the goose

I was lucky enough to see Keith Cunningham speaking in Dublin a few weeks ago. Keith is an American multi-millionaire entrepreneur who lists amongst his past businesses everything from dry-cleaning to cable television outfits. He went from being worth over a 100 million to bankruptcy in the 90’s and claims to be the inspiration for Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad”. He is the type of Texan that really could fill a ten gallon hat but is more mellow than maniacle. His current mission in life, together with his pretty young wife Sandy, is to educate would be entrepreneurs on the path to riches.

As a wanna-be rich entrepreneur myself – I was glued to every word. Although he may not be MBA professor material – he undoubtedly has a firm grip on the mind of an startupper. About half way though his presentation – he began to debunk some of the mantra’s professed by the Rich Dad crew. Keith started off his training career with Kiyosaki but its obvious there was a parting of ways at some stage. In southern tones, he started to dismantle the concept of “passive income”. In his own words he described the concept as ‘monumentally stoopid’.

I have to admit – my heart skipped a little when I heard him say this at first. I’ve been harping on about creating automated passive incomes for more than a year now and to hear someone with that kind of track record come out against the concept had me wondering. Of course- it was maybe more of a headline grabbing technique than it may first appear. Keith talks about leveraging your effort rather than creating a passive income stream. There is always work associated with money flowing into your bank account. At the very least there are accounts that need to be signed off. Of course – at the beginning there is far more than that to be done. Creating a passive income requires a massive effort. Like trying to manually push a fairground carousel into action – you need every ounce of energy to begin with. Even when the edifice is slowly making circles, you still need to keep an eye on it – pushing the odd horse as it floats by to keep the momentum up.