Robert Kiyosaki

Robert Toru Kiyosaki, born April 8, 1947, is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and author best known for the Rich Dad Poor Dad series of personal finance books. Born in Hilo, in the Territory of Hawaii, he grew up in a Japanese-descended family as the eldest child of Ralph and Majorie Kiyosaki. His mother was a nurse, and his father was an educator who was once appointed Hawaii’s superintendent of schools. Kiyosaki’s public career took shape across several worlds: military service, sales, motivational speaking, publishing, seminars, and branded financial education.

His early life gave him a close view of both education and economic risk. After attending Manoa Elementary School and moving to Hilo, he graduated from Hilo High School, where he was nearly expelled because of poor grades. In 1965 he entered the United States Merchant Marine Academy and graduated four years later as a deck officer. He traveled on ships of Matson, Inc. as a midshipman, then joined the U.S. Marine Corps as an officer. During the Vietnam War, he served as a helicopter gunship pilot and was once based in Kaneohe Bay.

Kiyosaki’s business path was uneven from the start. In 1977 he founded Rippers, a company that marketed nylon and Velcro wallets, but it went bankrupt. He later worked as a sales associate at Xerox until June 1978. In the 1980s, he became a motivational speaker in San Diego and ran a course on Erhard Seminars Training techniques called Money and You, after having attended the course in 1974. In 1984, Marshall Thurber transferred the business to Kiyosaki and D.C. Cordova, who expanded it beyond the United States. The course at one point had tens of thousands of students internationally, but the business nearly collapsed in Australia in 1993 after a critical Four Corners documentary. Kiyosaki left the business in 1994.

In 1993, Kiyosaki published If You Want to Be Rich and Happy, Don’t Go to School?, encouraging parents not to send their children to college and instead to enter real estate. He founded Cashflow Technologies in 1997, a holding company that owned and operated the Rich Dad and Cashflow brands as of 2002. He also created Cashflow board and video games to teach adults and children business and financial concepts. Kiyosaki has authored more than 26 books, including Rich Dad Poor Dad, which has been translated into dozens of languages and, as of 2017, had sold nearly 40 million copies.

His advice centers on financial independence through passive income, “good debt” used as leverage, real estate, gold, silver, and, in later years, cryptocurrency. Kiyosaki has also attracted criticism and legal conflict. Rich Global LLC filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and was ordered to pay $23.7 million to The Learning Annex and its founder. He has been sued in a class action suit filed by seminar attendees, and his seminars and business practices have been examined in investigative reports by CBC, CBS News, and WTAE-TV. Still, his words continue to draw readers who are dissatisfied with conventional paths to money and work. His line, “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning,” captures the risk-taking attitude that has defined both his message and his career.