MJ DeMarco
I followed the science; all I found was money.
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Ever sat at a wedding, champagne fizzing in your hand, thinking, "They've got a countdown timer ticking. Three years, max, before divorce blasts this union into smithereens"?
I have. And I've never been wrong.
Don't worry.
This isn't some morose saga about predicting divorces (although in The Great Rat Race Escape , I offer a 3-point plan to make your marriage bulletproof) but rather a story about predicting your fortune.
How? It's simple.
See, your marital status is a dance between you and your partner, much like wealth is a waltz with time.
Is time my nemesis, or can I mold it into your ally? In the late 90's something groundbreaking happens to me: Time, my arch-nemesis does a complete 180 and becomes my wingman. Like being "on the clock" in a grueling 9-to-5 gig, only this time, my clock never stops ticking. I'm minting money every hour of the day, whether I'm sleeping or busting my butt in the gym. It's been my reality for over two decades. The switcheroo? Time. The gulf between the filthy rich 1% and the struggling 99% is the role time plays in their lives.
Icons like Taylor Swift are raking in boatloads of cash every minute, whether she's shitting the toilet or belting out hits on stage. She has value. Systems. Content. Products. All of these give her a yield on time investments she made long, long ago.
You want jaw-dropping wealth that doesn't involve choking budgets and decrepit RV living?
Change your dance with time.
Here are SEVEN simple ideas to reshape your tango with time, transforming it from adversary to accomplice.
#1) BREAK FREE FROM YOUR TEMPORAL SHACKLES
Time can't be scaled or leveraged. You can't tweak the 24-hour day or the average 78-year life. Attaching wealth to "hours worked," "years salaried," or "years invested" is like shackling yourself to mediocrity's altar. Wealth will elude you.
And when some so-called "financial guru" peddles time as a crucial wealth partner ("Save $X monthly, you'll be a millionaire by 2070!"), get the hell out. Run! Unfollow!
This is ordinary finance for ordinary people.
#2) WEALTH WITHOUT TIME IS A DEATH SENTENCE
Wealth without time is death. This simple fact is why using TIME as a partner for wealth is a foolish strategy.
Existential ignorance doesn't change reality, and the devil with thank you. Using TIME as a variable for wealth is akin to selling your vital organs for money.
What good is dying rich with a $2.3M portfolio if you wasted 40 years of your youth to save it and enjoyed none of it? Money's a powerful resource, a gateway to experiences, memories, and unfettered choices that the average person can't enjoy. If you're frittering away your prime years in a soul-crushing, time-guzzling saving/investing scheme for an uncertain future predicated on patience and random economic returns, you're underselling your life.
#3) TIME'S UTILITY TANGIBLY DEPRECIATES
Skiing at 30 doesn't pack the same punch as at 75. Hopping on a world cruise when you're fit and 35 doesn't match doing it at 75 on a cocktail of meds.
Time, like money, depreciates.
Everyone harps about money's present value, but no one talks about time's present value.
Truth: Financial freedom enjoyed in your 30s/40s is FAR MORE valuable than financial freedom in your 70s/80s.You'll have plenty of time to sit home and play checkers when you're 80; doing it as your only form of cheap entertainment while you're 35 is, again, a waste of your most precious resource.
#4) LEVERAGE PHYSICALITY TO MAKE TIME AN ALLY
You can turn TIME into an ally vs. an adversary with a business that meets the TIME Commandment in the CENTS Framework. This is done through Physicality.
My forum exists 24/7. My publishing company sells books that exist separate from me. My ground transportation company still exists even though I sold it long ago. I have passive ownership investments in over 60 companies worldwide, all make money 24/7. I'm also the co-founder of a productivity system that operates 24/7, no matter what I'm doing. These ventures exist in time, separate from my time, even after I leave this earth!
In essence, Physicality is creating a system that functions independently of your time—products, software, franchises, content. It's never been easier to build something with Physicality while giving yourself the power to uncouple from time. Yes, like most investments, it won't happen fast, but when it does, you'll never go back.
#5) INVEST TIME, DON'T TRADE IT
Millions of resources exist that will show you how to invest your money. But what about time? Can you invest time?
Yup. But don't expect that lesson to be shared by any two-bit guru with an expensive training course to throw your way.
When you invest in a business system with Physicality, you're investing time. Not only does it churn out money, but it also buys you free time through passivity. Time is a resource we all must judiciously expend. It's your primal fuel. The question is: will you trade it for money like most of humanity or will you invest it in a system that buys you free time later?
In short, a CENTS-based business can transform TIME into an ally and work for you instead of against you. When you wake up in the morning and earn more than most people make all week, then you will understand.
#6) COMPOUNDING IS FUTILE, UNLESS...
Compound interest only flexes its muscles when leveraged with a hefty sum. Passive income from dividends and interest on $10M+ comfortably pays $40k/month. Would $40k/month debt-free enable you to lead a extraordinary life?
Regrettably, compound interest is sold to the commoner as a magical wealth generator when it's not. At lower sums, it keeps time as your parasitic foe. Your $1k investment earns a measly $5 a year unless you patiently wait for decades to roll by.
Compound interest only sparks magic when you go big.
#7) MARRY TIME FREEDOM WITH FINANCIAL FREEDOM FOR A HAPPY EMPIRE
Don't conflate TIME freedom with FINANCIAL freedom.
A homeless beggar on the street has just as much TIME freedom as one of these FIRE guys who claim to have "retired early" while living like a broke college coed. The thing is, both the beggar and the FIRE guy are subject to fiscal handcuffs: both have limited financial options, AND both stress about money. Anyone who claims they would rather live like a peasant than a king is lying to themselves, and to you.
In life's game of chess, yes, time is king.
But the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, and dismissing her is a huge mistake.
And king without his powerful queen is an empire destined to fail.
~ MJ
I have. And I've never been wrong.
Don't worry.
This isn't some morose saga about predicting divorces (although in The Great Rat Race Escape , I offer a 3-point plan to make your marriage bulletproof) but rather a story about predicting your fortune.
How? It's simple.
See, your marital status is a dance between you and your partner, much like wealth is a waltz with time.
Is time my nemesis, or can I mold it into your ally? In the late 90's something groundbreaking happens to me: Time, my arch-nemesis does a complete 180 and becomes my wingman. Like being "on the clock" in a grueling 9-to-5 gig, only this time, my clock never stops ticking. I'm minting money every hour of the day, whether I'm sleeping or busting my butt in the gym. It's been my reality for over two decades. The switcheroo? Time. The gulf between the filthy rich 1% and the struggling 99% is the role time plays in their lives.
Icons like Taylor Swift are raking in boatloads of cash every minute, whether she's shitting the toilet or belting out hits on stage. She has value. Systems. Content. Products. All of these give her a yield on time investments she made long, long ago.
You want jaw-dropping wealth that doesn't involve choking budgets and decrepit RV living?
Change your dance with time.
Here are SEVEN simple ideas to reshape your tango with time, transforming it from adversary to accomplice.
#1) BREAK FREE FROM YOUR TEMPORAL SHACKLES
Time can't be scaled or leveraged. You can't tweak the 24-hour day or the average 78-year life. Attaching wealth to "hours worked," "years salaried," or "years invested" is like shackling yourself to mediocrity's altar. Wealth will elude you.
And when some so-called "financial guru" peddles time as a crucial wealth partner ("Save $X monthly, you'll be a millionaire by 2070!"), get the hell out. Run! Unfollow!
This is ordinary finance for ordinary people.
#2) WEALTH WITHOUT TIME IS A DEATH SENTENCE
Wealth without time is death. This simple fact is why using TIME as a partner for wealth is a foolish strategy.
Existential ignorance doesn't change reality, and the devil with thank you. Using TIME as a variable for wealth is akin to selling your vital organs for money.
What good is dying rich with a $2.3M portfolio if you wasted 40 years of your youth to save it and enjoyed none of it? Money's a powerful resource, a gateway to experiences, memories, and unfettered choices that the average person can't enjoy. If you're frittering away your prime years in a soul-crushing, time-guzzling saving/investing scheme for an uncertain future predicated on patience and random economic returns, you're underselling your life.
#3) TIME'S UTILITY TANGIBLY DEPRECIATES
Skiing at 30 doesn't pack the same punch as at 75. Hopping on a world cruise when you're fit and 35 doesn't match doing it at 75 on a cocktail of meds.
Time, like money, depreciates.
Everyone harps about money's present value, but no one talks about time's present value.
Truth: Financial freedom enjoyed in your 30s/40s is FAR MORE valuable than financial freedom in your 70s/80s.You'll have plenty of time to sit home and play checkers when you're 80; doing it as your only form of cheap entertainment while you're 35 is, again, a waste of your most precious resource.
#4) LEVERAGE PHYSICALITY TO MAKE TIME AN ALLY
You can turn TIME into an ally vs. an adversary with a business that meets the TIME Commandment in the CENTS Framework. This is done through Physicality.
My forum exists 24/7. My publishing company sells books that exist separate from me. My ground transportation company still exists even though I sold it long ago. I have passive ownership investments in over 60 companies worldwide, all make money 24/7. I'm also the co-founder of a productivity system that operates 24/7, no matter what I'm doing. These ventures exist in time, separate from my time, even after I leave this earth!
In essence, Physicality is creating a system that functions independently of your time—products, software, franchises, content. It's never been easier to build something with Physicality while giving yourself the power to uncouple from time. Yes, like most investments, it won't happen fast, but when it does, you'll never go back.
#5) INVEST TIME, DON'T TRADE IT
Millions of resources exist that will show you how to invest your money. But what about time? Can you invest time?
Yup. But don't expect that lesson to be shared by any two-bit guru with an expensive training course to throw your way.
When you invest in a business system with Physicality, you're investing time. Not only does it churn out money, but it also buys you free time through passivity. Time is a resource we all must judiciously expend. It's your primal fuel. The question is: will you trade it for money like most of humanity or will you invest it in a system that buys you free time later?
In short, a CENTS-based business can transform TIME into an ally and work for you instead of against you. When you wake up in the morning and earn more than most people make all week, then you will understand.
#6) COMPOUNDING IS FUTILE, UNLESS...
Compound interest only flexes its muscles when leveraged with a hefty sum. Passive income from dividends and interest on $10M+ comfortably pays $40k/month. Would $40k/month debt-free enable you to lead a extraordinary life?
Regrettably, compound interest is sold to the commoner as a magical wealth generator when it's not. At lower sums, it keeps time as your parasitic foe. Your $1k investment earns a measly $5 a year unless you patiently wait for decades to roll by.
Compound interest only sparks magic when you go big.
#7) MARRY TIME FREEDOM WITH FINANCIAL FREEDOM FOR A HAPPY EMPIRE
Don't conflate TIME freedom with FINANCIAL freedom.
A homeless beggar on the street has just as much TIME freedom as one of these FIRE guys who claim to have "retired early" while living like a broke college coed. The thing is, both the beggar and the FIRE guy are subject to fiscal handcuffs: both have limited financial options, AND both stress about money. Anyone who claims they would rather live like a peasant than a king is lying to themselves, and to you.
In life's game of chess, yes, time is king.
But the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, and dismissing her is a huge mistake.
And king without his powerful queen is an empire destined to fail.
~ MJ
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