{"id":1252,"date":"2010-04-08T07:55:31","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T07:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2010-04-08T07:55:31","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T07:55:31","slug":"the-five-kinds-of-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/the-five-kinds-of-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Working The Five Kinds of\u00a0Capital?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image\"How important is money in connecting influential people to each other?\u00a0 Surely, it plays a large factor but what is most curious is that a person\u2019s riches and the size and power of his circle of influence do not correlate particularly well.\u00a0 There is one core exception to this:\u00a0 the VERY rich who, almost by definition, are connected to centers of power.\u00a0 Billionaires are in a club of their own but centimillionaires and decimillionaires are not.\u00a0 To be clear, these are arbitrary demarcations but the spirit of the point is clear:\u00a0 there are kinds of capital, outside of financial wealth, that correlate to influence.<\/p>\n

Why discuss this?\u00a0 Is it not obvious?\u00a0 Has this idea not been elevated countless times into the pantheon of clich\u00e9s- \u201cMoney isn\u2019t everything\u201d or \u201cCan\u2019t buy me love.\u201d
\nWell, hold on. In societies that worship Mammon, the clich\u00e9 works the other way too.\u00a0 After all \u201chealth is wealth\u201d and \u201cI feel like a million bucks\u201d are phrases often heard.\u00a0\u00a0 The equation of all things good to money happens more often than the negative position.\u00a0 As we are reared in this notion (or at least exposed to it countless times a day) we lose sight of other forms of capital.\u00a0 On occasion, sudden traumatic events shock us out of our stupor, but real epiphanies are few and far between in the sound bite society.<\/p>\n

What is my intent in writing this?\u00a0 This is not another paean to love.\u00a0 This is not a feel-good,-it\u2019s great to be poor yet happy-what really matters is spiritual poise manifesto.\u00a0 Indeed, it is the opposite.\u00a0 It\u2019s a practical guide to personal and professional development aimed to (hopefully) enlighten people on the panoply of ways to create, add, and deliver value to others.<\/p>\n

The Five Types of Capital<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the sake of debate, I posit 5 types of capital.\u00a0\u00a0 There are likely others, but these 5 form 90% of the total.\u00a0 I have studiously avoided categories like \u201cSpiritual Capital\u201d most importantly because they are subsumed in the others.<\/p>\n

Here they are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Financial Capital<\/strong>:\u00a0 Money.\u00a0 The ability to buy<\/a>.\u00a0 The potential ability to avoid existential need as regards one\u2019s physical needs.<\/li>\n
  2. Access Capital<\/strong>:\u00a0 Entr\u00e9e.\u00a0 The ability to enter circles of influence with relative ease.<\/li>\n
  3. Intellectual Capital<\/strong>:\u00a0 Intelligence.\u00a0 The ability to process facts, data, and stories quickly and to be able to think large thoughts.<\/li>\n
  4. Gravity Capital<\/strong>:\u00a0 Charisma.\u00a0 The ability to hold a room, to convey meaning powerfully through compelling communications and at times through the sheer force of will.<\/li>\n
  5. Execution Capital<\/strong>:\u00a0 Drive.\u00a0 The ability to do, to translate ideas into tangibility.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Predictably, these are not always either connected or resident in the same (howsoever rich) person.\u00a0 This fact crystallized to me some years ago when I was a fairly-lazy, impecunious junior professional with little clue and no direction.\u00a0 I was at dinner with the son of a very well-off man and with another man who, while well-off, had maybe 10% of the financial capital of the first man.\u00a0 Man One was lamenting some health issues and his inability to get access to leading specialists at the Mayo clinic<\/a>.\u00a0 Man Two, every helpful, immediately gave Man One a reference to \u201ca good friend\u201d who also happened to be one of the top few people in the country in the particular areas of medicine in question.\u00a0 Two weeks later, Man One was in front of the Doctor and getting what he needed.\u00a0 Access capital at work.<\/p>\n

    Growing up, my father was to me the height of charisma.\u00a0 Dad is a very well-known Physicist but also a polymath, a gifted intellectual in many areas.\u00a0 We grew up hearing not only about great physicists but of the Chinese Revolution, of the books of Par Lagerkvist, of the schools of Indian Philosophy.\u00a0 When I once asked dad about the field of logic he asked me to read something by G\u00f6del (I never did).\u00a0 People flocked to see dad and to hear him hold forth.\u00a0 One incandescent moment from my childhood is when some of dad\u2019s friends asked him to read T.S. Elliott for them.\u00a0 Apparently, his ability to render it was spell-binding.\u00a0 A combination of Intellectual Capital and Gravity Capital at work.<\/p>\n

    While working at Microsoft<\/a>, I styled myself a really smart, capable marketer.\u00a0 I at times scoffed at some others around me, feeling entitled to things I had not earned.\u00a0 The most important two years I spent there were also, therefore, the most frustration for the obvious reason:\u00a0 My manager saw through me and told me to slow down and just get things done.\u00a0 Until then I was considered the \u201ctop of the top,\u201d getting back-to-back stratospheric reviews and quick promotions.\u00a0 Suddenly, I saw many of my peers promoted before me; while I was truly thrilled for them, I did fall into the \u201cwhy me?\u201d and \u201cthe bosses don\u2019t get me\u201d trap.\u00a0 All the while I missed the main point:\u00a0 no one denied I was very smart but when it came to coherent, large-scale execution I rated a B, incommensurate with my (I think) A intellect.\u00a0 That dissonance made me, well, an ass.\u00a0 Execution capital matters and matters big.<\/p>\n

    There are countless lessons to be learned from this.\u00a0 None of them is earth-shattering or particularly original to me but I hope to be able to help others (and myself) by fructifying rarefied thoughts into useful words.<\/p>\n

    Some of these lessons are somewhat obvious:\u00a0 Intellect is not everything nor is money.\u00a0 Having connections in one sphere might not translate to enjoying them in another.\u00a0 Success is complex.<\/p>\n

    Some of the lessons are more subtle, however.\u00a0 Rich doesn\u2019t mean smart nor does it imply charisma.\u00a0 In some areas, access is far more useful than intellect or money.<\/p>\n

    As I said, I am writing this to clarify \u00a0but also to admonish.\u00a0 Most people I see compete for financial capital feverishly.\u00a0 This is a huge mistake and makes for an uninteresting bunch.\u00a0 It\u2019s curious to me how people who can piously intone the need for \u201cdifferentiation\u201d and \u201cadding unique value\u201d can simultaneously be so homogeneous in their teleology.\u00a0 To go down the path of \u201cmoney is the only capital\u201d is to go down the path of ultimate loss.<\/p>\n

    Find ways to develop different sorts of capital.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Don\u2019t forsake the development of the intellect for the pursuit of riches.<\/li>\n
    2. Know, love, and help people in all areas of life, across industries, and financial categories.<\/li>\n
    3. Develop gravitas in areas not defined by the dollar.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      What you\u2019ll find in the process is that you are better for it and you are able to \u201cdo more\u201d across a variety of planes.\u00a0 What you\u2019ll find after that is that certain types of capital never really diminish, very much unlike the category (money) that if we let define us, ultimately demeans us.<\/p>\n

      About the Author: <\/strong> Romi Mahajan is an advisor for Ascentium, a leading digital agency located in Bellevue, WA. Contact Information:\u00a0romi.mahajan@ascentium.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      How important is money in connecting influential people to each other?\u00a0 Surely, it plays a large factor but what is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[284],"yoast_head":"\nAre You Working The Five Kinds of\u00a0Capital? | QuestionPro<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How important is money in connecting influential people to each other?\u00a0 Surely, it plays a large factor but what is most curious is that a person\u2019s riches\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/the-five-kinds-of-capital\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are You Working The Five Kinds of\u00a0Capital? 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