Robert Kiyosaki Must Be Stopped

Some time back I wrote about Robert Kiyosaki and why he is a fake. I knew about him before his book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" became famous. This is because he is a Hawaiian, and when I was studying in Hawaii back in 1996, a bunch of my local Hawaiian friends has been to his talks where he tried to do get rich quick seminar called Money and You. I remember my friends said they blew away their money at these seminars that didn't help at all. I remember one story they keep telling me about the seminar giving useless and vague advice regarding financial management. How bad was it? Try, "If you want your money to go up, first you must make it go down" or "The wise grow their money slowly, the foolish burn them quickly". Yep, around this time he was just an average, low income, lying cheater guy.

Everyone I knew in Hawaii said he was a bad businessman. He went bankrupt even though he received business advice from "Rich Dad" when he was a kid! He actually went bankrupt twice! So we all know he didn't become a millionaire before he wrote his book and the advice he gave us in the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" didn't help him from being bankrupt, twice. So how did he become a millionaire? From selling overpriced board games.

Way back in 1992, Robert has already written a book called "If You Want to Be Rich and Happy, Don't Go To School?" He did not make million out of selling this book. And then he invented the overpriced board game called Cashflow 101. He didn't hit gold from selling this overpriced board games, because well it is just too damn expensive. So he wrote another book in 1997, endorsed by a greedy money grubbing certified public accountant called Sharon Lechter, that advocates his overpriced board game as a great learning tool. Initially self published, it was then picked up by a big publisher "Warner Books". This big publisher hypes the book up until it became a bestseller. The readers naturally orders the board game and voila! one rich liar. His wealth increases when he creates more overpriced board games and publishes books that cater to these games.

And you know what is the best part about the whole thing? His book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is full of useless and vague advice that he rehashes from his Money and You period. One of his advice was "If you're gonna go broke, go broke big".

What. The. Fish.

I have a friend who used to be a co-worker at a company we used to work at. One day, he told me he was going to start a business with a few friends. He was going to start a cybercafe, so he invested all his savings which I think was around $15k. He took out a bank loan for another $20k, and pooled his money with his friends, and started the business. I told him it was his life savings, this is a big responsibility and whatnots. He said it was ok, he read a book and bought the board game and now knows how to escape the rat race. Needless to say, the business tanked, they lost a total of $150k I believe, and he got a low paying job at a government post. Thank you Mr Two Times Bankrupt, you have now made my friend a bankrupt as well! And now he owes the bank $20k too!

New blogs!

I am starting 2 new blogs today, Technogeek and Entrepreneur. I did this to reduce the clutter that my old blog has become. Yeah it was a mish mash frankenstein monster wreck. Boy am I glad it disappeared. With this move I hope it will be easier to navigate the new site and cut down on the noise, better noise vs signal ratio and all that.

Anyway here's a current breakdown on what's what.

Alpha-male Diatribe
The main blog where I will be talking about society, my worldview, movies, jokes and stuff.

Alpha-male Technogeek
I will be talking about everything related to science and engineering. Stuff like building a SSTO, writing software for Iphone, Windows Mobile 6, and Google Android. Some tutorials here and there. Stuff about my me moving from IT consulting to becoming an ISV.

Alpha-male Entrepreneur
I have been growing 2 businesses in tandem which are totally unrelated to each other. One is in IT industry, the other is in aquaculture. I will be talking about how to effectively run a business as well as problems faced in these 2 businesses.