In my lifetime, I have absorbed the content of something in excess of 5,000 books. In my business as a money manager, I spend a great deal of time just taking in information, and then determining where is the investment play here. Most people are scattered, and are merely the recipients of information overload, which is shaping up to be the primary problem of our age. There's just too much NOISE out there. We have the unequalled ability in our time to constantly humor ourselves with television, iPods, mobile devices of all kinds including cell phones, and streaming, and then there's the Internet.
The result is a clear LACK OF TIME TO THINK. We suffer from an inability to find the time to sit back and integrate what we know. After reading, "WHY we want YOU to be RICH", I came away feeling cheated, and cheated on more than one level.
Donald Trump is a man to be admired, and so is Kiyosaki, but what is portrayed in the book is not the REAL DEAL that can be studied in either man's life history. Instead, we are given image and branding. Kiyosaki, as an example is not a man who took his father's advice and then proceeded to become a rich man. He's a man who wrote about how to become rich, and became rich from the books he published about the process. He was never engulfed in the process himself, and thus when he writes about the process, it is not authentic.
Both men have enjoyed REMARKABLE runs in the business world. Trump has continued his father's legendary real estate career. Fred Trump created a $400 million real estate empire, which would be worth at least $2 billion in today's money. Donald Trump to his credit took his father's reputation, and headed to Manhattan where over time he has created considerably more than his father achieve, but it is by standing on the shoulders of giants - his father. To his credit, a different man than Donald might have gone belly up when he ran into financial trouble in the late 80's, early 90's - the banks bailed him out, unlike some other less lucky individuals.
Kiyosaki's only claim to fame is his books. There are no major buildings bearing his name, no corporation that he successfully parlayed into a fortune. No, instead Kiyosaki wants to tell us how YOU can do, what he hasn't done. Does Kiyosaki have successful investments? You bet his does, from the proceeds of the books, not from a process, which is what he tells you to learn.
I am not writing about sour grapes. There are so many people out there that are capable of telling you the REAL THING. There is a process to making a fortune, and it is both predictable and repeatable. There is no guarantee that you will be rich beyond your dreams, because part of this process is luck, and simply coming through the funnel. What do I mean by this concept.
Mark is a friend of mine. We were walking through the Harvard University Yard one day and Mark who has a PhD from Johns Hopkins in biotechnology, no small feat in itself, blurted something out. He said, "Everybody talks about Bill Gates, but you know Rich, there were a 1000 guys building operating systems in those days, Gates is the only one who manage to get through the funnel, and it didn't have to happen that way." I instantly had a brain changing experience.
Mark was right. For every guy who makes it there are thousands who tried, many tried harder than the person who managed to hit it out of the park. All we see are the individuals who came through the funnel, and somehow managed to make it. In the final analysis, it didn't have to work out that way.
Gates could have failed, and Steve Jobs' operating system at Apple would have been the one we all talked about. As a matter of fact, had Apple been willing to license its operating system (Jobs' biggest mistake), we would ALL be using the Apple system today, and Gates would not even be a footnote to the industry.
Here's the key that Trump and Kiyosaki never touch on. It's not about RICH, and I am rich by the way. It's about finding something you absolutely love to do, to work on, to think about, and then doing it. There's one more point however, and it's more crucial than the first. You see, we all have wonderful doable ideas. Dreams, that we dream about on a daily basis. It's more than just doing what you love. You have to think about FOCUS, and EXECUTION too.
Dreams without FOCUS and EXECUTION are just when you really think about it - they are just DREAMS. You on the other hand have to take that DREAM, that LOVE OF YOUR LIFE, and bring FOCUS and EXECUTION to getting it done, to making it a reality. You may still not be able to by the way, but you will have lived a life worth living, and in the end that's all God, your family, and YOU can ask you.
Good luck in your journey.
Richard Stoyeck
