So 2011 is around the corner. It's been almost 7 years since I started this blog and investing in real estate. Back in the first couple of years of this blog, the real estate bubble had yet to burst and people everywhere were getting into flipping properties. There were a regular group of people that used to blog on their own and leave comments on this blog. I got to thinking about what happened to those people and what they might be doing today. I went back through some of my earliest posts, found the people who used to comment a lot and tried to see if I could find them today. Truthfully, I didn't search too hard. I'm not looking to actually contact these people or anything. I was just curious to see if they were still blogging and still in real estate investing. It's possible these people are still doing that, but using different names or blogs, but it seems most have moved on.
Trish#1 - Trish ran the blog Building An Empire, which is no longer around. She lived in Oklahoma and was purchasing and rehabbing properties she bought at foreclosure auctions. I actually bought a house from her, which didn't turn out too well. (In fact, it was the only investment property I lost money on - which was entirely my fault.) Last I heard of her, sometime back in 2007, she had started working for a property management company.
Seattle Eric - Used to run the blog seattlerei.blogspot.com, which is now defunct. I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but he might have left real estate investing to become a Realtor. I know one of the bloggers I followed in the Seattle area went that route.
BGInvestor - a fellow RE investor in Arizona. He ran the blog The Life And Times Of An Arizona Investor, which is still up, but hasn't been updated since 2006. His last entry said he was starting a new blog with a focus on real estate investing education, but that blog doesn't exist anymore.
Erin Morgan - aka PRLinkBiz. I met her in person back in 2006 at a local get together of people who were active on Robert Kiyosaki's RichDad.com forums. She obtained some infamy from her involvement with Casey Serin, a clueless wanna-be real estate investor. She was also part of the No Limit Ladies website, whose last entry is from March, 2009. This site was run by a couple of different women though, and I think Erin stopped posting there years earlier.
Savvy Saver - although not a real estate investor, she did follow my blog and commented frequently. She runs an eponymous blog that is still operating and focuses on personal finance.
Kenric - another Arizona resident I met at the previously mentioned Rich Dad get together. He has shifted his focus from real estate investing to creating and running internet businesses. He still actively posts on his blog Live Learn Invest.
Les - my partner in real estate investing, whom I also met at the Rich Dad meeting, although we had corresponded prior to that. He lives in Northern California. He never had a blog and I found him mainly though his postings on the discussion forums at richdad.com. I haven't been there in ages, so I don't know if he's still active there or not. He is still very much active in real estate investing, mainly as a hard money lender, although he and his wife do buy and rehab foreclosures now and then. He was a mortgage broker prior to becoming a full time real estate investor, so he was involved in real estate before the bubble started.
Steve - yet another local real estate investor. He invests in apartment complexes and it's through him that I found the apartment complex in Houston that we are both invested in. He never blogged, but did post somewhat frequently on the Rich Dad forums. Again, I don't know if he still does. He is still active in real estate investing.
So in looking back, it seems many people who got involved in real estate back in the bubble have now left. Not surprising. If people were looking for a quick or easy buck, they're not going to stick around when things head south. But I think the people that took Kiyosaki's point to heart - that your money needs to work for you and not the other way around - are still going strong. It's true, my focus has shifted more from rehabbing properties to doing more hard money lending, but I still believe in the security of real estate and its power to generate passive income. Kenric took what he learned at the get together (where someone made a presentation on internet businesses) to set up businesses that run 24 hours a day with or without him (although he has shifted lately from using drop shippers to fulfilling and shipping orders himself, so he is moving away from the truly passive concept). He took to heart another of Kiyosaki's principles - build businesses that can be sold.
I wonder if any of those people that have disappeared still take to heart the concept of passive income or if they gave it up when they gave up real estate and went back to living paycheck to paycheck? I personally no longer follow Kiyosaki or read his books - I feel he's simply repeating the same thing over and over now. I do credit him for opening my eyes to the power of passive income and for changing how I look at spending my money.
Showing posts with label Kiyosaki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kiyosaki. Show all posts
Kiyosaki's Seminars Investigated
Canadian TV has a story on the Kiyosaki's Rich Dad seminars. The upshot seems to be that they are basically non-educational and nothing more than extended sales pitches for more products and seminars. (I do have to disagree with the story's characterizations of lease-options and preforeclosures - these are valid investments and I have made money using both of them.)
Personally, I tend to agree. I've never been to a seminar I had to pay for. I just don't see the point. Kiyosaki has written lots of books, many of which I've read. I also was an active participant on the discussion forumson his website, which is where I met other RE investors and got most of my financial and real estate education. These are free or low-cost methods of learning. The only Kiyosaki seminar I attended was a free one that lasted a couple of hours. This was long ago – back before he got the image consultant and was still wearing Hawaiian shirts to appearances instead of suits. I’ve gone to a couple of other events he’s been at, all of which were free.
I can see where he is going and he is going to face increasing criticism like this. At one of the events I was at, he was talking about cashflow and how one of his goals was to increase it. He said he was currently getting about a million dollars a month in cash flow and he had talked with Oprah, who was cashflowing about a million dollars a day. His goal was to get to her level of cashflow.
Now to get to that level, you need to sell to a lot of people over and over. Books alone aren’t going to cut it. So I can see him branching out into other areas – seminars, videos, etc. And you can’t give seminars to tens of thousands of people on your own, so he has to hire or partner with other seminar companies. To get the recurring revenue, you also need to promote the need for more seminars, which seminar companies are good at doing.
Oprah has created her empire through television. She has her own show and it is her alone that millions of people watch and identify with. She is not giving seminars using other people and companies to promote her name. That is the big difference. She has a level of control over her empire that Kiyosaki can never have, not with the model he is using. It’s possible he knows this. He tried to go the television route before. He had a show on a local Phoenix television station that lasted a couple of episodes before it was cancelled. His wife also had a show that lasted slightly longer. Since the television route failed, the only other option he has for reaching the huge number of people needed to obtain his cashflow goal is by using surrogates to spread his message. By definition, he has therefore given up some control of his message by allowing others to teach in his name.
The other problem is his subject matter. Oprah talks to people about books, feelings, ways to live your life, and other topics that typically do not require her fans to invest large sums of money. Kiyosaki however, is teaching about real estate and, increasingly, stocks. Investing in these can require (although not necessarily) large amounts of money. Unwise or poorly educated people can, and have, lose all their savings and wind up bankrupt. Further, the law of averages guarantees this will happen to some of Kiyosaki’s followers, no matter what he does. Because the losses can be so great, dissatisfied followers will be more vocal and receive more publicity than dissatisfied followers of Oprah would. If you buy a book that Oprah recommends and you don’t like it, you’re out $5 to $15 bucks. If you buy a rental property like Kiyosaki says and you can’t manage it, you could go bankrupt. That’s a big difference. It’s why, in my opinion, Kiyosaki will never reach his cashflow goal. The number of people required to reach such a goal ensures there will be people who fail and failures in his field of play are enormously magnified, which in turn, discourages others.
This is not to say I am anti-Kiyosaki. His first several books are still filled with valid advice: stop buying liabilities, start buying assets, increase your cashflow. I still believe substantial passive income should be a goal of everyone. But it’s hard to continue to create content on this narrow topic. I stopped reading his books after Retire Young Retire Rich
because I felt he was repeating himself.
Bottom line: learn and live Kiyosaki’s core message from his first couple of books. Don’t bother with expensive seminars. Educate yourself by meeting with other real estate investors in your local area and from reading free on-line communities. Be skeptical but keep an open mind. Check out the accomplishments of those whose advice you feel inclined to take to make sure they know what they are talking about. Don’t expect to get rich overnight.
Personally, I tend to agree. I've never been to a seminar I had to pay for. I just don't see the point. Kiyosaki has written lots of books, many of which I've read. I also was an active participant on the discussion forumson his website, which is where I met other RE investors and got most of my financial and real estate education. These are free or low-cost methods of learning. The only Kiyosaki seminar I attended was a free one that lasted a couple of hours. This was long ago – back before he got the image consultant and was still wearing Hawaiian shirts to appearances instead of suits. I’ve gone to a couple of other events he’s been at, all of which were free.
I can see where he is going and he is going to face increasing criticism like this. At one of the events I was at, he was talking about cashflow and how one of his goals was to increase it. He said he was currently getting about a million dollars a month in cash flow and he had talked with Oprah, who was cashflowing about a million dollars a day. His goal was to get to her level of cashflow.
Now to get to that level, you need to sell to a lot of people over and over. Books alone aren’t going to cut it. So I can see him branching out into other areas – seminars, videos, etc. And you can’t give seminars to tens of thousands of people on your own, so he has to hire or partner with other seminar companies. To get the recurring revenue, you also need to promote the need for more seminars, which seminar companies are good at doing.
Oprah has created her empire through television. She has her own show and it is her alone that millions of people watch and identify with. She is not giving seminars using other people and companies to promote her name. That is the big difference. She has a level of control over her empire that Kiyosaki can never have, not with the model he is using. It’s possible he knows this. He tried to go the television route before. He had a show on a local Phoenix television station that lasted a couple of episodes before it was cancelled. His wife also had a show that lasted slightly longer. Since the television route failed, the only other option he has for reaching the huge number of people needed to obtain his cashflow goal is by using surrogates to spread his message. By definition, he has therefore given up some control of his message by allowing others to teach in his name.
The other problem is his subject matter. Oprah talks to people about books, feelings, ways to live your life, and other topics that typically do not require her fans to invest large sums of money. Kiyosaki however, is teaching about real estate and, increasingly, stocks. Investing in these can require (although not necessarily) large amounts of money. Unwise or poorly educated people can, and have, lose all their savings and wind up bankrupt. Further, the law of averages guarantees this will happen to some of Kiyosaki’s followers, no matter what he does. Because the losses can be so great, dissatisfied followers will be more vocal and receive more publicity than dissatisfied followers of Oprah would. If you buy a book that Oprah recommends and you don’t like it, you’re out $5 to $15 bucks. If you buy a rental property like Kiyosaki says and you can’t manage it, you could go bankrupt. That’s a big difference. It’s why, in my opinion, Kiyosaki will never reach his cashflow goal. The number of people required to reach such a goal ensures there will be people who fail and failures in his field of play are enormously magnified, which in turn, discourages others.
This is not to say I am anti-Kiyosaki. His first several books are still filled with valid advice: stop buying liabilities, start buying assets, increase your cashflow. I still believe substantial passive income should be a goal of everyone. But it’s hard to continue to create content on this narrow topic. I stopped reading his books after Retire Young Retire Rich
because I felt he was repeating himself.Bottom line: learn and live Kiyosaki’s core message from his first couple of books. Don’t bother with expensive seminars. Educate yourself by meeting with other real estate investors in your local area and from reading free on-line communities. Be skeptical but keep an open mind. Check out the accomplishments of those whose advice you feel inclined to take to make sure they know what they are talking about. Don’t expect to get rich overnight.
Kiyosaki Joins The Crowd
My interest in real estate investing started with my discovery of Rich Dad, Poor Dad in a local bookstore. After reading that, I read the next several books by Robert Kiyosaki, went to see him speak, and even got to meet him a few times. I liked his approach - namely that wealthy people thought about money and investments differently than most people and that he would teach us how to think like they did. Whether or not he really had "two dads" or if his story was 100% true didn't, and still doesn't, matter to me. He opened my eyes to a different way of looking and evaluating investments.
When the real estate bubble started to burst, I wondered if and how Kiyosaki was going to change his message. It now seems I know the answer.
Now, to be honest, I haven't read any of his recent books. I think the last one I read was Retire Young, Retire Rich. I couldn't even tell you how many have come out after that one. Once a daily reader and poster, I haven't visited his website or discussion boards in over 3 years. This wasn't due to any change in my opinion of him or his methods. Rather, I just felt I had learned all I could from him and he was starting to repeat himself. But I am still on his mailing list and I get email about his new products occasionally.
I have recently gotten a couple of emails for his latest project, called Conspiracy Of The Rich and am dissappointed in what I see. As public opinion has turned against bankers, Wall Street, and government bailouts, it seems Robert has changed his tune to ride that wave. A perfect example is the title. Now, instead of showing the masses (us) how to become rich, he is writing about a "conspiracy" of the rich against the rest of us. Suddenly, he is no longer the nice father figure trying to educate us to join him in the easily attainable ranks of the wealthy, but the champion of the poor and middle class protecting us from the "evil" rich and their scheming ways.
This is from his latest email:
He is referring, I figure, to an option the FDIC is exploring to raise funds, which have dried up from all the bank failures of late, in which banks will loan the FDIC money. You can read about it here and here. If you read the articles, you'll find out the banks are supporting this because it means the FDIC will not have to impose new fees on banks, so this will save them some money. Yet Kiyosaki's quote above clearly implies some massive collusion between the banking industry and the government - two groups that are none too popular right now.
Now I will be the first to admit that I have not read Conspiracy of the Rich. All I am basing my view on are the marketing emails for it that I have received. And I will also admit that marketing materials are, by definition, meant to be intriguing, draw people in, and make people want to buy or at least further investigate, a product. It is entirely possible that the marketing message and the actual message of the book are completely at odds. It wouldn't be the first time the truth was stretched in advertisements.
But still, I am disappointed in what I perceive to be a shift in tone in his work. There are many people who criticize Kiyosaki for many things. Some of those criticisms are valid. Personally, I don't believe he advocated what many of his readers did - bought houses with negative cash flow, hoping for rising equity to make them money. In fact, I always found his advice to be "make sure the property will be cashflow positive from Day 1 and don't count on property values increasing." I am still glad he got me interested in real estate and I don't think the bursting of the real estate bubble invalidates his main lessons. But I am sad to see him switch to an "us versus them" position. It makes it clear to me that what he really is is a salesman interested in selling more of his products - books. And he will write whatever the public wants to hear at the moment.
When the real estate bubble started to burst, I wondered if and how Kiyosaki was going to change his message. It now seems I know the answer.
Now, to be honest, I haven't read any of his recent books. I think the last one I read was Retire Young, Retire Rich. I couldn't even tell you how many have come out after that one. Once a daily reader and poster, I haven't visited his website or discussion boards in over 3 years. This wasn't due to any change in my opinion of him or his methods. Rather, I just felt I had learned all I could from him and he was starting to repeat himself. But I am still on his mailing list and I get email about his new products occasionally.
I have recently gotten a couple of emails for his latest project, called Conspiracy Of The Rich and am dissappointed in what I see. As public opinion has turned against bankers, Wall Street, and government bailouts, it seems Robert has changed his tune to ride that wave. A perfect example is the title. Now, instead of showing the masses (us) how to become rich, he is writing about a "conspiracy" of the rich against the rest of us. Suddenly, he is no longer the nice father figure trying to educate us to join him in the easily attainable ranks of the wealthy, but the champion of the poor and middle class protecting us from the "evil" rich and their scheming ways.
This is from his latest email:
Yes, you read correctly. In his latest Conspiracy of the Rich Bulletin, Robert discusses how the government is proposing a plan to have the banks bailout the government – and how the FDIC is not the solution, but the problem.
"The conspiracy of the rich knows no boundaries. For months now, the government has bailed out the banks. Now the government is proposing that banks bail out the government, which, of course, the banks are enthusiastically supporting."
He is referring, I figure, to an option the FDIC is exploring to raise funds, which have dried up from all the bank failures of late, in which banks will loan the FDIC money. You can read about it here and here. If you read the articles, you'll find out the banks are supporting this because it means the FDIC will not have to impose new fees on banks, so this will save them some money. Yet Kiyosaki's quote above clearly implies some massive collusion between the banking industry and the government - two groups that are none too popular right now.
Now I will be the first to admit that I have not read Conspiracy of the Rich. All I am basing my view on are the marketing emails for it that I have received. And I will also admit that marketing materials are, by definition, meant to be intriguing, draw people in, and make people want to buy or at least further investigate, a product. It is entirely possible that the marketing message and the actual message of the book are completely at odds. It wouldn't be the first time the truth was stretched in advertisements.
But still, I am disappointed in what I perceive to be a shift in tone in his work. There are many people who criticize Kiyosaki for many things. Some of those criticisms are valid. Personally, I don't believe he advocated what many of his readers did - bought houses with negative cash flow, hoping for rising equity to make them money. In fact, I always found his advice to be "make sure the property will be cashflow positive from Day 1 and don't count on property values increasing." I am still glad he got me interested in real estate and I don't think the bursting of the real estate bubble invalidates his main lessons. But I am sad to see him switch to an "us versus them" position. It makes it clear to me that what he really is is a salesman interested in selling more of his products - books. And he will write whatever the public wants to hear at the moment.
