My thoughts on Robert Kiyosaki

What's up you guys, it's Graham here. So if you're anything like me, you've noticed an unusually high amount of Robert Kiyosaki videos being recommended right now on YouTube. Like, it seems as though every single time I open up the homepage, there's a fresh new Robert Kiyosaki video just waiting for me, glaring at me right in the face, just begging for me to watch it. So naturally, I go and click on one of them to give it a chance, and then that's YouTube's signal to all of a sudden open up the floodgates and start showing me a bajillion other Robert Kiyosaki videos exactly like it.

But besides my fascination for why Robert Kiyosaki just seemed to have randomly appeared out of nowhere on YouTube, gathering millions of views between more than a dozen completely unrelated YouTube channels that have featured him over the last two months, I'll admit I was curious about what he had to say, or potentially what he had to sell. So naturally, I did what I'm best at, which is researching these things and watching a lot of YouTube videos. From that, I spent the last two hours watching almost every single Robert Kiyosaki video that was being recommended by the YouTube algorithm to get to the bottom of this and figure out what's going on.

And that, of course, is what I did, and this is what I found. I first want to preface this video by saying that I really enjoyed his 1997 classic "Rich Dad Poor Dad." Reading that book as a young teenager completely changed my outlook on the aspect of buying assets, not liabilities, and getting your money to work for you. He was able to articulate that in such an effective way that it's very easy to see why that book was such a big hit.

And now, 22 years after that book was published, we start seeing him on YouTube a lot. First of all, it's hard not to notice that in every single one of his videos, he does his best to polarize the rich versus the poor, as if they're two totally separate species, with the poor being the lowest form of human existence. Just check out all of these titles: "Do This Now or Continue to Be Poor," or "The Speech That Broke the Internet!!!," or "Keep Them Poor!!!," or "You Will Never Be Poor Again. Start Doing This Today! Rich Versus Poor Mindset."

Okay, now I will admit titles like that on YouTube get clicks. There's a reason why all of the YouTubers out there, including myself, make funny faces in the YouTube thumbnails, and then combine that with a title that leaves you half scratching your head, half wanting to figure out the answer to what's keeping you poor. Like, if you go and title a video "The History of Wealth Inequality in the United States," no one is going to watch that. But on the other hand, if you title the video "Do This Now or Continue to Be Poor," then yeah, I'm going to click on it!

The school makes students poor! PhD expense report! Helpless and desperate. The riskiest thing you can do is go to school, learn from a fake future, put your money with a financial planner, work hard to make money, and pay a lot of taxes. Like, I don't even know where to begin with this! Am I watching the introduction to a Michael Bay horror movie or a knockoff Breaking Bad series?

But thankfully, it doesn't take long to figure out that within the seven minutes of the video, the real takeaway I got from it that you need to do right now otherwise you'll be poor is to buy his book "Fake Money, Fake Teachers, Fake Assets." Because the entire video never really specified any actionable advice beyond what you could get from a brand-new entrepreneur Instagram page who posts hustle memes all day. Not to mention that there were some very imaginative assumptions made in the video, like this one: some of the biggest fake douches are all those financial planners.

But telling him, you know, to save money, why would you save? My time? The government's printing money! Not to mention this one: "And you look at all the pensions of the schoolteachers, firefighters, all guys with 401ks—they're all bankrupt because Wall Street stole their money from them!" I think that he thinks we're living in a parallel dystopian universe where everything is reversed. Because history has shown that a twenty-year holding period in the stock market has never once produced a negative result. So, alluding to putting money in the stock market over 40 years could lead to bankruptcy is quite the jump to make.

Doesn't really make sense to me. But anyway, I digress. The rest of the video is more so geared around limiting beliefs, mindset shifts, and self-education, which I agree does have a place when it comes to building your wealth. But in terms of practicality, I didn't see any information that actually dug deep enough to leave a long-standing impact. To me, the entire video was a lot like trying to scratch an itch with a feather.

So anyway, there you go. I just saved you 7 minutes and 2 seconds on a video that now has over 114 thousand views in less than 24 hours. But if that wasn't enough, let's take it up a notch, because if you start doing this today, you're never gonna be poor again! 3.9 million views! I never want to be poor ever again, so I'm going to click on the video and watch it. They don't want what we know out there! They'll never get those on CNBC when our school system will never tell us that is their part of the closet fake money big future.

Take that. Okay, so this one looks more like a Michael Moore documentary on how authors promote their Amazon books in 2019, as seen in the description. Rated! Smash the like button if you haven't done that already for the YouTube algorithm. But seriously, the entire video is really just a subtle mention for the book, even from the interviewer literally reading from the book to lead the discussion in the video.

The book starts and it says line number one: saving money will make you rich! But here's the thing, though. I acknowledge that within the clutter of all the dystopian financial assumptions and fear-mongering within the video, there is some decent advice sprinkled throughout, which is obviously enough to keep the viewer watching until the very end. My disappointment, however, was that none of the advice was actionable and more so based on a frame of mind. Like, rich people don't pay taxes; they buy assets, and they buy cash flow!

It's a lot like teaching a nine-year-old the basics of managing money and then telling them, "Okay, now you go out and do it!" And then you're just left kind of thinking, "Wait, what?" Sure, the general concepts of the video make sense, like schools don't teach you how to be wealthy and think for yourself and smash the like button, buy my book. But at the end, you're just kind of left a little bit confused, like you don't really know what's going on.

Well, I'll tell you because maybe these videos just keep getting better. Hopefully, because this next speech by Robert Kiyosaki broke the internet! So just a warning, if your internet just suddenly stops working out of nowhere, you know why! And by the way, I just love in the description how it says "They don't want you to see this." Who are they, and why don't they want us to see this video? And how does this magically break the internet? So many questions, and we will need some answers! Let's go right now and find out.

Oh, by the way, I notice now that it's the same interviewer as the last video, so I figured I would just point that out. One eternity later...

Okay, so I just sat through the entire video, and it seems like it's more so of an updated infomercial for "Rich Dad Poor Dad." But finally, eight minutes and 20 seconds in, he tells us exactly who doesn't want us to see this video. "I'm going to tell you, it's the rich people! They want to keep you poor by keeping you in school and teaching you how to get a job and teaching you how to work as an employee for the rest of your life!" Do the rich people cringe and say, "Don't tell them that," right? Yes!

I mean, I gotta say, it doesn't really seem like much of a secret. I can't imagine the Rockefellers just sitting there pulling their hair out over the contents of this video, just being like, "Robert, why did you tell them about this? They weren't supposed to know!" But thankfully, though, my internet is still working, which means that we can watch one last video called "The Shocking Truth About Your Future," featuring none other than the same interview guy from the last two videos.

I just want to know how many times this guy's had to sit through the exact same interview and ask the exact same questions and react the exact same way to the exact same answers. So many questions! Because I gotta say, from my perspective, after watching these four videos back-to-back, they're pretty much the exact same video, just repackaged with a different title. Like, in almost every single video, he mentions this exact same bit about not being able to afford something.

Let me show you: "They never say I can't afford it. Ask yourself, how can I?" He says everybody can say, "I don't have money, I can't afford it." He says that's why he's poor. But when they say "I can't afford it" or "I can't do that," they go down! Not to mention his stories are just eerily similar to one another, with a few key details just mildly changed.

Like, take this story for instance, I'll just let you watch it. "What gives you the right to teach Rajput entrepreneurship? This is I have a master's degree in entrepreneurship. I say, 'Hey Doug, you and I have been friends for a long time. You've never started a business. You're a fake teacher!' But I have all the answers!" And then now, in this video, he has the exact same story, except it's his accounting teacher. "I said, are you an accountant?" He goes, "I have a master's in accountancy." I said, "That's not the question. Are you an accountant?" "I have a master's in accountants!" Give it! "Are you an accountant?" Same answer as, "You're a fake! You don't know what you're talking about!"

I don't know! Who am I to assume any of this? Maybe he just likes becoming argumentative towards unprovoked teachers! But given that he's alluded to his rich dad just potentially being a fictional character built to be a representation of an overall mindset rather than an actual human being, I think it's safe to assume that maybe, just maybe, that these stories are also just a fabrication to prove a point rather than an actual event that took place.

But again, this video just seems to rehash the exact same words, stories, and mindsets as I saw from pretty much every other one of his videos. But in Robert's defense, I will say this: "Rich Dad Poor Dad" was an absolutely transformative book for me when I read it in my freshman year of high school, if even for just the purpose of being able to distinguish the difference between an asset and a liability.

The fact that he was able to articulate such a complex topic in such a way that children and young adults would be able to comprehend and internalize was very impressive, and for that, I'm grateful. And when he says our school system has failed our entire generation, I agree with him, and I think he's right. Not only is the cost of education just way too expensive, but schools don't teach you financial education. They don't teach you how to make money; they don't teach you how to save money on your taxes; they don't teach you how to think objectively and find your own answers.

And if anything, I think schools are too structured to a fault. My school is keeping your focus within such narrow confines, and by guiding you throughout the memorization of useless test answers, they teach you more how to follow someone else's instruction rather than instead make your own independent decisions. So it's no wonder that we have people who literally can't operate without being told what to do, when to do it, and how to get it done. Hence, from that, they train people to become employees.

And despite the repetitive monotonous tone of the videos, when you watch them all back-to-back, there is some actual decent advice sprinkled throughout! Like this one that I really like and agree with: "So every time I make, let's say, a million dollars as an entrepreneur, I immediately invest it in real estate. I have a four-to-one step-up, so I put a million dollars in real estate like at four million for the bank. That's why I love banks! But the banks are screwing everybody else!"

But anyway, despite that, for anyone wondering why Robert Kiyosaki has suddenly just come up a lot recently on the YouTube algorithm, it's obviously very apparent that it's a push towards his book sales, especially when most of these YouTube channels just seem like broad compilation channels that feature him out of nowhere, all conveniently around the same time.

Which I admit is an effective way of marketing, so I can't blame him or fault him for doing what works. But implying that savers are losers and the dollar is worthless and that investing in the stock market long term could lead to financial ruin is a bit of a stretch. I personally believe that fear-mongering is not the best way to go about doing things, but again, that's just my personal opinion.

Overall, from all of this, my thoughts on Robert Kiyosaki have really just not changed. I think he's got some pretty good general life advice and general business advice that's good for just giving you a kick in the pants if you need it to start thinking maybe just a little bit differently. But beyond these simple basics, I just don't see it. I would really like to see more practical, actionable step-by-step advice rather than just vague, broad concepts. I think that's where the disconnect stems from.

And let this be very clear for the record: I enjoyed the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad," even though I disagree with his philosophies on saving, investing in the stock market, and buying gold. We could just agree to disagree on this one, and that is my thoughts on Robert Kiyosaki.

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