The Millionaire Fastlane
An argument that saving and waiting is too slow, and that real wealth comes from building a business system that earns without trading your time for it.
MJ DeMarco · 2011 · 3 min read
MJ DeMarco's book is a deliberate provocation. Its argument: the conventional advice to get a good job, save diligently, invest in index funds and retire at 65 is a slow and uncertain way to get rich, because it trades the best years of your life for money you'll get to enjoy only when you're old.
It's a book written by an entrepreneur for would-be entrepreneurs, and it's worth reading even if, like most professionals, you plan to keep your career.
The big ideas
Three roads to wealth
DeMarco describes three financial roadmaps:
- The Sidewalk: spending everything you earn and more. No plan, often debt, and no wealth, whatever the income.
- The Slowlane: a job, steady saving and market investing, then waiting decades for compounding to do the work. It works, but slowly, and it depends on things you don't control, like your employer and market returns.
- The Fastlane: building a business system that creates value at scale and can eventually run, or be sold, without you.
Your time is the real constraint
The core problem with the Slowlane, in DeMarco's view, is that your income is tied to your hours. There are only so many of them, and you can't buy them back. Wealth comes from detaching income from time, through a business or assets that earn whether or not you're working.
What makes a good Fastlane business
He sums up the test in five words, which he calls the commandments of CENTS:
- Control: you control the business, rather than depending on someone else's platform or rules.
- Entry: the harder it is for anyone to start the same business, the better.
- Need: it solves a real problem people will pay for.
- Time: it can run without your constant presence.
- Scale: it can reach many people, or deliver big value to some.
Wealth comes from net profit and asset value
The biggest fortunes, he argues, come not from saving a slice of income but from building something valuable and then selling it, or owning it as it grows.
What a professional millionaire should take from it
Most professionals are, by design, in the Slowlane, and there's nothing wrong with that. A strong income and disciplined investing build real wealth. But the book's central question is worth asking anyway: how much of your income depends on your hours?
Even if your career stays salaried, you can add income that isn't tied to your time:
- Equity, through stock compensation, partnership or a stake in a business.
- Real estate, where tenants, leverage and appreciation do some of the work. (See what professional millionaires invest in.)
- A side business that solves a real problem and could grow without you. If you go that way, The Lean Startup is the practical companion to this book.
Where it falls short
- It's hard on the Slowlane. The steady saver it dismisses is how most millionaires actually got there, as The Millionaire Next Door shows.
- Survivorship. Most businesses fail. The book's success stories are real, but the many people who tried and didn't make it aren't in them.
- The tone. It's brash and repetitive in places, and some readers find it more motivational than practical.
Who should read it
Anyone who has ever wondered whether there's a faster way than saving for forty years, and especially anyone weighing a business idea. Read it for the questions it makes you ask, not as a reason to quit a good career.