Are You Hauling Buckets or Building a Pipeline?

The story below “From Hauling Buckets or Building A Pipeline”, as told in the opening pages of Robert Kiyosaki’s “The Cashflow Quadrant,” challenges us to critically examine our approach to career building. Though written specifically for entrepreneurs, it is applicable in all spheres of life. For example, an employee who relies only on relationships, eye service and politics to grow through the ranks as against acquiring job-related professional qualifications and experience by attending relevant training and seminars will soon find out, like the duck on top of the tree, the dangers of climbing to the top of the management tree by “other means”.

So, what is your strategy for getting ahead?

Are You Hauling Buckets or Building a Pipeline?

Once upon a time there was a quaint little village. It was a great place to live except for one problem. The village had no water unless it rained. To solve this problem once and for all, the village elders decided to put out to bid the contract to have water delivered to the village daily. Two people volunteered to take on the task and the elders awarded the contract to both. They felt that a little competition would keep prices low and ensure a backup supply of water.

The first of the two people who won the contract, Ed, immediately ran out, bought two galvanized steel buckets, and began running back and forth along the train to the lake which was a mile away.

He immediately began making money as he laboured morning to dusk hauling water from the lake with his two buckets. He would empty them into a large concrete holding tank the village had built. Each morning he had to get up before the rest of the village awoke to make sure there was enough water for the village when it needed it. It was hard work, but he was very happy to be making money and to have one of the two exclusive contracts for this business.

The second winning contractor, Bill, disappeared for a while. He was not seen for months, which made Ed very happy since he had no completion. Ed was making all the money!

Instead of buying two buckets to compete with Ed, Bill had written a business plan, created a corporation, found four investors, employed a president to do the work, and returned six months later with a construction crew. Within a year his team had built a large volume stainless steel pipeline which connected the village to the lake.

At the grand opening celebration, Bill announced that his water was cleaner than Ed’s water. Bill knew there had been complaints about dirt in Ed’s water. Bill also announced that he could supply the village with water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ed could only deliver water on the weekdays – he did not work on weekends. Then Bill announced that he would charge 75% less than Ed did for this higher quality and more reliable source of water. This village cheered and ran immediately for the faucet at the end of Bill’s pipeline.

To compete, Ed immediately lowered his rates by 75%, bought two more buckets, added covers to his buckets and began hauling four buckets each trip. To provide better service, he hired his two sons to give him a hand for the night shift and on the weekends.

When his boys went off to college, he said to them, ‘Hurry back because someday this business will belong to you.’ For some reason, after college, his two sons never returned. Eventually Ed had employees and union problems. The union was demanding higher wages, better benefits, and wanted its members to only haul one bucket at a time.

Bill, on the other hand, realized that if this village needed water, the other villages must need water too. He rewrote his business plan and went off to sell his high speed, high volume, low cost, and clean water delivery system to villages throughout the world. He only made one penny per bucket of water delivered, but he delivered billions of buckets of water everyday.

Regardless if he worked or not, billions of people consumed billions of buckets of water, and all of that money poured into his bank account.

Bill had developed a pipeline to deliver money to himself as well as water to the villages. Bill lived happily ever after, and Ed worked hard for the rest of his life and had financial problems forever after.

So, ask yourself right now, Am I Hauling Buckets Or Building A Pipeline?

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