Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship

Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship.
Build A Business That Goes Beyond Paying Bills: It Changes Your Life.

MJ DeMarco’s long awaited follow-up to the international best-seller, The Millionaire Fastlane, UNSCRIPTED is the definitive blueprint for escaping the cultural conditioning of the mundane and mediocre; learn how to create an awe-inspiring life using the power of entrepreneurship. UNSCRIPTED is not something your TRY, it is something you LIVE. Over 400+ pages, here is just a little of what you will learn:

• How to reverse engineer an opportunity in any industry, despite big competition and big pockets.
• The entrepreneurial ‘productocracy’; – how to be an entrepreneur that prints money where advertising is not the fire, but the fuel.
• How media, education, and government has conspired to keep you enslaved in a Monday-Friday slave cycle.
• Wall-Street’s compound interest scam; how this dirty little secret keeps the fiscal prostitutes rich, and you, patiently poor.
• The one thing that powers motivation, setting the stage for grinding to victory or quitting. (Sorry, it’s not passion, love, or any of the guru circle-jerking platitudes)
• The business framework that makes the difference between a venture that pays bills, and a venture that changes your life.
• The 3 false flags of a continuation move (or a failure) quit too early you could be throwing away millions.
• The SCRIPTED hyperrealities; how cultural engineering has scripted you to unremarkable mediocrity, and how to see through their lies.
• The best passive income business in existence, and how you can grab its entry ticket which is limited only to a very few.
• And hundreds more paradigm-busting strategies on every page.

Life is not about forfeiting Monday-thru-Friday, paying bills for 50 years and then dying. It’s time to win more than a paycheck and a 2 week vacation.
Win back your freedom. Your dreams. And your life. Go #UNSCRIPTED.

PART ONE: THE DISSONANCE… IS SOMETHING WRONG?
CH-1: Tales from the SCRIPT: A Monday Story
CH-2: Careless Whispers: Guilty Souls Have No Rhythm
CH-3: The Modern Day Matrix: The SCRIPT
PART TWO: THE SCRIPT… ENGINEERING YOUR INVOLUNTARY SLAVERY
CH-4: The Inauthentic Life: Trapped by Other People’s Thinking
CH-5: Conventional Wisdom: The Road to a Conventional Life
CH-6: The SCRIPTED Operating System: The Web of Servitude
CH-7: The Seeders: Our Life Sucks, Yours Should Too
CH-8: Hyperreality: Your Illusionary Captors
CH-9: Temporal Prostitution: Trading Good Time for Bad
CH-10: The Life Paths: Two Doors, One Slaughterhouse, No Difference
CH-11: Distraction: The Ministry of Entertainment
CH-12: M.O.D.E.L. Citizenry: Serial #666-77-8888
PART THREE: THE ALTERNATIVE… LIVING UNSCRIPTED
CH-13: The UNSCRIPTED Life: “Fuck You”
CH-14: “Fuck This” before “Fuck You”
PART FOUR: THE ESCAPE… THE UNSCRIPTED ENTREPRENEURIAL FRAMEWORK
CH-15: The UNSCRIPTED Entrepreneurial Framework
BELIEFS, BIASES, AND BULLSHIT (3B)
CH-16: Our Self-Imposed Prison: Beliefs, Biases, and Bullshit
CH-17: The Lies We Believe: The 8 Belief Scams
CH-18: The Shortcut Scam: Ordinary Doesn’t Compel Extraordinary
CH-19: The Special Scam: “I’m Not Good at That”
CH-20: The Consumption Scam: How Much Time Did That Cost?
CH-21: The Money Scam: I Can Get Rich by Wanting to Get Rich
CH-22: The Poverty Scam: “I’m Poor Because You’re Rich”
CH-23: The Luck Scam: You Don’t Play; You Don’t Win
CH-24: The Frugality Scam: Live Poor; Die Rich
CH-25: The Compound-Interest Scam: Wall-Street Ain’t Makin Ya Rich
CH-26: The Biases: Your Brain’s Delusions
CH-27: Bullshit from Bullshitters: Crutches, Clichés, and Cults
MEANING AND PURPOSE (MP)
CH-28: Meaning-and-Purpose: The Unstoppable Will to Win
CH-29: Beware! The Wonder Twins of Epically Bad Life Advice
CH-30: Ignite Your Purpose, Invigorate Your Soul
FASTLANE ENTREPRENEURSHIP (FE)
CH-31: How to Create A Business That Changes Your Life
CH-32: The Productocracy: How to Print Money (and Sleep Well)
CH-33: The Commandment of Control: Own What You Build
CH-34: The Commandment of Entry: The Difficulty IS The Opportunity!
CH-35: The Commandment of Need: How to Engineer Opportunity In Any Industry
CH-36: The Commandment of Time: Earn More than Money, Earn Time
CH-37: The Commandment of Scale: Win Life and Liberty, Not Dinner and a Movie
KINETIC EXECUTION (KE)
CH-38: Executing Excellence: You Can’t Predict the Unpredictable!
CH-39: Kinetic Execution: Everything Significant Started Insignificantly
CH-40: The 7 Ps of Process: Go From Idea to Productocracy
CH-41: Make Execution Matter: 13 Best Practices
THE FOUR DISCIPLINES (4D)
CH-42: The 4 Disciplines: Design, then Insure Your Future
CH-43: Comparative Immunity: Well-Dressed Slaves are Still Slaves
CH-44: Purposed Saving: Prepping for Lifetime Passive Income
CH-45: Measured Elevation: Reward and Enjoy the Ride
CH-46: Consequential-Thought: Protecting Your Kick-Ass Life
PART FIVE: A NEW DAWN… NEVER WORK AGAIN
CH-47: Welcome to “Fuck You”
CH-48: Your Last Business Ever (If You Want)
CH-49: #UNSCRIPTED

**** PREFACE ****

You weren’t born to slave nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday, pay bills and then die. When life’s final moment arrives, what will your spirit sing? Regret and remorse? Or peace and happiness?

Take a moment and forecast your life’s trajectory to your deathbed. And be honest. Will you mourn lost time and the things you didn’t do? Places you didn’t see? Will your life review be all work and zero legacy? If your  future forecast looks bleakly uninspiring and not worthy of your family’s history books, you have a chance to change it—right 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. Buteven more revealing, I ended up with a book unlike anything else available—a book completely contrary to mainstream thought. In other words, happiness wasn’t found doing what conventional wisdom embraced—but 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 feelgood fairy tales and Wall Street fantasies—prepackaged templates that baked-in mediocrity and forsaken dreams. Chances are you’ve 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 wasn’t 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 didn’t 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 didn’t hire a PR firm to hack the best-seller list with a phony
launch scheme. I didn’t 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 didn’t 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 couldn’t put the book down…

Might be the best book I’ve 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.

In the end, I shocked readers by “coming clean”—serving up a comprehensive road map for financial success, one based on indisputable mathematics, regardless of time, circumstance, or economics. Readers got the
tough-love truth about entrepreneurship, self-made wealth, the hypocrites who preach it, and even happiness.

As Fastlane spread worldwide, readers begged: “We want another book!” Fastlane was resurrecting dreams and changing lives. While writing two books in the same genre was not my intent, I knew another book lived in me, because the greatest con of the century exposed in Fastlane was only growing stronger. And in its wake, it was destroying critical thought and personal responsibility and, ultimately, murdering dreams. While Fastlane unmasked the myths of wealth, it really hinted at something more: an esoteric reality hidden in the fabric of society; a cultural underbelly threading something insidiously deceptive—a sociological scheme sentencing your life to an existence of blind obedience, resigned mediocrity, and abandoned dreams.

You see, if you fail your dreams, it won’t be because you lacked effort or enthusiasm; it will be because your life was sold into a Machiavellian system where your lifetime role was already SCRIPTED for an uninspiring performance.

You’ve been unwittingly cast to play a rigged carnival game masquerading as life, which few win and many lose… UNSCRIPTED: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship is your pen to rewrite a future that’s already been written. Don’t wait for life’s twilight to dream about a time machine; it exists in this moment.

Your younger self is here. Right now. And it’s excited for the opportunity—the opportunity to resurrect your
dreams and change the history that awaits.

INTRODUCTION

Un • script • ed (adjective)
“…Not following a prepared script”
(Merriam Webster Dictionary)

Life. Liberty. And the pursuit of entrepreneurship. It’s awaking in the morning and pinching yourself black-and-blue—that OMG, this is my life, and it’s freaking awesome. You live in your dream house, but there’s no mortgage. No alarm clock, no boss, no bills. No claims on the day’s time other than what you choose. It’s making more money before breakfast than you made for an entire week at your last job. It’s a crazy expensive car parked in your garage, a victorious symbol that your dreams no longer sleep in fantasies, but are awake with reality.

Make no mistake, this life exists.

I know, because it’s been mine for nearly 20 years. And in a few short years, it can be yours as well. That’s right, you won’t need 5 decades of thankless jobs, mind-numbing frugality, and patient investing with our trusted friends on Wall Street.

Unfortunately, you’ve been SCRIPTED to believe that such a life is out of your reach, or only possible for a certain type of person. Someone with a certain college degree, a certain amount of VC funding, or a certain contact list of connected friends from Stanford. I’m here to tell you, that none of it’s true.

While I’ve been entrepreneur most of my life, I’m no one special. You won’t read about me over at Tech Crunch or in some Silicon Valley newsletter. While I’ve been an Internet entrepreneur since the old “you’ve got mail” AOL days, I’ve never been funded by venture capitalists, I’ve never had a payroll with more than 5 people on it, and I’ve never studied computer science at school. Despite this, I’ve been able to create profitable businesses that create the type of UNSCRIPTED life I’ve described above. We’re talking about five-and six-figure monthly profits with valuations in the millions. Although I’ve had two successful“exits”, don’t let that scare you; it’s just a welcome (and sometimes unexpected) side effect of the process.

Now, you probably noticed this book is LONG. I mean like, super long. There’s a reason for this.

I’m not one of these “book a month” authors who writes about a trendy marketing tactic that becomes ineffectively overused within a year. I’m not an author who writes 200 pages of filler about one concept when only
four paragraphs are enough. In other words, I didn’t spend 3 years writing this book to enlarge my income streams—I wrote it to change your life. And in order to change your life, a lot needs to be said. Yes, this goes beyond starting a business and making some side cash— it’s about reclaiming life-and-liberty through the pursuit of entrepreneurship.

If you don’t know, let me break it to you: Slavery still exists. Except today’s contemporary slavery is called the SCRIPT—an implied social contract whereas a gilded cage is exchanged for voluntary indebtedness and lifelong toil, a price sacrificed by a non-redeemable fifty-years of Monday through Friday, an invisible servitude in which freedom is only promised by the arrival of life’s fading twilight. UNSCRIPTED is your blueprint into an awakening of abundance, freedom, and happiness; a keystone to unleashing a life few dream of.

1. In Part 1, I will identify the problem that has haunted you since you’ve been old enough to have a job. You have sensed it, felt it, and now, you fear you’re living it.
2. In Part 2, I will expose the greatest con of the century and detail exactly how it has stolen your dreams, and if you allow it, it will steal your life. To defeat a thief, you have to understand the thief.
3. In Part 3, I will unveil the high-definition vision of what is possible once your mind is free from the cultural doctrines ruling the game.
4. In Part 4, the bulk of this book, I will reveal the definitive blueprint to UNSCRIPTED Entrepreneurship, a detailed framework that will show you how to start a business that just doesn’t keep the bill-paying treadmill circulating, it breaks it— and then it changes your life forever.
5. In Part 5, I will detail the greatest passive income system in existence where work becomes optional. Yup, you will learn how to never work another day in your life, where to find it, and how to get started immediately.

If you haven’t read my first book, The Millionaire Fastlane, don’t worry. UNSCRIPTED stands alone. I wouldn’t have published it if I didn’t think it could change lives. Question is, will you allow it to change yours?First, if you have a great job, a chummy relationship with your boss, and are just thrilled with your 401(k), congratulations. I give you mad props. You’re winning a rigged game. You’re that dude who wins the giant stuffed elephant at
the traveling carnival. How you tossed those plastic rings around the beer bottles, I’ll never know. However, in light of your superpowers, this book probably isn’t for you.

Second, I don’t believe you can change your life by reading another “financial freedom” book that worships IRAs, stock-market investing, and soul-suffocating frugality. Do you really want to read another biblical-sized lecture idolizing the compound-interest fantasy? Hit Amazon and you’ll find ten gazillion books on such crap. This book’s title is UNSCRIPTED, not “be like fucking everyone else on the planet.”

Third, UNSCRIPTED is for you if your life has become hopeless and dissatisfying. It’s for you if you’re held hostage by a weekday and the bribery of its paycheck. If you’re sick of the suck, and tired of the tiresome: the break-room gossip, the organizational politics, the managerial ass-kissing, and whatever else boils when multiple human beings are tossed in a box and tasked with corporate minutia, I have your escape.

UNSCRIPTED is for you if you crave autonomy and the creative license to pursue work that matters. It’s for you if you’re a youngster who’d rather live richly young—travel, nice cars, free time—versus waiting to live richly old: wheelchairs, arthritis, and bridge. It’s for you if you have X-ray vision and can see what your parents cannot—that life’s formulaic template has become dated and flawed.

But most importantly, UNSCRIPTED is for you if you’ve been an aspiring entrepreneur far too long, someone who can’t turn a corner, turn a break, or turn a profit. Someone who might already own a business, but like a job, it steals time and just barely keeps the bills paid until next month. If you’re someone who would rather hear the discomforting truths from a multimillionaire over another broke blogger peddling in fantasies and narcissistic feel-good platitudes, I have your escape.

Finally, UNSCRIPTED is for you if you’re willing to risk changing yourself. Everyone wants change, but few want to change their choices. This book will be tough because life is tough. Uncomfortable truths, belief challenges, and egoshattering revelations lie ahead. Some will assign UNSCRIPTED’s blunt and insulting tone to themselves and miss the point entirely. If you think I’m a rude, politically incorrect asshole, please, return to your safe space and ask for arefund. Your opinion changes nothing about my reality, but I’m hoping mine changes yours. I didn’t write UNSCRIPTED to coddle and protect the status quo that’s been suffocating your dreams.

Disruptive change doesn’t come from some mental masturbation that sparks one day and flames-out the next—it comes from the depths of your heart and soul. If you’re open to the red pill, I have your escape.

So, if I haven’t been clear, let me be now: UNSCRIPTED is not something you try, it’s something you live. If you’re ready for the challenge, get ready for a shityour-pants revelation that everything you’ve been taught and told is bullshit. Legendary bullshit. We’re talking stuff that would make Ponzi feel out-scammed and out-lied. Don’t be mistaken, UNSCRIPTED is NOT about paradigm shifts. I hate that phrase. A paradigm shift doesn’t keep a sinking Titanic afloat. The problem is the paradigm itself. The problem is that you’ve allowed the paradigm to set the rules, call the shots, and dictate the decisions. The problem is, you’ve allowed ordinary thinking preached by ordinary people to produce exactly that— an ordinary life. The paradigm shift is realizing that the paradigm is shit.