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Comment by bparanj | Hacker News Reader

Maybe you can write an article on how you traveled the world with free miles during your investing vacation? Where do cheapos like this guy get money to invest in startups? Money laundering?

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He made his initial money selling a quack nutritional supplement called "BrainQUICKEN": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ferriss#BrainQUICKEN

Since then, he's made his money selling books and programs that claim to teach you how to make money (a.k.a. the Robert Kiyosaki method).

To be fair, 2/3 of his books are about health, the body and cooking.

Yeah--I think he's not a great dude, but The Four Hour Body was a pretty good kick in the ass for me to lose a bunch of weight and take better care of myself. I'm glad I came across it.

I enjoyed both of the books of his I've read, but you're not wrong. They're classic get rich quick schemes and get skinny fast schemes...not always based on the best science, or based on anything other than one data point (often his own personal experience). The value in them is more likely to be in maybe convincing someone to do something toward their goals, rather than providing a useful blueprint for what that something should be.

I followed his page on facebook years ago, and he trots out the "eating wheat causes you to have poop in your blood" article every year or so (there is no reason to believe "leaky gut syndrome" is a real thing, and Ferriss treats the guy who espouses that theory as though he is some kind of expert on health and nutrition). That's enough for me to take everything he says with a huge grain of salt.

The thing that always gets me about people who sell "success" and "wealth" products is that there would be no need to sell them if the product was truly that good. They'd just use it to become successful/wealthy themselves. But, they claim to just want to help other people? Awesome. Then, give it away.

Likewise with books that promise to teach you how to make a trillion dollars in the stock market. Really? You've found a way to do this, yet you want to sell me a book for $9.95?

Likewise, Kiyosaki started with a small amount of capital and made most of his early money haunting mortgage foreclosures and flipping foreclosed houses. At one point in Rich Dad, Poor Dad he gloats about making some obscene amount in an afternoon ($50k or so?) by buying a family's home out from under them and selling it. That's an asshole move no matter how you cut it, and I'd rather be poor than be a scumbag.

That's not an asshole move. You can't "buy a family's home out from under them". The bank owned the home. Kiyosaki made sure the owner of the home got repaid for their initial investment.

And banks have never foreclosed on mortgages unfairly, right? He made it easy for the bank to cash out at a huge loss to the mortgage holder. If it wasn't easy then the bank would have been more motivated to reach some agreement with the mortgage holder.

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