In our society money is the most efficient way to exchange value and to buy things. But we have to make money if we want to be able to spend it. We can decide to do this in a number of ways, depending on our inclinations and aspirations. I have identified 5 of these. Moreover there is a couple of ways we can decide to play outside the system instead of within.

What is that you want to do? How do you want to achieve it?

Within the system

The first 2 ways to play within the system are those that we have been taught by the school system. We can either find a job and become an employee or have a profession, like an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer.

Being an employee means finding a place where we do some predefined work within a bigger machine called a company. In a traditional job we are essentially a cog of a large machine. We trade our time and abilities for an amount of money based on how much we work.

In a profession instead we are paid in exchange for the value we bring to our customers or patients. But we have so much time hence we can produce only so much value.

The other 3 ways to play within the system are the entrepreneur and the investor, with the investor further divided in a rent investor and a capital gain investor.

The entrepreneur finds ways to scale up some way to create value well beyond their time availability. The entrepreneur builds a company, which is a machine to create value at scale. This in turns creates value – and money – for the entrepreneur him/herself.

The rent investor invests money in assets that provide a continuous return as dividends or a rent.

Finally the capital gain investor invests in assets that they can sell at a later stage for a profit.

All these options play within the social framework that requires us to make money somehow, in order to be able to spend it for products and services.

Outside the system

There are 2 further models that live outside of this framework. One is the hippy or leech, who does not produce value or at least does not earn money and lives frugally for zero cost or off other people’s money.

And finally, on the other side of the spectrum are the few fortunate enough to be able to redefine the rules of the game, in a way to own the game, and use the system rather than being within it. Think of the few Zuckerbergs of the world.

Here’s the full scale:

  • hippy or leech
  • employee
  • professional
  • entrepreneur
  • rent investor
  • capital gain investor
  • own the game

Obviously the further down the scale the more money you make and the more free you are (with the possible exception of the hippy who feels free, but in reality is not able to do a lot of things).

Which model did you choose? Why? What was there to stop you from choosing a better model than say the employee? What did you take for granted that you weren’t able to do?

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I work with CEOs, philanthropists, startup founders and great organisations to impact Ocean Sustainability and Decarbonisation at scale. If you want to 10x your impact on Ocean Sustainability and Decarbonisation get in touch on: leonardo@startupwharf.com

This is Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains art installation in Las Vegas, NV. I chose it to represent the 7 choices we have about how we want to play our life. Thank you Wesley Tingey on Unsplash for the beautiful picture.