I had the luxury of spending time with the good-hearted folk heading up the Rich Dad franchise over the weekend. An old friend of mine Kelly Ritchie is the franchisor for Robert & Kim Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad company, and he was in New Zealand — briefly — to conduct a training for the local franchisees (Henry Lee and his team). I was a guest.

What a pleasure. I mean it.

Kelly is such an engaging and earnest teacher — very clear, concise with his language, totally evincing the values of the Rich Dad company and its “4 pillars”:
1) fun and entertaining, 2) entrepreneurial spirit, 3) forthright and contrarian (challenging conventional thinking) and 4) global, educational, transformational.

As a long time fan of Robert Kiyosaki (yes, fan — I’ve acknowledged him in two books for his profound effect on my own thinking) it was interesting for me to observe some of what Kelly has brought to the party. It was impressive.

The whole ‘systemized reproduce-ability’ of what and how Kelly presented to us stood out strongly. Most of the material I recognised from time spent with Robert at seminars or hanging out with the Buckminster Fuller crowd, but I could see Kelly had boiled it down, and, as I told him, refined it.

That’s a valuable contribution to ease communication (and, let’s face it, essential for a franchise operation!) It seemed to me he made sure that if there were 7 key points, all 7 got hit, not just 4-and-a-half at random.

There are many layers to the way these guys do things, so many worthwhile lessons about doing business and doing life. In my experience it’s always valuable to hang out with people who think about issues like this and aren’t so carnal or money-focussed that they let the important things (like integrity) slide past in a rush for cash.

Throughout the day Kelly and Henry talked about the mission they’re on to bring financial literacy to the planet … and demonstrated their solution: the spread of the Rich Dad philosophy and tools through the same ‘cell’ approach that the communist party used in its evangelical growth phase. (In the RD case: “Person to Person, People teaching People”)

Like anyone who takes a stand, or decides to speak up and SPEAK OUT, the Kiyosakis and their acolytes have their critics. Of course. So what? As Henry Lee shouted over the hubbub of a CASHFLOW game several times during the day:
“Highest Energy Wins“.

They offer a lot, and give a lot. I wish them well. (See Rich Dad NZ website)