The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!

“Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.” - Jodie Foster

Many of us think that being rich is naturally a slow process: you must first work long hours to save money and invest it wisely, only to get rich when you’re already old. The problem with this model is that you are young only once, and sacrificing your life to get rich does not make much sense. That’s why the concept “Get rich slow” is a losing game.

The good news is that there is actually an alternative way to get rich—that is, to go with the Fastlane. Here, you don't have to be famous or physically talented; you just have to accept the fact that change can happen instantly and work your way toward it. Those who succeeded in this path are often self-made and unfamous millionaires capable of building wealth exponentially, not linearly.

“The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” - Lao Tzu

Getting wealthy is a process, not an event. It’s not as simple as just seeing a cooked meal; it’s about seeing the process that has been completed to cook that meal. It is the same with millionaires: it’s not enough to simply say they have millions; you also need to understand the process they had to go through to get them.

If you also want to be a millionaire, you need to change your beliefs in a way that will support you, not against you. If you believe that people get wealthy because of the stock market, that is how you will act. Similarly, if you believe it is possible for you to get wealthy fast, you will set it as a goal, and consequently, you may achieve it!

There are three financial roadmaps we can choose from: the Sidewalk, the Slowlane, and the Fastlane. Your destination will be determined by the roadmap you choose to abide by.

The Sidewalk, or the path to poorness, is the path most traveled because it’s the path of least resistance. People who pursue this path have no plans at all. They trust that the system will take care of them; they acquire formal education and a standard career path, believing this will make them happy and wealthy.

Some signs that may indicate you’re a Sidewalker are: You finished your formal education and haven’t learned anything since then, you change your job frequently, live paycheck to paycheck, and so on.

Sidewalkers will remain Sidewalkers if they keep making poor financial decisions. Sure, you might get lucky, win money, or get a good contract for creative work, but if you don’t make good decisions, you will still be broke despite your best efforts.

The second roadmap is the Slowlane, or the path toward mediocrity. This is usually chosen by those who want to be smarter. They educate themselves financially and believe the key to getting rich is saving enough money every month. While this may be possible, they’ll only get rich when they’re already old. Besides, so many random events may occur on the way, which may prevent them from attaining wealth.

If you decide to take this path, be prepared to work a lot—without much time for your family or entertainment—hoping that in the far future, you will finally get what you want. But since we are young only once, it’s not wise to trade our best period of life for the hope of a better life in the future. So, what’s the best path to take? Simply, the Fastlane.

The Fastlane is an alternative strategy for getting rich fast. It's not about a get-rich-fast scheme advertised here and there but about making smart decisions and smart moves to build a system that will earn money for us. Unlike in the Slowlane, working hard is not enough here; you need to work on building a money-generating machine that will take care of your life.

To do this, you need to be the producer instead of the consumer. In other words, you need to be an entrepreneur, innovator, visionary, and creator. You also need to build your own tree that grows money, often called “passive income.”

Passive income is an income that works even when you sleep or are on vacation. People who own businesses but must work 12 hours a day to make the company survive are not rich people because they exchange time for money. Generally, there are five areas in which you can create passive income for yourself: rental systems (e.g., renting apartments), computer systems (e.g., making a popular mobile app), content systems (e.g., writing a book), distribution systems (e.g., Amazon.com), and human-resource systems (a company that relies on people working in it).

To earn millions, you don’t have to rely on wishful thinking. Even the well-known Law of Attraction does not work at all. Instead, think about impacting millions of people. The more people you impact, the wealthier you will be. This is how the Law of Effection works: the more lives you affect in an entity you control, the richer you will become.

“Wealth isn’t embodied in not embodied in a car but in the freedom to know that you can buy it.”

There are three essential elements of wealth: relationships (with family, friends, community, and God), fitness, and freedom.

Contrary to popular belief, money doesn’t actually buy happiness—neither does poverty. In reality, happiness is strongly connected to relationships and freedom. People with strong family bonds, many friends, and a well-connected community are the happiest in the world; so are people with freedom. However, you can’t attain this freedom if you spend most of your life in a job you don’t enjoy.

What’s worse is that if your money is misused, it will give you even less freedom and less happiness. So if you want greater happiness, you need to use your money well. To achieve this, you need to take full responsibility in every area of your life first. Then, be accountable and work on those areas.

“Until we see what we are, we cannot take steps to become what we should be.” - Charlotte P. Gilman

The idea that “you should pay yourself first,” or taking a portion of your income for savings first before paying everything else, is common advice, but it might not be as good as it seems. That’s because you cannot pay yourself first if you don’t own yourself. You can do it only if you own your vehicle.

If your income comes from your job, it means you don’t own yourself, and you’re paying the government first, not yourself. To have your own vehicle, you must work on owning a corporation you can control.

On your journey to owning your vehicle, you need to be careful of your choices. Poorness comes from bad choices. Similarly, wealth comes from good choices. Choices are the steering wheel of your life.

The biggest obstacle to getting millions is your environment and the people you surround yourself with. It would be easy to go in the Fastlane if we knew a few people who went that way. However, almost all of the people around us do not truly believe in us, and what’s more, they get us down, so you must beware of toxic relationships with people.

Aside from relationships, you must also pay attention to how you spend your biggest asset—time. People who exchange time for money do not actually have much time to really live. That’s why it’s important to value time. We only have so much time in our lives, so we must spend it wisely.

To successfully reach the path toward wealth, it’s not enough to be interested in something; you must commit and work hard toward it. It’s not enough if you are interested in e-commerce. Only commitment and hard work will provide you with results.

There are five commandments for everyone who wants to go in the Fastlane.

1. The Commandment of Need: Instead of just following your passion or doing what you love in business, think of a solution to an existing problem. Most businesses fail because they are based on selfish internal needs rather than external market needs. So, stop chasing money and start caring for people’s needs, problems, pain points, and emotions.

2. The Commandment of Entry: The businesses with easier entry levels are more crowded with competition. If the entry level is high, there are fewer competitors, and it’s easier to do a profitable business. However, to create the proper business, you also need the right process first. Remember not to do something just because everyone’s doing it. Instead, learn to stay out of the ordinary and pursue the opposite. For example, if everyone is buying real estate, you should be selling it, and vice versa.

3. The Commandment of Control: To earn good money, you need full control over your business. This means being the driver, not the passenger of your own vehicle. For example, selling licenses instead of buying them, offering affiliate programs instead of just joining them, and so on. When you own the business, you have direct control over them — and you can pay yourself first over everything else!

4. The Commandment of Scale: It’s impossible to have a highly profitable business if you act only in the local market. To impact millions, you must cover a large area with your business. Think of a business that you can easily scale nationwide, and it will make millions for you.

5. The Commandment of Time: Your business should continue to operate even if you don’t have time for it. To do this, you need to create a business that can be automated. If you create a business that needs lots of your time, you don’t have a business; you have a job.

When creating a business, remember that you don’t need to invent a completely new idea. Competition is everywhere, and regardless of your hard work, you will most likely not find anything new. So, it’s best just to enter an existing market and provide a better solution than everybody else. This is how Facebook, Google, Walmart, Starbucks, and many other popular companies succeed. When you learn to observe people and discover what they are complaining about or what can be improved, you will likely find a business idea worth developing and selling to the market.

Building a successful business is more about execution, not the idea. Great ideas without good execution are worth almost nothing. But mediocre ideas with great execution are worth a lot.

This is similar to how business plans work. While it may be helpful to some, business plans are actually useless if you don’t execute them. Besides, most plans do not work anyway. So, it’s better just to jump right in and start executing what needs to be done; eventually, the world will tell you what it wants and where to go.

While running your business, remember to always listen to your customers’ complaints. If one user is complaining, ten others are likely feeling the same way, too. So react to each complaint and use it to create a superior product. However, you should only filter the feedback you’ll respond to. Trying to please everybody is a recipe for failure.

If you’re running a small company alone, try your best to make it appear big as it can by providing proper customer support. This will help your customers support your brand more. Conversely, if you decide to build a business with a partner, you should think of it like a marriage: You have to know each other well because you will spend a big chunk of your lives together, and you will have to deal with all the arising problems together.

Finally, remember to focus on one business only. While it might be tempting to run many businesses, they can just make you distracted, and none of these businesses will succeed.