BILLIONAIRE FASTLANE

CHAPTER 2 -- How I Screwed “Get Rich Slow”
The object of life is not to be on the side of the masses,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
~ Marcus Aurelius
EXPOSING THE “GET RICH SLOW” DREAMKILLER
As a teenager, I never gave myself a chance of becoming wealthy young. “Wealth +youth” was
an equation that didn’t compute simply because I didn’t have the physical capabilities.
Common roads to wealth for the young are competitive and require talent; become an actor, a
musician, an entertainer or a pro athlete—all familiar roads that had a big “ROAD CLOSED”
sign that laughed, “Not a chance, MJ!”
So, early in life, I conceded. I gave up on my dreams. “Get Rich Slow” made it abundantly clear:
Go to school, get a job, settle for less, sacrifice, be miserly and quit dreaming about financial
freedom, mountainside homes, and exotic cars. But I still dreamed. It’s what teenage boys do.
For me, it was all about the cars—specifically, the Lamborghini Countach.
THE 90 SECONDS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE
I grew up in Chicago and was a porky kid with few friends. I wasn’t interested in teenage girls or
sports, but lying around in a beanbag stuffing my face with doughnuts while watching Tom-n￾Jerry reruns.
Parental supervision was absent; Mom divorced Dad years earlier, which left my older siblings
and me to be raised by a single mother. Mom didn’t have a college education or a career, unless
a deep-frying job at Kentucky Fried Chicken qualified. That left me to my own indulgences,
usually consumption of sweets and the latest episode of the A-Team. My exertions were
epitomized by a long broken broomstick: I used it as the TV’s remote control since the real one
was broken and I was too lazy to move. When I did move, the local ice cream shop was often my
target; a sugary delight was a motive I could count on.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 banished 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 thought. 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 daring thought invaded my head: “Hey, MJ, why don’t you ask the guy what he
does for a living?” Could I? I stood on the sidewalk, dumbfounded while I negotiated with
myself. Emboldened and overcome 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!”
Feeling my approach, the owner hid his trepidation with a smile and opened his door. 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 my composure, as if
cars with futuristic doors were standard fare. 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?”
Sensing relief that I wasn’t a teenage derelict, the owner kindly responded: “I’m an inventor.”
Perplexed that his answer didn’t match my preconception; 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 the opportunity for escape, the young Lamborghini owner took the
driver’s seat, closed his 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 such a sight would happen again, I took mental inventory of
the automotive unicorn before me. I left awakened as 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 without fame or
without physical talent.
From that point forward, things changed. The Lamborghini encounter lasted 90 seconds, but
transcended a lifetime of new beliefs, directions, and choices. I decided that I would someday
own a Lamborghini and I would do it while I was young. I was unwilling to wait until my next
encounter, my next chance experience, and my next poster: I wanted it for myself. Yes, I retired
the broomstick and got off my fat 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. They had to be self-made. I was broke. Silver-spoon winners of the lucky sperm lottery
   weren’t invited to my lab.
4. Their riches couldn’t 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. College was a five￾year prenatal employee brainwashing with graduation as the overrated climax. I viewed college
   as indoctrination into corporate droneship; an unfulfilled marriage between me and a life of
   jobs, bosses, and being overworked and underpaid. My friends 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 the lie that I later define as “The Slowlane.” You
   know the drill: Get a good job, save, invest in mutual funds, and one day you will live a life of
   luxury. Me? Thanks but no thanks. I sought 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 business venture 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 Neanderthal jobs that crippled my ego: a
   busboy at a Chinese restaurant (yes, there are cockroaches in the back), a day laborer in the
   slums of Chicago, 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.to be.... continued