In Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow Quadrant, anyone who is actively making a living belongs to either one or two of these quadrants:
o Employee
o Entrepreneur/business owner
o Businessman
o Investor.
I have earned my credits as an employee and as a start-up entrepreneur, hence will be writing about these two groups of working people where the vast majority of us belong.
A businessman is described as an entrepreneur with no less than 500 people working for him while an investor is a faceless fellow with lots of money to leverage his efforts earning him even more money - and this is where our dreams must be anchored on.
Anyone who has the chance of attending one of those countless MLM (multi-level marketing) presentations couldn’t miss this Cashflow Quadrant. MLMs paint a very rosy picture of why “employees” should strive to jump into the “entrepreneur or business owner” quadrant; that failure to do so would forever tie them up with the uncertainty of employment and insufficiency of income.
While there is a grain of truth to this for most, this need not be so. A CEO of a modest corporation is probably very rich from his employment while an entrepreneur may have difficulty in keeping his business above water; and a lot of businessmen and investors have lost their shirts, especially in these times of financial turmoil. In fact, if one is good at his/her job today, employment may be the most certain of financial endeavors an individual may have.
A well-worn management saying goes this way, “person who knows the answer to the ‘what’ question will always have a job but he/she who knows the answer to the ‘why’ question will become the manager.” Which brings me to my daughter’s desire to be rich without specifically knowing why.
“The longest journey starts with a single step” is a saying of the sages and the years since it was spoken has not diminished its import in everything we do. A lot of us mistake the things wealth can buy as the “why” we must accumulate it in the first place. Lost in the process is the overriding reason why we must get rich.
“Everything has a reason,” I always say. Without a reason, life loses its meaning, desires its flavor and goals their challenge. If I want to buy a car, I must have a reason for the type of car I want to buy, i.e., displacement, gasoline or diesel, sedan or two-door, 4-wheel drive or not, and, if possible, color, etc. In a similar vein, if you want to be rich, you must have a really good reason for wanting to be. That becomes the soul of your aspirations.
Tags: answer, businessman, cashflow, credits, employee, investor, mlm, question, why
