This week's book: "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki.
"Never depend on a single income. Make an investment to create a second source."
Warren Buffett
Lesson 3 of this week's book is called Mind Your Own Business, and it might be the most important one in the entire book.
Most of us spend our whole lives focused on one question: how much do I make, and how do I make more? A raise. A promotion. A better job. All good things. But Kiyosaki says there's a second question we almost never ask: what do I own?
His example is Ray Kroc. Everyone thinks Kroc was in the hamburger business. But Kroc, and his CFO Harry Sonneborn, understood the real game was real estate. The restaurants sold burgers. The land beneath them became one of the most valuable real estate portfolios on earth. The burgers paid the bills. The property built the fortune.
That's the whole lesson. Learn the difference between an asset, something that puts money in your pocket, and a liability, something that takes it out. Then quietly and patiently keep feeding your asset column.
I want to be clear, the way I've tried to be all week: this doesn't mean quitting your job and rolling the dice on becoming an entrepreneur. A steady paycheck is a good and honorable thing, and most assets are built slowly, on the back of exactly that steady income. This isn't paycheck versus assets. It's using the first to build the second.
Because here's the truth, your income supports the life you're living right now. Your assets create the choices you'll have later, the freedom to slow down, to help someone, to walk away from something that isn't right, to say yes to something that is. More assets means more choices.
One thing to try today
Take a look at where your money goes each month and sort those items into two buckets: things that put money in your pocket, and things that take it out. Most of us have never looked at our money this way. Just seeing it clearly is the first step. You can't build an asset column you've never actually looked at. Note: a retirement plan, stocks, bonds, etc. are in the asset column.
What's one asset, however small, you'd like to start building? Hit reply, I read every one.
I'll go first: this newsletter. Today it's pure effort and no income. But built right, it becomes something that reaches people and does good whether I'm at my desk or out on a trail. That's the plan.
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Talk tomorrow,
Mike
Practical wisdom for the life you're building