Peter Schiff Blog: How Excessive Government Intervention Hinders Econ...

Peter Schiff Blog: How Excessive Government Intervention Hinders Econ...: Peter Schiff, CEO and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, discusses how excessive government intervention hinders economic rec...

Cashflow and my sister

If I really want to make an impact on people around me then I need to have a ‘why’ mentality versus a ‘what’ mentality when trying to explain things to them that are important otherwise they won’t internalize it. This makes me think about my little sister. She came up this weekend with my younger brother and his fiancé and spent the weekend at our house. She had never played the game Cashflow. It is a game by Robert Kiyosaki. It teaches you about financial independence. Right now she is a freshman in college and learning about that isn’t really a priority right now. She wasn’t really into the game as she didn’t really understand the math behind it, but if we had been able to explain the WHY of the game then she might have had interest in really learning how to play and what it could mean for her later on down the road.


What I mean by this is that she has goals to be an art therapist, with goals of getting her masters in it and bachelors in psychology I believe. She is one of those people that don’t care about money, but instead of what kind of impact she can have on others. It was lost on me and the other people around her playing the game that we needed to guide her, not tell her, to the ‘why’ it was important for HER to be independent financially. If she were financially independent then she could focus on others to the fullest of her capability whereas now and in her future if she isn’t focused on reigning in expenses and buying assets that cover her monthly expenses she’ll be working for a paycheck at times instead of working for the benefit of others like I believe she’d like to do.

The key is turning your earned income from your job into portfolio income and that is something we missed the boat on teaching her about. Hopefully I’ll have another crack at helping on that in the future.

Why? Not what.

        I just watched a video that talks about how successful people/ideas take off when people focus on the ‘Why’ and not the ‘What’. One example the speaker used was Tivo. Tivo has the best technology still and their company name is used as a verb or a noun when referring to other competitor’s technologies, i.e. “I’m going to Tivo the football game on my Comcast DVR.” The problem with them is that they told people what they needed, instead of why they needed it. For this reason the company has since been flat in its growth.

        The same applies to leadership and life in general I guess and what I want to apply to my blog. People won’t follow you or believe you if tell them what, but why. When you tell them why you do things and why they should do things they in turn internalize what you’ve said and make it their own. He talked about how there are Innovators of things. Then there are early adopters. Then there are early majority, late majority, and finally laggards. Innovators make things, but for those things to really take flight you need the early adopters to take it and praise it, as they are the ones that lead to the rest of the group using the product/idea. If you target the rest of the group then it never takes flight. This is what I need to do in my personal and business life.