The Millionaire Fastlane (19 page)

As Azur walks away, he chides, “You fool! Pharaoh will hang you in the gallows when he discovers your treason.”

Another year passes and Azur solidifies the base of his pyramid and begins the second level. Except a problem arises. Azur struggles in his progress. The stones are heavy and he cannot raise them to the pyramid's second level. Challenged by his physical limitations, Azur recognizes his weakness: he needs more strength to move heavier stones, and to do so, seeks the counsel of Bennu, Egypt's strongest man. For a fee, Bennu trains Azur to build bigger and stronger muscles. With great strength, Azur anticipates the heavier stones will be easier to lift onto the higher levels.

Meanwhile, Chuma's pyramid plot of land is still barren. Azur assumes his brother has a death wish since, by all appearances, Chuma is violating Pharaoh's mandate. Azur forgets about his brother and his nonexistent pyramid.

Another year passes and Azur's pyramid construction slows to a disheartening crawl. It often takes one month just to place one stone. Moving stones to the upper levels require great strength and Azur spends much of his time working with Bennu to build greater strength.

Additionally, Azur is spending most of his money on counseling fees and the exotic diet required for the training. Azur estimates at his current construction pace, his pyramid will be completed in another 30 years. Unfazed, Azur lauds, “After three years, I've far surpassed my brother. He hasn't placed one stone yet! That fool!”

Then, suddenly, one day while hauling a heavy stone up his pyramid, Azur hears a loud commotion erupting from the town square. The townsfolk, regular observers to his work, abruptly abandon his plot to examine the celebratory fuss. Curious himself, Azur takes a break and leaves to investigate.

Surrounded by a cheering crowd, Chuma trolls up the town square commandeering a 25-foot contraption, a towering machine built from a twisted maze of gantries, wheels, levers, and ropes. As Chuma slowly moves up the village street amidst the buoyant crowd, Azur fears the explanation. After a short trawl to Chuma's barren pyramid plot, Azur's suspicions are confirmed.

Within minutes, Chuma's strange machine starts moving heavy stones and begins to lay the foundation to his pyramid. One after another, the machine effortlessly lifts the stones and softly places them side-by-side into place. Miraculously, the machine requires little effort for Chuma's operation. Crank a wheel attached to a rope and cantilever entwined by a gear system, and bingo! Heavy stones are moved quickly and magically.

While Azur's pyramid foundation took over a year to build, Chuma lines up the foundation to his pyramid within one week. The second level that Azur so arduously struggled with is even more shocking: Chuma's machine does the work 30 times quicker. What took Azur two months takes Chuma's machine two days. After 40 days, Chuma and his machine accomplish as much as Azur's three years of toilsome work.

Azur was destroyed. He spent years doing the heavy lifting while
Chuma built a machine to do it for him.

Instead of honoring the machine, Azur vows, “I must get stronger! I must lift heavier stones!” Azur continues the hard labor of pyramid building while Chuma continues to work the crank of his machine.

After eight years, Chuma finishes his pyramid at age 26: three years to build the system and five years to reap the benefits of the system. The great pharaoh is pleased and does as promised. He rewards Chuma with kingship and endows him with great riches. Chuma never has to work another day in his life.

Meanwhile, Azur continues to dredge away at the same old routine. Lift rocks, waste time and money to get stronger, lift rocks, and get stronger. Sadly, Azur refuses to acknowledge his flawed strategy and endures the same old process: Carry heavy stones until you can lift no more … then get stronger so you can lift heavier stones.

This mindless prescription leads Azur to a lifetime of toil. He never finishes his pyramid promised to Pharaoh simply because he decides to do the heavy lifting himself when
he should have focused on a system to do it for him
. Azur has a heart attack and dies while on the 12th level of his pyramid, just two levels from finishing. He never experiences the great riches promised by Pharaoh.

Meanwhile, Chuma retires 40 years early in a crown of luxury. Sloshing in free time, Chuma goes on to become Egypt's greatest scholar and an accomplished inventor. He is entombed alongside Pharaoh in the same pyramid he built.

The Fastlane Is a Business System: The Slowlane Is a Job

The Slowlane is a job: your hard work traded for your employer's cash. Azur's struggles resemble that of a Slowlaner; to get rich, you're told to get stronger (spend money, return to school, and earn more in the job market) so you can lift heavier stones. The Fastlane is about building a better system, a better contraption, a better product, or a better “something” that will leverage your work. In the Slowlane, you are the source of heavy lifting, while in the Fastlane,
you construct a system that does it for you
.

On your wealth road trip, the Slowlane roadmap asks that you endure a long, tiresome walk to wealth. The toil of wealth is the process itself. In the Fastlane, wealth is driven in a business system you create-the toil is the creation and management of the system itself.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• The risk profile of a Fastlane strategy isn't much different from the Slowlane, but the rewards are far greater.
  
• The Fastlane Roadmap is an alternative financial strategy predicated on Controllable Unlimited Leverage.
  
• The Fastlane roadmap is predisposed to wealth.
  
• The Fastlane Roadmap is capable of generating “Get Rich Quick” results, not to be confused with “Get Rich Easy.”
  

CHAPTER 17: SWITCH TEAMS AND PLAYBOOKS

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
~ Benjamin Franklin

The Fastlane Roadmap: The Playbook for Wealth

Losing teams use losing playbooks. Play for a losing team and you're stuck using their losing playbook. To win, switch teams and use the winner's playbook. The Fastlane roadmap creates financial winners because it uses a winning formula rooted in unlimited and controllable mathematics. Where is this playbook and how do you get it? You have to forsake the ideology of the majority and become a Slowlane traitor.

Switching Teams and the Playbook

From the day you were born, you were baptized to play for
Team Consumer
, from the Barbie Doll and the Tonka Truck to the
Star Wars
action figures. You've been conditioned to demand: to want products, to need products, to buy products, and of course, to seek out the cheapest of those products.

The correlation between the Slowlane and the Sidewalk is this: Jobs exist to facilitate the consumer process. You become a brand manager for a consumer products company, you become an insurance agent, you become an accountant for some corporation-it's consumer driven and focused to move goods and services into the hands of consumers. This “consumer” focus is like a gravitational pull to keep you amenable to anti-Fastlane thinking.

Cracking the Code

Decoding the Fastlane roadmap is as simple as joining the team that is custodian to the decryption key. The winning team is
Team Producer
. Reshape life's focus on producing, not consuming. When you reframe your thinking from majority thinking (consumer) to minority thinking (producer), you effectively switch teams and allegiances. Yes,
become a producer first and a consumer second.

Applied, this means instead of buying products on TV, sell products. 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.

I know; it's not easy. However, once you see the world from a producer perspective, your perception sharpens like a fine-tuned radio frequency, from static to clear stereo sound. Suddenly, opportunities have clarity, ideas surface, and scams are exposed. This new minority status is critical to strengthening your wealth creation temperament. Remember, the rich are a minority, and you want to be in that minority. It starts with a producer mindset.

Producer Reorientation

When you encounter an advertising message that coaxes you to buy something, examine it from the producer perspective. How does this company make money? What is the aim of its message? What kind of business processes are involved in offering this product or service? Is this company making a profit? What is the revenue model? Is this product manufactured overseas or locally?

I've never bought a product on late night television, because I'm on the same team. As a producer, I see the infomercials for what they are: producers (the minority) serving the consumer (the majority). The “act nows,” the “but wait, there's more!” the “free bonuses”-these are marketing weapons in a producer's arsenal. I watch infomercials not to buy, but to see what the pros are doing.

As producers, our job is to entice consumers to buy. As a producer locked into a producer mindset,
I attract wealth because consumers seek producers
. Consumers are the majority who demand their fill!

To Consume Richly, Produce Effectively

And the irony of this producer/consumer dichotomy? Once you succeed as a producer, you can consume anything you want with little consequence because you'll be rich.

To consume richly, produce richly first
. Unfortunately, most people have it backward: consumption and no production. Producers get rich. Consumers get poor. Switch teams and reorient as a producer first, a consumer second. Make wealth attracted to you!

Be a Producer: Leverage the Business of a System

To switch teams and become a producer, you need to be an entrepreneur and an innovator. You need to be a visionary and a creator. You need to give birth to a business and offer the world value.

While the centrist theme to the Slowlane is a job, in the Fastlane, it's a business. Yes, good old self-employment. I know, not breaking news for “get rich” books, however, it's important to note that most small business owners are light years away from a Fastlane and dickering with Slowlane metrics. Some businesses masquerade as jobs!

A Fastlane business is the key to the Fastlane wealth equation (Wealth = Profit+ Asset Value) because it unlocks LEVERAGE, a new set of wealth variables that are unlimited and controllable, whereas in the Slowlane, they are limited and uncontrollable. Yes, ULL is swapped for CUL.

For example, the sale of this book extricates me from the Slowlane wealth equation and its universe. This book puts me into the Fastlane universe, which is governed by its wealth equation of net profit and asset value. This book is a business system that has unlimited leverage in both time and money! First, it survives time and it is capable of earning income long after my original time investment. This book effectively transfers the act of income generation from me (the human asset) to the book (the business asset).

From start to finish, this book cost roughly 1,000 hours of my time. If I sell 100,000 books at $5 profit each, I earn $500,000, or roughly $500 per hour invested. If I sell 500,000 books, I will earn $2,500 per hour invested. The more I sell, the greater the return on my original time investment, as I already paid the time. Imagine 10 years from today I sell one copy of this book. Suddenly I earn $5 from a time investment I made years ago!

But it gets better! If I guest-speak on a radio show for 10 minutes and that appearance yields 1,000 book sales, this 10-minute investment yields $5,000 in income (1,000 books X $5 profit) and yields a return on my time at $30,000 per hour. Can you get rich trading your time for $30,000 per hour? Yes you can, and awfully fast.

You see, when you unlock yourself from the handcuffs of time imposed by the Slowlane roadmap, you assign income to a system that leverages unlimited mathematics, and
fast wealth becomes possible
. The variables in my wealth universe can be controlled and leveraged. In the next chapter you will discover why the Fastlane can deliver financial freedom and wealth faster than any mutual fund can.

Chapter Summary: Fastlane Distinctions

• Producers are indigenous to the Fastlane roadmap.
  
• Producers are the minority as are the rich, while consumers are the majority as are the poor.
  
• When you succeed as a producer, you can consume anything you want.
  
• Fastlaners are producers, entrepreneurs, innovators, visionaries, and creators.
  
• A business does not make a Fastlane-some businesses are jobs in disguise.
  
• The Fastlane wealth equation is not bound by time and its variables are unlimited and controllable.
  

CHAPTER 18: HOW THE RICH REALLY GET RICH

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
~ TS Eliot

The Burning Question: “How Did You Get Rich?”

Drive any car that costs more than most people's homes and strangers will accost you with the question, “What do you do for a living?” This seemingly innocuous question “fronts” for the real question burning inside … “How did you get rich?”

People want to know the road I've taken so they can assess their likelihood to travel that same road. When I prompt for a guess, the answers are typical: Athlete. Actor. A spoiled brat indulged by rich parents. A lottery winner. These speculative “answers” unmask the reality behind people's perceptions: To get rich you have to get famous, inherit money , or win money. That's what I thought, until I met that stranger in his Lamborghini so many years ago.