by MJ DeMarco
Reflect back to our producer/consumer dichotomy. Consumers are selfish. They demand to know is “what’s in it for me!” To succeed as a producer, surrender your own selfishness and address the selfishness of others.
Stop Chasing Money—Chase Needs
Never start a business just to make money. Stop chasing money and start chasing needs. Let me repeat that, because it’s the most important thing in this book: Stop thinking about business in terms of your selfish desires, whether it’s money, dreams or “do what you love.” Instead, chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.
Entrepreneurs fail because they create businesses based on selfish premises, and selfish premises don’t yield profitable businesses; they lead directly into the 90% failure wastebasket.
I need a new income stream.
I’m an expert in [blank] so I’ll do that.
I read a ‘get rich’ book and it says to start a business.
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong. Again, selfish, narcissistic premises are VIP invitations to violate the Commandment of Need.
You and your business attract money when you stop being selfish and turn your business’s focus from the needs of yourself to the needs of other people. Give first, take second. Needs come first, not money! Charm the marketplace with your own selfish needs and my bet is placed on your failure.
Joe was a martial arts expert and he loved his craft. Following the advice of gurus, he set out to “do what you love” and opened a martial arts studio. Within 10 months, his studio closed, as he could no longer support his family on his $21,000-per-year business profit.
Before Joe started, he was destined for failure. He got into business based on a faulty entrepreneurial road paved with sand, a premise based on selfish needs and selfish desires: “I’m an expert in martial arts and love the art, therefore I should open a studio.” The correct foundation is externally based on market needs, not internal selfish needs. Instead of selfish motives, what should have Joe been thinking?
✓Is there a need in my neighborhood for a martial arts studio?
✓What are existing martial arts studios doing wrong that I could do better?
✓What improved value do I offer the martial arts student?
✓What assets do I bring to this community?
Joe failed because there wasn’t a genuine need in the marketplace and his motives were selfish. Had Joe analyzed these questions foremost, his odds of driving a successful road would have dramatically improved.
Several years ago, during the economic expansion, I noticed a standalone storefront being built in my mother’s neighborhood of Chandler, Arizona, a suburban bedroom community south of Phoenix. As the building went up and the store tenant moved in, the heat of failure percolated. How did I know?
This new store was a hip-hop apparel boutique. Fasten your seat belt here comes failure! Why? The store violates the Commandment of Need. The neighborhood doesn’t need a hip-hop store. The area isn’t urban, there are no dance clubs nearby, and nothing looks remotely hip-hop. In fact, not 100 yards away there is an elder care retirement home. Is a 91-year-old grandpa the target market for hip-hop gear? The obvious problem here is selfishness. The owner is following his passions, and his love for hip-hop music and culture. Maybe a life coach told him to “do what you love.” Whatever the motive, the need is internal and not externally based on the marketplace. I predicted the business would last 12 months. After 18 months, the business disappeared. The road was paved with sand because no need existed.
Money Chasers Chase Money, Not Needs
Frequently I read posts from aspiring entrepreneurs with grandiose goals of making a fortune by starting a business. Hang out at any business forum and you will see the misdirected, selfish foundation poisoning the well.
How can I make money starting a business?
What business can I start with $200 and still make $5K per month?
What home-based business can I start?
I have a friend who manufacturers widgets; you think I can make money selling them?
What can I sell on Amazon so I can get passive income?
What’s a good product to import from China and sell on eBay?
What’s the best business to start on a shoestring?
If you sit around and ask yourself these types of questions, you’ll likely fail because these dialogues expose your preoccupation with money, and not needs or value. You’ve got it backward! I call these entrepreneurs “money-chasers.” They hop from one business to the next, scalping and arbitraging market imbalances, rarely solving needs or creating momentum. Sometimes these selfish business owners use questionable business practices as customer needs are neglected and money is pursued with disturbing zealotry.
Money chasers are consumers who haven’t quite made the transition to producer. They want to be producers, but they selfishly think like consumers.
For example, in the housing boom, money chasers became mortgage brokers and real estate agents. The burst of the bubble purged the industry clean of the excess. When foreclosures hit an all-time high, “loan modifiers” became the newest money chasers. Every boom attracts money chasers who hop aboard the trend train to solely serve themselves. With plenty of selfish consumers to prey upon, money chasers survive and sometimes thrive. At least until they’re exposed for fraud or a new bust rolls in. In times of excess, scams, schemes, and rip-offs pervade because money chasers invade and imbalances occur.
To Attract Money Is to Forget About Money
Want to make big bucks? Then start attracting money instead of chasing it.
Money is like a mischievous cat; if you chase it around the neighborhood, it eludes you. It hides up a tree, behind the rose bush, or in the garden. However, if you ignore it and focus on what attracts the cat, it comes to you and sits in your lap.
Money isn’t attracted to selfish people. It is attracted to businesses that solve problems. It’s attracted to people who fill needs and add value. Solve needs massively and money massively attracts.The amount of money in your life is merely a reflection to the amount of value you have given to others. Ignore this symbiosis and money will ignore you.
Successful businesses share one common trait: The satisfaction of consumer needs as reflected by sales in the marketplace. The marketplaces and consumers, not you, determine if your business is viable. If you sell 10 million anything, 10 million people have voted that your product will help them, or satisfy one of their needs.
The only Fastlane road that works is a road paved with cement—rock hard needs, wants, and solutions—not sand. A rock hard pavement gives you the unfair odds. Solve needs on a massive scale or in magnitude. It could be as fantastic as starting a software company as Bill Gates did, or something seemingly minute like putting a new spin on something old. If you own a website that services 10,000 people daily, you’re making an impact. If you own a real estate company that provides housing to 1,000 people, you’re making an impact.
Make a freaking impact and start providing value! Let money come to you! Look around outside your world, stop being selfish, and help your fellow humans solve their problems. In a world of selfishness, become unselfish.
Need something more concrete? No problem. Make 1 million people achieve any of the following:
✓Make them feel better. (entertainment, music, video games)
✓Help them solve a problem.
✓Educate them.
✓Make them look better (health, nutrition, clothing, makeup).
✓Give them security (housing, safety, health).
✓Raise a positive emotion (love, happiness, laughter, self-confidence).
✓Satisfy appetites, from basic (food) to the risqué (sexual).
✓Make things easier.
✓Enhance their dreams and give hope.
. . . and I guarantee, you will be worth millions.
So the next time you’re trolling the web looking to make money, sit back and ask yourself, “What do I have to offe
r the world?” Offer the world value, and money becomes magnetized to you!
“Do What You Love” and LIVE BROKE as You Do
Beware of another guru-speak: “Do what you love and the money will follow!” Bullshit. That is, unless you want to violate the Commandment of Need. “Do what you love” is another mythical decree perpetrated by hypocritical gurus and so-called life coaches who are probably three clients from broke. Sadly, the road of “do what you love” rarely converges with wealth. In fact, it might lead you down a road to destructive love.
If you’re like me, “do what you love” was never an option. Think about what you love and then think, will someone pay for it? Is it going to solve a need? Are you good enough to make money doing it? Most likely, you aren’t.
For “do what you love” to work, you need two things: 1) Your love must solve a need and 2) You must be exceptional at it.
I love to play basketball, but I suck at it. I can’t parlay my love of basketball into a career. I love to play piano, but again, I suck at it. I love many things, but I suck at them! If I wanted a career in any of these “loves,” I’d need unlimited time and money because no one would pay me a dime to do it. Who wants to endure that ineptness?
Consider this book. I love to write. The book represents a dream of “doing what I love,” and that dream was made possible by the Fastlane. If I needed this book to pay for a mortgage (don’t have one!) I’m not sure it would. I have no clue if this book will sell 10 copies or 10 million. Therefore I can’t rely on it.
“Doing what you love” for money often isn’t good enough because we aren’t good enough. Additionally, so many people are “doing what they love” that their markets get crowded and margins deflate. Heavy competition reigns.
Authoring a book is a crowded space. Just because I love to write doesn’t guarantee money will follow. In fact, no one cares that I love to write. Do you? Of course not! You want to know if my writing will help you.
In a magazine interview, billionaire RJ Kirk was asked about the benchmark to his success. He replied, “It is for others to say whether I am useful or not.”
It isn’t for you to decide whether you are useful. The marketplace makes that determination.
People pay for their satisfaction; they don’t pay to satisfy your need of “do what you love.”
People pay for solutions, not for your enjoyment.
People pay for solved problems.
People don’t give a rats-ass about your love for whatever. If “do what you love” doesn’t fill a need spectacularly, no one will pay for it!
This book is possible because I didn’t need the confirmation of money to authenticate my skill. If that sentence is too complicated, you confirm my point. Maybe I’m just not good enough. Regardless of sales, my book is a testament to “do what I love” whether I’m good or not. The Fastlane allowed money to be removed from the equation.
Now, I don’t need to get paid to “do what I love.” I just do it.
In other words, money led to “do what you love,” it didn’t follow. How’s that for irony?
Lebron James gets paid to play basketball because he is good. One of the many destinations of the Fastlane is to remove the confirmation of money from your “do what you love” activity. Fastlane success means I could play basketball seven days a week. I can play video games all day. I don’t need to get paid to “do what I love” because I can now do it for FREE.
If you are one of the lucky few who can earn an income from a specific activity that you love AND are good enough, kudos to you. And congratulations—you might not need a Fastlane. A Slowlane just might suffice. No worries. But for those of us who can’t transform our loves into income, there are other alternatives paved by the Fastlane.
“Doing What You Love” Fakes and Derivatives
If you can’t work a job or a business doing what you love, you’re likely to fall into a trap. Your natural reaction is to make a deal with the devil—the Slowlane. You trade your life away, doing things you hate, in exchange for doing things you love. You say, “I’ll do five days of work I hate so I can enjoy two weekend days doing something I love.” Does this barter sound like rational thinking?
For example, my friend Andy is a bank collections agent and hates his job. At beer time, I hear the complaints, the frustration, and the BS about the job: the Nazi-like micro-management, the incompetent boss, and his psychotic coworkers. He’s on the firing line from all fronts. He numbs himself to this suffering five days a week. His salvation? His weekend. He pays “do what you hate” with a weekend of “do what you love”—boating.
Then other people negotiate with “do what you love” into an alternative, or a derivative. For example, Pauline loves to knit, so she sells her knitting online. Jose loves automotive audio so he opens a car stereo shop. Janice loves to sculpt and sells her works at the local gallery. Gary is an avid bodybuilder so he becomes a personal trainer.
There are two dangers to derivatives:
(1)They don’t make money fast.
(2)They endanger the love.
First, “do what you love” rarely creates money fast because more than likely, not only are YOU doing what you love but thousands of others are too (just tune into the first-week auditions for American Idol for proof). The need is weak. This saturates markets and makes profit margins shallow.
At my gym, a personal trainer acquaintance told me he is struggling to make ends meet. When I asked why, he responded that personal training is so competitive that he can’t charge a price worth his time. His service fees are deflationary, caused by an abundant supply of trainers, and when supply exceeds demand (need) prices move down. Not enough need, too much supply.
So why is the field for personal trainers so saturated? Simple. People follow the espoused guru-esque advice without reflection on need: “Do what you love.” Unfortunately, if you LOVE doing it, bet on thousands of others loving it too. When you “do what you love,” prepare to face stiff competition. Who enjoys higher margins? The personal trainer? Or the guy who starts a company to clean up crime scenes?
The second danger of derivatives is that your love becomes vulnerable to contamination when you do it for money. If you are forced to do anything, even something you purport to love, in exchange for a paycheck, that love is put in danger.
Decades ago, I took a job as a limo driver because I loved to drive. By the time that job ended, I hated to drive. After work, I’d stay home because I was so sick of driving. My love was contaminated.
I once had a friend who created fantastic paintings as a hobby. When I asked her why she doesn’t paint full time for a living, her answer was simple: I paint when I am impassioned to paint. The few times when she painted for money, it stunted her artistic creativity because a different force fueled the motivation—money, not emotion from the moment.
“Do what you love” is left to professional athletes, because they are at the pinnacle of their games. And yet, even after making millions, many of these athletes suffer the same fate. They lose their love of the game. Dancers lose their love for dance. Artists lose their love for art. Money and the demands of life cast a cloud over the love and darken it into a burden.
While derivatives of “do what you love” might yield a figment of happiness, they operate in saturated marketplaces and, more importantly, they could jeopardize your natural love for the activity.
Your Ignition: Moving from Love to Passion
The motivational fuel for the Fastlane is not love, but passion—passion for your future vision and passion from personal growth. If you have a passion for a specific goal, you’ll do anything for it. I had a passion for Lamborghinis and was willing to do anything for it. Pick up dog shit, mop floors, work at 3 a.m.—whatever it was going to take, I had the motivation to do it. Did I have a passion or a love for driving limos? Hell no. But I had a passion for my future goals and what I expected from life. It motivated me to act and then repeat.
Your vehicle needs an ignit
ion, a starter, something that compels you to jump out of bed in the morning challenged to tackle the day. That ignition is passion. Other people might call this a meaning, a purpose, or a “why”. You need to want something greater for you, your family, or something else. It is different for everybody, but when you find it, you will do anything for it.
When you put your goals on a road that actually leads to a dreamy destination, it impassions daily action. If you can’t get paid doing some activity, identify a specific “why” or “end goal” that ignites your passion to act.
What is your WHY? Why are you doing this? Why go Fastlane? Whom do you want to prove wrong? My “WHYS” read like this:
I want to pay off my mother’s mortgage.
I want to wake up without an alarm clock.
I want to write a book without the pressure of money.
I want a big house on a mountainside with a pool.
I want a Lamborghini.
I want to make a difference.
I want to prove him wrong.
Passion beats “do what you love,” because passion is generalized and can be laser focused toward any goal. When the focus is “doing what you love,” the focus becomes industry-specific and you’re likely to violate the Commandment of Need.
Why are you starting this business?
Because you love it?
Or because there is a real market need?
I repeat: Passion for an end goal, a why, drives Fastlane action.
Mike Rowe, host of the cable television show Dirty Jobs, profiled several owners of businesses who had less than lovable duties. From testing bovine manure to cleaning up pigeon goop, the owners were passionate. None of them “loved” what they did, but they had passionate “whys” and very deep bank accounts. Competition was sparse because everyone else was busy chasing “do what you love.”