Sunday, March 23, 2008

Robert Toru Kiyosaki


Robert Toru Kiyosaki (born April 8, 1947) is an investor, businessman, self-help author and motivational speaker. Kiyosaki is best known for his Rich Dad, Poor Dad series of motivational books and other material. He has written 18 books which combined have sold over 26 million copies.[1] Although beginning as a self-publisher, he was subsequently published by Warner Books, a division of Hachette Book Group USA, currently his new books appear under the Rich Dad Press imprint. Three of his books, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Rich Dad's CASHFLOW Quadrant, and Rich Dad's Guide to Investing, have been on the top 10 best-seller lists simultaneously on The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the New York Times. The book Rich Kid Smart Kid was published in 2001, with the intent to help parents teach their children financial concepts. He has created three "Cashflow" board and software games for adults and children and has a series of "Rich Dad" audio cassettes and disks. He also publishes a monthly newsletter.

A fourth-generation Japanese American, Kiyosaki was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaii. He is the son of the late educator Ralph H. Kiyosaki (1919-1991). After graduating from Hilo High School, he attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York, graduating with the class of 1969 as a deck officer. He later served in the Marine Corps as a helicopter gunship pilot during the Vietnam War, where he was awarded the Air Medal. Kiyosaki left the Marine Corps in 1974 and got a job selling copy machines for the Xerox Corporation. In 1977, Kiyosaki started a company that brought to market the first nylon and Velcro "surfer" wallets. The company garnered moderate success at first but would eventually go bankrupt. In the early 1980s, Kiyosaki started a business that licensed T-shirts for Heavy Metal rock bands.[2] Kiyosaki's foray into the motivational speaking business began with "Money & You", a seminar company started by Marshall Thurber. These 3-1/2 day personal growth seminars focused on teaching people financial strategies and helping them achieve financial freedom. In 1985, Kiyosaki took over the seminar business with Thurber's former partner, D.C. Cordova. They promptly shifted the market to Australia and New Zealand. In 1994, he shut down the business due to adverse publicity and "retired". Around 1996–1997 he launched Cashflow Technologies, Inc. which operates and owns the Rich Dad (and Cashflow) brand.
He is married to Kim Kiyosaki.

A large part of Kiyosaki's teachings focus on generating passive income by means of investment opportunities, such as real estate and small businesses, with the ultimate goal of being able to support oneself by such investments alone. In tandem with this, Kiyosaki defines "assets" as things that generate money, such as rental properties or businesses, and "liabilities" as things that cost money, such as house payments, cars and so on. Kiyosaki also proclaims financial leverage to be critically important in becoming rich.
Kiyosaki stresses what he calls "financial literacy" as the means to obtaining wealth. He says that life skills are often best learned through experience and that there are important lessons not taught in school. He says that formal education is primarily for those seeking to be employees or self-employed individuals, and that this is an "Industrial Age idea". And according to Kiyosaki, in order to obtain financial freedom, one must be either a business owner or an investor, generating passive income.
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 his own job and is his own boss.
B: Business owner — Where a person owns a "system" of making money, rather than a job to make money.
I: Investor — Spending money in order to receive a larger payout in return.
In late 2006 Kiyosaki teamed up with the business tycoon Jared Houston.[3] Houston and Kiyosaki have had similar experiences with "left Vs right side of the quadrant" mindsets. While Kiyosaki received much of his "B" and "I" from "Rich Dad", Houston obtained a lot of his from Rich Dad like characters like Fox Magee, Christian David, And Gengarellas. They have been refining some of the basic principles that Kiyosaki teaches. Both of these multi-millionaires share a passion in teaching, and both also are solid on their beliefs that the right side of the quadrant is freedom. These two are still working together, and are expected to come out with a book together late 2008 that will challenge the foundation of Trump's work.
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.

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