Before You Quit Your Job
Robert T. Kiyosaki & Sharon L. Lechter
(Reviewer - Wayne Turmel)
2006 Warner Business Books
ISBN: 0446696374

10 Real-Life Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Building a Multimillion-Dollar Business.

The real secret to making money & reaching financial independence is not staying an employee, but starting a company & quickly developing it.

Associate Business Reviewer Wayne Turmel writes:

This is the 12th book in the wildly successful Rich Dad-Poor Dad series & very much follows the same “I made a gazillion dollars & you can too” formula. It is also an honest & effective gut-check for those ready to take the plunge & start their own businesses. After all, the winner's circle is no place for the faint of heart & success is not achieved easily.

What makes books like this successful is a 2-part formula:
1) Are the rules (in this case 10 of them) simple to understand & implement?
2) Is it written in a way that will get you through the book?

The answer to the first question is an unqualified yes. Robert Kiyosaki takes 10 lessons such as “A successful business is created before there is a business” –- a frank assessment of what it takes to weather the stomach-churning storms & sleepless nights involved in being a successful entrepreneur, & “The scope of the mission determines the product”.

Using his own experiences as a Marine & a successful (& sometimes not successful) serial business-starter he uses stories to clearly illustrates the principles in ways that make you ask yourself the hard questions. Sharon Lechter, the CPA & the sober, serious half of the team adds her two-cents worth.

This brings us to the second question, that of style. Kiyosaki's brash swashbuckler comes across as a literary info-mercial (not surprisingly he conducts the seminars & does the TV spots for their empire) & Lechter's more academic take on the same topics support but don't really mesh well on the page. Still, the information they provide is valuable & there's little that doesn't ring true.

Those familiar with the series will have already accepted this oddly matched pair, & those waiting to take the plunge & have visions of millionaire lifestyles are pre-disposed to admire their blunt, self-congratulatory tone. After all, when it's true it ain't bragging, & they want to be just like them when they grow up.

The primary assets of this book are the rules it lays out & the blunt accounting of what can happen when they're not followed. On that score it's a worth-while stop on the road to business success.

More in the Rich Dad Advisors series:
The ABC's of Writing Winning Business Plans
The ABC's of Building a Business Team That Wins
SalesDogs®: You Do Not Have to Be an Attack Dog to Be Successful in Sales & many more.
(02/26/06)

Wayne Turmel
2006©Wayne Turmel
A RebeccasReads.Com Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
Wayne Turmel is the Business Book Reviewer for Rebecca's Reads. Besides being a corporate drone, he's a published writer in the field of business communication & training, as well as the author of A Philistine's Journal: An Average Guy Tackles the Classics. He can be heard on the web as the host of the popular podcast: The Cranky Middle Manager Show at (www.thepodcastnetwork.com/cmm).