Our guest followed his passions to create an international runaway bestseller. Robert Kiyosaki is the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which was USA Today’s number-one money book for 2004, and which has spent over five years on The New York Times Bestseller List.

Robert’s an investor, an entrepreneur, and an educator whose perspectives on money and investing fly in the face of conventional wisdom.

He has, virtually single-handedly, challenged and changed the way tens of millions around the world think about money. When I talked with him earlier today in preparation for this interview, he promised he was going to be controversial, so hang on to your seats.

Robert was born and raised in Hawaii. He’s a fourth-generation Japanese-American. He graduated from college in New York and then joined the Marine Corps, serving in Viet Nam as an officer and helicopter gunship pilot.

After the war, Robert went to work in sales for the Xerox Corporation, and in 1977 he started a company that brought the first nylon-and-Velcro surfer wallets to market.

He founded an international education company in 1985 that taught business investing to tens of thousands of students around the world. In 1994, he sold his business and, through his investments, was able to retire at the age of 47. During his short-lived retirement, he wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

That book has now been translated into 45 languages, is available in 90 countries, and the Rich Dad series has sold over 25 million copies worldwide.

Robert writes a biweekly column, “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer” for Yahoo Finance, and a monthly column titled “Rich Returns” for Entrepreneur magazine.

Chris Attwood: Rich Dad, Poor Dad has been on the bestseller list for over five years. The other day, I listened to you in San Francisco where you spoke to over 60,000 people. What role have your passions, the things that are most important in your life, played in the success that you enjoy today?

Robert Kiyosaki: I think you used the word ‘passions,’ and there’s more than one answer to that. One thing is, I think, in many ways I’m trying to save my own family from financial demise. When I was seven years old, I remember walking around my house in Hawaii and seeing my mother crying.

She was crying because we didn’t have enough money to pay the bills. I asked her, “What’s wrong?” She said, “We just don’t have any money.” I got really angry at my dad. I said, “How can you let my mom cry like this?” Well, he was at school; he was going for his Master’s Degree.

I still remember thinking, “Well, if you’re so smart, why are we broke?” Ever since then, I’ve given a lot of thought to the subject of passion. Passion, to me, isn’t love. Passion is anger and love. It is a combination of the two, where one is fire and one is softer.

I get so angry when I see people struggling financially, and I get angry when I see the school system wasting time making us study things we will never use. Then there is the love of my family, and also the love of having fun making a lot of money. Passion, to me, is anger plus love.

Chris Attwood: I appreciate the way you described it because when we talk about passions, I think we really are talking about that fire that burns inside, and sometimes it is the reactions of things we don’t like outside. Other times, it’s the fire to achieve or create what we want, right?

Robert Kiyosaki: Right.

Chris Attwood: Will you tell us the story of how you got involved in doing your present work? How did your career get started, and how did it lead you to where you are today?

Robert Kiyosaki: As I said, when I was seven, I saw my mother crying, and I thought that was ridiculous. When I came back from Viet Nam in ’73 and ’74, my dad was unemployed. He was unemployed although he was a PhD, really smart, and a great guy.

He was a tremendous man, but he was unemployed because he ran for lieutenant governor against his boss, the governor! The governor said, “You’ll never work in the State of Hawaii again.” All my father knew how to be was a public servant, a government employee.

So when I came back from Viet Nam—and I got very fed up with the United States out there—I said to my dad, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m going to back to school. You should go back to school, too.”

I said, “For what?” He said, “Get your Master’s, get your PhD, and then get a job with the government.”

I said, “Yeah, I’d rather go back to Viet Nam.” So there were all those really stupid things. My dad eventually died broke, and if not for a government pension, he would have been on the streets.

That’s when I began to get disgustingly sick every time I heard people say, “Go to school so you can get a good job, and the government’s going to take care of you.”

What a wimpy idea that is. That’s what burns in my soul. I keep asking the school system, “Why don’t we teach kids about money? Why do we study subjects that we’ll never use?” They have not come up with an answer yet.

Chris Attwood: You also had a rich dad, as I recall.

Robert Kiyosaki: Yes. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a true story of my two dads. Starting at the age of nine, after I saw my mother crying at seven, I really began to search for what I now know is a mentor. I was an apprentice to a mentor. There is a difference between a teacher (my dad was a teacher) and a mentor.

My rich dad was my mentor and my best friend’s father. A teacher is somebody who teaches you a subject, and a mentor is somebody you want to grow up to be, somebody you respect. I really wanted to grow up to become a rich man.

I didn’t want to grow up to be a teacher, of all things. So that’s the difference. I just started to listen to my rich dad more than my poor dad.

Chris Attwood: It’s interesting that much of your fame and success has been built around writing. The other day, I heard you say that you hate to write, which sounds very much like it’s the opposite of passion, and yet your success is built on your books.

You write several syndicated articles. You said that you spend much of your time writing. How do you reconcile your need to write with pursuing your passions?

Robert Kiyosaki: I think God is punishing me for being a bad student. That’s why I spend so much time writing. I think people have heard that I flunked out of high school when I was 15 and 17 because I couldn’t write. I was really a punky kid. Today, I have one of the top-three selling books in the world.

I still hate writing, but it’s not because I like to write. It’s because I love making money. Making money is so much fun, but I still hate it that we have such great poverty in the world. I don’t mean poverty from a poor level; I mean poverty from a mental level.

How many people out there are working at a job they hate simply because they need the money? What I’m really concerned about today is that we have such financial ignorance. The President of the United States and Greenspan stand up and say there is no inflation.

You look at the cost of housing, and you look at the price of oil and of gold, and these guys have the audacity to say that there is no inflation. People sit there and think, “Oh, I believe you. I believe you.”

What morons can we be? So I sit there and write just because I can’t stand it that people are so gullible and believe our politicians and public servants like that.

Chris Attwood: What I hear is that your writing is driven by the anger that you experience at seeing what is being put over on people.

Robert Kiyosaki: Absolutely. Again, how can people be so dumb and gullible? I don’t understand. Why do people work for a living at a job that they hate or don’t like, where all they dream about is retirement? There is something really sick about that. That is not passion. That is slavery.

Chris Attwood: So what is the alternative?

Robert Kiyosaki: I’d say you find out what you’re supposed to be doing and get educated. I remember my dad would always ask for a pay raise. I said, “Why don’t you just read a book on money instead?” He said, “Well, I’m not interested in money.” I said, “Then why do you want a pay raise?”

I finally found the answer, and the answer is he didn’t know. What I found out in the psychology of human beings is that when they don’t understand something, they must put it down, they must denigrate it.

That’s why so many poor people will say they’re not interested in money, where artists, intelligentsia, or academians say, “I’m interested in money.”

They have to put it down because they know they don’t know, so they have to make it below them. That’s beyond ignorance. That’s arrogance.

Arrogance is anger plus ignorance. That’s where arrogance comes from—anger at their own ignorance. I sit there and watch it.

Meanwhile, I make as much money as I like. I have as much money to spend as I like. I’m having a great time.

The only reason I write is because I look around at all these people clinging to job security; hoping for a pension from the government, social security and Medicare; hoping in their 401K or their bloody mutual funds; trying to save money and get out of debt.

I’m thinking, “What’s wrong with you guys?” I sit there and think, “There’s something wrong.” That was in 1994, when I sold my company for enough to retire on. I just wrote the story of how I could retire without a job, without a 401K, without a pension, without mutual funds, and without stocks.

How did I retire? I was sittng alone one night writing in my little cabin, “I had a rich dad and I had a poor dad,” and that’s where the book came from. It was a true story.

So I sit there with anger, and that’s why I write. I basically write about life’s experiences, and since I didn’t do that well in school, I’m able to put my ideas over simply enough that the average person can understand high finance.....

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