Robert Kiyosaki - Rich Dad,Poor Dad - How To Invest In Yourself

Full transcript: Robert Kiyosaki on London Real

5:32 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Robert Kiyosaki, the entrepreneur, educator and investor best known as the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, the number one personal finance book of all time. You’ve challenged and changed the way tens of millions of people around the world think about money, and you’ve become a passionate and outspoken advocate for financial education. I’m here on location with you in Scottsdale, Arizona.

5:53 Robert, welcome back to London Real. Well, thank you. I enjoyed our last interview. That was fantastic. It’s been a great day here and yesterday as well.

6:01 Spending time with you yesterday was one of the highlights of my life, so it was fantastic. Well, it was you and me and Jim Rickards. And why was that the highlight of your life? What was happening that day that made you feel that way? Well, you ever seen a kid, you know, like they’re playing football or base, whatever the sport is, and they go on to the field, they meet their hero?

6:23 You know, this may be like meeting David Beckham or, you know, somebody like that. Well, to me, Jim Rickards and Nomi Prins and a lot of the people I run around with now, we’re my heroes. I mean, there were the guys on the field and I said, you know, God, they’re so smart, they’re insiders into this world. And so to actually be sitting next to Jim and working on projects together, and I’m going, why am I here? So that would be like, you know, David Beckham and I playing soccer together.

6:56 I mean, it’s not supposed to be possible. Yeah, so hanging out with Jim Rickards and me and you and it’s like, it’s not supposed to be, it’s impossible, but dreams do come true because you always thought you were the outsider and now you’re hanging out with the quote-unquote insiders, and you’re agreeing on everything with them. Correct. Correct. And a lot of people get financial advice from outsiders, if you know, maybe a financial planner or a stockbroker or a real estate broker, but they’re not on the inside of the deal.

7:35 And one of the reasons I like being an entrepreneur and being a real estate guy, because I’m always trading from the inside. I know the deal, I’m part of the deal, I am the deal, you know. But the average person who buys, like, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs and saves money, they’re outsiders. They have no idea what’s going on between them and the real world of insight. So Jim Rickards and Nomi Prins, they were, you know, Jim was with the CIA, Long-Term Capital Management, the Pentagon, and they’re the inside and what’s going on with money.

8:10 Nomi Prins was with Salomon and Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs. They’re insiders, and I was a low guy on the outside trying to figure out what are those guys doing. You know, how are the, someone’s like list of Wizard doing, you know, how is it wasn’t pulling these handles and all this, and we’re all outside jumping around doing as they tell us. You know, you should save money. Oh, OK, save money.

8:33 You should buy stocks. OK, I buy stocks. You should put somebody in, but no, I said, there was a wizard in there. I wanna know who that was or it is. And so Jim and these guys are as close to the wizard as I could get.

8:47 How does a nine year old kid in Hawaii, a poor kid, get to this point? Yeah, well, I was poor by most people’s standards, but I came from a family with a poor attitude, if you know what I mean, because rich, poor, middle class, poverty starts with a fundamental attitude. So I was in Hawaii as nine years old. My father was a head of education, you know, PhD, very smart man, good guy, and for some reason we moved across town and I went to a school with rich kids.

9:24 So this is a little town called Hilo, Hawaii. You know, that’s not on the map anywhere, but it is. It’s a sugar plantation town. So when I was nine years old, I moved to this rich kids’ school and suddenly I realized I was poor because it’s relative. You know, as I said, it’s all relative.

9:40 And my classmates were mostly white guys, and that was one of the few Asians in the class. And these guys, their fathers owned the banks, they owned the plantations, you know, the car dealerships, they owned the meatpacking company, they owned the ranches. I’m going, how come my dad doesn’t own that? So I’m raising my hand when I was nine years old, talking to my fourth-grade teacher. I said, you know what, am I gonna learn about money?

10:11 And she was this woman who should have retired fifty years earlier. She was so sick and tired of kids by this time. She says, the love of money is the root of all evil. And I said, what, am I in Sunday school? This is a punky little nine-year-old kid.

10:30 And she says, we don’t teach money at school. I said, why not? And she couldn’t answer me and she got very flustered. Just sit down, take your seat. And then I got curious and so, why don’t we learn about money?

10:43 She go, ask your father. He’s that, he’s my boss. My father was the head of education, PhD, all that stuff. I go home and ask him, said, why don’t we learn about money in school? And he looked at me, says, because the government doesn’t let us teach that subject.

10:59 The government tells us what we can teach and what we can’t teach. And I thought that was strange and I said, but why are we going to school to learn about money? He says, no, your job is to get a job. I said, but you get a job to earn money. He goes, no, you’re supposed to just get a job.

11:21 No, no, no, no. Isn’t the purpose of a job to earn money? He goes, you’re correct. I said, so why don’t I just learn about money? I can skip the job part, you know.

11:32 And he got flustered and he said, look, and my father was full Japanese, very tall, six foot four, and I’m imposing man, good guy, but he says, why learn about money? Why don’t you ask your best friend’s father about money? I said, why? That’s Mike. So I asked him.

11:53 He says, because Mike’s father is an entrepreneur and I said, what? I’m what are you? He says, I’m an employee. I’m a government employee. I went, oh, what’s the difference?

12:05 You, the difference, as an entrepreneur must know about money or that they’re no longer entrepreneurs, and it says an employee doesn’t have to know anything about money because the government will take care of, my company will take care of. So I’m kid, I’m all confused, but I took my dad’s advice and I trundled over to Mike’s father’s office and knocked on his door and I said, hey, I’m here, nine years old, teach me about money. He says, beat it, kid, you know.

12:33 But that’s when the story Rich Dad Poor Dad started, and finally through her persistence, my rich dad sorry teaching me about money on one condition, and that condition was he would never pay me. This is the moment I pay you, you think like an employee. He says, that’s the trap. Entrepreneurs work for free. And now I’m nine years old, my head’s going cracking in half.

12:57 He says, you never want a paycheck, you understand that, kid? Said, okay, I got it. And he says, well, how do I make money? He says, that’s what a lunch bro swagger out looks like, just like there’s a cat, you know, which just comes first, a cat where the, you know, you kept chasing its tail. I said, so how do I learn about money?

13:17 So he would just break out I Monopoly game board. So I would work for free. I’d pick up cigarette butts and get hotels and restaurants that I would clean and do menial tasks, and as I got older I started getting into office work and marketing and accounting, and I was an apprentice basically, but I always worked for free and he would teach me about money. But the way he taught me about money was playing Monopoly and ice. Finally one day I got upset.

13:43 I said, well, when are you gonna teach me about money? He says, what do you think we’re doing? We’re playing Monopoly. He goes, no, no, no, no, what do you think we’re doing? We’re playing Monopoly.

13:55 Says, what do you think we’re doing? So I don’t know. I’m teaching about money. And then that’s why I, you know, you have one green house, you know. He says, there’s many formulas for a great success in money, there’s thousands of them, but one of the best ones found on the game of Monopoly still is today: four green houses, one red hotel.

14:16 Said, what? He says, one of the greatest ways to acquire great wealth is playing Monopoly in real life: four green houses, one red hotel. Well, is that all there is? He goes, that’s it. And he says, what do you think I’m doing?

14:32 And I went, I don’t know. So then he took me out, he showed me his green houses, and ten years later, when I was 19, I was now in school in New York and I come back to Hawaii and Rich Dad had bought the biggest piece of land, smack dab in the middle of Waikiki Beach. And when you go to Waikiki Beach today, you’ll see the Hyatt Regency Hotel. That was his hotel, just like the game of Monopoly, just like the game of Monopoly, acquired assets and they became bigger assets.

15:03 He just kept what’s called an assemblage, because that property wasn’t that big at that time, so he had to buy out all the small guys because Waikiki was a little dirt water little town. So he’d buy out this shop owner and buy that shop owner, and it took him a while, but he finally assembled this large piece of property, and then he and Hyatt put up this giant hotel. Hmm, you know, I guess, and it just sold for 800 million dollars. So that’s how I learned about money, and that’s because he refused to accept a paycheck.

15:39 He says, the moment you accept the paycheck, your brain goes dead. You know he’s just bought, you just got paid. He says, as long as you’re hungry, you’ll think. And he was a great, great teacher. So today when people ask me what I do, they vent, they know me as author of Rich Dad Poor Dad.

15:59 I just say, I play Monopoly. So I own green houses, I own big hotels, on oil wells, golf courses, businesses. I’m just playing Monopoly, that’s all I do. You know, I real issen to your book on the flight over from London, and I hadn’t listened to it maybe six years, and the first time I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, I thought it was a book about money, but when I, when I listened to it a couple days ago, I saw it differently. I saw it as a book about fear, about self-knowledge, about mindset, because you’re just describing these people in their, they’re in this world that they don’t want to acknowledge that they’re in.

16:36 It’s almost a prison in their own mind, right? Is that what you were trying to get across when you wrote that book? Well, I don’t know what I was trying to get across, just, uh, the real, the fact of the matter was I created this board game called Cashflow, yeah, and I couldn’t sell the board game, so I had to write a brochure, and the brochure I wrote was Rich Dad Poor Dad. So Cashflow came out in 1996 and money, I mean Rich Dad Poor Dad, came out in ’97.

17:03 So the real fact of the matter is Cashflow is about accounting. Rich Dad Poor Dad is a book on accounting: income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flow. But if you’ve ever taken accounting courses, there is no more course more boring than accounting. So to have Rich Dad Poor Dad be a book on accounting and be the number one personal finance book of all times, that says something. And it sold the Cashflow game, and today there’s thousands of Cashflow clubs all over the world, and the mission statement was people teaching people.

17:39 You can bypass that school system, because the school system will never teach you about money. The school system is designed to teach you to be an employee, which is important, or a doctor or a lawyer, a specialist, but never about money. So once I got old enough and I’d retired and I was rich and I was fairly well-off, it was kind of a social conscience. I said, I have to share what I know. So that’s why.

18:07 And it took until 1996 for the Cashflow board game to come out, because I could see this crash coming, which came in 1998. And then Rich Dad Poor Dad came in ’97 and the story goes, every publisher turned me down. They said, you don’t know what you’re talking about, because I said savers were losers, your house is not an asset, and the rich don’t work for money. And so the publishers are like my dad, academic superstars, you know, they’re A students in school, and so they turned the book down, and it took going by self-published route.

18:45 You know, a lot of network marketing companies picked up the book, like Amway and those guys, and they picked up the book to help recruit because it’s about financial independence. They’re about the same thing I am. And that Oprah called in 2000 and then the next time on Oprah, and I went from obscurity to world-famous in overnight success in 2000, and the book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for seven years until the New York Times took it off.

19:15 They said I’ve been on too long. But as you know, I mean, most people in publishing or journalism, they’re on the other side of the coin of capitalism, you know, so they don’t like guys who make money, and that’s like my poor dad side. So that’s kind of the story, and you know, I play, I play Monopoly in real life. I don’t need a job, I don’t have a retirement, don’t need a retirement, I don’t want the government to take care of me, but I felt a social responsibility to teach, and that’s what my rich dad did for me.

19:51 And you said the book is about accounting and it is an amazing book on accounting because it makes it understandable. I took accounting in business school and I know what you mean, it’s boring, it’s boring, but it is also a book about your own fears, and I think that’s why it resonates with people, right? You’re telling them things they know is true. They know when they look in the mirror they’re not making the correct choices, they’re not being disciplined, they’re doing the wrong thing, and they know they’re unhappy, in fear their whole lives, waiting for the next paycheck, and it’s understandable.

20:20 You know, I will have fear to be truth, we’ll have fear, it’s just how you deal with it. And you know, Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge, but knowledge empowers imagination, and what most people lack is real business knowledge, like accounting, you know, like debt, like taxes. You got to know that stuff, but they don’t teach it in school to anybody. So, and then when people ask me, how does your rich dad learn this when your poor dad a PhD, they didn’t?

20:59 And the answer is very simply, my Rich Dad is gonna play my best friend’s father. His father died when he was 13, so his sword Rich Dad had this family business at 13 to run. So he had to drop out of school, which was his blessing, you know. There’s blessings and you know, sometimes a blessing doesn’t look like a blessing, but it turned out to be a blessing. And then his teachers became his bookkeeper, his accountant, his attorney, his banker, his real estate agents.

21:29 So he has what I call real teachers, not these fake teachers in school. You see, most teachers in school, they’re out of ethics, they teach subjects they don’t, they themselves don’t practice. You know, I had the same problem in my MBA program. I got into arguments with the marketing teacher because the guy didn’t have a business, and then I got into arguments with the accounting teacher because the accounting teacher didn’t know accounting. I knew more about accounting at him because I actually worked in bookkeeping in my rich dad’s companies.

22:04 And so I’m not an accountant, but I understand accounting. So that was the end of my school years, because I understand what a fake teacher is. A fake teacher is somebody who just wants a job and they’ll teach anything. You know, they teach how to shine shoes, you get paid on more money, but they really don’t know what they’re teaching. For example, my calculus teacher’s house that went to military school in New York, and I asked the teacher, I said, you know, I’m in my third year of calculus now, it was called, it was called strength of materials.

22:38 I said, am I ever gonna use the stuff? He goes, no. You know, said, why do you teach it? Just as I get paid. Said, do you ever use it?

22:52 He goes, no. And that’s why, you know, I, you have to do in life one of the things I suggested people, you’re gonna find a real teacher versus a fake teacher, and a fake teacher is somebody doesn’t do what they teach, and a real teacher is doing what they teach every day. So my accountants, my attorney, is there in it every single day. That’s how I learn, because every day I’m solving problems in my business. So I have, I have accountants and attorneys and bankers and all these people on speed dial because I’m, I’m solving problems with my team.

23:27 Mm-hmm. How, that’s how I got smart. That’s, hey, that’s what, how are we doing? 21 years later since this book was published, there’s more information out there than ever. We’ve got the YouTube, we got Internet, everything.

23:39 Our people that are educated about money know they’re worse off. I mean, you know, I have a, my Lord, Rich Dad radio show, and tomorrow I’m interviewing these team of, I think they’re educational psychiatrists, and they’re, if the book is, their book is called The Coddling of the American Mind. It’s how they’re making, how our school systems are making our students weaker. So in school they have this thing’s called out triggering effects. So you can’t, as a teacher, you can’t say anything that might upset the student.

24:09 They don’t want anything that might jar their point of view. So if I were in school, I’d be thrown out because I threatened them. I would, you know, and to me it’s in school about opening your eyes and minds, new ideas, but that’s now out of the system. So everybody’s gonna be PC, you know, politically correct now, and it’s killing us, it’s killing the brains of our kids are going backwards, but in their minds they’re more enlightened, you know. It might be, but if I know, if I didn’t have ideas that shook me, I wouldn’t learn anything new.

24:45 But now these trigger, trigger mechanisms, you know, like they, they don’t let you have peanuts anymore. You know, so that they found out if you, you take peanuts away from a child, their propensity to have peanut allergies goes up. So you get out Charlie, so you can’t have peanuts, so seventeen percent will find out they’re allergic to peanuts, but if you gave kids peanuts, only three percent would be allergic to peanuts, and that’s kind of the metaphor the book, you starts with.

25:19 He says, we’re actually making our students weaker in school. Yeah, you did a corporate retreat here about a week ago. You do it every year for the last 21 years, Rich Dad Poor Dad or Rich Dad headquarters, and you bring all your people together, and you said you started talking about something new that you didn’t always have as a theme of your retreats. What was that? Well, this year, and we’ve been putting it back into the business, was my success comes from spirituality, not finance.

25:51 And what happened was, when my wife and I started Rich Dad back in 1996, actually we left the spirituality out, and then the corporate types came in, you know, they, MBAs and the accountants and attorneys, and they tried to make it into a business. And I said, no, we’re just a bunch of merry men who are kind of like Robin Hood and his gang. Are you Robin Hood, on the rich and giving to the poor? No, no, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe in giving to the…

26:21 But you’re giving knowledge to the poor. Yes, that’s a very big difference. You see, people say, well, why don’t you give the poor money? So the only problem with that, it just creates more poor people. There’s a man a fish, he fishes for the day or eats for the day.

26:32 Yeah, you give a man a fish, you got a lot of people want more fish, you know. Well, you teach them to fish. But you are the Robin Hood of knowledge, because I see you giving this knowledge out. And yeah, that I do. The rich people cringe and say, don’t tell them that, Rob.

26:45 Yes, yes, yes, don’t tell people. But the, what you know, people poor, but you know, unfortunately the poor, as was in the Bible, I’m not real religious, the poor will always be amongst us, because it starts up here, right? It’s that fear mentality. It’s, it’s in their words, you know, and the words become flesh. God, not really religious, I flunked out of Sunday School also.

27:06 But when they say, I can’t afford it, or I can’t do that, they go down, they become what they say. And I made so many people, I don’t, I can’t afford it, you think I’m made of money? You’re not used to say that, your mom used to say that, my dad, yeah, my PhD daddy says, what do you think I am, made of money? I can’t afford that. And my Rich Dad would say, that’s why he’s poor.

27:30 Poor people say, I can’t afford it, I can’t do that, I don’t have time, because this is escape, it’s an escape, you know. I mean, it’s easy to say, I can’t afford, oh, I’m too tired, oh, I can’t go to the gym, you know, when you could go to the gym, but no, I can’t. Truth is, I’m just too lazy to go. Did you, and you play it safe and you don’t introduce new risks into your life, and so I have job security, right? And your rich dad used to say, what, instead of I can’t afford it, how can I afford it?

28:00 How can I do that? You know, what would it take? Or why should I do that? He says that a question opens a mind, a statement closes the mind. See, when you say, I can’t afford it, your mind shuts down.

28:12 They become what you say, you know. Like I struggle with weight all the time. You’re telling me that you were on a vegan diet and all that? Yeah, you know, I go on a vegan diet three times a year. It’s one of the most miserable things in the whole world, but I have the discipline to do it for 21 days, and then I’m back to pigging out again, you know.

28:34 But the thing is, is that we become creatures of our own habits, and until we break the habit, we don’t change. So I have, I have, I have my retreats twice a year, 3 days, people come from all over the world, we study together, and this time went back to spirituality. Most people would, they can’t believe what they’re hearing from Robert Kiyosaki, the Rich Dad Poor Dad. It should be originally about spirituality, because they think it’s all about the money.

29:01 It’s not. Yeah, you know, people say, well, money is not that important to me. Then if money is not that important to you, money is not important to you. I mean, they, you know, I mean, I don’t care about my, the money doesn’t care about you, you know. The word does become flesh, or I’ll never be rich, or the favorite one is too rich or greedy.

29:23 It’s the poor that are greedy, you know, if you think about it, because to be rich you have to give something. You know, you have to pay. I have to produce books and games and I purchase real estate, I provide housing, provide jobs and all that. That’s why I’m rich. But greedy people produce nothing.

29:42 Oh no, is the rich are greedy. And I’m going, hey, sports fans, you know, you point a finger forward, three opponent backwards. Hmm. And so, as we know, there’s a big attitude problem against the rich today. I had a guest on my show recently and said, he said poor people are selfish.

30:01 Hit a lot of people below the belt, and he said, no, think about it, these people are selfish, they’re always complaining about their problems, they’re always focused on their own issues. Yeah. You agree with that? Well, the way you get rich, you solve other people’s problems, right? That’s how you create value.

30:16 Yeah, right, yeah. If you know, if you could cure cancer today, you’d be a trillionaire. Yes, a trillionaire. No, I’m just too busy to work on the ethical, play golf instead. Yeah, tell me about how you bring spirituality back into a company, a corporation, or Rich Dad.

30:33 Well, because it’s a business I can’t force anybody to do anything, but we study spiritual books. The last book we studied was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And before that, we, you know, we studied those types of books, we also study finance books, but then I encouraged meditation and this process called clearing. You know, Tolle talks about we have pain bodies in our, you know, it’s like maybe our father did something to you fifty years ago, well that pain is still there and meditation doesn’t get to it.

31:10 So there are people with the precision, it’s like a laser-guided, to go in there and remove the mental, emotional pain. So there are processes who can do that, so at our events we have these processors and they’re made available to people. Now, do, everyone is there a by a participant? No, right? Yeah, a little faith.

31:31 It doesn’t work, right? Yeah, and I, I was trained as an engineer and science told me that none of this stuff works, but when I meditate and I practice yoga and I do these things, I do find pain leaving my body. So again I have to ask myself, am I stuck in that poor dad mindset of believing everything everyone tells me, and now I’m making some decisions for myself? Yeah, well, when people ask you know, like, how did I get on Oprah? How did I write a book with Donald Trump, now President?

31:58 And I say, not that I’ve been tossing him, he’s much hated, good man though. I want to talk about him, but anyway, how could I have done that? Well, it wasn’t my brain. It was, you know, Oprah had me on the program because she’s concerned, also Trump, and I wrote the book together because we both had rich dads and we both are advocates for financial education, and a lot of people hate him because he’s rich or he’s obnoxious. He is obnoxious, I trying to give it that.

32:27 But we, we didn’t get together for about money, because we both had rich dads who taught us how to make money. Our schools don’t teach that. Our schools teach almost the exact opposite of that. So anyway, how does a guy like me, a little kid with no money, and it wasn’t, I was poor, we’re a very middle class, you know, I think my father was making about 20,000 a year, and when I graduated from school, from college, I was making a hundred twenty thousand a year, six times the amount he made.

32:58 That was 21 years old. And he goes, how’d you do that? I said, I didn’t go to the same school you went to. You used your mind in a different way. Now is, I just followed my heart.

33:11 Okay, I went to school to be a ship’s officer, to sail, so I sailed all over the world and, and back, and this is the sixties, if you sailed into the war zone, Vietnam, which I did, you got double the pay and no taxes. So that’s how I was making 128 thousand a year. And I come back, my father was still making twenty thousand a year, I’m making 120 K, and he can’t understand it because he’s a poor man in mind and in soul, you know. He says, you’ve become like all those rich guys.

33:45 And I said, just because I have money, you know, I’m in the war zone, I’m doing this, but it violated all the core values. She, the reason, you know, as you had was a, that Lipton, on you had Bruce Lipton, Norris Lipton, yeah. He says poverty is passed on, it’s taught in your families, and middle class is taught in families. And I was really, I was really happy that, you know, he and I and Doris, Rich Dad Poor Dad, on your program because he says, I was taught by a rich man.

34:19 And so the people right now who are sitting at home who are struggling financially or worried about money or unhappy, they may be making a lot of money but unhappy with what they’re doing, it was probably taught to you, you know, your super-ego was taught, get a job, work hard, or you’ll never be rich, or the rich are evil, or whatever. Until you change your mindset, money won’t help you, right? And we see that with people that win the lottery, people that make more money, they still have the same problem, right?

34:50 Because they have that poor man’s soul, right? If you’re poor, you’ll always be poor. That’s really hard for people to understand. That fast, just like most pro athletes, you know, they make millions of dollars and what, 65% are bankrupt five years later. It’s because it comes from poor families.

35:08 Now you tell them that, they get very angry at you. It’s not, it’s the rich’s fault, you know, as you guys ripped me off and government ripped me off. But unfortunately, what Mr. Lipton was saying, it’s passed down genetically, that’s the frightening thing. So what Mr.

35:27 Lipton was saying, what Trump and I are saying, and you know, what Jim Rickards and Nomi Prins and all, we’re saying, we kind of change what we teach our kids, right? Try to change that, you know, that soul, that DNA, and introduce a real different mindset. Yeah, well, if they’ve got to teach them you know, as Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Yeah, but you gotta have the basic knowledge of taxes, debt, financial statements and all that.

35:55 If you don’t want to learn it, I can’t help you. Said, my poor dad never wanted to learn what my rich dad was teaching. You wrote books for Trump because you both were passionate about teaching this knowledge. You both had rich dads that opened your minds up to possibilities, and again it’s almost like an investor’s mentality. How can I afford this?

36:14 You’re thinking about everything in life as an investment, invested of time, of money, you know. It’s an amazing mindset to have. What was that process writing books with Donald Trump? Not one book but two books, right? And what did you learn from him, a man before he even became president?

36:26 Well, there’s no two Donald Trumps. What I mean by that is, what you see on TV is who, what he is. He will not be asked you, you know, how a lot of politicians have two sides. Trump has one side, is the one that’s president at that moment. So the thing I appreciate about him, I always knew where I stood.

36:45 I didn’t have to guess. He tells you up front, right? Jim Rickards just said, he said, I know that guy, he’s a kid that grew up in Queens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s a tough guy. Yeah, very tough.

36:57 And Queens was not too far from where I went to school in New York. Okay, those guys are tough. You’re tough too. Yeah, we grew up tough, you know. But too, a lot of people, that’s offensive, that’s a new thing about in school triggering, you know.

37:16 You can’t offend me in any way, can’t scare me, don’t give me peanuts, okay? You know, and we’re getting weaker in a week here, in a week, my opinion. Yeah, I heard this from a lot of men in your generation, you and Trump, and say the political correctness is killing us. Yeah, it’s killing us. Yeah, you know, and I was like, can we tease each other all the time and all that?

37:37 You can’t say anything anymore. Hey, you can’t tease anybody because I’ll sue you, you know. I’m afraid, you know, in my position I’m never alone with a woman by myself because I can get sued that fast. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

37:53 And I, you know, I, I don’t fool around at all. I love my wife, and married 33 years, but today he’s accused of anything, you’re guilty. It’s something sick in our society. Well, this change in the next 50 years, it has to, right? Well, one of my best teachers was R.

38:14 Buckminster Fuller, and created the geodesic dome and all that, and he was kind of the guy that straightened me out spiritually. And he always talked about one of the, he talked about generalized principles, and these are principles that are always true, no exceptions. So if you drop a stone on the water, the ripple always goes out this way. It’s called precession, he says. There’s no exception.

38:35 You can’t drop a stone in the water and there’s no ripple. It always a ripple. So no matter what we do, all those cases creating ripples, that’s called precession. Ephemeralization is, I built, if you do more with less. So you look at our cellphone now, it has more horsepower than the Sperry computer 50 years ago, you know.

38:52 That’s doing more with less. So humans are getting more and more powerful, we have more power to us, unfortunately we’re not evolved as human beings, you know. It’s as horrifying, we’re more antagonistic, more antisocial. You know, social media is anti-social, you know. I don’t even get on to thing personally.

39:12 You know, I have, I’m very controlled at what we say, not like Trump, but because it’s so antisocial today, people are so antagonistic, that’s the danger part. So the reason I’m speaking on spirituality, we got to evolve. You know, it means meditation, that means yoga, means praying, means going to church, whatever it takes, but you got to get back to calm and peace and meditation. What do you make of all this fighting that’s going on? You know, I don’t live in America anymore, but everyone tells me it’s, it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard going to a dinner party because of arguments breaking, right?

39:49 There’s fights everywhere, we’re fighting with each other, we’re fighting with the environment. How does this pull you out and how do you view that? Well, that’s what I was getting at. So Fuller talked about the generalized principles. One generalized principle is emergence through emergency.

40:03 So when you look at the word emergency, the base word is emerge. And what Fuller says, the only way humans evolve is via emergency, crisis, crisis. Big ones coming. It’s gonna be, as we all know, our banks have ripped us off immensely. There’s just a bunch of crooks.

40:25 I know how they can live with themselves, but you know, the bankers rip off trillions, they get bonus in billions, nobody goes to jail. That’s the sickness of our society. So that’s why Trump and I write about financial education. It’s almost like self-defense. It’s almost like taking judo against our own government and our own banking systems and Wall Street.

40:47 So that’s why we’re here with Jim Rickards and Nomi Prins. It’s kind of self-defense, be teaching people what schools will not teach us. I spoke to you yesterday and asked about the next three weeks, you’re traveling all around the world, and I said, Robert, why are you travelling so much? And you said because I need to let people know that this crash is coming and that these problems are out there. You feel, you feel like you have a mission to let people know about this.

41:13 It’s, it’s a sense of that, yes. And you know, why is, why do I have, you know, I have bad luck too. I’ve had financial crash and so I’ve had people stab me in the back, but they’re all good because I grow from it. That’s spirituality, you know. People who are afraid of making mistakes, like they teach in school, they don’t ever grow, because spirituality is as good and there’s bad, there’s right and there’s wrong, there’s up and there’s down.

41:41 Most people don’t want to be right, all I want to be positive. Well, you can’t have that, that’s not reality. Your first two businesses, the, the wallet business was up and then failed, and your next one was up and failed, but you would have never gotten here without a, don’t quote unquote, bad events. Yeah. Should we stop using that word bad?

41:59 Yeah, every, to know, every time I failed, it was like, goodness, okay, what have I learned? And the average person, the reason their pours haven’t failed, you know, they play it so safe, they haven’t made any mistakes, like they taught in school, that means they don’t learn anything. That’s why the school systems actually fundamentally corrupt. It’s anti-education. Don’t make mistakes and don’t ask for help.

42:23 And if I didn’t ask for help, I have my accountants, my attorneys, my bankrupt and all that. You know, I go into business like a rugby team. You know, boom, boom, and we kick butt. But the average guy is standing there, oh, I’m an A student, I’m going to do this all on myself, and I kind of a bunch of rugby players run you over, you go, well, they’re not playing fair. Yeah, what, you’re not, you’re playing stupid.

42:51 You should have a team. You have accountants, attorneys and bankers and all that stuff, but that’s not the game I want to play. I said, then don’t play the game, you know. The game of business is played with accountants, attorneys, bankers, hate to say it, politicians. You know, you gotta know the game, and you got to play it hard.

43:07 Yeah, and you know, as I’ll say it is that I love England. Big, my favorite game is rugby, and I had the benefits in the 70s of playing twice with Blackheath, and that was, I going to, you know, almost going to heaven to be in England playing rugby, and then going to Twickenham, you know, for the World Cup, and that I was in Australia too. What’s, Jonny Wilkinson, Sir Jonny Wilkinson beat the Aussies and the most powerful rugby game ever played, I believe.

43:40 It was England versus Aussie, and they went to two overtimes and talked about the spirit of the players coming out there. Are guys falling down the field, not because they’re retired, they were cramping up, they couldn’t go anymore. Man, Wilkinson, in which I forgive him forever, takes that field, you know. But that’s the game, a lot of people rub, either sit in the stands than be in the game. That’s why you like rugby, because they’re on the field or a competitor competing, they’re going head to head, that’s raw.

44:17 Rugby is a team sport, but so is soccer, the rules are different, you know. When I went out for soccer, so we mean, I can’t hit anybody, so I’ll stay with rugby. And other people are golfers, they play by themselves, and so everybody’s different. So what I say to young people is, you find your game. So my game financially is business number one, second is real estate, and that’s why I pay no taxes, that’s why Trump pays no taxes, legally.

44:47 It’s a combination of business and real estate that gives us an unfair advantage over employees, because they don’t know what to do. It was an article in The New York Times on the front page about a week or two ago, and it’s about Jared Kushner, right? So Trump’s son-in-law, and I same article. Yeah, and you pick it up? Yeah, I read it, and it was all about how depreciation and, yeah, you didn’t pay any taxes and his net worth growing, and everyone’s arms were up, look, this guy is not paying taxes.

45:15 Yeah, and this is The New York Times, okay, so you know, considered a front-runner in the news, showing us how bad this was, that this entrepreneur who grew his net worth, I like three times or four times over the last three or four years. And I, and I thought of you. What does that tell us? What do you see when you see that article? Well, The New York Times article is an employee mindset and they have no financial education.

45:39 Somebody said Kushner has a loophole called depreciation. I go, you idiot, it’s illegal, it’s not a loophole. Depreciation is what the government wants us to do. So in other words, those three things is appreciation, amortization and depreciation. So the way guys like Trump and Kushner and the rich guys do it, it’s called the McDonald’s formula of business.

46:06 So McDonald’s has a business, right? They have a hamburger stand and when the interview Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, you saw the TV, I’m in the movie The Founder, he gave the formula away. The purpose of the business of McDonald’s is not hamburgers, the business of McDonald’s is real estate, and that’s the formula. So every time you go past a McDonald’s stand, oh, you know, you deserve a break today here at McDonald’s, and but they’re not seeing the real game.

46:42 The game is that little hamburger stand is buying the most expensive real estate in the world. So today McDonald’s owns more real estate than the Catholic Church. You know, but they are rich or evil and all that, they just can’t see it. So I have the Rich Dad company in the business side. So let’s say I make a million dollars, I don’t want to pay tax on that.

47:06 So I take that million dollars, instead of spending it on something stupid, I buy a piece of real estate. So let’s say for five million. So I goes from 1 million to 5 million, then I appreciate, depreciate and amortize that 5 million, and that offsets my 1 million dollars in tax. And I speak to average people that goes, yeah, even though they can do it too, it’s the law, it’s available to everybody in every country in every way all over the world. And I travel all over the world, they go, oh, it’s good for you in America, but you can’t do it here.

47:43 And I say, see the McDonald’s? Yeah, he’s doing it. No, no, no, no, no, no, they’re not doing it. I said, you know how much I got, you know, McDonald’s is not on cheap real estate. But the average person is so blinded because they went to school and they were taught by poor people, and as Lipton says, it’s handed down for generations.

48:05 Yeah, and that’s what Trump and I and Nomi Prins and Jim Rickards that I are trying to break. I’m against the school system because there’s actually teaching people to be poor. You know, it’s just tragic, but it’s happening in our school system. You can’t say anything offensive to me, you must be politically right, no peanuts, and they’re getting weaker and weaker and weaker. Yeah, tell me about the Marines and Vietnam.

48:34 I mean, if you look at your life, Robert, you’re kind of a badass, you know, you’re playing rugby, you’re going into the fray, you’re starting companies. I mean, this takes, you know, you have to be tough. Yeah, what did you learn in the Marines? Well, I almost, I wasn’t always that way, you know. One of the reasons I went to military school in New York was because I was a complete screw-up as a kid, just like Trump.

48:57 Yeah, I was, no, I was a surfer in Hawaii. You know, my father, the head of education, coming, yanked me out of the water, you know, the, because if the surf was up, I was surfing. So I was there in serious trouble, you know. Man, you that as F’s, flunking out, and I intuitively knew I needed discipline. If I went to the University of Hawaii I’d be still be surfing, because my dream was Sunday I’d be a pro surfer.

49:28 But that dream was kind of in the way of reality. So I applied because my dad, my father said to me, my poor dad, he says, you’re so worthless as a student, I’m not gonna pay for your education. I said, well, thank you, daddy, just did me a big favor, because now I have to think. You see, when a parent pays for the kid, the kids have to think. You know, I’m thinking it’s pretty important, so I had to figure out how am I gonna get a free education.

49:56 So when I was 16, I started applying to schools and I got two of the best schools in the United States. One was United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and that’s his Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, New York. So when I looked at Naval Academy, I looked at Merchant Marine Academy, Annapolis graduates for making $200 a month, Kings Pointers were making like 2,000 a month. So as 2,000 for us was 201. So I went to military school because I needed the discipline and it was really good for me.

50:31 You know, the moment you get up, somebody’s yelling at you, you stupid, hard, hard, and I’m not the first wake, I was crying, you know. I was so upset, such a little baby, you know. They yelled at me, that’s all that was, yelling at you. They’re calling you names or to call me names, you know. I said that was when I toughened up, because it’s only words, you know, but there were words of intent to make me stronger.

51:04 So when I graduated from the Academy, again like I said, we’re making a hundred twenty thousand a year if I sailed into a Vietnam in the war zone, and I would have gone through Vietnam to make money, but unfortunately the war was still on in 1969 and my brother got drafted, and my family, a family samurai from way back when, all the sons fight. So I had, you know, five uncles go to fight in Europe in World War Two and two uncles fought against the Japanese in World War Two. One got captured by the Japanese, that was a painful story.

51:43 I can imagine. But anyway, so it’s in a tradition to fight. So now a little toughened up from the Academy, and instead of taking 120,000 a year, I took the $200 a month and joined the Marine Corps and went to flight school, and in flight school, it’s a long story, but there was this one aircraft I wanted to fly, was a prop plane, and they canceled that. They said, no more of these prop planes. So I’m lost.

52:17 So they wanted me to fly the C-130, you know, the four engine prop job, and so I went into it and it was the most boring thing, boo-boo-boo-boo-boo, you know, 13 hours. So I think, good about the C-130, a coffee maker, you know, so I could sit there and drink coffee and, mmm. So I knew airlines was out, that is the most boring job on planet Earth. So I go to my monitor and the guy who handles my career, I’m still, you know, first lieutenant now, and I said, what’s the fastest way to Vietnam?

52:54 And he said, because the war was winding down and you wanted to see some action? Yeah, as I didn’t join the Marine Corps to sit in the back, you know. He says, well, though, he says, the number one fastest way for you to go is go to Camp Pendleton in California and you fly the gunship or the Cobras. Said, all right, that sounds interesting, why is that? He says, because they’re dying.

53:18 Your life expectancy is 30 days. 30 days? Yeah, we’re dead in 30 days, because it was a nasty old mission. So that kind of has a 21 year old kid, I said, I’ll do it. And that was the best decision.

53:31 So I got sent to Camp Pendleton and then onto an aircraft carrier off Vietnam, and it was flying a strike into Vietnam, you know, where they have these Jolly Green Giants and his huge troop transports. And so then they have the twin-rotor 46s and then always had two gunships escorting all the way in. So where were the gun escorts going in, and we’re flying their strike when you were losing, you know, the war was over, we had lost, America didn’t want to fight anymore.

54:06 So nobody wanted to be the last guy to die, and including me. So we’re flying in and then that was my first real spiritual experience. This is, I’ve been there several, oh, I had flown many missions, but they’re all safe, I always came back. And this one day I was up there at 1,500 feet waiting for the troops, the troop helicopters to come up so we could fly a strike into Vietnam, and my engine quit, and I don’t, you know, and this is the difference of training, you know, knowledge, is that when the engine quits on a gunship, he’ll look up, the gunship, we have crew of five, ammunition, 18 rockets, six machine guns, that thing doesn’t fly.

54:57 As soon as that engine quit, boom, all the alarms go off, but this is why people die in real life. When that fear hits them, they pull back, you know, I mean they go, it’s too frightening, not gonna do it. That’s why people die, they pull back. So the Marine Corps trains us so well, when that engine quit we’re trained to push forward. Yeah, auto-rotate.

55:28 Well, more than auto-rotate, which for the dive you have to be, don’t have to shift the flow of air through the blades, and you dive and you drop your power and you’re going down like this and everything goes instinctively. Are you training? Mayday, Mayday, waited eka whiskey nine six, I’m calling you, you know, what flight, up that a Mike, crew of five, automatically they jettison the machine guns, the ammunition, doors are coming off, it’s just so well trained.

55:57 We’re like a little machine coming down like this and also I’m looking down and then we start to auto-rotate, but I had to shift the air through the blades, of make sense, then it rotates English and going down like this. I’m looking at what they call the jaws of death. I’m looking at my death and I’m going straight down towards it. It’s beyond fearful. And then this is what happened.

56:24 I’m an exterior and people may look, I don’t know what that means, is I, I was suddenly up in the air watching myself, watching my crew flying to our death, and it was the most peaceful, surreal feeling, you know. It’s only about probably a second, but I went exterior in the wind and I, it was kind of you have a, it can choose to live, I can choose to die at this moment, but that was my first, what I call, real spiritual experience, you know. It’s like the archive just keeps going, you keep anything, you keep it straight for that water.

57:12 And I said, why people don’t succeed in real life is they pulled back, and you’ve got to keep the nose down towards that water, because we’re flying so, so we’re dropping like a rock. And so like a fear, I guess the fear was so intense I went out. Yeah, I could see my crew. I just felt nothing about love from, I said, oh yeah, I love these, you know, it was pure. They have families, have kids, and we’re going to right death.

57:46 And so at the very last minute, Zak vism, Marine Corps, the Navy trains you, you pull back slowly and it aircraft goes, it just misses the water, and then we’re skimming above the water and then you shift your peripheral, not from forward to sideways, and you’re watching the water, the blades, and we’re watching the water, watching the water, I’m watching my gauges, there’s no engine, at the last minute slowly pulled back, just be as you’re sinking into the water, aircraft goes like this, I can still hear it today. Then you walk the nose forward and it goes into this flat position, and just before you hit the water you go all the way up, because you just save all that speed on the blade. That’s the auto-rotate right there.

58:39 Yeah. And so the blades go grab, see angles, what, pop, pop, pop, pop, that’s quiet again. You can see the water and the aircraft just settles into the water, and that would happen to blade, right, blade, the blade hits to the right first, it tore the engine off toward the transmission, it came through the canopy, you know. And this water is filling up, and again it’s a surreal feeling. I said, I have a choice to live or die now, you know.

59:13 If I mess up, I’m dead, and you know, all the training comes in. Okay, get out, get out, get out. And so the aircraft just rocks and sinks, it blows up because the engines so hot, the smoke and the steam. The blade came through the canopy because it hit so hard. I had a camera sitting here, and later that day when I got rescued, the camera had a cut across the front of it.

59:41 So the camera saved my life, otherwise that whatever I hit me would have gone through me. So the whole lens was crushed, and the aircraft’s wobble, sinks and go upside down, and we’re getting out, the smoke and the steam, and you know, then I started taking a head count to see the first guy pop up, you know, go one, two, three. So where’s my co-pilot? It was quiet, there’s a steam and smoke and burning. Where’s Ted, you know, where is Ted?

1:00:18 And all of a sudden Ted comes popping up and he had some expletives. You he says, you rolled it towards my side. I didn’t roll it anywhere, Ted, you know, where you are going already. And I’m hugging him, same soap, you know, I was so glad to see the guy alive, because if he had drowned, he died, that would be a pain body in your soul at that moment, you know. And then four hours later I rescued and I got back to the ship.

1:00:49 Well, that next thing is that it’s shark-infested water, so we’re treading water for four hours, you know. Oh my god, oh my god, you know, because the crew before us was eaten, and so we’re just treading water out there, this ocean swells. So I get up and then they go to get on the carrier and we sit down for the debrief and I still refer to this day, I said, I can’t tell him what just happened, I couldn’t talk to about going hysteria. So it just became this mechanical ended down, switched, power cut, the batteries, became technical, not spiritual, but that was my search.

1:01:30 I want to find out after that, after I got out of the Marine Corps, I wanted to find out where I went. And so I started doing a lot of his New Age workshops and goofy things, and they had Shirley MacLaine who was into past lives, and you know, Tony Robbins was walking on fire and all those stuffs. I said, I want to find out how much power the human spirit add, because as you know and I know, it has more power than we ever know, we won’t ever know. So it became that search for, to get that power back, not the mental power but the spiritual power.

1:02:05 What do you think happened to you that day? How did you change? I went in search, I want to know how much, what happened, and it took do the thing called STS Jay. Yeah, and in that program I went back to being exterior when I could, I could, I went back into that space. You know, so there’s another dimension that we all have, all of us, we all have that power, spiritual part, not mental, not maybe not physical, and the emotions get in our way, the fear and things like this, but we all have it.

1:02:44 And that’s when I wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad and all those other things, created by boardgame, it’s not because of my brain, it’s because I’m serving a mission to serve my fellow human beings. Some kind of greater energy or a collective human consciousness. What Fuller said was this, okay, I think this is important for people to hear today. I hear many people say, just do your passion, you know, if you work your passion you don’t do a day in your life. And what Bucky Fuller says, gonna head of the geodesic dome, because someone the greatest geniuses of our times, it says passion is selfish.

1:03:21 Passion is doing what you want to do. Then we have purpose, you know. My purpose is to feed my kids, so you’re doing it for somebody else, that’s purpose. But there’s another level beyond that, and what Fuller called it was, was part of her ephemeral ization, ability to do more with less. Fuller said, ask yourself this question: what does God want done?

1:03:46 Not what you want to do, what does God want done? And so for the years afterwards, so what does God want done that I can do? And then it got clear to me, that’s why I had a Rich Dad, a poor dad, and I’m supposed to teach what my rich dad taught me, because that’s what God wants done. How can you be of service, that’s it? Oh no, it’s what does God want done, right there’s a very big difference.

1:04:15 It’s not about anything else but what God wants done. So like, do you think God wants cancer cured? Absolutely. Well, go to that, well, kind of business, good job. You know, he wants to end violence?

1:04:28 Well, they’re too busy. Most people busy for selfish reasons. I got to take care of the kids, I got the food on the table, you know, I got gotta come to college, excuses. Well, no, is the, the purpose is self purpose, ain’t so. There should be a higher purpose.

1:04:44 It’s what, ask yourself, what does God want done? And that means you have to tune in to God. I’m not being real religiously, God sends for a general overall director, you know, I’m a what, okay. And so it seemed like when I started studying with Fuller for three years, he says, God wants everybody to be prosperous. God wants everybody to be prosperous, but our school systems keeping us poor, at meant I had to take on the school system.

1:05:13 I went, oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me. Don’t have to take on Wall Street then. I’ll take on the banks, and I went, I don’t think I want to do that. You know, I mean, that’s what I have to do, but that gives you strength, knowing that you’re on a mission from God, but God wants them out of the way, right? Do I want to take them on?

1:05:40 No, no, I don’t. I mean, I argue love myself for a long time. You got to be kidding me, you’re gonna take on the school teachers union that your father ran for, dead? You’re gonna take on the colleges that teach you nothing about money, you’re gonna take on Wall Street, you’re gonna take on the bankers, gonna take on the Treasury, are you crazy? You go take on, you know, guys like the Rothschild family, that mega-rich who control the world, but beyond money.

1:06:11 So that was back in ’83, I went, you’re nuts. And then I said, well, I guess I got to do it. Like I was in rock-and-roll the time, I had a rock-and-roll fatuous, I was working for Duran Duran, The Police, Journey, Boy George, those guys. What were you doing for them? Yeah, I had to give all that up, you know, just surrender to it.

1:06:33 And that was the same year, that was ’83, met my wife Kim, and I said, why, she said, wait, guys, I’m selling everything, I’m getting out, I’m gonna find out why God wants me to do this. Adachi goes, that’s, I said, I know I’m nuts, but I’m gonna do it. And then she said, I’ll go with. And that’s Hawaiian way, I want the best marriages in the world, because she was willing to give up her job, her life, her parents thought she was nuts. We’re homeless, were women screwed, blued and tattooed, would meant a lot of crooks and charlatans, but we’ll also met some fantastic people along a journey.

1:07:11 But that’s what I said is Lona when I’m dead. I met Oprah and she, the reason I was on her program because she knows who I’m after. Join, I mean it’s the banks, the schools, education system to keep people poor, they teach people to be poor. Then I’m a Trump and it says, let’s do a book together. But until you find your spirit that’s bigger than anything, I don’t know, you know, I don’t recommend it, but that’s why I’m here today.

1:07:49 So there sit with Jim Rickards and Nomi Prins and David Stockman and the other guys who are now joining forces saying, we’re going after them. It’s crazy, because they’re gonna crush us. You could fight them, huh? They’re coming after us already. But you’re asking your court yourself that question, what does God want?

1:08:09 And if you follow that path, you will probably live an incredible life. Don’t do the right thing, but you also have bad things and good things and horrible things and wonderful things come on with you. Then you come in and yesterday when I sit down with you and Jim Rickards, I’m going, how did I get here? Because Jim’s an insider and I am an outsider. Say it was only that we’re joining forces now.

1:08:38 Jim is saying the same thing I’m saying, Nomi’s saying the same thing I’m saying, Stockman saying the same thing I’m saying. These SLBs are ripping us off. How in the world can they come to central banks and the like, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo and Citigroup, they print all this money, they bust the world’s economy, they rip everybody off, and they get paid billions in bonuses while millions lose our jobs and their everything, retirements. We have more poor today in America than ever before.

1:09:13 There’s more homelessness in America than ever before because of our banking and Treasury and a government system. So you know, that’s like, it’s almost like the classic David versus Goliath. That’s when you say, okay, I’m going to take something on. So it’s been since 1983 and my wife says, I’ll join you, and the numbers keep growing. Do you understand what I’m saying?

1:09:39 Yeah, more people are coming with you, coming when it’s not, we’re all coming together, you know. Yeah, and so that’s how yesterday was one of the biggest days of my life. I get to sit next to Jim, Jim Rickards, I made Nomi Prins, these guys are insiders. I was some little kid surfer kid who was screwing up all his life from Hilo, Hawaii. We knew nothing about their world.

1:10:04 Tell me more about this woman, Kim Kiyosaki. Four years ago in London I remember you, but I remember her even more. And I met her gorgeous a few minutes and she’s just got this incredible energy, and then yesterday it was right back there again. She said hi, and you know, tell me more about her. What do we don’t know about her and why did she follow your craziness for the past 30 years?

1:10:26 Let me tell you another way of saying it. A rugby player, right, and Kim, and it was Kim Meyer in Honolulu, and I’d asked my rugby friends and said, you know what, what’s my chances of going out with her? I think, oh, you are, you kidding me? Every guy in town wants her and you just was lossless schmuck. Yeah, my rugby friends are not the nicest guys, you know how they are.

1:10:52 So that kind of inspired me. So the story is I had to ask her out for six months, six months. So I sent her flowers, I call her up, I sent her cars, balloons, anything just keep refreshing her that I was here. I just says, but I have a boyfriend. I said, I don’t care.

1:11:15 And finally, whoa, I did my market research file method. So I called one of her friends and said, tell me something about Kim that I don’t know. As well, her best friend is your ex-girlfriend. What, my ex-girlfriend, that who’s that? Well, Karen.

1:11:35 Karen hates me, you know. So this is persistence. So I have to call Karen up, who hates me. Hey Karen, uh, no hard feelings, thank you. Look, just give Kim a recommendation from you.

1:11:51 I’ve been asking for six months. She says, why would she go out with you? I said, Karen, think about the old times, the good times. There are no good times with you. So finally Karen says, you should go out with him then.

1:12:06 Kim thought, Karen, what about with me? And it was all messed up, but I finally found out from Karen that what Kim loves was a bottle of champagne and moonlight walks on the beach. I said, I thought 25 bucks. So finally Kim says, okay, I’ll go off, he just once, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter. I’m a businessman, I thought my market research, I knew what she wanted.

1:12:32 So I lived at the time in the best hotel in Waikiki. I had no money but I still lived the best place, and Kim, Kim is driving up a little orange Toyota Celica. I paid the valet five bucks, he says, when he see this orange Celica come up, that’s her. Okay, okay. So as soon as he drives up, the valet, yeah, you must be Kim.

1:12:55 Oh, so nice to see you. She goes, Jesus, you know, you take our car and they show it to my room, knocks on the door, and chemicals and Michelle’s restaurant is, and is the best restaurant in Waikiki, right on the ocean, and I can’t even afford to go there, but I live there, you know. So we go down to Michelle’s, the maitre d’ goes, Robert, is this Kim? Oh, so nice to meet you. They show us to this table right next to the water.

1:13:27 It’s not, Kim’s going, holy mackerel. Yeah, and then guy comes up and he says, it’s just the champagne your order, and she goes, yes, that’ll do, and Kim goes, it’s her favorite champagne. No, because Karen told me all of this. So we pour the champagne and the maitre d’ knows I don’t have any money for dinner. This is Robert, why don’t you and your date go for a walk on the beach?

1:13:57 Exactly everything she loved, and we’ve been together ever since. What I found out is that she is more beautiful in the inside than the outside, and I think that such a sense about. Yeah, and you also said she’s the brains behind the operation. Yes, she’s very, very smart. You know, like her game is real estate, she understands real estate.

1:14:24 I’m more than the business side, so I remember the McDonald’s part, I didn’t wanted to McDonald’s, and then we, then I get the money to her and she buys a real estate with that. That’s why we, we make millions using debt and pay very little in taxes legally, because that’s the game. Mmm. And people get angry about it, but I said, if you look at it, McDonald’s right next year, that’s what they’re doing. You just don’t know how to do it.

1:14:48 And so that’s what Donald Trump and I teach and people like we teach, and it gets the socialist class very upset with us. How dare you not pay taxes? I said, we only do with the government asks. I pay no taxes because I provide jobs. If you’re an employee, you pay the highest taxes.

1:15:06 If you’re a doctor, a lawyer, you’re self-employed, you pay even higher taxes because the government doesn’t want you to do that. Government wants you to hire people. And I get millions in tax breaks because I use debt, the government, but they incentivize borrowers to borrow money, and then I buy apartment houses with it, and they give me a tax breaks because I’m providing housing, and so if you understand the tax laws, they’re really incentives to help the government out, but it drives the Socialists and the Communists and the leftist nuts, that’s what I hate Trump, right, right.

1:15:57 So it’s just a matter of a lack of, you know, qualified financial education. And what’s it like being married to your business partner? Does that work for everyone? One, the luckiest guy on earth. She is actually the kindest, most spiritual, kind, never has a bad thing to say about anybody.

1:16:19 She generally loves everybody, she sees no color, size, shape, she doesn’t discriminate. She’s a very loving and loving person. When I started thinking about it, she mentioned my mom. My mom was the most loving. Yes, my mom was so loving, she’d hug all my friends.

1:16:38 Yeah, I’m a little high school kid, she’s hugging my friend’s mom, leave him alone, you know, with this. And my dad was, my dad was cold and cold as ice, but my mother was the most loving person. So in many ways I married my mom on the inside, because my mom was not as gorgeous as chemists. That’s the story of her and Kim. It really is a rich woman, she is committed to teaching, you know, as she says, you know, women, when it comes to money, women are smarter than men.

1:17:05 I would say that’s true. And why is that? Well, men have big egos, it’s about the flashy cars and, you know, the toys and, yeah, I gotta have a new boat. And Kim doesn’t want that stuff, as she’s happy with her 12 year old car. She doesn’t like to go shopping, but she loves investing.

1:17:29 That’s working. And I spoke to her at dinner last night, she’s in big on the spirituality along with you. That’s a mission you’re both on, you know, individually and for the company. Well, it’s for the culture of our company, right? So that meeting, people come from all over the world, all because encourage, encourage people to meditate, to read spiritual books, to do, hate the word therapy, but it’s not therapies, but it’s, as Tolle says, we all have pain and sometimes it’s really locked up and there are people who are trained to go after it.

1:18:03 So that’s what we encourage. Do you meditate? Yeah, every morning. What does it do for you? Magic.

1:18:11 It doesn’t mean it’s all good, hunky-dory, you know. I mean, I’ve had, there’s no such thing as good and bad, because some of the worst things have happened to me, I’ve been the best, and some of the best thing I haven’t had been the worst, or like we had, we had my medic, my cardiologist speaking at our event, and he’s very much into spirituality. Says, you know, yin and yang. He says, inside yang is yin and inside the yin is more yang and unsightly in it, you know, it just goes on, the mind goes at infinitum.

1:18:42 So our failures are not necessarily a head, and our successes aren’t necessarily that. No, and what happens to most people is they get these highs and then they screw up, because every time you go up you have to come down, and what’s happening to people is getting addicted to the high. So they do opium and drugs and heroin and sex and alcohol, that they’re masking the pain inside. So what we do is encourage a more sane, healthy culture that if you’re upset with something, look, if I’m upset with Kim after 45 minutes, I call Seal, who’s kind of the person who knows how to handle the pain, because the pain with Kim is only pain from the past.

1:19:29 Your past, past, yes. So that’s our agreement. I’m upset, I call Seal. So I’m calling Seal all the time. Yep.

1:19:38 Give us a call as often. But anyway, it’s a healthier way of dealing with things because, as you know, many marriages, the stuff builds up. You know, the biggest lie in a marriage ever told was, and they lived happily ever after. No such thing, sweetheart, you know. You got good days and you have bad days.

1:19:58 Then you have kids, because yeah, more challenging, but people are not trained to deal with that and it builds up, and a lot of times the marriage dies, the bodies are together but the marriage is dead. I mean, or they get divorced. Yeah, so try to deal with the everyday conflict and deal with it in a positive way. Yep, because we all have pain, you know. Look at Prince Harry, you know, he says he goes to counseling because he was still upset about Princess Diana died.

1:20:30 You know, Phelps, the gold medalist, he now is a spokesperson for therapy because you get to be the biggest Olympian in the world, you coming down, you know, and what people are not trained to do is deal with that pain. So that’s why we had a big meeting, we’re gonna build a culture where people are more transparent, should I say, it’s okay to make mistakes, okay to talk about your failure, it’s okay to seek therapy, to meditate, to pray, to study spiritual things as well as money. Yeah, ten years from now, I’m gonna come back here and we’re gonna sit down again and I want to know, what is Robert Kiyosaki, you’re gonna be doing that at 81 years old, what does your world look like, what does your day look like?

1:21:20 No, no, it’s good question, but I was leaving with us thought that rings in my head goes from Fuller again, Buckminster Fuller. He says, you do not belong to you, you belong to the universe. Your true purpose may be forever obscure to you, but you’d be arrested sure you are, you’re fulfilling your true purpose if you commit your life to the highest advantage of others. And that’s the difference. So whatever is the highest advantage of others, I’ll do.

1:21:55 That’s what I’ll be doing. Hmm. Wow, that’s powerful, Robert. What scares you, if anything? What scares you?

1:22:07 Not too much, not, not in the normal sense of things, you know. I mean, it’s what scares me is dealing with the demons inside, as I still have them, you know, they’re still there, they’ll almost probably be there. So that’s why I meditate. This money I was up this morning to meditate, handle the success from yesterday, and but also what else is residual coming up. And you know, death terrifies many people, but like I said, when I, the helicopter, when I had to push the nose down, tied India, I didn’t need coffee for about three weeks.

1:22:46 Does that scare you? No, that’s why I said that, when, uh, when I had to look at death, I went, went to peace. And this is common, I’ve had a few people on my show that I’ve had these near-death experiences and they’re in the middle of suffering and trauma and then they’re out of their body and it’s peaceful and it, they’re connected, and then they have to make that choice whether they’re gonna go back in or die, and the ones I’ve spoken to obviously have gone back in and for a reason, you know.

1:23:16 Yeah, and they come back and tell these things and that moment always sticks with them. Yeah, it was, it was peace, you know. It felt like a lot of it was this peace was this in love with my crew. We’re all facing death and we’re just working as hard as we could, knowing that if I screw it up we’re dead anyway, but they still did their work, you know. We’re going down.

1:23:44 The other thing that happened was about a month later, as a pilot, we don’t see who we kill. This is a pretty sterile world, you know. But I had never seen anybody I killed that I knew him, because we’re the gunships coming in all the time and pulling off. One day I was parked on this dusty field, you know, near a city called Quang Tri, where Quang Tri was the last stand, the NVA were coming down, and we’re preparing for the battle for Quang Tri. And so we’re just sitting around and these Boy Scouts in charge of watching the helicopters because the crew went off for lunch, and these boys came out and they were climbing on the helicopter, then about ten-year-old boys, you know.

1:24:31 I said, hey, get off, get off, get off. They won’t listen, they’re crawling around. Then I realized they might be sappers, it might be VC. Got calm and then panic sets in. So I go running up to this and I grab this one kid and I’m screaming at all the other kids, get off the helicopters, they’re not supposed to be on him, and they wouldn’t listen.

1:24:58 So I grabbed this kid, I’m holding him up like this, he’s a small guy, and I just pulled out my gun and put it to his head. That’s what kill him, because I had never killed somebody, never seen somebody’s brains blown out, you know. I said, yeah, I was yelling and he started kicking and he started biting me, and then I lost it. And this feeling came over, miss it, he’s dead, that all of a sudden my mother had passed away like two years prior. I could hear her saying to me, stop, stop, stop, cuz I’ve been, I was a mean kid, you should, because I’ve done my best to tell you to cut that mean, you know, whatever she was saying, you’re so mean.

1:25:46 And she says, look, I did not give you life, take another mother’s child. Think before you kill him. I didn’t know what she meant, but if I pulled that trigger, before ever a scar on my soul, because I didn’t have to kill him, you know. At that point the war was over because he was unarmed. So I put the gun down and I looked in his eyes and looked at his ID, we both started to cry because we knew we had come that close.

1:26:20 I just thought, I’m called a kid at a soccer, so I got the soccer ball, I threw it out, sorry, play well, well, like little boys playing soccer, running around the place, you know, kicking in, and that we said goodbye. And then the rest of the crew came back and we, I found, I did find the satchel charge. They did plant one. Pity, yeah, I just, I just, that’s what they’re taught to do. Yeah, the same things going on today all over the world.

1:26:58 You know, look in Syria and Lebanon, that’s like thought to do to kill us, kill each other. When you see those wars happening and what do you see when you see war around? I see the pain, you know, what’s, what are we teaching kids? How can we do that, you know? But anyway, I just, so I strap back in and we’re flying back to the carrier and there was about six aircraft flying home that night.

1:27:25 It was almost like a John Wayne movie, and we’re flying out and the sun’s coming, you know, the sun’s already setting as we’re back and I’m flying out to the ocean, you can see the carrier’s about 25 miles offshore and it was, I could, I couldn’t get the boy’s eyes out of my eye, I couldn’t. I saw his, you know, the Cosa Nostra says if you want to kill somebody, don’t look him in the eyes, you see their souls. I said, what’d you learn that day with that boy?

1:27:57 My war was over. I couldn’t, I couldn’t fight anymore. So there’s an American Indian chief named Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, and he was up in the Seattle area, and Chief Joseph has a classic line, you know, the American Cavalry chasing men chase him and Jason and his people were dying, he was like 10 miles short of the Canadian border and they surrounded him and they were going to kill everybody, and Joseph said he had to surrender because if he didn’t surrender, his whole tribe might be wiped out.

1:28:37 And so he has a classic line, I’ma, you know, he says, I will fight no more, no longer. And so that day I was flying back to the carrier, you know, after being in military school and training to kill people most, much of that time, my war was over. That’s when I came back and I said, I better do something more productive than kill people. And so I, you know, this is what I’m doing today. Hey, I can ask him myself, what does God want done that I might be able to lend a hand at doing?

1:29:14 But it seems to me that God wants people to have more prosperity, and you know, I don’t think God likes people being poor. Maybe, maybe he or she does, but I grew up in pain of poverty, because it wasn’t that we’re a poor, my mother and father mismanaged their money constantly, they spent more than we made. So I see that as pain, you know. So what, we still gonna be fighting wars 100 years from now? Let’s hope not, but I think it’s in our DNA.

1:29:50 That’s why. So is poverty, though. Maybe we can get that out. What’s up? So is poverty maybe in our DNA?

1:29:58 Yeah, I think, you know, as Bucky Fuller says, I don’t think we have much more time. We better make up our minds. So that’s why when you and I just sat down just now, I feel compelled to talk about more the spiritual side than the financial side. What do you, I mean, we don’t have much time, we’re gonna kill each other, you know. I mean, as I said, human beings have not evolved, but technology has, and now you know you can, with a little laptop, you can destroy a lot of things for that.

1:30:28 So if we don’t evolve, as Fuller says, you know, God will just wipe us off the earth, bring a new batch in and see if we get it in another three or four million years. We’ll see if the next batch of humans gets it right. It’s just a learning experience with what will be. Yeah, I’ve heard that more and more and more is where Polar’s that we’re in the final examination as human beings. We’ve got to evolve because technology is evolving but we’re not, and that’s the challenge.

1:30:57 We’re getting worse. Yet 50 years is the consensus of a lot of my guests, that’s what they say. If we can’t turn it around, then it’s gonna go one way. So these conversations are very important. Yeah.

1:31:07 What keeps you awake at night? Not doing a good job still. Yeah, wow. Yeah, you have to get better, you know. Why is that important?

1:31:18 Just perfect, you know, success means you have to do a better job. Don’t rest on your laurels. What would we be surprised to learn about Robert Kiyosaki? Something you do we think about, I wouldn’t have known you had a suit design like a 1930s, you know, man. But what’s something that we would be surprised to learn about you?

1:31:40 Well, I never did well in school. I’m very slow in school, and I found out later on that, you know, there’s a left brain and the right brain, a subconscious mind. I’m more artistic, so when I was 5 years old I wasn’t display at the Academy of Arts in Honolulu. And so if you notice what makes me successful, I’m always drawing pictures. So his income statement, balance sheet, he’d know that, and what few people realize is that what makes me successful is I’m almost drawing pictures, but that’s why I flunked out of school.

1:32:16 I flunked the English twice, I flunked accounting once. Says, I’m not very left-brained, but I hire got accountants, I could hire good attorneys, you know, and I hang out guys for the records, the see students, employee, the A students. Yeah, yeah, and that shows you we all have our strengths, our weaknesses, and sometimes what the Shrek looks like is really their weakness. All right, so you failed that in school, but that gave you all these other possibilities.

1:32:47 I learned how to survive in school. Right, right, and in school I always sat next to the Smart Girls because a test time, I was very cooperative, but the school system calls that cheating, and today that’s what makes me successful. I sit next, I that I work with, a hire the smartest people I know because in my world life is a rugby team, not a golf game. But most people go at life as a golfer and not a rugby player or a soccer player or a basketball player.

1:33:17 You know, you have to have a good team, and our schools teach us that having a good team is cheating. That’s why I’m all schoolteachers are poor, because asking my help is cheating. I was reading the teacher’s manual, my poor dad, that’s exactly what it says, definition of cheating: giving aid to somebody in need. To me that means being a human being. It’s that mindset.

1:33:44 Yeah. Wow, Robert, if I can give you some kind of a magic phone and you can make a call to the 20 year-old Robert Kiyosaki and give that young man a bit of advice, probably this is before you went to Vietnam, what would you tell him? I’m gonna say keep going, just do what you have to do. It’s just, you know, live it to the fullest life, which I did. Nothing ever did made sense.

1:34:14 Could you imagine quitting $120,000 year a job for $200 a month to go fight in Vietnam and almost die? Yeah, it didn’t make sense, but it was the best decision I made at that time. And I think what most people do is they let their parents or their friends talk them out of life. So afraid of failing, but failing is how we succeed. You look at that, you guys look at guys like Edison and all that, they failed like ten thousand, thousand fourteen times before he invented the light bulb.

1:34:49 You know, our schools punish you for making mistakes. That’s why we have so many people are so afraid of admitting they make mistakes or afraid of failing, you know. All of my successes and failures was because I was too successful. If you can imagine that, when I started my first nylon wallet, soft fur, fur business, wallet business, I didn’t fail because I was a failure, I fail because it took off. I couldn’t supply the demand for it.

1:35:18 So then I learned, that’s why I can’t sold those wallets for myself. So my next business was rock and roll, so I had Duran Duran, The Police, Van Halen, so I went to Korea, didn’t get manufacturing overseas again, the business took off, heck, it was so big I couldn’t finance it. So it’s not that I failed because I failed, I failed because I was too successful. So exactly the Zen idea that success will lead to failure, as I was discovering that. But most people are afraid of failing, so they never succeed.

1:35:52 So follow your gut and take risk for some people. Oh, Carl, different, you know, but that’s what you were doing. Yeah, yeah, when somebody, when, whenever I was getting ready to go to Vietnam, I said, oh, I told my classmates I was, you know, I said, you’re giving up a job that pays you a hundred twenty thousand a year, this is the 1969, it was worth a lot of money back then. I said, yeah, I said, but you might die, and my answer was, and I might live. That was it, I went.

1:36:25 So that was, that’s how I love my life. Hmm. I don’t know everybody should do what I do, because that’s not, that’s not, that’s not sane yet the process of their own life. Yeah, on that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received? And I know you’ve written books about the best advice you’ve ever received, but if you had to pick one thing that you could pass on to other people, what would it be?

1:36:49 What comes to mind? Final part of that question to that 20 year old that’s out there watching us right now, what do you tell them? What advice can you give to them of all your wisdom, follow your life? What do you tell them?

1:37:29 I don’t know. I know that all that, all cliched through dying self be true, but I, I really think that when you interviewed Lipton, I maybe I understand that what he was saying was that it’s passed down from generations. That was pretty insight was, what’s it called? Oh yeah, epigenetics, sir. Epigenetic, yes.

1:37:53 Yeah, the expressions of those genes. So, and so if you as a young person, I would take a look at what your parents taught you or they and their parents taught them. Is that what you want? And it’s not, you have to make a conscious effort to think differently. Yes, and break out of that.

1:38:12 Yes, because you’ll teach it to your kids. Any final thoughts, Rob? That should do it. I just appreciate the time, Robert. I, you know, you really are a legend.

1:38:23 I’m sure that’s strange to hear. Most people know you because of money and accounting and Cashflow and amazing board games and all that stuff, but you know, behind a great message like that there’s always more, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen it, and so I really appreciate you going deep and talking about things that some people don’t understand, like near-death experiences and spirituality, and something that doesn’t fit on the balance sheet, but you know, there’s always something like that behind greatness. There’s always that will, right?

1:38:53 And thank you for showing that to us. And that’s what happened yesterday with Jim Rickards, and I when we went off-script, you know, yeah, and we’re saying that things that really were driving us. Yeah, well, how do you know why does he come in? You come at five o’clock in the morning and Jim comes at six and we go all day and all night. It’s not the money, it’s a spirit.

1:39:15 We haven’t, we have a mission to do. Yeah, you won’t be what you will to be. Thank you, thank you so much, Robert, all the best. Thank you very much.