Midas Touch: Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich – and Why Most Don’t by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki (Plata Publishing, LLC, 2011) is a follow up to Why We Want You to Be Rich.
Trump and Kiyosaki are both successful businessmen. Trump is well known as a real estate developer in New York and host of The Apprentice television show. Kiyosaki is author of many books in the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series.
The two authors write these books because they believe that the educational system does not provide enough practical financial education, especially regarding starting and building a business. Both seek to educate the reader from their own different perspectives; Kiyosaki as a small businessman from humble beginnings, and Trump as a corporate leader.
The book is set up in chapters, each covering a skill that an entrepreneur needs to have and develop in order to be successful in running a business. The five skills make up the fingers of the hand. Together, they give the reader the Midas Touch, the golden hand that will enable them to build and run a successful business.
The Fingers of the Hand in the Midas Touch
The five skills or traits required of an entrepreneur are:
- Strength of character
- Focus
- Building a brand
- Relationships
- The little things that count
In each chapter, Kiyosaki leads off with his trademark storytelling, introducing the Rich Dad concepts and the CASHFLOW quadrant, or ESBI diagram, which is whether a person is an Employee, Small Business person, large Business or Investor.
Trump then follows with stories that illuminate the five skills from his perspective from the boardroom. After each has taken their turn, the information is summarized.
The book is interesting, but for those familiar with other works by the authors, there is very little new information provided. The stories on The Apprentice and Donald’s Saturday Night Live appearance are both repetitive in the book and from other books he has written.
Kiyosaki’s stories of his early career, developing his nylon wallet business and financial difficulties have also been well documented in his earlier books. Whether you believe all the details about the stories of rich and poor fathers, this book moves away from some of his more startling predictions of economic events and delivers more substance on how to develop relationships.
The book by these two well known authors treads little new ground, but can be useful for those needing motivation and a bit of a spur to get going with developing a business. There is not a lot of hard data for decision making, but entrepreneurs will enjoy getting into the mind of these two successful business people.
