The Three Roberts and the Meaning of Wealth (Or How You Can Attain True Wealth) Part One

By Louis Lim

Robert Kiyosaki defines ‘Wealth’ as a ‘Positive Net Cash Inflow’.

In financial terms, when money coming to you on a regular basis is more than what is going out from you, you are wealthy. There is a further condition i.e. the incoming cash flow must be a ‘passive one’. Thus, a ‘wealthy’ person or one who is financially free is one who has a passive income(s) that is in excess of what is needed to live the life one desires.

Passive income is receiving money from assets whether you are doing anything or not. Robert Kiyosaki take on this is ‘Wealthy people do not work for money but money works for them’. Clearly then, the way to wealth is to create passive incomes to work for you!

How then does one create a passive income? To Robert Kiyosaki, it’s about creating financial assets. An asset is something you own that brings ‘positive’ cash flow. If you own a house and have to pay a mortgage and the cash flow is negative then the house is a liability, not an asset. However, if you collect a rental from the house which is more than your mortgage then it is an asset. Other assets would include securities(sic!) or business(es) or royalty from a book etc..

The next question must be ‘how does one create an asset?’ Can one create assets like shares, houses and business etc. without money, special talents and skill, connections? The answer is yes and many have done it! It is even more possible today because of the internet. Robert Kiyosaki will tell you it’s about one’s perspective! If you believe you can be wealthy, you will be!

To Kiyosaki the best way to create wealth is to start a business of your own. A successful business will allow you to build assets. Currently there are businesses you can start part-time whilst you are working. Nowadays the easiest to start is an Online business.

Besides the internet, what other businesses should you go into that can lead you to wealth. The kinds that can do without much money, employees and provide multiple streams of passive incomes; and which suits almost anyone! Here is where the second Robert i.e. Robert Allen is going to guide you. He claims to have created many millionaires. Indeed his ideas on how any ordinary guy can create great wealth is something anyone who desires to have lots of money need to know.

The space given this article is too short. Please look out for ‘The Three Roberts and The Meaning Of Wealth’ (Part 2) to read about the other two Roberts and how ideas  together can make you truly wealthy.

Wishing you all the best!

About the Author:

Louis Lim is a highly qualified certified management consultant who promotes entrepreneurship as a set of basic human skills for financial security! With these skills,, anyone can always feel secure of making a living with or without a job. Louis has identified Internet Marketing as the latest opportunity for those seeking financial independence. He has decades of experience consulting for many firms and mentors many business people. He is sharing his skills in business on the internet.

Louis Lim is also an Expert Author on Entrepreneurship in the top Ezine Business and Motivation magazines in the internet and Google.  One of his websites is http://TheSuperFastAffiliate.com” where you can find a program to learn how to start an internet a marketing business.

Economic Freedom and Political Liberty

By Louis Lim

The time has come for to raise serious issues of economic and political freedoms which we take for granted at our peril.

Many excellent points have been raised from a Western perspective as regards the erosion of democratic principles vis-à-vis economic freedom as proposed outside Western viewpoints. There is nothing wrong with this but the world as evolving currently requires an understanding of an Eastern perspective, in particular, a Chinese one. This is so because unlike the previous wealthy Chinese empire of the nineteen century, this emerging one would have a great impact (which it previously never had), on how the social-political-economic nature of the world is going to evolve.

I mention this because no other than the big Russian nation is now studying seriously whether a Chinese style (which John Naisbitt described as a form of ‘vertical democracy’) of government is more efficacious than an often disruptive and counter-productive, bicameral, Westminster style one.

No one who understands freedom could argue that a Western democracy is not the best form for individual freedom. In recent years, however, the advent of unfettered capitalism has seemingly made very questionable, the benefits of Western style democratic governance. It’s as though, the powerfully vested few could high-jack the system for their narrow interests alone, leaving the rest unprotected from wholesale skull-drudgery.

The strangest irony is that real democracy and unfettered capitalism (or true laisse faire) are, as Marx would describe, natural opposites. Democracy, in the simplest term is the will of the democratic majority, as expressed in individual ballots. Capitalism, on the other hand, is by nature autocratic, representing the will of a powerful minority. And when democracy becomes a captive of uncontrolled capitalism as in the US recently, democratic considerations takes a back seat, as it were, and the capitalist-autocrats take over and the common man suffers. Albeit, for only awhile (and this is the safeguard of democracy) but eventually, “he who holds the purse, controls the world”.

This is what the Chinese realised when Deng Xiao Ping, looked around in the eighties. You can have the longest, existing civilisation in the world but without money you are nothing. It did not take long before the pragmatic Chinese saw what needed doing; i.e. create a capitalist-type economy.

The question of compatibility was quickly resolved when Deng visited Lee Kuan Yew; he saw how an authoritarian regime sits well with capitalism and thrives. He got the answer of how you can control the population completely, at the same time provides them the means to be wealthy.

The rest, as they say is history. Confucianism, which provides the basic framework of Chinese society, and Communism, has fundamentally to do with respect of authority and allowing it to function without question; the provision being that it must do well in furthering the welfare of the people. It is thus clear that capitalism and autocracy are natural partners; nobody elects the leaders; the leaders elect themselves.

It is never understood, particularly in the right-wing West, why the Chinese people would not rise against the many human rights violations that the Westerner can see. The answer is that the Chinese view it differently. If your government has lifted ‘400 million’ or more of you out of abject poverty and your life is so much better in the last twenty years and there are opportunities to be fabulously rich, why would you object?

The assumption in the West is often that the individual generally knows what he wants and when enough numbers have the same wants they form the majority to elect the government they want. Off course, the rights of the minority, which can be a considerable number is often ignored.

This naturally results in a bicameral situation where one side is engaged endlessly in undermining the other, to the detriment of all. This fundamentally is the weakness. And when public opinion is controlled by a few press barons which represents only the interests of the few rich, democracy meaning free speech is often undermined.

Free speech becomes only free for opinion makers in the major newspapers. The voice of the ordinary man is often left unheard. Thus the warning of the sub-primed danger, the raising of Madoff’s schemes, the plight of the uninsured for health care and such, are like voices crying in the wilderness. The result is that the Chinese system now seems much better. Much of the world is now looking to China to lead it out of their economic crisis.

Those of us who treasure freedom have better wake up. Capitalism without social justice cannot endure as Communism with social and economic justice can. The enemies of Obama as reflected by the mean and vehement opposition of insurance companies in the US to the Health reforms, is a stark indication of the malaise of unfettered capitalism; it destroys democracy as we need it!

 

About the Author:

Louis Lim is a highly qualified certified management consultant who promotes entrepreneurship as a set of basic human skills for financial security! With them, anyone can always feel secure of making a living with or without a job. Louis has identified Internet Marketing as the latest opportunity for those seeking financial independence. He has decades of experience consulting for many firms and mentors many business people. He is sharing his skills in business on the internet. Louis Lim is also an Expert Author on Entrepreneurship in the top Ezine Business and Motivation magazines in the internet and Google.

Entrepreneurship – A Panacea For Job Insecurity?

By Louis Lim, Business Correspondent

In view of the current economic difficulties facing many, people ought to be more ware of what’s happening in the world and how what’s happening can adversely affect their financial securities and lives; if it has not done so already!

It is not a well known secret that one can avoid being a financial casualty by simply acquiring a set of skills different from what we are usually programmed from young to have. The latter has to do with being enslaved to a job or business controlled by others; the other being about having skills to generate an income independent of any circumstance or other people.

Anyone depending solely on a job for a living would be almost completely lost if he loses his job. The unfortunate fact is that since the Multi-Nationals Companies began institutionalizing the treatment of employees as just another business resource, albeit commodity, the age of life-long employment seizes.

Financial results associated with satisfying shareholders’ expectations became the main reason for a business enterprise. Coupled with the practice of achieving short term objectives and the need to maintain share prices, retrenching workers became a normal business practice. Words like ‘downsizing’ and ‘business rationalizing’ became common business parlance.

This dehumanizing of business enterprises, prevalent throughout 18th and 19th century industrializing Britain was revived and practice by American businesses. The new reality in a capitalist environment anywhere means a worker is subject to his job being taken away any day. More importantly, this means also that the individual worker must realize quickly the insecurity of a job.

What then is a worker to do to secure himself? Off course there are skills like being a doctor or dentist and others which are not down sizable. However, most workers are dispensable!

Men are, however, born with an innate creativity which can be described as entrepreneurial but this has historically been replaced by skills which are intended for us to work for someone else. The result is that only the top five per cent or so of employees can acquire financially independence (with high salaries) while the rest remained dependent and vulnerable all their lives.

To acquire these forgotten skills would require a change in mindset from one of being a worker (a worker’s mindset) to that of being a boss (an entrepreneurial mindset). The latter entails having a ‘Possibilities Mindset” which would enable one to know how to garner resources and knowledge and, to apply them to secure one’s own financial objectives.

Henry Ford, the car genius, once said that ‘money is not a man’s security; he is his own security’. What he meant was that a man’s security lies in his knowledge and skills. However, if your skill and knowledge is tied to working for someone then those skills and knowledge can be replaced any time.

However, Henry Ford is not wrong; if a man’s skills and knowledge is in the area of creating a money making enterprise. Robert Kiyosaki, a very successful entrepreneur, said that ‘every man must mind his own business’. He didn’t express it too well but what he meant is that ‘to have financial security a person must learn to develop his own money making business’. Is this possible? Every man? In my opinion, in today’ new reality, any worker who wants financial security has no other option!

Off course, whenever an uninitiated thinks of starting a business he thinks of big capital, connections, special knowledge and skills. For a man who has little money and has just lost his job, it’s even more unrealistic to think of starting his own business. However, many have done it, albeit, at great odds.

But what if you are not retrenched yet? And you have some time to learn. Could you invest in a money-making skill that can provide an alternative income? Could you learn to be an entrepreneur with little resources and connections?

The answer is yes but you have to adopt an entrepreneur mind-set; which really means that you to start believing in possibilities! Remember that when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs started their little enterprises in garages all they had mainly were their belief in possibilities. The amazing fact is that because of them the possibilities have increased exponentially with the advent of the internet.

Besides a strong belief in possibilities, an entrepreneur is one who learns to gather resources, knowledge and skills and organize them into money making processes. In most conventional businesses, this is usually a huge ask for any newcomer. Fortunately,, there are now other avenues where starting a business is made more possible for any one with little money and is prepared to spend time learning.

For example, the internet has made it easier to start your own business. The main thing you would need is a good PC, some affordable money, a willingness to learn and a lot of belief in yourself. What is to be learned is seldom difficult; a man’s limitation to success is often his own lack of self-belief! (Note : One website where you can learn how to be internet entrepreneur is www.thesuperfastaffiliate.com)

If your motivation is create a secure financial situation for you and your loved ones, you need to be an entrepreneur. The days of secure employment is long over and moreover, personal wealth is seldom acquired by working for others.

About the Author:

Louis Lim is a highly qualified certified management consultant who promotes entrepreneurship as a set of basic human skills for financial security! With them, anyone can always feel secure of making a living with or without a job. Louis has identified Internet Marketing as the latest opportunity for those seeking financial independence. He has decades of experience consulting for many firms and mentors many business people. He is sharing his skills in business on the internet. Louis Lim is also an Expert Author on Entrepreneurship in the top Ezine Business and Motivation magazines in the internet and Google.