Step 5: Seek Mentors

CHAPTER 15

Who guides you to places you're never been to before?

A mentor is someone who tells you what is important and what is not important.

MENTORS TELL US WHAT IS IMPORTANT

The following is the score sheet from my educational board game, CASHFLOW It was created to be a mentor, because it trains people to think like my rich dad thought and point out what he thought was financially important.

Salary Dad thought this area of a financial statement was important.

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Rich dad taught me that these areas are important if you want to be rich.

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My highly educated but poor dad thought that a job with a high salary was important, and that buying the house of your dreams was important. He also believed in paying bills first and living below your means.

My rich dad taught me to focus on passive income and spend my time acquiring the assets that provided passive or long-term residual income. He did not believe in living below your means. To his son and me, he often said, "Instead of living below your means, focus on increasing your means."

To do that, he recommended we focus on building the asset column and increasing passive income from capital gains, dividends, residual income from businesses, rental income from real estate, and royalties.

Both dads served as strong mentors for me as I grew up. The fact that I chose to follow the financial advice of my rich dad did not lessen the impact that my educated by poor dad had on me as well. I would not be who I am today without the strong influence of both these men.

Just as there are mentors who are excellent role models, there are people who are also reverse role models. In most instances, we all have both.

For example, I have a friend who has personally made more than $800 million in his lifetime. Today as I write, he is personally bankrupt. I have had other friends ask me why I continue to spend time with him. The answer to that question is because he is both an excellent role model and an excellent reverse role model. I can learn from both role models.

SPIRITUAL ROLE MODELS

Both of my dads were spiritual men, yet when it came to money and spirituality, they had different points of view. For instance, they interpreted the saying "the love of money is the root of all evil" differently.

My highly educated but poor dad felt any desire to have more money or to improve your financial position was wrong.

On the other hand, my rich dad interpreted this quote quite differently. He felt that temptation, greed and financial ignorance were wrong.

In other words, rich dad did not think money by itself was evil. He did believe that working all your life as a slave to money was evil and to be in financial slavery to personal debt was evil.

My rich dad often had a way of converting religious teachings into financial lessons, and I would like to share one of those lessons with you now.

THE POWER OF TEMPTATION

Rich dad believed individuals who worked hard, were chronically in debt and lived beyond their means were poor role models for their children. Not only were they poor role models in his eyes, but he also felt that people in debt had given into temptation and greed.

He would often draw a diagram like the following and say:

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"And lead us not into temptation," as he pointed to the liability column.

Rich dad believed that many financial problems came from the desire to possess items that had little value. When credit cards arrived, he foresaw that millions of people would go into debt and that the debt would eventually control their lives. We see people going into tremendous personal debt for homes, furnishings, clothes, vacations and cars, because they lacked control over that human emotion called "temptation." Today people work harder and harder, buying things they think are assets, but their spending habits will never allow them to acquire real assets.

He then would point to the asset column that follows and say,

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"But deliver us from evil."

Which was rich dad's way of saying that delaying gratification (a sign of emotional intelligence), minding your own business, and building your asset column first would help you avoid the degradation of the human spirit caused by temptation, lack of financial education, and the influence of financially poor role models.

For those of you seeking your own personal fast track, I can only caution you to be careful about the people you are around every day. Ask yourself: Are they good role models? If not, I suggest consciously seeking to spend more time with people who are heading in the same direction you are.

If you cannot fmd them during working hours, you can find them in investment dubs, network marketing groups, and other business associations.

FIND SOMEONE WHO'S BEEN THERE

Choose your mentors wisely. Be careful from whom you take advice. If you want to go somewhere, it is best to find someone who has already been there.

For example, if you decide you are going to climb Mount Everest next year, obviously you'd seek advice from someone who had climbed the mountain before. However, when It comes to climbing financial mountains, most people ask advice from people who are also personally stuck in financial swamps.

The hard part of finding mentors who are °Evs° and 'Ts" Is that most people

giving advice about those quadrants, and about money, are people who actually come from the "E" and "S" side of the Quadrant.

Rich dad encouraged me to always have a coach or mentor. He constantly said, "Professionals have coaches. Amateurs do not.°

For example, I play golf and I take lessons, but I do not have a full-time coach. This is probably why I pay money to play golf instead of getting paid to play. Yet, when it comes to the game of business and Investing, I do have coaches, several of them. Why do I have coaches? I have coaches because I get paid to play those games.

So choose your mentors wisely. It is one of the most important things you can do.

MACE AMON

1) Seek Mentors - Seek out individuals in both the investment and business arenas who might as as mentors to you. a) Seek out role models. Learn from them. b) Seek out reverse role models. Learn from them.

2) WHO YOU SPEND YOUR TIME WITH IS YOUR FUTURE a) Write down the six people you spend the most time with. All of your children count as one person. Remember that the qualifier is who you spend the most time with, not the type of your relationship. (DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER UNTIL YOU HAVE WRITTEN DOWN YOUR 6 NAMES.)

I was at a seminar about fifteen years ago when the instructor asked us to do the same. I wrote down my 6 names.

He then asked us to look at the names we had written and announced, "You are looking at your future. The six people you spend the most time with are your future."

The six people you spend the most time with may not necessarily always be personal friends. For some of you it may be your co-workers, spouse and children, or members of your church or charity. My list was made up of co-workers, business associates, and rugby players, The list was pretty revealing once I began to look below the surface. I gained insights about

myself that I liked and even more that I did not like. The Instructor had us go around the room and meet with other people to discuss our lists. After a while the relevance of the exercise began to sink in even deeper. The more I discussed my list with other people, and the more I listened to them, I realized that I needed to make some changes. This exercise had little to do with the people I was spending my time with. It had everything to do with where I was going and what I was doing with my life.

Fifteen years later, the people I spend the most time with are all different except one. The five others on my earlier list are still dear friends, but we rarely see each other. They are great people and they are happy with their lives. My change had only to do with me. I wanted to change my future. To successfully change my future, I had to change my thoughts, and as a result, the people I spent time with.

b) Now that you have your list of 6 people, the next step is:

1) After each person's name list the quadrant they operate from.

Are they an S, B, or I"? A reminder the quadrant reflects the way in which a person generates the majority of their income. If they are unemployed or retired, list the quadrant they earned their income in. Leave a blank for young children and students.

Note: A person can have more than one designation. For example, my wife, Kim, would have a "B" and an "I" next to her name since she generates 50% of her income from each.

So my list would have Kim at the top since she and I spend almost all of our time together.

NAME Quadrant 1. Kim Kiyosaki B-I 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

c) The next step is to list each person's level as an investor. Please refer to chapter 5 and the 7 levels of Investors. Kim is a level 6 investor.

If you do not know a person's investor level, just do your best and take an educated guess.

So a name would be complete with the quadrant and investor level listed.

NAME QUADRANT INVESTOR LEVEL 1. Kim Kiyosaki B-I 6 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

SOME PEOPLE GET ANGRY

I've had mixed reviews from people in doing this exercise. Some people get very angry. I have heard, "How dare you ask me to classify the people around me?" So if this exercise has caused any emotional upset, please accept my apologies. This exercise is not intended to upset anyone. It is simply an exercise that is designed to shine some light on an individual's life. It does for some, but not for everyone.

When I did this exercise over 15 years ago, I realized that I was playing it safe and hiding. I was not happy with where I was and I used the people I worked with as the excuse as to why I was not making progress in my life. There were two people in particular that I argued with constantly, blaming them for holding our company back. My daily routine at work was to find their faults, point the faults out to them and then blame them for the problems we were having as an organization.

After completing this exercise, I realized that the two people I was always bumping heads with were very happy with where they were. I was the one who wanted to change. So instead of changing myself, I was pressuring them to change. After doing this exercise, I realized that I was projecting my personal expectations onto others. I wanted them to do what I did not want to do. I also thought that they should want and have the same things I did. It was not a healthy relationship. Once I realized what was happening, I was able to take the steps to change myself.

Then put your initials in the quadrant you are in at present. Next put your initials in the quadrant you want to operate from in the future. If they are all primarily in the same quadrant, the chances are, you are a happy person. You are surrounded by like minded people. If they are not, you may want to consider some changes in your life.