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even people who know nothing about personal  finance or self-development will have heard  
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of Rich Dad Poor Dad and its author Robert  kiyosaki the enigmatic businessman was the  
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original Financial influencer building a huge  and loyal audience decades before the internet  
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made it possible for anybody with a webcam and a  Robin Hood account to grow a following there are  
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just two problems his advice was never that good  to begin with and it's only gotten worse over time  
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in one of your uh your currently $600 million in  debt .2 billion this seminar was free but speakers  
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spend most of their time trying to convince us to  attend another seminar I think it cost us about  
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$15,000 $995 for 3 Days of training if you could  say something to Robert kiyosaki what would you  
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say can my 500 bucks back if you're watching a  video like this then there's a very good chance  
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that you have a better understanding of personal  finance business and the economy than the average  
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person on the street and even then it can be hard  to find the answers to simple questions that can  
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have a big imp impact on your livelihood the lack  of financial education combined with the fact  
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that a lot of personal finance is unnecessarily  complicated and jargony is a great opportunity  
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for people to sell a simple guide on how to  fix all your money problems the problem with  
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these lessons is that it's impossible to make a  book course YouTube video or live seminar that  
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appeals to a wide audience while simultaneously  considering each individual audience member's  
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personal financial situation it's also really hard  to make constructive Financial advice marketable  
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because most of the time it's simply boring if you  want to make lots of money providing desperately  
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needed Financial education you have two options  make something for a niche group of people who  
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you can give tailored unexciting yet productive  advice to or you could make big exciting promises  
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that appeal to everyone but don't really consider  anyone kiyosaki is the king of making extremely  
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basic and often questionable Financial advice  sound extremely profound to a novice audience  
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just as prior to the F War was illegal to educate  a slave we're not allowed to learn about money in  
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school it might sound stupid to you and I but  there's a big audience for it especially from  
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those who are down on their luck kiyosaki  has made millions of dollars over the past  
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four decades by selling a personal financial  strategy that denigrates a formal education  
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and a stable career while advocating for lots of  debt aggressive investments in entrepreneurship  
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as ways to achieve financial success or at least  that was his advice before he really went off the  
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rails but we'll get into that later kiyosaki  is best known for his book Rich Dad Poor Dad  
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but he is an absolutely prolific author having  published no less than 26 individual books all  
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related to money real estate and personal finance  his first book while not a successful perfectly  
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encapsulates how he would go on to sell his own  brand of financial advice it's titled if you want  
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to be rich and happy don't go to school and as  the name suggests it outlines how a traditional  
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education is is designed to just direct people  into getting traditional jobs that will make them  
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miserable and poor now like all good sales pitches  there is an element of truth to this wages haven't  
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kept up with Rising asset prices and the college  degree route has only become more expensive and  
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more competitive since this book was published  but it is conveniently also good at casting a  
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very wide net over a group of people who either  never got a college degree regret getting their  
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college degree or are considering whether they  should get a college degree the only people who  
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won't find a book like this compelling are  people who went to college and turned that  
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into a successful career but that doesn't  matter because those people don't make for  
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good customers anyway his much more successful  book Rich Dad Poor Dad takes the same lessons  
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and repackages them into a simple narrative with  a more intriguing title the man has his problems  
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but he optimized thumbnails and content creation  decades before YouTube even existed so um respect  
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I guess anyway most of you probably already  know the basics of the book If you haven't  
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already read it he talks about his actual father  his Poor Dad who went to school and got a stable  
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job and tried to stay out of debt to his friend's  father who becomes a mentor and is referred to as  
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his Rich Dad according to most investigations into  the subject this Rich Dad never really existed now  
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most exposes on the topic leave it at that but  to be fair to Robert the made-up character is  
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hardly The Smoking Gun people think it is even  if the rich dad was just a figment of kiyosaki's  
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imagination used as a stand in for his own advice  that would wouldn't matter if the advice was good  
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now some of the stuff he teaches is so generic  that it's really Beyond criticism don't go into  
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debt to buy dumb stuff don't spend money you  don't have accumulate assets not liabilities  
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and keep track of your money that's all perfectly  reasonable and if that's all you take away from  
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him that's fine but that would be like picking up  a personal fitness book from an Olympic Athlete to  
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read about the health benefits of drinking water  it's not wrong but it's not what the book sells  
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and that's where his lessons can really hurt  people the most dangerous aspect of kiyosaki's  
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teachings is how much he advocates for using  debt going so far as to say you can never get  
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rich if you don't Master the art of using other  people's money utilizing leverage to buy a house  
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or even Investments can generate huge returns  if you really know what you're doing and have  
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the facilities in place to manage the risk  debt can increase your returns but it also  
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increases the risk and if you take on debt at the  wrong time it can put your financial life back  
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decades like it would have if you attended his  real estate investment seminars in 2007 months  
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before the global financial crisis if that wasn't  bad enough he also teaches something called Cash  
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Flow quadrant which outlines the different ways  people can produce an income there are employees  
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and self-employed people the suckers and then  there are investors and business owners the  
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winners according to his books the difference  between a self-employed person and a business  
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owner is that the self-employed person needs to  work in their own business to keep it running  
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whereas a business owner can step away from their  business at any time and leave it to employees  
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to handle everything without them in addition to  leveraging other people's money Kiyosaki refers to  
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this as using other people's time this means that  any profit from the business is passive income  
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which is obviously great but it's incredibly hard  for most businesses to get to the scale where they  
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can offload all operations to hire the staff  while still generating enough profit for Robert  
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this didn't matter because L investigations into  his backstory have all found the same thing he got  
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rich by selling books on how to get rich not by  following the advice in those books today Kiyosaki  
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is a very wealthy man and he's since made a lot of  investments into real estate and reportedly taken  
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on a scary amount of debt but that is all a lot  easier and safer to do when there are millions of  
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dollars coming in from Book Sales every year now  the thing with this strategy is that it will work  
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for some people and those people are are more  likely to go and publicly sing the Praises of  
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kiyosaki and his teachings than people who levered  up on a rental property in 2007 and went bankrupt  
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when the market turned against them people that  end up in situations like that are embarrassed  
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and tend to keep quiet even if the lessons are  far more valuable than someone who just got lucky  
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on a risky bet now even that wouldn't be worth  making a video about person becomes rich by giving  
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out questionable untailored Financial advice and  then uses that wealth to justify their strategies  
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that's basically half the internet at this point  and old Bob here doesn't get any special mentions  
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just because he did it first what does warrant  further digging though is how bad advice is just  
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the first step in the Rich Dad Poor Dad funnel  one of kiyosaki's lesser known books is probably  
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the one that's done the most damage and it's  called The Business of the 21st century in it  
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he makes the same points about moving away from a  role where you're working for money and trying to  
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build up Investments and businesses that generate  passive income but the problem is that starting  
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a business is hard and even if the average person  had enough money to open a business for themselves  
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most fail the solution that kiyosaki pitches in  the book is to avoid traditional businesses and  
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instead start a network marketing business instead  if you don't know network marketing multi-level  
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marketing and direct selling are all corporate  euphemisms for businesses like herbal lifee Amway  
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Avon and USANA I'm sure by now you know what these  companies are but if you don't just think of them  
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as pyramid schemes that are just legal thanks to  some clever loopholes those businesses all have  
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terrible track records of making money from their  members through ridiculously overpriced products  
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the only thing that keeps people coming back  to buy more is the dream that companies sell of  
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making millions of dollars by roping more people  into the scheme and becoming an Elite member at  
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the top of the pyramid in his book kiyosaki says  he isn't directly involved in any particular  
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company but that's actually a genius move on his  part this book is given out as almost required  
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reading to any new new people entering the bottom  of the pyramid through these companies the Rich  
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Dad Poor Dad brand adds an element of legitimacy  to a business that people have become very wary  
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of and by not claiming direct involvement in any  particular business kiyosaki can sell the book to  
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Amway distributors just as easily as Herbalife  Distributors that's where the money actually  
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is in these businesses according to mandatory  disclosures even the people in the top percentile  
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of these companies makes very little money from  the bonus structure itself certainly not enough  
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to live the lavish life style they show off to  new recruits the real money comes from selling  
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books CDs and tickets to seminars that promise  the secrets to unlocking wealth by running a  
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multi-level marketing company it's a grift inside  a grift and Kiyosaki has put his hat right in the  
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middle of the scheme with his book The ubiquity  of this book amongst multi-level marketing pundits  
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also means that he can charge a lot of money in  speaking fees at the conferences these companies  
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hold you know so when people say Network marketing  is like Ponzi or pyramid scheme they don't know  
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what they're talking about Corporate America is a  pyramid scheme goes like this having arguably the  
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most famous Financial Guru in the world telling a  room full of people they're suckers for having a  
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stable job is a great way to get people to sign  up to sell Vitamins out of the back of their  
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car kiyosaki's business strategy of casting  a wide net with his books and then profiting  
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off specific groups doesn't just work on the MLM  crowd in addition to seminars on real estate which  
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is arguably what he's best known for he's also  started claiming to be an expert on cryptocurrency  
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precious metals and Drop Shipping basically if  there's market for selling advice on sketchy  
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businesses with the promises of riches Kiyosaki  will be there with a seminar to sell now just for  
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a bit of fun it's worth looking at the absolutely  wild ways in which he tries to build Authority in  
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these spaces when a market is oversaturated with  people trying to sell a course it takes some crazy  
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sound bites to stand out for crypto it was the  prediction that Bitcoin will hit $10 million  
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and for precious metals it was the claim that he  owned the biggest gold mine in America I bought  
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the biggest gold mine in America last yearly  it's in Utah so you're literally mining your  
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own gold hey so this was just like verifiably  untrue according to the firm global data the  
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biggest gold mine in the USA is the Carin mine  which is in Nevada it's owned primarily by the  
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Newmont Corporation and Kiyosaki is not listed on  company filings as a major shareholder although  
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it's possible he's a minor non-listed shareholder  on his website he clarifies that he actually has  
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an interest in an ex copper mine that he and his  team have prospected to have 2.9 Million ounces  
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of gold in it if this is true it would be a major  Discovery to be sure but it would still only be  
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around 2 years production of the actual largest  gold mine in America that's still impressive but  
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doesn't sell as well to his target audience in the  same article he talks about why he's buying gold  
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and the headline issue is because he doesn't trust  the academic Elites at the FED it's a popular and  
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almost understandable sentiment but curiously the  only way you can buy his courses or attend his  
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seminars is by paying with that dirty academic  Elite paper money that's completely worthless