Read these 4 books to become financially free
By Ali Abdaal
Summary
## Key takeaways - **Fast Lane: Rich in 10 Years**: MJ Demarco argues for the fast lane approach where you can get rich quick, defined as within a 10-year period by working for yourself, rather than the slow lane of climbing the corporate ladder and investing savings until 65. [02:26], [02:46] - **No Earnings Cap in Business**: Jobs impose artificial caps on earnings like salary bands and infrequent raises, but a business has no cap since you work for yourself and earnings are limited only by your skills and market choice. [04:17], [04:43] - **Sell Few Expensive Items**: It's easier to make $100k by selling 10 things at $10,000 each than 10,000 things at $10, especially without a massive audience. [08:46], [09:09] - **Value Equation for Offers**: Alex Hormozi defines value as dream outcome multiplied by perceived likelihood of achievement divided by time, effort, and sacrifice required. [09:47], [10:03] - **Market Demand Beats Hobbies**: Building a business around what you want is a hobby; base it on what the market wants, like helping accounting firms speed up client onboarding instead of public speaking for immigrants. [12:13], [12:37] - **Funnels Guide Multiple Sales**: Sales funnels take people from awareness to purchase with upsells, like McDonald's profiting on fries and drinks after the burger, or potato gun guide upsells to materials. [15:55], [16:17]
Topics Covered
- Slow lane fails before 65
- Business uncaps your earnings
- Sell few expensive items
- Market wants beats your passion
- Just start before ready
Full Transcript
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the channel. If you read these four books that we're going to talk about in this video, they will give you an incredible firmware update in your brain and will drastically help you on the road to achieving financial freedom. If you're new here, hello. My name is Ali.
I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur. And this is Freedom Fridays, the weeklyish series where we talk about strategies, tools, ideas, books that you can use to achieve financial freedom, time freedom, and creative freedom so that you can
ultimately live life on your own terms. So, the first book I would recommend you read is The Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ Demarco. And I apologize on MJ's behalf for the clickbait title, but it's actually really good. I actually have
done a book club episode where I summarized my learnings from this book a couple years ago. We'll link that down there and up there and all that kind of stuff. And it's quite like a dense book. Like there's a lot going on here, which
stuff. And it's quite like a dense book. Like there's a lot going on here, which is why I would recommend if you struggle to focus and like actually just read stuff. Understandable. I would just recommend getting the audio book on
stuff. Understandable. I would just recommend getting the audio book on Audible and just listening to it. Now, what this book will do is that it will give you a firmware update in your mind around how to think about making money.
MJ's whole argument here is that there are three routes to making money. There
is the sidewalk, there's the slow lane, and then there's the fast lane. Now, the
sidewalk is basically where he argues that like, you know, the living paycheck to paycheck, basically living in poverty. That is probably not you. If
you are the sort of person who watches this video, you're probably a professional, maybe you've got a job, society thinks you're successful, you're probably very good-looking, you're probably not living paycheck to paycheck in poverty. if you are like the average person who watches my stuff. But where
in poverty. if you are like the average person who watches my stuff. But where
you might be is that you might be in the slow lane. Now MJ describes the slow lane path to building wealth as basically being the thing that your parents probably have taught you, which is go to a good university, get a good
job, stay at that job, work your way up the corporate ladder. As you're working your way up the corporate ladder, you're going to be slowly getting raises and salaries. You save a lot of money. You try and keep your your cost down. And
salaries. You save a lot of money. You try and keep your your cost down. And
then you take the money that you've saved and you invest it into things like stocks or real estate. And then theoretically you become rich when you are 65 and you've got osteoarthritis in both of your knees. Now this actually used to work. This was totally viable a few decades ago when um you could stay
at the same company for decades and you could get raises reliably and you were able to support a family on a single paycheck and houses were affordable and you were staying put in one place for your entire life. But especially the way the world is going and especially if you want to become financially free before
the age of 65, this slow lane approach of like, let me just save money and I'll invest it over time and hope that by investing my money I'll suddenly become financially free. That isn't really the path. What he argues for is the fast
financially free. That isn't really the path. What he argues for is the fast lane approach, which is why it's called the millionaire fast lane, where you can get rich quick, but quick he defines as within a 10-year period. And I think this is really nice. This is not like you're going to get rich overnight. It's
not like you're going to get rich in 2 years. It's that if you do sensible things, if you follow the fast lane approach to building wealth rather than the slow lane approach to building wealth, you could totally become financially free in the next, let's say, 5 to 10 years. And the key thing that separates the fast lane from the slow lane is that when you are in the slow
lane, you are working for someone else. And when you are in the fast lane, you are working for yourself. Now, a fun story about this book, I recommended this book to a friend of mine, Sahel, who actually featured on the channel recently. So, he'll quit his job and within two years has now a business
recently. So, he'll quit his job and within two years has now a business that's doing $1.3 million a year in annual recurring revenue because he built like this software that helps video editors save time in their video editing. And this was the first book that I recommended him him to read once
editing. And this was the first book that I recommended him him to read once he quit his job. And he messaged me after he read this book and he said, "Wo, I can never get a job ever again because now I see how money works." Oh,
by the way, if you're watching this before Black Friday 2025, we have a special mega discount available on the YouTuber Academy. So, there'll be a link in the video description if you want to check it out. See, the thing is, you can never really save your way to financial freedom. Unless you have like an insanely high paying job and you're making millions as an AI researcher or
as like a sort of 10x software developer, then yes, you could probably save your way save and invest your way to financial freedom because you just got so much money coming in. But again, if I think of most people who watch this channel, you're probably you probably don't have a job that pays you $900,000
a year or $1.5 million a year. That that's probably not what's going on.
Which means there is a cap to how much money you can actually invest every year. If you if the only way you have to make money is your job. And so the whole
year. If you if the only way you have to make money is your job. And so the whole argument here is that if you start a business, then a business is basically where you work for yourself. And there is no cap on how much money you can earn when you have a business. No cap. If you wanted to and if you had the right
skills, you could build a business that makes you 100,000 a year or 200,000 a year or 500,000 a year or a million a year or 2 million a year or 5 million a year. The only cap to that, the only ceiling is your own skills, which is
year. The only cap to that, the only ceiling is your own skills, which is super nice, right? Like there's no artificial constraint of like if you're trying to get a raise at work and they say sorry you're only allowed to ask for a raise every 3 years or if you're trying to you know campaign for a raise
with your manager and they're like well sorry we've got all these like bands and like you have to stay within this particular band and we can only raise your salary by inflation plus 2% every year. These are all artificial caps on the amount that you can earn. But if you are doing your own thing, if you have
your own business, then those caps go and it's entirely based on your own skill set and the market that you choose. And so the whole book is basically a guide on like how to think about this because the way that school teaches us about money and about how to get rich, how to become financially free. I mean firstly school doesn't really teach that stuff to us and and
free. I mean firstly school doesn't really teach that stuff to us and and and if it does it very much hammers on the slow lane. It's like make sure you get a good job. Make sure you save money. But actually this is not how people get rich. This is not how people become financially free. And by reading the millionaire fast lane or by listening to the audio book for the
millionaire fast lane, I can basically guarantee you will have a massive firmware update in your mind. It would be like going from the original iOS uh on on the iPhone all the way up to like iPhone 17 or wherever we are now. Like
there's a lot that's changed and so it will give you like it it's like installing new firmware in your brain about how money works. Honestly, I think this book should be required reading for literally everyone in the world because it will help you see how money actually works. And so could not recommend this
more highly. The Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ Demarco. Now once you've started
more highly. The Millionaire Fast Lane by MJ Demarco. Now once you've started your business and you've gotten it off the ground, you're going to need a website. It's a place where potential clients can learn more about what you
website. It's a place where potential clients can learn more about what you offer and ideally even buy from you. And of course, the easiest way to do that is with a website. And that is where the lovely people at Hostinger, who are very kindly sponsoring this video, come in. Hostinger is a one-stop shop solution to build your online presence. Whether you're creating a beautiful website or
launching a business or hosting web apps, Hostinger houses it all in one ecosystem. Hostinger also happens to be the hosts of all of our websites that we
ecosystem. Hostinger also happens to be the hosts of all of our websites that we have within our business as well. So, we are actually personally using them for our stuff. Hostinger offers an AI website builder that helps you get your
our stuff. Hostinger offers an AI website builder that helps you get your site up and running easily. You just type in your brand name, describe what you do, and it'll instantly generate a beautiful, fully functional site with built-in AI tools for things like content writing and image generation and
even email marketing. Now, what me and my team love about Hostinger is how beginnerfriendly and how affordable it is, especially if you are building your first online business. The best deal you'll get is by signing up to their business plan for 48 months. And so, not only will that give you access to their
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So, if you've been putting off creating your website, head over to the link in the video description to get started with Hostinger and use the code Ali Abdal to get 10% off whatever plan you go for. So, thank you Hostinger for sponsoring the video and let's get back to it. Okay, so Millionaire Fast Lane would be
book number one I would read in this order. The next book I would read is probably 100 million Offers by Alex Formoszi. Now, you've probably or maybe maybe you've seen Alex Forzi stuff here on YouTube. It is really very good.
Well, I watch basically every video that him and his wife Leila put out because it's it's amazing content if you want to start a business and become financially free. Now, $100 million offers. Yes, you could listen to it on Audible, but it's
free. Now, $100 million offers. Yes, you could listen to it on Audible, but it's actually a really easy read. It's got like big text. It's got lots of pictures and it's got lots of like photos of stuff to illustrate things. And the
thing I really love about Alex's stuff is that he writes very very very simply.
Millionaire Fast Lane is like a little wordy. It can be hard to get through. I
would recommend you push through and get through it because like I said, it'll give you a firmware update. But $100 million offers is such an such an easy book to read. It's so nice. You know, how to charge double, 10 times, or 100 times more than your competition without changing anything about what you sell.
This will teach you the concept of an offer. Now, the concept of an offer is something that beginners to the world of business find very difficult to understand. The offer is kind of like if you imagine a book, the book is the
understand. The offer is kind of like if you imagine a book, the book is the product, but the offer is sort of like the front cover, the title, the subtitle. It's sort of like the packaging around the product, right?
subtitle. It's sort of like the packaging around the product, right?
like the offer is the thing that people are buying and the product is the thing that they are getting to use that particular terminology. And so when you read $100 million offers, it starts to help you realize what are the different
factors that are associated with people valuing different things. So, if you wanted to start a business to become financially free or whatever, like you probably like right now, if I were to say you've got to charge $10,000 for some kind of service, mostly people in my audience, people in our lifestyle
business academy kind of program, mostly people feel really scared about charging $10,000 for anything because you probably have not paid $10,000 for anything before maybe except like a car or a house. And you probably haven't charged $10,000 for anything unless you already have your own business or you're a freelancer or you work with a lot of B2B clients. But it's actually a lot
easier to build a business when you are selling small numbers of very expensive things. Like it's so much easier making a h 100 grand if you sell 10 things for
things. Like it's so much easier making a h 100 grand if you sell 10 things for $10,000 compared to if you sell 10,000 things for $10. And this is sort of like the price to people like value discrepancy kind of thing where
beginners to the world of business just don't appreciate that it's so much easier to sell small numbers of an expensive thing than to sell large numbers of a cheap thing. And the single biggest mistake that I see beginners to the world of business make is trying to sell lots and lots of something really
cheap. Now, you can sell lots and lots of something really cheap, but you have
cheap. Now, you can sell lots and lots of something really cheap, but you have to have a massive audience to be able to do it. And if you're watching this channel, chances are you're probably not that famous. You probably don't have hundreds of thousands to millions of subscribers on your social media or on
your email list. So, it would probably be unfeasible for you to become financially free by the vehicle of selling large numbers of a cheap thing.
Probably money is just an exchange of value, right? If you provide enough value to someone and they're willing to pay you for that value, that is how you that is how you make money. But what Horsei does in this book is that he defines what value actually means. And he defines it in terms of the value equation. So value equals dream outcome multiplied by perceived likelihood of
equation. So value equals dream outcome multiplied by perceived likelihood of achievement divided by time, effort, and sacrifice required to achieve that particular dream outcome. And that is a really, really, really helpful equation.
And don't worry if it sounds complicated. Read the book. He will
explain every single thing in copious detail. And he works you through various different examples of let's say you were selling weight loss as a coaching program or something. What would be the difference between weight loss packaged as a $10 thing versus a $100 thing versus a $1,000 thing versus a $10,000
thing versus a $50,000 thing? You can actually sell the same general thing for way more money than you think if you just understand the principles of what makes a good offer. Now, this is something that we take our students in the Lifest Academy through when they come into the program. We give them a
lot of feedback on figuring out their niche and figuring out their offer. Um,
but to be honest, if you just read this book and just do every single thing he says and apply it, the stuff that you will sell for your business, which will be the the vehicle that gets you to financial freedom, will be drastically better and drastically higher priced. And so, this book breaks the mind of anyone who reads it. Also, you should absolutely read the book if you want to
become financially free. The least you can do is read a couple of books. Uh,
but also, there is a free version of like this book as an online course on Alex's website at acquisition.com. We'll put a link down below if you want to check it out. It's free. There's no opt-ins, you know, but you really should just read the book. It's absolutely fantastic. And every time we want to make a product, we literally take the physical copy and like actually just go
through it like a workbook and use that workbook to help us figure out what is the offer for the product that we are making. Now there is a major mistake that we see a lot of our students in our lifestyle business academy do when you know when they come into our mentorship program and we give them feedback on figuring out their niche and figuring figuring out their offer which is that
they decide to base their business on what they want to do rather than what the market wants. And that is called a hobby. It's called a hobby if you're trying to build a business around what you think is cool. Whereas, if you build a business around what people actually want and they're actually willing to pay you money for it, it just massively lubricates the whole process. It starts
to make business feel like you're playing on easy mode rather than you're playing on hard mode. So, for example, one of our students in in the academy, you know, came in and they were thinking of like, hey, you know, we really like public speaking and so we want to build a public speaking program that helps uh
immigrants learn how to public speak. And we were like, okay, maybe there's a market for that because okay, like and but in in the process of them going through our training on offers, which was fairly heavily based
on the stuff in $100 million offers, they realized that actually they could add so much more value by switching like pivoting niches and instead helping accounting firms drastically speed up their onboarding process for new
clients. Now, that sounds boring. It sounds boring to say, "Yeah, my business
clients. Now, that sounds boring. It sounds boring to say, "Yeah, my business helps accounting firms speed up their onboarding for new clients." But that is a very powerful dream outcome that all the accounting firms want because it takes freaking weeks to onboard a new client. And they lose so much time and so much money in the process of doing it. And so these guys in our program
realized, wait a minute, we can just help them with that because we've got experience in that particular niche or whatever. And now they have a far more compelling offer. and it will be way easier for them to build that business
compelling offer. and it will be way easier for them to build that business compared to build the business where they're trying to convince immigrants that they need an a very expensive coaching program to become good at public speaking or whatever. And so that's just like an example of how you
might come in with one idea of like I reckon maybe I want to start a business selling hoodies and then you'll go through the process in $100 million offers and you'll actually realize that you know you'll read these books, you'll get the firmer update and you'll realize it's really really really hard to build
a business trying to sell hoodies. you probably do not want to do that as your first business, especially if you're a beginner. And so, so this is where just literally reading a bunch of these books can can literally save you years and years of your life that you would have wasted pursuing a very very difficult business idea because you just didn't take the time to spend a few hours
listening to these on Audible for basically zero money at all.
Now, we get to book number three, which is Secrets by Russell Brunson. It's
quite a big book. You could just listen to it on audio book, but there's lots of pictures and lots of images and lots of diagrams. So, I really would recommend reading this as a legit book or on Kindle or something. It's also very easy to read. Russell's a good writer. He gets it. And there's like lots of cute
to read. Russell's a good writer. He gets it. And there's like lots of cute like little diagrams like for example this. And it just sort of helps you just really appreciate how businesses work and stuff. Now, com secrets, the
subtitle is the underground playbook for growing your company online with sales funnels. Now, the idea behind this is that Millionaire Fastlane teaches you
funnels. Now, the idea behind this is that Millionaire Fastlane teaches you basically like, okay, how does money actually work and what are the characteristics of the business that you want to start if you want to become financially free? Easy enough. $100 million offers teaches you how to make
financially free? Easy enough. $100 million offers teaches you how to make an offer so good that people feel dumb saying no. I.e., how to package up the thing that you are selling so that people want to buy it. Now, Alexi
actually does have a new book called $100 million Money Models, which sort of covers similar ground as.com Secrets, but I think.com Secrets like because there's more stuff in there, and it's sort of like OG. There's just a lot of value in understanding the concept of a funnel. So, what the hell is a funnel? A
funnel is basically a process that takes someone from like hearing about your stuff or not hearing about your stuff to hearing about your stuff and then they're like more interested and then they click to buy the thing and then maybe you've got like an upsell or an order bump. you know, you sell them a
cheap thing initially and then maybe a few months into using the cheap thing which they're they feel really great about because they because the cheap thing is really good, they then upsell into like your expensive thing and your expensive thing is how you actually make your money. So there's all these different ways that online businesses in particular and if you care about
building a lifestyle business, which is, you know, an online business based around fun, freedom, flexibility, fulfillment, and financial freedom, if you want to build a lifestyle business, actually understanding how funnels work is incredibly helpful. Russell Brunson got his start selling I think a guide on
how to make a potato gun. Like how to put like PVC pipes and stuff together in order to sort of get like a aerosol propelled like potato gun that shoots out potatoes as like a little bit of fun. And then they realized, wait a minute, we can make way more money if on the thank you page once once someone
buys the potato gun guide, we also sell them be like, hey, you know, for an extra $100, we can actually just send you the material directly. So you don't even need to go to B&H to buy the material. and stuff and that was when they realized that wait a minute you can actually make way more money by having
multiple options for people to buy as part of this funnel where it takes people from one step to the next. Similarly, you know that one of the examples that I really like is how if you imagine like McDonald's drive-thru, they actually don't make any money on the burger that you buy from the
McDonald's drive-thru because of all of their costs and all of their marketing costs and everything like that. But you buy the burger and then they say, "Would you like fries with that?" They make all of their profit on the fries and on the drink. And if they didn't say, "Would you like fries with that?" and you just
drink. And if they didn't say, "Would you like fries with that?" and you just bought a burger, McDonald's would have gone out of business long ago. And so
this kind of is a very basic example of a sales funnel where the the business owner or the business is guiding the buyer from a step of like A to B to C to D. And some of those people are only going to want the burger. That's fine.
D. And some of those people are only going to want the burger. That's fine.
But some of them will want the burger and the fries. Some of them will want the burger and the fries and the drink. Some of them will want the burger, the fries, and the drink and up and upgrade to the extra-L large combo. Some of them will want the Happy Meal on top of that. You know, that kind of idea. The nice
thing about this book and the nice thing about Russell's stuff is that it's it's it's yes it's yes it's yes it's yes it's yes it's yes it's long so yes I'm afraid you do have to spend longer reading it but like you know you're trying to become financially free right like this is not an easy process it's fairly simple but it's not easy and just by reading this book and just looking at
the pictures in the book and understanding you'll again you'll just have a massive firmware update and you'll start to appreciate like oh okay this is how businesses actually make money and so when it comes to thinking of your own business idea and figuring out what your niche is going to be what your offer is going to be what your products might be just the fact that
you've seen a bunch of different examples examples from a bunch of different niches just by reading a book. It's just incredibly helpful. Now,
Russell Brunson has a whole like trilogy. The next one is Traffic Secrets, and then there's Expert Secrets, maybe the other way around. Both of those are also really, really, really good. I would also recommend you read every book Alex Mosie has come out
really good. I would also recommend you read every book Alex Mosie has come out with so far. $100 million offers, $100 million leads, and $100 million money models. But if I really had to boil it down to just four books in this
models. But if I really had to boil it down to just four books in this particular video, I would say.com Secrets would be on that list. And when
I read this book, I was like, "Wo." Had I read this book when I first started selling stuff on the internet, I would have become a millionaire way sooner. I
would have become financially free way sooner. I would have saved years and years and years of like trying to learn things the hard way because I could have just read the book from the guy who's been doing it for way longer than I have and made way more money than I have. And he literally tells everything to you in
like a very very cheap book. So again, it's just the power of learning from the people that came before us, standing on the shoulders of giants. And if you're not going to do that, you're just signing up for a lot of years of like mistakes that you really could have avoided by just reading a very simple book.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen. So, so far we have talked about the millionaire fast lane and how this is like the first book that you want to read because this is going to give you a massive massive massive firmware update. Secondly, we
talked about the value of $100 million offers in terms of like helping you understand what an offer is and how you can package and price stuff so that you can charge way more money than you think you can for it. We have just talked about secrets by Russell Brunson and how he's going to give you a ton of examples
around how to actually build a business that makes money. And then finally, these three books were quite theoretical. So, I'm now going to introduce you to Milliondoll Weekend by Noah Kagan. I also have a separate dedicated video about this book which will be linked up there and down there.
This is nice because this is very actionoriented. The other three books were quite theory oriented in that you could feasibly read those books and get the theoretical firmware update in your brain without ever having to actually take action.
Which is amazing for people that I know are in this crowd or in this audience who just love the idea of learning skills without actually taking action.
Because taking action is the hard part. That is where the rubber meets the road.
That's where you have to face your imposter syndrome and analysis paralysis, all of the emotional hurdles associated with becoming a business owner and becoming an entrepreneur. Most of you will still probably watch this and choose not to take action, which is fine. You'll never be financially free if you don't take action. That's okay. Uh, but for the minority of people that
read this book and actually do what Noah Kagan says and you take action, this is how you can build a business. You can start a business in just a weekend.
That's like the whole idea. And there's all, you know, the first chapter is literally called just [ __ ] start. Begin before you are ready. Now, the
danger with recommending all these books is that it creates the illusion of progress, right? When you read these books, and I do recommend you read them,
progress, right? When you read these books, and I do recommend you read them, you will get a FOMO update and you will start to feel as if you are making progress on route to starting your business. But until you actually start that business, nothing is going to matter. And so, you kind of need to
begin before you are ready. And that is his Noah's key point in the book. I love
Noah. He's a good friend of mine. Stayed in his house for like a month when I was in Austin. Great guy. He knows his stuff. I've been consuming his content
in Austin. Great guy. He knows his stuff. I've been consuming his content for way longer than I've actually known him as a as a human cuz I used to listen to his podcast back in the day before I started my business, etc., etc. But yeah, he really knows his stuff and this is a very nice, very readable, very simple book that really just encourages you to take action. It helps you figure
out what is your business idea going to be, how you can validate your business idea and kind of basically how to make money from it and you can get started in just a weekend. So, if you would like to find out more information about this book, check out this video over here, which is my book club episode where I
break the book down in much more detail. Thank you so much for watching. Have a
lovely day and I will see you hopefully in the next video and all the best with building your lifestyle business. to get you to financial freedom.
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