I believe there’s an entrepreneur in everybody.
~ Robert Kiyosaki
Last weekend, Chris and I traveled to Phoenix, AZ, where we spent several days with Robert Kiyosaki, author of the popular personal finance book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which has sold over 26 million copies to-date.
Robert had read The Crash Course, and it resonated so strongly with him that he purchased copies for his staff and made it the theme of his company’s leadership conference this spring. Together with his wife, Kim, and his council of Rich Dad advisors, we spent many hours discussing the future implications of the Three E’s with business leaders from across Robert’s global organization.
Kiyosaki’s great passion is financial education; specifically, teaching people how to take control of their destiny by becoming financially independent through business ownership and investment income:
The more money you print, the poorer we get. It has happened throughout history. Yet, people get up every morning and go to work. They work for money. If they get fired, they just get another job to work for more money. After a while, you have to wake up and ask why you are doing this. If they are printing money, why are you working for money?
That’s what happened for me back in 1983. I just woke up and said I could not know what I know and allow this to go on. If you read my book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, people don’t really get the message in the first chapter. The title of the first chapter is “The Rich Don’t Work for Money”. That’s why they are rich. Yet, you go to school to get a job to work for money. The more you are working for money, the poorer you are getting because of inflation and taxes.
The rich print our own money. We have assets.
There are different kinds of assets in the world. That was Rich Dad, Poor Dad. My poor dad worked for a paycheck. My rich dad worked to create assets. He was an entrepreneur. He built hotels. He built restaurants. He did not sell them; he just ran them as an entrepreneur. He built assets. If you read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, the definition of an asset is something that puts money in your pocket whether you work or not. A liability takes money from your pocket.
My Rich Dad used to teach me that playing Monopoly: four green houses for one red hotel. With one green house, you get $10.00. That is an asset. There are financial assets, real property assets like real estate and IP assets, intellectual property assets. Every time I write a book, it is an asset, and more and more money comes in.
The point here is that I am always converting cash into an asset. That is the difference. That was what Rich Dad, Poor Dad was about.
What caught Robert’s attention most in The Crash Course is the magnitude of the coming wealth transfer; where tertiary wealth (paper-based claims) will be forgone in favor of second and primary forms of wealth (productive assets and raw materials). More than ever, he believes entrepreneurial skills will be the most important determinant for ensuring you are on the right side of that wealth transfer.
What you saw in the workshop is my team, my advisors, the team of nine. We are tight. We have my accountants, my attorneys, my guys who raise capital for me and my sales guys, all that stuff. We are a team. That is what makes you rich. I talked about this. You have to be a master of pieces. I put accountants, attorneys and bankers all together. That is how I get rich. In school, rather than being a master of the pieces you become one of the pieces. You come out of school as an accountant or attorney. The entrepreneur comes in and puts you together with the rest of their team. You are either the master of pieces as an entrepreneur or one of the pieces from the school system. What you guys are doing right now is becoming the master of the pieces, putting your own team together, or your community, or your tribe. That is what is going to cause us to survive.
Especially when it comes to the world of money, as you and I will probably agree, that’s probably the most corrupt of all. The moment they could print money, it became more corrupt. For people to go to school and work to make a high salary, you are probably going down the wrong trail. The more money they print, the harder you have to work. Nietzsche says the more we print money, the poorer we get and the more impoverished people get.
You had better start thinking differently. How do you convert your money into an asset?
Click the play button below to listen to Chris’ interview with Robert Kiyosaki (32m:09s):
by kugscheese