The Business of the 21st Century by Robert Kiyosaki (Summary)

Wealth Building Assets
Asset 1 – Real-world business education.
Asset 2 – Profitable path of personal development.
Asset 3 – Circle of friends who share your dreams and values.
Asset 4 – Power of your own network.
Asset 5 – Dublicable, fully scalable business.
Asset 6 – Incomparable leadership skills.
Asset 7 – Mechanism for genuine wealth creation.
Asset 8 – Big dreams and capacity to live them.

1 Your job is not going to take care of you. In today’s world there is no such thing as a job security, even if you work for a big corporation or the government. Good jobs are hard to find and even harder to keep.

2 When times are bad is when the real entrepreneurs emerge. Many new businesses are formed when the economy is bad. One person’s adversity is another person’s opportunity. Some people are even forced into starting a business of their own because they can’t find a good job.

3 The S quadrant is typically a trap. As a self-employed person, you are still trading hours for dollars and you don’t have any leverage. You basically own your own job. Everything relies on you and you alone. That’s until you want to take time off or you lose your ability to work. Most people working in the “S” quadrant work twice as hard as they did in their job and make half as much.

4 When you’re talking to someone who values having a job, it is difficult to explain why you might not want a job. Most people have the employee mindset and have no desire to be their own boss. Most people have been programmed their entire life to work for someone else as an employee.

5 A college education is important for traditional professions, but not for people looking to build wealth. If you want to be a doctor, lawyer or accountant, you need to go to college. But if you want to be an entrepreneur it isn’t required. Most successful entrepreneurs never went to college! Even if you go to college, it won’t prepare you for starting and growing your own business. College teaches people how to be employees.

6 People who work for income work harder and harder, only to be taxed more and more. The more you make the more the government takes, and at a higher rate. Employees have no tax incentives either. Owning a business allows you to legally minimise your taxes.

7 In the course of starting a new business – and I’m talking about a successful business – you can easily go five to ten years without getting a paycheck. Most successful businesses in the real world take a few years just to make their first dollar of profits. That’s why you need substantial savings before going full time, or you should start your business part-time, while you keep your day job. Nothing worth accomplishing is fast, free or easy.

8 While personal success if fulfilling, it’s much more fulfilling when you can help many others create their own success as well. Life is about helping others. The more people you serve and help, the more money you make and the more success you achieve.

9 The single most powerful form of promotion in the world is personal word-of-mouth. Nothing will ever beat word of mouth advertising. Companies spend BILLIONS of dollars on advertising to get their customers talking about them and sharing their message with others. That’s why network marketing is such a powerful business concept.

10 The reason people want to know how much they can earn per month is that they are thinking in terms of living in the E quadrant or the S quadrant. Employees focus on making more money. Entrepreneurs focus on building an asset that makes money. This is the difference between linear income and residual income.

11 If it doesn’t make you money, it’s not an asset, it’s a liability. Anything that takes your money out of your pocket is a liability.

12 When you build a business, you are building an asset. The purpose of building a business is to build something that you can sell one day for a big profit, or retire from and still earn residual income.

13 In network marketing, instead of earning income, you build an asset – your business – and the asset generates income. This is where most people get confused about network marketing. Your goal is to build your network, which can pay you for many years to come, not just today.

14 The biggest popular misconception about network marketing is that it’s a selling a business. I believe all entrepreneurs must be salespeople. At a bare bones minimum, you must be able to sell yourself and sell your ideas.

15 In network marketing, the whole point is not to sell a product, but to build a network. The real money comes from building a big network of customers and distributors. This industry is about a lot of people doing a little bit.

16 Network marketing is not about earning more income; it’s about building an asset. Your ultimate goal is to build an asset that continues to pay you month-after-month.

17 The No. 1 value you get from the experience is a real-world business education. MLM is the best business school that I know of. You will learn selling, marketing, leadership, communication, accounting, business operations, training, and countless other real-world skills that will help you in your day job and future business endeavours.

18 You don’t really have freedom until you have financial freedom. Until you have enough residual income coming in that pays for your living expenses each month, or more, you will never be totally free. Most people are only one or two paychecks away from bankruptcy.

19 Many people spend their lives hanging out and networking with people who hold them back Financially. Take advice from people who have what you want and avoid the haters. Surround yourself with people who uplift you and encourage you and avoid the people who bring you down. Never take advice from someone who doesn’t have what you want.

20 According to the Direct Selling Association (DSA), a significant number of people who join network marketing companies and stick with them rank the social network they belong to as an even higher priority than the income they earn. Most people want to belong to something bigger than themselves. They want more friends and better relationships. Your job is to create a team culture than enables that. Create a strong community and attrition won’t be a huge problem.

21 The power is not in the product; the power is in the network. Your product is important, but your network is even more important.

22 The richest people in the world build networks. Everyone else looks for work. Once you own a network, you can make money on demand. Companies like Amazon, eBay, AT&T and Coca-Cola all own large networks of people.

23 It is not a business for those gifted in sales. This is a business for leaders and teachers, not salesmen. This really is a sponsoring and teaching business, not a recruiting and selling business. If you are really good at selling you might want to pursue a career that pays large commissions per transaction, such as real estate.

24 Network marketing is about sharing information and personal stories, and not about hard selling. Use the products. Develop a good product story. Share your story with others. Facts tell, but stories sell. There is no need to lie, deceive, hard sell or pressure anyone to do the business.

25 In network marketing, you are the messenger, not the message. Use third party tools to grow your business. Take yourself out of the equation. Keep the business so simple even an eight year old could do it.

26 Being on the front lines means not caring about whether or not you are liked. Of course, we all want to be liked – but to be a great leader, you have to set boundaries, monitor the behaviour of your staff, and take corrective action when necessary. Leaders have to set the example, do the right thing, and not worry about what everyone else is doing or thinking. When you are a leader you are a trailblazer, not someone following the pack. If you aren’t the lead dog, the view never changes.

27 Wealth is not the same thing as money. Wealth is not measured by the size of income. Wealth is measured in time. True wealth is determined by the number of months you can live, and sustain your current standard of living, without going to a job.

28 Getting a business off the ground typically takes about Five years. Rome wasn’t built in a day. You won’t achieve overnight success. No matter what type of business you start, it’s going to take some time and sweat equity to launch it and grow it.

29 Don’t try to use your business as an income source to live on. Be smart about how you spend your bonus check. During your first few years in business, and keep a day job to pay  your day bills. It’s going to take some time to build up your. Even of it back into your business to grow it.

30 Keep your day job. You need a job to keep the financial pressure off your back while you are building your business. My personal mentor tells me this all the time.

31 If you suck all the income out of your new business to burn on monthly living expenses, then you’re not building a business; you’re just building yourself another job. One of my best pieces of advice is to get a job, or keep your day job, during your first few years in your network marketing businesses.

32 A true business owner never stops investing and reinvesting to build the business. Your business is like a small baby. You need to nurture it, spend time with it, and love on it until it grows and takes on a life of its own. Invest in your personal development. It’s the only investment you can’t lose money on.

33 Network marketing is, at its core, a relationship business. It’s not a business that revolves around making sales; it is a business that revolves around making connections. This is the ultimate people business. The more rock solid long-term relationships you can make, the more money you will make.

34 I think party plan businesses – a type of network marketing business that revolves around in-home parties – are ideal for so many women looking to start their own business. If you enjoy selling in small groups, you should really consider the party-plan business.

35 You have to go out there and make things happen. You can’t think your way to success. You have to roll up your sleeves and do the work. Success is usually disguised as hard work.

36 The most lucrative and viable network marketing opportunities will not expect you to reinvent the wheel. Find a simple system that works and follow it, until you can find or develop a better way. As Michael Gerber says, “the system is the solution.”

37 “Great salesman” types cannot duplicate themselves. The good recruiters typically can’t teach their team how to do the same thing. It’s the teachers that do the best in our industry.

38 If getting rich were easy, everybody would be rich. Achieving success at anything in life takes time, money, effort and skill. There is no free lunch in the real world.

39 It is people in the E and the S quadrants who are most often sucked into the get-rich-quick schemes and scams of life. There is no such thing as get rich quick.

40 It takes time to build great companies and great business leaders. This business, just like any other business, will take you several years to get off the ground. It will also take you several years to master your skills and become a network marketing professional.

41 Most people want money but are unwilling to invest their time. This is not a business for dreamers. Everyone wants to be successful, but few people are willing to put in the required work. This is a business for doers.

42 Ten thousand hours: Do the math. If you work eight hours a day, five days a week, you hit the 10,000 hour mark after Live years of full-time effort. It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.

43 Losing is a part of the process of winning. You will need to fail your way to success. Success is never a straight line. It has ups and downs, zigs and zags. Move one step forward, two steps back.

44 You can plan all you want, study all you want, and learn all you want, but the only people who win in network marketing are people who take action – today, tomorrow, and every day. Until you roll up your sleeves and do the work, nothing will happen in your business. You won’t think your way to the top.

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