Creating a "Cashflow" Mindset - Why playing Cashflow 101 can make you wealthy
In a previous blog post I described how playing Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow 101 board game for the first time started a positive chain of events that continues to this day in my life. I want to go into in a bit greater detail on why playing the game has been so important for me and how it can assist others in achieving their financial goals.
What I remember most from playing the Cashflow game for the first time was not the “how to” of playing the game but the people that I met at the event where the game was being played. These were not like the normal people in my life that would tell me I was crazy for trying to start my own real estate investing business or that financial freedom was impossible without a steady well-paying job. The people I met were excited about learning and expanding their knowledge on how to achieve financial freedom. They were active investors in real estate and the stock market. They were small business owners with a passion and vision for creating more financial success in their lives. Overall, they had a mindset for prosperity that I like to call a “Cahflow” mindset.
A lot of people complain that Robert Kiyosaki in his books and programs does not provide the specific details on how people should implement his strategies to create financial freedom. Truth is he never spells out a step by step “how to” for building long-term financial freedom. What he does teach is far more important, and that is how to create a “Cashflow” mindset. Robert describes it in his book Cashflow Quadrant as moving your mindset from the E (employee) and S (self-employed) side of his Cashflow quadrant to the B (business owner) and I (investor) side of the quadrant. In layman’s terms, it’s the mental shift from someone who seeks financial security at all costs to someone who can confidently and knowledgably take measured risks. This is a simplistic definition but a very important one to understand. Without the correct mindset, it really doesn’t matter how much you learn the “how to” of real estate investing, trading stocks, building a strong MLM business, etc. You will not succeed. It’s like trying to grow corn in a field of sand. The seeds will not germinate and you’ll end up with next to nothing to harvest in the fall.
How you ask does this relate to the Cashflow game? Well, after playing the game a bunch of times I learned the “how to” of getting out of the Rat Race inside of the game, but I still was not able to take what I learned from the game and apply it to my real life financial situation. However, I realized that the time I was spending with my new Cashflow group friends was changing the way I thought about money and my financial future. I no longer viewed the stock market as a giant rigged system for losing money. I began to see the tremendous opportunities in the sinking real estate market even as many people I knew were losing money on deals that had gone bad. Overall, I saw for the first time opportunities all around me to create wealth even as the newspapers talked constantly of the “Great Recession”.
Today as a result of my ongoing involvement playing and organizing my local Cashlfow events in Southern California, I have a thriving real estate investing business. It was after speaking with one of my Casfhlow friends who was a real estate investor that I was encouraged to start building my business of assisting investors in acquiring rented and rehabbed income properties for around $4k. It turned out to be a great decision. More recently, I’ve begun to learn how to successfully trade in the stock market using options. As a self-proclaimed real estate “zealot”, I never would have dreamed of investing in the equity markets. However, after playing Cashflow 202 with my Cashflow friend who is an active trader and learning about his trading system, I was able to see the opportunity before me. I now fully expect that investing in the markets will be a huge part of my future financial success in addition to my real estate activities.
Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow 101 and 202 are great board games to expand your financial intelligence, but I hope you can now see they are the basis for so much more. They create a framework for building lasting relationships with people who have a “Cashflow” mindset. These are people who are actively pursuing financial freedom and see the world full of financial opportunity and money making possibilities. By hanging out with these folks at your local Cashflow group, I know you too will begin developing your own “Cashflow” mindset and begin to see real changes in your financial future.
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