Choose a scalable profession to become a 'Crore'pathi ( Karod pathi)*

If you have been wondering " Why I am not getting rich as fast I should?" or " What is left with me after slogging for hours @ business / office ?" or " What is stopping me from getting stinking rich?" ( What should I do to become a crorepathi or billionaire/millionaire) , here is probably a dimension which can answer your question at least partly.

Taleb ( NNT) in his book ' Black Swan' talks about scalable career.Taleb narrates that "one of his fellow Wharton classmates explained to Taleb that in looking for a career, make sure that it is "scalable"".

What he meant by this is to look for a profession where you are not paid by the hour and therefore are not subject to the limitations of the amount of your labour. This definitely is an interesting point of discussion.

Say, a doctor is paid by an hour. His physical presence and an "one on one" attention to a patient is required to earn money. This is not the case in case of an actor or an author. Their output ( movie or book) can be easily scaled up multi fold which can make them earn money.

In other words, A scalable career or business is one that can grow at an extremely rapid pace, with roughly a base input from the people working on the business. For example, for each user a software or a web site not be recreated . Once a software ( or an app) is created , it is scalable.

Not that, if you are not in scalable business you cant get rich. It takes a long time and there is a limitation of non-scalability!

Here comes the catch

"A scalable profession is good only if you are successful; they are more competitive, produce monstrous inequalities, and are far more random with huge disparities between efforts and rewards -- a few can take a large share of the pie, leaving others out entirely at no fault of their own."

An average person can be successful in a non-scalable career. But only few ( lucky!) can be successful in a scalable business or career.

So, if you have an option and requisite guts, choose a scalable career to become rich.

* article originally published in ideasmoney.