The Resilient Mind - Develop Financial Resilience by Shifting Your Money Mindset - Robert Kiyosaki

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

Robert Toru Kiyosaki is an American entrepreneur, investor, and bestselling author best known for his groundbreaking personal finance book Rich Dad Poor Dad. As the founder of The Rich Dad Company, Kiyosaki has dedicated his career to transforming the way people think about money, offering accessible financial education through books, videos, and online resources. Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalThis episode is bought to you in partnership with Motiversity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Develop Financial Resilience by shifting your money mindset with Robert Kiyosaki. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. The reason I wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad was because I knew this time was coming. And we have, as a world, I've never been here before. And so is it a spooky time? Damn yet.

It is probably the most dangerous time ever, ever, ever, ever. There's nothing to compare it to because there's never been a world economy before. For example, you know, 100 years ago, if there was a stock market crash in England, didn't affect anybody. But now the U.S. market goes down, the world goes down. So plus with social media and all this we're doing now, and so we've never been here before. And, you know, I'm excited about it because. I make more money in crashes than I do when they go up.

But for the average person, they'll get wiped out. I'm afraid that the worst, I hope I'm wrong, but I think we're heading for a global depression. How does this play out for the average worker, Robert, for the small business owner? I mean, what does the next three months look like? Because it doesn't look pretty. I mean, people are already being laid off, made redundant.

Businesses are, there's no cash flow in most of these businesses. How does that play out? Well, let me give one more step, just to give you the size of it, okay? The national debt for World War II is $25 billion. Every day today, every day they're printing $125 billion. Every single day, that's like five World War IIs per day. They're printing so much money to keep this boat. Think of a hot air balloon with a tear in it.

And they're doing desperately trying to fix this tear. But no matter how hard they try, the terrorist gone beyond. It's coming down. So in financial terms, it's called our debt to deep GDP has now gone from 60 to 905 is going to 120 or bankrupt. And they're going to print more and more money, which means savers or losers, just as I predicted. Your money is going to be worthless in a few years.

So my message is the same as some of your other guests. This is metamorphosis type. Financial education in Rich Dad's term, is really financial transformation. And the definition of metamorphosis is very important. Metamorphosis, the definition is the evolution or the transformation from an immature form to an adult form,

an immature form to an adult form. Metamorphosis is the same as a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. And Fuller always said there's nothing to predict a butterfly inside a caterpillar. So everybody listening right now, if you're struggling financially, just looking yourself as a little caterpillar.

And this crisis is your cocoon. The question is, what do you emerge as? Do you emerge as a victim? You know, the world did that to me and the capitalists are crook and rich are bastards and all this stuff? Or do you say,

oh, this is the best thing that ever happened to me. The same is my health. I am ground zero for the coronavirus. All that it does is inspire me to get healthier. You're either going to get healthier and wealthier, or are you going to go bust? Your choice.

It sits between your ears, your heart, your body, your mind, your spirit, your attitude. This could be the best thing that ever happened to you, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, if you turn out to a butterfly or somebody will step on you like a little worm. your choice. Now, if you're in trouble today, my message is not so kind. This is hard talk, not happy talk.

The crisis is in your head. Now, that's the bad news. The good news, you can change the crisis by changing what's inside your head. And so I'm doing, I hate to brag, but I'm doing extremely well financially today because as I was warning everybody, this crisis was coming.

but it would be irresponsible of me to warn people of the crisis and not personally make changes myself. So the good news is the crisis is in your head, the bad news is in your head. The most important thing you can have right now is not job security, but meaningful work. So you and I don't need the money, but our work is meaningful.

And it's our meaningful work that gets us through the hard times. So the good news is, my company is sold out. We cannot keep up with product. The bad news is the supply chain shut down, but that's a good problem. We have tons of cash. I have gold, I have silver.

I do have challenges in the real estate market, but that's going to make me stronger. That's my only attitude I can have. Otherwise, I just cry and say, well, the government should take care of me. I need a bailout. I need a stimulus. So what can I do?

I'm one of them. What do I do? this. Go back to employee, self-employed business owner, investor. Like, go find a business, go start a business, go reposition yourself career-wise. Is there a one, two, three-step process on what I can do to be prepared for it? I have a friend in Panama. He has an avocado farm. So he's sitting in Panama growing avocados. It's because people have to eat. Another guy's a friend of mine is growing blueberries. But another friend of mine, he moved up to C.A. He moved up to C.A. He said, he, he He was from Seattle, excuse me.

He had a big house. His kids all moved out. So he converted the kids' bedrooms into one-bedroom apartments. So he put a kitchen and he put a toilet inside his little bedrooms. And so he now rents out four bedrooms. He's making more money today than ever before because a lot of workers commute to Seattle. So they come in, they come in on Sunday night, they check out Friday afternoon. It's at a little house.

He's making more money. So the point is, everybody can do something, but you've got to figure out what you can do. Well, the reason the rich don't work for money is number one expense is tax. See, there's three kinds of income, earned portfolio passive. So earned income is if I get a job, that's earned income.

If I'm a doctor or a programmer, that's earned income, because I'm working for it. If I buy, let's say, Apple for $10, and I sent it for 20, that's portfolio income, capital gains. But passive income, which is cash flow, is never taxed. So it's not so these guys are screaming right now in America, tax to rich, I said, good luck. Because most of the guys complaining, they don't know the three kinds of income, and the rich don't have jobs anyway.

They have assets. And so the average Schmoe out there, poor guy, you know, sent the kid to school. They don't learn this. So that's why in fake, as you were talking about it, is that newspaper article about Jared Kushner. And he explains how the Trumps and the Kushners don't pay taxes and make millions of dollars. And the reporter couldn't understand him because they're not, our schools will never teach you that three types of income. And they judged him and say they're wrong and it's cheating. And we see that over and over again.

Amazon not paying taxes. What do you say to people when they come up, you can say, Robert, it's not fair. It's not fair. They're not paying taxes. Well, there's always three sides to a coin, you know, heads, tails, and the edge. You know, so which side of the coin are you on? From my side, it's fair. But this is a difference. Everybody can do the same thing I do, because the tax laws are for everybody. You know, we don't say, well, the tax laws only for the rich. No, the tax laws are for everybody to use if you have the right financial education.

And the reason I'm an advocate of financial education without that education, you'll have to pay taxes. You see, very few people will buy what I do, make a million dollars and pay zero tax. And my rich dad taught me that playing monopoly. That's how it started. Four greenhouses, one red hotel. Or the McDonald's formula.

I write about it there. McDonald's, Ray Kroc. Yeah. McDonald's is in the real estate business. So they sell hamburgers, but they buy real estate, so they pay no taxes. You know, this guy, Bezos, what he's $16 billion. How much tax did they pay him that's $16 billion? Zero.

And that's all legal. Anyone can do it. Everybody can do it. But most people lack the education. So Jared learned about money when he was a kid by watching his father, but watching these people invest in real estate and said, wow, Now, not only do you get to make the money, you get to keep the money. That's a big problem a lot of people don't understand.

They, oh, look how much money I made, but how much did you keep? Because that could be half. How much tax did you pay? Right, what tax did you pay? And so, you always say, this is the law. The law is true for every citizen. You can do it, but most people just don't do it. Sometimes, like you said, they don't have the education,

because you need to have a plan if you're going to go do risky things. Well, it's not risky. I mean, to me, what's risky is having a job in paying taxes. Yeah. and saving money because they're printing it. You know, that's the worst thing of all. And that's why there's fake money, fake teachers, because the teachers will never, they don't know it.

And fake assets because Wall Street or the city of London or Lehman or Goldman and all, they're not going to tell you this. The most obsolete idea is go to school, get a job, work hard, save money, get out of debt and invest for the long term of the stock market. See, why would you save money when they're not going to save money when they're printing trillions of dollars. The gap between the 1% and 99% is massive.

You see, it's not just money. You have to step back and look at the bigger picture. So what do you do? In every one of us is a poor person. There's still a poor person inside me. There's also a middle class person, and the middle class persons want security. They want that steady paycheck,

and there's a rich person. And they're all inside of us, except that it's not taught. You're taught to go to school, get a job, and get a paycheck. You're not taught to how to get rich. If you're a red rich dad, poor dad, my rich dad refused to pay me. You said the paycheck was one of the most damaging things

you could take in your life. He says, the moment you take a paycheck, you're an employee, and that's the mindset. So my rich dad never paid me. It drove my poor dad, you know, government employee, nuts. You got to pay people. to pay people. And Rich Dad was not saying that the paycheck was bad. He says, you didn't want to be a slave to money. So as an entrepreneur, if Rich Dad folded, I just turned another company. I don't

need a paycheck. I don't need anybody to take care of me. If my government doesn't like me, I move to another country because they need entrepreneurs there. So the entrepreneur is not so much the business. The entrepreneur is really the mindset and the skill sets and the different set of rules. You see, I don't operate. Small business does not operate in the same rules as big business. Entrepreneur is a mindset first, a skill set, and rules. And depending upon whether your employee or a small business, the rules are different. The mindset's are different. The skill sets are different. You could say one thing to somebody who has never been an entrepreneur, and they're thinking about making the leap of faith into becoming an entrepreneur.

What could you tell them? Well, I'll just tell them the same thing that happened to me. You know, my last paycheck, I still remember it clearly. It was one of the worst and the best days of my life. And I was in Puerto Rico. I was working for Xerox. And my boss gave me my last, it wasn't a paycheck, it was a bonus check. I think it was about $30,000.

Taxable, it's only problem with that. So I got this check, and I went, holy macro. You know what I mean? So I was excited, but I was also disturbed. And so this other guy comes up to me, his name was John. And John says to me, he says, you're going to be back. I said, why? He says, because you're going to fail.

I looked at him and said, look, few expletive words, because that's what he did. He left Xerox, failed, and he came back. And I said, look, da-da-da. You failed and you came back. But I'm going to fail, and I'm never coming back. that's the attitude. Do what I mean? If you say, well, if I fail, I'll go back to mommy and daddy, then that's what you'll do. So if you fail, that's when I became an entrepreneur, because I had no money. I had no money for years. I didn't have a paycheck. But that's what my rich dad encouraged

me to do is when you don't have this paycheck, you get hungier, smarter, and it's a test of your character. Will you become a crook? Will you become dishonest? Will you cheat and steal? Or will you become a better human being. So really, that's the benefit of becoming an entrepreneur. You really find out who you are when you don't have anything. You always have to look at the big picture. Too many people look at, well, what's going to happen to me? When you look at the big picture, you're also going to know that when something bad

happened, something good's going to happen. But you've got to prepare for whatever it is coming. If you think next 20 years, we'll be like the last 20 years, you're going to have creamed. You know, when you and I go to the supermarket and we buy a, carton of milk. Well, it's checked for the expiration date. But most people do not check for the expiration date on their brains. Instead of get out of debt, I get into debt. I just refinanced $300 million in debt. I went from 5% to 2.5% of interest. I made a fortune. Every month, more money comes in because my cost of money has gone down. So while some financial experts are

saying get out of debt, I'm saying learn how to use debt. So when I came back in Vietnam in January of 73, the first thing my rich dad said to me was go to school to learn how to invest in real estate. It wasn't real estate. It was how to use debt and taxes. Debt and taxes make the rich richer. Debt and taxes make the poor, middle class, poor. So all the rich guys who are doctors and lawyers or, you know, those guys, they're getting creamed and they don't know why. Doctors are getting creamed.

Oh, yeah. They make it more money. but the take home is less. Sure. You know, my doctor just yelled at me, he was happy. He says, oh, guess what? I finally made a million dollars. And I said, yeah, this was three weeks ago.

And so I said, yeah, well, how much you pay in tax? He says, 750,000 in taxes. So his net was about 400,000. That's not bad. But when I make a million bucks, I keep a million bucks. And the reason is because I don't make it by working for money. See, if you work for money, you're taxed. So that's why lesson number one.

and rich dad, poor dad is the rich don't work for money. What we do instead is we create businesses as entrepreneurs. We acquire real estate. I don't invest in the stock market. So the reason is because as entrepreneurs, I have more control over my income, how much I make and how much I pay in taxes. And because I'm an entrepreneur, as well as an investor in real estate,

I pay zero tax. So every time I make, let's say, a million dollars as an entrepreneur, I immediately invested in real estate and I have a four to one step up. So I put a million dollars in real estate. I get four million from the bank. That's why I love banks. But the banks are screwing everybody else. I'm terrible.

But it's good for me. That's why you say when you print, it's bad for people that work for money. Because when you print, savers get creamed and people who work for when they get creamed. When they print, debtors get rich. You see, debt and taxes make the rich richer. And debt and taxes make the poor middle class poorer. When we have obsolete ideas, we get obsolete results. So what's happening for most people, the idea of going to school,

getting a job, working hard, saving money, getting out of debt, buying your house because it's an asset, investing for the long term, is obsolete. The world has changed. The world changed in 1971 when President Nixon took us off the gold standard. and money became debt. What if we get rid of school, then what would happen? Would it be better if we had no educational system at all?

No, I'm saying education is more important before. It's just obsolete. You know, there's Moore's Law that... Moore's Law would state's information doubles every 18 months. In other words, everything's obsolete 18 months. And this is a recent phenomenon. So when you come out of school, you're are obsolete. And that's why I'm the old guy, you know.

I meet my friends who went to Harvard. I went to Harvard. I said, yeah, that was how long. 50 years ago? Today, the banks are charging you interest to save money. In other words, banks don't want your money because they printed too much of it. And that's why this is bubbles in stocks and bubbles in real estate and all this. People are dumping the cash because, as I said in here, savers or losers and cash is trash. And yet people are, well, I want a high-paying job. Well, that's an obsolete idea. Get out of debt is an obsolete idea. You should learn how to get

into debt, how to use debt to get rich, and they'll never teach you about taxes. The reason the 1% is way up here, and the 99% are going this way is because when you print money, two things happen, inflation and taxes. It's crushing them. And any entrepreneur thinks, I'm just going to make money, I'm going to start a business to make a lot of money because we talk about, they really have got to smell the roses, man. You know, that's not what the real entrepreneurs are doing. Most entrepreneurs, there's 28 million. small business owners in America. 24 million are what are one-person entrepreneurs.

They're called non-employee entrepreneurs. And that's what happens is when people don't really understand what an entrepreneur does. So most people are self-employed, but they're not really entrepreneurs. The self-employed paid the highest taxes of all. And nobody tells them that. It's also called the entrepreneurial spirit. But what we were actually talking about was there's no such thing as a bad economy. You know, there's externally, you and I, we all have an external economy,

but we also have an internal economy. And the willpower is to change our internal economy. So for me, I can see the good and I can see the bad. I don't really give a damn because I'm going to be rich anyway. But a poor person with a poor personal economy, all they're going to see is a bad economy. because they don't know how to make money in any economy. And a middle class person, they have a middle class economy.

But they want as a nice house and a steady paycheck and the job and the car. And so when you take their job away to them, that's disaster. Well, since an entrepreneur doesn't have a job anyway, it's no big deal. So all I'm saying to people, and so what Bucky Fuller taught me, is always two sides, you know what I mean? You know, it's plural at minimum two. So if you think the economy is bad, it's because your economy is bad. If you think that steady employment is important,

then you'll see an economy without jobs. Your economy versus the external economy. Where you control versus where you can't control. I can control. Yeah, it's called an internal focus versus an external focus. So the real entrepreneur has an internal focus. But if they fall down, they say, oh, this is good, because I'm going to go up higher.

You know, the average person will fall down and say, oh, I'm going to take some Prozac. Or if somebody has some mistakes, oh, the mistakes don't matter. Well, mistakes matter. It means you didn't know something. But a real entrepreneur, whether they fall down,

they go, they always can go up. They can stand back up and go higher. Then no matter what happens to them, they get stronger and better and smarter and happier. But a person with a weak internal mindset is that there's something. afraid of what happens, it generally happens. Like, you know, people who are afraid of losing their jobs,

they generally lose their jobs. You know what I mean? Yeah, no doubt. So everything comes through you. Yeah, so the entrepreneur first job is a control inside here, not outside there. The moment you take that paycheck, you're an employee. Thank you for tuning in.

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