Kiyosaki speaks often of what he calls "The Cashflow Quadrant," a conceptual tool that aims to describe how all the money in the world is earned. Depicted in a diagram, this concept entails four groupings, split with two 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 their own job and is their own boss.
B: Business owner — Where a person owns a "system" of making money, rather than a job to make them money.
I: Investor — Spending money in order to receive a larger payout in return.

For those on the left side of the divide (E and S), Kiyosaki says that they may never obtain true wealth. Conversely, those on the right side of the divide (B and I) are supposedly following the only road to true wealth