Fastlane Entrepreneurship: The Right Product + The Right Distribution with MJ Demarco

Author of the #1 Best-Seller The Millionaire Fastlane, former CEO/Founder of Limos.com, entrepreneur, blogger, investor, anti-guru, and aspiring screenwriter. – MJ DeMarco

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MJ is the author of the Millionaire Fastlane, a book that is HIGHLY recommended by me and millionaires I interview. We go over what you need for Fastlane Entrepreneurship and how to find the right product and the right distribution. Plus he talks all about his self publishing journey and how he has sold thousands of copies of his book himself.

Resources Mentioned on this Podcast:

• The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
• The Fastlane Forum

Check out TheMillionaireFastlane.com for more info!

You can follow MJ on Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript:

Jaime: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy, and today I am lucky to have back MJ DeMarco. Now if you remember, he was interview number three. Back when I had no idea what I was doing, and so I'm really happy to have him back on the show. He's the author of The Millionaire Fastlane, a book I highly recommend. We're going to be talking about a whole bunch of really cool stuff today. Thank you so much for coming on the show, MJ.

MJ: Hey Jaime, it's great to see you again. 

Jaime: I feel like we've chatted for two years. I feel like I know you really well, which is. Thank you by the way. We've kept in touch, even though you were the third interview, and I knew nothing at the time. You were very sweet to me, so thank you very much. Thanks for coming back on. 

MJ: You know it's been awesome to watch you progress over the last couple years and see what's been happening with you.

Jaime: Let's tell everybody, because I know everybody that's listening right now is going to love what you talk about. You have an amazing book, but you also have a website and a forum that really talks about that. Give me a gist of what this platform is like. 

MJ: Well, the book is about fast lane entrepreneurship, and I own a forum that gets about eighty thousand visitors a month. It discusses fastlane entrepreneurship. Fastlane entrepreneurship is a type of entrepreneurship usually relating to start ups that enable the entrepreneur to create a lifestyle of freedom and exponential wealth through various distribution channels. Usually, like for instance when you write a book, you have a distribution channel like Amazon that allows you to scale. That is the essence of a fastlane, when you have entrepreneurship that can scale to a multi-million dollar audience or a multi-million dollar platform. We're seeing that a lot with application developers, or they have this channel, iTunes, they can get their product out there immediately to the masses. We're seeing it with Amazon, like on the Kindle you can immediately tap into that channel, have access to millions. It's the internet, you can create a product, put it on EBay or Craigslist, and you have access to millions. That is exactly how fastlane entrepreneurship works. You create something that has tremendous value, and you scale it to the masses through a various channel. Either one that is already there or one that you create. The forum is a venue that we all do to do to explain that, to get the ends and outs, what works, what doesn't work. I've been running that now for six or seven years. 

Jaime: Has it been that long? That's awesome. 

MJ: I actually created it a year before I started writing my book. My book took three years to write, so by the time my book came out, that was already launched for, I think, four years. 

Jaime: What I think is really interesting is the book is great and talks about a lot of concepts and rules and stuff like that. What's really cool is the forum; I've actually been on the forum quite a bit, especially when I first started. The people that are on the forum are really cool. They're looking to become entrepreneurs, or they are entrepreneurs. It's a really interactive forum. I have question though. I get on there, and what I love is the book is sort of knowledge. When you go to the forum, it's real life. People going this is not working, how come this isn't working, I don't know what to do, and people coming and giving advice. What do you think, based on all your experience with the forum, separates somebody who has things that don't work versus somebody that does have stuff that works?

MJ: The beauty of running a forum with thousands of entrepreneurs coming and going is you actually get to see why things aren't working. You get to see the mentality of, I guess, the average entrepreneur, or the average want-repreneur. The reason why I would say most of these people that come in and say things aren't working, it's because they're chasing the wrong thing. Usually they're chasing money. You see a very common thread is when they come in and they post this long, long introduction. It's loaded with "I's" and "I want this, I want that, I want to be free, I want to travel, I want to work fours hours a week, I want a Ferrari." It's just this huge block of text, and not once did they mention value, or filling a need, or providing a solution, or solving a problem. That is the essence of entrepreneurship. You have to actually provide value or provide a solution. You become a problem solver. Then all of the sudden, if you do that correctly, the money will start flowing. Instead, they're selfish; they want to do entrepreneurship for their own selfish reasons. I don't want a boss; I want to do what I love. See the market doesn't give a crap about any of that stuff. They don't care. Market wants to know "What the hell are you going to do for me, and if you can do it for me, then here's my money." The analogy I like to use is if you have the cure for cancer, how hard is it going to be for you to make money? Does anyone care that you love doing that if you have the cure?  No one cares about that stuff. No one cares about your motivations and what you want to do. They just want to know "What can you do for me?" 

Jaime: It's so hard to get stuck in that because especially if someone hates their day job and they're going it is sort of about them. They actually have to work themselves up and be like, "But I want this," sort of pump themselves up. What do you see has worked for the people maybe in the forum? To go from that "I" mentality to switch over? 

MJ: Everything starts with the problem you are trying to solve. A lot of people come in there with confusion; they're not focused, or they try something and it doesn't work. Then they're off to the next easiest thing. See what they don't understand is that difficulty in solving the problem is actually the opportunity because it adds a barrier to entry. If there's a barrier to entry, what you're doing is you're whittling away all those other loose entrepreneurs that don't have it in them to solve the problem. Everything starts with the solution. If you're involved with an industry, and for instance, my business now is self-publishing, so I see opportunities in this industry all the time. Once you find the problem you intend to solve, all the confusion goes away. You become focused. Listen, I have to solve this problem. What is step one? Step two, step three, step four? A great analogy of this is when you, not to be morbid, when someone is diagnosed with a morbid disease, you ever notice how much focus they suddenly get? They eat right; they cut out whatever. They have a heart attack. They start eating right. They start exercising. They get incredible focus. That's because there's all of the sudden a huge problem before them. Now they have a clear focus. See if you don't have a focus, it means you're not solving a problem. You're probably chasing money. You're probably doing the latest internet marketing gig that works this week, but it won't work next month. That is everything. Start with that need. Start with that solution you're seeking to solve.

Jaime: I see chasing money all the time, and it sucks. You see people and they're looking for something quick. Especially if they want to leave their day job, they're looking to do it now. What do you give for advice on someone in that situation that knows they need to define a problem? I know, "MJ told me I need to define a problem, so I need to find one and serve the market." How do I do that without sort of acting like someone with ADD going "Squirrel!"? You know what I mean? Because there's a thousand opportunities.

MJ: You know, I've said this many times is a lot of times it's not the next Instagram, it's not the next Facebook; it's something that's being done that just isn't being done very well. Or it's something that lacks customer service. I see this a lot in brick and mortar businesses. I told you I was moving across town, and I'm moving into the middle of the desert on top of hills and stuff. Internet access is a big problem. If there's no internet access, I can't do it. If the internet access is like a dial up, I can't do it. I've called a lot of these local internet companies. I'll call them, and I'll get a call back a week later. That's an example of poor customer service where you can define yourself by providing better customer service. Customer service is one of the branding elements that can create yourself a fast lane, simply by virtue that most people don't even provide it anymore. It's like you're treated like an inconvenience. That is a horrific way to do business because a product centered business, another item I like to talk about, a product centered business doesn't need any marketing because the product will sell itself. 

Jaime: Let's talk about that. Tell me more about that.

MJ: Have you ever walked into a restaurant that someone, one of your friends recommended? You walk in, and there's a waiting list for three hours. Yet you never heard of them other than through your friend. That's what I call a product centered business, where the product itself sells itself. You don't need to do any marketing. A lot of businesses that are created that way save a sh... I won't swear, save a lot of money because they don't have to market. The product itself is the marketing. For example, I went to a barbecue in my neighborhood. It was a brand new place; it just opened up. I'd never heard of it. Walked in. My friend said "Hey, I want to go there." So I walked in, I was like "Wow, this is totally cool." I had never seen something like this. it was called a Rudy's Barbecue. This is great. It looks different, like something I've never seen. So there was a brand there, but they've got to back it up with some good food. I ordered some food; it was incredible. It was just wonderful. I don't even like that kind of style of barbecue, but it was wonderful. The minute I got home, I'm on the phone with my mother saying, "Hey Mom, you know down the street, Rudy's just opened. You got to go try it out." She went a week later, loved it, and ended up phoning my brother and sister. That is having a product centered business. It also works on the internet. It also works on brick and mortar. It also works for books, which is mainly the way I've sold tens of thousands of books, by being a product centered book versus "Oh, I have to market on Facebook to sell this. That's the only way I can sell it." No, that's not the way it works. You have to be centered. Product centered is based on a great value or a solution that is clearly defined, or a product that just really kicks butt. 

Jaime: Okay. I want to get into the book stuff definitely, especially because I'm writing a book right now. Let's talk about that in just a second. What I really want to dig in a little bit more on this is I know people are asking "How do I get that?" Right? Of course, everybody wants something that they don't have to market. That's great, but how do I actually find that? 

MJ: You have to look at what actually do you want. I mean, how many times in life, I do this every day. I go around "God, I hate blank," or "Oh this sucks," or "This da da da da." I just had an idea the other day when I was packing up my stuff for a move. I had these wonderful crates that were just easy to make things moving, make the move very easy. Instead of packing up the boxes, you've got to do the tape; you got to do the. Right there, there was an idea born. You tweak it a little. You add a little branding, you add some customer service. There's a potential multi-million dollar franchisable business there. That's how you find it. I sat there, and I was thinking to myself, "God, I wish I had more crates. I really don't want to be boxing up more, doing the tape, da da da." That's how you find a need that needs a solution. Through your daily life, every day you go through life, and there's problems. Things are inconvenient. You don't like things. When you get involved in any kind of industry, even at your job, you have a job you hate. You are going to find these needs. Which is why I like to say you have to get up to bat, you have to get out there and get into the marketplace because that's how you expose these needs. If you're sitting on your butt playing video games all day, you're not exposing these needs because you're not exposing yourself to the world. 

Jaime: Yeah, and we really need to know more before we can solve any need that's out there. Find those needs. Okay. How do we determine whether or not they're good? I know, it's funny, I've chatted with a lot of people, and they either have those ideas, huge million dollar ideas, they're like well, who am I to do that? That's amazing. That would be someone else"; or they go "Well, who's going to pay for that?" Just because it's an idea doesn't mean that anyone's going to pay for it. How do we sort of mitigate those two issues? 

MJ: You take the quickest path to the customer. Sometimes you can even do it by, I don't want to say cheating, but you want to see who will pay for, who will actually pay for your product or pay for your service. That involves will they fill out a form, will they say hey, will they call you on the phone. A good example is a couple months ago in the publishing business, I saw a potential need and I ran a little experiment. It was a two-sided market. A two-sided market is where you need two markets for the actual idea to work. This is something that I did with my first company. You need the consumers, and you need the buyers. You have to bring the two together in order for it to work. EBay's a great example; you have buyers, and you have sellers. It's a two-sided market. I went into Craigslist, and this idea I had, I tested each side of the market. I tested one side, and I posted a little ad saying "Hey I'm going to pay you for this, for X." I don't want to say the idea yet because I haven't quite figured out if I'm going to do it yet or not. "We're going to pay you for X." And I got bombarded with emails. "I want in, let me do it, here's my name, here's my contact, da da da." I literally had thirty emails in the first thirty minutes. So that tells you that concept or what you're thinking is viable. Then I tested the other side with the same type of message on Craigslist. In that case, I only got two emails in the first week. What you're seeing there is "Yeah!" on one side of that market you have a definite need. On the other side, maybe there isn't a need. You have to, that's a great way of how you can test. I know you've had some other people who talk about putting up fake websites, well not fake, but you know, order forms. They can click a button; it says it's offline. 

Jaime: Test. 

MJ: There's all kinds of ways you can test the market to see if there's an actual need by creating copy is relatively easy. It should only take you thirty minutes to create copy, and then you can test. I do not recommend testing your friends and family because they're usually going to give you the "Oh yeah, that's wonderful." 

Jaime: "That's a great idea."

MJ: You know what? When it comes down to opening wallets, it's a whole different game.

Jaime: Definitely.

MJ: A whole different game.

Jaime: So that other thing though is you got those results. How do we interpret results? Because it's never clear, it's sometimes with some of your businesses, with some of the people I talked to, like making foldable shoes. It was bam, she's done, everybody wants it. That's great. A lot of the times it's this weird nebulous thing, and people are like "I don't know what to do with this; I don't know if this stuff is good. I don't know if I should continue because I'm not sure it's yea or nay; it's sort of somewhere in between. 

MJ: Every point in the process, the market will give you feedback. That's one of the key techniques that I used to grow my business when I owned it for ten years. Every point in the process you're putting your product or service out there, and the market's going to reverberate back to you "We don't like this," or "We like that," or "We hate this." "You should have this, you should do that." When there's patterns that emerge, that's the route you should steer. Because the market will tell you. A good example is what I wrote in my book. I got market feedback "Oh your book is wonderful, but your cover just really sucks." When I first came out with it, it had a different cover. 

Jaime: Oh, okay.

MJ: I really liked the first cover; it was great. In my opinion. The market was bouncing back to me the same old pattern. "Your book is wonderful, but my friend didn't want to read it because the cover sucked."

Jaime: Alright, what was the cover? Was it the Lamborghini cover? 

MJ: It was the one with the Lamborghini, kind of a bright green and orange. Kind of stood out, but again. I liked it, but the market kept telling me "No, no, no, no." I went in and I changed it about a year into its production to a more neutral, you know, gender friendly cover. Not once have I heard since then "Oh your book is wonderful, but your cover sucks." I don't know how many thousands in sales that saved me by changing the cover. That's by listening to the market. Another good example is I am going to write another book. My intention was to be a one author book, one book author. I just wanted to write one. However, the market is telling me "When are you going to write another one?" I let the market take me where it wants me to go because the market is the ultimate judge and jury of what you offer. They will tell you what you have is good or what you have sucks.

Jaime: So let's go and talk about books now. I love talking about covers because I actually just got my cover sent from my publisher. I have a bunch, and I'm trying to figure out which is good and which isn't good. It's a bit of a pain in the butt. One of the things I sort of want to go back to is you self-published this, all by yourself. This was two years ago. Everybody should listen to the previous interview if you want to know more of the content of the book. We talk a lot more about that then. You've gone through this for two years, so I would love to hear what that journey was like, to try and go self-publish, especially a couple years ago when it wasn't that big to self-publish yourself. 

MJ: I get a lot, "Hey, when are you going to do your next start-up?" I was telling you offline having a self-publishing business really is like a start-up. It's like having your own business. Because it's not simply writing a book, then you throw it on Amazon, then you're done with it.  That's not the way it is. It's like a full-fledged business that you have to have. Versus a start-up, you know you have to have employees; you start with the eighty hour weeks. That's something I'm not really interested in any longer. But a publishing company, you literally have to write up distributors, you have to do invoicing. You literally have to tap into all the channels yourself. You don't just drop it off to somebody, and they take care of it. It literally is running a business, running another company. If anyone doesn't want to deal with the nuances that come with that, I would recommend going to a publisher or through a print on demand where it's much easier. Self-publishing is not print on demand; it's not Lulu and CreateSpace. It's a totally different concept where you actually print the book yourself. Get the manufacturer, you get the printer, you ship ?em.

Jaime: I didn't even realize that you did all that. 

MJ: Yeah, yeah. There's a misconception that self-publishing is just going to CreateSpace. That's a form of self-publishing, but true self-publishing is actually when you do the book. You lay it out, not you yourself. You do the book. You project manage it. Then you actually get the printer to print it out. You don't get CreateSpace. I'll give an example to do self-publishing cost me a dollar a book. You know, your listeners are going to get my internal margins here. It cost me a dollar a book. Now if I went to CreateSpace to do that, it would cost me, I think it's seven dollars and seventy cents a book. We're looking at a six to seven hundred percent increase in my margin because I self-published. Because I'm paying a dollar a unit versus of seven dollars a unit. A lot of self-publishers think they're self-publishing because they're going over to CreateSpace. They're going over to, Lightning Source, whatever, and they're being charged seven dollars a book. When you're selling to Amazon for ten dollars a book, you need to sell millions in order to make that a fast lane. When you're selling them for a dollar a book, it's a whole different story. 

Jaime: That's what I was going to ask you about too. I was going to say that books, people usually say, are not the way to fastlane. 

MJ: No.

Jaime: Books have a low margin. In general, I know with my publisher I get like a squeaky little bit, so people use it as business cards or marketing or whatever. You're actually using this as a book, an actual business. Tell me about how you're doing that, or how you started to do that back then, and what you've learned. What sells? How does marketing techniques work? This is a whole business that you had to learn from scratch.

MJ: Well. You can't just write something and throw it up there and expect it to sell. Unless it's a phenomenal product. That's what we talked about being product centered. We have an unprecedented opportunity right now is you have access to distribution. This wasn't available, maybe five or six years ago. By access to distribution, I literally mean you can write something up yourself, format it to Kindle, and you can plug it in to Kindle, into their channel. Immediately that product is available to millions of people around the world. Now this is unprecedented. This is how a fastlane is built. Then the thing is you have no one in the middle stealing your margin because it's just you and the channel. Just in the last two weeks, I've had two publishers, self-publishers, come onto my forum who said they are making five figures monthly, and they expect to be making six figures monthly because of the self-publishing platform. This is because they control the product. They're the producer. There's no one in the middle to muddle up their margin. Publishers, distributors, ya ya ya, all they have is Amazon. Amazon's the end game, so Amazon's obviously going to take their cut. The price of that is you're reaching millions. 

Jaime: Someone's paying for marketing.

MJ: The same thing, yeah, the same thing goes when you're actually printing the book because I have to send books to Amazon. I have to send books physically; I have to send books to Baker and Taylor; I have to send books to all these distributors. That's a part of the publishing game and the self-publishing business that people don't see. The thing is those channels are direct links to consumers, and there's no one in the middle to muck it up. When you add a publisher in there, you're adding these multiple levels that are stealing your margin. That's how it becomes difficult unless you're a worldwide brand already. Then you can deal with that, and you can benefit from that. 

Jaime: So I know I need a phenomenal, let's talk about a book in this case, I need a phenomenal so that people will word of mouth. They have for your book. I know lots of the people, even just in the Eventual Millionaire community recommend your book, and I do too. I just did, right? To my audience, so that's one, right, amazing product. Great. We have a distribution channel which goes out to millions of people, but I know personally too that people can put something out on Amazon and not really have anything happen, even if it's an amazing book. How do you launch that? How do you get all that started? 

MJ: It's difficult, and I think a lot of people don't realize that. They think you build it, and they will come. You put it out on Amazon, and I'm going to be loaded with sales. I have two copycats. I had one person actually plagiarize me; it's on CreateSpace right now. I have another person that ripped off my tagline, but they're not selling anything. The product sucks; it's because they don't know how to market. It's because they don't have a platform. Now you have a platform, and that is something that you've built over the years. You've engaged into a process that enables you to grab an audience. See that's going to serve you, but most people do not want to invest in that kind of commitment that you have committed to. That's why you have a book deal. That's why you have thousands of people following you because you have provided tremendous value. Now what I just said there is not easy. What you have done, what I have done is not easy which is why most people will not succeed. They're not willing to put the time and the effort in to build a successful platform, a successful audience, a value equation that people recognize.

Jaime: That makes sense. So were you able to, when you launched it, did it go amazing because you already had this platform, and people were talking about it? Or did you do a lot of marketing too? That's the thing. I'm thinking about my book right now, and I'm going "I have my platform. I have the people that said they're going to promote it, which makes me very excited." I'm going "But I need to do more!" Tell me any other ideas that you might have. 

MJ: When I launched my book, there was no fanfare, no phony hyped up launches with you buy fifty, and I'll do this, I'll have dinner with you, none of that. I didn't do any of that. That's because I wasn't trying to be one of these gurus. I just wanted to write a book. Honestly, it is still selling just as good as it did two years ago. That's because the book is doing the selling. I do not market. I don't think I've paid a dime in marketing for this book in years. It's the book itself.

Jaime: Really?

MJ: I don't know if my model is the one that you want to be following because I had multiple editors tell me, because I had the book pushed through editors, saying "Your book is too broad based, and it's too long." I said "Well, I don't care. It's my book; I run the publishing company. I'm going to put it out there." "Well, you know you're talking about little bit in health, a little bit about fitness. It's a wealth book. You shouldn't do that." Screw you, I'm going to do it my way. You know what? I don't care how many sell. I don't care who I piss off. It's my book, and I'm going to write it the way I want. I think that's one of the reasons why it's done so well because it's a little different in that area. It goes away from conventional, something that a publisher might put out. I can tell you if I'd given that book to a publisher, they would have minced it. You need to do two books there, da da da.  The other reason why it's done so well is I'm not selling anything. There's no seminars. There's no upsells into my multi-disk CD program. Or my ten thousand dollar a head. There's none of that going on. I think people recognize that this is a guy that genuinely wrote this because he felt this needed to be written. That's why I believe it's done so well. 

Jaime: Amazing. It's really funny. You can get information from anybody. You had editors going "No, you should do this and this." A friend of mine has a publisher, and they sent him some book covers. He's like "I don't really like those." He had his own people make a book cover, and they're like "That's never going to sell. We shouldn't use that." He ended up putting it out there to people, and everybody picked his book cover, like everybody. You know what I mean? It's like feedback, feedback! Not one person knows the right and the wrong thing that's going to work or not going to work. 

MJ: I don't know how much you follow self-publishing, but there are so many stories out there where you have someone who submits manuscripts to publishers. They say "Nope, nope, nope. Reject, reject, reject." Finally they get so fed up, they do what I just talked about. They write it themselves, and they put it right to the channel, meaning right to the end market. The end market bounces back, and they start selling thousands of them. They end up ultimately selling millions of dollars in books, and all of the sudden, the publishers go "Oh." All of the sudden, they're interested, and now they want to sign them. A lot of them end up do signing; a lot of them end up saying "You know, you had your chance. Now I'm doing it this because now I'm making a lot of money." That's another example of if you have something, you got to put it out there, and let the market work its magic. The market's magic is them saying "This is awesome. Here's my money," or "This sucks." You end up having three reviews on Amazon, and all of them are one star. That's all it does because your product simply isn't that good. 

Jaime: Would you recommend someone who has a day job, and they want to quit, would you recommend them more or less going the start-up route or something more, I know now you're like "I don't really want employees. This seems more like what I'm looking to go after." Which way would you really suggest, especially for someone who's looking to do it within the next year? 

MJ: Well, anyone that follows me knows that I'm not on this do what you love bandwagon. I believe you have to do what the market loves because then the market will give you money. Then once you have the money, you can go do what you love. Not have to worry about who tells you what sucks and what. Again this is what I did. I created a start-up. I didn't want to own a business in the limousine business. I didn't want to do that, but I saw a need. I filled it well. Made a lot of money. Sold it a couple times. Now I can do what I love, which is writing, not have to worry about who I'm going to piss off, about how many will sell, about who's on YouTube calling me an idiot. I don't have to worry about it because my bills are paid. I have no mortgage. I do what I want. That's what's the essence of do what you love I believe. To answer your question, follow where the need is. Follow the problem you are trying to solve. If I had to do it over, I probably would do the start-up thing again. Based upon, I mean I enjoy that process, I just don't enjoy the eighty hour weeks. I don't enjoy the employees. I don't enjoy the payroll. I don't enjoy that stuff. But I would do that because I knew I would have an end goal. The end goal is to accumulate the financial resources to do whatever you want for the rest of your life. 

Jaime: I love this. I want to get a little bit more into how you sort of pushed through doing something that you didn't really like in a second. I might have brought this up last time, or maybe I didn't. A good friend of mine, Maren Kate, who owns a company called Zirtual. I remember she went to dinner with you, and she came back to my mastermind group and was like "I'm doing this." She was in sort of the lifestyle business.

MJ: She was doing multiple things. I remember this. 

Jaime: Oh yeah. She was, she had a blog, she had a bunch of different things. Then having that meeting with you just blew her mind, and she's like "I'm going to work like no one else for five years. Then sell my company and live off. The hilarious thing was this was two years ago that she had the meeting with you, and now she just got funded for two million dollars by Tony Hsieh. Two years, bam!

MJ: That's what a focus will do. You know when I talked to her, she was talking about blogs. She was talking about the lifestyle business, which is I think more about getting by versus living how you really want to live. You've got to do one thing and do it spectacularly, so other people notice. Your customers give you money. Maybe a big investment company will come buy you out, private equity, whatever. Now she's kicking butt. I know I see her updates. I'm like "Alright!" You know?

Jaime: I got to hang out with her and Tony Hsieh when I was down in Austin. I was like "This is crazy." She's doing very, very well. It's a different thing. She doesn't have a family. She doesn't have kids. She can really go ahead, and eighty plus hour work weeks are no big deal. She loves it. She loves what she does. It's not as though she doesn't. 

MJ: I want to clarify for you. It makes it sound like I hated it. I loved providing value. I loved being my own boss. I love when someone buys anything that I offer. That shows me, that's a validation of what you're doing that you are providing value. I loved the start-up game. With that, there comes some other things that I simply don't enjoy. Employees, payroll, government regulation. When you're launching something, you got to be there 24-7. Those are the things that come attached to it that necessarily I don't like. I may have another start-up in me; I don't know. I enjoyed building something. I'm a creationist. I love creating. The start-up is the business of creation. 

Jaime: See I think that's a big point I want to highlight. A lot of people are like "Well I need to find my passion." A lot of people that I end up talking to are passionate about entrepreneurship. It doesn't really matter as much about what the product is; it's I want to build this and I want to see it grow. I think that's a really big piece. I get people coming to me and going "What about motivation?" If you do something that you don't love, how do you continually put effort forth over and over and over again if there are all these obstacles that you don't like? 

MJ: An experiment one needs to run is create something on your own. It could be a book. Maybe you could go to Goodwill and find some old, ratty old dresser; you fix it up and polish it up and sell it. Examine how you feel when you do that. I'm guaranteeing you that you're going to feel something like "Wow." You're going to feel empowered. You're going to feel achievement. That's the passion I am talking about. I'm not talking about passion. "Oh I love underwater basket weaving. I'm going to do that."  That's a specific passion, and that usually, in my opinion, leads to failure. Because it's industry specific and it's not market driven. Having a passion for I want to be my own boss. Having a passion for I love entrepreneurship. Having a passion for I love helping people. That's the kind of passion you need because that will make you do what you don't want to do. Do you think I love going down to the UPS store with a big box on my shoulder, delivering a case of books to Baker and Taylor? Do you think I like to do that? No, but I do it. It only takes me a couple minutes, but I do it. Because I love writing. I love seeing people consume my book and write to me to say "Your book changed my life." That's what I love. I can tell you there's a lot of things in the publishing business I cannot stand. I do them because that's life. You're not going to love everything. 

Jaime: That's huge. You're not going to love everything. You know when you're sort of an entrepreneur, and you're all excited. "This is going to be amazing." Just like in your job or just like in life there are things that you don't necessarily like doing, and we do them anyway because of those other things. I mean, changing someone's life is huge. Of course you're going to take books to UPS. 

MJ: The fact that I can get up whenever I want to get up, that to me is priceless. Not having a mortgage is priceless. Not having a car payment is priceless. It's going to cost me a five minute trip down to UPS. 

Jaime: Sold! It's so really funny. My son who's six, we've started him out on the right foot, right? So he has his own business where he's selling granola bars at our dojo. It's very funny because he does not give two craps about the granola bars. He hates buying the granola bars, but he goes in there, and the look on his face when he looks in there and sees all that money. How many chores would he have to do to make twenty bucks in granola bars profit, even? He's like "This is amazing." I think that's the big piece. 

MJ: He's got a taste of fastlane entrepreneurship. You throw away your trading your time for money and you put it toward a peggable unit, his granola bars. 

Jaime: He will not take fifty cents to make his bed anymore. He's like "No, I'm going to sell more granola bars." Oh, come on! 

MJ: That's it. Why, why trade your valuable hours when you could be trading something that has tangible value which could be your podcast that's online forever, or could be a book, or could be software, or could be internet website, or could be an invention. You want to create something that is separate from your time. That's how you build a fastlane. 

Jaime: I love it. Good. So do you have any resources or anything? Actually, I highly recommend going on to Millionaire Fastlane Forum. It's millionaire fast lane forum dot com.

MJ: The book is the Millionaire Fastlane dot com. The forum is the fastlane forum dot com.

Jaime: Definitely check that out, even if it's just to read in a little bit. Even if you don't say anything, even if you just go read it. It's really interesting to see what people are doing, the ideas that other people are having. It feels so crazy by the way. 

MJ: That little nudge for anyone that's new. The people with the highest speed at the forum are usually the millionaires, the people who are actually doing a lot. They're in the trenches of entrepreneurship. A lot of them are millionaires. Obviously they don't say "I'm a millionaire here." You can tell by their speed, if they're in the two hundreds, that's telling you that they are actively in the trenches and most likely a millionaire. 

Jaime: Well, I met Billy. You're a mutual friend of ours. Billy I interviewed on the show who's on there also. Who you got me in touch. I actually saw him when I was in Austin too. Just amazing people on there. You don't usually get. A lot of people come to this show because they have access to millionaires where normally they wouldn't. That's what's really cool about the forum. You can actually talk to people that are really successful. They'll give you feedback without charging you any money either. Which I think is hugely important. So I know we need to start wrapping up, and I ask the same last question for everyone, except since you were the third interview, I don't think you ever got this question before. Woo hoo. Brand new. What's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward to their goal of a million?

MJ: You have to evaluate your product. Is it product centered? Is your profits going to stop when you stop marketing? If they will, you probably don't have a very good product or a business. Yet if you stop marketing and the money continues to roll in that tells me you have a product centered business. Because the product is doing the marketing. If you want to become a millionaire, you have to have a good product that will scale to these million dollar channels. You have to look at that. I think that's what people start with the wrong product. If you start with the wrong product, you're not going to be able to get to the goal. They're always fighting an uphill battle because the product frankly sucks. It's not solving a need; it's not solving a problem. It's below average. Customer service sucks. They don't get anywhere. It truly starts right there. Adding something after that, some fancy marketing gimmick that worked last week, that's a scam. That's a rouge because your product still sucks. It's not going to make a difference because once you stop that fancy marketing tactic that worked last week that don't work now, your money stops. Because your product ain't that good. Start at the grassroots level, and look at your product. Is it product centered? If it's not, how do I make it product centered? Do I need to do better customer service? Do I need to tweak something? Do I need to start listening to my customers more instead of ignoring them because they're pains in my butt that I don't want to answer any more? That's what you have to start with. It all starts with the, like the foundation. People don't want to talk about the foundation; they want to talk about the windows and the roof. You got to start at the foundation. That's the product. That's the need you're solving. That's the solution. 

Jaime: I love it. Perfect. Everybody listening can go ahead and do that right now. That will definitely help. Tell me, we've already got your website and the forum, are you also on Facebook or Twitter? Do you do any social media that we can follow you on?

MJ: On Twitter dot com, MJDeMarco. Pretty sure that's it. Facebook slash the Millionaire Fastlane.

Jaime: Perfect. I'll definitely link those up in the show so everyone can follow you too. It's awesome. Thank you for coming on the show today. Hopefully I'll actually get to meet you in person. I've met a bunch of your friends, but I haven't actually met you yet. 

MJ: Great. Thank you for having me again. I really appreciate that.

Jaime: Awesome. Take care.

Tags: Beta Testing, book promotion, Book Publication, Business Marketing, Fastlane Entrepreneurship, Idea Validation, Millionaire Fastlane, millionaire interview, MJ Demarco

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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