Kim Kiyosaki Rich Woman

Kim Kiyosaki has a voice which demands attention. Intelligent, vivacious, strong, it is absolutely representative of the woman behind it. It is also a voice which, through the medium of Kim’s newly released book Rich Woman: A book on investing for women, speaks directly to women and supports them on their way to becoming financially independent.

A successful business woman and investor in her own right, Kiyosaki is also a partner in The Rich Dad Company, the financial education enterprise behind the bestseller Rich Dad, Poor Dad, written by Kim’s husband and business partner Robert Kiyosaki. Rich Dad’s success paved the way for nine successive books and a host of educational initiatives.  

Rich Woman addresses the reasons why women must learn to invest, the issues that are unique to women when it comes to money and investing and how to put a plan together. It encourages women to be financially independent, in the face of some shocking statistics:

• In Australia, 40% of women over the age of 50 are single
• One in two marriages ends in divorce
• In the first year after a divorce, a woman’s standard of living drops on average about 73%
• Of the elderly living in poverty, three out of four are women, yet 80% of them were not poor when their husbands were alive.

“As women get older, more and more of us are responsible for ourselves financially, and yet we haven’t been prepared or educated to take care of ourselves.” A paradigm shift is vital, and Kim is leading the charge.

Life thus far

Kiyosaki has led a colourful life. After graduating from college, Kim worked with one of the largest advertising agencies in Honolulu. Ambitious and hardworking, she rapidly moved up the career ladder but made plans to move to New York and start her own business.

Meeting and falling in love with Robert in 1984 threw a spanner in the works. Within one month of their first date, they started their first business venture together in Honolulu – embroidering the logo ‘Win/Win’ on shirts and jackets and marketing them at conferences, seminars and conventions throughout the US.

In December 1984, the couple built an education company focused on entrepreneurship. Within two months they were broke, without jobs or work and were a long way from launching their business. Kim recalls, “Robert and I were married in 1986 and in 1989, because we’d been building our business, we had been broke for quite a while and homeless for a short period of time. So I understand what it’s like to struggle financially.”

The Kiyosakis finally made the decision to take control of their future. Their business took off and grew to 11 offices in seven countries throughout the world. In 1994, after ten years of running the company, they sold it and retired. Kim was 37, Robert was 47. They were able to retire young due to smart investments, primarily in real estate, which provided cash flow and more than covered their expenses.

Steep learning curve

The path to financial freedom has been difficult for Kim. She admits that when she met Robert, “I knew nothing about money, I knew nothing about investing. I wasn’t around anybody who did it.

‘In 1989 Robert said, ‘It’s time you started investing.’ I had no idea what he was talking about. So he started to teach me what his rich dad taught him, and then he said ‘You’re out on your own’. My first investment was a little two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Portland, Oregon. It was $45,000 and I had to put $5,000 down, which I didn’t have, and I was scared to death. I did all of my inspections and checked it all out, and when it came time to sign the paper of the closing documents my hand was shaking so badly they couldn’t even read my signature. That was my first foray into the world of investing. It was on that first house that I learnt the fundamentals, where I learnt the basics.”

Kim received $50 cash flow in her first month of ownership of that property and has been hooked on investing ever since. Today, she controls millions of dollars worth of real estate as well as other investments. She is also a partner in The Rich Dad Company which has grown and continues to grow into a global brand representing financial freedom and independence.

Kim is quite happy where she sits now. “We’ve been rich, we’ve been poor, rich is much better. Going through that time where we had nothing … It was 1985 when that started. It was the year from hell, but looking back in retrospect it is one of the best things that could have happened to us. Because individually we both got stronger for going through it, and as a couple we got stronger as well.”

Times they are a-changing

The idea for Rich Woman developed as the couple travelled the world running Rich Dad, Poor Dad workshops and educating people about how to make their money work for them.

“Robert would talk about the Rich Dad philosophies and I would get up on stage and I would talk for five or 10 minutes about women and investing,” Kim recalls. “It didn’t matter if I was in Sydney or New York or Singapore or LA or London, at the breaks I would be inundated by women and they all had the same issues. ‘Investing is all full of jargon’, ‘I’m not smart enough because investing is a man’s world’, ‘I don’t understand’, ‘It’s confusing’ … It’s just a matter of breaking it down because women, they’re great investors. But I think because historically we haven’t been educated, we haven’t been expected to be the money manager.”

Kim speaks from personal experience. “I was always taught to go for your dreams, but there was still this assumption that I would grow up, get married and my husband would provide for me. And I think that’s still being taught to girls today even though you need a two-income family in most cases. And then there’s the divorce rate and what’s happening with businesses … It’s changed so much.”

No longer just a rich man’s world

So if you’re a woman and you recognise the need to become financially independent, where can you start? “Step number one of course is financial education. Invest time in study and learning, talking to people and get yourself some financial education. I often hear the question ‘I have $10,000, what should I do with it.’ If you have $10,000 and don’t know what to do with it, number one, don’t tell anyone about it! Put it away in a bank account, get some financial education and then invest. Start small.

“The next step is that you’ve got to get in the game. You’ve got to put some money down. Again start small, take baby steps, but you’ve got to start. And I call it a game, because sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.”

Taking those first steps is a scary prospect for any first-time investor and Kim has no magic formula for overcoming this fear. “All I know is that the more education and research you have behind you the less risk you’re going to undertake. But there will always be some risk. Inside everybody there is the coward, and there is the hero. At one point you have to take that step forward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘If you are not facing something you fear every day, then you don’t understand the secret of life’. You get up to your fear and do you get through it, or do you back away from it? If you get through it, that’s how you grow.”

Kim also emphasises the importance of a support base. “It’s more difficult if you are doing this by yourself. Ideally you’ll want to do this with your partner. The reality is this may not be the case all of the time, and that’s why I encourage women to get together and form a women’s investment study group. If you have a group behind you that is supporting and almost pushing you, challenging you and holding you accountable to what you want in life and your financial goals, I think that makes
it a lot easier.”

Money matters

It is interesting to hear how a woman who has made a lot of smart money defines wealth. “If you stop working today, how many days can you survive? If your expenses are $5,000 a month and you have savings or CDs or stocks worth $10,000 total, then you’ve got two months of wealth. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is my investing philosophy as well. We invest in assets that throw off cash flow, so every month we have cash flow coming in that is greater than our living expenses.

“On the non financial side, wealth to me is really growth and knowledge. Robert and I study together, we attend seminars together, we read books together; we grow together. If I’m not growing, I’m going the other way, and that’s not what I want to do.”

These two elements are also Kim’s keys for growing a business. “Every time you’re in a business you’re taking steps forward and you don’t quite know what to expect. But if you believe in what you’re doing, then you just keep going forward and you keep on going over those obstacles. And that experience is priceless.” To keep her own businesses going and keep them moving forward, the Kiyosakis do two things. “We reinvest a lot of our money from the business back into our business, to keep it growing. Because financially we’re set; we don’t need to live on the business. We want to make sure that the decisions that we make are what’s best for the business, not what’s going to put money in our pockets.
“Our other philosophy is that the cash flow we do get from our business, we put into investments. The more we do that, the more free we become. As long as we’re free, then we can make better decisions. And we’ve got much better choices.”

Education, education, education

Kim is passionate about financial education. “Money is a life skill. As Robert’s rich dad said to him, ‘Money may not be the most important thing in the world, but it affects everything that is important’.”

She would love to see a course on entrepreneurship, money and budgeting taught in schools. “Kids are so fascinated by money at an early age. They’re out there doing their lemonade stands, running their little businesses.” Some activities she suggests could easily be incorporated at home. “‘You each have $100, how are you going to multiply that, how are you going to create a business’. Or ‘Here’s a budget for the week for your family’s food. How are you going to budget it so that you can make this money last and feed your family for the week?’ Simple things like that, so the kids learn to appreciate the value of money.”

“I would also like to see business leaders get behind a push to encourage entrepreneurship, because business people are already experts and can teach it well. I’d also love to see business people in government. I think that we could really trim down the government and really run it as a business as opposed to a bureaucracy. I know that Donald Trump is thinking about running. I’d vote for him.”

On top of the world

Kim may have no money worries, but she isn’t one for a life of leisure. In 2003, after being on the road for 220 days, Robert and business partner Sharon Lechter and Kim were exhausted and decided to bring in a CEO to run The Rich Dad Company. “We let him run the company and a year later we look and expenses have gone through the roof, sales have plummeted, no new product has been delivered and our customers and partners are upset with us.”

In July 2005, after a year off, the Kiyosakis took the business back. “Now we’re in control of how the business is run and we are having a blast. It’s like this little experimental place where we can try marketing ideas. We’re working just as hard but it’s so much fun. Of course we have our problems in business, but in general … I don’t need to be promoting books and travelling, but to do what I’m doing and to talk to women, to talk to people about financial education for women … I wouldn’t do anything else right now. I love where I sit. Both Robert and I have never been happier.”

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