If you are going to get rich, you may have to give up everything you ever learned in school and from your parents and start from scratch. Now that's not a definite by any means. You may not have to start over. If someone along the line taught you, for instance that it doesn't actually take money to make money, then you may already be on the right track.

That's right. Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad book series, said it exactly like this: "It doesn't take money to make money. I often hear people say it takes money to make money. I disagree. We had no money when we started and we were also in debt. It also doesn't take a formal education."

He then mentioned Bill Gates as someone who never completed a college education. Which would you rather have, a collection of doctorates or Bill Gates' money?

Robert Kiyosaki says that the only true prerequisites to being rich are that one must be determined and a quick study. Beyond that, it's all about what you know. One of the first things you need to know about becoming rich is where you fall on the Cash Flow Quadrant.

The diagram entitled the Cash Flow Quadrant represents one of the most important lessons that Robert Kiyosaki learned from his Rich Dad. It comprises a square split into quarters, which represent the four ways in which individuals can relate to money: as n Employee, a Self-Employed individual, a Businessperson, or an Investor. The diagram serves to demonstrate that a person's behavior with money is intertwined with his or her upbringing, innate personality, and perspective on the world at large.

What Robert Kiyosaki means when he says that in order to build wealth, you need to be a quick learner, is that you must learn the ropes of investing. Following in the steps of "Rich Dad," Kiyosaki himself invested in real estate-- a great choice for anyone considering investing, as so much depends on it. In his "Rich Dad," book, he points out how many of Hawaii's businesses were located on land owned by Rich Dad.

But don't worry-- learning about real estate doesn't mean that you have to learn every minute detail that goes into the buying and selling of property; in reality, there are plenty of people willing to take on the technical aspects of investing for you. You just need to think like a businessperson in choosing the individuals with whom you surround yourself.

That is a far cry from thinking like a Self-employed person. According to Kiyosaki, a self-employed person is someone who owns a job, not a business. You don't own a true business, he said, unless you can leave it for a year and return to find it still making money for you. Businesspeople, he said, know better than to try to do everything themselves. In order to save time and money, they hire people to do the things they can't do or don't have time to do. That's why hiring a qualified real estate professional to guide you in your decisions can be a good investment in and of itself.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if you dive headfirst into the study of investing yourself, or you simply hire a qualified expert to help you make your decisions. The important part is that if you really want to strike it rich, you must be willing to move from the 'E' and 'S' squares of the Cash Flow Quadrant into squares 'B' and 'I,' which are where the real money is.