The Resilient Mind - You Were Taught to Stay Poor: Time to Unlearn Everything - Robert Kiyosaki

Episode Date: July 24, 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: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠This episode is brought to you in partnership with The Icons by 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, You Were Taught to Stay Poor, Time to Unlearn Everything with Robert Kiyosaki. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Failure should inspire you to get smarter. And unfortunately, our school system says if you fail, you're stupid. That is not true.

There's no such thing as a bad economy. And the willpower is to change our internally. 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. He says you always have to look at the big picture. Too many people look at, well, what's going to happen to me? Well, you look at the big picture, you're also going to know that when something bad

happened, something good is going to happen. But you've got to prepare for whatever is coming. If you think the last, next 20 years will be like the last 20 years cream, you know, when you and I go to the supermarket and we buy a carton of milk, we always check for the expiration date. But most people do not check for the expiration date on their brains. Because the school system will never teach you about money. The school system was designed to teach you to be an employee, which is important, or a doctor

or a lawyer, a specialist. But never about money. really got to understand what is risky and what is not risky. And in my world, if you play it safe, that makes you stupid. Because if you don't take risk, you don't get smarter. And when somebody says, what is risk? You have to look in the mirror. Jim, I mean, for me to fly in Vietnam, that was high risk.

But the higher the risk, the more you have to study. You know that? I know that. Well, first of all, everybody can do something. but they won't. And that's the problem. The point is, everybody can do something, but you've got to figure out what you can do.

Poor people say, I can't afford it, I can't do that, I don't have time. Because this is escape. It's an escape. So I remember raising my hand when I was nine years old, talking to my fourth grade teacher, and I said, you know, what am I going to learn about money?

And she was this woman who should have retired 50 years earlier. She was so sick and tired of kids by this time, and she says, we'd all teach money at school. I said, why not? And she couldn't answer and she got very flustered. She said, sit down, take your seat. And then I got curious and said, why don't we learn about money? I go home and ask him, said, why don't we learn about money in school? And he looked at me and says, because the government doesn't let us teach that subject. The government tells us what we can teach and what we can't teach. And I thought that was strange. And I said, but aren't we going to school to learn about money?

He says, no, your job is to get a job. I said, but you get a job to earn money. He goes, no, you're supposed to just get a job. I went, no, no, no, no, no. Isn't the purpose of a job to earn money? He goes, you're correct. I said, so why don't I just learn about money? I can skip the job part, you know?

and he got flustered and he said, look, and my father was for Japanese very tall, six foot four, and imposing, man, good guy. But he says, if I'll learn about money, why don't you ask your best friend's father about money? And I said, why? That's Mike. So why ask him? He says, because Mike's father is an entrepreneur. And I said, what are you? He says, I'm an employee.

I'm a government employee. I went, oh, what's the difference? This is the differences an entrepreneur must know about money, or they're no longer entrepreneurs. And he says an employee doesn't have to know anything about money because the government will take care of and the company will take care of. And finally through persistence,

my rich dad started teaching me about money on one condition. And that condition was he would never pay me. He says, the moment I pay you, you think like an employee. He says, that's the trap. entrepreneur's work for free. And now I'm nine years old, my head's going cracking in half. He says, you never want a paycheck.

You understand that kid. He said, okay, I got it. And he says, well, how do I make money? He says, that's what entrepreneurs figure out. He refused to accept a paycheck. He says, the moment you accept the paycheck, your brangles did, he says, as long as you're hungry, you'll think. So let's say if everything they teach you in school,

doesn't work. What if we get rid of school, then what would happen? Would it be better if we had no educational system at all? When you go to the supermarket, you buy a carton of milk, the first thing you check for is expiration date. You know, if the expiration date, let's say it's March 1st and, you know, it's already July, you better not drink that milk. The same thing happens inside our brains is when we have obsolete ideas, we get obsolete results. So what's happening from 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. So if you're not going to study, you're not going to practice and all that, then you should do

what Wall Street tells you to do by, you know, 401Ks, mutual funds, ETFs and all that. But that's where they're fake assets, because they'll make Wall Street or the city of London rich, Just watch where the cash is flowing. So what happens to entrepreneurs who go and they get their ass handed to them and they survive, if you survive? We'll have fear. To be true, we'll have fear. It's just how you deal with it. And Einstein said, you know, imagination is more important than knowledge, but knowledge empowers imagination.

And what most people lack is real business knowledge, like accounting, you know, like debt, like taxes. You got to know that stuff, but they don't teach it in school to anybody. First of all, let's go back to what is financial education. It's not get a job, work hard, save money, and invest in a well-diverse, right portfolio, stocks, plus, mutual funds, and ETFs. That's not it. You know, money is, the financial industry is $2,000. things, debt and taxes. Debt and taxes. So when I came back from 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 and middle class poor. But when I make a million bucks, I keep a million bucks. And the reason is because I don't make it by working from money. See, if you work for money, you're taxed. So that's why lesson number one in rich dead poor debt, because 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. people 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. Well, it's cool. Look at the teacher about money. Get a job, you pay at the highest taxes. Pay your taxes.

I don't pay taxes. Get out of debt. Well, debt money is debt after 1971 if you know your history of money. Your house is not an asset, the house is a liability. And why about it invest for long-term of the stock market when I can make my own assets?

I don't need the stock market. I'm not saying you shouldn't. But I create my own assets. I create my own cash flow. Financial intelligence is the ability to control cash flow. You'll pay most of your money will go out through taxes in your lifetime.

And then they tell you to buy a house and a car. Car is an asset. No, cars are a lot of money. ability, an insurance, gas, upkeep, and all this. So you're working for a big company like Google, you might be safe today, but you might be gone tomorrow. Whereas you're a little startup, you might have a better chance. There's something everybody can do.

Like I said, everybody can buy a $20 silver piece. Everybody can afford $20. Will they do it? No. They'll be at Starbucks sucking it down instead. It's easy to say I can't afford it. Oh, I'm too tired. Oh, I can't go to the gym.

You know, when you could go to the gym, But now I can. Truth is, I'm just too lazy to go, didn't you? And you play it safe and you don't introduce new risks into your life. And so the people right now who are sitting at home who are struggling financially or worried about money or unhappy, they may be making a lot of money, but unhappy with what they're doing, it was probably taught to you.

Your super ego was taught get a job, work hard, or you'll never be rich, or the rich or evil, whatever. And until you change your mindset, money won't help you, right? And we see that with people that win the lottery, people that make more money, they still have the same problem. Right. Because they have that poor man's soul. Right. If you're poor, you'll always be poor. That's really hard for people to understand.

Yeah, the money will disappear that fast. In every one of it is a poor person. There's still a poor person inside me. So the real entrepreneur has an internal focus that 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, all the mistakes don't matter. Well, mistakes matter. It means you didn't know some.

But a real entrepreneur, the weather, they fall down and they go, they always can go, they can stand back up and go higher. That no matter what happens to them, they get stronger and better and smarter and happier. But a person with a weak internal mindset, because they're so afraid of what happens, it generally happens. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.