A few days ago, I asked Twitter for some feedback on Rich Dad Poor Dad. I received a ton of replies with the consensus swinging from awesome, to a vanity project, to a complete waste of time. A number of people suggested I read MJ DeMarco’s The Millionaire Fastlane instead, and having heard good things from sources I trust, I thought I’d take them up on the suggestion.

The Millionaire Fastlane aims to dispel the myth of Get Rich Slow, aka ‘every financial dream you’ve ever been sold’. DeMarco is a contemporary self-made millionaire; the type that we traditionally look up to in the Internet Marketing world. But then, this is no ordinary world. DeMarco made his fortune by selling Limos.com for several million dollars in the early 2000s. Now, he wants to hand us his blueprint for early retirement, using a clusterfuck of petrolhead metaphors and really, really tough love.

It sounds like a very familiar story arc, doesn’t it? Tell the already downtrodden reader that he’s been doing it wrong all these years. Then fill his shattered dreams with hope that a quick fix solution is there after all.

DeMarco distances himself from the popular ‘be your own boss gurus’ that he claims to despise. And yet his formula for setting the tone of the message is as textbook as a Clickbank sales page. While the first half of The Millionaire Fastlane is a merciless assassination of anybody and everybody who detours from his grand plan, the latter chapters are a brilliant portrayal of what it really takes to attract wealth.

Fastlane is a mixed bag. It’s 100 pages too long, and starts terribly by ticking off every last painful cliche of the Internet Millionaire. DeMarco is an abrasive, obnoxious and sometimes annoying writer. That happens to be one of my preferred methods of relating to young cash-hungry audiences, but MJ really pushes the boat out. The tough love tone could be forgiven, if it wasn’t for the breathtaking nonchalance by which he dispels the merit in any lifestyle but his own.

God forbid you read this book as the proud owner of a shitty car, or as somebody in his 50s or 60s. DeMarco ridicules anybody who hasn’t achieved early wealth as a urine-stained, wheelchair-riding lost cause of society.

The first 100 pages act as a relentless attack on what MJ refers to as sidewalkers and slowlaners, or anybody who hasn’t discovered his fastlane mindset. He unleashes a grandstand assault on just about anybody with a day job, and anybody with the audacity to follow a profession that requires working for The Man, or getting a college education.

It takes 17 chapters of preaching to the choir for DeMarco to simmer down and accept that we ‘get it’. We know why most people are destined to never be millionaires. We know that working 5 days in an office to enjoy 2 days of peace is not the greatest of trades. But Christ, does he ever ram it down our throats? Barely a page drifts by where we’re not forced to listen to his Lamborghini fetish, or an increasingly ridiculous diatribe of automobile metaphors.

So, I hated the first half of this book. The empty rhetoric left me wondering how such a broken beat could ever have hoarded the 5 star reviews that Amazon suggests, which made it all the more surprising that the chapters to follow are perhaps some of the best ever written on the field of personal finance.

As brash as DeMarco writes, his assessment of entrepreneurism is the sort that really gets you lining up the parallels with your own business. He provides a much needed demolition of the myth that being your own boss is synonymous with wealth and freedom. He even accuses us affiliate marketers of hitchhiking the road to riches and not being genuine entrepreneurs. He’s right, of course. And his message that creating systems is the true secret behind wealth will be reverberating in the head of anybody who persists with the first half of the book and gets so far as to read it.

There are moments in the closing chapters where The Millionaire Fastlane resonates with our kind in a way that I’ve yet to see any other book manage. It’s a perfectly executed kick in the GoDaddys. A much needed reminder that as long as we stay promoting other people’s products, we get no closer to dictating our own future. Indeed, DeMarco even confesses his love for affiliate marketing. He just wants to be in charge of the system, rather than a disposable part of it.

Without doubt, the first half of this book is a damning crucifixion of the modesty lacking in our industry, but by the time you reach the final page, you’ll be feeling too punchdrunk on inspiration to care.

You’ll feel the need to step out from the shadow of promoting products you have no control over. You’ll want to build real wealth that leads to real freedom. This illumination, if it comes, is the single greatest gift an affiliate marketer could ask for. For that reason alone, Millionaire Fastlane is a must-read.

Recommended This Week

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