Transcript: This ALWAYS Happens Before A Total Market Collapse – Robert Kiyosaki

Most people never get past the first house. They only have no houses. To get to the second house, you get, you know, one house, you get ten dollars. Second house, you get twenty dollars. Third house, you get thirty, forty, hotel, sixty.

Well, it’s a quantum leap from four houses to that hotel. I own hotels in town. I just play Monopoly. It’s not that hard to do.

Biggest Misconceptions

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about you?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I’m a nice guy.

JACK SELBY: No, they think you’re a nice guy and you’re not?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I’m an asshole. Why don’t you shoot me?

JACK SELBY: Really?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Oh, God. I’m a US Marine. Well, you cross me, I sue you.

JACK SELBY: Well, you’ve been nothing but a nice person to us.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, because you guys are nice guys too. But boy, this respect. You guys are very respectful. You understand your subject. You’re successful at what you do. I’m glad you brought that up because these last two Uber rides I had, I almost got into a fist fight with the driver.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Why?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: They’re lazy. This one Uber guy picks me up, he goes, “hey, did you write that book?” I said, “yeah.” He goes, “did you read it?” He goes, “nah, I don’t have time. Tell me what I should do.”

JACK SELBY: He said that?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: He said, “do you think I just get rich?” I said, “look, I study all the time. Do you study?” He goes, “no, I’m busy working.” See, you’re a poor working class guy.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: You should have them buy your audiobook though. They could listen to it in the car.

JACK SELBY: Yeah, you could have made a few dollars if you just upsold them your book right then and there.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I don’t have time for lazy people. I don’t have time for lazy people. It’s easier to be lazy than productive.

Work Hard, Then Think More

JACK SELBY: There’s a couple interesting things there. But I do want to lean into the idea that a lot of wealthy people share that in the beginning you need to do a lot and think a little bit less. And then once you start making a lot of money and you have a lot of people under you or you’re a high level operator, then you need to think more and do less. And more money is made from your decisions instead of the actual work that you’re putting in. Do you think in the beginning that you should just continue and work hard? When do you start really thinking about these things?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: The thing that happened for me was I went to military school. I flunked out of high school twice because I can’t write. Imagine that. I’m an international best selling writer. But it wasn’t that I couldn’t write. The teachers didn’t like what I was writing. Those bastards.

So I said, “this school is a waste of time for me. I want to be rich and you guys are poor. Why do I want to learn from poor people?” My school teachers gave me an F for that. So I got nominations to Naval Academy, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. I took Merchant Marine Academy. My study was oil. You know how much money I made from oil? It’s cash flow.

I drill an oil well. Oil well will produce for 40 years. So I’ll invest, let’s say two million dollars in a partnership to drill for oil someplace in North Dakota or Texas. And that oil well pumps oil for 20 to 30 years and I pay no taxes. That’s a lot better than that stupid stock market.

My point here is this: there’s a million ways you can get rich. As young guys like you, find a way that works for you. Like Warren Buffett. I could never follow that guy. I personally don’t like what Warren Buffett says, but he’s successful at it. But I don’t play the stock market. Waste of time for me.

So I drill oil and I get that. And then I buy apartment houses with my money from my oil. And the apartment houses throw cash flow every single month. And I have apartment houses because I use 100% debt to finance the apartment houses so that I pay no taxes. It’s only a game. It’s sheer Monopoly. Then I buy a hotel.

Why Not Stocks?

JACK SELBY: Do you think the average person should be investing in stocks? Or who do you think should be investing in stocks?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: The best advice for the average person is don’t be average. Get your ass. The stock market and the 401k is set up for losers. You want to be a loser, get a 401k.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Why do you not want to invest in stocks? Is that because of tax implications?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Control. I’m an entrepreneur, not a loser. I control the oil well, I control the apartment houses, I control the hotels.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: But isn’t some of that dictated also by the city and the governance a little bit?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yeah, sure, you got to play the game. The point here is most people are losers because they’re lazy. America’s too easy.

The Laziness Problem

GRAHAM STEPHAN: When do you think it made the switch that people have become lazier over time?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Good economy, debt. There’s 200 million Americans on some kind of government welfare right now. That’s almost half, over half the population. And they’re all counting on what they call that stuff, Social Security. It’s bankrupt. America’s bankrupt. America loses two trillion dollars a year.

So we collect, let’s say five trillion dollars in taxes, but we spend seven trillion dollars in expenses. We spend more on debt than we do on weapons. And we’re fighting a war in the Middle East and we’re fighting that place in Ukraine. We’re going bust. We’re bankrupt.

So that’s why I said I don’t save this. I always carry this around. Here’s ten dollars. And here’s a 1964 coin. Which one do you want? This is 50 cents. This is ten dollars. The average American goes for the 10 bucks. This is worth more because this is real money. This is fake. They go for fake money all day long. It’s really, really sad.

This in 10 years will be worth 20 of that. You know what I mean? Because they keep printing money. Why don’t our schools teach us that? Because our school teachers are Marxists. They’re Marxists. Not bad people. They’re just Marxists. I’m a capitalist. Big difference.

Real Money vs. Fake Money

GRAHAM STEPHAN: You would do great if you went on the street and you asked people, would you want ten dollars here or this 50 cent piece? And you see what people say.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I do it all the time.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: They don’t realize that that’s silver.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: They don’t know the difference.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How often do people take the silver?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: None. This is worth more.

The Education System and Marxist Influence

JACK SELBY: You say that they don’t teach you this in school. I’m curious, why is this not a part of the curriculum? People always speculate they’re keeping you poor. They want you to stay poor. They don’t want you to understand investing, buying assets instead of buying liabilities. Who are these people that don’t want you to become wealthy? Do you think they exist?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I wrote a book called the Capitalist Manifesto. One of the first books. I went to military school, the West March Marine Academy. Our first book we had to read was a Communist Manifesto. I recommend everybody read the Communist Manifesto and you’ll find out that most of your friends are communists. They believe in paying income tax and a whole bunch of other things.

So I went to military school, I read the Communist Manifesto, and I was curious at that. But I was 18 years old then I found out in 1930, Columbia University, that communist organization invited Marxist teachers from the Frankfurt School in Germany to come to Columbia’s Teachers College to teach teachers, American teachers, Marxism.

So our school system is Marxist, if you can understand that. I mean, they told you to pay taxes. You know what? Marxist taxation is essential for the spread of communism. They also said most schoolteachers are labor union people. What Marx said was, workers of the world, unite.

When I read the Communist Manifesto, it’s only a small little book. I went, my family’s communist. They’re good people. Don’t get me wrong. You know, you see them on the street, well, there’s communists over there, but they pay taxes. I don’t pay taxes.

Government Funding and Taxation

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How would the government run though, if they were not collecting taxes? Because there would have to be money coming from somewhere to pay for things like roads and city street lights and things like this.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Not my problem. No, I mean, they’ll figure it out. I mean, communists, they just extract your money from the top down. You know, Russia runs. They’re communist. The point is people don’t know they’re educated by communists.

I was at Arizona State University. Was the fourth largest schools in America. I was on stage with a guy named Charlie Kirk. They came after us because we were teaching capitalism. So if you understand that, I would say 80% of all school teachers are at the core Marxist. They just don’t know it. They pay tax. They belong to the teachers union.

What’s the biggest union in America? The NEA. National Education Association. National Extortion Association. Our test scores are going down, teacher salary is going up.

Rewriting Financial Education

JACK SELBY: If the average person knows nothing about money. If you could go in and rewrite the school’s curriculum to teach financial literacy, how to invest, what are the topics?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I already did that. It’s called Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

JACK SELBY: What would you say?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I already did that.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: I agree.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I read Rich dad and that’s why that lazy son of a Uber driver says, yeah, I got your book. I still had time to read it. I said, the problem is they’re lazy. They’re hard working poor people. There’s nothing wrong with being a hard working poor person.

You guys had that guy on I was talking to you about, he hung out with Richard Branson on Necker island and all this. He says there’s different kinds of poor and different kinds of rich. That was a great program you guys had. I sat there listening to you. I went, so he says, you can be poor, but you can be ultra poor also. And you can be rich and you can be ultra rich. And this guy was, what was his name? He was Sahil Bloom, man.

The Optimal Level of Wealth

GRAHAM STEPHAN: He was talking about the optimal rich to be. Because if you get ultra rich, you have to question are people around you because of what you have. But if you’re rich, you have access to things without being over the top.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yeah, he was very good. Yeah, you’re great. Great program you guys had. So I listened to that. I learned a lot of when. That’s when I was coming on your show. So I better find out what you guys were about here.

So you guys are into educating and illumination, basically putting the light on the subject. But when he says this, you know, some people, they get so rich it ruins their lives. I don’t have that problem. I like getting rich is a game to me. That’s all it is.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: So where do people go wrong? Where they get rich and it ruins their life. What makes you different and how have you gone about that?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I think they sell their soul. Well, have a soul. There’s a price on it and I just don’t do that.

Savers Are Losers: The Case for Real Assets

JACK SELBY: You’ve said savers are losers. That’s one of my favorite quotes of yours. I’m curious, when you say savers are losers, what is the average person, the person that doesn’t have a lot of extra money at the end of the month supposed to do then?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Save real silver. Today is 40, 45 bucks, I think.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Gold is $3,500. I started saving this when it was a dollar. I have boxes of silver and I have boxes of gold. I own gold mines. I’ve taken two gold mines public. One on Toronto Stock Exchange, one on New York Stock Exchange. I believe in sound money. I don’t work for this fake garbage. But that’s what schools teach you to do.

This is not money. This is called toilet paper. And they can print as much as they like of it. And it’s killing us right now. It’s killing this country.

The Zimbabwe Dollar Warning

So I was just talking to you. I was in Zimbabwe last week. I was in Zimbabwe in 2002. You know when guys may have seen them, here’s $100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars. Everyone’s laughing at Zimbabwe. So I was in Zimbabwe in 2002. I’m a hunter. I’m a politically incorrect hunter.

So I’m out there in Zimbabwe, I’m looking at this stuff. And the next year I went back again. The Zim dollar collapsed. And I’m in a truck, a hunting truck. And these truckload full of Black guys with AK-47s, they’re called war vets. Why they call them that, I don’t know. They came up, they just went like this. All we can do is this. When the currency collapses, the economy collapsed.

So that’s why I say to Americans, I said, America is doing exactly the same thing Zimbabwe is doing now. We print money to pay our bills. There’s no difference between a Zim dollar and a US dollar.

So I warn people all the time, don’t save this, save silver, Bitcoin, Ethereum. Go for something that’s not printed by the US government. Like I said, I don’t have oil stocks, but I own oil. Well, and every month they pump oil. Guess what? They use it. Every month. Every month they send me a check.

And because I’m in a vital industry, oil, I pay no tax. You don’t have to. You know, my friends all live. My friends live in Vegas or Puerto Rico. I said, if you knew a tax law, you wouldn’t have to live in Puerto Rico or Vegas because the tax laws are written for capitalists. If you’re not a capitalist, you pay tax.

Investment Strategy and Depreciation

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Do you invest in anything that you can’t get depreciation on? Because I know with oil you could depreciate it. Real estate, you could depreciate it. How do you decide where to allocate your money? And at what point do you buy something like Bitcoin or gold or silver?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I’m always moving money. My problem is too much money. If you just buy assets, rich don’t work for money. What? The rich work for assets.

So my first property I was, was 1974, getting out of the Marine Corps. I was a pilot. All my friends went on to become pilots for the pension. Guess what happened to all their pensions? Gone. They took all the pensions of the pilots. Bunch of losers. But I’m not going to fall into that trap.

So it’s 1974. So just at that point I took real estate courses, stock courses, technical trading. I go to seminars and you know what I meant these little seminars and goofy things like that. Around the Lulu, I meet guys like you. That’s where I met my friends. There were people that were actually interested in learning about money and we became really good friends and my best friend and I became billionaires.

I met him at a seminar, you know, let’s kick some ass. But if you hang out with losers and poor people, that’s your choice. And they’re probably good people. Am I wrong? You know, like that Uber driver in his head, I’m quite sure he has a tape or a cassette playing. I’m a good, working, hard, working poor man. Unless he changes that tape. He’s a hardworking poor man.

I said, have you read my book? It’s not, I don’t have time. But he has time to drive an Uber, God bless him. I like Uber. It saves me from DWI Chargers and all that other stuff. It’s a great service, it’s fantastic. But if a person doesn’t change the tape up here. So that’s why you read books and study and go to seminars and YouTube and what you guys are doing, listen in.

Sources of Income

GRAHAM STEPHAN: So at this point, where do you make most of your income from?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Just property and oil and I make a lot of money off of. I’ve been buying gold since I was not a kid. But you know, basically. So I just paid for my house. They wanted $4.5 million for it. So I just took out some gold from my safe, paid for it. The gold only cost me $450,000. The house was $4.5 million but because I saved gold coins, so I only paid $450,000 for the gold. But over the years it went to $4.5 million, so I paid for that.

And then I only hang out with friends who are rich. I mean, I don’t mean I’m selective on that. Yeah, but we just get along. We’re always doing deals together. So my other friend, Kenny McElroy, one of the smartest real estate guys I know, you know, he’s doing billboards now.

I said, Kenny, what the heck are you doing billboards? He says, bonus depreciation. So that means you put $100,000 to a billboard, right? You might get $500,000 depreciation. So by hanging out with smart guys, I get richer. And he and I, and Ken and I are always studying together. We get together on a regular basis and we study.

So when I was with those two Uber drivers, I mean, they just pissed me off the other day. Well, I don’t have time, man. Tell me what, tell me, tell me what I should do.

The Mindset Gap

GRAHAM STEPHAN: You know, what percentage of people would you say have that mindset that they just don’t have time?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Lazy people.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What percentage of the US?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Probably 95%.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: And what separates them from the five people?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That was that guy. Who was that guy?

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Sahil Bloom.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Everybody should listen back. Yeah.

JACK SELBY: I’m going to link to that episode down below.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Our episode with Sahil. Highly. Right. We just posted it, so it’s a brand new episode, so chances are you probably haven’t seen it yet. So go and see it.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: It’s fantastic.

The Game of Money

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Because it’s only a choice. Well, how much? People say, well, how much is enough? I said, I don’t think you get it. I go, wait, me say, they think money is about the dollar amount. To me, it’s the game.

I play Monopoly, four greenhouses, red hotel oil wells. It’s just a game to me. It’s not serious.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What’s your best investment that you’ve ever made?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I wrote a book, sold 45 million copies of it. That’s the biggest asset I’ve ever made.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How much did you make from the book?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I don’t know. I have accountants do that for me. I’m always moving money, I’m always moving my money into the next thing. Next thing.

So you can ask my friends, you know, like Kenny McElroy, he says, hey, when’s that billboard deal coming together? Good, good, good. The friend ran, When’s this property coming together? Good, good, good, good. Entrepreneurs. I don’t invest on Wall Street.

Learning Through Failure

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Have you ever lost money with an investment? And what’s been your worst investment?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: My own company. But losing is part of winning. I think that’s the thing that gets most people, because most freaking school teachers tell you, don’t make mistakes. The reason school teachers are poor is you don’t learn unless you make mistakes.

You know, I flew for the US Marine Corps, and as we got ready to fly into Vietnam, I was in Camp Pendleton getting ready to go through the gunship. Every day we had to practice crashing. Three to five times a day we practice crashing. So when it, because the odds are you’re going to crash.

So I went down three times in Vietnam, but every time the engine quit or I got, you know, automatic. There’s a book called “The Big Print” by Lawrence Lepard. Everybody should read “The Big Print.” It talks about traditional education versus military education.

I went to military school. First one, first word we learned at military school, mission. What’s your mission? So he talks about, Lepard talks about, in military school, you’re always preparing for something to go wrong. That is very, very true. Whereas in traditional school, oh, everything’s, you know, sunshine and roses. In a perfect world, this will happen, but you cannot handle it like that.

First time I lost my engine. I tell you, it’s terrifying. We’re flying a strike into Vietnam. I think it’s got 18 rockets on it, machine crew, boxes of ammo. We’re all strapped in. We got leather. We got, you know best. We’re heaviest. That engine quit.

The reason pilots die is they pull back. What we’re trained to do as Marine Corps pilots. When that engine quits, you push forward. They call out, look. You look at the eyes of death.

So I was only about 1500 feet when that engine quit. Like, boom. Nose forward, cut power. The team was already prepared. Rockets were being kicked out. Cannons were, ammunition kicked out. That theft’s going off and all this boom into the water.

I went over to Vietnam with 16 men. Lieutenant Kiyosaki, I came back with 16 men, all alive, all in one piece. Because we prepare for bad times.

The Power of Truth

JACK SELBY: What is the most important failure you’ve experienced?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I was court martialed twice. And you ever see that movie “A Few Good Men” with Nicholson?

GRAHAM STEPHAN: It’s been a long time.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yeah, yeah, he’s Colonel Jessup. He goes, “You can’t handle the truth.” So what I was doing, for some reason I like pretty women. You know, I just find them very attractive. I always got in trouble with my helicopter and pretty women.

So I was in Hawaii, stationed at Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station. I’d go into Waikiki. I had shaved, you know, and back then everybody had long hair, so they knew you were a marine right away and they spit on you. I came back from Vietnam and got hit with rotten eggs and spit on called names. Terrible. Coming back as a marine, as a serviceman, and so we couldn’t pick up any women.

So I said, well, I got this thing called a helicopter. So I talked to these young women. I said, want to go for a helicopter ride to a private island so while they don’t see your hair anymore, you know. So I used to fly from Kaneohe Air Station to the air force base next door to us, pick up the ladies and we’d fly to this private island loaded with beer, drinking.

Oh my gosh, we were partying, going for the Mile High Club. Everything said I’m having the best time. And I’m, and so everybody hears about my little ventures I’m doing. I said, my commanding officer says, can I go with you? Sure, sir. Yeah. He’s a colonel, I’m a lieutenant. And he goes, sure.

So we go. We’re partying away on this island, drunk as skunks and all this stuff. And one day I come taxiing back in to Oahu, the main island, and I shut my engine off and MPs are out. They opened the door of my helicopter. First thing that falls out is beer cans. So that’s federal offense right there.

Then I fell out. I had no flight suit on. I was in swimming trunks and rubber slippers in the back to find cans of beer, diving gear, everything illegal. And the mistake I made was I started to lie. And so they caught me. They put me under house arrest. I had a nice condo in Waikiki.

They put this Captain Abrams, nice Jewish attorney, prosecutor, on my butt. Oh, he was good. I thought I was good. I’m trying to cover my, it was exactly like “A Few Good Men.” They took the fuel logs, and so they were checking my fuel logs and all this stuff, and I was lying through my teeth.

And finally I was like, I couldn’t stand it anymore. He caught everything I did. This Abrams, great attorney. I mean, I respect him a lot. So I’m sitting in the room and he goes, so, Lieutenant, on this day, did you do this?

Sir, I’m going to tell you the truth, the whole truth, other, but the truth. I tell him about every stupid thing I ever did on this day. I flew women here. On this date. I did this here, this day. We did this here.

At the end of it, I think I lost 30 pounds because I was just so upset, you know, lying, tracking me down and all this stuff. I sat there like this and on the stand, and I looked up at Captain Abrams and I said, how many years, sir?

And he smiled at me and says, you’re free. I said, what? Just get the out of here. Honorable discharge. Thank you, Maureen. I said what?

He looked at me and he says, son, till, I’ll tell you something. We all mess up. We all mistake. We all make mistakes. Just don’t lie. Because when you lie about your mistakes, you become a liar. That’s the worst thing you can do.

It was one of the best lessons I ever had. So to this day, I have tremendous respect for the US Marine Corps because they pounded me. They pounded me. And this Captain Abrams, man, he was one smart dude. I don’t know how he caught all my, I mean, I was cheating every. I was a top of that was a top secret officer.

So I had a lot of top secret files and all that. He tracked me down. And so when I saw “A Few Good Men” with Nicholson, and so Jessup Nicholson goes, “You can’t handle the truth.” I said that wasn’t it.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How did that change your mindset afterwards?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Don’t lie. You mess up. You mess up. God designed us to make mistakes. The way a baby learns to walk is to fall down. The way you learn to ride a bike is to fall down. We make mistakes, so God does. I’m not really religious. I’m not preaching here.

The way humans were designed to learn is by making mistakes. So I’m an entrepreneur. I made a lot of mistakes, but that’s why I’m rich today. And those Uber drivers didn’t want to go through that process.

You know, I crashed three times. I have a broken back because of it. But we practice making mistakes, and I think our academic system has screwed up because most school teachers sing from the Bible of don’t make mistakes because mistakes make you stupid. The facts are humans are designed to make mistakes, and that’s how we learn.

Honesty as a Foundation

JACK SELBY: How has only ever being honest and telling the truth positively affected your life? We had Kevin O’Leary on this podcast a while ago. I’m sure you probably know who he is.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: He would say, he’s a smart dude.

JACK SELBY: Boy, he is a smart guy. And he was saying the exact same thing that you’re saying right now, which is one lie can destroy your life. One lie. And so he has made a pledge to only ever be honest. And that’s part of why he is the way that he is.

He’s known as Mr. Wonderful because he’s so blunt and cut and dry and honest. He only says the truth. And he credits that towards his, I would say, understanding that you should only ever be honest and never lie.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yeah, we all make mistakes. You know, that’s how I lost so many companies. We make mistakes, but don’t lie about it. So I’ve paid my bills. You know, I’ve lost several million dollars. I paid it off, but that’s why I’m rich today.

But those Uber drivers didn’t want to go through that process. They went, what’s a quick fix? I said, buy Bitcoin. So I can’t afford. It’s got a problem. You know, Bitcoin’s brilliant, by the way. I think it’s really Ether. Ethereum.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Ethereum.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Fantastic. You don’t have to be that smart. And you get rich.

Real Estate vs. Bitcoin

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah. A lot of people compare real estate with Bitcoin. They say Bitcoin is like a digital real estate in a sense that you’re buying something that’s fixed. What is your thought on that?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That’s bullshit.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What is your thought on real estate today?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Real estate’s a tough game.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Do you think that prices for real estate are elevated to a point where it just no longer makes sense to buy it?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Doesn’t make any difference to me. If it’s too expensive, you don’t buy it. Yeah, I love crashes. When the markets crash, that’s when I get rich. Everything goes on sale.

So people, well, what, you know, today. Today, as this was the September 2025, the S&P is at all time highs, I’d be out because I want to go one more direction down.

Do You Expect a Crash in the Near Future?

JACK SELBY: Do you expect a crash in the near future? And how do you get rich during a crash?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, that’s what I was talking about Zimbabwe, when I was there. When I saw that crash, I said, this is great. The sad thing, what happened in Zimbabwe was I was talking to this young entrepreneur about your age. He lost his nerve. I could tell he was smart. He had that. I said, you live in one of the richest. Zimbabwe is one of the richest countries. It’s a gold country, man. There’s so many gold mines here and all this. I’d be on like a cheap suit. He lost his nerve.

I’ve seen it happen. When a pilot loses their nerve, we take them off the line. They can’t handle it. They just can’t handle it. I mean, people’s tough. When I was flying into combat, we just put rock and roll music on because we had to jack ourselves up. When you see your friends go down and you never see them again, it just takes your heart out. Your friends don’t come back to the carrier, going to cry, but the next day going back at it again.

That’s what I loved about the military. It was mission first, you didn’t count. So I meet young men especially, where’s your testicles? Get up there and fight hard. But they don’t do that. My friends who are now like generals and things like this, they can’t fight men. So the Marine Corps is having a tough time finding men.

JACK SELBY: So on the topic of a possible incoming crash, do you expect some sort of a stock market crash? And how can you get rich during the crash?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Everything goes on sale. See, I don’t save dollars. I only serve gold and silver and Bitcoin and Ethereum. I don’t save this stuff. So in a crash, gold, silver and all that, what they do is they print more money. When they print more money, those go up in value. So my gold goes up, silver goes up, Ethereum goes up, Bitcoin goes up.

So you got to know, in a crash, this goes up, crashes, goes down. It’s the same as flying an aircraft. So I like crashes. The reason I’m in Phoenix, Arizona is in 2008, when it crashed here, the best real estate on earth went on sale. I bought so much, it was incredible. The banks were happy to see you.

The Fed’s Role in Market Crashes

GRAHAM STEPHAN: There’s this belief now though, that we’re not going to see a crash anymore and that if we see the markets drop, the Fed can come in and just print more money and bail us out.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That’s right.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How does that change your investing philosophy?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Because when you print money, the rich get richer and the poor and middle class get poorer. The reason we have homelessness today is because we have a Federal Reserve Bank. It’s a criminal organization. Anything that’s a central bank is Marxist. So the Fed is Marxist, if you understand that.

So Thomas Jefferson said, if we allow somebody to take over our money, which the Fed did, people wake up homeless in their own lands. Look at homelessness is exploding. People can’t afford homes. Your age is having tougher, tougher times because prices are so high. When you print fake money, which this stuff is, you make life harder on people.

But guys like me who have assets, you print this, this goes up. But if you print this, the price of coffee also goes up. So inflation is going to wipe out my generation. The boomers don’t have enough money to get through inflation. They’re going to be. The boomers are going to be homeless all over the place.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: But what about the argument that AI is going to help bring down the cost of a lot of items and that we might not see as much inflation over time because we could start doing things for less?

AI and the Future of Employment

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Hey, that’s going to cause unemployment. So AI, what happened was the industrial age took out the manual worker. The guy worked with his hands. AI is going to take out the doctors and lawyers. I don’t need a lawyer anymore. AI does it for me. So there’s going to be good and bad to it, but I don’t really give a damn.

If you understand money, that the way the Fed operates, which is a Marxist organization, they’re going to print. Like I said, I was in Zimbabwe. They printed to solve their problems and they kept printing and it collapsed. I went to watch how they couldn’t trade because the Zim dollar was worthless.

So I’m in Harare, northern Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. And then they had a thing called United Nations. And in the back of this garage, all these people were coming together. It was like a big swap meet because the money was no good. They’re saying, I got this for sale here, I’ll trade you my watch. Or, I got some tomatoes for sale here. And they went to a barter economy that fast.

So when I tell you guys I was in Zimbabwe, everybody goes, well, where’s Zimbabwe? But America is following Zimbabwe right now, same as prepare for it. What Zimbabwe did was they printed money to pay their bills. We print 2 trillion a year. That’s what Trump is trying to stop. But there’s people who take him out for that.

Should You Buy or Rent a House?

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Do you think for the average person, given what you’ve just said, should buy or rent a house?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That’s an expense to me. That’s all it is. If you don’t, the problem is if you don’t make enough money, like that Uber driver, those two of them, right in a row, I don’t have time to read your book, so thank you. Bye.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: But if the average person needs to live somewhere and they say they’re going to print more money, there is the belief that real estate, as a result of that, is not a person worth more.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Don’t ask what if questions. Look, I own 1,500 rental properties. I’ll just go sleep in one of them. How many guys do own seven? So just keep buying. No, it’s serious.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Thomas Jefferson said if a central bank takes over, which the Fed is, people wake up homeless in their own lands. And that’s what’s happening today. I look at the people who are homeless now, you can say, well, they’re on drugs or mentally deranged and all this stuff, which is probably true, but it’s getting harder.

When you print money, the rich get richer and the poor and middle class get poorer. So if you own a house and you print money, you feel, oh, my price of my house went up. But the average person, so the price of chicken and eggs and yogurt goes up and inflation wipes them out.

So mark my words, I’m the first of the boomers. We’re going to get wiped out via inflation. Your mommy and daddy may be on the street because inflation is going to wipe out the Social Security.

Predictions and Price Targets

JACK SELBY: When’s the last time that you were wrong about a prediction that you had made?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Ever?

JACK SELBY: Never wrong.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: As long as you’re printing money, you can predict what’s going to happen. That’s happened throughout time. The Romans did it, the Chinese did it. Hitler did it. They all do it.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What are your price targets for something like Bitcoin? Gold, silver?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I have no price target. I have an entry and I don’t sell. So right now, to me, the biggest bargain is silver. So silver’s about 40, 50 bucks. And Ethereum, I think, is very good right now. I stopped buying Bitcoin.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Why?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Too high.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: I’ve seen so many predictions that Bitcoin’s going to hit a million, five million. So if it’s too high, why not sell?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I don’t need the money. I don’t need money. I got 1,500 rental properties. I own oil wells. Money keeps pouring in. I got to keep moving my money around. I invest in assets.

Let me give you the three rules of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The rich don’t work for money. The rich work to acquire assets. And an asset is, and that puts money in your pocket, whether you work or not. Some of my little oil wells, I’m investing in billboards now. And the billboards are going to be outside of Las Vegas, right? And they pay every month. They pay you money for those billboards. And I get bonus depreciation. So I’m always moving my money.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What’s the ROI of a billboard?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I have no idea. Right now this is being put together now, it’s bonus depreciation. So I put a million dollars in, I get 5 million depreciation. That means I don’t pay tax.

The Worst Financial Advice

JACK SELBY: What would you say is the worst financial advice you’ve ever heard?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Warren Buffett, what’s for average people? Smart man. But I listen to him.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: So we actually have a video I’d love for you to react to.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Warren Buffett speaks for the average man. And my saying to you guys is, don’t be average. You want to be the best at what you can do.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: I want to get your thoughts on what Warren Buffett said on leverage. This is what he said.

WARREN BUFFETT: “They risked what they did have and did need. And that’s foolish. That is just plain foolish. I don’t make any difference what your IQ is. If you risk something that is important to you for something that is unimportant to you, it just does not make any sense. I don’t care whether the odds are 100 to 1 that you succeed or a thousand to one that you. If you hand me a gun with a thousand chambers, a million chambers in it, and there’s a bullet in one chamber and you said, put it up your temple. How much do you want to be paid to pull it once?”

GRAHAM STEPHAN: So that’s on leverage. That’s why take a risk in anything if you don’t need the extra money.

Warren Buffett’s Leverage

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: What was he talking about? He has the biggest leverage of all. He has an insurance company. That’s massive leverage. The reason you own insurance companies is because insurance companies have to keep placing their money. You want to get rich, you buy an insurance company. He’s full of it. He’s a smart guy in his field.

My whole message to everybody is this, find out the best field for you. For me, it’s real estate and oil. I’m very good in those two fields. And now billboards. I love gold and silver. I have a gold mine in Utah. I took it public, the New York Stock Exchange. So one of my goals was to list a company on the New York Stock Exchange. So that’s what entrepreneurs do. Our goals are different.

The average guy says, oh, I think I’ll have a well diversified program in a 401k. That’s not my goal. It takes no intelligence on a 401k. To me, it’s a waste of time. I can beat the 401k all the time. I’d rather have oil wells that pay me every single month. Guess what? Every month they’re going to burn that oil. Every month. And every month, because they’re burning that oil, I get a depletion allowance, which means I pay less tax. So I make more money and I pay less tax. To me, that’s smart.

To put my money in a 401k, I must give it to Warren Buffett. Nothing wrong with that. No, Buffett’s a smart boy, but his thing on leverage, he’s talking about the average guy. Yet he bought an insurance company. I think it was Geico or something like that. Insurance companies are the biggest leverage show is because they have to leverage their money. If you can put $200 in, they have to be able to pay you your money back later on. So he doesn’t tell the whole story. He didn’t call. He called gold rat droppings or something like that.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: That was, I think Bitcoin. He called Bitcoin rat droppings.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: He’s entitled to his opinion. Fine. But each of us has to find the way that makes the most sense for them. I like Bitcoin. I like Ethereum. I like gold. I like silver. I like real estate. I like oil. I don’t like stocks. If you like stocks, invest in them. But be good at it. You got to be very, very good at it is the most important thing. Don’t lie. You make a mistake. Mistakes are very good ways to learn. Well, I screw it up here.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: People who lie about their mistakes don’t learn.

Index Funds and ETFs

GRAHAM STEPHAN: When it comes to investing in stocks. What do you think about investing in index funds or ETFs that track the market?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: For losers. My opinion. Yeah, but if you’re a loser, have a good time.

JACK SELBY: Graham’s a loser.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Graham.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: I like index.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Tell me wrong. It’s not exciting. It’s boring.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: That’s why I like it, though, because I don’t have to worry.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I don’t have to say it fits you.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Because here’s the thing. When you’re talking about owning all these rental properties and billboards, to me that just seems like mental energy that gets tied up. And again, you’ve said before that you do what works for you.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yes.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: And when I think about something like my rental properties, I can’t stand them. Because when something gets fixed, I look at the bill and I think, how could I have done this for less money? Is this a good bill? I start itemizing every little thing.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: You’re missing property management.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: I have a property manager.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yeah. I don’t do that shit.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: So here’s what bothered me. I had a refrigerator.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I don’t do that shit. I’m not a laborer.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: But how do you know that you’re not getting ripped off?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Because I have good property managers. Kenny McElroy is my partner. You should read his stuff.

JACK SELBY: You know, we’ve been told by a few people we should have him on this show.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yes.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: The man is a freaking genius. I mean, the thing I love about Kenny, he’s funny, you know, but he’s one of the smartest entrepreneurs I have ever met. So when I have a question, I talk to him. The same as my tax guys. Tom Wheelwright, Tax Free Wealth. Interview him. I want to find out. Oil. As my friend Mike Muselli, I just want the cash flow. I don’t want capital gains. I don’t want that. I want cash flow. I want as much debt as I can get, and I don’t want to pay taxes. That’s my game.

The Refrigerator Problem

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah. I think when it comes to me in real estate, though, I’ll give you the refrigerator example, because it still bothers me after a few months. I had a refrigerator ice maker just like this that broke. And so the tenant called the property manager. The property manager sends me a bill, and I see the bill, and it’s already paid, already done.

But it was $1,200, and the refrigerator was worth $700. And so I said, we spent $1,200 to save a $700 refrigerator. That doesn’t make sense. Where did we go wrong on this? And that little discrepancy took my focus away from doing anything else that would have yielded a higher return than me focusing on the refrigerator.

And you could say, don’t worry about it. You know, it doesn’t matter in the big picture. It really doesn’t. But stuff like that, I can’t help it. It’s just how my mind works to optimize every little thing. And so the less I have on my plate and the more I could doing something like this, that gets a way better ROI than that refrigerator or the property. That’s the way I think of things. So I just want to outsource and just index funds.

JACK SELBY: I will say the mentality of “I can’t help the way that I believe, like, that my mind is going to react that way” is a complete cop out. You absolutely can.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: That’s true.

JACK SELBY: So you can choose at any given moment to feel however you want to feel. You could choose right now to be like, okay, I’m never going to think about that again. So that’s a cop out.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: I just want to say that I’m…

JACK SELBY: Not going to let you say that and just be like, I’m just the type of guy to get really upset when something happens. Choose that.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: That’s fair. Yeah, I agree with that.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: You’re looking at the property management side. I look at real estate, the finance side. So who else is going to lend me? Like, I borrowed, how much did I borrow last week? Oh, $25 million. Who’s going to give me $25 million to buy the S&P? But real estate, they do. Debt is the way I get rich.

So Buffett’s saying debt is no good. That’s Buffett’s plan. This is a great program because what we’re saying is find a way that works for you. You know, you’re fighting with a refrigerator. I’d rather get $25 million in cash to buy the damn place and hire a property manager.

The Billion Dollar Question

JACK SELBY: Speaking of debt, I would love to hear your opinion on this. We had Dave Ramsey on this podcast, and I asked him a question I want to hear your thoughts on his response. If you could borrow $1 billion, 0% interest for 10 years, would you do it?

GRAHAM STEPHAN: No. Even though you could put it in treasuries after the 10 years, you could lock in 10 year treasury right now. 10.5%.

JACK SELBY: It’s not worth it.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I don’t borrow money.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: There we go.

JACK SELBY: What do you think about that?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That’s Dave Ramsey’s formula. Unfortunately, he’s really short sighted. What he doesn’t understand is 1971 the US dollar became debt. If you stop borrowing money, the US economy stops. So he says, live debt free. It’s actually unpatriotic.

I borrow money as a patriot because when I borrow money, I create money. Money is only, money only comes into existence after 1971 when we borrow money. But it’s his formula. But he and I have gone around and around on this. Live debt free.

JACK SELBY: Have you ever spent time with Dave?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: A little bit. I had dinner with him one night and I said, how do you think this guy pays for this building? Debt. Debt. 1971, the dollar became debt. So just understand that. So in my point of view, when I’m borrowing money, I’m creating money.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Do you think there’s any peace of mind that you have owning a paid off house, no debt, no credit cards. Everything you buy is yours.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yeah, but that doesn’t make me peace for mine. I like my game. Yeah, I like buying something as big as I can using other people’s money as much as I can. It’s my game. Don’t do what I do. I like my game.

The first, you know, when I came out of the Marine Corps, I had to learn several things. I had to take sales courses. So my rich dad says, if you can’t sell, you can’t be an entrepreneur. Then after that was how to raise capital debt. And that’s when I found out. He says, you better get to know your banker.

And so I plan my future by, you know, what I did every day. I don’t just jump into it. So I got to know my banker fairly well. Then I got to know my accountants, and then some I like, some I didn’t like. So today we have the rich dad advisor team. My accountants, Tom Wheelwright. I asked all of them to write books to tell people what they do for me.

My accountant on the corporate side is Garrett Sutton, because I use corporations to shield my, protect my wealth, but also limit taxes. So I don’t come into this just guessing.

Does Money Buy Happiness?

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Do you think money buys happiness? That you become happier the more money you have?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I do.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Is there…

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Have you ever been poor?

GRAHAM STEPHAN: I wouldn’t say poor poor, but definitely growing up, things were paycheck to paycheck.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Just not happy. I buy, like, what I want to buy.

JACK SELBY: At what point do you think money slows down?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: If you sell your value system, your soul, you’re doing what you hate to do. I love what I do. Like, I went back to Zimbabwe to teach. I work for free. I don’t need money. I have so much money coming in, I can work for free. I would hate it if I couldn’t go back to Zimbabwe and have to charge that money. I work for free because I have so much money coming in from assets, not from a job.

JACK SELBY: Have you seen many people sell their soul? And when they do, what does that…

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Every day is called? Go to work. I see on the highway every morning.

Learning from Trump and Strong Leadership

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah, I don’t disagree with you. I remember I went to a doctor’s appointment recently, and I went right after lunch. And so I’m watching some of these doctor’s assistants coming in, and they say, oh, man, it was Friday. They said, only four more hours until we could get off work. What are you doing this weekend? They’re all talking.

And I remembered briefly I was working like this 9 to 5 job doing data entry when I was 18. And I remember that same feeling where you would dread Sunday because you had to go to work on Monday morning. And I remember thinking on Fridays, oh, great, one more day left. Only three hours till lunch. And then after lunch, oh, great, only three hours left until I’m off. I’d be so happy on Friday.

Then Saturday I would think to myself, oh, man, Sunday I have to go to bed early because Monday I have work. And I remember just thinking, I never wanted to experience that ever again.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I’ve thought about that a lot too. And my best friend, who he and I both became billionaires together. And he taught me a very valuable lesson. He says, you start work on Sunday. I went, what? He just reframed it, you know, so we’d go into. We worked at Xerox together in Honolulu. We’d go to work with our own key. We’d do all of our work on Sunday night because we got more done. And we submitted our proposals Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We had Friday, Saturday, Sunday off.

The Best Investment: Education

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What do you think is the best use of spending money that you found?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Education. Like I said, one of the benefits of my job is people want me come and speak for them. So I get to go, oh, I can attend a seminar and I get to hang out with some really smart people in the green room. That’s how I met Trump. Trump and I hang out in the back. Rumbling and he goes, who are you? And we just, he’s, he’s the best guy. He and his sons, Don Jr. And Eric, man, they’re good kids, you know. And we became best of friends sitting in the back room together.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: When was this?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Oh, years ago now.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What was your first impression of him?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I think the same as everybody else is kind of a presence, you know, he’s, I mean, he exudes power. He’s a very powerful man. Don Jr. And Eric Trump were hunters. And we go, this is private island they used to take women to in Hawaii. We do it legally this time and we fly there. We have no toilets, no running water.

Those young boys ask no quarter. They’re extremely well raised young men. I can, you know, if I had sons, they would be like those two guys. They’re the best. Tough, mean. Not mean, but strong, strong men.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What have you learned from Trump?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That’s a good question. Just. I can call him. He’s very accessible.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How often have you called him?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Very rarely.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: And when you do, what do you ask?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, journalism would. It was Don and where’s Don and Eric? We’re going hunting together now. It’s just fun. We’re just friends. We wrote two books together and we’d write. And as he’d say, so I got to understand how he thought. I said, here’s a problem, you know, and the book, the book was called the Midas Touch. How Entrepreneurs, so why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich.

So I had to sit with ask, so how would you do this? And he, he’s most generous, very generous man. His whole staff in New York City, just the best people. There was Rona and Meredith and all this. His bodyguard, chief. He and I had the body. Just a great, just really good people. They’re not arrogant, they’re not cocky. That was the most surprising thing about hanging out with them.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How do you think Trump raised such strong children?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: They said that I asked the question.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Said their mother kicked their ass now. And they had a sister, you know, surname Vono. They’re just good kids. Just really solid young men. Really, really solid. I mean, you’re sitting out there, there’s no toilet, you know, you got to dig a hole. We had to eat what we killed. And they don’t. They don’t no wimps. They’re just solid, good guys.

JACK SELBY: What was your last conversation with Trump like?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: It was, we’re supposed to write a third book together. And I said, Robert, can’t do the book deal with you going to let me out of it. We have a three book deal. I said, sure. You’re out. Why am I going to hold him?

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I said, what are you doing? He says, I’m running for president. I said, good luck. That’s all I could say to him. The next thing you know, he’s coming down the stairs, you know, would you.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Ever want to be president?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: No. That’s a. He is. You know, you look like Jordan Peterson.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah. We’ve had him on the podcast.

Strong Leadership in Difficult Times

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: He’s a man. He’s a smart dude, Jordan is, but I got to hang out with those guys in green rooms. So I was hanging out with Jordan Peterson and all this stuff, and he was talking about Trump, you know, and Jordan, as I’m saying, he says, you think tough men are bad, weak men are the worst. Something like that. Jordan says something like that.

And so he says, Trump is a strong man. That’s what we need at this time. Could you imagine if Kamala had won? Or Joe Biden’s crime family? My God. So we needed a tough man at this time. I know people hate him, my family hates him, but he’s a tough man right now.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How do you think politics affect the average person when it comes to their money?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Well, they pay taxes.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: That’s true.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: No, I mean it’s. To me it’s really simple because I was in Zimbabwe last week. They went bust because they printed money to pay their bills. The United States was at 36 trillion in debt.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: 37 now 37. It’s almost 38.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: 37. 600 million, let’s say 350 Americans, 200 million are on some kind of government subsistence. And my whole family, not all of them, their idea of a good job is getting a government pension. So it’s in your value system. I don’t want a government pension.

But there’s so many of our school teachers, they want that government pension. And that’s the 200 million that are part of this Social Security disaster we have coming. And so I saw young people like you, you know, Studies Zimbabwe, 2002. I had my hands up like this. I’m going, law and order breaks. Law and order broke down.

Starting from Zero: Learning to Sell

JACK SELBY: If you were the average person, let’s just call them in their 20s today and you were starting from zero, what would you do?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I learned how to sell. You know, I like network marketing. I tell people to join network marketing. I said, why is that? Because you learn to take rejection. You know, if you can’t take rejection, you can’t be an entrepreneur. It’s probably the, everybody likes to be liked. I like to be liked. But man, you can handle rejection. You got it made.

So network marketing. The guys I hang out with, they’re just really good. Another guys are really good are Mormon missionaries. Man, those guys take a lot of rejection. I, I hang out with several of them and go, how’d you guys do that? You know, how did you do that? You know? And they said, man, you knock on the door, I’m in the U.S. I’m from the Mormon church.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Yeah.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I said, Jesus, the best training you got.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How do you not take that personally? And how do you become a salesperson?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That’s the trick. If you’re like a. They call a snag a sensitive new age guy, it’s hard to get ahead. But there’s so many people, they take things so personally. And I told, I, I should have mentioned the names, but I won’t mention I told this one person, you charged too much money. They got so upset with me. So my friends are complaining about you. They can’t take feedback. Feedback is how we learn.

The Importance of Feedback and Choosing Teachers Wisely

GRAHAM STEPHAN: How often do you get feedback? Where people come to you and say, here’s my thoughts about what you’re doing. And how do you know whether or not to listen to somebody?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That’s a tough. That’s a good question. Because a lot of times I have such a nice temper. It’s not good. It’s not healthy. So I’ve got to learn to control my temper and actually seek the feedback. It’s a discipline I have. Things change as you age and do better and all this stuff. So life’s always about change. Change and growth, personal development.

I like what you guys are doing, like I said. And I love YouTube because a lot of characters on there, you know, a lot of. A lot of. But I listen to them, too. You know, just keep your mind open and chug along.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: But how do you decide what to listen to and take to heart and maybe make changes versus someone just giving you advice that’s maybe incorrect?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: It’s a risk you take. I think the most important lesson I learned was I studied with a man named Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller. This guy invented the geodesic dome. So if you go. I went to the Montreal. Montreal World Expo in 67. The US pavilion was Bucky Fuller’s dome. And I’m in there with my classmate. But I had studied Fuller. They considered one of the greatest geniuses of our time.

I’m studying with Fuller. This one. Look at this thing. So I went to study with him. The lesson I learned, choose your teachers wisely. So once I understood that I wanted to study with Fuller, I tracked him down. So when he gave a seminar, I went to listen to him. So I studied with Fuller for three summers, once a year, and once in Hawaii, once there.

And I sat there with him, and he asked me about a class of about 100 people. And I’m sitting there. I’m kind of. I don’t like to share things by myself. And he kind of said, hey, what’s your life’s purpose? And here he is, the world’s greatest genius, Buckminster Fuller. You know, John Denver wrote songs about him. All this stuff. I said, I’m going to get rich.

And in front of a hundred people, he chews me out. Young man, young man, young man. Getting rich is the waste of a good mind. I went, what? So here’s all his groupies who love him. I’m getting my ass chewed up by Bucky Fuller, you know. And he goes, well, what am I supposed to do? He says, ask yourself this young man. What does God want done? Said what? What does God want done? Not what do you want to do? What does God want done?

So I’m hurting inside because he chewed me out for 100 people. You know, nobody’s like, get chewed out. But the lesson hit me. It says, what does God want done? So this was studying. This is in Reno, Nevada, in the mountains. So I left there and I said, what does God want done? I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, and I created my cash flow board game. And I wrote, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

I said, there’s no financial education in schools. I think if I was God, that’s what I would want. And that was in 96 and 97. And now those board games have gone all over the world.

Creating Rich Dad Poor Dad

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Did you know when you wrote the book that it was going to be a hit?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I flunked out of high school twice because I can’t write. It’s not that I can’t write. Teachers didn’t like what I was writing. But the question I leave for young men like you, what does God want done? Even though you can see it. And for me, I was kind of naturally interested in money, so I naturally studied money.

And so when Dave Ramsey says, live debt free, I said, well, if you understood money, Dave, you know, you stop borrowing money and the economy stops, what are you going to do? You know, you couldn’t answer the question.

JACK SELBY: When’s the last time you changed your mind on something?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: All the time. All the time.

JACK SELBY: In any significant way. Anytime in the past few years or recently.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Recently. Like going to Zimbabwe, you know, I saw that there.

JACK SELBY: How did that change your mind, though?

Keeping Promises and Finding Purpose

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I realized I made a promise back in 2002. There’s a poem by—I wrote about it in Rich Dad, Poor Dad—by Robert Frost. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.” The title of the poem was “A Road Less Traveled.”

And I said, what am I supposed to do? I said, I’m supposed to come back to Zimbabwe and teach. I get paid zero. But I made a promise to those people in 2002 I’d come back because I have promises to keep.

So now my cash flow board game’s there. They’re teaching everybody. I’m donating 120 games and they’re going to start clubs all around Zimbabwe to teach people money, because I’ve kept the promise. I’m going to teach these people on the possibility of learning, because they’re not going to learn it in school.

One of the richest countries in the world used to be called Rhodesia. Now it’s Zimbabwe. The biggest financial disaster in history took place there. The Zim Dollar. The US Dollar’s next. So I’m practicing.

Defining Wealth and Success

JACK SELBY: How do you now define wealth or success now that you have basically all the money anyone could ever ask for?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: What does God want done?

JACK SELBY: So you ask yourself that, come to an answer, and then pursue that.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: What emphasis do you place on legacy?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Not much. When I’m dead, that’s it.

JACK SELBY: You don’t have any children. What are you going to do with your money?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: That’s going to my ex-wife. She’s going to manage it. Now I have—it’s going to be a big foundation and all that, but I haven’t decided how. That’s a project I’m working on now. That’s a very important question.

Daily Habits and Spiritual Practice

JACK SELBY: What’s one daily habit you never will skip?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: I get up every morning and take—I read. I wouldn’t call it spiritual, but kind of spiritual readings. And I don’t just read it, I write it. And I write it three times, so it might be a paragraph.

Because I studied from Maria Montessori in the Montessori school system. Great entrepreneur. She says, “What the hand does, the mind remembers.” So if I just read spiritual words, when I have to write them, it embeds. So that’s one habit. I get up and I basically—not plagiarize them—just, oh, it’s a nice passage. I write it three times.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Cool.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: And I set the day off with that.

Mentors and Influences

JACK SELBY: Who would you say is the biggest mentor or influence on your life?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Buckminster Fuller. The happiest thing about my life is kind of not really religious, but I believe there’s a God and there’s vibrations that we go through in life. You know, I feel good here. Go someplace else, you don’t feel so good.

So I’m going to do a whole series with another guy on Bucky Fuller now. So, you guys do an Iced Coffee Hour. Yeah, I’m going to do one on Bucky Fuller, the greatest genius of our time. And that makes my heart happy. So that’s God telling me you’re on course. Because the frequency, you know, it feels good. That’s the devil.

JACK SELBY: If you were to finish this sentence, “Money is blank,” what would you put in?

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Freedom. Freedom.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Cool.

Closing Thoughts

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Robert, thank you.

JACK SELBY: Thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour. This was honestly a blast. This was an honor, a pleasure. Your insights are phenomenal. I love not only the money and finance conversation, but also just the life and everything. And I think it’s also interesting—what would God want? Asking yourself that and then just gearing your actions towards it.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Yeah. What does God want done? And then go do it.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Thank you. This is an honor.

JACK SELBY: Thank you very much.

GRAHAM STEPHAN: Till next time.

ROBERT KIYOSAKI: Thank you.

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