When I was with Rich Dad Seminars, we took a few Cashflow games down into the inner city and played with a group of kids from the Boys and Girls Club.  If you’ve never played Cashflow, it is a game by Robert Kiyosaki that teaches you how to invest, create a residual income that surpasses your job, and gets you out of the rat race.  Anyway, we were playing with a bunch of teens who, at the time, thought the two best ways to become a millionaire were to sell drugs or become an NBA star.  They didn’t see many other options where they were growing up.  We were there to show them some other opportunities. 

Now, Cashflow is a pretty lengthy game.  It can take hours to play and there are a lot of real-life money lessons along the way.  One of those lessons is collaboration.  If you don’t have the money to buy a property, you can sell the option to buy to another player who does have the money to buy it.  But, when I first suggested that to a young lady who was at my table, she looked shocked.  “Why would I want to help them make money?”  I explained that by helping them, you are also helping yourself and although they’ll probably make more than you on this deal, it will put you in a better position when the next deal comes around.  She still looked worried.  “What if there isn’t another deal?”  I told her, “Trust me, there’s always another deal.”  She sold the deal to another player and made a nice little profit and when the next opportunity came her way, she had enough money to make an offer on the deal herself.  I saw her first WIN-WIN and it was amazing.  Possibilities were born in her eyes.

About halfway through the games, we took a break to grab some pizza and drinks.  When we were getting up from the tables where the boards were, the kids all started to grab their money and their properties because they didn’t want someone to take them.  They were so worried.  We told them to leave it but these kids were used to keeping anything that meant something to them on their person or at least within eyesight.  Of the hundreds of Cashflow games I’ve taught and played, the games with those kids were my favorite.  These teenagers, who never knew about investing, learned fast and soon began fighting over who would be the janitor (a job position that is the easiest to get out of the rat race because it has the lowest expenses) when we played the next time. 

The lesson here is that these kids were not only open to but they were able to retrain how they were taught to think about money.  Their beliefs were learned but not cemented.  As we played, they began to realize that there is always more than enough to go around.  There is always another deal.  They began to wait and root for the last player to get out of the rat race and join the rest on the fast track.  They went from hoarding the little money they had to helping others succeed and realizing that by serving others, we naturally profit ourselves.   The transformations I saw in them were amazing.

What can we learn from these kids?

• Be open to new experiences.

• Realize that there is always more than enough for everyone to profit.

• Being generous with others helps not only them but ourselves as well.

• There are more ways to make money than the obvious. Be creative.

• It feels better to love and encourage others, to cheer them on to success and have them do the same for us, too.

• We aren’t in competition with others, only ourselves.

I think that every adult can take lessons from these kids.  Their eyes were wide open at the end of these Cashflow games.  They went from knowing nothing about investing to asking some very profound questions about several types of investing by the end.  They were eager to learn more, do more, and be more.  I believe that we may have sparked some true entrepreneurs while we were there.  I have no doubt that they were all ready and able to launch some amazing financial plans that would carry them far through the rest of their lives.

Michelle R Russell

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