Money Tree

The next 18 months I was revitalized to take my service to the next level. In hindsight, I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn't just some lucky chap who got caught up in the dot-com boom. I continued to improve my Web site. I integrated new technologies and listened to customers. My new passion was automation and process.

As I streamlined my processes and systems, a slow and steady transformation took place. I worked less and less. Suddenly, I worked an hour a day instead of ten. Yet, the money rolled in. I'd go to Vegas on a gambling spree; the money rolled in. I'd be sick for four days; the money rolled in. I'd day trade for a month; the money rolled in. I'd take a month off; the money rolled in.

Then I realized what I achieved. This was the Fastlane. I built myself a real, living, fruit-bearing money tree. It was a flourishing money tree that made money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it didn't require my life for the trade. It required a few hours a month of water and sunshine, which I happily provided. Outside of routine attention, this money tree grew, produced fruit, and gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted.

For the next few years I lived a life of laziness and gluttony. Sure, I worked a few hours a month, but mostly, I worked out, traveled, played video games, bought and raced fast cars, entertained myself with dating Web sites, gambled-I was free because I had a money tree that surrogated for my time and yielded a bountiful monthly harvest.

Since reclaiming my business, it grew meteorically. Some months I'd PROFIT more than $200,000. Yes, profit! A bad month was $100,000. I earned in two weeks what most people earned in an entire year. Wealth poured in and I was flying low on the radar … no fame. If you earned $200,000 every month, how would your life change?

• What would you drive?
  
• Where would you live?
  
• What vacations would you take?
  
• What schools would your children attend?
  
• Would debt be a noose around your neck?
  
• How fast would you become a millionaire? Four months or forty years?
  
• Would grabbing a $6 coffee at Starbucks be an issue?
  

You see, when you generate this kind of income, millionaire status happens quickly. I was a multimillionaire by age 33. If I hadn't sold my business initially, I would have probably arrived there faster, but when you're eating cardboard noodles and someone tosses $1.2 million dollars in your face, not many would say, “Nah, I'll pass.”

I purchased my first Lamborghini and completed the dream prophecy birthed in my teens. Today, that same question I asked so many years ago is now sent my way almost weekly. And now I have an answer that I can give, and an answer I would have dreamed of hearing.

In 2007, I sold my company again. It was time to retire and think about my wildest dreams, things like this book and screenwriting. However, this time I entertained a variety of offers, ranging from $3.3 million to $7.9 million. After making millions over and over in a few short years, I accepted one of the full-cash offers and repeated the Fastlane process … in 10 minutes. That's how long it took to cash the six checks that amounted to millions.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• Fame or physical talent is not a prerequisite to wealth.
  
• Fast wealth is created exponentially, not linearly.
  
• Change can happen in an instant.
  

PART 2:
Wealth is Not a Road, But a Road Trip

CHAPTER 3: THE ROAD TRIP TO WEALTH

The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
~ Lao Tzu

Wealth Is a Road Trip, Not Just a Road!

While in college, my friends and I embarked on a spring break road trip from Chicago to South Florida. Naturally, as young men, we were gushing with anticipation and enamored with the destination: a sunny, crowded Florida beach of scantily clad, well-tanned, boozed-up college coeds.

Unfortunately, preoccupied with the destination, we failed to address the journey and the vehicle that we relied onto get us there. Eight hours into the trip, our old Dodge Duster started billowing smoke and clanked to a stop. With a ruptured gasket and no oil, our trip stalled on some country road in the middle of southern Illinois. Cows, manure stink, and cornfields, light years away from the sandy beaches of South Florida.

Sadly, for most, the journey to wealth often ends like my spring break road trip: stalled on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, left to ask, “How the hell did I get here?”

Like my spring break trip, to know and drive “the road to wealth” is not enough because the road itself is deficient in delivering wealth. Your pursuit of wealth stalls when your focus is the road and its destination, and not the roadtrip. Sure, the Fastlane might open a rapid road to wealth, but a successful road trip will demand your respect for all of the trip's vital tools.

My spring break stalled because we neglected the road trip and focused on the road. Oil? Roadmap? Engine tune-up? Screw it, just hit the road and head south! When you disregard critical road trip components, your engine redlines, oil burns stale, gas is squandered, and decade-long detours are encountered. When your focus is only the road, your journey is likely to stall and dreamy destinations never arrive.

Wealth's Illusionary Road

If wealth has escaped you, it's probably because you are “road-focused” and not using the whole formula. Sure, you might have bits and pieces: an ingredient captured from a book or two, another seeded by some “get rich” seminar or a hot stock tip from your broke college buddy. Unfortunately, these isolated ingredients can't create wealth and are likened to a car stuck on the road to wealth with an empty gas tank and a dead battery. You can't crack wealth's code with one variable in a multi-variable equation.

Wealth's road trip formula is like a recipe.

Imagine if I threw you into the kitchen with sugar and flour and ordered you to bake cookies. The feat is impossible because two ingredients alone don't make the entire formula. Forget the baking soda and the cookies won't rise. Remove the butter and the cookies taste awful. One forgotten or flawed ingredient and the process fails. Therein lies the fault with most wealth books: They are “road focused.” They specialize on the most titillating part of the formula-the sugar!

They tell you:

• Buy foreclosures to get rich!
  
• Buy a franchise and be your own boss!
  
• Learn the mystical secret law and think positive!
  
• Start a business!
  
• Invest in real estate for passive income!
  
• Trade your way to riches with currencies!
  

These strategies highlight various roads to wealth: the real estate road, the trading road, and the business road. They address nothing else. The failure is within the “else” because
the else is the rest of the formula.

Millionaires Are Forged by Process, Not by Events

All self-made multimillionaires create their wealth by a carefully orchestrated
process
. They have and use the entire formula. Despite what you may have read or heard,
wealth is not an event
. Wealth doesn't drop from the sky or come from a game show. It doesn't ring the doorbell and await you on the front porch with balloons and a check the size of a refrigerator. Wealth does not chime from a machine with spinning bars, lemons, and cherries.

Wealth is a process, not an event. Ask any chef and they will confirm that the perfect dish is a series of ingredients and a well-engineered process of execution: a little of this, a little of that, done at the right time at the right place, and wham, you have a tasty meal. Wealth creation has the same method of execution-a fabricated accumulation of many disassociated ingredients into an assembled whole that has value and is worth millions.

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. For our chef, the
cooking
is the process, while the
meal
is the event.

For example, an athlete who scores a $50-million-dollar contract to play pro basketball is an event from process. You see and hear about the big contract, the spectacular “get-rich” event, but you typically ignore the process that preceded the event. The process was the long, arduous road you didn't witness: The daily four-hour practices, the midnight pickup basketball games, the torn ligaments, the surgery and rehabilitation, the rejection of being cut from the junior varsity team, and the resistance to the neighborhood gangs, all fabricates the journey that forms process.

When a 20-year-old sells his Internet company for $30 million dollars, you read about it on a tech blog. The event is lauded and showcased for all to admire. Sidelined is the process-you didn't hear about the long hours of coding the founder had to endure. You don't hear about the cold dark days working in the garage. You don't hear about how the company was founded on credit cards at 21.99% interest. You don't hear about the founder and his rusty P.O.S. Toyota with 174,000 miles.

When J. Darius Bikoff founded Glaceau Vitamin Water in 1996 and 11 years later Coca-Cola offers him $4.1 billion for the company, the offer makes headline news around the world. What doesn't? The 11 years of struggle forged by a sharpened process. The billion-dollar offer is the event-the process is the struggle and the backstory.

The sale of my company climaxed in an event, but its fruition was carved by process. Outsiders see the nice house and the expensive cars and might think, “Wow, if I only could be so lucky.” Such a belief is a mirage of event over process.

All events of wealth are preceded by process, a backstory of trial, risk, hard work, and sacrifice.
If you try to skip process, you'll never experience events
. Unfortunately, as a media-driven, “I want it now” society, we spotlight and glorify the event, but usher the process behind the woodshed, carefully drying its sweat from the public cognition. However, if you search long and hard, you can always find the process, buried in another story or in the trailing paragraphs that glorify the event.

When you make your first million, it will be because of process and not some clandestine happenstance that just happened to waltz across your path. Process is the road trip to wealth: The destination shines as an event, but it's found by process. Yes, the elevator to success is out-of-order-you'll need to hit the stairs.

Wealth's Road Trip Formula

The formula for wealth's road trip is like a long road trip across the country. Success demands your focused exercise into the journey and the tools of that journey (process) as opposed to the destination (event). There are four constituent ingredients that make up the winning formula. They are:

Your Roadmap (Parts 3, 4, and 5)
The compass for the trip-your roadmap-is the guiding force behind your actions. Your roadmap makes up your financial belief system and your preconceived convictions about wealth and money. There are three roadmaps that will chart your course to wealth:

1. The Sidewalk
   
2. The Slowlane
   
3. The Fastlane
   

Much like a recipe, your roadmap will outline why, where, how, and what.

Your Vehicle (Part 6)
Your vehicle is you. No one can drive the journey but you. Your vehicle is a complicated system composed of oil, gas, an engine, a steering wheel, a windshield, horsepower, and an accelerator-all needing frequent tuning and maintenance to ensure peak efficiency during the road trip.

Your Roads (Part 7)
Your roads are the financial pathways you travel. For example, you can travel the job road, and within that road you have limitless choices: You can be an engineer, a project manager, a physician, a plumber, a truck driver. Then there are entrepreneurial roads: You can be a real estate investor, a retail storeowner, a franchiser, an Internet marketer, or an inventor. Just like a road trip across the country, roads are plentiful with millions of permutations.