Robert T. Kiyosaki

Robert Toru Kiyosaki, born April 8, 1947, in Hilo, Territory of Hawaii, is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and author best known for the Rich Dad Poor Dad series of personal finance books. He grew up as the eldest child in a Japanese American family. His mother, Majorie Kiyosaki, was a nurse, and his father, Ralph Kiyosaki, was an educator who was once appointed Hawaii’s superintendent of schools. After an unsuccessful 1970 run for lieutenant governor on the Republican Party ticket, his father lost his job, used his savings to buy an ice-cream franchise that failed, and later worked for labor unions.

Kiyosaki attended Manoa Elementary School before moving to Hilo, then 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. After traveling on ships of Matson, Inc. as a midshipman, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps as an officer. He served as a helicopter gunship pilot during the Vietnam War and was once based in Kaneohe Bay. Those early chapters placed him near institutions, discipline, risk, and a family story that included both public service and business failure.

His business career included a number of starts, setbacks, and reinventions. In 1977, he started a company called Rippers, which marketed nylon and Velcro wallets; after it went bankrupt, he worked as a sales associate at Xerox until June 1978. His earlier businesses involving surfing bags with Velcro fasteners and T-shirts also went bankrupt. In the 1980s, he became a motivational speaker in San Diego and ran a course called Money and You, based on Erhard Seminars Training techniques. He had attended the course in 1974, and in 1984 Marshall Thurber transferred the business to Kiyosaki and D.C. Cordova. They expanded it beyond the United States, at one point reaching tens of thousands of students internationally. 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 the real estate business. In 1997, he founded Cashflow Technologies, 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 about business and financial concepts. He went on to author 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.

Kiyosaki’s teaching centers on the claim that financial independence can be reached through passive income, and that wealth cannot be achieved through school and a traditional job alone. He advocates using what he calls “good debt” as leverage to buy assets such as real estate, and he has also supported buying gold, silver, and cryptocurrency. His companies and seminars have drawn criticism, lawsuits, and investigative coverage by CBC, CBS News, and WTAE-TV; Rich Global LLC filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Still, his blunt language about money, assets, and education continues to attract readers. One of his quotes captures the appeal: “The single most powerful asset we all have is our mind.”