How to Live a Life Unscripted According to MJ De Marco
Unscripted by MJ De Marco is the long awaited follow up to his 2011 best seller Millionaire Fastlane which has sold over 1 million copies and is one of the most important self published books of our time.
I first read Millionaire Fastlane over two years ago when just starting on my entrepreneurial journey. Something about the message of the book struck a chord with me, much of it making incredibly good sense. And so when James from RedPillReviews.com offered to review it for this website, I jumped at the chance (read it here.)
So it wasn’t a hard sell for me to buy De Marco’s latest book, Unscripted: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship on Audible.
Living Unscripted According to MJ De Marco
The first part of Unscripted is the hardest to read/listen to. Prepare to have every cognitive bias and pre-conception challenged. I found this hard going – to the point where I wanted to quit.
But De Marco wants you to think about your life in these terms. Are you living your life according to the script. Or are you living unscripted?
These are great terms, but what does the script boil down to? It goes something like this:
- Go to college/university
- Get a good job
- Buy a house/get a mortgage
- Work 9-5, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year
- Save your money for retirement
- Retire
- Die
Let’s be honest – that’s how most of us are living. That’s how I was living until a couple of years ago.
But around two years to the day of writing this post, I realised something. I wanted more. Much more.
Unscripted is the fulfilment of that vision: to live life on your terms – off the script.
The book is full of well drawn images and infographics. If you buy the audio book, these are on a separate PDF attachment.
What You Could Learn from ‘Unscripted’ – 3 Lessons
Unscripted is a book on business and at 443 pages, it covers a lot of ground. So here are the most valuable lessons I learned from the book:
1. Listen for Echoes
What’s an echo? According to De Marco, it’s a little sign that what you’re doing is reaching people and having an impact. It’s a signal that your product has value and people want to part with their money to get it.
It might be reading your latest blog post, or making a deal with you, or ordering a piece of work – every time that happens, that’s an echo.
Think about losing weight. The first few days are hell. You’re low energy, irritable and craving all the junk you just gave up. You don’t see any results for days. But a couple of weeks in, the scales start to move – a little at first. That’s an echo. When you’re co-workers notice a difference? Another echo. Feeling your jeans loose around your waist? Another echo.
The trick is to look out for these signs of encouragement. It can be difficult to see, especially when you’re building a side business or improving your career or getting fit – there’s just so much you don’t know.
2.Break the Piñata
De Marco uses the imagery of a piñata at a party. Entrepreneurs poke or prod the piñata but nothing comes out. They need to smash it with the big stick until all the sweeties come pouring forth.
The idea behind this is simple: if you have something to sell – a product or a service – then you need to put serious effort into promoting it. That might mean advertising, getting in touch with influencers, free gifts or samples. Whatever you need to do.
When I started my first niche site, I was only relying on Google traffic for hits and sales. But as soon as I spent a little on advertising, things exploded and have continued to grow. Now I’m at the point where I don’t pay for ads for that site any more – it’s self perpetuating.
It’s the same with A Father’s Mission. I believe in what I’ve created and so I’m going to put serious effort into getting it out there and making sure my message reaches as many Dads as possible.
3. Build a Money System
This chapter comes right at the end of the book and it’s worth the asking price alone. De Marco starts by explaining that many wealthy entrepreneurs are great at creating wealth but suck when it comes to keeping hold of it.
His simple money system has three parts, all of which link into each other. The driver of the whole system is the Pay Check pot which focuses your money in income generating activities. This was a revelation for me and I’ve made big changes in how my money is invested.
I still stand by the way I manage my money, but taking aspects of De Marco’s money system makes a heap of sense.
Unscripted – Are You Ready for the Journey?
The last few years of my life have been affected periodically by catalysts. This feels like one of those moments. Listening to Unscripted gave me a new motivation to start a project I’d wanted to work on for a while as well as inspire me to keep promoting A Father’s Mission.
The money advice is worth the price of the book alone but with so much more value for the budding hustler, you’ll be going off script in no time.
You can buy Unscripted here (Amazon)
Neil
P.S. Reading Unscripted inspired me to make A Father’s Mission available across a range of formats. But Amazon is still the most popular. Get your copy here.
