I have been reading a Book by Robert Kiyosaki titled as “Cashflow Quadrant”. It is a very interesting book and give really good insights on different category of people driving worlds economy.
Basically there are 4 kind of people as shown in the Quadrant below.
Robert is big advocate of Financial Intelligence. People on left side or Quadrant think very differently about work and money as compared to people on Right side.
E (Employee) – Employee’s just love their paychecks . Days are long gone where you learn one skill and you can earn your livelihood on that skill for your whole life. E’s are no longer secure like past as new technology is changing workplace like never before. E’s are trained for Industrial age as the Jobs that exist today may not exist 5-10 years down the line. So being an E is a very risky Proposition.
S (Self-Employee) – Self-Employee’s are perfectionist’s and do not like to work for anyone. More successful they become, harder they have to work. Their income ceases the moment they stop working or are sick. Doctors, Lawyers, Independent consultants come into this category. S are involved in all the activities of their business like Business Development, Finance Management, Legal. They burn out after working hard on all the activities in case they become successful although only 10% of all the businesses are successful after 5 years. S are definitely very brave.
B (Business Owner) – Business Owners build the system for E’s and sometimes S’s. They can leave their business for a year or so and come back to find that its growing at even greater pace. They use other people’s time and money. They have a lot of free time and money because they do not have any expertise other than handling people. B hire people with good expertise to manage different functions of business like Business Development, Human Resource, Finance, Legal and Product Development. B have mastered the art of Building systems in which E,S(after losing business) can work. B have strong Leadership and Communication Skills.
I (Investor) – Investors are always looking for high growth businesses to invest their money in. I’s analyze systems built by B’s and put their money on fastest Horse. This is a certainly a high risk group but also get very high returns.
People should try to move from Left side of quadrant to the right side. The skills and mindset needed on both sides is completely different. Certainly people at their very core are very different in different quadrants.
With Technology changing the world rapidly, its better to be a B or an I than being a E or S. Its certainly better to built a system rather than working in a Job we are not sure would exist tommorow.