Robert Kiyosaki is an investor, businessman, self-help author, and motivational speaker. Although best known for his successful Rich Dad, Poor Dad motivational series, he has written eighteen books that have sold over twenty-six million copies. Three of Kiyosaki’s books have been on the top ten bestseller’s lists of The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the New York Times. In an effort to teach valuable financial concepts to children, Kiyosaki published a book called Rich Kid Smart Kid in 2001. Thereafter, he went on to create three board games called Cashflow and has a series of Rich Dad audio lessons.

The majority of Kiyosaki's teachings deal with using investment opportunities like real estate or owning small businesses to create “passive” income with the long-term goal of actually living exclusively on these sources of income. In his books and teaching sessions, Kiyosaki also talks about two terms, assets and liabilities. In the context, he explains that one’s assets are those things that produce money while liabilities are merely things that cost you money. Kiyosaki asserts that when you money coming in through such passive means, as well as initially continuing to work at another job, you have the extra resources to start building your wealth.

Kiyosaki stresses what he calls "financial education" as a means to obtaining wealth. He says that life skills are often best learned through experience and that there are important lessons not taught in school. He says that formal education is primarily for those seeking to be employees or self-employed individuals, and that this is an “Industrial Age idea”. And according to Kiyosaki, in order to obtain financial freedom, one must be either a business owner or an investor, generating passive income.

Kiyosaki also talks a great deal about a concept he calls The Cashflow Quadrant. It is a diagram that he uses to represent the system by which all money in the world is earned. This diagram is made up of four specific groups representing ways, designated by letters, in which individuals make money. The groups are all separated horizontal and vertical lines. Employee: The most common way is working for someone else. Self-employed or Small business owner: The job is yours; you’re responsible for making the income yourself. Business owner: Here the person owns separate means or system of earning income, rather than working for someone else. Investor: You spend money to make money and with the hope of making far more in return than what you spent.

Kiyosaki suggests that if you are an employee or self-employed you will never obtain any significant wealth, you will more than likely help ends meet, but that is about all you can expect. Conversely, those who either own businesses or invest in various ways will have much greater chances of becoming wealthy individuals. Understanding how wealth is generated and the risks that are involved with reaching such goals, form the basis of many of Robert Kiyosaki’s teachings and they have made him a very successful and very rich man.