With my job change and impending birth of my first baby, my mind has been focused on the future. I have a lot of interests: front-end development, design, usability, management, writing, etc., but regardless of the position/industry, there are two things that I've come to realize:
- There are very few jobs (outside of direct sales) where your salary scales directly with your effort and creative input.
- Robert Kiyosaki points out that rich people buy assets, not liabilities. They build wealth with those assets. Unfortunately, there are very few jobs that allow you to build and own assets.
Owners have assets, employees don't. For a long time I thought being an owner meant taking a lot of risk, like getting a loan or spending money on an MBA. But through the internet, namely blogs like Unicornfree.com, iwillteachyoutoberich.com, smartpassiveincome.com, I've learned that there are an infinite number of other possibilities that just require time and effort, something that I have an abundance of.
Amy Hoy of unicornfree.com posted a great video today talking about building your empire brick by brick. You don't have to go from zero to a million dollar company and she explains how no one else did, even 37signals, but you can get there by building up your own assets, brick by brick, until you have a massive wall. Each brick helps build onto the next one, creating assets that you can leverage for each following project.