PART 8: YOUR SPEED: ACCELERATE WEALTH
CHAPTER 38: THE SPEED OF SUCCESS
Ideas are nothing but neurological flatulence. ~ MJ DeMarco
Chapter 38 Quotes and Highlights
- Get-rich systems sold on TV take advantage of human nature because it is human nature to seek events and avoid process.
- Your success requires a shift from this one-dimensional approach to a multidimensional attack. Put the checkers away and play chess, where each chess piece represents a specific function within your business. How you play each function will determine if you build Fastlane speed or drift aimlessly. Those pieces are:
- The King: Your execution T
- he Queen: Your marketing
- The Bishop: Your customer service
- The Knight: Your product
- The Rook: Your people
- The Pawn: Your ideas.
- The owner of an idea is not he who imagines it, but he who executes it.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
- Speed is the transformation of ideas to execution.
- Most people let powerful information expire and become worthless.
- Successful Fastlane businesses are run multi-dimensionally, like a game of chess. One-dimensional businesses focus on price only.
- Execution divides winners and losers from their ideas.
- In business, execution is process. Ideas are events.
- Ideas are potential speed. Execution is actual speed.
- Others share your blockbuster idea. He who thinks the idea owns nothing. He who executes the idea owns everything.
- Real money and momentum is created when an idea (potential speed) is matched with execution (accelerator pressure).
- An idea is neurological flatulence. Execution makes it smell like a rose.
CHAPTER 39: BURN THE BUSINESS PLAN, IGNITE EXECUTION
Having the world’s best idea will do you no good unless you act on it. People who want milk shouldn’t sit on a stool in the middle of the field in hopes that a cow will back up to them. ~ Curtis Grant
Chapter 39 Quotes and Highlights
- Create a prototype! Create a brand! Create a track record that others can see or touch! Dive into process. When you have a physical manifestation of an idea, investors will open their wallets.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
- The world gives clues to the direction you should be moving.
- Business plans are useless because they are ideas on steroids.
- As soon as the world interacts with your ideas, your business plan is invalidated.
- The marketplace will steer you into directions that were previously unplanned for.
- The best business plan in the world is a track record of execution—it legitimizes the business plan.
- If you have a track record of execution, suddenly people will want to see your business plan.
- If you want your business to get funded, take action and create something that reflects tangible execution.
- Investors are more likely to invest in something tangible and real; not ideas dissected ad nauseam on paper.
CHAPTER 40: PEDESTRIANS WILL MAKE YOU RICH!
If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. ~ Jeff Bezos
Chapter 40 Quotes and Highlights
- written record of all complaints, grievances, and issues my business experienced daily.
- while you don’t have a boss, the person who pays your mortgage is your customer and they always should be heard—but sometimes ignored.
- You can explode your business into the stratosphere by deploying a customer service strategy that exceeds expectations: I call it SUCS, or “Superior Unexpected Customer Service.”
- when you violate your client’s customer service expectation profile positively, you turn your customers into loyal, repeat buyers, and ultimately,
- Success in business comes from making your customer the boss and the No. 1 stakeholder to your business.
- “The customer pays your paycheck, not me—keep them happy.”
- Anywhere customer service is expected to suck, you have a business opportunity.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
- Complaints are valuable insights into your customers’ minds.
- Complaints of change are difficult to decipher and often require additional data to validate or invalidate.
- Complaints of expectation expose operational problems in either your business, or in your marketing strategy.
- Complaints of void expose unmet needs, raise the value of your product or service, and expose new revenue opportunities.
- Great customer service is as simple as violating your customer’s low expectation in the positive.
- Poor service gaps are Fastlane opportunities.
- Satisfied customers can be human resource systems who promote your business for free.
- Satisfied customers have a dual residual effect: Repeat business and new business via discipleship.
- Your customer and their satisfaction hold the key to everything you selfishly want.
- Looking big but acting small sets up customer service expectation violations in the positive.
- Looking big can scare away potential competitors.
CHAPTER 41: THROW HIJACKERS TO THE CURB!
People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn’t make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps. ~ Mary Kay Ash
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
- A business partnership is as important as a marriage.
- A good accountant and attorney will save you thousands, perhaps millions.
- Accountants and attorneys have the keys to your castle; make sure you trust them fully because they have the power to right or wrong you.
- Unmitigated trust exposes you to unmitigated risk.
- Unverified trust can lead to uncontrollable consequences.
- Your employees communicate the public’s perception of your company. Fanatical customer service can overcome shortcomings, but fanatical features can’t overcome poor customer service. Customer service philosophy is delivered from human interactions—not ambitious mission statements on a wall plaque in the CEO’s office.
CHAPTER 42: BE SOMEONE’S SAVIOR
A market is never saturated with a good product ,but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one. ~ Henry Ford
Chapter 42 Quotes and Highlights
- total disregard toward market needs leads down the road to commoditization, where you must sell your soul to the buyer who wants the cheapest price.
- If your product isn’t someone’s knight, standing out from the crowd and differentiating, it stands to be commoditized.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
- Commoditization occurs when you get into business based on a false premise—“I want to own a business” or “I know how to do this, so I’ll start a business doing it.”
- If you are too busy copying or watching your competition, you’re not innovating.
- Use your competition to exploit their weaknesses.
CHAPTER 43: BUILD BRANDS, NOT BUSINESSES
Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important. ’Never forget that message when working with people. ~ Mary Kay Ash
Chapter 43 Quotes and Highlights
- How to Rise above the Noise There are five ways to get your message above the noise: Polarize Arouse emotions Be risqué Encourage interaction and Be unconventional
- There’s an old story I heard about how price equates to value. Cleaning his basement, a man found an old dresser and decided to give it away. He moved the dresser to the street corner and placed a sign atop it: FREE. Shockingly, the dresser stood there all day, and for several days thereafter. This confused the man because the dresser, albeit old, was in decent shape and just needed a quick wood stain for perfection. The man decided a new strategy was warranted. He went to the street corner and replaced the “FREE” sign with “$50.” Not an hour later, the dresser was stolen.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
- Marketing and branding (the queen) is the most powerful tool in your Fastlane toolbox.
- Businesses survive. Brands thrive.
- Businesses have identity crises, brands don’t. Identity crises force business owners into price commoditization.
- Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) are the keys to your brand and differentiate your company from the rest.
- People have a natural disposition to be unique and unlike everyone else.
- To succeed in marketing, your messages have to break above the advertising clutter, or noise.
- Polarization is a great above-the-noise tool if your product targets a polarized audience—usually politics, minority opinions, and even sports teams.
- Sex sells and always draws eyeballs.
- Consumers make buying decisions based on emotions before practicality.
- If you can arouse emotions in your audience, you will be more likely to convince them to buy.
- People have a natural disposition to talk about themselves. If you can incorporate interaction into your campaigns, you will have better success.
- To be unconventional means to first isolate and identify what is conventional, then doing the opposite, or interrupting that convention.
- Consumers are selfishly motivated. Always target your messages toward the predisposition of “What’s in it for me?”
- Features are translated to benefits when you switch positions from producer to consumer, identify the feature’s advantages, and extrapolate those advantages into a specific result.
- Price implicitly conveys value and worth.
- Don’t allow your own perception of price direct your brand to mediocrity.
CHAPTER 44: CHOOSE MONOGAMY OVER POLYGAMY
No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
Chapter 44 Quotes and Highlights
- A scattered focus leads to scattered results. Instead of one business that thrives, the polygamist-opportunist has 20 businesses that suck. Ten businesses earning $10,000 cumulatively are not better than one business that does it singlehandedly. When you segregate your effort among assets, you build weak assets. Weak assets don’t do heavy lifting, and they don’t build strong pyramids.
- To hit the top of your game, business or otherwise, you have to eat, live, and shit your thing. If you’re dabbling in 10 different things, your results will be dabbling and unimpressive. Focus on one thing and do it in the most excellent way.
- Fastlane success comes from monogamy; not split attentions among wives and mistresses. It’s marriage. Yes, good old-fashioned monogamy. Focus on one Fastlane business and kick ass at it.
Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions
- Tekel Syndrome sufferers are polygamist-opportunists who opportunity hop.
- A weak business commitment commits you to weak assets.
- Weak assets do not accelerate wealth.
- The most successful entrepreneurs lived their business and were 100% committed to it.
- Successful business monogamy can lead to successful business polygamy.
CHAPTER 45: PUT IT TOGETHER: SUPERCHARGE YOUR WEALTH PLAN!
Your choices are made in a moment, but their consequences will transcend a lifetime. ~ MJ DeMarco
Chapter 45 Quotes and Highlights
- Admit that the preordained path to wealth, “Get Rich Slow,” is fundamentally flawed because of Uncontrollable Limited Leverage, weak mathematics predicated on time (Wealth = Job + Markets).
- Swap your allegiances from consumer to producer.
- If you can’t control the mathematics that predetermine your wealth, nor accelerate them into large numbers, you can’t control your financial plan. Leverage is harnessed by a system that does the work for you.
- “The more people whose lives you affect in an environment you control, the more money you will make.” Impact millions and you will make millions. When you solve needs on a massive scale, money flows into your life. Money reflects value.
- Information is the oil on your financial journey.
- Train your mind to see needs and problems. Observe your thoughts and language, because they expose unmet needs, or needs met poorly. You don’t have to find the next breakthrough; just find a problem, a pain-point, or a service gap, and solve it. Many of the best businesses in the world are based on products that already existed; the owners solved the problem better. When you focus on needs, problems, inconveniences, and issues, roads open. Yes, the road chooses you.
- HAVE what others NEED and money will flow into your life. This reflects the Commandment of Need. You can’t explode your income by chasing money. Stop chasing money, because it eludes those who try. Instead, focus on what attracts money, and that is a business that solves needs. Money comes from providing value. Cast aside selfishness and seek to HAVE what your fellow man WANTS. When you do, money flows into your life because money is attracted to those who have what others want, desire, crave, or need.
- The best passive-income money-tree seedlings are money systems, rental systems, computer systems, content systems, distribution systems, and human resource systems.
- Can your product, service, process be replicated on a global scale to tap the Law of Effection?
THE 40 FASTLANE LIFESTYLE GUIDELINES
I SHALL . . .
- Not dismiss “Get Rich Quick” as improbable.
- Not allow the Slowlane to bury my dreams.
- Not allow Slowlane prognosticators to contaminate my truth with their dogma.
- Not ordain the Slowlane as the plan, but let it be a part of the plan.
- Not sell my soul for a weekend.
- Not expect nor seek a chauffeur to wealth.
- Not trade my time for money.
- Not put time in control over my financial plan.
- Not forsake control over my financial plan.
- Not demote time as abundant and effervescent.
- Not assign faith to events, but to process.
- Not take advice from gurus who preach one roadmap, while getting rich using another.
- Not use compound interest for wealth, but for income.
- Not disrespect the passivity of a dollar.
- Not cease learning at graduation, but start it.
- Not impose the burdens of parasitic debt into my life.
- Not play on Team Consumer, but switch to Team Producer.
- Not dismiss the plausibility of my dreams.
- Not chase a path of money, but a path of need.
- Not fuel my motivation by love, but by passion.
- Not focus on my expenses, but on my income.
- Not pay myself last, but first.
- Not do what everyone does.
- Not trust everyone, but allow trust to be proven.
- Not relinquish control over my business.
- Not hitchhike, but seek to drive.
- Not operate within limited scales and in tiny habitats.
- Not dishonor the horsepower of my choices.
- Not swim as a guppy in a pool, but as a shark in the oceans.
- Not consume first, but produce first, and consume later.
- Not engage in barrier-free or entry-weak businesses.
- Not invest in other people’s brands, but in my own.
- Not give credence to ideas, but to execution.
- Not forsake my customer for other stakeholders.
- Not build a business, but a brand.
- Not focus my marketing messages on features, but benefits.
- Not be a polygamist opportunist: Focus!
- Not engage my business like checkers, but chess.
- Not live above my means, but seek to expand my means.
- Not live without the insurance of financial literacy.
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