There is a great story in Robert Kiyosaki’s
“Cashflow
Quadrant” (a must read book) that goes
like this:
A village in Africa needed water, so they gave
two
people, Bill and Ed, the contract to supply it,
reasoning that the competition would keep
prices
reasonable and the service good. Bill
immediately
ran out, bought two buckets, and started
making the
trek to and from the lake, which was a mile
away. He
started making money immediately, which was
great,
especially as Ed disappeared from the village.
The
downside was that he had to get up before
everybody else to make sure that the village
had the
water, and his work was very tiring, as he
spent his
whole day carrying buckets of water.
Several months later, Ed returned. It turned
out he
had been putting together a construction crew
and
developing the plans to build a stainless steel
pipe
from the lake to the village. Once it was ready,
he
announced that he would charge 75% less for
his
water than Bill, that his water would be cleaner
than
Bill’s, because it would be covered the whole
way,
and finally that his water would be available
24/7,
unlike Bill’s, because Bill didn’t work on
weekends.
When Bill saw everybody run to the new faucet
at the
end of Ed’s pipeline, he dropped his prices by
75%,
bought covers for his buckets, and employed
his
sons to work night and weekend shifts. Once
his sons
had left for college (and inexplicably never
returned),
he had to hire more workers to cover their
costs, and
spent his days dealing with accounting and
labor
issues.
Ed saw the success of his pipeline in this
village, and
went on to build them in several other villages
as well,
earning only pennies on every bucket
delivered, but
delivering millions of buckets a day. He
oversees his
business from a beach in Hawaii, as the water
flows
whether he is working or not.
The question raised by the story is obvious:
Are you
spending all of your days WORKING for
money, or, are
you also DESIGNING SYSTEMS to ultimately
have
money flowing to, and working for, you?
We are not suggesting that most of us don’t
need money
now. We need to pay the rent, put food on the
table, and
gas in the car. It takes time to develop
financial
plans, to
build businesses and/or create multiple
sources of
income. What are we supposed to do if
we
don’t have
the capital to live off while we’re “building our
own
pipeline?”
The answer, and this can be difficult to
accept, is that
we have to be building the pipeline WHILE
hauling
buckets, as hard as that may be. In other
words, you
work to build some kind of business (outside of
your
artistic career) that will eventually support you
in your
artistic endeavours, WHILE also continuing to
work
the job that currently allows you to survive.
Yes, this
means that you will be working harder now. At
times
it may seem overwhelming and there will most
likely
be short term sacrifices. However, one of
the key
secrets of financially stable and wealthy
people is
that they do work now that will pay them next
month
and next year, as opposed to only next
week.
So what to do? The place to start is
education. Learn
about businesses, about investing, about tax
structure and so on. Take the time to plan
your
financial growth, instead of being driven
by constant
financial insecurity. Dedicate a few hours a
week to
this process, and then, once you have made a
decision as to what you are going to pursue,
focus
some time on bringing your idea to fruition.
In the long run, this will give you the time
and energy to
truly pursue the things that matter most,
ensuring that in
five, ten, fifteen years - you won't still be
hauling the
same buckets you are today.
