Around 3 years ago, we were having some sort of a reunion at a friend’s place. We were three of us who were mates at the Engineering college and were meeting after a long gap. All of us were having good jobs with reputed organisations; married with children and were quite happy with our personal lives. But there was another thing that was common among us which wasn’t quite pleasant. And it was this fact we were not happy with our financial status. It was a strange kind of a feeling. Here we were, 3 bright young men, qualified IT engineers placed in big corporates in a fledging city working our butts off but yet, far away from attaining the kind of financial status we thought our qualifications and jobs would give us. The topic just came up casually and it passed by without us delving into it.
But the thought lingered on and made me think on my way back home and for the next few days. Make no mistake – I wasn’t whining and I wasn’t hating my job. I kind of liked what I did and enjoyed the atmosphere that I worked in. Had a lot people around that I liked being with, had a lot of fun at the company events – get togthers, outings etc. And being in a firm with wings, I had the chance to travel, meet new people and explore new cultures. But the problem was a perennial one in that there was more month at the end of money. And it happened month after month after month. I was and I still am, a bit ambitious and for all the good things that I enjoyed with my job, it wasn’t helping me achieve my goals. I wasn’t building assets and I wasn’t getting wealthy. To sum it, my good job was falling short in helping me fulfill my aspirations.
All the more, it was startling to see people half as qualified or educated as I was, acquiring wealth and assets the way they did. And it was quite apparent being in a city like Dubai where you could find this whole breed of under qualified and under educated but super wealthy men. somehow this realisation dawned on me that something was amiss. It became clear to me that, if I really want to get my finances in order, if I really wanted to get wealthy and if I seriously wanted to fulfill my dreams, I need to do something. I had no clue what it was but I knew there should be a way.
And then in one of my casual forays on the web, I chanced upon a video of a gentleman called Robert Kiyosaki explaining the concept of Cashflow Quadrant. It immediately struck me since I could relate to what he was saying when he talked about the E or the Employee quadrant because I was an employee all my career. It seemed as though he was speaking directly to me on how I was. How the dual emotions of fear and greed were dominating my thoughts; how money had a stranglehold on my life; how I was repeating the same cycle over and over again without getting any better economically but getting worse emotionally since I was getting increasingly frustrating and desperate with my financial condition not improving; and how I am knowingly or otherwise involved in the same rat race that millions of others were in too.
I realised that in order to be financially free I needed to be financially intelligent and for that, I need to change my mindset before anything else and more than anything else. That was perhaps the biggest challenge that I had came across in my life because in order to shift from the Employee quadrant to the Business Owner quadrant I needed to transform myself into someone who is both mentally and emotionally far removed from the person I have been all my adult life and perhaps my formative years as well. And I can tell you that the journey has been a truly fascinating one and in many ways an experience in self realisation because I didn’t think that I had an entrepreneurial bone in my body until I set about becoming one. I can also tell you that it isn’t easy and takes a lot of heart and courage; but worth every minute in time and every ounce in effort. And as I began conditioning my mind and got the new sets of values and rules ingrained within, the rest seemed to fall in place as I took my first steps towards being an entrepreneur.
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