How to create monetary wealth in just 5 years. (Or less!)

[MJ DeMarco]

Asked on Quora which I answered...

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-create-massive-monetary-success-in-five-years/answer/MJ-DeMarco-1

Create yourself a mathematical equation that scales, then work that equation to death while acting, assessing, and adjusting along the way.

Few people understand that all of our actions and career decisions implicitly tie us into an equation.

This equation can be relatively simple or extremely complex.

At the end of the day, it will be your self-directed EQUATION that determines how much wealth you can (or cannot) accumulate.

• Equations that scale make their owners rich.
• Equations that do not, make their owners slaves to the system of “trading time for money.”

The beauty of this equation is that you can control its basic variable parameters. But most people DO NOT because most people don’t even know this equation exists!

If you decide to get a job at McDonalds and are paid $12/hour — congratulations, you just created yourself an equation to which you are now bound to:

Monetary Wealth = (rate of pay) x (hours worked)​

If you work 30 hours, your equation is 12 X 30, which equals $360.

If you go to college and accumulate $140K in debt so you can have the privilege of earning $40K/year, congratulations, that’s your new equation.

Monetary Wealth = (hourly salary) X (years worked)​

To complicate the mix, you are then suggested to save your money and give it to Wall Street.

There you get another equation:

Monetary Wealth = Market investments X annual ROI​

This mainstream advice is the standard prescription for mediocrity.

And it’s clearly not a method to create monetary success in less than 10 years, much less 5.

As you can see, the problem with “trading your time for money” or “Wall-Street” as a conduit to wealth is that the variables are extremely limited and uncontrollable. You cannot work 3,000 hours at McDonalds in one week. You cannot force McDonalds to pay you $1,000 per hour. You cannot ask Wall Street to give you a 4000% return.

There are only so many hours in a day, and years in a life.

And herein lies the lie behind college: Young people are told to go to college so they can increase their PER HOUR rate from $12 to, say, $25 or $30. Or if they go into more technical fields (STEM stuff) they get away from hourly to annual pay. Now instead of making $50/hour, they make $50,000/year.

The problem remains.

TIME CANNOT BE SCALED.

You cannot work 1000 hours in day.

You cannot live to be 500 years old.

You cannot ask Wall Street to give you a 4000% return in one year.

You cannot ask your employer to give you a raise from 50K/year, to $500K.

Your hands are tied because the equation you’ve given yourself SUCKS.

Instead of trying to scale time (more debt to earn a better education to earn a better paying job under an annual salary regime) start scaling units— units separate from your time.

This means you become a creator of relative value.

Creators produce products, services, books, information, inventions, it doesn’t matter so as long as:

• A) Your creation can eventually become separate from your time.
• B) You can scale your creation to a level that can change your life.

The other metric is relative value.

Sure your blog full of fitness tips my be valuable— but it isn’t relatively valuable because the web is filled with ‘em.

Whatever you create, it must be relatively valuable in the global pool of options. This doesn’t mean you have to be the next Steve Jobs — it just means to skew value on one or two attributes; faster shipping, improved operation, better logistics, better service, better UI, better this, better that.

Entrepreneurship is about improving, more so than inventing the next hot thing.

So let’s assume you invent a cool new widget that appeals to women who are mothers.

Your equation now becomes:

Wealth = Widget Profit X Widgets Sold.​

This is where things change.

Now you can SCALE a part of your equation. There are billions of mothers on the planet. Additionally, you control your widget operations and can fiddle with pricing, sourcing, and other operations integral to your widget.

So if you sell 100,000 widgets at $5 profit each, you just earned $500,000.

If a IG influencer raves about your product in IG and you get a rush of traffic for 1 week, selling 4,000 units, you make $20K in week.

Your ceiling for wealth can be influenced by your execution, marketing, and decision-making. You cannot do this under a “time trade” regime.

This is how you create wealth beyond the BS preached in the mainstream (get a job, save your money, invest with Wall Street for 50 years blah blah)

Of course I’m not suggesting this is easy.

The key is to change the equation, change the probability, and change your potential outcomes. Nothing is easy, but neither is getting up at 6AM, fighting traffic for 50 years, and retiring with a gold watch on 50% of your income.

Just to give you an example, how this works in real life, I’ve been “off the clock” for over 20 years. That means I earn money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because my income and net worth is tied to UNITS, not HOURS or TIME. This is how can effectively call myself “semi-retired”.

I’m a best selling author [The Millionaire Fastlane] and [Unscripted] (published in over 15+ countries/languages) so part of my “equation” is how many books that sell worldwide.

And when you move to a “unit” metric, your markets expand beyond your local city — so what not appeal locally, might appeal globally. For instance, my second book Unscripted is a the #1 best-selling business book in South Korea (at least that’s why my publisher is telling me) but barely known in the states.

I also run a global community on entrepreneurship [The Fastlane Entrepreneur Forum] which operates 24 hours a day. A 24 hour operation means I earn 24 hours a day. I could go on and on with the other ventures but hopefully you get the point…

So are you ready?

Here’s my SIMPLIFIED equation for wealth currently. (Actually it’s much larger but I think you get the picture.)

(bup)(bs1)(bc1) + (bup)(bs1)(bc2) + (bup)(bs1)(bc3) + (bup)(bs1)(bc1) +(bup)(bs1)(bc4) + (bup)(bs1)(bc5) + (bup)(bs1)(bc6) + (bup)(bs1)(bc7) +(bup)(bs1)(bc8) + (bup)(bs1)(bc9) + (bup)(bs1)(bc10) + (bup)(bs1)(bc11) +(roy1)(bs1) + (roy2)(bs1) + (roy3)(bs1) + (roy5)(bs1) + (roy6)(bs1) + (roy7)(bs1) + (roy8)(bs1) + (roy9)(bs1) + (roy10)(bs1) + (roy11)(bs1) + (roy12)(bs1) + (roy2)(bs2) + (roy2)(bs2) + (roy2)(bs2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc1) + (bup)(bs2)(bc3) + (bup)(bs4)(bc2) + (bup)(bs5)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc6) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc10) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (wt)(webconv)(ad1) + (wt)(webconv)(ad2) + (wt)(webconv)(ad3) + (webtraffic)(insconv)(insfee) + (inv1)(roi1) + (inv2)(roi2) + (inv3)(roi3)+(inv4)(roi4) +(inv4)(roi5) + (inv5)(roi4) + (inv5)(roi5) + (inv5)(roi5) + (inv6)(roi6) + (res)(avg-app) + val(biz1)(pe) + val(biz2)(pe) + val(biz3)(pe) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + btc(value) + eth(value) + …​

Most of those variables listed above I can CONTROL and SCALE.

1) Create relative value.

2) Recognize your equation.

3) Work the equation.

4) Act — Assess — Adjust

5) Repeat​

That my friend is how you create monetary wealth within 5 years.

 

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[Philip Marlowe]

Create yourself a mathematical equation

For those who were not at the summit, MJ gave an in-depth presentation on his equation. And what I realized - which should have been obvious - is that your whole life is an equation. All your goals can break down in a similar way.

When I decided to lose weight, I looked at my equation. It was something like:

Wake-up late + skip breakfast + Dunkin Donuts + Working Lunch....

You get the idea. My equation now is:

Wake-up early + work-out first + healthy breakfast + pack a lunch...

You can do the same thing for your business goals. Are you waking-up late and trying to hustle at night when you're tired, or are you making it a priority and grinding first thing when you're free? I've already been up for 2 hours (EST) and gotten my "ONE THING" done for today. If I didn't do anything for the rest of today, it would be a success. It's an amazing feeling.

This is obviously a complete hijack of the concept, but MJ's presentation changed how I viewed all of my goals. YMMV.

-PM

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Here's a video I did that adds to this concept, somewhat reflects my topic at the Fastlane Summit.

 

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[Envision]

Every person starting out or trying to figure things out, should print this out, it's literally the key. When you break everything down to the skeletal structure - that's it.

Now you have to plug in the pieces to the puzzle and figure out how to make it work

What products would fill X persons need?
How can you create X product?
How do you afford X product?
Where do you sell X product?
How do you market X product?
How do you scale X product?

The biggest mistake I see my peers do that prevent them from executing on this equation (early 20's) is they lock themselves into their job. They use their income from their 50k/yr jobs to get new cars, houses, pay their loans, and go downtown to the bars. They don't save, invest, or plan for the future. If you consciously allocate funds from your job to creating more income, whether thats investing it into real estate, starting a business, or investing in your skills you are leveraging that time you're forced to spend at your job due to your life circumstances to build your puzzle pieces out.

Been thinking about this a lot lately. Thanks for posting this MJ!

 

[Envious]

Man...
This is such an incredible post.
It's crazy to think so many people in this world will never read it and never understand that they are stuck in the script, by the time most realize, it will be too late.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Does making videos about a certain topic on Youtube count? even though you don't CONTROL the platform?

YouTube is a channel to reach an audience. As is Amazon. These are channels. They don't wholly represent my business, they are pieces of the business.

 

[TonyStark]

Some days I wish I could’ve started sooner, instead of wasting so much time in public school. Lol

 

[JG17]

@MJ DeMarco

Does making videos about a certain topic on Youtube count? even though you don't CONTROL the platform?

I know you have tagged MJ and wouldn't attempt to answer for him but I don't think YouTube can ever be truly Fastlane. However there are lessons you can learn from MJ's fantastic opening post that can get you closer to Fastlane. To compare to MJ's book example which I have oversimplified:

MJ creates the book and then sells on various platforms at a margin to what it cost to create and market per unit. MJ doesn't control the platforms but he does set the sale price and can negotiate/control the publishing and marketing costs to a certain extent. Like YouTube, the reach of his various platforms is worldwide so his potential audience or customer is therefore worldwide.

With YouTube, you can create as many videos (units) as you like, you can control your marketing and your production cost, and your audience has the potential to make you profit from these units indefinitely as long as the video stays live. However it is no secret while your video will stay up indefinitely, the YouTube algorithm gives it somewhat of a lifespan.

And unlike MJ you will never be able to control your sale price. Your earnings (adsense $ per view) will always be controlled by the platform and you're also unable to update your videos once they go out of date. MJ can republish updated versions of his books to ensure the information remains accurate.

To get closer to the message MJ is promoting in this thread you need to think outside the box of just creating and uploading videos.

Adding more layers of income to each unit (video) would enable you to be able to have more control over your total sale price (average $ per view). Sponsorships and affiliate deals not only add an extra layer of income but also can be negotiated. By adding more variables to your equation, not only does this get closer to Fastlane but you will create more income along the way.

Instead of (unit=video):

Monetary Wealth = unit X (total views X adsense $ per view rate)

Turn your equation into:

Monetary Wealth = unit X ((total views X adsense $ per view rate)+(sponsorship value)+(total views X average affiliate conversion per viewer) X affiliate $ per conversion rate))

I might be off with the brackets there but I hope you see what I mean.

This isn't totally Fastlane, you won't be able to release one or two videos and live off of the proceeds while doing minimal maintenance work, you need to keep creating units, marketing them etc. But there are certainly actions you can take to become less Slowlane.

 

[ZF Lee]

The word shortcut is not mentioned once in the article. Not sure what you're referring to.

Must be the abbreviations of your wealth equation.

I think I made out some of them as crypto, forum traffic ads, paper assets and books sales. You've got a lot of thumbs in many pies, I see.

 

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[Photool]

"Create yourself a mathematical equation that scales, then work that equation to death while acting, assessing, and adjusting along the way."

This is a powerful concept MJ brings up that deserves much awareness and contemplation for beginners and advanced humans. I have found it can be applied in all areas of life.

To me its relative to a profound insight I had years ago with business which ties into this concept very well - I began to see all my creations (content, value, products etc) as creative organisms out in the world growing & working for me - separate from me or my time - like giving birth to a thing which sole purpose is to help people & grow. Put another way : It can be likened to a seed you plant, nurture & harvest.

As I continue to develop this process within my life & share it others I decided to break down the expanded video @MJ DeMarco made into a written/visual form with additional thoughts followed by an action item at the end to help whoever draw values from it.

My Intention:
A. Spreading more awareness to this concept in a extended medium (visual )
B. Helping more people integrate this concept
C. Continue to act as a reminder to everyone to not overlook this concept

This one concept is the underlying mechanism that will determine if you even have a chance at becoming a millionaire or whatever your financial goals are. Your understanding of wealth and how to make a fortune will be evident and light years ahead of any average person not implementing this .

Each of us - every single person - has our own individual mathematical equation attached to our back - you can't see it , but it is there. NO one is immune just like no one is immune to water or oxygen




Think of it like an invisible backpack that is holding a bunch of variables and those variables create your equation . Most importantly YOU control the variables that are in your backpack and how they formulate your equation ..



What is this mathematical equation that everyone has ? Its called your WEALTH CREATION EQUATION (WCE), more specifically it is how you earn income and generate wealth . Its is the equation/variables you put into your backpack. Each one you place gets yourself a new wealth equation




EXAMPLE

Position	Wealth Creation Equation
Unemployed	0
McDonalds	$10 X (hrs worked) - taxes -> Work 80 hours = $10 X 80hrs = $800 - taxes = $680 Millionaire in 2 yrs with this formula : You would need to work 100,000 hours or 961 hours every week for the next 104 weeks . This is impossible because you cant scale your time into 961 hrs of work per week

That is key distinctions
#1: You CANNOT scale time - it is fundamentally impossible for you to work more than a 168hrs a week. Time or hours are normally scaled at 40 , some will push its 50, 60, 70,80 but bottom line is time cannot be scaled.

#2: It is near impossible to scale wages or salary - no matter if you are making $25/ hour or $25,000 /year - values are tied to TIME and you cannot walk into your bosses office and ask for a 4000% pay raise

#3: The mathematics of jobs - whether its hourly or salary annually salary does not scale wealth because your wealth creation equation is constrained by time... You cannot work 300 hours in a week and you cannot work 300 years in a life span. Time and mortality limits your wealth creation equation.

This also applies with the main streams sacred cow "compound interest" , otherwise known as "Save $100 a day for 50 years and you will be rich. You cannot scale wall street returns which averages about 7% a year. You will not in any circumstances with this variable make 4,000% in one year by maxing out your 401k in a index fund and you cannot sit around for 200 years waiting for compound interest to work, not to mention inflation..





Main Point :Creating wealth is as simple as mathematics - you have the power to change your wealth creation equation at any time

How ? Through your behaviors, choices, decision making, career choices, and financial management.

Getting a job is a CHOICE , which carries with it an equation

Starting a business dependent on your time is a CHOICE , which carries with it an equation

Spending $160K on a degree in medieval literature is a CHOICE , which carries with it an equation





CHOICES CONTROL YOUR EQUATION AND YOU CONTROL ALL OF IT
If you want to get rich, change your choices so your wealth equation in your backpack contains variables that can be:

#1 SCALED
#2 MANIPULATED

Examples:

The Fastlane Forum (Entrepreneur container) - Founded many years ago by MJ - that behavior added to his wealth equation . It operates separate from his time receiving thousands of views per month .

These metrics are infinitely scale-able and can be monetized into ad revenue, subscriptions, book sales & many other income opportunities. He can scale an manipulate the variables

YouTube video with valuable information (content)- Created once and exists in perpetuity (long after/forever) and has potential to reach millions. In other words - it works for him 24 hours a day 7 days a week - Youtube views, subscribers again are all variables that can be scaled an manipulated

The Millionaire Fastlane & Unscripted (Books) - any book he writes can be infinitely scaled from 100s of copies into millions without too much effort.

Key - Your creation becomes its own "valuable thing" separate from your time and can exponentially grow on its own at a multitude of levels. Working for you greater than you ever can as an individual person , its a way to duplicate yourself, your ideas, and your value.




This is why unscriped fastlane entrepreneurship is so powerful

Entrepreneurs who follows the CENTS FRAMEWORK are operating on an un-even playing field for wealth . It all comes down to their choices and decisions which manipulated (modified) their wealth equation.

Control
Entry
Need
Time
Scale



LARGE EQUATIONS WITH SCALEABLE and CONTROLLABLE VARIABLES CREATES WEALTH
Simple wealth equations that do not scale or cannot be manipulated does not create wealth.



MJ Demarcos Example of his wealth creation equation



EVERY variable exists because YOU make it exist through your choices and your behaviors.
So change your Choices to change your Equation to change your Life

Think of the way you make money as a bet on your time.

Job/Salary bet on time =
Your bet of time is fixed , as is the probability and reward from that bet.
If you make 1 hour a dollar your 1 hour bet wins 10 in pay...
PREDICTABLE..UNCONTROLLABLE...and UNSCALABLE

vs

Entrepreneur following cents framework bet on time =
Everything changes - from the size of the bet time to the size of the reward
Rewards can be unlimited and they can continue to come long after the bet was made

You can make this a reality when you acknowledge that you control the simple mathematics that govern your ability to create wealth OR not create wealth. ​

What is in your backpack? Change your choices, change your equation , and then you get to change your life


ACTION STEP : Take out a piece of paper and write out your CURRENT equation on one side (so you truthfully see where you are) and on the other side brainstorm & create a new set of variables for your NEW equation (where you want to go). This is the one you will begin to implement & move towards starting today. Great! This is your new destination , the sails are set, time to move !

 

[NMdad]

Instead of trying to scale time (more debt to earn a better education to earn a better paying job under an annual salary regime) start scaling units— units separate from your time.

Holy moly, the simplicity of this is astounding.

It's been a while since I read TMF , and I know time can't be scaled. But focusing on scaling UNITS--that's the key to the puzzle. I knew that, but seeing it as an equation compared to wage-earner equations--that's the red pill.

Probability is another piece of the puzzle, and I think it's often either ignored or glossed over. For example, some people make an assumption: "If I could capture 10% of the market..." instead of making a reality-based assessment: "If A & B & C are true, then X is likely."

Probability lets you compare opportunities so you can choose what to focus on. For example, does X opportunity have a 1% or 80% probability? Very different. Does X opportunity have the (reality-based) potential to scale to 10x or 100x more units compared to Y opportunity? And what variables can you control that could increase the probability?

Profit margin per unit is another piece. Can I make $.01, $1.00, or $1,000 per unit, taking into account the probability of selling X units?

Having an equation is inescapable. But we have the choice to determine what it looks like.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

What is "bup"?

Stands for unit profit on one book.

Ok MJ, one question... where is the GOLD tag?

Done!

 

[Limitless4Life]

But...where are the exact steps?

 

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[Ocelot]

That's a crazy amount of value for a Quora post.

Hopefully they are ready to actually let that advice filter in and start to provide the right mindset. Too many people bounce around from one scheme to another until they ultimately realise that this is only true way.

You've probably just saved them years.

 

[jmusic]

The biggest mistake I see my peers do that prevent them from executing on this equation (early 20's) is they lock themselves into their job. They use their income from their 50k/yr jobs to get new cars, houses, pay their loans, and go downtown to the bars. They don't save, invest, or plan for the future.

Very much so. And of course, to make the cubicle jail cell complete, they put everything on credit. Even though I'm still a cubicle slave (for now), I try to think of every purchase in terms of how many hours of my life will be required to pay for the next gadget.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Probability lets you compare opportunities so you can choose what to focus on. For example, does X opportunity have a 1% or 80% probability? Very different. Does X opportunity have the (reality-based) potential to scale to 10x or 100x more units compared to Y opportunity? And what variables can you control that could increase the probability?

Probability based strategy is a key component to everything. Everything we do carries unseen probabilities, but they are there. Glad you caught it.

 

[fishgodeep]

I feel like I was napping in class only to wake up while @MJ DeMarco was saying exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you.

Recently I've started 'doing well' as a wage slave earning ~$3k/week in a job where I have a lot of free time. Currently writing this post while at work, been here 5 hours and literally haven't done anything except read.

Ironically, I've been able to 'move up' into this position at work because (among other things) this forum. I've applied a lot of the aspects of an entrepreneurial mindset to my career i.e. taking responsibility for everything, going the extra mile, showing up early and staying late, seeing every failure as an opportunity to learn etc.

Most people I feel would be happy to make $150k/year while doing little. But to me it still feels like prison. The only difference is now they've moved me to a much nicer cell where the bed is soft and the food is good. But I'm still in a cage. I'm still trading time (a finite unit) for money (an infinite unit).

My equation is better but it still sucks. Thank you for the reminder and helping me shift my focus. I'm not going to lie like a lot of others on here and say I'm going take action right now! #worktillmyeyesbleed #serialentrepreneur.

The truth is I'm not really an entrepreneur. otherwise I'd be doing it not reading threads on how to do it. But what I do possess is an immigrant mentality. I work harder because I feel I must work harder. There is great great strength is being the underdog.

Anyway, thanks for writing this and my apologies for the rant. I guess it was on my mind for some time now lol.

To summarize I don't know how I'll escape from my cell but I will escape.

 

[banjoa]

@MJ DeMarco thanks you for this. Incredible stuff.

MJ, is this the same concept espoused in TMF under the topic of scale and magnitude?

 

[Rickh]

Asked on Quora which I answered...

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-create-massive-monetary-success-in-five-years/answer/MJ-DeMarco-1

Create yourself a mathematical equation that scales, then work that equation to death while acting, assessing, and adjusting along the way.

Few people understand that all of our actions and career decisions implicitly tie us into an equation.

This equation can be relatively simple or extremely complex.

At the end of the day, it will be your self-directed EQUATION that determines how much wealth you can (or cannot) accumulate.

• Equations that scale make their owners rich.
• Equations that do not, make their owners slaves to the system of “trading time for money.”

The beauty of this equation is that you can control its basic variable parameters. But most people DO NOT because most people don’t even know this equation exists!

If you decide to get a job at McDonalds and are paid $12/hour — congratulations, you just created yourself an equation to which you are now bound to:

Monetary Wealth = (rate of pay) x (hours worked)​

If you work 30 hours, your equation is 12 X 30, which equals $360.

If you go to college and accumulate $140K in debt so you can have the privilege of earning $40K/year, congratulations, that’s your new equation.

Monetary Wealth = (hourly salary) X (years worked)​

To complicate the mix, you are then suggested to save your money and give it to Wall Street.

There you get another equation:

Monetary Wealth = Market investments X annual ROI​

This mainstream advice is the standard prescription for mediocrity.

And it’s clearly not a method to create monetary success in less than 10 years, much less 5.

As you can see, the problem with “trading your time for money” or “Wall-Street” as a conduit to wealth is that the variables are extremely limited and uncontrollable. You cannot work 3,000 hours at McDonalds in one week. You cannot force McDonalds to pay you $1,000 per hour. You cannot ask Wall Street to give you a 4000% return.

There are only so many hours in a day, and years in a life.

And herein lies the lie behind college: Young people are told to go to college so they can increase their PER HOUR rate from $12 to, say, $25 or $30. Or if they go into more technical fields (STEM stuff) they get away from hourly to annual pay. Now instead of making $50/hour, they make $50,000/year.

The problem remains.

TIME CANNOT BE SCALED.

You cannot work 1000 hours in day.

You cannot live to be 500 years old.

You cannot ask Wall Street to give you a 4000% return in one year.

You cannot ask your employer to give you a raise from 50K/year, to $500K.

Your hands are tied because the equation you’ve given yourself SUCKS.

Instead of trying to scale time (more debt to earn a better education to earn a better paying job under an annual salary regime) start scaling units— units separate from your time.

This means you become a creator of relative value.

Creators produce products, services, books, information, inventions, it doesn’t matter so as long as:

• A) Your creation can eventually become separate from your time.
• B) You can scale your creation to a level that can change your life.

The other metric is relative value.

Sure your blog full of fitness tips my be valuable— but it isn’t relatively valuable because the web is filled with ‘em.

Whatever you create, it must be relatively valuable in the global pool of options. This doesn’t mean you have to be the next Steve Jobs — it just means to skew value on one or two attributes; faster shipping, improved operation, better logistics, better service, better UI, better this, better that.

Entrepreneurship is about improving, more so than inventing the next hot thing.

So let’s assume you invent a cool new widget that appeals to women who are mothers.

Your equation now becomes:

Wealth = Widget Profit X Widgets Sold.​

This is where things change.

Now you can SCALE a part of your equation. There are billions of mothers on the planet. Additionally, you control your widget operations and can fiddle with pricing, sourcing, and other operations integral to your widget.

So if you sell 100,000 widgets at $5 profit each, you just earned $500,000.

If a IG influencer raves about your product in IG and you get a rush of traffic for 1 week, selling 4,000 units, you make $20K in week.

Your ceiling for wealth can be influenced by your execution, marketing, and decision-making. You cannot do this under a “time trade” regime.

This is how you create wealth beyond the BS preached in the mainstream (get a job, save your money, invest with Wall Street for 50 years blah blah)

Of course I’m not suggesting this is easy.

The key is to change the equation, change the probability, and change your potential outcomes. Nothing is easy, but neither is getting up at 6AM, fighting traffic for 50 years, and retiring with a gold watch on 50% of your income.

Just to give you an example, how this works in real life, I’ve been “off the clock” for over 20 years. That means I earn money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because my income and net worth is tied to UNITS, not HOURS or TIME. This is how can effectively call myself “semi-retired”.

I’m a best selling author [The Millionaire Fastlane] and [Unscripted] (published in over 15+ countries/languages) so part of my “equation” is how many books that sell worldwide.

And when you move to a “unit” metric, your markets expand beyond your local city — so what not appeal locally, might appeal globally. For instance, my second book Unscripted is a the #1 best-selling business book in South Korea (at least that’s why my publisher is telling me) but barely known in the states.

I also run a global community on entrepreneurship [The Fastlane Entrepreneur Forum] which operates 24 hours a day. A 24 hour operation means I earn 24 hours a day. I could go on and on with the other ventures but hopefully you get the point…

So are you ready?

Here’s my SIMPLIFIED equation for wealth currently. (Actually it’s much larger but I think you get the picture.)

(bup)(bs1)(bc1) + (bup)(bs1)(bc2) + (bup)(bs1)(bc3) + (bup)(bs1)(bc1) +(bup)(bs1)(bc4) + (bup)(bs1)(bc5) + (bup)(bs1)(bc6) + (bup)(bs1)(bc7) +(bup)(bs1)(bc8) + (bup)(bs1)(bc9) + (bup)(bs1)(bc10) + (bup)(bs1)(bc11) +(roy1)(bs1) + (roy2)(bs1) + (roy3)(bs1) + (roy5)(bs1) + (roy6)(bs1) + (roy7)(bs1) + (roy8)(bs1) + (roy9)(bs1) + (roy10)(bs1) + (roy11)(bs1) + (roy12)(bs1) + (roy2)(bs2) + (roy2)(bs2) + (roy2)(bs2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc1) + (bup)(bs2)(bc3) + (bup)(bs4)(bc2) + (bup)(bs5)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc6) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc10) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (wt)(webconv)(ad1) + (wt)(webconv)(ad2) + (wt)(webconv)(ad3) + (webtraffic)(insconv)(insfee) + (inv1)(roi1) + (inv2)(roi2) + (inv3)(roi3)+(inv4)(roi4) +(inv4)(roi5) + (inv5)(roi4) + (inv5)(roi5) + (inv5)(roi5) + (inv6)(roi6) + (res)(avg-app) + val(biz1)(pe) + val(biz2)(pe) + val(biz3)(pe) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + btc(value) + eth(value) + …​

Most of those variables listed above I can CONTROL and SCALE.

1) Create relative value.

2) Recognize your equation.

3) Work the equation.

4) Act — Assess — Adjust

5) Repeat​

That my friend is how you create monetary wealth within 5 years.

I need to hang around with you a lot more @MJ DeMarco lol

 

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[Matt Hunt]

Seeing how I'm now 37 years old, and have tons of student loan debt still to pay off, yeah... the whole 50 years of compound interest definitely isn't gonna work for me! I never really liked the idea, anyway. For years I've felt that the process of getting enough to retire on is too slow. I gotta figure out a faster way. I'm not gonna work 80 hours a week... I'll burn out and quite possibly end up in an insane asylum. I could increase my income, but only in small increments. The amount of time it takes off the Slowlane equation to retirement is too small.

I call my previous plan the middle lane. Invest half my earnings in multi-family real estate (much better returns than Wall Street). It's not a terrible plan, and could get me to a modest retirement in roughly 10 years.

But 10 years is still a long time to slave away at a job! I can't see myself doing that. Gotta build up a Fastlane business that can buy me freedom within the next few years!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I mean the shortcuts.

The word shortcut is not mentioned once in the article. Not sure what you're referring to.

 

[HackVenture]

+1 also interested to see a "legend" of the abbreviations you used, would be cool to see a real-life demonstration of the term "multiple streams of income" lol.

Great post!

 

[ironman150]

Here's a video I did that adds to this concept, somewhat reflects my topic at the Fastlane Summit.

this should be mandatory for all new people (and the old ones too).

 

[MJ DeMarco]

So, I just counted. 58 streams of income... Why not 60? Lazy? Just kidding, don't ban me I like my new home!

My equation has far more variables, the "58" was an simplification of a more complex equation.

 

[4Ring_]

MJ - I read that and instantly was awaken from my current slumber. Thank you for the constant feed of absolute GOLD.

 

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[Owner2Millions]

@MJ DeMarco Im very surprise you start getting active on your Youtube again lol. Anyway great content as usual. I aspire to provide as much value to many others like you have.

 

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[Ivan2BAlive]

This is truly Gold material MJ. I agree with you 100%

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Is it cool to share the video on FB?

Of course, and thank you!

 

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[Vy Vy Anne]

Asked on Quora which I answered...

MJ DeMarco's answer to How can I create massive monetary success in five years? - Quora

Create yourself a mathematical equation that scales, then work that equation to death while acting, assessing, and adjusting along the way.

Few people understand that all of our actions and career decisions implicitly tie us into an equation.

This equation can be relatively simple or extremely complex.

At the end of the day, it will be your self-directed EQUATION that determines how much wealth you can (or cannot) accumulate.

• Equations that scale make their owners rich.
• Equations that do not, make their owners slaves to the system of “trading time for money.”

The beauty of this equation is that you can control its basic variable parameters. But most people DO NOT because most people don’t even know this equation exists!

If you decide to get a job at McDonalds and are paid $12/hour — congratulations, you just created yourself an equation to which you are now bound to:

Monetary Wealth = (rate of pay) x (hours worked)​

If you work 30 hours, your equation is 12 X 30, which equals $360.

If you go to college and accumulate $140K in debt so you can have the privilege of earning $40K/year, congratulations, that’s your new equation.

Monetary Wealth = (hourly salary) X (years worked)​

To complicate the mix, you are then suggested to save your money and give it to Wall Street.

There you get another equation:

Monetary Wealth = Market investments X annual ROI​

This mainstream advice is the standard prescription for mediocrity.

And it’s clearly not a method to create monetary success in less than 10 years, much less 5.

As you can see, the problem with “trading your time for money” or “Wall-Street” as a conduit to wealth is that the variables are extremely limited and uncontrollable. You cannot work 3,000 hours at McDonalds in one week. You cannot force McDonalds to pay you $1,000 per hour. You cannot ask Wall Street to give you a 4000% return.

There are only so many hours in a day, and years in a life.

And herein lies the lie behind college: Young people are told to go to college so they can increase their PER HOUR rate from $12 to, say, $25 or $30. Or if they go into more technical fields (STEM stuff) they get away from hourly to annual pay. Now instead of making $50/hour, they make $50,000/year.

The problem remains.

TIME CANNOT BE SCALED.

You cannot work 1000 hours in day.

You cannot live to be 500 years old.

You cannot ask Wall Street to give you a 4000% return in one year.

You cannot ask your employer to give you a raise from 50K/year, to $500K.

Your hands are tied because the equation you’ve given yourself SUCKS.

Instead of trying to scale time (more debt to earn a better education to earn a better paying job under an annual salary regime) start scaling units— units separate from your time.

This means you become a creator of relative value.

Creators produce products, services, books, information, inventions, it doesn’t matter so as long as:

• A) Your creation can eventually become separate from your time.
• B) You can scale your creation to a level that can change your life.

The other metric is relative value.

Sure your blog full of fitness tips my be valuable— but it isn’t relatively valuable because the web is filled with ‘em.

Whatever you create, it must be relatively valuable in the global pool of options. This doesn’t mean you have to be the next Steve Jobs — it just means to skew value on one or two attributes; faster shipping, improved operation, better logistics, better service, better UI, better this, better that.

Entrepreneurship is about improving, more so than inventing the next hot thing.

So let’s assume you invent a cool new widget that appeals to women who are mothers.

Your equation now becomes:

Wealth = Widget Profit X Widgets Sold.​

This is where things change.

Now you can SCALE a part of your equation. There are billions of mothers on the planet. Additionally, you control your widget operations and can fiddle with pricing, sourcing, and other operations integral to your widget.

So if you sell 100,000 widgets at $5 profit each, you just earned $500,000.

If a IG influencer raves about your product in IG and you get a rush of traffic for 1 week, selling 4,000 units, you make $20K in week.

Your ceiling for wealth can be influenced by your execution, marketing, and decision-making. You cannot do this under a “time trade” regime.

This is how you create wealth beyond the BS preached in the mainstream (get a job, save your money, invest with Wall Street for 50 years blah blah)

Of course I’m not suggesting this is easy.

The key is to change the equation, change the probability, and change your potential outcomes. Nothing is easy, but neither is getting up at 6AM, fighting traffic for 50 years, and retiring with a gold watch on 50% of your income.

Just to give you an example, how this works in real life, I’ve been “off the clock” for over 20 years. That means I earn money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because my income and net worth is tied to UNITS, not HOURS or TIME. This is how can effectively call myself “semi-retired”.

I’m a best selling author [The Millionaire Fastlane] and [Unscripted] (published in over 15+ countries/languages) so part of my “equation” is how many books that sell worldwide.

And when you move to a “unit” metric, your markets expand beyond your local city — so what not appeal locally, might appeal globally. For instance, my second book Unscripted is a the #1 best-selling business book in South Korea (at least that’s why my publisher is telling me) but barely known in the states.

I also run a global community on entrepreneurship [The Fastlane Entrepreneur Forum] which operates 24 hours a day. A 24 hour operation means I earn 24 hours a day. I could go on and on with the other ventures but hopefully you get the point…

So are you ready?

Here’s my SIMPLIFIED equation for wealth currently. (Actually it’s much larger but I think you get the picture.)

​

(bup)(bs1)(bc1) + (bup)(bs1)(bc2) + (bup)(bs1)(bc3) + (bup)(bs1)(bc1) +(bup)(bs1)(bc4) + (bup)(bs1)(bc5) + (bup)(bs1)(bc6) + (bup)(bs1)(bc7) +(bup)(bs1)(bc8) + (bup)(bs1)(bc9) + (bup)(bs1)(bc10) + (bup)(bs1)(bc11) +(roy1)(bs1) + (roy2)(bs1) + (roy3)(bs1) + (roy5)(bs1) + (roy6)(bs1) + (roy7)(bs1) + (roy8)(bs1) + (roy9)(bs1) + (roy10)(bs1) + (roy11)(bs1) + (roy12)(bs1) + (roy2)(bs2) + (roy2)(bs2) + (roy2)(bs2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc1) + (bup)(bs2)(bc3) + (bup)(bs4)(bc2) + (bup)(bs5)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc6) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (bup)(bs2)(bc10) + (bup)(bs2)(bc2) + (wt)(webconv)(ad1) + (wt)(webconv)(ad2) + (wt)(webconv)(ad3) + (webtraffic)(insconv)(insfee) + (inv1)(roi1) + (inv2)(roi2) + (inv3)(roi3)+(inv4)(roi4) +(inv4)(roi5) + (inv5)(roi4) + (inv5)(roi5) + (inv5)(roi5) + (inv6)(roi6) + (res)(avg-app) + val(biz1)(pe) + val(biz2)(pe) + val(biz3)(pe) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + altcoins(value) + btc(value) + eth(value) + …​

Most of those variables listed above I can CONTROL and SCALE.

1) Create relative value.​

​

2) Recognize your equation.​

​

3) Work the equation.​

​

4) Act — Assess — Adjust​

​

5) Repeat​

That my friend is how you create monetary wealth within 5 years.

Wow! So apt....

I have to learn the power to CONTROL and SCALE.....
Thankyu @MJ DeMarco

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

"Create yourself a mathematical equation that scales, then work that equation to death while acting, assessing, and adjusting along the way."

This is a powerful concept MJ brings up that deserves much awareness and contemplation for beginners and advanced humans. I have found it can be applied in all areas of life.

To me its relative to a profound insight I had years ago with business which ties into this concept very well - I began to see all my creations (content, value, products etc) as creative organisms out in the world growing & working for me - separate from me or my time - like giving birth to a thing which sole purpose is to help people & grow. Put another way : It can be likened to a seed you plant, nurture & harvest.

As I continue to develop this process within my life & share it others I decided to break down the expanded video @MJ DeMarco made into a written/visual form with additional thoughts followed by an action item at the end to help whoever draw values from it.

My Intention:
A. Spreading more awareness to this concept in a extended medium (visual )
B. Helping more people integrate this concept
C. Continue to act as a reminder to everyone to not overlook this concept

This one concept is the underlying mechanism that will determine if you even have a chance at becoming a millionaire or whatever your financial goals are. Your understanding of wealth and how to make a fortune will be evident and light years ahead of any average person not implementing this .

Each of us - every single person - has our own individual mathematical equation attached to our back - you can't see it , but it is there. NO one is immune just like no one is immune to water or oxygen

View attachment 34400


Think of it like an invisible backpack that is holding a bunch of variables and those variables create your equation . Most importantly YOU control the variables that are in your backpack and how they formulate your equation ..
View attachment 34398


What is this mathematical equation that everyone has ? Its called your WEALTH CREATION EQUATION (WCE), more specifically it is how you earn income and generate wealth . Its is the equation/variables you put into your backpack. Each one you place gets yourself a new wealth equation

View attachment 34396


EXAMPLE

Position	Wealth Creation Equation
Unemployed	0
McDonalds	$10 X (hrs worked) - taxes -> Work 80 hours = $10 X 80hrs = $800 - taxes = $680 Millionaire in 2 yrs with this formula : You would need to work 100,000 hours or 961 hours every week for the next 104 weeks . This is impossible because you cant scale your time into 961 hrs of work per week

That is key distinctions
#1: You CANNOT scale time - it is fundamentally impossible for you to work more than a 168hrs a week. Time or hours are normally scaled at 40 , some will push its 50, 60, 70,80 but bottom line is time cannot be scaled.

#2: It is near impossible to scale wages or salary - no matter if you are making $25/ hour or $25,000 /year - values are tied to TIME and you cannot walk into your bosses office and ask for a 4000% pay raise

#3: The mathematics of jobs - whether its hourly or salary annually salary does not scale wealth because your wealth creation equation is constrained by time... You cannot work 300 hours in a week and you cannot work 300 years in a life span. Time and mortality limits your wealth creation equation.

This also applies with the main streams sacred cow "compound interest" , otherwise known as "Save $100 a day for 50 years and you will be rich. You cannot scale wall street returns which averages about 7% a year. You will not in any circumstances with this variable make 4,000% in one year by maxing out your 401k in a index fund and you cannot sit around for 200 years waiting for compound interest to work, not to mention inflation..


View attachment 34401


Main Point :Creating wealth is as simple as mathematics - you have the power to change your wealth creation equation at any time

How ? Through your behaviors, choices, decision making, career choices, and financial management.

Getting a job is a CHOICE , which carries with it an equation

Starting a business dependent on your time is a CHOICE , which carries with it an equation

Spending $160K on a degree in medieval literature is a CHOICE , which carries with it an equation


View attachment 34394


CHOICES CONTROL YOUR EQUATION AND YOU CONTROL ALL OF IT
If you want to get rich, change your choices so your wealth equation in your backpack contains variables that can be:

#1 SCALED
#2 MANIPULATED

Examples:

The Fastlane Forum (Entrepreneur container) - Founded many years ago by MJ - that behavior added to his wealth equation . It operates separate from his time receiving thousands of views per month .

These metrics are infinitely scale-able and can be monetized into ad revenue, subscriptions, book sales & many other income opportunities. He can scale an manipulate the variables

YouTube video with valuable information (content)- Created once and exists in perpetuity (long after/forever) and has potential to reach millions. In other words - it works for him 24 hours a day 7 days a week - Youtube views, subscribers again are all variables that can be scaled an manipulated

The Millionaire Fastlane & Unscripted (Books) - any book he writes can be infinitely scaled from 100s of copies into millions without too much effort.

Key - Your creation becomes its own "valuable thing" separate from your time and can exponentially grow on its own at a multitude of levels. Working for you greater than you ever can as an individual person , its a way to duplicate yourself, your ideas, and your value.

View attachment 34395


This is why unscriped fastlane entrepreneurship is so powerful

Entrepreneurs who follows the CENTS FRAMEWORK are operating on an un-even playing field for wealth . It all comes down to their choices and decisions which manipulated (modified) their wealth equation.

Control
Entry
Need
Time
Scale



LARGE EQUATIONS WITH SCALEABLE and CONTROLLABLE VARIABLES CREATES WEALTH
Simple wealth equations that do not scale or cannot be manipulated does not create wealth.

View attachment 34403

MJ Demarcos Example of his wealth creation equation
View attachment 34402


EVERY variable exists because YOU make it exist through your choices and your behaviors.
So change your Choices to change your Equation to change your Life

Think of the way you make money as a bet on your time.

Job/Salary bet on time =
Your bet of time is fixed , as is the probability and reward from that bet.
If you make 1 hour a dollar your 1 hour bet wins 10 in pay...
PREDICTABLE..UNCONTROLLABLE...and UNSCALABLE

vs

Entrepreneur following cents framework bet on time =
Everything changes - from the size of the bet time to the size of the reward
Rewards can be unlimited and they can continue to come long after the bet was made

You can make this a reality when you acknowledge that you control the simple mathematics that govern your ability to create wealth OR not create wealth. ​

View attachment 34397


What is in your backpack? Change your choices, change your equation , and then you get to change your life


ACTION STEP : Take out a piece of paper and write out your CURRENT equation on one side (so you truthfully see where you are) and on the other side brainstorm & create a new set of variables for your NEW equation (where you want to go). This is the one you will begin to implement & move towards starting today. Great! This is your new destination , the sails are set, time to move !

WOW!! Phenomenal write up! Thanks for the detailed analysis!