Over the last 4 days I have been discussing the 4 quadrants from Robert Kiyosaki’s book The Cashflow Quadrant. Yesterday I mentioned the transformation of our financial planning practice from a typical “S” quadrant business to a “Business”. Today is an expansion of that story.
I was an employee for the first 14 years of my working life. I then became a self employed accountant with a small practice and then later commenced a financial planning practice with my husband and another partner. I believed in the saying “work hard and you will get ahead” so that is what I set out to do and my husband was just the same.
By the time we met Robert Kiyosaki in the early 1990s we had built the financial planning practice up to a reasonable size with about 25 staff. Both my husband and I worked very long hours. We had a young family and we did not spend enough time with them.
When I commenced studying with Robert I had many of my beliefs challenged.
The first one was that our residence was not an asset. He talked about your business only being a business when it can operate with out you. The concept of “why do something yourself when you get someone else to do it”.
These were all new concepts to me and challenged my accountant brain.
While it took me time to get comfortable with some of Robert’s concepts there were others that were “ah ha” moments for me. One of these was “not doing something you can get someone else to do”. As an accountant I had worked for many years on the basis of charging my time to clients on an hourly basis. As my charge rate was higher than the assistants in the office I was mindful of delegating tasks to someone on a lower charge rate where possible.
Robert also talked about getting someone to clean the house, mow the lawn, buy the groceries and anything else you can delegate. My husband and I decided to implement some of these strategies. The first big one was to employ a housekeeper. I was fearful at first that we could not afford it – but our earnings increased as a result of it and more importantly we had more recreational/family time.
The other main concept we took on board was to put formalised systems into our office. At that stage we had no procedures manuals and no consistent way of training new people. We engaged external consultants and transformed our business.
Prior to doing this we had never taken more than a week of vacation at a time. The following year we went overseas for 6 weeks and the office operated wonderfully without us.
Now we work in a home based business and do not want to have full time staff again. We do still delegate tasks to various contractors and we do have systems. Every business no matter what size must do the same.
Have a great day and leave me some feedback.
Sharlene Stevens says
Hi Sue,
It’s great to meet you and I’m looking forward to getting to know you better.
I absolutely love Robert Kiyosaki’s books and teachings. I believe I have read most of his books.
It’s tough getting out of the employee mindset, when that’s all you’ve ever known. But if your going to succeed in this industry, I believe you have to change the way you think…
Thanks for sharing,
Sharlene
Sue says
Hi Sharlene
Thanks for your comments and great you have read most of Robert’s books. During the years I was with Pow Wow Events I read so many stories from people who transformed their lives because of his books and seminars.
I think recognizing that you need to change the way you think is a big step. I have a very old post card from the first seminar I did with Robert back almost 20 years ago stuck on my desk that says “for things to change 1st I must change”. I read it everyday as I have learned over the years it is an ongoing process.
Have a great day.
Sue
Adam Robinson says
Sometimes it’s hard to delegate, especially if it involves spending money in order to do so. However, if one will be more productive and able to earn more by delegating, then by all means. It’s a nice feeling to have a business running on its own with minimum to no supervision required.
Sue says
Thanks for your comment again Adam. I agree many people find delegating hard. In fact I think it is something we have to learn. Hey and as you say it is a nice feeling to have a business running on it’s own with minimum to no supervision. I think all business owners need to aim to get there.
Sue