Required Reading: Shoe Dog and the Lessons From Business

“The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen.” This quote sounds brutally honest, gritty, and harsh, which is exactly what Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight is. I loved this book and was sad when the journey was over. (Note: I listened to the Audible version of the book, narrated excellently by Norbert Leo Butz).

Everyone knows Nike, but I can’t imagine most know about Phil Knight, it’s founder. I didn’t, but the book appeared on many of the “Best Books on Business” lists out there on the internet. As it turns out, it is an excellent book on business — but not for reasons you would think. There is no section on starting a business, no textbook-like process of following steps to start then grow your own business to success. What Shoe Dog is is the life adventure of Knight and the day by day, year by year struggles of selling (and later manufacturing) shoes. It is a tale as full of wisdom as anything in the Bible or ancient myths.

Knight’s story is an inspiration for anyone who owns their own business (or is looking to do so). I catch myself thinking of the book and Knight as my business changes and grows. When I get stuck or frustrated at how things are going in my company, I think of Knight and the hardships he had to go through. At least I’m not constantly traveling to Asia.

I’ve done this Required Reading for Shoe Dog a little different than past Required Reading posts. I read (listened to) Shoe Dog at a pivotal time in my own business, and much of what Phil Knight wrote resonated with me in a profound way. I wasn’t just hearing the words, I was living them. So instead of listing 5 major takeaways from the book, I’m going to breakdown the ways Shoe Dog mirrors what I’m currently going through — and what anyone who wants to start their own business should know.

Seek a Calling

I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.

Starting, building, and maintaining a business takes an unlimited amount of focus and persistence. The casual observer of a business may think it’s easy, or the owner is talented or even just lucky. It’s easy to dismiss someone as “just lucky” when they have a successful business (or product, or app) but that’s because so much of the work and hardship is usually when you’re not being observed and never shared. This is why it’s important to seek a calling. You need that fuel, that bottomless reservoir of stamina and determination.

There’s been tough times. They’re usually wrapped in uncertainty and unpredictability. You never really know when they start or when they end, but you always know when you’re in them. If you know it’s your calling — that you’re the person to do this and no one else is going to do it as well — it keeps you going. I’m fortunate enough to have two business partners, and we’ve taken turns pulling each other up when one gets run down by the business or some element of it. For Phil Knight, it was mostly him — but he had a strong support group in his coach-turned-business-partner, his father, and later his wife. But it was his calling, the desire to bring quality and life-changing shoes to athletes, that kept him going.

The most important piece of the quote above is “disappointments will be fuel.” You must look at failures as a way to get better, to improve, to adjust and regroup. Too many people suffer a failure and it derails them. They lose focus. They want to give up and crawl away to something else. My business has had failures. We consult companies and schools for technology needs and custom solutions. Not ever job or client went perfectly. One of them was a disaster; several others almost were. My partners and I regrouped: “What went wrong? If we did it over, what would we change? How could we better prepare? What didn’t we know that we didn’t know?” If we didn’t have the calling to drive this business, any one of us could have given up at any time.

Take the hit. Get back up and do better next time. If you take two steps forward for every step back, you’ll still get there. With this comes the next section:

Fail Fast

“Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks—marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling—seem like sure things. But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind every day, until it became my internal chant: Fail fast.”

Nothing has driven my company more than failure. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Only if you look at failure as a bad thing. When we started out, we had knowledge — technical, sales, and legal (each partner bringing one to the table) — but we didn’t have much else. Failing at everything else made us realize what was needed to succeed at our business. We didn’t have paperwork; we didn’t have standard operating procedures; we didn’t have even a real Mission Statement. We knew what we could do, and we knew there were people and businesses that needed it.

Phil Knight aimed to fail fast. Shoe design doesn’t work? Find out as quick as possible and change it. Japanese shoe factory can’t meet demand or is cutting corners? Fine, but find out quickly. If you fail fast, you succeed sooner. Imagine it this way: If you spend a year working on something only to find out it’s a failure, you’ve lost a year. Sure, you learned a great bit from the failure itself, but imagine if the failure happened much sooner.

It is true what he says about business making everything else in life feel like sure things. Having your own business is a risk. The risk goes the larger the business gets. My company recently hired its first full time employees. That means we’re growing, but the risk is that much greater: it’s not just the owners anymore, we’re responsible for five people and their livelihood. The revenue must come in to maintain these employees, let alone hire more in the future.

No Finish Line

“For that matter, few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that there’s no finish line; it’s that you define the finish line. Whatever pleasures or gains you derive from the act of running, you must find them within. It’s all in how you frame it, how you sell it to yourself.”

For Knight, running and business go hand-in-hand. This, of course, works on two levels as his business was running shoes (before branching out into other sports). Both are about pushing yourself, finding your own way to measure success, and come to the conclusion there is no real destination.

Why start a business? To become rich? Does that make money the measure of success? Or is it to make life better for others. How many others? How many bettered people would be considered a success? From day one, my business partners and I never discussed what would we considered success. But that’s okay, it didn’t stop us. But looking at it now, what would I consider ‘successful?’ For awhile it was yearly gross profit. That was a way to measure (and how most businesses measure) relative success. Was this year more profitable than last? But now success is measured in other ways to us. We have employees. We couldn’t do that if we weren’t growing; if we’re not growing than we must not be successful.

For a portion of Shoe Dog, Knight measured his success (and relayed it to others) by the number of pairs of shoes he sold. First hundreds, then thousands, eventually millions of running shoes sold first out of the trunk of his car later in company stores. But eventually, that huge number became irrelevant. He used it to try and secure more loans from the bank to keep his business going — buying more inventory and paying employees. But the numbers stopped mattering to the bank to extend his credit line. I believe Knight later found his measurement of success in the athletes he provided for. He speaks proudly of seeing Nike shoes at the Olympics for the first time — worn by American athletes winning medals in running and track and field. To him, success was taking care of these athletes by providing superior shoe design and material.

We recently experienced something similar as we worked to get a payroll loan from the bank for our new employees. We have just received the largest contract ever (by far) from a new, Fortune 500 level client. The contract is used as unsecured collateral in order to receive a line of credit from the bank for our brand new employees. To us, this contract was our measurement of success. To the bank, much like Knight, it doesn’t mean much. Also like Knight’s shoe business, we were only given barely enough to cover. While we saw our new contract as success, the bank clearly didn’t think much of it.

I don’t know if I have a finish line. Maybe I haven’t defined mine yet. Maybe it’s too early to see it. With my business, I’m somewhere in the middle of the race just trying to lead the pack. I’m not worried about it, the important thing now is to keep pushing. Our interim finish line is to provide this new client the best possible service and let the chips fall where they may.

Redefining ‘Winning’

“It seems wrong to call it “business”. It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher–and none of us wavered in the belief that “stakes” didn’t mean “money”. For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for use business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living–and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great business do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the life of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is–you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping other to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.”

I founded my business out of the needs of others. The kernel of my business idea was planted by my former job at Apple — hours, days behind the Genius Bar working with customers who weren’t able to get their needs addressed by the company. Particularly professions and businesses who were unable to bring their problems into the store. From there I convinced others that there was a need in this market, and I had the ability to fill it.

I’m proud my company was founded on solving the needs of others. Nobility aside, it proves of our right to exist. We meet a need that wasn’t being solved by others. Regardless of the size of the business, the need remains the same.

There’s something else above Knight’s quote above and Shoe Dog itself. Business is not glorious. Glory can be a component, an aspect of achievements earned by the business. But it’s mostly inglorious work. It’s bookkeeping, taking notes and making lists. Paying bills and contractors and employees. Knight’s allegory is correct: a business is very much like the inner workers of the human body, it never stops. Cash is merely part of that system; money goes in, money goes out. It’s these processes that keep the business moving to fill a need.

They say entrepreneurs learn to love the process. I think you have to or else you’ll never make it. If it’s all about the money, and you’re just waiting for the next payday, you’ll begin to lapse on the inglorious work. Things won’t get done or will slip. The business will break down.

There’s a tremendous more to Knight’s book than just his philosophy of business. The book itself is an experience from Knight’s adventures around the world (such as climbing Japan’s mount Fuji or seeing the Temple of Athena Nike in Greece), how a business goes from idea to full fledged movement, and the life of a runner in search of the perfect shoe. The book contains philosophies of life, quasi-mysticism of the business world, and just what never giving up can truly bring.

I miss this book. I loved listening to it and following Knight’s adventure. I was sad when it was over and it’s one of the few books I’ve read or listened to that gave a sense of true fulfillment. I cannot recommend it enough, especially if you’re thinking of going into business or even just looking for some guidance.

I think I’ll start it over again today.

Click this link to check out the book on Amazon. If you purchase it, it doesn’t cost any extra but I get a few cents from Amazon! You can also click on the image of the book all the way back at the top of this post to do the same.

Required Reading: 5 Takeaways From Cashflow Quadrant

“The only difference between a rich person and a poor person is what they do in their spare time.”
Robert Kiyosaki

One of the segments I want to do with this blog I’m called “Required Reading,” which essentially is a combination book review and recommendation. I’ll write a post on a particularly educational or useful book and break down the top 5 takeaways.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably familiar with the name Robert Kiyosaki. He burst on the scene in 1997 with Rich Dad Poor Dad and has built an empire around financial literacy and education. Cashflow Quadrant was the follow up in 2000 to the hugely successful 1997 book and the Kiyosaki book that had the biggest impact on me.

I usually recommend this book very early to people who want to change their financial lives. It’s not a how-to book. It’s not a “baby step” book that tells you what to do. It’s a book that rewires your brain and changes how you think about money, jobs, and wealth. Kiyosaki breaks it down in very simple terms, exposing the reality behind things we take for granted, such as being an employee and the tax system. Cashflow Quadrant is very much required reading for anyone looking to break out of the rat race. Below are my top 5 takeaways from the book (but you should really read the whole thing):

#1. As an Employee, The System is Against You

The said ‘quadrant’ of the title is made up of four types of income: “E” (Employee), “S” (Specialist or Self-Employed), “B” (Business Owner), and “I” (Investor). The vast majority of people are “Es” and are also the most disadvantaged of the four. As an employee, taxes (income, social security, medicare, etc) are taken from you before you get any money. You pay taxes and get what’s left. As an “S” or “B” you have tax advantages, such as deductions and depreciation. These lower the amount that’s taxable; you spend money and pay taxes on what’s left. To make matters worse, “Es” are also taxed at the highest rates!

“Your boss cannot make you rich,” Kiyosaki writes. “The reality is, your boss’s job is not to make you rich. Your boss’s job is to make sure you get your paycheck.” Which is then taxed. If you remain an employee, you’re working hard for taxes and what’s left. Being an employee also usually takes away a lot of your time. You’re at the whim of a manager or company — you must adhere to their schedule and demands. If you’re unwise about your money skills and budgeting, “then all the money in the world cannot save you…if you budget your money wisely, and learn about either the “B” or “I” quadrant, then you are on your own path to great personal fortune, and, most importantly, freedom.”

What’s even more messed up is the fact that The System only gives tax breaks for “Es” if you go further into debt. Think about it: as a business owner, your expenses and the “cost of doing business” are deductible from your income, reducing what you pay taxes on; as an “E” the only tax breaks you get are from taking on debt like a home mortgage or student loans. These two (usually large) loans have tax deductible interest. But you have to go into big time debt just to get the deduction. Simply put, you want to get out of the “E” quadrant as fast as possible.

#2. In Debt vs Indebted

“The more people you are indebted to, the poorer you are. And the more people you have indebted to you, the wealthier you are. That is the game.”

This one is brilliantly simple. If you owe a bank a mortgage, another bank credit card debt, another institution student loan debt, your parents $100 you borrowed, you are in debt to someone else. Your earned money is taken away by these debts. However, if someone owes you, you earn money by these debts. As a property renter or bond buyer or lending via a Peer-to-Peer lending service, people are indebted to you. “We are all in debt to someone else,” says Kiyosaki. “The problems occur when the debt gets out of balance.”

“The world simply takes from the poor, the weak, the financially uninformed. If you have too much debt, the world takes everything you have…your time, your work, your home, your life, your confidence, and then they take your dignity, if you let them. I did not make up this game, I do not make the rules, but I do know the game…”

#3. Mind Your Own Business

Kiyosaki shatters “Industrial Age” adages and beliefs against the rock of reality that is the 21st century. “Go to school and get good grades, so you can find a safe, secure job with good pay and excellent benefits,” he points to as out-of-date advice. “Work hard so you can buy the home of your dreams. After all, your home is an assent and is your most important investment.” “Having a large mortgage is good because the government gives you a tax deduction for your interest payments.” “Buy now, pay later.”

As Kiyosaki points out, people who “blindly follow” the advice above often end up as employees (“making their bosses and owners rich”), debtors (“making banks and money lenders rich”), taxpayers (“making the government rich”), and consumers (“making many other businesses rich”) The people following this advice are making everyone else rich but themselves! “They work all their lives minding everyone else’s.”

To break out of this, you must move into the “B” and “I” quadrants. Move from the employee to the employer. How do you do this? Start a business. Offer a product or service. To enter the “I” quadrant as an investor, learn about finance and investing. Buy stocks or bonds that generate income. Or buy an existing franchise! Don’t work at McDonald’s, own one. It may seem like a leap, but as Kiyosaki will repeat over and over, it’s about financial education. Don’t grow other people’s businesses, grow your own.

#4. Assets and Liabilities

Find any YouTube interview with Kiyosaki (or read any of his books) and I guarantee you will hear him mention these two things. “An asset,” he likes to say, “puts money into my pocket. A liability takes money out of my pocket.” He punctuates this always by stating “your home is NOT an asset!” The mindset is that buying a home with a large mortgage is an asset — this is archaic thinking — because the mortgage interest is tax deductible. But you still have the monthly mortgage payment. And property taxes. And Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) if you put down under 20%. Plus you have renovations and repairs. But a home becomes an asset when your rent it. The rent brings in monthly income. The repairs and renovations become tax deductible as business expenses.

Thinking more about these two things really changed my focus on spending money. When I spend money now, I think “is it an asset or a liability?” “Will it make my money or cost me money?” I get excited when I buy a new stock or more shares of a stock I already own. They’re going to go to work for me and make money. I had to buy a new car not long ago and groaned about the new liability — but if I use it to Uber or Amazon Flex, now it’s an asset because it puts money in my pocket. The gas I use and tires I purchase are now business expenses.

Assets and liabilities are as core to wealth as supply and demand.

#5. Other People’s Time and Money

“OPT” and “OPM” as Kiyosaki calls them are “found on the right side of the quadrant.” A “B” Business Owner and “I” investor become wealthy using other people’s time and money. It sounds sinister, but think it through. If you’re an employee, you have a job because someone built a business around an idea or product. Your paycheck is the direct result of someone else’s time and money. Put yourself on the other side of the equation: by putting in the time and money to start a business, you begin to earn back both at the expense of someone else’s who works for you.

The “I” quadrant is the most unique. In the “I”, Kiyosaki says “money works for you.” This is why I love investing so much. If I buy shares of Coca-Cola, the company is doing the work for me. The stock may increase in value, making me money. Then, every quarter, they pay me money in the form of a dividend. I don’t work for Coca-Cola. I don’t attend any meetings or drive anywhere. I don’t even get a paycheck from them. I get increased asset (there’s that word again!) value and a dividend. Best of all, I still have all of my time to dedicate to something else (or nothing, if I chose).

Kiyosaki: “A few years ago, I read this article that said most rich people received 70% of their income from investments, or the “I” quadrant, and less than 30% from wages, or the “E” quadrant. And if they were an “E”, chances were that they were employees of their own corporation.”

I have barely scratched the surface of Cashflow Quadrant with this post. It was one of the earliest books I read when I wanted to change my thinking on finances and wealth and it had one of the greatest impacts. It pulled back the curtain. It shook me out of a sleepwalking daze of going to work day in and day out, collecting a paycheck that was heavily taxed and withheld. It put me on the path to financial freedom. I cannot recommend it enough! To help you on your own personal wealth journey, I added a link to buy a copy below by clicking on the cover or here.

Required Reading: 5 Takeaways from The Millionaire Fastlane

If you read my “Top 10 Books For Financial Freedom” post, you’ll know that MJ Demarco’s The Millionaire Fastlane sat at my #1 spot. For me, this book changed everything in my journey to financial independence. Moreover, because I read it after reading so many other common authors on personal finance, DeMarco’s book came as a shock.

The first time I read it, I had to actually put it down after a few chapters because it scared the crap out of me. DeMarco’s arguments were sound, rational, and completely countered the more conventional ‘gurus’ and authors out there. I was midway through my personal financial transformation when I picked up The Millionaire Fastlane and it made me rethink my process. So without further ado, let’s get into it:

#1. “The Promise of Wealth…The Price? Your Life”

“By working faithfully 8 hours a day, you may eventually get to be the boss and work 12 hours a day.” ~ Robert Frost

The conventional financial ‘wisdom’ of financial gurus such as Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, or Tony Robbins is build around the idea of using time to compound investments. By continually contributing to a 401k or IRA and allowing it to compound (e.g., increase in value and reinvest dividends) over time, it becomes your method of financial freedom. As Ramsey calls it, a “Cash Mutual Fund Millionaire.” The key to this, of course, is time. Work a job for forty years, investing all the while. Take the employer 401k or IRA match. Let it grow, and when you retire at 65, you’ll have millionaires to “retire with dignity.”

DeMarco refers to this strategy as the ‘Slow Lane.’ He counterpunches: “It’s a lie so deceiving that when uncovered, decades of life have passed…The driving force behind behind wealth under Get Rich Slow is time — time employed at the job and time invested in the markets. Your glorious tomorrow might arrive after 40 years, when you’re living your last presidential administration and on your second hip replacement.”

DeMarco goes on to point out the best way to enjoy wealth is when it’s lived young, when you have “health, vibrancy, energy, and yes, maybe even some hair.” The idea of waiting to enjoy life when you’re older, breaking down, and possibly even bedridden does not come across as appealing. You give up the good, healthy years to be free during the older, medically-dependent years.

Even worse, what’s the guarantee you’ll even make it? The average life expectancy (as of 2018) in the U.S. is 76. That means working for 40 years to enjoy 11 (if you retire at 65). The math isn’t worth it. DeMarco brings up the fact that, even if you do live long enough to retire, there’s no guarantee you’ll be a millionaire. The gurus’ plans don’t work without a job, or if the market goes south, or if a housing crisis wipes out 40% of your illiquid net worth in a year (as the 2008 crisis exposed to many).

#2. Your Definition of Wealth Has Been Corrupted

“Money doesn’t buy happiness when it’s misused,” DeMarco writes. “Instead of money buying freedom, it buys bondage.” The idea is that people want to feel wealth, so they buy things they cannot afford to look wealthy. By craving respect and admiration, you expect wealth to bring you into happiness. “Society says wealth is “stuff,” and because of this faulty definition, the bridge between wealth and happiness collapses.”

Indeed, wealth has become something of a dirty word in society in the era of “We Are the 99%.” Wealth is equated with sports cars, big houses, and showing off lavish vacations on Instagram. These objects of wealth are sources of envy and disdain, leading many people to sneer at the mention of wealth or money. However, DeMarco says, “used properly, money buys freedom.” Freedom buys choice. Those that chose to use money to flaunt fake wealth end up deeply in debt trying to maintain it, and are forced to work to pay that debt and keep the cycle going.

DeMarco illustrates wealth as freedom further:

Money buys the freedom to watch your kids grow up
Money buys the freedom to pursue your craziest dreams
Money buys the freedom to make a difference in the world
Money buys the freedom to build and strengthen relationships
Money buys the freedom to do what you love, with financial validation removed from the equation

These are nothing to be ashamed of.

#3. “Wealth is a Process, Not an Event”

Earning wealth is not a sexy process. Sexy is winning the lottery, opening your front door to find Ed McMahon with a giant check, or hitting it big at the casino. However, these events are highly, highly unlikely and cannot be planned or earned, no matter how much effort or time is put into it. As DeMarco puts it, “Millionaires are forged by process…self made millionaires create their wealth by a carefully orchestrated process.”

The ‘process’ never makes the headlines. DeMarco uses the examples of an athlete scoring a $50 million contract or an Internet wiz selling his company for $30 million. The ‘event’ (the contract or deal) is “showcased for all to admire.” People read about it and say “gee, if only I could be so lucky.” What’s not lauded is the amount of work it took to get there. Years of shooting free throws alone in a gym or endless nights coding alone in the dark are unsexy. The process is hidden from the headlines, buried deep in paragraphs or tucked into the end of the story.

Wealth takes time. Don’t plan to inherit a family fortune, to win the lottery, or file frivolous lawsuits trying to win big. Do it one step at a time. Put the hours in. Be okay with things taking time; learn to respect and enjoy the process. As a reminder, 70% of lottery winners go broke because they didn’t have a process. They won money through an event and quickly spent it away because they didn’t earn it.

#4. Never Start a Business ‘Doing What You Love’

This one was a bit of shocker. Not because I started a business out of doing what I loved, but because it’s such a common saying. Do you love animals? Open a pet grooming shop. Do you love doing yoga? Open a yoga studio. If you’re going to put time and money into a business, why not do what you love? It only makes logical sense right?

DeMarco points out the fatal flaw: opening a business doing what you love does not guarantee business. Most business started out of a love of something end up shuttering their doors due to lack of customers. They weren’t started to satisfy a ‘need’ or no ‘need’ was identified to build a business around the solution. Without a guarantee of customers who have a need for your solution, it’s not going to work.

“Stop thinking about business in terms of your selfish desires, whether it’s money, dreams or “do what you love.” Instead, chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.”

I can testify to this. I started my business in 2014 after identifying a need working at Apple. Business owners and customers all wanted on-site support or installation, which Apple refused to provide (for a myriad of reasons). It eventually got to the point where customers were offering bribes to get me to come to their house or office to resolve issues or help them. I eventually quit my job to build a business around these needs. Five years later, the company is doing more business than ever before.

So what does DeMarco suggest to finally do what you love? If you go back to #2 on this list, the answer is have wealth first. If you build a business around a need, you’ll have customers. Customer will bring wealth. Wealth will allow you to do whatever you want, including pursuing what you love to do.

#5. Instead of Digging For Gold, Sell Shovels

I love the wisdom of “What’s the best way to get rich in a gold rush? Sell shovels.” Being a producer is the fastest way to become wealthy. What is a producer? Someone who has something to offer. As Robert Kiyosaki says, “Have something to sell. The poor have nothing to sell.”

DeMarco: “Instead of digging for gold, sell shovels. Instead of taking a class, offer a class. Instead of borrowing money, lend it. Instead of taking a job, hire for jobs. Instead of taking a mortgage, hold a mortgage. Break free from consumption, switch sides, and reorient to the world as producer.”

The point is, make yourself valuable. If you have a valuable or useful skill, people will seek you out. If you have something to offer, customers will be found. A lot of the mentality I find — especially among coworkers and family — is based around “what can I buy” or “how much can I have.” It’s a consumer culture. We are bombarded with advertisements and incentives to consume. It’s up to you to change your way of thinking, “switch sides” as DeMarco calls it, and become the one offering to consumers. “If millions seek you,” he adds, “you will be paid millions.”

I highly recommend The Millionaire Fastlane to anyone interested in breaking free of The Slow Lane or even The Sidewalk. It will change your way of thinking and hopefully set you in a direction to prosperity and financial freedom. I could easily have expanded my top 5 takeaways to top 10 or even 15, but this post would have gone on forever. DeMarco followed up The Millionaire Fastlane with a sequel, called UNSCRIPTED, which I will cover in another blog post! Pick up a copy of The Millionaire Fastlane (you can do so by clicking the book above) and take off down the Fastlane.