One Business Network

Do You Really Have a Business?

In Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki suggests there are four ways of earning money:

• Employed – trade your time for other people’s money.  You give up control for a guaranteed pay check
• Self-employed – trade time for other people’s money.  In some cases you were fed up with working 40 hours a week for an idiot, so you swapped it for working 80 hours a week for an even bigger idiot
• Business – a system or something that can be franchised.  It isn’t reliant on the business owner
• Investor – you make your and other people’s money work for you

Would you rather have security or control?  There is no right, or wrong answer; you just need to decide where you are on the quadrant and where you want to be.

The acid test for a business is whether you could leave it for six months and come back to find it in the same (or better) state than when you left.  I certainly failed this one, but I knew I wanted to be on the right hand side of the quadrant.

If  you want to change position; particularly if you want to move from one side of the quadrant to the other, you will probably need some personal development and education to help you achieve that.  But, at least if you know where you're heading, you can make a plan and plot the route.

Have a look at  http://www.richdad.com/ for more details about Robert Kiyosaki - he changed the way I thought about assets and liabilities and was the start of a very enlightening journey for us.