Kiyosaki stresses financial literacy as the means to obtaining wealth. He says that life skills are often best learned through experience and that there are important lessons not taught in school. He says that formal education is primarily for those seeking to be employees or self-employed individuals, and that this is an "Industrial Age idea." And according to Kiyosaki, in order to obtain financial freedom, one must be either a business owner or an investor, generating passive income.
Kiyosaki often refers to "The Cashflow Quadrant," a conceptual tool which he developed to categorize the four major ways income is earned. Depicted in a diagram, this concept entails four groupings, split with two crossed lines (one vertical and one horizontal). In each of the four groups there is a letter representing a way in which an individual may earn income. The letters are as follows.
- E: Employee — Working for someone else.
- S: Self-employed or Small business owner — Where a person owns his own job and is his own boss.
- B: Business owner — A person owns a business to make money; typically where the owner's physical presence is not required.
- I: Investor — Investing money in order to receive a larger income in the future.
Main article: Rich Dad
