How much can YOU sell your JOB for?

I just finished reading

This book called me out. 

There is a story at the beginning where Robert takes his financials in to his rich dad to examine how his company is doing.  Rich dad then states that his company has financial cancer and that it is terminal.  He also gets very upset and angry at Robert.  He’d been taking worker’s wages and taxes owed to the government to buy expensive cars.  Rich dad told Robert that we all have characters inside of us.  We have a crook.  We have a whore.  We have a saint.  We have a wimp.  We have a hero.  We have a liar.  We have a truthful person and on and on.  Rich dad told Robert to get out of his office and not come back until his employees and taxes were paid.  Part of that conversation included saying that we all at some play each of those roles and we have to decide which one we’ll let win out in our current situation. 

Further into the book Robert talks about a quiz his rich dad would give his son and Robert.  The quiz was this, “If you woke up jobless, homeless, moneyless, what would you do?”  Before I’d even read on I’d told myself I’d immediately go and get a job of some sort to help tide things over.  Rich dad’s response to someone with that answer was that they were programmed (currently) to be an E in the cash flow quadrant.  He even said this was reasonable to be expected since that is how we’re trained all through school, which is exactly what I talk about here.  An E is an employee.  Well this bugged me as I don’t want to be an E.

If someone responded saying they’d figure out a way to get, start, or buy a business then they were a B, for business.  If someone said they would try and find some type of investment to get to make them money with their own resources or those of another person/investor and if this was the case then they were set to be an I, or investor.  Both of these trains of thought were completely absent in my knee jerk response.  That upset me.  I know that other quadrants in the cash flow quadrant are where real wealth is made.  I have ignored that though for years. 

I’ve given in to and let the wimp inside of me win that battle time and again.  I however am not going to continue with that.  I’m going to work on building businesses.  I am likely to fail at business and investing.  That doesn’t mean I’m not going to learn from it.  It also doesn’t mean I can’t start again on another one.  It doesn’t mean I can’t read and study and workshop and mastermind and scrap to get ahead of those failures and WIN. 

At this point I’m just talking to myself.

One interesting line the above book is that Rich dad calls excuses “lies we tell ourselves”.

One interesting question that struck me particularly that Robert poses to a married couple who both work very high paying jobs was, “How much can you sell your job for?”  In the book he just lets the question hang and the wife keeps asking him to explain what he meant/means.  The husband then starts asking himself the question out loud rhetorically.  They then walk themselves through the fact that they can’t sell their jobs.  They’re working and enriching someone else.  When they’re done with their job they’ll have nothing to show for it.  That last point is a big part of the book.

The whole book woke me up to the fact that I’ve been looking at my job as freedom instead of as security.  People want security and they THINK they have freedom because of it.  Robert points out however that the most secure place in the world, a maximum security prison, is quite certainly the least FREE place there is to live. 

What is interesting about this whole book is how psychologically intelligent and MATURE rich people can be.  They’re very honest with themselves and very accountable.  They tell the truth deep down it seems. 

Let me clarify that this may be met with skepticism with the elite/rich who are corrupt to the core and running a big chunk of the world these days.  While this may be so they are also very rich.  What I identify as lasting wealth characteristics in a person are also mature emotional and psychological characteristics.  While the corrupt are corrupt, doesn’t mean they’re building lasting wealth, which is perhaps the distinguishing component that is needed here…lasting.  Sure the corrupt win by cheating, lying, stealing, it won’t last forever.

I notice that healthy doses of reality and accountability are what make the difference between someone who succeeds at business and one who doesn’t.  That is what I want to strive for.  Those things are also important in overcoming any kind of addiction.  

Interesting stuff.