Episode-683- MJ Demarco on the Five Financial Lies
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Join me today as MJ Demarco, former CEO and Founder of Limos.com (1997-2007), entrepreneur, author, and the revolutionary “get rich slow” anti-guru, MJ DeMarco not long ago lived with his mother, mopped floors, and sought the dream like so many others: the dream to live free from bosses, free from 9-5 jobs, and free from life mediocrity.
Through rigorous years of self-study, countless errors and failures, MJ uncovered the real essence of wealth, dreams, and was able to retire YOUNG in his thirties without sacrificing lifestyle. (Yes, he drinks Starbucks coffee, drives exotic cars, and rarely clips coupons! OMG!) He lives in beautiful Phoenix Arizona and enjoys traveling, dining, writing, softball, working out and obviously, has a fanatical passion for the Lamborghini marquee.
Some of M.J. views may challenge you, some of his views may not be totally in sync with your own. Why? Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur (large or small scale). Yet I believe the insights of a man who has actually done what he claims can be done in regard to money is something we all need to hear from time to time.
Also please consider when our ideas are challenged we have a great opportunity to learn. In this interview you will hear me at two specific points challenge MJ’s view on something, notice how he considers the ideas, evaluates them and is open to them. He may not necessarily adopt them but he considers them and takes them in, this is an exceptional example for all of us when challenged with new ideas.
Additional Resources for Today’s Show
- Members Support Brigade
- TSP Gear Shop
- Join Our Forum
- Fastlane Entrepreneurs – MJ’s Blog/Website – No Longer Functional
- The Fast Lane Forum – MJ’s Entrepreneur’s Forum
- The Millionaire Fastlane – MJ’s Book
Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.
I hope TSP community members will check the book out. Thanks for a great interview Jack!
Federally secured student loans cannot be passed on to your children. The problem isn’t so much student loans its that kids are more concerned with the pedigree of the degree instead of the actual learning. Community colleges are cheap and offer better learning than large Universities, I have attended both.
Work in your strengths!! Don’t try to start a business in something that you don’t care about!!
Always glad to get away from the doom and gloom and think about true positive reality. I am beginning to wonder if there is an equation – how many millions of dollars to every big-ass gun?
Honestly, the ability to produce and contribute seems so much more important than what assault rifles(s) you have or how many rounds of ammo you have stored.
Go builders! Yay!
(sorry – I’m a farmer so I’m more focused on producing than I am on worrying)
Joy!
great podcast thanks
Not everyone is geared towards running a company, some people are linchpins and some aren’t. Just because you have an idea that maybe 100K people like (or more) doesn’t mean its going to make you a millionaire.
If you are a small business owner you know that your boss is a slave driver!! 80% of America’s millionaires are first generation rich – Tom Stanely.
Lets count the number of entrepreneurs that become millionaires in 5 years of starting their business? Now let’s count the number that reach that in 10yrs, 15 yrs, 20 yrs..and so on? I bet the bell curve is more in the 15+ yrs.
The tortoise wins the race every time I read the book 🙂
I really liked this interview — more than the one with Gary V — and for reasons that I necessarily couldn’t have seen just a year or two ago.
Much of what MJ talked about seemed to come from a place of not necessarily desiring to be RICH, as much as it was about finding FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE. Even though the manifestation of his financial independence was demonstrated through a big house, fast cars and a wealthy lifestyle, the root of it still resided in that desire for independence. This bore a close resemblance to the core value of one of the best books on building a life that I’ve ever read, _Your Money or Your Life_ by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.
While YMOYL focuses more on the reduction of expenses through conscious earning and spending — thus increasing the amount of savings (or profit) each and every month, and MJ focuses on how to seriously grow your wealth within a relatively short (5 years or less) time frame, both of them have as their goal the idea of Financial Independence, or “FI,” as Dominguez and Robin called it.
I also liked MJ’s comment about time being a finite resource, not money. This also tapped directly into a key point of YMOYL, that you only have a finite amount of time on this earth so it’s important to spend it wisely and consciously.
All in all a very good show today — and it gave me some things to think about, especially in the realm of focusing my ideas on filling a need/want instead of simply trying to “follow a passion”. If my ultimate passion is financial independence, then whatever helps me to reach that goal that fits into my own moral sensibilities has to be a good thing.
I think this was an excellent show. I’ve always been self employed and I’ve always “followed my passion” into business. BAD IDEA. It’s never netted me much over a poverty line living. Not that wealth, or money for its own sake has ever been my goal, but I would like to be making a living at this point — time to change gears.
Still listening to this show but had to pause and drop a comment…
You mentioned how a large, bloated company would need to have 60 meetings and go through several months of bureaucratic B.S. to program a new search feature on their web site.
How about me sitting at work yesterday listening to 6 or 7 high ranking (100k+ salaried) executives literally SCREAMING at the top of their lungs at each other, hitting walls, almost getting into a fist fight… Arguing for 3 hours (and this fight has dragged on into today’s workflow) about whether they need to put a ® or ™ next to a product logo on our web site.
The company can afford to pay 7 high salaried employees (calculated to over $3500) to come to a conclusion about this important decision.
The company dropped $40,000 to have a special effects guy produce 2 30 second product videos, yet we aren’t getting any bonuses or raises this year.
These corporate atmospheres are the main reason Americans are not productive AT ALL anymore. I estimate that the people who work at a typical large corporation have about 4 productive hours in a 40 hour work week.
Whoa. Like the comment about building a business based on what “haters” are saying… plenty of “haters” in my market. That gives lots of room to build.
Thanks for this episode Jack!
Adam B. — Your observation about corporate America hit the nail on the head. You might find this article by Charles Hugh Smith interesting:
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune11/corporate-america-bankrupt6-11.html
Interesting call. To me, doing what you love is move like doing the type of things you love to do, rather than building a business around a specific hobby. Yes, like if you love building businesses, then build a business. Do the type of work that you love to do.
My oldest son loves to program new stuff, even to the point of developing new languages. While speaking at a conference once, he was asked how he was able to write such a vast amount of new code. His reply was sometimes I can’t sleep at night, I have to write a new framework.
I think anytime anyone is that passionate about doing something should find a way to monetize it. My son realized that he loves to start stuff, others are good at finishing stuff. He starts a lot of stuff, often giving it away to someone else to finish. A year or 2 later he is like wow, that idea really caught on fast. One of the conferences he spoke at this year, he gave away one of his starts to one of the attendees to finish.
Time is the issue, more ideas than time to develop each idea.
Looking back though, it was when he saw a need in his niche and filled it, (another of those must stay up all night projects) that he became successful in a matter of months and it no longer mattered whether he finished his degree or not.
@Chris — Enjoyed that article quite a bit. I pretty much agree with those observations.
I don’t get it. I tried to post a comment with no foul language and re-worded it SEVERAL times but it just won’t post. But I bet this one does.
I agree that a lot of the talk about how college is becoming valueless is correct, but sometimes I get tired of hearing this criticism over and over and over again. I got my degrees (BS and MS) in engineering and I do not think this was a waste at all. Granted, I went to a public school, in such a way as to incur almost no debt for my bachelors, and managed to get my MS entirely paid for by an outside source. But given that I’m interviewing for jobs in the 60-75 range, I think it would have been worthwhile economically even if I’d had to go into more debt to do it, so college is not yet entirely worthless no matter how you go about it or what you study (as in fairness, you have also pointed out).
I would really like it if you could do a show that went into more detail about higher education: when it is a waste, when it’s worth the cost, what are the alternatives, and what its future might be once the bubble collapses. It’d also be nice if you could talk about some ways to make it more affordable right now.
I also get a little tired sometimes of the fixation on entrepreneurship. I don’t want to be an entrepreneur, most people aren’t cut out to be entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs would have a hard time finding employees for their businesses if everyone wanted to be a leader and an entrepreneur. Maybe another idea for a show would be what sort of careers and skill sets are better geared towards achieving self-sufficiency and independence without running a business, or at least without running a business. I realize that the only way to completely control your own destiny is to completely control your source of income, but running your own business also entails risks and uncertainties that employees do not have to face. Surely some skill sets and careers lend themselves better to independence and self-sufficiency than others; couldn’t we do a show for those of us who don’t want to run a business by talking about some of those?
If you are contemplating starting a business, read “The E-Myth” or “The E-Myth revisited”. Either book will lay out why most new businesses fail and how to avoid those pitfalls.
Hello Jack
After a 4 months leave after being fed up with your loose language, I came back to your wesbite while the kids were gone and was excited to share this program with them later until you dropped the cavalier quotation about sex and teens. Please take your own advice; your audience (or would-be audience) is giving you feed back to clean up your language…There is a whole youth audience that you are either leading into the gutter or shutting out because we have to turn you off.
@Kathy, see Section 3.
http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/about-tspc/disclaimers-policies-2
Your kids hear far worse at a skating rink, on a school bus or watching prime time TV on public airways.
Sorry, Jack, not in our case, but if they did they would be hearing it from immature peers as themselves not from adults who attract their respect. Sorry that adulthood comes with so much responsibility, but it’s what makes the world become better rather than worse and judging from the state of our culture today it is obvious that adults would rather stay juvenile than behave respectably. Striving for a better tomorrow for all of us. ~ Kathy
Sorry but you come off as a sanctimonious prude. You are offended that I quoted Gary Vanderchuk saying,
“The internet is only 14 years old and hasn’t even grown up and had sex yet”.
That means you are offended by LIFE. As you have kids clearly you at some point, “grew up and had sex”.
And I don’t care if you home school your kids and don’t let them on the net or play video games, if they ever get outside of your direct earshot for over 30 seconds with other children they will hear and DO worse than anything you hear on TSP.
Those who think they are the exception to this are delusional.
If you do somehow manage to suppress this for say 18 years the rebellion you will create will be impressive.
You can’t please everyone so just do the show how you see fit. If you are crass people are going to get pissed off. If you are too politically correct or even worse — monotone and soul-less (like NPR) then you will offend ME.
I make no judgements in regards to which listeners would be better to keep but I personally stopped trying to please everyone a long long time ago because you just can’t.
@Adam B, don’t worry man I don’t try and never will try to please everyone. From day one people have told me how I should run things at TSP, other than some constructive input as to subjects and such I have listened to NONE of it.
The show is who I am, it is me, it will never change. Doing this built a community of over 25,000 people who listen each day. Those people expect tomorrow to be like the last three years, for me to be me, authentic and even crass at time. I owe it to them to give them what I have promised from day one.
And you are right if I tuned this into G rated crap you and all of the rest should be offended, don’t worry it wont happen. The only things that can change me and my personality are severe head injury, altimeters or death.