According to MJ, Success is a process (creating a moneytree), not an event (buying the Lamborghini) and there are three models of life:
- Sidewalk to poverty – having no idea and just spending like there’s no tomorrow. Instant gratification leads to the destruction of freedom, health and choice.
- Slowlane to mediocrity – skimping and saving and investing on 401ks but essentially keeping the day job. Wealth is only possible when you are too old to enjoy it.
- Fastlane to wealth – disconnecting your earnings potential from time and using the ability to scale. May take time to create the moneytree but it is get rich quick (not get rich easy)
As you can see, MJ is fond of the driving metaphor (slightly more palatable than that Who Moved My Cheese? book of yesteryear where the overriding metaphor was rats in a maze.) Anyway, if you are not averse to a stretched metaphor or two in your business advice book, there’s lots to, er, get your hands behind the wheel of (?) Here are some key, er, driveaways from the book in which MJ handily applies the acronym “CENTS” for evaluating your budding enterprise’s wealth potential:
Control
You must have control of all key areas of your enterprise, or else you’ll relinquish all the possibilities of big money. You’ll end up working for someone else who does have the control eg franchses, network marketing. Don’t join a trend, start a trend. Run the network marketing, don’t join it.
Entry
Cannot succeed in a field where “everyone is doing it” already. Must be some restriction on entry, otherwise you can only succeed if exceptional.
Need
Businesses that solve needs win. Needs can be pain points, service gaps, unsolved problems, emotional disconnects. No one cares about your selfish desires, they care about their own selfish desires. “Do what you love” only works if your love solves a need, otherwise it’s a crowded market and you must be exceptional to succeed. Better to have passion for an end goal (money or business success) that will allow you to do what you love for free, not as a business.
Time
A business attached to your time is a job. A business with unlimited potential is one that earns income exclusive of how much time you put in. Start a business that uses a money-system seedling.
Scale
Scale is achieved by reach (units sold) and/or magnitude (unit profit). Engage the “law of effection” that is if you sell to millions, you will make millions (or a smaller number but charging a larger amount.
* * *
No. 6 of 50 books I intend to read and review in 2022.
I’m Patrick Sherriff, an Englishman who survived 13 years working for newspapers in the US, UK and Japan. Between teaching English lessons at my conversation school in Abiko, Japan, I write and illustrate textbooks for non-native speakers of English, release Hana Walker mystery novels, short stories, paint, sketch and write essays and a monthly newsletter highlighting good fiction published in English about Japan.
Patrick Sherriff 