Employment Vs Entrepreneurship
Man is a social animal and to live a life we need wealth so we can overcome our social needs. Most of the time when we graduate from university,we try to find a job so we can earn some bucks.
For me, true wealth is the ability to earn enough money to live comfortably without having to work. I don’t want to achieve this when I’m 65, I want to achieve it as soon as possible.
Why do we want wealth?
We all want to live a life with full of our desires. Some want to buy a dream house some need a super car(As i am :P) and a long list of wishes can be written. When we are doing jobs for decades but we can’t afford a dream house or a luxury car, so we need wealth to do this.
How can one obtain wealth?
I started reading books about how to become wealthy. I devoured all the classics, “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, “Think and Grow Rich”, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”, etc. They all basically say the same thing. Don’t trade time for money.
Robert Kiyosaki puts it well in his books, he segments income types into four different categories that he calls the “cashflow quadrant”. The four main types of income are:
- Employee — you are employed by someone else and paid for your time.
- Self employed — you are employed by yourself, but still paid for your time.
- Business Owner — you own a system that makes you money.
- Investor — your money makes you money.
In order to be “wealthy”, Robert Kiyosaki says that you should prioritise earning money from income streams as far down that list as possible. Notice that the further down the list you go the more scalable the income streams become and the more opportunity you have to free up your time.
Freedom
The other thing is freedom which plays a key role to change one’s mindset from employment to entrepreneurship.
What is freedom?
Personal freedom comes in many forms.
To name a few:
- Freedom of time
- Freedom of location
- Financial freedom
- Freedom of expression
- Freedom of choice
The disconnect between freedom and employment
No matter how good the culture at your company is or how much you love your job, you will still be required to forgot some amount of freedom when you are an employee. That’s why you get paid.
For example:
- You must work during specific times (sacrifice time freedom).
- You can’t say anything on social media that would negatively affect your employer (freedom of expression).
- If your boss asks you to do something, you have to do it (freedom of choice).
- If an employer decides that they don’t want to pay you money anymore, they can sack you (financial freedom).
This isn’t a dig at any company, it’s just how employment works. Employees get paid to forgot their freedom.
The alternative of Employment
I am trying to reconfigure my life to look more like this:
- I decide when I work.
- I decide how hard I work.
- I decide what I work on.
- I decide where I work from.
- I decide who I work with.
- I express myself freely.
People have their own tastes on this topic, some enjoy their jobs and some find business is real freedom. What do you think about this, must comment!
