This has nothing to do with Kiyosaki and everything to do with Reed. Reed has no credibility in my eyes, therefore I refuse to do anything to promote him. I know little about Kiyosaki, so I reserve judgment there. — Bryan Ellis

Kiyosaki talks in glib cleches. His whole backstory about his “Rich Dad” is fiction, prior to writing a dumbed down get rich quick book he was broke with a bankruptcy behind him. Kiyosaki’s only talent as far as I can tell is in sales. He wrote a very simplistic and misleading get rich quick book (Rich Dad, Poor Dad), which bizarrely enough his fans claim is not a get rich quick book, and like many highly promoted get rich quick books it sold well to complete novices.

Among experienced investors and advisors however, Kiyosaki is a joke. We shake our heads in disbelief at the amounts of money people are willing to throw at the guy to attend seminars which are primarily motivational, while providing very little actual knowledge.

John Reed did a comparison of the cost of various guru courses, workshops and “boot camps” against legitimate educational courses. A weekend seminar with Robert Kiyosaki compares very UNFAVOURABLY on a cost basis to any university finance course including MBA degrees and the like.

Mr. Reed’s opinions carry no weight here. His words are generally quite foolish. — Bryan Ellis

Frankly, professionals laugh at Kiyosaki and his fans. Who the heck in their right mind pays that kind of exhorbitant money for a weekend seminar which will qualify you for exactly nothing, when you can pay much less for proper qualifications from proper educational institutions which result in proper certificates, diplomas and even MBAs.

And does anyone think for even one second that Kiyosaki will provide an education which is even 1% as good as one of those professional degrees? Anyone?

Face it… Kiyosaki is a scammer. He sells expensive motivational “revivals” pretending to be investment courses to people who wouldn’t know the difference. His books are the same… not so expensive obviously, but heavy on motivation and woefully light on education, again appealing mainly to people who don’t know that there is a difference.

Thanks for your comments. I neither agree nor disagree… I just don’t know. I’m curious - have you attended any of Kiyosaki’s paid courses? If so, your opinion has merit. If you haven’t, then your opinion is worthless. Let us know which. — Bryan Ellis

You clearly have good judgment. I hate cats. In all seriousness, this is a perfect example of the free market: You’re free not to read my blog anymore, and I’m free to continue to write what I please. And we can both be happy about it. — Bryan Ellis

My Results: I work with my girlfriend’s father in doing the real estate. I’m helping him build his business and he helps me build mine so to speak. Since attending the first seminar back in October of 2008 we have acquired approximately $450,000 worth of property cash flowing between $2500 - $3000 a month (still filling units in a recent purchase which was recently renovated).

My Thoughts: If you’re looking for a magic bullet, a get rich quick scheme or a one size fits all EVERYONE can profit doing exactly what I do story, then you’ll probably be disappointed with Cash Flow Technologies and the Wealth Intelligence Academy.

However, if you’re looking to put structure to your finances, commit yourself to building a team and to improving your financial intelligence so that you can find the path that best suits your style and goals, then this is definitely the program for you. The problem with most “Gurus” is that they give you one strategy, one path and one set of rules, which typically means it’ll only work for a small subset of the population. Whereas Robert’s materials are more about educating people in economics, financial literacy, business, etc. He doesn’t limit his approach to one path, but teaches the diligent students how to create their own path by understanding how money works.

Conclusion: Before finding Robert Kiyosaki’s products I was a broke 25 yo college instructor sleeping on an air mattress and eating raman noodles wondering why I was making more money then ever and living in the worst conditions I’d ever endured. Since reading Rich Dad Poor Dad (about a year ago) I have:

*Eliminated ~ $4,000 of credit card debt
*Reduced my Auto loan from ~ $8,000 to under $5,000
*Increased my emergency fund from $0 to $3,000
*Acquired over $4,000 in assets (rich dad version)
*Helped build a Real Estate Investment business worth over $450,000

All done with a gross salary of ~ $50,000

As I tell my students, if you try to learn by watching, then you’ll never learn. It’s what you do outside of the classroom that defines your education, and often your appreciation of the education.

But she did “sell” her program well and I actually bought the $500 package but after seeing all the negative reviews online got my money back.
Thank God.

I’m glad you are comfortable with everything now. I would, however, caution you against putting too much emphasis on online reviews. There’s at least one very well known guy in the real estate investing information business who runs a “review” site for real estate courses, and there’s overwhelming evidence that the guy uses his site to falsely inflate the ratings of his preferred JV partners and also (and more significantly) falsely demeans his competitors with bogus reviews. I suspect the FTC will catch up to him this or next year, but nevertheless, the prevalence of bogus reviews online is overwhelming. Bryan Ellis

I haven’t been through his coaching or been to a seminar of his but love his books and CDs. I think like most things in life, you’ve got to put in tons of hard smart work and that’s where most people fail. They “give it a try,” quit, and tell everybody that it doesn’t work and that it’s a scam.

I’m somewhat disappointed to the 6 Steps to to Successful Real Estate Investing audio program.

I read an newspaper article last year that said the Rich Dad Real Estate course is presented by the Russ Whitney organization. My personal experience with Whitney was a disappointment. They delivered less then promised. The 3 day seminar I went to was basic stuff where you had to spend $1000’s more to get the complete info. They sold us on the fact that the 3 day event would concentrate on the Calif. mkt. However, they talked about R.E. in terms of properties under $100k.

Then there was a high pressure sales pitch to purchase more programs. The whole package was somthing like $50k.

I went to an introductory “seminar” for the new Rich Dad R.E. course a couple of months ago. In my gut I could tell that it was a Whitney program.

Kiyosaki’s early work was eye opening. I’m hesitant to invest further in his work.

RK’s books “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and “The Cash Flow Quadrant” are “must reads”. His other books are not as good. His latest book on your Financial IQ seems to be a rehash of his earlier writings, according to some critics. I haven’t read it. I like the cash flow game 101, but finding players for regular games is difficult. I’ve heard some CF101 clubs advertise on CraigsList.org. One of the most difficult concepts to learn in CF101, is that it doesn’t matter what your starting profession is (high income Doctor or low income Car Mechanic). Anyone can quickly get off the Rat Race and achieve wealth by applying some basic principles (simplified in the game) for replacing earned income with passive income.

As for RK’s seminars, they are a total waste of time and money. RK has licensed his name to another company that provides the seminars, mentoring and coaching services. Rich Dad Academy and Rich Dad University are extremely high priced and quite useless. Their introductory course costs $500 for a 3-day sales pitch for their mentoring/coaching service. The 3-day pitch has absolutely zero content (they spent much time playing CF101), much puff-and-fluff showing beautiful pictures of million dollar properties that earned fortunes for the speaker, and hard upsell through-out. If the speaker earned so much money, then why is he hardselling coaching in a dank cheesy hotel meeting room?

They spend the first day telling you how to increase your credit limit on your credit cards. Most seminary gurus do this so you’ll have enough room on your credit card to buy whatever they are upselling. I warned several of the “students” at the break about what was happening, and most were thankful for me telling them.

Yes, I sat through that nonsense with a friend, whom I warned not to buy into it. They wanted $77,000 for their full blown coaching (with a modest discount if you “commit today to fulfilling your wealth goals”). Complete sham. Fortunately, my friend only lost his $500 investment, but I could see that many others were getting sucked into the lure of easy quick wealth.

Similar remarks apply to the mentoring/coaching companies that are licensing Donald Trump’s name. Stay away from them, too. (I like Trump’s books as entertainment, but not so much for education.)