Wisdom of Rich Dad

Kingley Kobo, AfricaNews reporter in Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Failure is in the process of making success. Those who avoid failure also avoid success – Robert Kiyosaki.

The one thing nobody wants to hear is failure. The one thing everybody wants to hold is success. Life ushers us this cheerful desire to keep fuelling our efforts of attaining an enviable summit.

But how many of you really know that success and failure are sisters clothed in identical garment, only with differing colours and fragrance?

These two forces abide in same household and mostly step out onto the street with same rhythm of stride. They ride in tandem, calling out to clients at the same time, but with unbalanced volume of sound.

Success screams louder and lures more people into her wagon, whereas failure endures her unpopularity waiting to recover those who will eventually drop off the wagon of success. These two sisters love themselves as much as their clients hate to be seen together.

In fact, failure doesn’t exist all by itself, it is the back side of success – I mean the dark part which is not affected by the light and glamour that splash the face of success. But for one instance, if success spins around on its axis to expose her back, the number of scars failure has written there would tell you how long both have befriended.

I interviewed an oil magnate recently. When I asked if he was a successful man, he said, “No, I’m not a successful man. I’m only an experienced man.”

What did he mean? I peered deeply into his round, red eyes and asked, “What do you mean by experience?” He coughed, downed his cognac and said, “Experience is a big sack containing dry bones of failure, tied at the mouth with a shining stout cord of success.”

Dry bones of failure

So, every success sits atop a sack jammed with dry bones of failure? Hm-m! But who wants to make a collection of such dry bones in order to achieve success? You don’t know when you do really. Your ambitions throw you out into a route guarded by success and failure, and as you soldier on, you seem to follow only the pull of success while frowning at the slightest whispering from failure.

Don’t forget both are watching you, calculating you and listening to your heartbeat, and are set to embrace you, somehow.

Your triumph depends on your steadfastness and not the fear not to fail. If you dread failure, you’ll appear too frail to be able to stand before the throne of success.

Take to heart that failure, like mistake, doesn’t wholly exist, she’s simply the shortage of success – or a cup half full of success!

Focus on attaining success but if you come short, you’ve just added one dry bone to the sack you’ll someday be tying up with that gold-plated cord of success.

We all want to know how to make money, so the question is – why isn’t it easier? We all know time is money, but we have no time and have no money! What on earth is wrong?

Let’s use Robert Kiyosaki’s model. He simplifies the money-making world into four basic categories of types of activity.

1. People who work for others and exchange their freedom – their hours – for money. We know that as a JOB. Just Over Broke and living from pay check to pay check. Why do you suppose it is that the employer knows how to make more money than the employee? We can also conclude that within this group there are people who work VERY hard. Now, if hard work were the secret to success, then manual laborers would be higher on the list. NO, hard work does not earn money.

2. There is another group – the employers who have people working for them. There is a snag though. Many employers find they work extremely long hours and they belong to the business – having very little, or no, free time to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

3. The next is the self employed person. They also have the issue of trading dollars for hours. How many of them can walk away from the business and see it prosper in their absence? See what I mean.

All three of these groups suffer the old and dramatic problem of hours versus money. Some have lots of time and no money. Some have lots of money, but no time. None of the above has both time and money.

4. Group four has it all. These are the people who invest. They invest in such a way that in their presence, or in their absence, they still make money. Now that is living free! Typically, they own real estate, have investments; but a new breed has been born with the internet explosion.

There are many entrepreneurs who make a very nice living using automated systems on the internet. These systems mean that the person can work a few hours a week, or a month and still make a very nice living.

Most of them work from a home office; no commuting for them, and NO boss! Many work in network marketing. Now, I know, network marketing has a tarnished image, but why? Because, so many tried and failed… Let’s get real now. How many new businesses fail? 95% fail. So, if 95% of people try network marketing and fail, why is the system maligned? It’s NO different from reality in business. The reason may be that people think only the guys at the top get all the money. Wait a minute! Who gets all the money in any business? The guys at the top! So, again I ask why network marketing should be badly thought of? I say, that if the company has good training and repeat sales products, then go for it!

I would also add that both Kiyosaki and Donald Trump speak highly of the concept of network marketing. Guess what my preferred business choice is.

You got it – network marketing. And do you know why?

- Low start up cost
- Low fixed costs
- Flexible hours
- Passive income
- Unlimited potential

It is true that income is slow to come at first it is not usually fast money – but what if we can show how to make money from Day One?

What is the downside to Network Marketing? Many, many people suffer initially because of high rejection. They chase people and hear too many NOs. And they spend fortunes buying leads and advertising. The problem is in the posture – trying to sell family and friends on an idea. But people don’t like to be sold. They like to buy an idea. It’s the selling that creates the rejection.

Due to the country hyperinflati0n rate of over 231,000,000% a year, the financial authorities were forced to release larger and larger bills in order to help people buy the simplest things without carrying bricks of bills with them. When the $10,000,000 bill was released early this year, it was worth about $4 US, but it soon became as worthless as the previous bills and now you can find the 100 billion dollars bill which you can use to buy 3 eggs.

When people want to go to a restaurant they are again forced to carry mountains of money with them. This all began in the year 2000, when president Mugabe came to power and transformed the whole country into a giant agricultural field. Now the inflation is through the roof, 80% of the population is unemployed and a third of the population has left the country. At least they can take pride in the fact that they have the highest denomination bills in the world.

500 million note, printed in May 2008…..everybody can have it….maybe just nice for 1 breakfast/lunch (equal to about USD 2).

$10,000,000 bill was released early this year, it was worth about $4 US.

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Did you know that very few people become millionaires in their lifetimes, let alone EARN a million in just a few years? If you haven’t already read the New York Times best-selling book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki, I highly recommend it. In this book, Mr. Kiyosaki says the only way to become wealthy is to go into business for yourself: “Mind your own business,” as he puts it.

“The greatest entrepreneurial opportunities will be in distributing rather than in manufacturing products.”

Dr. Charles King, Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois, and entrepreneur Tim Sales (who generated revenues in excess of $25 million annually from 24 countries) teach an Accredited Course called, “How to Recognize a Professional Business Model When You See One.” This is what they had to say:

“There are four principles of a business that are essential:
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In Accountancy an asset is defined as ‘‘a resource controlled by the entity as a result of past events and from which future economic benefits are expected to flow to the entity.’’

A liability also defined as “present obligation of the entity arising from past events, the settlement of which is expected to result in an outflow from the entity of resources embodying economic benefits’’.

These are the classroom definitions and technical for those in the Accountancy field and these definitions are mostly related to assets owned and liabilities owed by corporate entities.

Human beings, as we are, we also have personal assets and liabilities and we can define them in our personal ways that would give us better understanding. This would help us take proper personal financial decisions.

Now let’s look the definitions given by one renown American Entrepreneur, Writer and Teacher, Robert Kiyosaki. Roberts defines an asset ‘‘as anything that puts money into your pocket and a liability as anything that takes away money from your pocket’’.

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~ Tom Wheelwright ~

My good friend, Robert Kiyosaki, recently posted an interesting opinion on the USA Today blog at http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/02/column-we-need-two-school-systems-.html#uslPageReturn.  In his blog post, Robert suggests two school systems, one for entrepreneurs and one for those who wish to be employees.

The number of comments already to this post is astounding. Clearly a reflection that the public sees challenges with the current school system. Personally, I like the idea of a parallel school system for those who want to be entrepreneurs. I, for one, would have loved going to a school for entrepreneurs. My earliest memories are of business ventures my friends and I started.

For the record, I always did well in school. For the most part, an “A” student. I liked school. I’m one of those who found reading enjoyable and didn’t mind listening to the teachers. I took the very traditional route of going to school, then going to college and then getting a masters degree. My family was not wealthy. I paid for my own education, including graduate school.

Still, I would have loved attending a school for entrepreneurs. I am an entrepreneur, having successfully started and run two businesses in my lifetime – a CPA firm and a financial education company. I can’t say that I learned anything about building or running a company in school. I had to learn it the hard way – trial and error. And I had lots of help from good friends and mentors along the way who were encouraging and supportive and willing to take the time to teach me with no expectation of payment or reward.

One of the things I like most about Robert’s idea is that the instructors would work for free. I would like to be on that faculty. Heck, I was an adjunct professor at Arizona State University for fourteen years and it was practically for free, the pay was so low. I didn’t do it for the pay. In fact, I don’t know of any adjunct professors who do it for the money. (Adjuncts get paid less than janitors.) We do it because we love to teach and want to share our knowledge with the students.

I, for one, applaud Robert’s idea of creating a second school system. This is creative thinking and we definitely need an alternative to the current public school system. It would be ideal to overhaul the current system, but given the power of the AEA, I don’t see it happening any time soon.

Let me know what you think about a school for entrepreneurs.