by MJ DeMarco
That day was like any other day: I sought ice cream. I plotted the flavor of my next indulgence and headed toward the ice cream parlor.
When I arrived, there IT was. I was face to face with my dream car; a Lamborghini Countach famous from the 80s hit movie Cannonball Run. Parked stoically like an omnipotent king, I gazed upon it like a worshiper beholden to its God. Awestruck, any thoughts of ice cream were ousted from my brain.
Posterized on my bedroom walls and drooled upon in my favorite car magazines, I was acutely familiar with the Lamborghini Countach: cunning, evil, obscenely fast, spaceship doors, and ungodly expensive. Yet, here it was just a few feet away, like Elvis resurrected. Its raw tangible grandeur was like an artisan coming face to face with an authentic Monet. The lines, the curves, the smell . . .
I gawked for a few minutes, until a young man left the ice cream parlor and headed toward the car. Could this be the owner? No way. He couldn’t have been more than 25 years old. Dressed in blue jeans and an oversized flannel shirt with what I spied to be an Iron Maiden concert shirt underneath, I reasoned this couldn’t be the owner. I expected an old guy: wrinkled, receding gray hairline, and dressed two seasons late. Not so.
“What the heck?” I mulled. How could a young guy afford such a kick-ass automobile? For God’s sake, that car costs more than the house I live in! It’s got to be a lottery winner, I speculated. Hmmm . . . or maybe some rich kid who inherited the family fortune. No, it’s a pro athlete. Yes, that’s it, I concluded.
Suddenly, a dare invaded my head: “Hey, why don’t you ask the guy what he does for a living?” Could I? I stood on the sidewalk, dumbfounded while I argued with myself. Emboldened and washed with adrenaline, I found my legs moving toward the car as if my brain weren’t agreeable. In the back of my mind, my brother taunted, “Danger, Will Robinson, danger!”
Sensing my approach, the owner quickly opened his door and hid his trepidation with a forced smile. Whoa. The car’s door flung up into the sky, vertically, as opposed to swinging out sideways like a normal car. It threw me off what little game I had and I tried to maintain composure, as if cars with futuristic doors were standard. What couldn’t have been more than 20 words seemed like a novel. My opportunity was here and I snatched it. “Excuse me, sir?” I nervously muttered, hoping he wouldn’t ignore me. “May I ask what you do for a living?”
Relieved that I wasn’t a teenage derelict, the owner kindly responded: “I’m an inventor.” Perplexed that his answer didn’t match my guesses; my prepared follow-up questions were nullified, paralyzing my next move. I stood there frozen like the ice cream I had sought minutes earlier. Sensing an escape opportunity, the young Lamborghini owner plunked into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and started the engine. The loud roar of the exhaust swept through the parking lot, alerting all life forms to the Lamborghini’s formidable presence. Whether I liked it or not, the conversation was over.
Knowing it might be years before I could enjoy a similar spectacle, I took mental inventory of the automotive unicorn before me. I left awakened and motivated as if a neural pathway suddenly smacked open in my brain.
The Liberation from Fame and Talent
What changed that day? I was exposed to the Fastlane and a new truth. As for the sweets I pursued that day, I never made it into the store. I turned around and went home with a new reality. I wasn’t athletic, I couldn’t sing, and I couldn’t act, but I could get rich as an entrepreneur.
From that point forward, things changed. The Lamborghini encounter lasted 90 seconds, but transcended a lifetime of new beliefs, new studies, and altered choices. I decided that someday I would own a Lamborghini and I would do it while I was young. I was not waiting until my next chance encounter or my next poster: I wanted it for myself. Yes, I retired the broomstick and got off my lazy ass.
The Search for the Millionaire Fastlane
After the Lamborghini encounter, I made a conscious effort to study young millionaires who weren’t famous or physically talented. But I wasn’t interested in all millionaires, just those who lived a rich, extravagant lifestyle. This examination led me to study a limited, obscure group of people: a small subset of fameless millionaires who met these criteria:
✓They were living a rich lifestyle or were capable of such. I wasn’t interested in hearing from frugal millionaires who lived “next door” in the middle class.
✓They had to be relatively young (under 35) or they had to have acquired wealth fast. I wasn’t interested in people who spent 40 years of their life jobbing and penny-pinching their way to millions. I wanted to be rich young, not old.
✓They had to be self-made. I was broke. Silver-spoon winners of the lucky sperm lottery weren’t invited to my lab.
✓Their riches could NOT be from fame, physical talent, playing pro ball, acting, singing, or entertaining.
I sought millionaires who would have started like me, an average guy without any special skill or talent, who, somehow, made it big. Through high school and college, I religiously studied this millionaire divergence. I read magazines, books, and newspapers and watched documentaries of successful businessmen; anything that provided insight into this small subset of millionaires, I absorbed it.
Unfortunately, this zest to uncover the secret to fast wealth led me to disappointments. I was a late-night infomercial marketer’s dream come true—gullible, willing, and armed with a credit card. I bought into countless opportunities, from “one tiny classified ad” to the Asian real estate mogul and his sexy bikini-clad yacht vixens. None of them delivered wealth, and despite the slick commercials and their claims, the large-breasted models never materialized.
As I fed my appetite for knowledge and endured one odd job after another, my research uncovered some remarkable common denominators. I was confident I had uncovered all the components to the Millionaire Fastlane and fameless wealth. I was determined to become rich young, and the journey would begin after college graduation. Little did I know what lay ahead—the roadblocks, the detours, and the mistakes.
Resistance into Mediocrity
I graduated from Northern Illinois University with two business degrees. For me, college seemed like a five-year brainwashing program for corporate homogenization. Nobody talked about entrepreneurship. All I heard from my teachers was “when you get hired” and “when you get a job” as if starting a business was a dirty thought. I resisted, but my friends didn’t. They were hired for great jobs and bragged about it:
I work for Motorola.
I got a job at Northwestern Insurance!
Hertz Rental Cars hired me as a training manager!
While I was happy for them, my friends bought into the lie what I affectionately call, “The Slowlane”. Me? Thanks but no thanks. I wanted to avoid the Slowlane like a medieval plague. My idea was to find the Fastlane, retire rich, and retire young.
Roadblocks, Detours, and Depression
Despite the confidence, the next few years fell horribly short of my expectations. I lived with my mother as I bounced from one “opportunity” to another. Success was absent. Every month was a different business: vitamins, jewelry, some hot “turnkey” marketing program purchased from the back of a business magazine, or some goofy long-distance network marketing gig.
Despite the hard work, my record of failures grew, as did my mounting debts. Years passed and folly fermented as I was forced to take a series of ego-crippling jobs better suited for a Neanderthal: a busboy at a Chinese restaurant (yes, there are cockroaches in the back), a day laborer in the Chicago slums, pizza-delivery boy, flower-delivery boy, dispatcher, limo driver, early morning newspaper delivery for the Chicago Tribune, Subway sandwich restaurant salesman (WTF?), Sears stock clerk (in the freaking drapery department), charity can collector, and house painter.
The only thing worse than these shitty jobs and their pay? The hours. Most required a predawn start . . . 3 a.m., 4 a.m. . . . if any ungodly hour was involved you could bet my job required it. Five years of college and I g
raduated to live like a dairy farmer. Hell, money was so tight that I prostituted myself to an older woman to pay for my best friend’s wedding gift. Yes, cougars preyed in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, my friends progressed in their careers: They got their 3% yearly pay increases. They bought their Mustangs and Acuras and their 1,200-square-foot townhouses. They appeared content and lived the expectant life prescribed by society. They were normal and I wasn’t.
At 26 years old, I fell into depression; my businesses were not self-sufficient and neither was I. Seasonal depression gnawed at my fractured psyche. Chicago’s rainy, dark, dreary weather made me crave the comfort of a warm bed and tasty pastries. Accomplishments were preceded by sunshine; so yes, I wasn’t accomplishing much. Tired of the high-school dropout jobs, I struggled to get out of bed, and doubt became the daily affirmation. Physically, emotionally, and financially exhausted from failure, I knew my results weren’t reflective of my true self. I knew the Fastlane way to wealth but just couldn’t get it executed. What was I doing wrong? What was holding me back? After years of research and education, complete with a full closet of books, magazines, and “quick start” videos, I was further away from wealth. I sat stalled on the sidewalk with the Fastlane nowhere in sight.
My deep depression sunk me into escapes, but instead of drugs, sex, or alcohol, I lost myself in books and kept studying fameless millionaires. If I couldn’t be successful, I’d escape into the lives of those who were by absorbing success stories and other rags-to-riches tales.
But it got worse.
The people in my life gave up on me. My long-time girlfriend proclaimed, “You have no resolve.” She had a safe and secure job with a rental car agency, but we’d argue because she worked long hours for chump change, a whopping $28,000 a year. Of course, she rightly retorted with the facts: “You don’t have a job, you make $27,000 less than me, and none of your businesses work.” She was a smart cat. Our relationship ended as she found courtship with a corporate radio ad executive.
And then there was my mother. For the first years after college, she cut me slack, but then came the failures and the low-rent jobs. I begged patience. One of my pleads was a detailed commentary about Fastlane wealth creation for entrepreneurs—it operates under an exponential scale—those with jobs operate under a linear scale. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter how great my charts and diagrams were; mom lost faith and I didn’t blame her. Landing a man on Mars showed more promise.
Her directives dulled my drive. She’d shout, “Get a job, baby!” at least 20 times a week. Ugh, even today I shudder. That phrase, shouted in that voice, could exterminate cockroaches in a post-apocalyptic world. There were days I’d want to pound my head into a vise and crush my ears into deafness. “Get a job, baby!” bore into my soul; it was a motherly decree that ended the trial with the jury’s unanimous verdict: “Failure, with a vote of no confidence.”
Mom suggested, “The grocery store is hiring a deli manager, why don’t you go down there and check it out?” As if my disaffected college education and next five years of struggle were to eclipse at the deli counter, cutting blocks of bologna and ladling potato salad to the neighborhood soccer moms. Thanks for the job tip, but I’ll pass.
My Blizzard of Awakening
The agony of a cold Chicago blizzard flung me onto life’s crossroads. It was a frigid night and I was dead tired working as a limo driver. Wet snow drenched my shoes while I fought a migraine headache. The four aspirins I chased hours earlier had no effect. As the intensity of the storm increased, it was clear: I wouldn’t be getting home soon. My usual routes were snowed in. Frustrated, I pulled to the shoulder of a unlit road. I parked the limo and faced myself in darkened and dead silence.
I felt the cold chill of melted snow crawl up from my toes into my legs. Outside I saw a beautiful cascade of snowflakes, an ironic reminder about how much I hated the ugliness of winter. I dropped my head back into the seat and unleashed an epic groan. As I gazed at the cigarette-burned ceiling of the limousine, the reality hit me: “What the hell am I doing? Is this what my life has become?”
Sitting on an empty road in a blizzard in the dead of the night in the middle of nowhere, I’d had it. Sometimes clarity washes over you like a peaceful breeze and other times it hits you like a falling Steinway piano. For me, it was the latter. A sharp declaration clobbered my brain: “You cannot live another day like this!”
If I was going to survive, I needed to change.
The Decision to Change
The harsh winter shot me into swift action. I decided to change. I took control over something I thought was uncontrollable: my environment. I decided to relocate—to where, I didn’t know, and at that moment, I didn’t care.
In an instant, I felt powerful. The velocity of that choice infused my miserable existence with hope and a small drip of happiness. My failures evaporated and I felt reborn. Suddenly a dead-end road converged with a dream.
It wasn’t about the decision to move; it was about taking control and knowing that I had a choice.
With this new power, I considered options that never seemed possible. I asked a simple question: “If I could live anywhere in the country without restraint, where would I live?” I thought about the things important to me, and circled five cities on a map. Within the next few weeks, I took a road trip and visited all of them. Weeks after that, I moved, or I should say, escaped.
The Merge from Slowlane to Fastlane
I arrived in Phoenix with 900 bucks, no job, no friends, and no family—just 330 days of sun and a burning desire to hit the Fastlane. My possessions included an old mattress, a 10-year-old rusty Buick Skylark with no third gear, a few side businesses that made little cash, and several hundred books. Ground zero for my new life was a small studio apartment in central Phoenix that rented for $475 per month. I transformed my studio apartment into an office. No bedroom set, no furniture, just a mattress that invaded the kitchen. I slept with Pop Tart crumbs, a side effect of laying a mattress next to the kitchen counter.
I lived poor and without security, but I felt rich. I was in control of my life.
One of the many businesses I created was a website. While driving that limo in Chicago, sometimes I’d sit idle for hours and had plenty of downtime to read books. I didn’t waste that time. While I waited for clients at the airport or while they got smashed at the local watering hole, I sat in the limo and read. And read. I studied everything from finance to Internet programming to more autobiographies of the rich.
The limo job did something special: it put me at the forefront of an unsolved need that needed a solution. One of my limo clients asked if I knew of any good limo companies in New York. I dropped the passenger off at the airport, but he left me with a seed of invention. If I lived in Chicago and needed prices and booking options for limo service in New York, where would I go to find it? I didn’t have a New York Yellow Pages handy, and surely no one else outside of New York did either. Faced with this question, I concluded that other travelers would have the same challenge. So I built a website that would solve this problem.
Naturally because the Internet has no geographical limits, this venture traveled with me to Phoenix. But, like my prior businesses, it didn’t make a lot of money.
However, now it was different.
I was debt-strapped and naked in a strange town with no money, job, or safety net. I had to focus.
I aggressively marketed my website. I sent out emails. Cold-called. Mailed letters. I learned search engine optimization (SEO). Because I couldn’t afford books, I visited the Phoenix library daily and studied Internet programming languages. (This was before Wordpress and easy “drag and drop” content management systems.) I improved my website and learned about graphics and copywriting. Anything that could help me, I consumed.
Then one day I had a breakthrough; I received a call from a company in Kansas that raved about my website service and wanted me to design its website. While my focus wasn’t web design, I obliged for a p
rice of $400. They thought the price was a steal, and within 24 hours, I had built the company its website. I was ecstatic. In 24 hours, I had most of my rent payment. Then, coincidentally, not 24 hours later, I received another call from a company in New York asking for the same thing, a new website. I designed it for $600 and it took me two days to complete. I had another rent payment!
Now, I know this isn’t a lot of money, but from poverty to $1,000 in three days felt like winning the 50-million-dollar Powerball. My first few months in Phoenix I gained traction and survived on my own for the first time in my life. No flower boy. No busboy. No pizza delivery. No sponging off Mom with cheap rent. I was purely self-employed! It was a momentous acceleration, a wind at my back that foreshadowed a directional change into a new universe of wealth generation.
But something still wasn’t right. Something was missing and I knew it. Most of my income was attached to my website designs and not my website service portal. My income was tied to my time, website construction. More websites jobs meant more time spent, and if I didn’t work, my income would stop. My time was being sold off for money.
A New Wealth Equation Yields Wealth Acceleration
In the winter, a friend visited from Chicago. I showed him my web service and he was amazed at all the traffic my service received. I’d get ride arrangement inquiries from around the world, every minute of the day. How much for a limo from Boston to Worcester? How much from JFK to Manhattan? We’d scan my email inbox and it had 450 emails. Ten minutes passed, click refresh, and then there would be another 30 emails. Emails were pouring in several per minute. He suggested “Dude! Turn those emails into money somehow.”
