Sunday, July 30, 2006

Work Reusability

6:00

In his best-seller The Cashflow Quadrant, Robert Kiyosaki separates people into four groups:
  1. Employees
  2. Free agents
  3. Business owners
  4. Professional investors
His message is that for fiscal reasons as well as for personal wealth-buiding reasons, it is better to be a business owner or professional investors.

There are details he doesn't mention, and I can understand why: it is better to simplify things so people can quickly grasp the main idea. And his main idea is amazingly correct.

Here, I want to talk about when it may be better to work as an employee rather than a business owner.

The main principle I use is "Work Reusability."

The key question is: "How much of the work you did on Monday is being reused on Tuesday?"

Consider two positions: a manager of a corporate training intranet vs the owner of a small convenience store.

Who do you think is continually reusing his own work and building on it? Who is creating value exponentially?