The Millionaire Fastlane - Book Review

📌 Key points

1. The sidewalk, slowlane, and fastlane

The main theme is the book is the shift from a life to sidewalk, slowlane, to a fastlane.

1. Sidewalk

   • Formula is (Wealth = Income + Debt)
   • Undisciplined credit card use, showing off to other people.

2. Slowlane

   • Formula is (Wealth = Income + Investments)
   • Whereas the sidewalk focuses on instant gratification. The slowlane also refered to the traditional path involves a much more strategic approach to wealth albeit slower. Going to school, getting a job, climbing the corporate ladder, saving and investing. This is the path that most people take and is often considered the "safe" path. However, as the author have mentioned, this path is not necessarily safe and can be risky in its own way. The risk is that we are relying on a single entity (our employer) for our income and financial security. We are also relying on the hope that we will get a promotion or a raise in the future. This path also often involves sacrificing our time and freedom for the sake of security.
   • One of the thought-provoking parts of the slowlane is debunking compound interests. Inflation, life expectancy, assumptions, and the real world unpredictability errodes compound interest. We can reap the rewards of investment through two things: having a large sum of capital OR investing for a long time. For most people
   • A great analogy MJ puts is the analogy of the titanic sinking. The ship will sink in 2 hours, yet our neighbor says to calm down and relax since the rescue ship will come in 6 hours.
   • One of the key takeaways from the book I haven't seen in other book summaries is that there is essentially two ways to break the slowlane formula. Through climbing the corporate ladder or popularity.
   • Despite this, the slowlane still works for a lot of people. Take my first developer job as an example. I used it as a stepping stone as I had zero experience in the workforce as a college dropout. That first job gave me the necessary experience and skills to progress in my career and brand. The danger of the slowlane arises when it is the only path we take. And as our friend MJ puts it, there are smarter paths we can take, namely: the fastlane.

3. Fastlane

   • Formula is (Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value)
   • The fastlane is categorized as utilizing leverage to create wealth. Leverage can come in many forms: media, attention, code, time, skills, and more. The key is to leverage these resources to create value for others at scale.
   • The most potent seedlings include: rental systems, software systems, content systems, distribution systems, and human resource systems. The list is not exhaustive and absolute and can interbreed with one another.
   • Living below our means fits the fastlane with a distinction of expanding our means.
   • Following the NECTS framework increases the likelihood of our business success.
   • The fastlane still utilizes investment but not as the primary source of income.

2. Wealth is a process not event

Wealth is forged by the process, event is what the world sees. A pitfall I personally encountered is the thought of resigning my job after reading a couple self-help business books and seeing how others share their app's overnight success. And while some people have exceled and accomplish making their business thrive, the reality is it involves careful planning, strategizing, and a lot of work involved to make it happen. It feels good, motivating and productive to the read those books and see those highlights at the moment. However, it is not a guarantee that crossing the finish line will follow and there are often unseen work in those "overnight" success. The lesson is to focus on the process and not the event.

Some example of event-driven decisions includes resigning from a job, dropping out of college, posting on social media that we just started a new business, or seeing the highs and successes of other people.

Some example of process-driven decisions include showing up everyday and doing the work, working when no one else sees it, figuring out how to solve a problem and move the needle, and consistently improving our skills.

3. Switch from a consumer to a producer mindset

Perhaps the most important lesson from this book is the identity shift from being a consumer to a producer. Since our birth, we are often taught to consume anything that comes into our way: food, education, media, entertainment, and more. However, if we actually rationalize how some people seem to have access to disproportionate amount of resources and opportunities than the average. They are often the ones that produces the most value to others. Be it providing entertainment, comfort, relief, enriching others' lives or simply being useful to someone else.

This is a hard thing since it involves undoing the things that we have been taught for so long. Think: the conscious effort to learn how to code than playing video games, the decision to improve your soft skills (which I still practice and struggle with) than to pick up your phone and scroll for hours on end or anything that requires effort and skill to produce. All of which demands effort, perseverance and a thirst for self-improvement. Or as the law of equivalent exchange in the fictional series Fullmetal Alchemist puts it: to obtain something, something of equal value must be lost.

In my opinion, a telltale sign of internalizing this mindset is the neverending thought of leaving a legacy into the world in some form. Think: an product, service, app, channel or presence to an audience.

4. The five commandments - NECST/CENTS

The five commandments are a set of principles and framework that we can follow to increase the likelihood of success of our fastlane business. As our friend MJ mentioned, one can break one or more of these commandments and still reap success but satisfying most increases our odds significantly.

1. Commandment of Need

   • The most important commandment hence why it's the first. This is about identifying a genuine need in the market that your product or service can address.
   • We are often blinded by our own passion and wants but as mentioned in the book, the market does not care about our personal interests. It only cares about what value we provide. A personal example is why I created a PDF app is not because I'm passionate about editing PDFs at birth, but because it is a pain point that I and many people have.
   • As the author have mentioned, we don't need to reinvent the wheel and be the next Facebook. We just need to find a gap in the market that we can fill by identifying value skews (i.e customer service, UI/UX, entertainment value) that we can improve upon.

2. Commandment of Entry

   • Difficulty is the opportunity. Ideally the fastlane business that we should pursue is one with a high barrier to entry. One that can't easily be replicated by others. If the venture that we pursue is one that just takes up 5 minutes of your time to fill up a form, then we really are just hitchiking someone else's business.
   • Example of this include: figuring out how to buy a domain from a provider and configuring the DNS, knowing how to use a cloud provider, or UI/UX design. All esoteric topics that detest competition and creates a natural moat around our venture. The more barrier the better.

3. Commandment of Control

   • Control is about mitigating risks by not relying on a single point of failure. If we rely solely on one distribution, channel or provider for everything, we are exposed to significant risk.
   • In my opinion this is also the reason why being loyal to a job also carries its own risk. We have no control about job layoffs, salary cuts, or company decisions. However excellent we may perform at work, we have no control about yearly salary increase. But by diversifying our income streams: job, business, investments we mitigate these risks.

4. Commandment of Scale

   • Our fastlane business should have to potential to scale or distribute to many people. The internet is a great channel for achieving this.
   • We can satisfy this commandment through the law of effection.

5. Commandment of Time

   • The last commandment is time. Ideally our business should thrive divorced from our time. In his 2nd book, Unscripted, this is often the last commandment to consider of our priorities as it's been corrupted in its meaning.
   • A business that can't be detached from our time is secretly a job.

5. The law of effection

To create wealth we must impact millions. The more lives we impact the greater reward we reap. Whereas the law of attraction is a theory, law of effection is not.

According to the our friend MJ, the law of effection can be satisfied in two ways. Scale x Magnitude. Scale is a measure of how many people we impact, while magnitude is a measure of how great the impact on each individual. When we view money as just a representation of how much value we have impacted people at scale x magnitude. Entitlement disappears. Our relationship with money becomes healthier. We focus on becoming genuinely useful to people and the money follows.

From my couple of years of experience in the workforce, one of the key distinctions I have observed is that people who make money outside of the traditional path often have audience. A traditional business caters to customers, a social media channel has subscribers, a web or mobile app has users, the list goes on. Whereas in a job we serve only one entity: our employer. In a non-traditional path we serve a group of people. This is the law of effection. To make wealth we must focus on impacting the lives of many people.

⚖️ Verdict

• 9.8 / 10 - Highly recommended, very insightful and contrarian to traditional advice.
• The book can sound harsh and polarizing at times but that's what makes it resonate with a lot of readers who agree with the lessons.
• The book offers fantastic advice not just on wealth and finance but on how to rethink life design.
• The book offers not just mindset shifts but practical courses of action for improving our lives.
• The book is a must-read for anyone looking to seek alternative paths from the traditional career and financial advice.

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