Poor decision making and life choices are often the result of poor premises, incorrect information, or untamed biases. Often these are given to you by your culture, family, or media.

If you believe X and X is incorrect or based on a false belief, your decisions based on X will also be incorrect.

In the end, you live a lie. Opportunity, missed.

Examples: "Starting a business is risky" or "You get rich investing in the stock market"

So, holding a job with a corporation who can FIRE you at any moment, for any reason, is NOT risky?

You let the whims of the stock market dictate your entire financial life? That isn't risky?

Astounding.

Every year is a new chance to evaluate your goals.

As a teenager, I had the goal for courtside seats at Chicago Bulls games, next to Michael Jordan. By the time I hit my twenties, this goal disappeared. As I built a better life for myself, the soap-operas of pro sports was no longer worth my time or the mental bandwidth.

As a rule, continuously evaluate your goals that extend beyond one year: As you grow and chisel yourself into a newer you, your goals and values change. There's no failure in dropping a goal that you no longer value.

Build a NEW you, and the goals of OLD you might disappear.

Wishing everyone happy holidays!

I'd like to reiterate that social media is a TOOL.

A thread on the forum advocates deleting social media.

My agreement depends on how the tool is used.

You can use social media to hammer you over the head and make you stupid.
Or you can use it to hammer you a better life and a better business.

At the end of last year I've been having some hip problems which I am 99% sure is due to too much sitting; it dropped me to Healthcon4. This particular issue only flared up during my sleep so I was started to sleep poorly due to hip pain.

I spent nearly $1K on a chiropractor who did nothing to fix the problem.
I spent more $$ on massage.
I stretched daily the area.

Nothing really changed.

My wife started following a bunch of exercise physiologists, kiniseologists ,and physical therapists on IG. She sent me a bunch of stretching exercises as recommended by these people. I started doing the stretches 5-6X a week. Within one week, the problem was reduced in severity.

Today, the pain is virtually gone and I can once again, get a good nights rest. HealthCon5.

And the exercises exposed some really interesting mechanics in my body that likely have been caused by YEARS of sitting in a chair during work hours.

Social media solved these problems for me. And for FREE. Or I could have spent countless hours and dollars trying to find someone to help me, which was already proving fruitless.

Social media improved my health.

It didn't destroy it.

You decide how to use the tool.

Happy New Year!

New Year's Resolutions are for losers.

I haven't had one in decades.

Here's why.

If you're making New Year's Resolutions, it tells me that you don't have a habit of making goals, but only once a year, at the end of December or the beginning of January. 😔

We're already one week into the New Year. Have your goals already started to crack through the seams of life?

I make goals every week of the year—not just January 2nd. Not only do I set goals often, but I also have a STRATEGY and a SYSTEM for achieving them.

Both are needed to succeed.

🎯THE STRATEGY
If you read The Great Rat Race Escape, my 1/5/10 Planasy is my strategy to achieve goals. If you aren't familiar with this strategy, it is based on the goal-setting concept of Backwardation.

Backwardation is visualizing your end goal—selling a Fastlane business for $10M— and reverse-engineering that goal into shorter, segmented goals, narrowed down to the week and the day.

Backwardation is a phenomenally effective concept that has stood the test of time. The most timeless application is in Stephen Covey's work, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where Habit #2 is "Starting with the End in Mind."

Without Backwardation and a strategy for achievement, New Year's Resolutions are mere fantasies—or, as I like to preach, "A fantastic goal without a fantastic plan is a fantastic fantasy."

🎯THE SYSTEM
One of James Clear's most profound pieces of wisdom in Atomic Habits was, "You do not rise to the level of your goals, but you rise to the level of your systems."

I used a simple pen-and-paper system for decades to plot my Backwardation plan. I futilely tried moving my backwardation strategy to online tools like Notion, Clickup, or MS To Do. It resulted in failure every time as I found these tools bulky, complex, and not "big-picture" focused. I'd always revert back to pen and paper.

As such, last year, I cofounded GoalSumo.com to solve my own problem, or, as they say, to scratch my own itch. I also added in a mentorship, knowledge acquisition, and Kaizen angle as well, a function that other task systems do not have.

I'm happy to say this powerful system has officially replaced my trusty 1/5/10 paper planner. I can say unequivocally that this system has leveled-up my life, with the most notable improvements in my physical fitness.

I use this system daily to set, plan, and achieve goals.

I would use it even if I wasn't associated with it.

If you want to level up your life and make 2024 the year everything changes, I invite you to start using Backwardation for your goals.

1️⃣ Set an ambitious goal
2️⃣ Segment it into smaller, bit-sized goals. Years, months, weeks, day.
3️⃣ Task and habit it to your day.

You can do this at GoalSumo easily, or you can download my free planner. Or write it down in your own journal.

You are the CEO of your life/

Back in the mid-90s, I spent 20 minutes visualizing my future and penned it down in a journal. Years later, I stumbled upon that old visualization in a dusty crate while moving to a new home. EVERYTHING I WROTE DOWN, I ACHEIVED, thanks to Backwardation.

You can read the story listed below.

Win the day. Win the week. And you'll win the year, followed by life.
Cheers, MJ

⚡RESOURCES
▶️ My FREE 1/5/10 Planner: Put Backwardation into Immediate Use.
▶️ My personal Backwardation success story.
▶️ GoalSumo Backwardation Tutorial.
▶️ Get a Free GoalSumo Trial; We have 25 "WIN-2024" subscription discount vouchers; as of now there are 19 left.

PS: If you tried GoalSumo months ago, I invite you to check it out it again as it was totally redone and improved in accordance to my specifications and use model. I stand behind what I personally use.

PS2: The crazy picture of me is after suffering through oral surgery, thanks to GoalSumo, I put on some muscle! 💪💪

The most important business pivot is the one you make before starting.

Direct from the Fastlane Newsletter (in case you missed it!)

https://www.mjdemarco.com/pivoting-in-business-pivot-before-starting/

Have a spectacular weekend everyone!
MJ

Want to get wealthy where budgets are no longer part of your vocabulary?

80/20 applies.

The 80 is a business. The 20 are your investments.

In other words, your controllable business generates massive wealth— not bitcoin or stocks.

Your uncontrollable stocks, crypto and bitcoin are mere investments, some more speculative than others, that can help grow your idle cash while you build massive wealth in your business.

Those who focus on the 20 do not get rich, only less poor.

Focus on what matters; that is a business that you can scale.

Most financial advice nowadays is what I call "survival finance" -- ways to manage your money just to get by and survive. Case in point... advice that fits in the box of the 99% will get you a life that checks the boxes of the 99%. 🤦‍♂️

Here's a list of all the Super-Bowl commercials that involved a product you can eat or drink...

Pringles potato chips
Lindt chocolate
M&Ms
Mountain Dew
Popeye's Chicken
Nerds Candy
Oreo Cookies
Mayonnaise
Doritos
Bud Light
Michelob Ultra
Reese Peanut Butter Cups
Coors Light
Starry Soda
Poppi Soda

Consuming every single one of these products will contribute to shortening your life, or will contribute to sickness and disease. (Sorry Poppi I don't believe your marketing.)

And then ironically, throw in a Pfizer commercial who will happily help medicate you, and manage the disease you self-inflicted.

Living UNSCRIPTED means living outside of your media and culture despite its attempts at normalizing destructive behavior.

There has never been a better example of the programmatic duress one faces when trying to live uniquely, and in the "1%" in terms of health and wealth.

What a time we live in.

Thanks to The Fastlane Forum, I've interacted with millions of aspiring entrepreneurs over the last 15 yrs.

Here's what I learned: Most won't succeed as they go thru life with a cadre of poison pens, destructive beliefs that will ruin your life. Here are the 7 most destructive.

First, a poison pen is a limiting belief that funds poor decisions and hence, poor outcomes.

Ex: If you hate your job but falsely believe "Starting a business is risky," you'll stay stuck in that job, choosing unknown risk over known pain.

Your life story will not change.

#1) I DON'T HAVE TIME
Actually, you do have time, but starting a business isn't as important as Netflix, sleep, video games, TikTok, or the Yankees' 75th game of the season.

Translation: My entertaining comfort is more important than my freedom.

#2) I DON'T HAVE MONEY!
Money certainly helps but it isn't a requirement. Value is blind and doesn't ask you for a bank account balance. If you have skills, you can charge a premium price—money—for those skills. When people refuse to acquire skills, they refuse to acquire money.

#3) I DON'T HAVE SKILLS!
No one is born with skills, you must acquire them thru grit & focus. I wasn't born an entrepreneur or an author. I honed these skills over years through deliberate practice. Financial freedom was more important to me than the latest Call of Duty release.

#4) I DON'T HAVE ANY IDEAS!
Wow, it is so awesome you live in a perfect Utopia where there are no problems, no faulty products, no inconveniences, no poor customer service experiences; nope, life is just perfect.

This poison pen reflects someone who has no clue, and no chance.

#5) I HAVE KIDS!
That's right. I forgot that in all of recorded human history, no one has ever started a business and succeeded when they had kids. This poison pen is medicating your cognitive dissonance for your inaction and makes you "feel good" about doing nothing.

#6) I CAN'T QUIT MY JOB!
Don't quit your job, yet. Your job can fit with the business process, from ideation to funding. Your life isn't your job; your job is to set yourself free from the rat-race tyranny & the "work, buy and die" paradigm. Isn't that worth your time?

#7) I AM [BLANK]!
BLANK represents a faulty identity issue. I have ADHD. I'm divorced. I'm a recovering alcoholic. I'm the wrong gender or race.

Again, value is generally color blind; if you have what I want, I won't care that you wet your bed as a kid.

How much does it cost?

THE NEW PEN STRATEGY: Write New Words of Suffer the Same Story.

This is a concept from The Great Rat Race Escape, the last book I wrote (2021) that is part novel/parable (witness an executed Fastlane!) & part business book.

Read this book to see how the rich, really get rich.

CONCLUDE: When someone posts at my forum and I see these "poison pens," I know they are a lost cause; unless they swap their poison pen into a growth pen, a belief system capable of writing a new story.

What poison pens can you ditch so your life can take on a new story arc?

📝📝📝📝📝✏️✏️✏️✏️

THE SOMEDAY PRINCIPLE: Regard "Someday" as a Lie that Really Means NEVER. (Page 26, The Great Rat Race Escape)

Someday is another dream-killing lie of "I'm waiting for some condition" before acting. In reality, one new condition replaces the fulfilled one. Here are just a few:

Someday I'll do X, but I'm waiting...

...for the New Year
...to finish school
...for a better job
...until the kids move out
...for a promotion
...to get out of debt
...until my vacation
...for a better opp/economy/President
...until I retire

FACT: The timing is NEVER right.

Key takeaways:

+ Someday is a lie, a code for NEVER.

+ Someday is an excuse for inaction, a bribe to dismiss today for a tomorrow that never comes.

+ Someday makes you feel better, like eating a tub of ice cream, but its impacts linger.

+ Someday is like betting on a fractal to end.

SOMEDAY must become TODAY.

The market is NEVER saturated if you offer a better product and a better value.

People who ask such questions aren't looking to create value, they're looking to chase money; which is why they ask about "saturation."

Bottomline: Think of the market like a raging river; it naturally gravitates toward value and value is the path of least resistance; the water doesn't care how fast or how much it is flowing; it simply goes where it needs to go.

Today's obvious not obvious observation...

The #1 richest guy on the planet (Bernard Arnault, $212 Billion) sells luxury products that makes middle-class/poor people feel rich, hence, keeping them middle-class/poor.

Interesting.