Millionaire Interview: MJ DeMarco – Successful Online Entrepreneur and Author

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MJ DeMarco – Successful Online Entrepreneur and Author

In this podcast I talk with MJ DeMarco. He’s recently authored the book the Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime. The book just hit #1 on Amazon in Entrepreneurship (Kindle) and Business Finance, and it deserves all of the success. In the book he talks about being a young kid with a poster on his wall of a Lamborghini and the story it took for him to buy his own years later.

He has an incredible story, and great tips for your business. His ideas make you want to be a producer instead of just a consumer. I hope you enjoy the interview!

Fastlane Forums: You can find MJ and a great community of entrepreneurs full of advice and inspiration

The Millionaire Fastlane Book:I highly recommend the book especially if you have big dreams in business.

The Millionaire Fastlane on Facebook: Interesting posts and info straight from MJ

If you like these interviews subscribe via iTunes. Thanks!

Transcript:

Jaime Tardy ? Welcome to The Eventual Millionaire Podcast. I?m Jaime Tardy, and today we have MJ DeMarco on the show. He went from being depressed and living with his mom at age 26 to a multi-millionaire by the age of 33. He?s been through a lot in business, and recently wrote the book ?The Millionaire Fast Lane ? Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich For a Lifetime.? Welcome MJ. Thanks so much for coming on today.

MJ DeMarco ? Hey Jaime, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Jaime Tardy ? Excellent. So first I?d love to have you talk about your experience as a young boy as you mentioned in your book. What happened to make you want to become a millionaire?

MJ DeMarco ? Well, when I was 12 or 13 years old, I was a pretty sedentary kid, unmotivated, came from a divorced family, and I kind of knew that my ability to ever get rich young was probably not going to happen because you have to be an athlete, you have to be a rapper, you have to be a singer, you have to be an actor, and I didn?t fit that kind of mold, so I kind of never thought the ability to create wealth young was ever going to happen for me.

And then one day, while heading to an ice cream store, I saw a Lamborghini Kuntash, and that?s a car that I was just in love with at the time. You know, I had it on my walls for posters, I was always looking at it in magazines, and I saw one of them in front of an ice cream store and immediately thought to myself ?Okay well this has got to be an old guy driving this car, and the gentleman that came out probably was in his mid-20s and kind of not what I expected. I mustered up the courage to go up to the guy and asked him ?Hey, what do you do for a living?? And its ironic because now that happens to me when I drive around in my Lamborghini, I get that question all the time. So things went kind of full circle with that, but back to that story, is when I asked him he said he was an inventor. And that kind of blew me away that I expected him to be a baseball player or a football player, whatever, some kind of athlete or something famous, but he was an inventor, he was an entrepreneurial rogue that kind of set me off on a new path of beliefs and thoughts. That?s what started my desire to be an entrepreneur and start looking into that as a way to create wealth, a way to control my financial future.

I went through college, got a degree in marketing and finance. Once I graduated from college, I did not interview for jobs. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Lived at home with my mother till I was 26 years old. Did all kinds of goofy jobs, from mopping floors in pizzerias, delivering flowers, delivering newspapers at 3AM in the morning, all kinds of crazy stuff. But in the background I was always working on an entrepreneurial business. I knew that was a path to creating wealth quickly. One of my lame old jobs was a limousine driver and I actually got in that business because I wanted, I thought I wanted to own a limousine company. I did that for a couple of years and the opportunity came up where I could actually own that company. The owner of the company offered it to me, but I did not decide to do it. What did happen though, in that job was it exposed a need in that particular industry that wasn?t being well served. One day I got a client that I was driving to the airport who mentioned that ?Hey I?m going to New York. Do you know any companies in New York that you could recommend?? And I didn?t have a New York Yellow Pages handy. This was back in the late 90s, mind you. So I didn?t have that information and I couldn?t help him but it put a seed of invention into my mind that ?Hey, if this guy needs a limo in New York, how many other people need limos in New York that are flying there or if you?re flying to Atlanta how many people need service over there?? So what I did was I created a website that would solve that problem for people who were travelling. It was called, at the time, LimoDashSearch.com, which I eventually transformed into Limos.com and I ended up buying that domain on the secondary market. I created a website that would solve that problem. The interesting?

Jaime Tardy ? Excellent.

MJ DeMarco ? I?m sorry?

Jaime Tardy ? No, I just said ?excellent!?

MJ DeMarco ? Oh, okay. The interesting thing about that is when I say I was the CEO and founder of Limos.com, people think I picked up that domain for $15 on Register.com. No, I had to buy that on the secondary market back in the time when domains were selling for millions of dollars and the interesting thing about all this is I started that company with no background in Internet technology. Self taught myself everything. Had no funding, started it with $900 in a studio apartment. Built the company to passively cash flow. A hundred, sometimes 200,000 dollars a month. Sold it couple times, and obviously being able to earn over ten million in such a short time, I was able to retire about 30, 35 years early.

Jaime Tardy ? Wow, okay. So I?m going to go back for a minute. Can you tell us a little bit about what life was like in your mid 20s? You said you were doing horrible jobs and failing at entrepreneurial events. What made you keep going then?

MJ DeMarco ? Well I knew my road would converge with my dream and I knew my road was going to put me in control. Anyone that?s read my book will see that I?m kind of a control freak and I believe in controlling all aspects of your financial future. I believed I was building my road and travelling my road that allowed me to do that. I call it Your Dream Is Alive and if your dream is alive you will do whatever it takes to make it happen. You will pick up dog shit, you?ll mop floors, you?ll do whatever it is. If you know where you?re going and if you know what you?re doing works. I believed that entrepreneurship; no matter how many failures I had I knew it would lead me to where I wanted to go. I think a lot of people lose sight of that dream because they get stuck in some mindless job that they hate getting up in the morning and what happens is their dream dies. Its because they don?t see that road going to anywhere that they see exciting. It?s just a dead end road and then life becomes suffering. The happiest days of my life, if this sounds strange it isn?t, but I remember being in that studio apartment just working the code and having being excited and seeing your bank account grow. That feeling of control was an incredible feeling. I believe if you?re on a path that you believe works, you?ll do anything for it. That?ll keep you going.

Jaime Tardy ? That?s funny because I actually talked about on my blog that ever since I was little girl I had this feeling that I would become a millionaire. I knew that since I was little. But it sounds like even when you were broke; you felt like you would eventually become a millionaire.

MJ DeMarco ? Absolutely. The thing was when I started making that money, the income started growing exponential. One day I was making 2000 a month, the next month it was 4000 a month, then 8000 a month. It was an exponential curve. The thing was because I knew I wanted to be a millionaire and a multimillionaire, I wanted to retire early, I wasn?t blowing that money. I was saving 90% of it. The gurus say save 10% of your paycheck. I say screw that. Save 90% of your income. I was saving 90% of it and my expenses they weren?t going up at the same rate. Sure I started to splurge on somethings, I started eating out a lot, bought an expensive car, but for the most part the expenses were linear. I was putting it all away, again, that was because I knew I wanted to become a millionaire, I wanted to retire early so I wasn?t going to go out there and blow it all and become of these guys that one day they?re living high, the next day they?re filing for bankruptcy.

Jaime Tardy ? So believe in get rich quick?

MJ DeMarco ? You want to go here?

Jaime Tardy ? I would, I would.

MJ DeMarco ? Get rich quick, it exists. I?m hoping I?m not losing a lot of listeners here, but if you think about it logically, there are a lot of entrepreneurs out there that get rich quick. Mark Zuckerburg is the youngest billionaire alive. Obviously he got rich quick. The Internet is littered with stories of entrepreneurs who are making five and six figures a month. They are getting rich quick. What happens is people get confused with get rich easy. That?s where people think they can get rich. They think it?s easy. Oh, I can put an ad on Google and I?ll get rich, or oh, I?ll join this program, this turnkey program I found in the back of an entrepreneur magazine. I?m going to get rich. Get rich easy is what not exists. I had 70, 80-hour workweeks for years to create that kind of income and to invest in that. Then it becomes possible. But if you?re getting into entrepreneurship and you?re looking for a get rich easy, it?s not going to happen. Get rich quick may happen, though, and it?s based on mathematics. I go about that in my book, how you can make that happen.

Jaime Tardy ? That?s a really good point, and I wrote about this on my blog too. I really love in the book that you mention millions are made by processes not events. Sounds like what you?re talking about right now. Tell me more about processes over events.

MJ DeMarco ? Boy, that?s a two-hour conversation alone. We are an event driven society. We love events, and all your have to do is look at our culture to see how we are event driven. Event driven is oh, you feel ill? Well take this pill. Pharmaceutical drugs are the response to being event driven. We want to fix our health problems by taking a pill. We want to lose weight by taking a pill. We want to get rich by buying an infomercial product at 2AM on Tuesday night on the Home and Garden Channel. We are event driven. We want things to happen overnight and the problem with being event driven is you don?t see the back-story. The back-story is the process.

When you hear, for example I think his name is Aaron Patzer, he sold mint.com for a 180 million dollars. That makes headline news around the Internet or around the world. That?s the event. He sold it for a $180 million. Wow. But what you don?t hear about is the process. You don?t hear about the back-story. You don?t hear about him trying to get funding. You don?t hear about coding in the garage. You don?t hear about the piece of crap car he had to drive for ten years. When people want to look into my story, they see the car and the nice house or whatever, but they don?t see the back-story. They don?t see telling my buddies; no I don?t want to go out drinking tonight. I got to sit at home and figure out this code block. They don?t see that. For you, to ever want to create wealth you?re going to have to get involved with the process. The process is the lifestyle. The process is the millions of choices that form that lifestyle. We have a tendency; I?ve even seen this myself, to be event driven. New Year?s Resolutions are events. That?s the reason why most New Year?s Resolutions fail, is because, well, my New Year?s Resolution is XXX. Well that?s an event. People fail that resolution because actually achieving it and executing it is the process.

Process is daily work. It?s your daily choices. It?s your daily thoughts; it?s your daily actions. It?s taking in hard choices, like turning off the TV, and making the sacrifices that most people won?t.

Jaime Tardy ? Give us some advice on how to change from event mentality to a process mentality.

MJ DeMarco ? Obviously the first is to understand that, and I see myself, I?m not perfect, I see myself falling into event driven kind of thoughts, and you just have to know that this is you building your unfolding story. Think about it. When the day comes you become a millionaire, or a multimillionaire, whatever that is, and someone says ?Wow, whats your story?? What do you think that story is going to be? It?s not going to be ?Oh, I took one action and wham.? No, it?s going to be a long story. I failed at this, I failed at that. The first step is to recognize that you will have failure. I?ve been kind of out of the game for three years because I?ve been retired but once I wrote this book I had to get back into the game and start marketing again. I see this event process shedding its head again, because I?ll try a promotion thing. It?ll fail miserably, or I?ll try this and it won?t work. That?s the process. I could easily say, ?Well, that didn?t work. This books a failure. I?m done.? That?s the event. Just to recognize it is your first step. Know that what you?re doing is going to take a lot of failure, it?s going to take a lot of choices and it?ll take a lot of hard action. If you don?t make the necessary sacrifices, you?re going to fall back into that event driven thing and you?ll quit. There?s nothing wrong with failure. Its quitting on your dream, and that?s where people end up having their dreams die.

Jaime Tardy ? That?s really important. What?s funny is that it made me think of what you talk about in the book about new companies and trying new things. Tell me what advice you gave to him. He was kind of working the process, but it wasn?t really working for him.

MJ DeMarco ? Well, I had a friend, who every tow weeks he?d be involved with a different business. Every time he started a business that was an event. Oh, I started another business, that?s an event. He?s lacking process in all the businesses. You don?t build a multi million-dollar business overnight. It takes months to years, and if you?re dumping a business every two weeks to start another one, you?re being event driven. You?re not being process driven. You really have to stick with something, let the market guide where you need to be taken, and work that business. I call it being a monogamist versus being a polygamist. I come across a lot of entrepreneurs that say ?Oh yeah, I had ten businesses, and those ten businesses? They suck, they don?t make any money.? Its because they?re being polygamists. It?s like marrying ten different women. You think those women are going to be happy? No. Each one of them is cheating. So I say give your attention to one spouse, which is your business. Give your attention to one. Be monogamist. Not to draw the analogy to marriage, but you have to be monogamist to your wife to make that relationship work. I believe in business is the same thing. You spread your interests along different lines; you?re going to have a bunch of weak businesses. Your goal here, in the fast lane, is to create an exponential business that leverages to scale or magnitude and have a multi-million dollar corporation that you can ultimately sell if you desire. Well that doesn?t happen if you have ten different businesses. The interesting thing is you always look at entrepreneurs who end up selling their companies for millions. They did it through monogamy, but then they go polygamist. They go to polygamy, which means they start spreading out, they start investing in multiple companies. They?re venture capitalists all of a sudden. They?re angel investors. I believe monogamy leads to polygamy in terms of business.

Jaime Tardy ? Good analogy. So (INDECIPHERABLE). Could you tell us what the fast lane is and how it differentiates from what most people do now?

MJ DeMarco ? The fast lane is a business, psychological and mathematical business strategy that allows entrepreneurs to create exponential wealth quickly. It does that by, it swaps out the preordained plan for wealth which we?ve all been indoctrinated to follow, which is what I call the slow lane, or the wealth in a wheelchair financial plan, which is get a job, save 10% of your paycheck, max out your 401k, clip coupons, cancel those movie channels, quit drinking that Starbucks coffee and one day when you?re 70 years old you?re going to be rich. That?s the slow plan and that plan is predicated on hope and time. The fast lane is a business strategy that is predicated on control and leverage, and the control comes from entrepreneurship, obviously, owning your own business, creating a company that solves a problem, fills a need. Leverage comes from having a business that has the potential to scale, which is one of my commandments, to scale, and by scale I mean you want to have you business that has the ability to impact the lives of millions of people, if not millions then hundreds of thousands. Because that?s where the exponential wealth comes in. You have to deliver, you have to solve a problem, you have to create value to the masses. And it doesn?t have happen, I see a lot of entrepreneurs that, yeah they?ve got some control, but they have no scale. The best example I always give in the book is personal trainer. There?s no scale in that business. I don?t care what the guy does. He will not wake up one day and have 20,000 clients to train in one day. There is no leverage in that business. There?s no scale. So the fast lane is about creating a business that has scalable mathematics to it.

Jaime Tardy ? Huge thing for people to know when they start a business. So I know you have the five commandments for starting a million dollar business. I?d love to hear more about what those five commandments are. Scale, of course.

MJ DeMarco ? The five commandments are need, entry, control, scale and time. I?ll try to be brief in each one of them. The commandment of need is actually probably why most business ultimately end up failing. In commandment of need simply states that you?ve got to get into business for the right reason, and the right reason is not your own selfishness. People into business for the wrong reason. They get into business because a guru says do what you love, a guru says start your own business and get rich. I?m an expert in this, so I?m going to start that business. Those are commandment of need violations, which will ultimately probably end up having to fail. Commandment of need says to get into business for the right reason, and the reason is to solve a need. It?s to solve a problem in the marketplace. It?s to solve an inconvenience, an issue. A drama thing. It?s a problem that is glaring in the marketplace, or it?s a problem that?s not being solved well enough. If you attack the market based on that presumption, your odds of creating an exponential business increase. The example I give is Joe is an expert in martial arts, so a guru says go do what you love and so he starts a martial arts studio. Well, twelve months later his business failed. His problem was his own selfishness. The market didn?t need a martial arts studio, that?s why he failed. There was no need for it. If you attack the marketplace selfishly, the marketplace will respond equally selfishly and not give you any money or any business because its not based on a need.

The second commandment is entry. If you?re getting into business and that process, here we come to the process thing again, if that process entails filling out an application and you?re in business, that?s a violation of entry. You don?t want to be involved with business that doesn?t take just one step to do. You look at the back of an entrepreneur magazine, oh join this program, fill out an application and you?re in business. That?s a violation of entry. If entry is weak, meaning anybody can do it, what this does is create a market that is saturated. The supply exceeds demand, and when supply exceeds demand, your potential for profitability is going to go down. So entry in of itself needs to be a process. That means to start the company; it?s going to take you dozens, perhaps hundreds of different choices and actions. The example I give is I have an acquaintance who owns a bed and breakfast in the Napa Valley. To compete with him, it?s a detailed process. Entry is difficult. You have to find a house, retrofit it, get permits, get employees, there?s a whole slew of choices and actions you have to take to compete. As opposed to the person who joins an affiliate program, they sign up and wham they?re in business. There?s a violation of entry right there.

The third is control. That also is similar to entry. Control means you want to control all aspects of your company or corporation. To bring back the example of the affiliate program, when you join a company?s affiliate program, you?re not in control. That company can dictate terms to you. They can slip the rug out from under you. To give you an example, when I had my company, I had hundreds of affiliates that were selling for me. I was the person that controlled that process. At any time I could have said to my affiliates, ?You know what, I?m going to change the terms, and instead of paying you 40% I?m going to pay you 20%. Or I?m going to cancel this affiliate program effective immediately. That?s what happens when you violate control. You put someone in control of your financial future. It?s usually a hierarchal control structure. Another example is network marketing. How many people will join network marketing companies only to find out the company goes bankrupt a couple of years later, or they change the compensation program. That?s because you are violating control. When you control your company you control everything about it. Your marketing, your pricing, your research and development. You have the power to make those decisions. There?s not someone up above higher that can dictate those choices.

Four is scale, which we kind of got into, and that means to be involved in a business that has the potential to impact the lives of millions of people.

The last one is time, which basically says eventually you want to be able to divorce yourself from the act of the work that the company is producing. You want to build a company that?s a system, that?s a surrogate for your time, so you?re not always trading your time for money. That often is where the process comes in, it takes years to build. It?s like building an apparatus or a system. It took me two, three years to build that system to come to the point where I actually was working just a couple of hours a week but I was making five, six figures a month. Eventually you want to think about the commandment of time, which says can you divorce yourself from this business? Can you walk away from it, sit on the beach and make money?

Those are the five commandments. Need, entry, control, scale and time.

Jaime Tardy ? So it sounds like if we have the goal to be a millionaire and we want to start on this, we should take this as a checklist and go through our business ideas and figure out if this business would eventually get us to a millionaire status.

MJ DeMarco ? The commandments are a kind of litmus test. If you satisfy all five of them, or have the potential to satisfy all five of them, it?s a great fast lane business that could exponentially leverage into a multi million-dollar cash flow valuation. As the violations accrue, so does the potency of the opportunity. I won?t say ?Oh network marketing, that?s a waste of?? I won?t say that, but it does violate commandments. There are millionaires doing that, just like there are millionaires that play the lottery. There?s millionaires affiliate marketers. This is about probability, about increasing your probability of doing it. If the violations start to accrue, your probabilities are going to start to get worse. That?s what the commandments are for.

Jaime Tardy ? Lets go back to need, because I like the commandment of need. How do you differentiate from what businesses have need and what don?t? You started quite a few different businesses, and in your book you talk about you start what became Limos.com and you weren?t really making any money at first, so you really had to try and grow that business by calling people and letters and all this stuff. How do you really determine there?s a need?

MJ DeMarco ? Need is always determined by the marketplace. It?s always exposed in language. Anytime you hear somebody complain about something, you?ve got a need. Anytime you someone saying ?I hate? or ?This sucks?, or ?I Wish?, those are needs being exposed. Anytime you find yourself disgruntled over something, you?re exposed a need. Anytime there?s inconvenience or a pain point in your life, there is a need.

I failed at my early business because I wasn?t focused on need; I was focused on my selfish interests. I remember I used to love car audio. Subwoofers and amplifiers, so I followed the guru advice of do what you love. Well, I did what I loved and I went broke because there was no need in the marketplace for what I was doing. I was attacking the market selfishly, and I didn?t base it on anything that existed in the marketplace. Which is why when I hear a guru say do what you love, it makes me want to puke, because the market doesn?t about what you love. I know that goes counter to what everyone is used to hearing. The market doesn?t care about what you love, it doesn?t care about your passions, it doesn?t care about who you want to prove wrong, it just wants to know what can you do for me? What can you make easier in my life?

Think about it. If someone reads my book, and they absolutely love it, and it changed their life, you think they care I loved writing it or hated writing it? They don?t care. They want to know what will it do for me? What kind of change in my life, and that?s kind of the conundrum to succeed in the fast lane that we have to let go of our own selfish desires and focus on the selfishness of others. I think that when we do that, then your product, because its based on a need, becomes more vital. Becomes more, oh I?ve got to talk about this. It becomes people becoming free human resource systems and telling other people and that?s when you get that exponential growth curve.

As opposed to pushing the market with something isn?t really needed, and then you get into a game of marketing and a game of price commoditization where you?ve got to cheapen your price to find a buyer, and it?s a nasty thing you don?t want to do. My suggestion is quit focusing on what you love and start focusing on what the market needs.

Jaime Tardy ? Hm, that?s good advice because otherwise you might be banging your head against the wall. But Its not that you can?t love what you do, because you loved what you did. You weren?t necessarily passionate about limos specifically but you were certainly passionate about being a business owner.

MJ DeMarco ? That?s what I believe is the key metric in all of this. Its not do what you love. Do what you love is industry specific. If you love working out and you want to be a personal trainer then you?re stuck in that business. Versus passion, passion is usually generalized and for me, my passion when I saw those Lamborghini years ago, I wanted to own one. That was my passion. When I saw my mother struggling as a single mother I wanted to ease the burden, pay off the mortgage early. That was a passion. That is general.

When you have a passion that is strong enough, you?ll do anything for it. That?s what it takes to get up in the morning, to do what you need to do, and yeah, I didn?t love the limo business, not at all. But I did love making a difference and that means the world, to see yourself, your product or your or your service making an impact in the lives of others. It?s just incredible. To get away from that do what you love thing and focus on something more general that?s a passion to you, I think is a better route to take.

Jaime Tardy ? So, now I have a question that comes up a lot. Let?s say (INDECIPHERABLE) we?re talking to someone who is $12,000 in debt, and barely make ends meet. Where should someone like that start?

MJ DeMarco ? The answer, which kind of hit me quick, the answer is not on the expense side of the equation. The answer is on the income side. Now, if you?re $12,000 in debt, with that $12,000 debt be a problem if you were making $40,000 a month? No. I remember when I paid off my debt; I did in one swift stroke. I paid off my student loans with one check. Paid off my credit cards with one check, and that?s because I was focused on income. Income is the answer. If you want to become a millionaire you don?t worry about ?oh, I?ve got to quit drinking coffee and put a hundred dollars on credit? that doesn?t create millionaires. I?m sorry it doesn?t. Yes it might get you out of debt. Yes it might make you debt free and you can scream and do all that other stuff, but the answer to the key of the fast lane is to create a business that exponentiates an income that attacks that debt in one swift stroke. Now, for someone to say ?oh I don?t have any money, how am I going to start a business?? That?s an excuse. It really is. I started my business with $900. All the capital that came into my business was human capital. Hard work, sweat, and the other thing I want to mention is that it was all self taught. I took the time to learn. Everything I learned insofar as my company, I had to self teach myself, I was on the Internet, learning and buying books, I was at the library all the time. This was after graduation. My answer to them is yes, attack that debt, keep it from growing, pay it off as best you can, but don?t get caught up on it. You?ve got to focus on the income side. Wealth is an equation. Its income and expenses. The slow lane is predicated on the expense side of the variable, the equation. Cut out the coffee, buy the used car, that?s a lifetime prescription for mediocrity. There?s nothing wrong with focusing on expenses, but if you really want to escape the rat race, retire thirty years early, become a millionaire, you?ve got to focusing on the income side of the equation.

Jaime Tardy ? That is definitely really important. Like you said, a lot of people I talk to talk about cutting things. While I think that?s extremely important, because of course when you were living with your mom you probably weren?t spending a lot on Starbucks anyway. But You?re (INDECIPHERABLE) really focused on that main income side. It?s amazing to pay off your student loan in one fell swoop. That?s a great thing.

Why do you talk about?sorry, go ahead.

MJ DeMarco ? At risk of being misinterpreted, financial discipline doesn?t care what you make. I don?t? care if you?re making a $100 a month or a $100,000 a month. You can?t spend more than you earn. I don?t to be misinterpreted, not saying oh just forget about your expenses.? It?s important because how many times have you seen an NBA player file bankruptcy or an actor. That?s because they lack financial discipline. The slow lane is really about financial discipline so it?s not something you want to say ?oh, screw that and forget about it.? I like to say, yeah, you want the slow lane to be a part of the plan, not the plan. I wanted to make that distinction.

Jaime Tardy ? Yeah, I really appreciate that too. That makes sense and that?s sort of what I got out of your book. I was told go to school, get a good job and I did all that and I hated working for someone else. Unfortunately you don?t want to work thirty years of your life hating your job every time you go. I think what you?re talking about is extremely important. The slow lane can be a backup plan and its definitely good information, but you need to be focused somewhere else. You say in your book, and I love this quote, ?Don?t consume, produce first, and then consume later.? Can you tell me a little bit more about that and why?

MJ DeMarco ? We?ve been trained to be consumers our entire life. Get this; get that, without any thought about producing. I like to say producers get rich, consumers get poor. If you want to create wealth exponentially, you?ve got to stat looking at things from a producer?s perspective. Start becoming a producer, start becoming in demand, start taking the driver?s seat. Instead of taking a seminar, offer a seminar. Instead of joining an affiliate program, create an affiliate program. Instead of buying a franchise sell a franchise. Instead of joining an MLM, marketing company, create one. You?ve got to start looking at things from the producer side of the equation. Become a producer.

The beauty of it is once you produce to the masses, you will find you will be able to consume whatever you want and unfortunately people have got it backwards. They consume and consume and eventually, obviously, that is why we are in the situation we are in now. People struggling to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck, in debt up to their eyes. Its because we?ve become consumers and that?s just to buy buy buy and not to focus on production.

Jaime Tardy ? So then, tell me, because you produced and you?re consuming now. How is it different now then from before you were a millionaire?

MJ DeMarco ? Actually when I became a millionaire it was very anticlimactic. It wasn?t? anything like, I don?t know, there were no fireworks or anything. I think the thing is that kind of depressing is a millionaire today, which one million dollars in net worth I look at it as a liquid net worth when you have a million dollar invested in whole assets, is really upper middle class. Your lifestyle, once you achieve that stage, is not really going to change. You can try to change but you?ll find yourself going broke. When people hear the word millionaire they think ?oh rich.? But its not. It really isn?t. If you think that a millionaire status entitles you to millionaire lifestyle you will eventually find yourself going broke. I wasn?t really able to fell that millionaire status until I started to get up into the fives. Over five million. That?s when you start to feel, oh okay, and your investments start bringing in a predictable sum every month. You don?t have to worry about certain things, you don?t have to worry about paying the electric bill, you don?t have to worry about oh gee, could I eat out today? You don?t have to worry about the movie channels being cancelled because some guru said it?ll save you $800 a year. I like to say five million is the new one million, so if you?re looking to some kind of feeling by becoming millionaire, you?re going to have to be over five million to really experience that. If you try to experience that at lower levels, you?re going to find yourself in trouble with going broke. Not having your money last.

Jaime Tardy ? Yeah, with inflation and everything, I?m saying everybody needs to become a millionaire the way things are going. What do you prefer for a vehicle for managing your wealth? Real estate? Venture capital and why?(INDECIPHERABLE)

MJ DeMarco ? I?m actually in the Australian dollar. I?m in a lot of Australian stuff because I?m not too confident in the US dollar. It just hasn?t been, the way we?re printing money its not something, I see it as a big risk. I?ve made a lot of money in the Australian dollar. Also merging market bonds, Australian bonds, and I believe that you have to think globally. And if I didn?t think globally I certainly couldn?t live the way I live now because what are money markets now? Point two percent? You can?t live on something like that. It?s always important to think globally and look at the opportunities that are on the market globally, and I also like a lot of commodities now because they?ve gone up. I like commodities like hard assets because they go up as currency is deflated across the globe. I like the Australian; FAX is a good ETF that I go in and out of. There?s a bond fund that I?m in and out of a lot, its called FAX. It?s an Australian/Asian bond fund. I don?t like municipal bonds right now, but hey are getting to a point of buying again because they?re being depressed by sovereign debt and state debt. It depends. When I invest in things I don?t sit in them. I go in and out of things, and let the income come to me. There really isn?t any?you put it in there and then you disappear. You really have to actively manage. Actively manage means spending four or five hours a month, I can deal with that. No big deal. There really isn?t ?oh, put it in here, then I can forget about it and be done for the rest of my life.? If you do that then you?re asking for trouble.

Jaime Tardy ? Sounds like to this day you?re a wealth of information. Always keep learning, and it sounds like that is a real key piece of advice for everyone too.

MJ DeMarco ? Oh God yeah. The moment you think you know everything is the moment you stop learning. I don?t know everything. I had someone call me a guru the other day, I was like ugh. I?m no guru, I hate that word. Guru implies you know everything. I don?t know everything. I strive to continually learn. I?m always reading, I?m always learning new things. That?s how we continue to grow in our process. This publishing business is, my god, what an experience that?s been. It truly tells you how little I know. So yeah, at the moment you think you know everything is the moment you?re going to stop growing. Like you said, I graduated from college, and everything I learned to get where I am today happened after college. Graduation is not the end. It?s the beginning.

Jaime Tardy ? Very good point. I?m going to ask one more question and you alluded to it in the publishing comment, but what is the big goal you?re working on accomplishing right now?

MJ DeMarco ? As far as the book goes?

Jaime Tardy ? (INDECIPHERABLE)

MJ DeMarco ? Biggest goal right now is to get picked up by a distributor that can put it in the bookstores.

Jaime Tardy ? So it?s not even (INDECIPHERABLE)

MJ DeMarco ? Actually had a publisher contact me the other day and they just?the thing about publishing is that it?s almost a violation of what I teach because there are so many hierarchal control structures, there?s publishers, distributors, there?s a lot of hierarchal control structures. You lose control and if I wasn?t retired I probably wouldn?t have done this because it violates some of my things but I?d like to get into book stores and get the book out there. Right now I?m pushing the Amazon sales channel which is the early reviews have just far exceeded my expectations. I really wanted to see in the early months see what the feedback was on it. I go against all kind of conventional wisdom and you do that to set yourself up to be attacked. I wanted to see what the kind of feedback on that was before I hit it hard but my first goal would be to get it in the bookstores, and further to get it out there. See what people think about it. I think the world is really catching on to the old get a job, save your life away, and one day when you?re 80 years old you?re going to be rich. People are getting onto that that is a risk, because if you don?t have a job that plan fails. If you can?t find a job that plan fails. If you lose your job that plan fails. People are finding out that that is risky plan. I know that my message is very timely with that.

Jaime Tardy ? Highly recommend everyone to pick up the book, ?Millionaire Fast Lane?. Can you tell us where can find you and how to get the book?

MJ DeMarco ? The book?s on Amazon.com and unfortunately Amazon has decided at this moment of this interview, to sell it at full MSRP. So if you don?t want to deal with that, underneath the Amazon listing there?s a seller account that sells it a lot cheaper. I think its 15 dollars, or 33% off, so if you hit the Amazon page you?ll probably be better off buying one of the merchant books, which is also new. A little cheaper. You can also find it on Kindle, which is just ten bucks. You can find it on Nook or iBooks as well, if you have an iPad or anything.

Jaime Tardy ? Great. So what?s your website?

MJ DeMarco ? I frequent the Fast Lane forum, which is a bunch of people around the world discussing Fast Lane strategy. Also I write a periodical at FastLaneEntrepreneurs.com.

Jaime Tardy ? Excellent. Thank you MJ. I really appreciate having you on today. Have a great day.

MJ DeMarco ? Thanks for having me, Jaime. Take care.

Tags: Business Finance, business tips, Focus, millionaire interview, MJ Demarco, Visioning, Wealth Building

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Fear, Goals, 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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