[00:00:00] Hala Taha: What's going on, young improfiters? Welcome back to the show. My guest today is a titan in the area of personal finance.  Robert Kiyosaki is an American investor, businessman, motivational speaker, financial commentator, and the founder of Rich Global and the Rich Dad Company. He's the author of numerous books, including the global bestseller, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which sold 32 million copies. , and he's the host of the Rich Dad Radio Show podcast.

Today we're going to be talking about  super smart ways to manage your money, make it as an entrepreneur, and so much more. Robert, welcome to Young Profiting Podcast.

Well, thank you. I'm so pumped for this conversation, Robert. I've been such a big fan of your work for a long time. Rich dad, poor dad was one of the first. Business books that I ever read. And so my goal for today's conversation is to cover the big evergreen ideas that you have in this classic finance book, rich dad, poor dad.

I also want to hear your thoughts that you have around new issues going on in the world. And lastly, capture as many life lessons that we can. That you've learned on your journey along the way. So today you're a hugely successful entrepreneur, businessman, and author, and you've overcome a lot in your journey.

It's taken many different turns. And I thought a good place to start was your early career as a sales rep at Xerox. What did you learn from this experience and how did that job shape who you became later on in life? Well, 

[00:02:41] Robert Kiyosaki: my first career was this. I flew these for the U. S. Marine Corps. 

[00:02:46] Hala Taha: Oh, he's carrying a plane for those of you listening on audio.

[00:02:49] Robert Kiyosaki: I flew for six years in the Marine Corps, and when I was coming out of the Marine Corps, I was born in 1947, so I was coming out of the Marine Corps in 73, 74. And my poor dad, of course, said, you know, why don't you fly for the airlines? I was a gunship pilot. I went down three times in Vietnam. All my crew came back.

That was my most important job as a Marine Lieutenant. It's bringing my man home alive. So my poor dad says, I'll go fly for the airlines, go back to school, get your PhD. And I said, I'll wind up like him, you know, an employee working for money. But in the meantime, I studied with my rich dad since I was 10.

Rich dad was my best friend's father. And so the story of rich dad, poor dad is what two fathers tell their sons, my best friend's father, about money. And we don't teach money at school and they're completely opposite. My poor dad always says, you know, work hard for money and my rich says, you don't work for money.

So the reason I got a job at Xerox was not because I like Xerox and I was looking for a career. I need sales skills. When I find an entrepreneur, he doesn't have any money. The main reason is they can't sell and it's because sales equals income.

This here's a financial statement. This is the cashflow board game. These guys here have always want income. They want salaries. But entrepreneur needs cashflow coming in. So I meet so many people who have no cashflow coming in and they say stupid, stupid things to me. I mean, I can't believe how stupid they are to say I'm a millionaire.

I said, well, how are you a millionaire? Well, my net worth is a millionaire. Well, net worth is not a millionaire, you know, I make a million dollars a month. That's a millionaire. So when you can make a million dollars a month without working, you're a millionaire. That's what Elon Musk does. That's what Donald Trump does.

And so that's a whole different educational mindset. And that's what I set out to teach when I wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad 25 years ago. 

[00:04:48] Hala Taha: what actual lessons in sales did you learn? You said you wanted to learn sales experience.

I totally agree that when it comes to entrepreneurship, sales is By far the number one skill that you can have What did you learn at that job? 

[00:05:00] Robert Kiyosaki: How to sell, how to handle rejection. You know, there was a big sign on our wall. This is a Honolulu. Salesmanship begins when the customer says no. So years later, when I met my wife, Kim, I mean, she turned me down for six months.

So if I had quit when most people quit. I'd never gotten married. So the main reason people are poor is because They don't have the balls to keep going. And my best friend and I met at Xerox. I think that's one of the keys to becoming rich is who your friends are.

And my best friend and I, we pushed each other and all this. So we became millionaires together and we became billionaires together. So that's the power of friendship. If you have wimpy friends, you're screwed. 

[00:05:47] Hala Taha: I couldn't agree more. I have a business now. I've got a company that has 50 employees. We make several million dollars a year.

And I'd run it with my two closest friends who originally I met them through work, but they're my close friends. And to your point, if you've got really smart people pushing you, you can go really far. But if you're hanging out with losers, you're going to end up being more like a loser. 

[00:06:11] Robert Kiyosaki: Right. Well, congratulations on your success.

[00:06:13] Hala Taha: Thank you. Okay. So you had a business in your early twenties that I think you were just kind of alluding to that you started with your friend. Can you talk to us about the first business that you had, real business that started making real money? 

[00:06:27] Robert Kiyosaki: I've had so many. Which one are you talking about? I mean, uh.

I think 

[00:06:30] Hala Taha: I'm talking about the wallet. 

[00:06:32] Robert Kiyosaki: Oh, the wallet one was a start, it was a nylon wallet business. We went broke, we came back up and it became the number one product in sporting goods. So failure is, this is the biggest thing I hated about school because I flunked out of school. I hated school, didn't like my school teachers.

I wouldn't have them as business partners, that's for sure. but they want job security. You know, job security is a different person. When we went down, it was the best thing that happened to me because we just came back up, we fought back up, we redesigned our product lines and all this.

And we became the number one product in sporting goods. The lesson is. Before you can walk, you've got to fall down a couple of times. So baby learns to walk by falling down. And our schools teach us that if you fall down, you're stupid. And I meet so many unsuccessful people. They're so afraid of falling down.

They never become successful. 

[00:07:25] Hala Taha: Yeah, you've got this awesome quote about failure. You say, in school, we learn that mistakes are bad and we're punished for making them. Yet if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fall down, we would never walk.

[00:07:39] Robert Kiyosaki: Congratulations. You read my book. You're very good. Of 

[00:07:43] Hala Taha: course I read your book. We've got to prepare. 

[00:07:45] Robert Kiyosaki: You see this 

[00:07:46] Hala Taha: aircraft here? Yes, he's carrying his helicopter. 

[00:07:49] Robert Kiyosaki: The reason I flew this aircraft in Vietnam, our life expectancy was 30 days. And this is the lesson I, when I have the time, I talk to people about is the more dangerous, the mission, the more skillful you've got to become.

So when I meet a person and they're so afraid of making mistakes, they're not going to make it, they'll make it, they'll become a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or something. But the more dangerous the mission, the more skillful you've got to become. I say that because when I graduated from school in New York, Kings Point in Long Island, I had a high paying job with Standard Oil of California.

Our starting pay back then was 120, 000 a year, which wasn't much money, but 120, Nine was a lot of money and I gave it up to go fly for the Marine Corps and the thing I loved about the Marine Corps and flying was we had to crash every single day, every single day we had to practice crashing. And the reason I did this, the odds of us being shot down were so high because our life expectancy was only 30 days and that's where I learned that lesson.

I said the more dangerous the job, the more skillful you've got to become. And when I meet people who are unsuccessful, number one is they can't sell. But number two, they're so afraid of making mistakes, they don't ever have any skill sets. 

[00:09:17] Hala Taha: you're so right. We learn so much from our mistakes. And even when we try new things and it doesn't work out necessarily, you learn new skills along the way. That you can make a lot of money on later on if you hit the right idea and you're able to execute the right idea at the right 

[00:09:32] Robert Kiyosaki: time.

Well, there's different kinds of money. So making money is no big deal. Like I said, Oh, I'm a millionaire. So, well, what, when you make a million dollars a month tax free, give me a call. That's the difference. And so it was how you define money. The problem with schools, they don't tell you there's three types of money.

There's earned income, portfolio income, and passive income. Most people, since they go to school to get a job, they're working for earned income, highest taxed, they don't get ahead that way. 

[00:10:02] Hala Taha: I think my audience will appreciate that because we're mostly entrepreneurs or want to be entrepreneurs 

[00:10:07] Robert Kiyosaki: at least.

Right. So it's a matter of your goals and your friendships. So my friend and I are still great friends. We became billionaires together. We just pushed each other along, we're hard on each other, we're tough. We lost several times, we just keep fighting back. And then that determined who our friends were.

[00:10:24] Hala Taha: And speaking of friends and the importance of relationships in business, you're in business with your wife. And actually, you started this whole journey creating a board game, Cashflow, which you have, if you guys are watching on YouTube right now or on IG Reels, you'll see He's got the game board behind him as his background.

So you put that out in the late 1990s with your wife. So a couple questions around that. Why did you decide to go into business with your wife? And why did you start out with the cashflow game? 

[00:10:51] Robert Kiyosaki: Well, the reason we created the cashflow board game was I met her when she was 27 and I was 30.

So we're 10 years apart. 10 years later, we were retired. We didn't have to work anymore. And people kept asking us, how'd you do it? How'd you do it? How'd you do it? Because everybody, They're in the stock market. Okay. You can make a lot of money in the stock market. You know, Warren Buffett made a lot of money in the stock market, but I'm an entrepreneur.

I don't like stocks. I don't like bonds. I don't like mutual funds. I don't like ETFs. So we couldn't explain how we did it. We couldn't explain how we retired. in 10 years. So at the end of 10 years, she and I created the board game to teach people about it. And this is the financial statement here. And this is your report card when you leave school.

But most people think the report card is a great point average. That's why A students work for C students, you know, because I'm a C student. But this here is your financial statement. This is what your banker wants to see. So we created the cash flow board game after we had retired. And the thing I don't trust about YouTube is a lot of those guys are liars.

I mean, I listened to a lot of these people on there. I won't mention names because I get into a lot of trouble, but they say things that. Make absolutely no sense is one guy's a real estate guys is by a 25 million property to start with no money. I'm going, are you crazy? He might've done it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

I don't recommend investments, by the way. I build my own assets. The other guy is Dave Ramsey. And I, he says, live debt free. And Dave's a good friend of mine. I don't live debt free. I'm a billion dollars in debt. So there's millions of ways you can get rich. But you've got to find the right teacher, the right partners, the right education.

And let me say it again, is the more dangerous the mission, the better you've got to be. I'm not saying take huge risk, but I'm saying better know thyself, you know? So I know myself fairly well, and I thank the U. S. Marine Corps. Cause like I said, every single day I'm flying these things in Vietnam went down three times.

And if I hadn't practiced crashing every single day in flight school, I'd be dead. 

[00:13:07] Hala Taha: to your point, you don't build the character because you didn't go through hard experiences. So you don't know 

[00:13:12] Robert Kiyosaki: how to deal with it. Amen, Allah. Amen. God bless you. 

[00:13:14] Hala Taha: When you have rejection and failure, you kind of just approach things because I've had so much rejection in my life.

I was a failed entrepreneur. I Several times I started being an entrepreneur straight out of college. I also failed out of school. Congratulations. You know, and so then it's just like, I had nothing to lose. I was just willing to take risks and try things and learn and work for free and do whatever I could to gain the skills that I needed to now be the podcast princess and dominate my industry.

Right. So I'm with you in terms of, you've got to really fail and be brave, I guess. No, 

[00:13:43] Robert Kiyosaki: what Hala, what I find refreshing is you're not afraid to saying you failed. Yeah. I've met so many people who don't talk about their failures. And I was also court martialed twice as a Marine. I was stationed on an aircraft carrier in Vietnam.

And you know, the saddest days of our lives is when your friends don't come back. All the planes return and your friend's aircraft doesn't return and the crew dies out there. So you get to be very close to your guys who survive. So I got court martialed twice, I got kicked out as a Marine Lieutenant, and my best friend went out as a Marine Lieutenant General, three stars.

And he and I would laugh all the time because we take the same risks, we do the same stupid things. And I said, Jack, I said, how come you're a General and I'm a Lieutenant? And he says, because you get caught and I don't. And we're still the best of friends. If I could leave that one message is your friends are your key.

[00:14:50] Hala Taha: One of the things that I learned about you that I didn't know before I started researching you for this show is that you don't have any kids. 

 So why did you decide not to have kids even with you being so successful? What was the logic behind that? 

[00:15:02] Robert Kiyosaki: Well, let me tell you the story about Kim again. I was a rugby player, you know, rugby players are drunks and. We have a good time.

We're not soccer players. Soccer players are different than rugby players. Rugby players always make fun of soccer players and all that stuff. But anyway, I was playing in Hawaii. I always had my little business. I was on nylon. I was also on rock and roll. I don't know if you know that. I worked with Duran Duran, the police, Van Halen, Boy George.

I didn't know, no. Entrepreneurs have a lot of professions, shall we say. And so I saw Kim one day. And I was hot after her. And all my rugby friends said, she'll never go out with you. You're ugly. You're fat. You're not rich. You know, she only goes out of rich, good looking guys. So I kept asking her out. So that's why I say it's salesmanship begins with a customer says no, no for six months, you know, just no.

And I kept asking and all this stuff. And so we finally said yes. And then what turned her on hollow was that I didn't want job security. It was interesting. I found that very interesting about her. She goes, I said, well, it's kind of this adventure I'm on, you know, I want to find out how far I can go with nothing.

And one day I said, I'm leaving Hawaii. I'm going to leave to California, San Diego specifically. And I'm going to teach, I'm going to teach entrepreneurship. And Kim says, I'll go with you. I went, holy mackerel. That's when we fell in love after six months. She just wanted some guy with some testicles. I mean, she was so sick and tired of having these rich guys head on her and, you know, let's fly to Maui and let's go out for dinner and all this stuff.

That was a big lesson for her, she says, and as we got more and more serious, and we were homeless and all that stuff, she loved it, she was a real entrepreneur, Kim's a real entrepreneur, real tough woman, and we fell in love with all this, and one of the things was, well, are we going to have kids, and I said, do you want children, and she goes, no.

And she has sisters and all this stuff, and they all had kids. And I said, I don't want kids either. So those are the terms and conditions of the partnership. 

every time the question of kids came up, We'd borrow my sister's kids, and that lasted about a day. And 

[00:17:12] Hala Taha: then you realized, we could just send these back. Nah, 

[00:17:16] Robert Kiyosaki: that's for didn't just make, you know, what I'm saying is, you have to find out who you are. So everybody listening to this saying, the biggest question on the planet Earth is who are you?

Who are you as a human being? Exactly. 

[00:17:27] Hala Taha: And there's no right or wrong, right? You don't have to have kids to be happy or successful. And I know Alex and Layla 

[00:17:33] Hala Taha: Hermosi were just on the show pretty recently, and they also have chosen not to have kids. So even if you're extremely rich and successful, there's other ways to help the world aside from having your own children.

[00:17:45] Robert Kiyosaki: Right? Well, I'll tell you about the saddest things I see is that a lot of men are not doing their job. Should I say? They knock women up and they leave them and all this. I meet so many single moms. And these guys just have sex and have kids and just desert the women.

And I feel for the, if they're boys, I feel for them because they grew up without a father. I had a rich dad, poor dad. My dads, the men figures in my life were crucial to me. And then I go to military school and it was all male school and the Marine Corps is definitely male energy. but I see so many young boys today.

You know, that guy, Sam Backman freed, he was the crypto guy, the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. He has his mushroom haircut. I see so many guys with their mushroom haircuts today, young boys. They're all Sam Backman freed fanatics.And they're all TikTok dancers. I'm going, what's happening to the men, you know?

[00:18:43] Hala Taha: Yeah, Scott Galloway came on the show and he has a lot of opinions on how like young men are just like really struggling now. They're not getting into college. They're not getting good jobs. And girls are having trouble finding spouses because they're more successful and girls want to marry up and guys kind of want to marry down.

Right. And there's just, it's becoming a mismatch. 

[00:19:03] Robert Kiyosaki: I love you, man. You're the wiser beyond your years. Tell the men that women don't marry down. 

[00:19:11] Hala Taha: Women marry up and it's really hard for us to want to marry down. So you guys got to get educated and got to get rich. There's not so many single, like we don't have a population problem 

Okay. So let's get to rich dad, poor dad, because there's so much material and it's evergreen and your book is so popular. It's one of the most popular books of all time. 32 million copies sold around the world. The book is about your real father, aka your poor dad, and the father of your best friend, which is your rich dad, and the ways that these men shaped your thoughts about money and investing.

And so it's been 26 years since you released this book. It's still recognized as a top financial book. Even had a resurgence in popularity thanks to book talk on TikTok. And so my first question related to your book is, Why do you think in 1997 when you put it out that It created such a big buzz. 

[00:20:02] Robert Kiyosaki: It goes back to school. I flunked out of school because I can't write. And it's not that I can't write, it's that teachers didn't like what I was writing, if that makes sense to you. So I flunked my sophomore year, and I flunked my senior year of high school because I can't write.

And then I also flunked my junior year. And my poor dad, who was the head of education, my poor dad was a PhD from Stanford, University of Chicago, and Northwestern. And he was the head of education. So when my second instructor flunked me, my poor dad fired him and that sent reverberations through the school.

The school was 2, 400 kids. It's pretty big for a Hawaii school. So by the time I got to my senior year, the teacher was going to flunk me again. And it's not that I can't write, they don't like what I was writing. And so holla, when rich dad, poor dad came out, same thing happened. Editors in the big book publishers out of New York, they turned rich dad, poor dad downsing.

You don't know anything about money. And I said, well, maybe you don't. Does that make sense to you? They don't. So Rich Dad, I got turned down. So I had to self publish it. I put it in my friend's car wash in Austin, Texas. And the book sat there for a long time. And my friend was an orthopedic. He's my friend.

Now he's an orthopedic surgeon. He was an Amway and he picked up the book and he read it. And he went, Oh my God. And he said it to his upline in Dallas and Amway was a diamond. And it says, this is exactly what Amway is looking for. You're teaching entrepreneurship. I said, yes, I am. And Amway, Hala took it all over the world.

So next thing you know, Oprah called. Trump called, we're reaching entrepreneurs and our schools are teaching people to be employees. That's been the struggle as, as you probably know. And I 

[00:21:47] Hala Taha: feel like you were one of the first people, I guess, to really put that out there in the world, to talk about how entrepreneurship is the way to go.

And even to say your father to other people at that time, people probably thought that was a successful person, you know, Stanford PhD, principal of a school. And you're saying that's my poor dad. So I feel like that's probably. A shocking thing to say at that time. Now, everybody's an entrepreneur. Back then, it was a little bit mysterious to be an entrepreneur.

Wouldn't you say? 

[00:22:17] Robert Kiyosaki: Well, it's also times have changed. Okay. So understand that my generation, I'm a baby boomer. Trump and I are the same age. We wrote two books together. This was Trump's book and myself, the baby boom generation's in trouble. And the reason for that, we had it too easy. We came in after World War II, 1944.

The U S dollar became the reserve currency of the world. And it was really easy for Americans, American boomers. And then in 1971, Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. So this here is real gold. This is real money. And this here is toilet paper. 

[00:22:54] Hala Taha: He's carrying a dollar bill and a gold 

[00:22:56] Robert Kiyosaki: coin. Yeah. And people are taught to work for fake money.

And what's happening today as you may, you may or may not know America's bankrupt today, because after Nixon came to office. They printed trillions of these fake dollars. We can't pay it off anymore. America is bankrupt. So your generation kind of knows that. That's why you guys created Bitcoin and all that.

Because you know, our money's bad. Not only is education bad, is I call them the three stooges. You know, the three stooges. One stooge is in the White House. His name is Biden. The second stooge is a treasurer's secretary. His name is Yellen. And the third stooge is Powell. He's head of the Federal Reserve Bank.

And these three stooges are driving us bankrupt, but there was a stooge before that, this guy named Bernanke, who was from your part of the world, New Jersey, Princeton and all that. He got a Nobel prize for bankrupting America. And that's what happens when you have professors like my poor dad running the economy.

That's the problem. So that's why in 65, I had to read this book here, it's called the Communist Manifesto. I went to military school in New York, so. My economics teacher had us read the Communist Manifesto, and what most people don't realize is school teachers are Marxists. They're not bad people, they just have different values, if you know what I mean.

So like my poor dad believed in taxing the rich, so this is what Marx said, a heavy or progressive income tax is necessary for the spread of communism. So guys like Trump and me, we don't pay tax. But the Marxists want us to pay tax. The other thing that Marxists believe in are labor unions. My poor dad was head of the NEA, National Education Association.

Forge magazine calls the NEA National Extortion Association. So most school teachers are Marxists. They just don't know it. Not bad people. There's different values. 

[00:24:49] Hala Taha: Yeah. 

let's talk about the fact that you started off not as a good writer. You just alluded to that, that you were kind of like flunking out of school.

People said that you weren't a good writer. And I think this is a really huge lesson for my young improfiter. So you look at Robert. One of the most famous authors in the world, but this is his peak, right? It's not a starting point. He had multiple failures, multiple businesses. He had a wife, all these relationships that he talked about, all these skills that he's acquired over the years.

Talk to us about how or why you think you were able to transform writing, which you weren't necessarily great as, as a student, to then becoming one of the most famous authors in the world. Why do you think you were able to bridge that gap? 

[00:25:36] Robert Kiyosaki: Well, it's called what the market wanted. In other words, look, this here is, this here, nothing I learned from my rich dad, okay?

E S B I, my books don't sell to employees. It's the wrong market. My books don't sell to doctors and lawyers. S's wrong market. So the market will tell you what they want. So if you don't give the market what it wants, the market doesn't buy it. So my job as an entrepreneur is to find the market. So a lot of people talk about the fed chairman Powell and Yellen, the treasury and Biden, but really it's.

Nothing to do with what the fed does is what's the market doing. So right now the market's going to crash probably March of next year, 2024, because the market's going to turn up the world. The market determines everything, not some academic sitting at the fed. And so as an entrepreneur, I'm always like, what does this market want?

So when I wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad, I knew I was going to have trouble because. Most college professors are E's, employees. They want job security. They hate my books and the doctors and lawyers, you know, the A students, they hate my books. But my books over here is why A students work for C students. They love my books.

So you've got to know who your customer is, who's your target market. 

And so that's why I tell the story of Rich Dad Poor Dad sitting in a car wash in Austin, Texas. And this orthopedic surgeon, really smart guy, Tom Burns, Tom Burns was over here. Doctor, smart guy. He says, I want to come over here. So when he found my book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, he says, that's what I'm looking for.

And then he sent it to his upline in Amway, the diamond Bill Galvin. And the book took off because I started reaching these guys here. So that was 20 something years ago, and only now is it seeping across to here. So only now are E's and S's kind of waking up saying, Oh my God, the economy is in bad shape.

But I knew the economy was going to be in bad shape because I was students of Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller, guy who created the geodesic dome and all that. And he basically said, well, we all know today, our banks are ripping us off. 

It's 

[00:27:48] Hala Taha: interesting that you say that. And the fact that when you first put out the book. It was really entrepreneurs who gravitated towards it.

And now, like I was mentioning before, everybody's side hustling and getting into entrepreneurship. So it's no wonder that it's having a resurgence and this is why you're on our show. It's your generation. 

[00:28:05] Robert Kiyosaki: Yeah. You guys know you're in 

[00:28:07] Hala Taha: trouble. Well, I'm not in trouble, but some folks are. 

[00:28:11] Robert Kiyosaki: Trust me, when the economy goes down, uh, as I say, when it goes down, you go find out how good your money 

is.

[00:28:16] Hala Taha: Let's dig into that. What do you mean? How good your money is? 

[00:28:19] Robert Kiyosaki: Do you have this stuff? This is toilet paper. 

[00:28:23] Hala Taha: He's holding a dollar bill. Yeah, I 

[00:28:25] Robert Kiyosaki: have This stuff. Okay, and I have 

[00:28:29] Hala Taha: he's holding up gold gold and silver. Yeah, and 

[00:28:33] Robert Kiyosaki: I have Bitcoin Mmm, 

[00:28:35] Hala Taha: and we're gonna get into all these lessons like why rich people invest in commodities and things like that 

[00:28:40] Robert Kiyosaki: Not rich people, smart people, smart people, the average American, my generation, they're in the stock market.

My generation was taught 60, 40, 60 percent equities, 40 percent bonds. Why did Silvergate bank? Why did Silicon Valley bank? Why did Credit Suisse, the biggest bank in the world go down? You know why? Why? Bonds. China's going down because the bonds are bad. You see, and that's what I caution people like you just because you're making money today.

What kind of money are you making? 

[00:29:13] Hala Taha: Or where am I putting that money to keep it, I guess? 

[00:29:16] Robert Kiyosaki: No, if you're holding toilet paper, you're in serious trouble. So, ever since 1964, I was saving these. This is a 1964 Kennedy half dollar. I was 17 years old. I have tons of silver and tons of gold. And I have lots of Bitcoin.

I don't have dollars. And since I was 17, I knew our dollar was bad just because you're making money today and you could be making a lot of money, but our currency is bad. Our money is bad. And that happened in 1971 and 64. So those are the lessons. 

[00:29:56] Hala Taha: Well, you definitely have my wheels turning and me thinking about most of my money's in stocks and things like that.

So. I definitely have to look at gold and I want to talk to you about that later on. 

[00:30:06] Robert Kiyosaki: S& P is going to go down big time. S& P is at all time high. That's like a big fat balloon sitting in the sky right now. And the bond market brought down, uh, Silicon Valley Bank. I don't know if you know this stuff, but that's money.

That's not how much money you make, it's not being an entrepreneur, it's what kind of money you're buying into. 

[00:30:24] Hala Taha: You're talking about a big lesson that you talk about in your book. And I know you have many lessons from Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I thought that I could basically rattle off some of your key ideas from the book or quotes and go over them with you quick fire style.

So I'll read a quote or a big idea, and then I'd love for you to expand on it. And these are all ideas from Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Okay. The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them. 

[00:30:51] Robert Kiyosaki: That's pretty good, okay? That's this here. This was book number two of the Cashflow Quadrant.

So after all, rich dad, poor dad. You go to school, go to school, get a job, and you work for money. And they want a pension and all this stuff. And the S is a smart person, like a doctor or a lawyer. And these people work the hardest, but guess who pays the highest taxes?

[00:31:14] Hala Taha: These people who make like under a million a year. 

[00:31:17] Robert Kiyosaki: So what happens is when I talk to people, like a lot of podcasts now they go, Oh, I started my side hustle. You went from here to here, taxes. This is worldwide taxes over here are 40 percent taxes over here are 60%. So the average person becoming an entrepreneur walks into a higher tax bracket.

So they work harder for their money. This here is 500 employees or more big business, but it also stands for brand. So I started a brand, you know, Apple is a brand. Tesla is a brand. Warren Buffett only invests in brands. It's And I stands for insight investor. So I only invest in the insight. That's why I have no stocks, bonds, or mutual funds.

I have no bonds. And what happened was when they raised the interest rates, the bonds inside the banks collapsed. You have to understand bond market. So not just about making money, but you have to understand the monetary system. Bonds started to collapse. Uh, Silicon Valley bank collapsed, Silvergate bank collapsed, Credit Suisse, the biggest bank in Switzerland collapsed, and UBS, United Bank of Switzerland, had to gobble up Credit Suisse and UBS is going bust now.

So what I'm saying to you is this, the world banking market is going bust. So I wouldn't be holding cash. I'll be outside the system. That's gold, silver, Bitcoin. 

[00:32:49] Hala Taha: Okay. The next one, rich people acquire assets, the poor and middle class acquire liabilities that they think are 

[00:32:55] Robert Kiyosaki: assets.

This is a financial statement. This is what your banker wants to see. This is from the cash flow board game. So this here are E's and S's. They work here. E 

[00:33:07] Hala Taha: stands for what and S stands for 

[00:33:08] Robert Kiyosaki: what? Employee, self employed, small business. Got 

[00:33:12] Hala Taha: it. And then you have big business and then the last one is investments?

Insiders. Insiders. 

[00:33:18] Robert Kiyosaki: Okay. It's like, uh, the last week I bought two new businesses. I don't work the businesses. I hire the CEOs for them. I only invest in the insider. Got it. Okay. I don't want the stock. I don't want the bond. I have stocks and bonds, but they're my companies. I took a company public last July.

It's a gold mine in Utah, biggest gold mine in America. So I took it public and that's why I have stock for that, but I still own the mine, but I practiced a long time to do it. Anyway, so these are capitalists over here. These are the working class here. What my poor dad taught me was to work here, go to school, get a job, pay taxes.

I don't pay taxes. I have assets. 

[00:34:00] Hala Taha: Okay. Just to kind of piggyback on that question, make sure my listeners understand, what are the liabilities that the poor and middle class acquire that they think are assets? What are the mistakes that they make? Are you just saying bonds and stocks stay away? Is that the lesson right there?

[00:34:17] Robert Kiyosaki: Yes. The biggest liability, the biggest you guys have is student loan debt. So today, the biggest asset of America are student loan debts. We took the young generation and put them in debt so America could stay afloat.

So your generation's in serious trouble because of student loan debt. And your college degree is not an asset. It's a liability. 

[00:34:39] Hala Taha: one more quote here, 

Most people use their budget as a plan to become poor or middle class rather than to become rich. My budget is a plan to become rich. You have to make a surplus and expense. Well, 

[00:34:52] Robert Kiyosaki: it's a lot of it, but the biggest asset you have is your time. And we basically have the same, we're equal 24 hours a day.

And the question is, what do you do with your time? So that's what I was saying to you when I came out of the Marine Corps. I was a very good pilot. I could have flown for the airlines, but I'd be here. I didn't want to be there. So how do I get over here? So my time was spent making the transition. And like I said, most of the people on your screen have already checked out.

[00:35:18] Hala Taha: Oh, I'd rather just be a small business guy, a little side hustle. But you pay 60 percent in tax, Well, let me ask you this, because I actually think this is a really important question. I didn't study about the quadrant, so I don't know much about it.

That's why I keep asking follow up questions about it. So you've got this S quadrant and the B quadrant. S is like doctors, lawyers, small business owners. Right now you're an 

[00:35:41] Robert Kiyosaki: S. 

[00:35:41] Hala Taha: Right now, I'm, yeah, I'm an S. I do think I built a brand, but I am an S. How do I then make the transition to be big business? Like, what are the steps that I would take to go from small business owner to that next level which is a big business with a 

[00:35:57] Robert Kiyosaki: brand?

What did Elon Musk do? What did Steve Jobs do? What did Thomas Edison do? I studied those guys. Musk is one of the smartest guys I've ever seen, man. And Jobs was my generation. Those guys are bees and eyes on the eye side is, uh, you know, people talk about Buffett a lot, he's over here.

So it's a matter of studying the people you respect and figure out how they did it. So that's the third book. I hate to keep selling books, but the third book is Rich Dad's Guide to Investing. And the third book is what it takes to come over here. So it's constant study. And I hate to say this, but most people are already checked out.

[00:36:36] Hala Taha: Yeah. I don't know about my listeners though. Probably all of us are in this S bucket looking to try to figure out how to become a B in an I, right? So don't feel shy about giving us any direction because I think we'll take your advice. 

[00:36:50] Robert Kiyosaki: Holla, the reason I tell you guys I've checked out because it'll piss you off and you'll check back in.

It's called reverse psychology.

[00:36:58] Hala Taha: 

[00:36:58] Robert Kiyosaki: If I call most of you a wimp and you won't make it, it pisses enough people off that they'll come firing back on me. 

[00:37:05] Hala Taha: Yeah, I'm going to prove Robert 

[00:37:06] Robert Kiyosaki: wrong. Yeah, but a real wimp will say, yeah, he's right. I am a wimp. I should have got my mushroom haircut and be.

A TikTok dancer, you know? 

[00:37:23] Hala Taha: So you just mentioned that you think the economy is going to crash next year. I think you said March. It's crashing right now. You've also said that we need new entrepreneurs to save us from the economy failing. Why do you believe that? Why do you think it's important that we've got some new entrepreneurs stepping up in the world?

[00:37:39] Robert Kiyosaki: When you look at the economy right now, it's guys like my poor dad are running the show. PhDs. PhDs stands for poor, helpless, desperate. 

[00:37:48] Hala Taha: Do you mean like they're just academics?

They have no idea like how to run a business or make money. Is that, is that your Yep. Okay, got it. 

[00:37:55] Robert Kiyosaki: And also, they're rich people, don't get me wrong, but it's how'd you make your money. 

[00:38:00] Hala Taha: Mm, yeah. 

[00:38:01] Robert Kiyosaki: If you ran the Fed, you'd run it differently than Powell would.

Because you've had to work on your own, so you'd actually be a better Fed chairman than him because you come from experience. 

[00:38:12] Hala Taha: And speaking about being a successful entrepreneur, you also talk about how money emerges from good ideas that are executed well. Tell us about that. Like what makes a good entrepreneur in your opinion?

What makes a good business? What makes a good entrepreneur? What do you need? 

[00:38:26] Robert Kiyosaki: That's the third book. It's over here. These are entrepreneurs. 

[00:38:30] Hala Taha: He's pointing to BNI, big business brands and insider. 

[00:38:34] Robert Kiyosaki: I build brands, starting another brand. I'm constantly starting businesses and invest. Like last week, I invested in two big businesses.

I'm an insider. I don't use my own money. I don't need money. So I know some people are going to have money, but I don't need money. But it took me a long time to get there. The chain may. You've got to train your brain to think that way. 

[00:38:56] Hala Taha: Why don't we talk about the difference between a brand and a business?

Cause I feel like some people don't understand the difference. So when I started, I have a social agency and a podcast network. I run people's social channels on LinkedIn and Instagram then I also monetize podcasts and I have one of the biggest podcast networks, right? When I first started, I had built this big brand around me being a social media influencer and starting my company Yap Media.

And I was able to charge like 10, 000 a month for LinkedIn services, where other people probably charge like 500 a month. And it's because I had a brand, which is one of the reasons why I was able to charge so high. And obviously reputation and credibility and social proof and whatever, right? What would you say is the difference between just a business and a brand?

You can't 

[00:39:44] Robert Kiyosaki: go public. 

[00:39:46] Hala Taha: If you can't go public, you're not a brand. 

[00:39:48] Robert Kiyosaki: Holla, you make a lot of money as an S. My brand sells without me. Right. I don't have to work, so I started another company last week. I'm developing it into a brand, but I don't have to be there. 

[00:40:02] Hala Taha: So if you can take yourself out of your business, now you've created a brand.

[00:40:06] Robert Kiyosaki: It's like Tesla, or Google, or Apple, or General Electric. That was Edison. There's a book called Branding by I studied constantly, so I knew I didn't want to be a high paid S, because I guarantee you I don't pay any taxes, and you pay a lot of taxes. I 

[00:40:26] Hala Taha: do. I pay way too many taxes right now. I know that for a fact.

I need to move to a different state, and I need to figure that out. 

[00:40:34] Robert Kiyosaki: But you're asking the right question, because your mind, I think your mind is, I'm punching you in the head right now going brand, brand, brand, right now you're an S, S, S. 

Only S's have clients. If you have clients, you're not a brand. I don't have clients. I don't work. I have a company works for me. I have employees. I have all of these people here, all over the world. 

King's Point, the school I went to on Long Island, not too far from where you are, is supply chain. I build supply chains. So my products go all over the world. I don't go around the world.

It's a different mindset. 

all of your people listening right now. They're going, I have a side hustle. I got this gig going.

I got my podcast going. I'm a tick tock dancer. Even your title is. Young and profiting, that's not a brand, the position statement, Catholic church is a brand. 

And I'll say it again, Buffett invests in brands. Buffett won't invest in your company. Wall Street invests in brands. Wall Street won't invest in your business. So when you think about that, then the pieces start to figure, come in. But I had to read the stories of Thomas Edison and, uh, Steve Jobs. 

[00:41:57] Hala Taha: But those guys create brands. And when you hit brands, and you will hit it, But right now you've got, you've got a couple of pieces missing.I still have clients. So like, you're right with that. I still have some clients and things like that, but I will try to figure out how he can become more of a brand and more of an insider.

It's 

[00:42:14] Robert Kiyosaki: book three. Okay. This book too called The Cashflow Quadrant, which is this year. And 

[00:42:19] Hala Taha: maybe we'll have you back on after I read that book so I can teach 

[00:42:22] Robert Kiyosaki: everyone about it. This year is BNI. You have to get to this site. You're over here. Yeah. You can make a lot of money here, but it doesn't make any money here.

[00:42:32] Hala Taha: Yeah. Let's talk about things that you've been talking about in recent years. You mentioned before gold and silver. Why are you such a big proponent of gold and silver? 

[00:42:42] Robert Kiyosaki: cause this is toilet paper. 

[00:42:44] Hala Taha: He's carrying a dollar. 

[00:42:46] Robert Kiyosaki: This went fake. This is a Kennedy half dollar, 64.

This went fake in 71. So it's an important question. See, what happened when they went to this in 71? Then it went to treasury bonds, T bills and T bonds. 

Do you know what the IRA is? Inflation Reduction Act. That was Biden again. They're raising interest rates to kill America. And when the socialists take over, we'll be communists.

They want social programs and all this stuff and they're bankrupting America right now. So I'm a U S Marine. I went to military school. That's what we studied. That's why I said, I read this book at the academy here.

Everybody should read this book. Our banking system's collapsing. I hope it doesn't, but if they keep doing what they're going to do, there's You're holding on to this stuff. You know, what happened during 2008 with this stuff? There are things called bail ins, not bail outs. They're going to take your dollars in the bank, and they're going to turn it into bank shares.

That's a bail in. I'm giving you macroeconomics right now. So that's why, back in 64, this went fake, and in 71, This went fake. 

If 

[00:44:04] Hala Taha: this is how you feel, if you feel like America is becoming communist and people are Marxist and communist and don't even know it, basically, I think people have these opinions because they see such a disparity between the rich and the poor right now, right?

The rich are getting richer, they're not really taxed, they know how to make money and they're, they're doing better than a majority of Americans, right? All the wealth is like with the top 0. 01 percent and then everybody else is sort of left in the dust. What's your perspective on that? Do you not believe in any sort of social programs or helping people who didn't have the same opportunities?

[00:44:40] Robert Kiyosaki: You can teach a man to fish, or you can give a man a fish. You're not the type of person that wants to be given fish, Hala. You teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime, or a woman. You give a person a fish, you feed them for a day. And 60 percent of Americans believe in giving people fish.

I'm not even getting into that, Holla. I'm just saying right now is this, if you have this and you're working for this and you have this in the bank, you're in trouble. I hear you. I started this whole program because in 64, I was holding one of these Kennedy half dollars looking at it. It was copper. What they did in 64 is they pulled the silver out of the silver coins.

And then what happened in 71, Nixon pulled the gold out of the dollar. Today, America is the biggest debtor nation in history. Holla, we're going bankrupt. We are bankrupt right now. We have a few more months left. So the object is, I'm not trying to save anybody. If anybody's listening, I'd buy some of the silver coins right now.

They're about 35 bucks. They used to be 50 bucks. So I would go to real money as fast as I can. Either real gold, this is real silver, real gold, or Bitcoin. Get out of this stuff here.

Talk to 

[00:46:06] Hala Taha: us about that cryptocurrency. You mentioned Bitcoin. Why do you feel that's safer than dollars right now? 

[00:46:13] Robert Kiyosaki: I study like crazy.

I'm not kidding you. I hang out with very smart guys. Like I said, your number one asset are your friends. Who are your friends? This is the question I ask people. Are your friends E's, S's, B's, or I's? That's where you start. How about your father? E, S, B, or I. Your sister? S, B, or I. Everyone 

[00:46:39] Hala Taha: is an S. 

[00:46:40] Robert Kiyosaki: For me. And it's going to affect the way you think.

 I hang out with people your generation who can explain Bitcoin to me. So I don't have an ego where I say, well, a person's, I'm older so I can't learn.

I can learn from somebody who knows more than me. And so my friend who is a Bitcoin fricking genius, I mean, he used to work for me, but now he's a millionaire. He doesn't have to, but he understood Bitcoin. I don't understand it. So he explained it to me. So, okay, I got it. So you've got to find in anything in life here, who are the people you're talking to?

I don't like financial planners. You know, they're nice people, but they tell you the 60, 40, 60, 40 equities, 40 percent bonds. 6040 is going to bankrupt people this year, this year, not next year. This here is a book I wrote here who stole my pension. If I had gone and become an airline pilot, like my friends did, they lost their pensions.

They flew for United Airlines, United Airlines stole their pensions. It's going to happen to every police officer, firefighter, school teacher, their pensions have been stolen. They don't know it yet though. It's coming out in the wash. So I'm warning people now, Oh, you know what you're talking about. So, okay.

But my friends who went to fly for United Airlines, they lost their pensions already. Okay. I'm just warning people. I wish I could say, Hey, guess what? The Easter Bunny is coming to town. We're going to hit the ground around the place. We're going to hug and kiss and I'll be happy. 

[00:48:10] Hala Taha: We touched on a lot of things. One thing you didn't really talk about is real estate. How do you feel about real estate right now? Is it something It's going to crash. 

[00:48:18] Robert Kiyosaki: Because interest rates are going up.

It depends upon what your interest rate was when you bought the thing. Now the good news is, is when markets crash is when you get rich. So I say, well, it's going to crash. Everybody goes, oh, it's bad news. No, it's good news. But right now, the biggest thing is consumer credit and then corporate credit. I'm doing my very best to tell you something.

This is garbage. Dollar bills. It's built on debt. We're coming down. We're probably going into a depression. I hope I'm wrong. You've got to get away from this stuff here. So, oh, I'm making millions today.

I've saved millions of dollars throughout history. These things have disappeared like that. It's like, we're just about to go over the falls right now. And you want to tell them, talk about more of this stuff here. I'm warning you. I'm warning you. I'm warning you. At least get to some silver. It's only 35.

This thing is 2, 200. 

Let's say I need cash. I walk down to my gold dealer. He gets me 2, 200 bucks for that the same day. It's liquid. It's good as cash today, but when I bought this thing, it was only 50 bucks. Today it's worth 2, 200. Think about that. Think about that. 

[00:49:39] Hala Taha: Well, let me ask you this. Why do you think gold and silver will keep its value?

I know that it's actually valuable, right? It's a precious metal. But why is it that it keeps its value more than dollars? That's 

[00:49:51] Robert Kiyosaki: a really good question, because it's real. Gold is God's money. Silver is God's money. Bitcoin is people's money. Most of your listeners, if they're male, are into Bitcoin. You want to get outside the system.

Don't want to be inside the financial system. The whole financial system was set up to rip us off.Well, 

[00:50:11] Hala Taha: Robert, like I mentioned, it's been such a great conversation. I end my show with two questions that I ask all my guests and then we do something fun with them at the end of the year.

So the first question is. What is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? 

[00:50:26] Robert Kiyosaki: I would find out where is your local gold and silver dealer.

 And a gold and silver dealer, they have to know what they're doing. A lot of crooks out there. I bought my first gold coin. It was 50 bucks. I still have it. It's now worth 2, 200 bucks.

Did the gold coin get any more valuable or did the dollar get less valuable? 

I hate to tell you this, March 2024, it comes to an end. My generation is toast because all we have are 401ks 

[00:50:54] Hala Taha: Okay, last question. What is your secret to profiting in life? And this is a metaphor. So beyond financial and business, how do you suggest that we live our most successful profiting lives? 

[00:51:06] Robert Kiyosaki: Be generous.

Like, you're generous in sharing what you know, I'm generous in sharing what I know. But also, the biggest thing is be careful who you listen to. I flunked out of Sunday school also, I wasn't very good, you know. My mom and dad tried to get me to become a good Christian, I couldn't handle it. But I learned one big thing, I was at Sunday school, I was seven years old.

And the Sunday school teacher was a young woman. She says, why were the three wise men wise? And I raised my hand. And she says, why? I said, because they were rich. I'm like seven years old. She goes, no, no, no, no. Why do you say they're rich? I said, well, they're gold, frankincense, and myrrh. They had to be rich.

He goes, no, no, no. I said, so what's the answer? She said, why are the three wise men wise? Her answer was because they sought the best teacher. So I was seven years old at that time. When I was 10 years old, I knew my old man, poor dad was poor. He was never going to make it. He wanted me to get a PhD and all that other stuff, you know.

So I went to seek the next teacher and that was Rich Dad. And today I still seek the wisest teachers. That's my lesson. 

[00:52:14] Hala Taha: Love that. What a great way to end the show and kind of just wrap everything up. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you 

[00:52:23] Robert Kiyosaki: do?

RichDad. com. I would get the board game, play it 10 times, it'll change your brain. Most people are wired to think like Es and Esas. That'll change your thinking to Bs and Is. That's where it starts. 

[00:52:36] Hala Taha: Well, I know that I've got some more reading to do. I've got to read some of your more recent books that you've been talking about.

Thank you so much, Robert, for joining us on the show. 

[00:52:44] Robert Kiyosaki: Thank you. Keep up the good work. Very strong and tough. Very good. 

[00:52:49] Hala Taha: Thank you. 

So much has changed about being an entrepreneur since Rich Dad Poor Dad was first published in the late 1990s, but so much has stayed the same too. For example, I love the way that Robert talked about not being afraid of failure. As he has written, we learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.

Sometimes you have to be willing to make mistakes and fall down so that you can get back up as a stronger and better person, an entrepreneur. Robert had to overcome flunking out of school, going off to fight in Vietnam, and having his first couple of businesses fail. But he dusted himself off and kept trying new things, building new businesses and brands.

One of the keys to his success was finding the right friends to make mistakes with. He said he found a lot about becoming rich and successful depends on who your friends are. Will you be able to find the right people that will keep pushing you to do better? And who will accept it when you push them back?

As Robert put it bluntly, if you're hanging out with losers, you're going to end up being a loser. I also found it fascinating how Robert described his breakout success with Rich Dad Poor Dad. He didn't attribute it to being a work of genius or anything like that. He says he tapped into what the market wanted.

If you don't give the market what it wants, the market doesn't buy it. You've got to know who you're writing for and who your customers are. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. We know who our listeners and customers are, and we want to keep being able to bring you great content that you enjoy.

If you listen, learned, and profited, be sure to share this episode with your friends and family. And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something new, then please drop us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That is the number one way to thank us. You can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name.

It's Hala Taha. And before we wrap up, I did want to give a big shout out to my incredible Yap production team. You guys are absolutely amazing. I'm so thankful for you all. This is your host, Hala Taha, signing off.