MJ DeMarco - UNSCRIPTED: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship

http://www.getUnscripted.com

http://www.theMillionaireFastlane.com

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HAS LIFE REGRESSED INTO PAYING BILLS AND LIVING FOR A WEEKEND?

**** PREFACE ****

Y ou werent born to slave nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday, pay bills and then die. When lifes final moment arrives, what will your spirit sing? Regret and remorse? Or peace and happiness?

Take a moment and forecast your lifes trajectory to your deathbed. And be honest. Will you mourn lost time and the things you didnt do? Places you didnt see? Will your life review be all work and zero legacy? If your future forecast looks bleakly uninspiring and not worthy of your familys history books, you have a chance to change itright here and right now.

Elderly people nearing the end of their lives often wish they could take a time machine back to their youth and chat with their younger selves. Once there, they would tell their younger selves their life wisdom and regretful warnings that only decades of experience could reveal. By changing the past, they hope to change the future, which has become today. Sadly, what remains is a life haunted by the ghosts of dead dreams which have long died.

After selling my Internet company in 2007 and retiring young in my thirties as opposed to old in my sixties, I set off to tackle the younger self question as it pertained to life and business. If I could go back and speak to twenty-year-old me, someone who consistently struggled, what foresight would I share? What wisdom did I need slapped in my face? What did my failures unearth? And more importantly, how could other people benefit from this wisdom?

After three years of self-reflection, the rough draft made Moby Dick look like a novella. Yes, my many mistakes and their learnings filled page after page. But even more revealing, I ended up with a book unlike anything else availablea book completely contrary to mainstream thought. In other words, happiness wasnt found doing what conventional wisdom embracedbut doing exactly the opposite.

While there are countless books on finance, navigating life, and starting businesses, none of them told the real story. Instead, these books pushed feel-good fairy tales and Wall Street fantasiesprepackaged templates that baked-in mediocrity and forsaken dreams. Chances are youve read these books and wondered the same as I: Are there really multimillionaires living the rock-star life because they wage-slaved Monday through Friday while penny-pinching their way to a balanced portfolio of mutual funds? Or is that CNBC financial guru with the orange face and annoying voice really rich because of what she overtly preaches or what she covertly practices? And my favorite: Can I really live the dream selling Amway while alienating my friends and family in the process?

During production, publishing experts warned that my book would never sell. Those same experts also said I was committing the ultimate author sacrilege: I wasnt pushing readers into a back-end sales funnel, ya know, so I could sell you a coaching seminar costing as much as a Cadillac.

Well, I didnt give a shit.

I was writing from my heart. Not for fame, fortune, or some egocentric motive that could catapult me into the privileged world of gurus and seminar hustlers.

In 2011 after a year-long editing marathon, I finally self-published The Millionaire Fastlane with limited distribution and no fanfare. And by no fanfare, I mean I didnt hire a PR firm to hack the best-seller list with a phony launch scheme. I didnt benefit from any quid-pro-quo endorsements from influencers or thought leaders. I spent virtually nothing on advertising. The mainstream media ignored me. Bloggers ignored me. The start-up clique rolling the hallowed streets of Silicon Valley ignored me. But you know who didnt ignore me? Readers tired of average advice from average books promoting an average life.

As months passed, the book sold in steady chunks. Dozens of sales turned into hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Soon, sales exceeded $1 million and then $2 million. Language licensing and translations followed: Korean, Japanese, Italian, and more. My Twitter feed blew up with readers who couldnt put the book down

Might be the best book Ive ever read.

Brilliant business wisdom.

Listening to your book is blowing my mind.

And many more.

Despite what many deemed a cheesy get rich quick title and an ugly cover, the book hit number one on Amazon in multiple categories and on multiple occasions. While the book never hit The New York Times best-seller list, it has sold more than most of them. Mind you, the average self-published book pulls in about $900 in retail sales.