Crewe says he paid $199 to attend a “Rich Dad Education Stock Success 3-day Training program, which was supposed to provide training and education in trading stocks.”

But he says, “Defendants did not provide any training or education at the workshop. Instead, the sole purpose of the workshop was to up-sell ‘students’ into additional useless but more-expensive coursework and monitoring, which costs up to $64,899 per enrollee.”

Also sued are Cashflow Technologies, Tigrent Learning and two entities, two Rich Dad affiliates, and Robert Kiyosaki, who lives in or around Phoenix and allegedly “approved, authorized, either expressly or tacitly directed, ratified and/or participated in the acts complained of herein”.

Crewe says the defendants advertise their 3-day program as “‘designed to help you effectively pursue the many wealth-building opportunities provided by the stock and options market. You now have the entire Rich Dad education team to share their knowledge and experience in the markets with you. …

“Your 3-Day Training is comprehensive. It will cover everything from thinking like the rich to developing a personal plan and executing on that plan.”

But Crewe says, “Rich Dad Education workshops and training do not provide attendees with any financial education that leads to financial success or independence. Rather, they comprise an aggressive sales scam where attendees are encouraged to spend up to tens of thousands of dollars and encumber themselves with crippling debt to buy useless courses.

“Defendants’ sales scam is built on a misleading three-tiered sales pitch where customers are sold increasingly expensive training programs using pressure tactics and false promises concerning the programs’ ability to produce financial results for trainees.

Initially, customers are lured to attend one of two free workshops that are advertised as providing a financial education to attendees in a specific area of investing. However, the workshops do not provide any financial education, and their whole purpose is to sell attendees the paid 3-day training programs that are associated with those free classes. In turn, the purpose of the paid 3-day training programs is not to provide financial education and skills training as promised, but to sell attendees on additional ‘advanced’ training courses and personal mentoring. This is the laddered sales pitch, or up-sell, that forms the core of defendants’ business.

“In large part, the up-sell is executed by defendants’ training instructors who hold themselves out as experts in their investment field but have no discernible investing expertise or successful track record.”

The defendants are Rich Dad Education LLC, Rich Global LLC, Rich Dad Operating Co. LLC, Cashflow Technologies Inc. Tigrent Inc; Tigrent Learning Inc., Tigrent Brands Inc., and Robert Kiyosaki.

Crewe seeks costs and damages for breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trading Practices Act, unjust enrichment, negligent misrepresentation, and fraud.He is represented by Scott A. Bursor with Bursor & Fisher.

Jeff Yeager, who writes about frugality, is one of 12 personal finance experts featured in a contest on www.gobankingrates.com, a financial website.

Until Dec. 31, visitors to the site can vote once per day for their favorite from a list that, in addition to Yeager and Buffet, includes Suze Orman, who has a personal finance TV show, Dave Ramsey, a radio personality, and Robert Kiyosaki, creator of the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” books and seminars.

In a Wednesday interview, Yeager, who has dubbed himself “the Ultimate Cheapskate,” said he was startled to be selected to compete against the “rock stars of finance.”

“At first I thought it was some sort of scam,” he said.

Yeager has written two books about serious frugality he advocates paying less than a dollar per pound for groceries, and conducted a cross-country book tour by bicycle but didn’t think he had achieved enough attention to be in the top 12, he said.

“I’ve been named one of the top 12 financial gurus of 2011. It was a real surprise to me, not something you enter [to join] or anything. What surprised me most about it was some of the other names on the list … and then there’s me, the Ultimate Cheapskate. I don’t know how they selected me. My books are pretty popular, but I’ll be first to admit I’m the odd man out,” Yeager said.

He speculated that his selection is a “sign of the times,” a signal that the public’s focus is shifting from trying to make more money to conserving what they have.

Jaime Catmull, Gobankingrates.com spokeswoman, suggested something similar in an email.

“Jeff’s advice is something that is becoming more helpful and popular due to the economy, and we wanted to make sure to include him. We love that he is helping people to be happy in a down economy with his money-saving tips,” she wrote.

Yeager’s profile on the site features a photograph of him holding a giant salmon carcass over a pot in his kitchen. Already stripped of its more valuable filets, he bought three carcasses for $5 from a Washington, D.C., fish market, to be boiled for broth, he boasted.

Catmull asked him what set him apart from the other contestants, and his answer was, “I’m the only financial adviser who’s not been through bankruptcy. That’s not accurate, but Dave Ramsey has, and some of the others,” Yeager said.

On Wednesday evening, Yeager was in fourth place, behind financial adviser Ric Edelman and Ramsey, and well behind Kiyosaki, who had captured 61 percent of the vote, more than six times as much as any other candidate. Four thousand, five hundred ninety-two votes had been cast.

But Yeager’s 8 percent following outstrips his national fame, something he attributed to the devotion of his followers.

“I don’t begin to have this kind of fan base that these others have but my people feel very passionate about it. They believe, like me, it’s not just about money. It’s about happiness,” he said.

Among Yeager’s partisans in the poll’s comment section were Carol Wells, an artist from Texas, who wrote, using her Facebook account, that “I voted for Jeff Yeager because he delivers his helpful, practical advice like a wise uncle with a touch of humor. Very refreshing in this age of louder-faster-heavier.”

“I love Jeff Yeager! He is a much realer person to me than the rest of them! He doesn’t have any crazy formulas to follow or anything! I compare his philosophy to dieting! Eat less, move more, and you will lose weight! Jeff- If you don’t need it, don’t buy it!” wrote Jessica Marie Cline of Denver, Colo.

Yeager is urging friends and followers to vote and said hopes Southern Marylanders will “go vote for the cheap ticket” to push him over the top, he said.

But the reality is, there are many people, including highly educated ones, who work hard for money and yet plunge deep into debt with every dollar earned.

Some take the short cut by placing bets on the lottery. While millionaires have been made overnight, they can become bankrupt just as quickly if they lose all of their winnings to extravagant lifestyles and frivolous spending.

Even today, the downward spiral of the real estate markets has completely shattered the dreams of ordinary people hoping to create wealth. It is worse for those who have been driven out of their dream homes and into the “poor house” as a result of property foreclosure.

Luxury cars, too, have become liabilities as fuel prices increase drastically and people are more concerned about survival than seeing their dreams come true.

It is your knowledge about money that makes your dreams come true

While the recent news over the mis-selling of investment products highlights the importance of financial literacy, it was my personal experience with gold that taught me to take financial education seriously.

Gold was my first real investment as a young adult. I invested in gold before I began my foray into real estate. In 1972, at the age of twenty-five, I bought gold coins when the price of the commodity was approximately $70 an ounce. By 1980, gold was valued at $800 an ounce.

My caution gave way to temptation when rousing speculations about a gold rush spread like wildfire. Gold prices were expected to skyrocket to about $2,500 an ounce! That sparked a buying frenzy among investors, who bought piles of gold, even though they had never done so before.

Instead of selling my gold coins to make an instant profit, I waited, like everyone else, hoping their value would go up. That proved to be an unwise decision. About a year later, prices plunged below $500 an ounce and I had no choice but to sell my last coin. The situation never improved and the value of gold finally bottomed out at $250 an ounce in 1999. In retrospect, many who speculated in gold when it was valued at $800 an ounce, lost huge amounts of money.

Although I was unable to take advantage of the high price of gold, that experience taught me priceless lessons about investing. I realised it wasn’t gold that was going to make me rich. It was the knowledge concerning that asset that ultimately determined if a person became rich or poor.

Having the best golf equipment does not make you the next Jack Nicklaus.

A friend of mine is crazy about golf.

He spends thousands of dollars a year on the latest high-tech golf clubs and nearly every new gadget that arrives on the market. Despite being a fervent fan of the sport, he has never invested a single cent to improve his game. Not surprisingly, my friend’s golf performance remains the same today, although he owns some of the best equipment money can buy. Had he invested some money to upgrade his skills, he would certainly have risen from average to great.

In fact, that same crazy phenomenon occurs in the game of money. Billions of people have thrown their hard-earned savings into assets such as stocks and real estate, but few have ever invested in information that would help to improve their financial knowledge.

A powerful lesson to take home

Many believe that “only the rich become richer”, but that is not true.

Always remember this: it is not gold, real estate, stocks, mutual funds, businesses, or money that make you rich. It is what you KNOW – your financial IQ – about gold, real estate, stocks, hard work, and so on, that will make you rich!

Three of Robert’s books, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Rich Dad’s CASHFLOW Quadrant, and Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing, have simultaneously been on the top 10 best-seller lists of The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the New York Times.

In this Q&A interview with Alex Pirouz, Robert Kiyosaki discusses what it takes to be successful in business, the No 1 skill every entrepreneur should learn and the five qualities required by every entrepreneur in order to become successful.

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?

It takes ambition and the desire to truly master the art and science of becoming a successful entrepreneur. And in my opinion ambition is far more important than brains, because if you have ambition you can always hire good brains.

What is your number one rule of thumb in business?

The more people we serve, the more money we make. It’s as simple as that

Do you think it is easier now than when you first started?

Well, first of all, it’s never easy; but in this day and age technology and the internet have made access to global markets a lot more accessible.

What is the number one skill an entrepreneur should learn?

I think it’s raising capital for their business. In today’s world you have to be so damn good for people to give you money, you need to be proven because there are simply too many unethical people out there. Most entrepreneurs do not know how to do this and are therefore limited in how much they can grow.

Do you think there are generic qualities required to be a successful entrepreneur?

Me and Donald (Donald Trump) have put together, based on our experiences, five qualities that all successful entrepreneurs require which combined gives them the Midas Touch. The first quality every entrepreneur needs to possess is strength of character. In business, many times an entrepreneur is tested, and as you become more and more successful the more you are tested, so how you show up as a person is a good indication of the type of entrepreneur you are.

The next quality is the ability to stay focused. F.O.C.U.S means Follow One Course Until Successful – the emphasis here being on Until Successful. Most entrepreneurs fail because they lack the strength of character and the ability to stay on course until successful.

The third quality is relationships. Whenever you find a struggling business, a bad marriage, or an investment gone bad, you will find a bad partner. This does not mean the person is a bad person. It just means they are a bad partner, the wrong person for the task. Working with the right partners is essential to becoming a successful entrepreneur because at the end of the day you can’t do a good deal with a bad partner.

The fourth quality is an entrepreneur’s ability to build a brand. Many entrepreneurs work hard building a business, but only a few build a brand. Building your business into a brand is essential in developing the Midas Touch. For example, the Coca-Cola brand is worth much more than all the building plants, equipment, and capital goods making up the business.

The fifth and final quality comes down to getting the little things done. Too many entrepreneurs think small and fail to focus on the little things that count.

What should an entrepreneur look for when bringing on board a new business partner?

In a partner you are looking for someone with synergy, a person who shares the same values and mission, and can bring something to the table that you do not have.

What is the number one skill you possess that has allowed you to succeed in business?

I would have to say personal development. It has taught me to be truthful to myself and other people. I always seek professional help from my list of advisors and occasionally I see a therapist because to be an entrepreneur you have to be nuts.

Why did you decide to be an entrepreneur?

I decided to be an entrepreneur because I didn’t want to be limited by how much I could earn and essentially I didn’t want to be poor. Every year my wife and I set goals on how much money we want and over time we have realised that to earn more you have to give more.

lex Pirouz is the founder of RIDC Advisory Pty Ltd. A Business and Sales Advisory firm partnering with Australia’s largest and fastest growing companies to further increase their revenue.

Sadly, our government is the circus, and many people are starting to get hungry.

Yesterday, the house has passed a compromise bill to raise the debt ceiling that has no details and opens the way for a potential historic lobbying effort as the rich and powerful get ready to fight for the scraps of government funding.

But I don’t need to point out how dysfunctional our government is to you. The whole world knows by now.

Instead, I’m going to focus on another dysfunction—the college education system.

Huffington Post, reports that in an effort to pay for college, many young women are exchanging sex for tuition with dirty, old, rich men.

The article chronicles a number of young women who, desperate for a degree, find “sugar daddies” to pay their way through college in exchange for money to pay for tuition.

These girls say they’re not prostitutes, but as Professor Barb Brets says, “These college women [don’t] see themselves as sex workers, but women doing straight-up prostitution often don’t see themselves that way either. Drawing that line and making that distinction may be necessary psychologically, but in material facts it’s quite a blurry line.”

Most people with a brain know that selling sex for money is prostitution. It’s sad to know that young girls think a degree is so important that they need to sell their dignity and their body to get a college education.

But what is even sadder is that our universities have prostituted education, raising the costs of tuition and fees well beyond inflation. According to the College Board, tuition and fee costs have skyrocketed by 130 percent over the last 20 years while incomes have been stagnant. According to the same article, two-thirds of college students graduate with college debt averaging over $23,000.

This has given birth to “pimps” like Sallie Mae, who give loans out like candy to students who don’t understand the sacred cow of go to school is a lie. These loans are big business, pulling in millions and millions in profits for investors and saddling our young people with debt and useless degrees. In a sick twist of irony, I wonder if any of the people getting rich off school loans are turning around to use that money to pay for sex with college girls who want a degree.

Simply said, students are paying more to earn less. With incomes stagnant, the higher cost of debt payments reduces income.

For many, the cost of college isn’t worth it. And it certainly isn’t worth prostituting yourself for.

To me, the fact that young girls are selling themselves to pay for college is proof that financial lies and myths are not only wrong, but also dangerous. Our young people feel the pressure to go to college in order to get a good job. It’s one of the worst sacred cows of money. You don’t need a college education. You need a proper education, and that’s rarely found in the hallowed halls of our nation’s universities.

Like all sacred cows, “go to school” needs to be shot.

This is not to say that I’m anti-education, or even anti-college. But I am anti-ignorance. For some professions, college is important. If you want to be a doctor, you need college. If you want to be a teacher, you need college. If you want to be a lawyer, you need college. You’ll have to decide whether the cost of college is worth the benefit of your chosen field.

But for many people, college is simply a bad investment. The benefit of a degree isn’t worth the return it provides. Instead, explore alternative forms of education. For instance, if you want to start a business, study money and find a mentor.

At the end of the day, one of the biggest educations you learn as you grow up is that most people don’t want to help you. They want to take your money. That’s not bad. It’s business. But you need to be educated and understand what a good investment is for you.

Don’t let the system pimp you.

Borrowing the open from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Kiyosaki uses the phrase, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” to illustrate his belief that opportunity always exists, even when the typical barometers of growth and economic vitality suggest otherwise. (For the record, the line that follows is also telling: “It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”)

“I hate to say it but it has been the best three years of my life,” says best-selling author and financial literacy advocate Robert Kiyosaki. “I have never made so much money – America is on sale.”

This self-proclaimed “cash-flow guy” prefers investments that “throw money in my pocket every month.” He’s focused on real estate, oil, gold, silver, and natural gas. Given his belief that “commercial real estate is done and individual real estate is a mess,” Kiyosaki says 300-800 unit apartment complexes are “the hottest part of the market.”

When asked if dividend paying blue chip stocks meet his criteria for value and cash flow, the native Hawaiian says no, and refers to a cyclical prediction from a previous book that has called for a bottom in 2016. In the meantime, he has no interest in owning shares of Exxon Mobil (XOM) or BP (BP). Instead he prefers “buy private oil drilling projects, where the entrepreneur and I are good friends.”

Clearly, a man of his means, who has access to and writes books with Donald Trump, will have a different array of investment choices and opportunities available to him than the average Joe. For us mortals, his advice is 3-fold: Educate yourself, be smarter, and seek cash flow.

Kiyosaki has been a gold bug since his time in Vietnam 40 years ago. “If I have cash and I can’t figure a way to put it into real estate or my business, I hold it in gold and silver,” he says.

For those holding out hope that Ben Bernanke and the Fed will inject more dollars into the monetary system and markets, Kiyosaki says you’ve got it all wrong. “The Fed just printed like $4trillion dolllars in three years,” he says. “That wipes out the purchasing power of your money and your labor. So I think the Fed and the Treasury have basically ripped off the American worker.”

If he’s right, perhaps it’s time for a policy re-branding and would suggest, “Quantitative Teasing.”

But I did.

My parents divorced before I was 2, and both remarried. My father, who lived across town, was my “Rich Dad.” My stepfather was my “Poor Dad.” Let me tell you about them and how they each affected my views toward money, business and life.

My Rich Dad

My father started his business in college. He sold stolen records, and when that didn’t pay the bills, he hustled others for money at the local pool hall. He was apparently a real shark at billiards and pocket billiards. Mom tells the story of the time he played Willie Mosconi (prettiest blue eyes she’d ever seen) and lost. But apparently he held his own.

When he graduated, he moved away from the hot vinyl market and into a wholesale business selling posters and incense (they were big in the ’70s). After cornering the Farrah Fawcett poster market, he upgraded to selling jewelry from Mexico. From Mexican jewelry he moved on to gold jewelry and eventually diamonds.

Interestingly, he never left the posters and incense business. I spent my summers rolling posters and putting them in the clear plastic sleeves you’re probably familiar with. We’d add a label identifying the poster, and they were ready for delivery to Kmart and his other retail customers.

I can also remember going on a sales call with my Rich Dad. It was a jewelry store in The Continent, a then fashionable outdoor mall north of Columbus, Ohio, that has since declined precipitously. I can still remember the jewelry store owner looking me in the eye and saying that my father was the best salesmen he’d ever met. If only I had inherited that skill!

My Rich Dad made a lot of money. He spent a lot, too. He and my stepmother lived in a very nice home east of Columbus. They had an in-ground pool put in. They owned a condo in Florida. My father drove a Mercedes 450 SL when he wasn’t driving his 1976 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. My stepmother drove a Mercedes 450 SLC.

Rich Dad was the first to own a VCR, at least that I had ever seen. It was a massive box by today’s standards. He also had the first car phone I’d ever seen. In the 1970s, a car phone involved installing significant equipment in the trunk of the car. He belonged to a very nice country club, had expensive jewelry, and wore custom suits.

He was also extremely unhappy and died in a car accident at the age of 39.

My Poor Dad

My Poor Dad worked at the gas company. He never went to college, but was a natural-born artist. He could paint or draw anything, and was an excellent photographer and videographer. And he was a fisherman. A bass fisherman. Atournament-attending?, power-boat-buying, depth-finder-using, plastic-worm-jigging? fisherman.

He had multiple, massive tackle boxes that when expanded must have had a wingspan of 10 feet. At $2 to $3 a pop, his collection of lures was easily worth thousands of dollars. And his graphite rods and smooth spinning reels numbered in the dozens.

A day on the lake with my Poor Dad went something like this:

• 4 a.m. Wake up, stumble out of bed, eat eggs and bacon that my mom fixed, and be on the road by 4:45 (which was always late by his standards).
• 5:30 a.m. Boat in the water, helmets on (not kidding), and full throttle with a Johnson 150 horsepower outboard beast. If you’ve never experienced this, I can sum it all up in two words — freakin’ cold!
• 5:33 a.m. Arrive at THE fishing hole. We know it’s THE fishing hole because the previous winter, my Poor Dad and I spent countless hours photographing the bottom of the lake. Again, not kidding.
• 5:38 a.m. We spend 12 minutes trying to get my lure out of a tree. At $3 a pop, we would have spent 12 hours if need be.
• 6:25 a.m. Having seen absolutely no sign of any fish at THE fishing hole, we power up and zoom off to another fishing hole.
• 3:32 p.m. I haven’t made a cast in two hours. I sit wondering what my Rich Dad is doing at the country club.
• 7 p.m. We’ve caught nothing all day. With live bait, we would have had a boat full of fish. But we never used live bait. Somehow live bait gave us an unfair advantage over the fish. We pack up and head home.

The reason I’ve regaled you with this story is so you’ll understand the next step in my Poor Dad’s journey. In the late ’70s, he opened a fishing and archery store in north Columbus. He didn’t quit his job at the gas company, but he did borrow against our home to fund the business. He also bought the store the business was in.

During the summers, I often ran the store. We would go entire days without a single customer. I vividly recall watching the Bjorn Borg vs. John McEnroe epic battle at Wimbledon on a small black-and-white TV while potential customers zoomed by without giving us so much as a glance.

In large part because of the poor economic times of the late ’70s and early ’80s, the business failed. And because my Poor Dad borrowed against our home, bankruptcy and foreclosure hung over our heads. And you’re not going to believe what kept us from bankruptcy and foreclosure — my Rich Dad’s death.

When my dad died, Social Security sent me a monthly check until I graduated from high school. That check each month went to pay for my Poor Dad’s business loan that was secured by our home. Ironic, I know.

Lessons learned

In the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” Kiyosaki describes what he learned from his Rich Dad. But he seemed not to learn anything from his Poor Dad. I learned a lot from both of mine:

• Money doesn’t buy happiness. We’ve all heard this before, but you can’t buy contentment. My Rich Dad taught me this, as did my Poor Dad. In many respects, my Poor Dad was more content than my Rich Dad.
• Poverty can rob you of happiness. While money can’t buy happiness, poverty can rob you of contentment. While we never slept on the street, there were plenty of times where we had no money, no food in the house, and no gas in the car. We had our electricity and gas turned off, and lived paycheck to paycheck. I vowed never to live that way if I could help it.
• Take “smart” risks. In many ways I respect my Poor Dad for taking the risks he did when he opened his tackle store. The problem is he put his ambitions above his family. Taking risks is part of life, but don’t bet the farm. Yes, we’ve all heard of people who risked everything and it paid off. What we don’t hear about are the thousands who did the same thing and lost everything. If you have a family, they come before your ambition.
• Save money. Perhaps above all else, both my Rich Dad and my Poor Dad taught me the importance of saving. They taught me this lesson by showing me the consequences of living without an emergency fund or meaningful retirement account.

In the end, my Rich Dad and Poor Dad both gave me a healthy dose of perspective. The difficult times made me stronger in many ways. My childhood prepared me to be a better father and husband. And it prepared me to handle money more responsibly. Do I wish I had an easier childhood? Perhaps. But it wasn’t all bad, and it prepared me to handle the difficult things that life throws at us from time to time.

How has your childhood affected the way you handle money?

The native trick is to find a tree with a small hole in the tree trunk and place fruits or nuts inside it. What happens then? A monkey comes along, puts its fist in the hole and grabs onto the fruit or nuts, narrates the author.

“The monkey’s fist, now clenched and filled with the fruit or nuts, cannot be withdrawn from the hole, trapping the monkey.  Rather than let go of the fruits or nuts, the monkey twists and turns, pulls and tugs, but refuses to let go…”

The sobering lesson from this tale is that humans are similar to monkeys, clinging to job security, possessions and money, as Kiyosaki frets. He notes that, due to a lack of financial education, like the trapped monkey, most people will spend their lives as wage slaves of their employers and tax slaves of the government.

KNOWLEDGE ADVANTAGE

Therefore, if you are ready to let go of the nuts and fruits in the form of old and obsolete ideas, the first advantage you must gain is knowledge, because your level of financial education determines what you do with your money and how you invest it, the author advises. He begins by cautioning that financial training often masquerades as financial education.

“Just as Pavlov trained his dogs to salivate even if there was nothing to salivate about, millions of highly educated people are trained rather than educated when it comes to the subject of money.” Mindlessly sending your money to complete strangers for managing the portfolio is not the end result of good financial education; it is the end result of dog training, chides Kiyosaki.

In the world of money and financial education, ‘cash flow’ is the single most important word, he emphasises. “Cash is always flowing. It is either flowing in, or it is flowing out. For most people, they work hard and the cash flows out. True financial education trains you to have cash flowing in.”

The author reminds that the people who lost money during the financial crisis were people who invested primarily for capital gains. Because such people bet on the price of something going up; and when the market crashed, their wealth crashed, and for many, their net worth went negative, he recounts.

FIRST PRESENT

An instructive section in the book is ‘Kim’ commentary,’ where the author’s wife Kim shares her insights with the readers. “My very first gift from Robert when we were first dating was not a nice piece of jewellery or my favourite perfume,” she reminisces. Incredible it may sound, but her first present was a seminar on accounting, through a game played for two days.

“My mind-set shifted when I realised that, in order to become financially independent and free, I needed to focus on acquiring assets, not income,” Kim writes. If you wonder ‘why,’ her answer is that focusing on income means you have to keep working harder and harder to make more and more money and may be one day you will have enough money so that you no longer have to work.

“Shifting my focus to acquiring assets takes the attention off me working forever for money and puts it on my money working forever to make money. This made all the difference.” A book that can make a definitive contribution to the millions around the world who have been taught only ‘to go to school, work hard, pay taxes, live below your means, buy a house, get out of debt, and die poor.’

Kiyosaki has built his empire around financial education and books. He first shot to prominence following the success of his Rich Dad, Poor Dad series of books, which have held a top spot on the famed New York Times list for over six years. Trump is a magnate thanks to his property and casino interests and reality television show The Apprentice.

In Sydney this week, I spoke to Kiyosaki about how business owners can acquire the Midas touch.

Don’t go to school!

Fond of stirring the pot, Kiyosaki says that most entrepreneurs don’t get rich because they go to school

“Schools don’t teach you to be entrepreneurs, they teach you to be employees,” says Kiyosaki. “They also teach you not to make mistakes at school. But the only way I learnt to walk, or ride a bicycle or be a pilot is to fall down a couple of times. Most people that go to school come out risk averse, and rather than becoming entrepreneurs, they become bureaucrats.

“A bureaucrat is somebody who has managerial power but they have no fiscal risk. If they make a bad decision, they don’t pay for it.”

Be a generalist not a specialist

Kiyosaki also warns against specialising. “What makes a person successful is not mono-culture or mono-disciplines, you have to be a synergy of different skills sets,” he says.

He also warns that if you want to stay small, you should aim to be the smartest guy on the block. Drawing a parallel with accountants and lawyers, Kiyosaki says business owners in these professions rarely get rich because they are too specialised.

As a former combat pilot, Kiyosaki is not short on military analogies – in his book and in conversation.

“In the military, we’re taught to be generalists, not specialists. When I sit down with my team, I have  accountants, attorneys … IT guys, graphic designers … I operate as a team,” he says. “In actuality, being a great entrepreneur means I can be the laziest guy and I can know the least. But I have to have a smart team.”

There is no doubt that Kiyosaki is smart, despite the fact he points out he flunked school. He also makes the point that you need the right people around you if you really want to make it big. “Because I was never smart, I have respect for people who are smart. A lot of time, I meet A-students and they think they are the smartest guys on planet earth. And that lack of respect will keep them small.”

The five elements of the Midas touch

Since all King Midas had to do was reach out his hand to touch something in order for it to turn to gold, Kiyosaki extends this metaphor in his book by associating the thumb and four fingers with key factors for entrepreneurial success.

1. Thumb: Strength of character.
2. Index finger: Focus, which he says is also an abbreviation for “Follow one course until successful”.
3. Middle finger: Brand, that is, what you stand for.
4. Ring finger: Relationships, surround yourself with good people and remember that you can’t do a good deal with bad partners
5. Little finger: Little things count. That is, do the little things that other entrepreneurs don’t in order to set yourself apart.

The book discusses each of these factors, with perspectives from both Kiyosaki and Trump. It’s for entrepreneurs who want to think big. If you want to break free from the “job” you’ve created for yourself, Kiyosaki’s concepts are not for small business owners that want to stay small.

The ultimate salesmen and a master storyteller, Kiyosaki built an empire starting with the story of his two dads: a rich dad, and a poor dad. Rich Dad, Poor Dad became a runaway success and one of the most successful financial education books ever published.

Kiyosaki points out that a spirit of selling has been fundamental to this success. “I’m a best-selling author, I’m not the best writing author. When I am writing, I am selling constantly,” he says. “If you can’t sell, you’re never going to be an entrepreneur.”

Working from your new book’s title, what’s your definition of the Midas touch?
Donald Trump: We are specifically pointing out the skill set needed to be a successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are crucial today because they create jobs. People who can successfully incorporate the skills and imagination required to create new businesses are significant to the current economic landscape on several levels. The job forecast is greatly improved when jobs are literally created by someone who has had the fortitude and vision to bring something new to the table. I’ve provided thousands of jobs and continue to do so, and I know the process involved. Midas Touch explains this process, and we hope we will inspire others to become entrepreneurs.

Robert Kiyosaki: The Midas touch is also called alchemy—when you can touch something and turn it into gold. I’ve had my share of bad luck and expect I will continue to have setbacks and challenges. If you can turn bad luck into good luck, that’s the Midas touch. Right now, I see a lot of opportunity out there. Do you have the skill set to see opportunity, pursue it and make it work? I “drilled for oil” in publishing. I struck gold in the brand Rich Dad—in discovering that there was a huge mass of people who wanted to hear that message. The guys behind search engines like Google struck massive IT oil. FedEx struck oil; Facebook struck oil. Perceiving opportunity is part of the Midas touch.

The book’s subtitle says that most entrepreneurs don’t get rich—why not?
D.T.: Very often I meet people with great ideas but they lack the tenacity required to make it, and sometimes they lack the skills. You have to know everything you can about what you’re doing. Not everything works every time. So you have to just keep at it and never give up. I’ve seen people who give up too soon. There are risks involved, of course, so the person also has to have the ability to live with that risk. Some people don’t have that in their personality, and some people fail to develop it.

R.K.: Over a 10-year period, 99 out of 100 new entrepreneurs will fail. Only one will be left standing as others get pushed out of the market or burn out from working so hard. It’s really sad. I recently stopped into a coffee shop at a resort where a father and daughter were working. He had lost his job and put all his money into this shop, thinking he would do the same thing that made Starbucks so successful. The shop was empty. And there was a reason for that: there was no foot traffic. He had good coffee – but a poor location. It breaks my heart when people take the risk to become an entrepreneur and lose everything. It’s not like being an employee where you’re sheltered from the storm. And success doesn’t make it easier, it just makes you smarter. If you were not getting smarter, your business would fail anyway.
How are you adjusting your strategies and/or message in the current economy?
D.T.: My theory is that there are always opportunities. They may be more difficult to find, but they are there. Research is important and one needs to be wary. However, I’m a cautious optimist and I think it’s best to focus on the solution instead of the problem. The current economy is undoubtedly difficult but to focus solely on the difficulties is not a good solution or approach. It’s also a great time to become innovative—that’s what’s needed. My strategy is to be on the lookout for opportunities. They’re there.

R.K.: There’s always a classic battle between capitalism and socialism. Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices. As a capitalist, I’m not looking for more money. I’m figuring out how to provide a better product at better prices. We’re entrepreneurs; we just keep innovating and  producing.

Creating jobs is a hot-button issue these days: how would you accomplish that?
D.T.: I am accomplishing it. I have a huge development in Scotland, Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, which is employing thousands of people. I have a new winery in Virginia and several new golf courses in the U.S. that employ many people. The Celebrity Apprentice is entering the twelfth Apprentice series, and the Trump Organization is going strong. The Hotel Collection has expanded and continues to win awards, so we are moving forward in many ways. We create jobs—a lot of them—and I’m proud of that.

R.K.: That’s all I’m doing right now, because every time I buy a property, I put workers into it. We’re building 2,000 new apartment houses, so we’re putting people to work there, and when the building is finished, we’ll put in management teams. Today, the IT team at Rich Dad is at Stanford University putting in a huge international web game that will teach entrepreneurship all over the world. Our projects spur the economy in our very small way. We’ve got over 4,000 people working for us. I’m an entrepreneur; my business is to invest in America.

What’s your next project?
D.T.: I’m working on several things now, the course in Scotland will be open in July 2012 and the new Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto will be opening in January 2012. The Trump Vineyard Estates are being revitalized and that’s a few of the things I have going on. As for projects with Robert, we have another idea for a book, as this is a good time for helping out the economic situation. We enjoy working together and it’s good for everyone. Finding the time is the only problem! But there will most likely be something in the works before too long.

R.K.: I think the next breakthrough in electronic gaming will be in education. We’re creating an electronic web game that teaches entrepreneurship to everyone from children to adults. We anticipate a launch date in spring of next year. It’s a magical project. We do need financial and entrepreneurial education, and games are the best way to teach it. Working with Donald on Midas Touch has reminded us of the power of experience and persistence. If sharing our experiences and delivering messages and education that can move the needle in terms of economic growth, then we have our work cut out for us. As Donald mentioned, we have another idea in the works and our collaboration over the past decade has been fantastic. We both see huge opportunities in the global marketplace and I don’t expect that either of us will slow up, let along stop building our brands and our businesses, in the months ahead.