Well, according to Kiyosaki's own words, Kiyosaki's a sinner!
How so, you ask?
Ah, that's a story to tell. There's betrayal, there's vindication, there's a second betrayal, and lies to "spin doctor" the treachery into triumph.
So have a seat, and let us discover a chapter of "Rich Dad" that Kiyosaki would rather you not mention.
On October 12, 2012, Kiyosaki posted on his "Rich Dad" financial education blog a post titled "Rich Dad Isn't Bankrupt Dad". This excerpted paragraph sums up the sentiment:
His (Rich Dad's) best lesson to me was: “Be smart and you won’t be pushed around as much.” He knew the law because he was a law-abiding citizen, and more importantly, it was expensive to not know the law. “If you know you’re right, you’re not afraid of fighting back,” even if you are taking on Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. It’s better to be Rich Dad with a bankrupt corporation than to let the desperate Robin Hood destroy you.What's the backstory though? Turns out, one of Kiyosaki's corporations declared bankruptcy in 2012. Rich Global, LLC was supposed to have gone into partnership with the Learning Annex, one of the biggest seminar providers out there. TLA really pushed Kiyosaki, to take advantage of the book's publication and organized some of the largest seminars for Kiyosaki from 2001-2004, complete with "letter of intent" signed by both parties, with promise of revenue share. TLA setup one of the most prominent of Kiyosaki's seminars at New York's Madison Square Garden in 2002. The idea is TLA will create the free seminars, where they'll upsell the attendees into attending the for-pay seminars. Except Kiyosaki never paid TLA their share. So TLA sued the entity that signed the contract... "Rich Global LLC".
Rich Global declared bankruptcy on August 20, 2012, in Wyoming, after losing the lawsuit and was ordered by the court to pay $24 million in damages. And this is a full Chapter 7 closure. According to NYPost, Rich Global has a few million left in the bank, and that's it. In other words, TLA may not even get enough to pay the lawyers. This is at best, a symbolic victory, and at worst, a Pyrrhic victory.
But Kiyosaki is not out of business. He's doing business nowadays as "Rich Dad Co." This corporation, setup by Kiyosaki and his wife Kim, was apparently founded around 2005 to 2007 after their breakup with The Learning Annex.
And now you'll find "Rich Dad Co" doing the exact same thing TLA originally proposed... free seminars to draw people in to sell them $495 full day seminars. And the full day seminars are designed to sell people on $2500 3-day seminars. And the 3-day seminars are designed to sell people on "full courses" that can cost up to $45000 dollars.
But Kiyosaki had outsourced the courses to some other company that already switched names twice after receiving multiple complaints about hard sell, bogus and possibly illegal advice, and other shady biz... just like Kiyosaki himself. And Kiyosaki has plausible deniability.
But The Learning Annex is hardly the first partner Kiyosaki had screwed over the years. The co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, and the source of the real financial advice, Sharon Lector, CPA, was paid off in 2008 after she threatened to expose enough secrets to force the entire company into receivership so she can get her fair share.
Yes, Kiyosaki's smart in setting up multiple corporations and let that protect his assets. The dummy corp dies like a lizard loses its tail, but the lizard will escape and live another day... and grow another tail (or two, or three).
But what's the real lesson here? To Kiyosaki, it's "if you setup your game right, you can screw other people and laugh about it later".
Apparently, the mistake here is "should have never trusted a man whose non-fiction book is about a man who does not exist".
And the only one who won't admit to a mistake is Robert Kiyosaki himself. He thinks he's the rich guy protecting himself from Robin Hood. Except this Robin Hood is someone he screwed over, not just once, but TWICE.
So Robert T. Kiyosaki is a self-admitted sinner, by his own standard, as he won't admit to his mistake.
Unless it's NOT a mistake... He deliberately chose to screw the Learning Annex after learning their system so he can clone it.
That's deliberate fraud, which is even WORSE than a mistake.
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