Change the Rules, Win the Game
In his best-selling book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki challenges the line of thinking most of us grew up with — get a good education, get a good job, work hard, live within your means, save money, retire. It’s the typical 45-year plan where one enters the workforce somewhere close to the age of 20 and emerges (usually near broke) at about age 65.
Although even a quick analysis of this plan shows its blatant flaws, close to 95 percent of American workers trudge along this path on a daily basis. For some reason, this vast majority continues to hope that performing the same task will for them produce different results and many seem surprised when they’ve exhausted their bodies, their lives, and their savings, they are rewarded with a monthly check roughly half the amount of their accustomed earnings.
Kiyosaki explains that to win the game, one must first change the rules. You see, there are four basic ways to earn income — E (Employee); S (Self-employment); B (Big Business Systems); and I (Investor). Draw a square and section it into quadrants. The E is in the upper left with the S right below it. On the left side of your diagram, the B goes in the upper right, and the I is placed in the remaining section. This “Cash-flow Quadrant” sums up money-making means.
The right side contains the 95-percentile. Nearly everyone falls into one of those two categories. Yet the 5-percenters (Big Business Systems & Investors) take home 95 percent of the created wealth. Think about that for a few minutes. Ninety-five percent of Americans split 5 percent of the money made while 5 percent divide 95 percent of the money.
Some would have those in the 95-percent bracket share their earnings with those grasping for their share of the 5 percent. My question is — why not just switch brackets? Move out of the E/S side of the quadrant and set up camp in the right-hand column. Sound impossible? Not really. Not when you know which rules to change.
The biggest obstacle to overcome when playing the wealth-creating game is “un-learning” everything you’ve been taught. The 45-year plan is so ingrained in our society, it’s difficult to break out of. When we consider trying something “different,” our friends and families begin to question our sanity and often bombard us with negativity — “That will NEVER work!” or “Maybe it’ll work for some people, but not for YOU!”
Fear holds most people back from taking a risk. Few people are willing to trade security for freedom. We’ve traded our time for someone else’s money for so many years, it’s difficult to break free from that mentality. Yet true freedom comes when one stops working for money and makes their money work for them. This is called leveraging money. You can also learn to leverage time — which is a powerful concept.
The key to leveraging is to work a Big Business System until you see results. It’s not always fast and it’s certainly not always easy, but it definitely won’t take 45 years. Probably not even half of that.
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