The Untold Story Of Rich Dad Poor Dad's Co-Author

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. I'm talking with Sharon Lecter from I think Phoenix, Arizona. That area, is that right?

That's correct. Scottsdale? You bet.

Oh, Scottsdale, yeah. And northern Scottsdale. I used to go out there all the time. Well, for a lot of reasons. But anyway, a fun place. What I remember about that place, I bought more jackets and heavy sweaters out there because I never took anything out of that. I thought I'm going out there where it's hot.

From Phoenix you can get to the mountains and snow ski in a couple of hours. You just never know what the weather is going to be like. But.

Right, but in the desert, kind of gets cold in the evening at night. You don't expect that if you're not from that area. And I never remembered it. So I would fall into that trap every time. How long have you lived in Scottsdale?

32 years.

Really? You've got to be one of the veterans now.

I was like, we're natives of course it was very, a very different town back then, but we love it here. It's an easy place to live.

Why did you choose that place?

Well, we had been in Wisconsin. My husband was, is a well known intellectual property attorney and bec kind of established a model for creating intellectual property practices within large firms. And so he was recruited down here to do that for a firm in Phoenix. So that's what actually brought us here. And at the time Phoenix was considered little Silicon Valley. Very inconducive to research and development. And since he's a, his background is a patent attorney and licensing, it was a perfect opportunity for him.

So you have seen that place absolutely explode. And what area of town do you live in?

Well, we lived for the first 31 years in paradise Valley, right by Scottsdale Lincoln, if you're familiar with the area and loved it. It was beautiful home. We loved where we were. And then a year ago we moved a little further east in Scottsdale. Out on Shea puts us about a half an hour closer to our ranch. We also own a ranch in Young Arizona that's about two and a half hours away.

How big is that?

We have 300 acres that are deeded and 42,000 acres of grazing rights and in the Tonto National Forest. So.

Wow. Wow, that's impressive. It take a while to fly over that even in a Helicopter, I think.

Yep. We run Black Angus cattle there. So it's a working cattle ranch. And then we also have a hospitality side. So it's a guest ranch. People can come stay. We have a beautiful lodge and it's. Go to cherrycreeklodge.com you can see a.

Little bit more about the Cherokee Lodge.com so the public, you bring the public in.

Yes, we have. You can go online to cherrycreeklodge.com and you can rent a room, you can rent the whole place. We have weddings, retreats. It's a little piece of heaven. It's totally off the grid, all solar power, our own water. So it's really a little piece of heaven.

Now did you get that going by as a long pent up desire to have your own place out in the country or to get into cattle? You know, cattle is a big thing and a lot of entanglements. This after a life of travel and go, go, go. That's a big project you bid off for yourself. And so why'd you do that?

Well, we've been. My Mike and I have been married for 43 years and he always wanted a survival property. So we were out looking for 10 acres somewhere. And now 18 years ago we found this place and we both fell in love with the history. And the history is the place of one of the deadliest feuds in American history. And the Pleasant Valley War, if you remember old westerns where you saw the. Between the cattle ranchers and the sheep herders. That was from this property. Yeah, the big corporate cattle guys against the little guys. That was this particular war. And so we love the history, wanted to maintain that. And so we actually bought it the day we saw it. And it was a whole lot more than what we were looking for. We were looking for 10 acres somewhere. We end up at 300 acres and 45,000 acres of grazing rights. And so we became ranchers overnight because of that. And my family background was in farming. My parents both were raised on farms, but my husband was a city boy, so it was kind of interesting. And he's now Cowboy Mike. He loves it out there. We've owned it for, like I said, for 18 years. And because of what I teach, financial response, I said, we've got this large piece of property now, we need to make it an asset. Yeah. So we became ranchers and we built the lodge and we use it as an income producing hospitality. Yeah.

And the one thing you don't want for Christmas is anyone to give you any sheep. I guess the die has been cast in favor of the ranchers.

Yes, the cattle.

So in terms of anybody interested in restarting that war, they're going to have.

Oh it is. The feud is still alive and well. People who live up there. It's the Tewksbury's versus the Grahams. We bought the Tewksbury ranch and in fact our ranch manager lives on property that was owned by the Graham. So it's just, it's a comical because we kind of keep the feud alive and well.

Wow. Wow. Let's let people behind the scenes. You are a high level financial mentor. Mentor and working with brands like Disney and Time Warner. I'm going to read off some of the bullet points here. You have co authored and I want to hear about this, the international bestseller Rich Dad, Poor dad, which I've heard about for the last zillion years because I come from the financial services industry as well and has released 14 other books in the Rich dad series. You've collaborated with the inventor of the first electronic talking book and turned that into a multimillion dollar international market. And you have centered your career out impacting others to improve their financial IQ and served under two US Presidents as an advisor on the topic of financial literacy. And you've covered the whole spectrum there from George Bush to Obama. And so everybody's interested in financial literacy. And so how in the world did you get into this situation with your young self starting out in life?

Well, thanks for the question, Larry. I think we don't know what we don't know and we all sometimes we don't know what we do know. I was raised in a very lower middle class home. We lived in an old tiny house between my mom's beauty shop and my dad's used car lot. And we had rental properties that I had to help scrub out the bathrooms between tenants at the age of 10. So I've been a real estate investor since I was 10 and I hated it. I had my friend's parents were CEOs military officers. I swore I'd never be an entrepreneur. I was going to be a sophisticated professional. And so I was the first generation one of my family, first generation to go to college. I was the only woman in my accounting classes. I was one of the very first women hired in public accounting by Coopers and Lybrand. At the time there were the big eight and started my career in Atlanta. I thought I was hot stuff, very upwardly moving in my career. One of the few women learning tons and in that position I learned how companies did things right and probably more importantly, how companies did things wrong. And in that journey I started realizing that some basic understanding of things that I understood the power of assets, income producing assets people didn't get. People were chasing money, chasing salary. And at the ripe old age of 25, my parents looked a whole lot smarter to me. And I realized that I'd been given this gift of financial education that most people didn't get. And that was. I actually had a call from a client inviting me to go with him. He was getting a company out of bankruptcy. And I. So I went back to my condo and did the old pros and cons because this was before PCs or cell phones. Yellow legal pad, right. And it didn't help me a bit because I could argue both sides because I was very successful in my career, but not in control of my life. And I had this opportunity and my hand kind of took off and wrote across, why not do something different? Why not take the road less traveled? Why not solve a problem, serve a need? Why not go where you've never been before? And so I made the decision to leave public accounting.

If you're looking down the road at that moment in your life, I don't know if you verbalized it, but probably at least subconsciously you felt like you were going to be doing more of the same, that you'd learned quite a bit. And the excitement was in learning things you didn't know and also being able to move yourself up, being more in control of moving up yourself. I know the idea of freedom being my own boss was worth more than just about anything to me coming up. And it's funny how that'll take over. You come from the inside out as you get established and you get a confidence in your ability to perform in the real world and you get, you know, you had the advantage of being in situations where you had responsibility. You came up with solutions, you earned respect. And that's like, okay, I can do this. And so it's still a gut wrenching thing in a sense to walk away from those things, security and things to the unknown. Many times, unless you're, you're terrorized where you are. But you know, if you're not terrorizing, you're making up, you're going from good foundation to something that could be even better. It's it. You got to think about it a little bit, don't you?

Oh, it was, I mean, my parents thought I was crazy, but it was. For me, it was, it comes back to that question, why not? And I, that's still a Mantra of mine today. Why not do something about it? Something gets me mad, I start a new company. It's one of those things. It's just been a part of my DNA. And it was probably still, to this day, the worst business decision of my life. I got up to New Hampshire, where the company was. And ended up finding all kinds of corruption. So I was, like 26 years old. Afraid I was going to lose my newly minted CPA license. And I was terrified, not knowing what to do. So I knew I had to leave. And I actually went away for a couple of days. To try and center myself. To figure out what my next step was. And when I came back, that company, as I mentioned, was in bankruptcy. So there was quite a bit of litigation. I wasn't part of that. So they waited for me to get back for them to do discovery in this lawsuit. And that's when I met Michael Lecter. He was there. He was on the other side of the lawsuit. He was doing discovery. And was selected to come into my office to do theirs. So we literally met when he was in my chair going through my desk drawer. So we comically tell people we met when he was going through my drawers. Which was a true statement. And it was love at first sight. And that was 43 and a half years ago.

So, well, congratulations. And on all fronts. So when you. Let's just say before that, up to the time you decided to move out on your own. Had you been burned? I mean, had you gotten responsibility and dropped the ball. And had some comeuppance, let's say, in your early career in the CPA firm? Or is it just a matter of doing the work they gave you every day? And did you have some bad or unfortunate learning experiences. Or how did the progression go when you got into the cpa?

Well, I mean, there were things that happened that I share with people that. But I really like to add more to it. Because I was a woman in a field that was primarily male oriented. So. And many of my audit clients were in little tiny towns in Georgia. So I tell the story. I did one that was a calcite mine. And that's the white powder on chewing gum, right? So I was in charge of that audit. And I went in, and the guy was big, heavy, behind his desk with this big stogie. And he saw me and he says, I don't need no secretary. And I don't need my windows washed. So I don't know why you're here. And so I tell people, at that point in time, you can make a decision. Do I combat or do I just confront? And so, you know, and I said, well, it's a good thing, Harry, because I don't do windows and I'm a lousy secretary. But if you want to maintain that loan with your bank, you and I are going to become good friends. And so a lot of it is learning to have backbone and not combative, but be strong in your position. And we ended up becoming great friends. And then one of the reasons I made the decision to leave public accounting was that I was in this group of people that were hired, the only female and my. I got a wonderful raise. And they said, you've, you really deserve to be a manager. We're giving you the money of the manager, but we can't give you the title because it's going to upset the guys that started with you. And so that was really like a trigger. And it's not me being mad about sexual discrimination. It was just simply I had earned it, but I wasn't in control of getting what I deserved. And so that was a trigger. And then it was like the week after was when I get a call from a client where I said, okay, I'm tired of not being in control of my life. I am a lousy employee and I need to be in a position where I can control my destiny.

Yeah. And of course you have magnificently with. Did your. I'm curious, did your parents always make great financial decisions when they were buying those houses and accumulating those rental properties? Or did you live through some tough times or some reversals there too? Because the real estate market is always. Is always a crapshoot. We change all the time.

So yeah, we had some tough times. My. I have a sister, four years older and she went to a private college in Georgia. Was very expensive. So I remember my parents concerned about with some weeks we had vegetable dinners all week because they were conservative. But my father was just a brilliant money manager and we had multiple rental properties. He owned orange groves. He always believed in cash flow. We would sit at the dinner table and talk about assets, cash flow appreciation really. And some of his orange groves are now where SeaWorld is. Right. So he was a man before his time and he was not at all. He didn't want to build an empire. He just wanted to build a foundation for his family. And he did. He bought a piece of property that was the last undeveloped part of Winter Park, Florida, if you're at all familiar with Florida. And so when he passed, we had this 30 acre piece right in the middle of the largest, most desirable area in central Florida. And he was always looking to leave a legacy for my sister and I.

So pretty good decision. For those of you who are sick and tired of fooling around and are dead serious about wanting to move up fast, I've got something especially for you. I've combined the best insights from over 40 years in business and making $70 million in income and compressed them into a free webinar. That's right. It's a free resource. If you want to find out exactly what the concepts are that I use in coaching million dollar earners, Register now@widelawnwinning.com you'll discover the five part framework used by so many to reach their financial, personal and professional goals. You can find that link in this episode's show.

Not.

So how did you get into. I didn't even know there was a co author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So how did you get involved in that project and the tsunami of success that came from that? You really struck a nerve. That made sense to a lot of people. It still does and is a topic of conversation still all over the country. And so talk about how you got in that. Did it look like a gold mine or. It looked like a big hit right from the beginning.

Well, let me. Yeah, let me back up one second because you mentioned the talking children's book. That company was first. That was my first global book.

Oh, it was okay.

And I met the inventor of the first talking children's book. So the books that have the sound strips down the side. And at that time, our kids were up to the point where they didn't really like to read that much. Their friends didn't like to read and they had nothing electronic, they had no screen time. So we said, how can we get parents to trust us? And that's why we did deals with little companies like Disney, Warner Brothers, Sesame Street, Marvel Comics and allowed us to explode that around the world. We thought we were hot stuff. A million in sales the first year, then went to 9 to 23 to 52 million. Totally self funded. And so we had a tremendous success.

How did you do that? I mean, how do you show up and okay, we want to get in and all of a sudden you're dealing with Disney and Time Warner. How did you, I mean, connections of people you've done that, had the network.

And very, very strong licensing agreements with them that allowed us to have that kind of brand association and that validity because parents trusted Disney, they trusted Sesame Street. So therefore they would be more likely to purchase the books than if it was an off brand, not knowing what it was. So that alliance, yeah, we paid big fees to Disney, Sesame Street, Warner Brothers. But it was well worth it because it allowed us to expand globally. And in that process, the expansion of understanding how the resources of where to get things made and to be able to bring them in from China or bring them in locally, compile them locally to bring them.

How much of that did you have, information did you have when you made that first contact with Disney and was this all kind of spinning the idea to them and see if they buy it or how much of that did you have nailed down?

Well, the inventor was well known in the music industry. He had a long history in one of the biggest companies in sheet music. And then he had this idea for the talking children's book. And he actually is the one who made the original contact with Disney. But it was a long time, it took us a long time to negotiate that deal. And because we started at the top, right, and Disney's lawyers, so and my husband is the one who negotiated the licensing arrangements with all those. Because it is intellectual property, it's very important that you protect it. And they had very stringent quality control. The voices had to be approved by them. At that time they were little tiny chips. First time ever that they'd condense sound on these little tiny chips. So it was a really exciting time to see as we progressed and got these deals done. But it took a long time.

What's a long time?

Well, it took us probably six months for the first chip to get approved and then each one after that was about the same because they, it had to go through their huge corporate environment to get the approval, the sounds. And then of course we had to have the strips made and manufactured and brought over. So it was, there was a, about a nine month, almost nine months manufacturing cycle.

Yeah, but actually in dealing with big corporation, that seems like lightning fast actually because usually, usually to get permission to turn the light bulb on in the hallway is 18 months. We've got to set a policy. Who's going to flip the switch, who's going to train them? And so exit sounds pretty fast. Now what were you doing while this was going on?

Well, we were actually, when you talk about length of time, because we weren't going from the bottom up, we were at the top. So we were the top of the company to the top of the company with their lawyers and the quality control people. So I think that's what allowed us to speed that up and when we were in the development phase, I was looking for ways for us to build our ability to grow more quickly through self funding. Instead of having letters of credit upfront, we were able to get some established relationships with our manufacturing partners. There's a lot that goes into these little things, you know, with all the individual pieces and having to get the molds made for the sound strips, all that. So. And that knowledge of the manufacturing system, cycles and resources allowed me to step in to the rich dad organization. So if I then now I'll transfer, you know, transition to rich dad.

Okay, I got, yeah, we sold the.

Talking book company in 1991, and that's when we moved to Arizona because that was when we lived in and this was in Wisconsin. And in 92, my oldest son went off to college and came home in credit card debt. So his first semester, he had a really good time. He got there and they greeted him with table free pizza, free money, another table free T shirt, free money. And we didn't even know he had a credit card. So he had a really good time his first semester. And then he asked us to bail him out at Christmas. And that was December of 1992, Larry. And that's when I dedicated the rest of my career to financial education and entrepreneurship education for young people, for women and personal finance education. And I'm as passionate about it today as I was back then. But that really was when I really knew what the rest of my life, what my mission was. And that was In December of 92, I started working with school systems. I always say, if, you know, my hair used to be red, but if you work with school systems, why, it's white now and then accelerate a few years. I got a phone call from my husband in 96, 1996, and he, Robert Kiyosaki, had gone to his office with Bermuda shorts, flip flops and this idea for board game. So I met Robert at the first beta test for the board game Cash Flow. I was the only one that got out of the rat race. I thought it was brilliant. I volunteered to help him commercialize it because all of the resources I had and the connections. And he and I started working together just as a volunteer, helping him. And he told me he wanted to charge $200 for the board game. And I said, that's pretty pricey. We're talking 1996 board game, $200. Said, well, maybe you ought to write a brochure that explains the philosophy, convince people that they want to invest $200. And that brochure that's when he asked me to become his partner. And we were partners for 10 years, built the company, I was a CEO, I put it all together and we wrote that brochure called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So we never expected it to take on a life of its own, but it just exploded. Then we thought, well, maybe we'll do three books, a trilogy, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Cash Flow Quadrant, Rich Dad's Guide to Investing. And then, oh no, over 10 years we wrote 15 books together. And then I launched the Rich Dad Advisor series, which are books in individual topic areas by the experts in those areas as well. And we exploded around the world, 110 countries, over 50 languages.

So wow, that's like in moving into the category of biggest sales of all time for any book, pretty much up in that category at least to be considered up in that category.

It's the largest personal finance brand in the world. We sold 35 million books and it was on the Bridget Poor dad was on the New York Times bestseller list for over seven years.

So, yeah, very interesting. And so when you met Robert Kiyosaki, he was not in his suit and tie and he actually lived in a.

Two bedroom condo, had two small apartment complexes. His passive income was $100,000 a year and his living expenses were like 35, 36,000. But that was the message I wanted the world to hear. He was financially free at $100,000 worth of income. And you're financially free when the income from your assets exceeds your monthly expenses. And that was the message I wanted the world to hear. The importance of buying, building and creating assets.

And as you expanded that, I noticed that, you know, Rich Dad, Poor dad for women. You've got one of the titles in there. What would you say? The message is pretty clear. What was the impetus behind like, okay, we need to write a book on this as well, expanding it. How did you get into the expanding the series?

Well, typically we created the first trilogy, which was really the Rich Dad Poor had the basic parable and then we had Cash Flow Quadrant, the way you think about money mindset, and then Rich Dad's guide to investing, thinking that we covered all the bases, but. But then we had people coming to us wanting more and more. And so we just started pretty much a book a year around almost every nine months on various topics and was retire young, retire rich. You know, don't quit your day job. There's things before you quit your job. There's lots of different topics that we covered that added to the arsenal and to the library of The Rich Dad Organization.

How does this thing expand where you're in all that many countries? Is that a natural progression? I mean you get people calling you or how does that.

We were very fortunate early on when we actually first launched the book, we only printed a thousand copies. And we had a friend in Austin, Texas that had car wash. We sent a few books there, they would only take on consignment. And somebody picked up the book and read it. And he was a diamond in Amway and he sent it to Dexter Yeager, who was one of the top dogs in Amway. And I still remember him calling me and saying, you know, I read this book and I'm going, you did? Because we really had just done the launch and probably we printed a thousand. I still had 950. It was like we were just family and friends. And it's like, where did you get this? And it was amazing. And he said, yeah, I gave it to Dexter and how many do you still have? I said about 950. And he said, I'll buy them all. And so this was before Amazon. Hard to believe. It was before the Internet. Hard to believe. And so the expansion of the Rich Dad Organization was word of mouth, people talking about it all over the world and. And we became the darling of the network marketing industry was never our intention, but it was because our message validated that industry.

Right.

And so that helped us also expand internationally. And the beauty of what I teach people, Larry, is the power of association. CEO to CEO. And when we needed to do infomercials, I didn't want to build all those systems. So we time life came to us and I said, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it with number one quality. And so they use their money, their people, their resources and helped us develop infomercials that were the top selling infomercial for a couple of years. When we wanted to start Rich Dad's Coaching, I found the best coaching company that had the systems. And so I went there and worked with them to establish Rich Dad Coaching so that it would be answered the phone, Rich Dad Coach, you know, Rich Dad Coaching. And the people that were doing the coaching were trained by us and we had the ability to have quality control. And so it's again, the way we expand is through the power of association, finding the best in class. And by doing that, it elevates your speed to market your ability to serve more people more quickly.

Yeah, I love those phrases. Elevate your speed to market best in class. That's What I've always been interested in about a thousand different things and had very little time, but because of success in business, had the resources. So when I put my time in, I was able to be able to maximize the results. But that best equipment, best person I could find in the world doing that, that I could get my conversation with and that I found that you make the fastest possible growth. In fact, I was learning how to play the banjo. I had a Grammy Award winning banjo player teach me. And just like that, I won't go into all of the things, but from skiing.

Yeah, having the right mentor, so important and so many people that are in business, they have, they may even have a mentor, but the mentor's gotten them to where they are today, but may not be the right mentor to get them to where they deserve to be. Everybody deserves to play a bigger game.

So that's another phrase right there. So how do you advise people talk about that system, that phrase you used earlier, CEO to CEO, or you'd like systems, go and find someone who's already in that world and partner up with them or get them involved, talk about that process.

Well, the vast majority of business owners sell to consumers. So it's B2C. So I make a sale, then I have to find the next person to make a sale to, then I have to find somebody else. And the power of association allows you to elevate your brand, elevate your standing list. Like we did with the talking children's book. By connecting with Disney, all of a sudden, we opened ourselves up to the millions of Disney lovers, which allowed us to impact more children more quickly. And so when we were publishing these books, I was able to establish relationships with publishers all over the world using their systems, their people, their technology, their distribution system to be able to translate the book into over 50 languages and get it into over 100 countries. I didn't do that, they did. And so instead of just being B2C, which you want to be, you want to have customers directly. But if you can go B2B, CEO to CEO. At one time, right before I left, I probably had 5,000 people working for the Rich dad organization, but only 17 were on my payroll. The rest of them were on somebody else's payroll. And so I managed them through CEO to CEO relationships, and that their CEO was managing the individual people, which is a much easier way to go. Plus, as I said, speed to market is everything even more important today than back then. And so you find somebody who already got the systems, already got the technology, already have the Opportunity for you to hit the ground running. It's going to get you to elevate your business much more quickly.

Well, that's always been the ideal way to do it. That's why big businesses always partner and that's why you see even the Googles, the Amazons and they're buying these companies. They need to go in this world, let's just go buy that company, buy all the people running it, buy their brains, their experience and saves them. It saves them experimenting, in other words, trying to figure out, develop their own people, get some ideas, go through all the stumble and fumble, then maybe have it go belly flop and then it's all for another. Rather you get something proven these people know. Finding people to know how to make things go, that's really the idea behind this podcast. It's like you want to hear things from people who know how to make things go. And because you got some thinking to do out there, you got a massive amount of work to do. But figuring out things that nobody's figured out before, especially you've never figured out and getting the information you need going through that process, the best way to figure that out is to hear from someone who's been down that road. I bet now you really stumbled into or you partnered up with a guy on the Electric Electronic Children's book and he was a well known writer, whatever, and he had contacts at Disney. I bet you have not had things fall in your lap where you always knew the top guy, you always knew the best of the best. And it's just a matter of making a phone call and say, John, Mary Jane, whatever saw you last. Remember we met last week, got an idea for you. I'm sure you had to hunt and work your way somewhere along the way.

Oh, absolutely. I've always had the power of association is not an easy thing to do. You have to figure out who's the right person in the right seat and the right chair. There's going to be interest in what you have to offer and you have to do your homework. Business is not easy. It's definitely a team sport. But you have to do your homework and you have to make sure you're speaking to the right person. And that's, you know, it's really, it's been. I have the Personal Success Equation, which is in my first book with the Napoleon Hill Foundation. And after I left Rich Dad, I had that opportunity to work with them and it was called Three Feet From Gold. And the Personal Success equation talks about your passion and your talent. That's all about us, right? And that's what we're taught in schools, all about us. Do everything by ourselves. But true success is times a power of association. Right? Who's on your team? Do you have a mentor? Do you have people on your team who are strong, where you are weak? Making sure that business is a team sport and then times a taking action. How many times do we know what we're supposed to do? We just don't do it. And then plus f faith in yourself, faith in what you're doing, faith that is needed and necessary and faith that you will succeed. A successful business does one of two things. Solves a problem, serves a need. That's it. And if you keep your eye focused on what problem you're solving, what need you're serving, that takes it outside of you personally. And surround yourself with people who share that passion, that have the strengths that you don't have, have the mentorship, that have been where you want to go. You're going to have the ability to have your success much quicker. And that personal success equation you can get a free way for to work out your own. If you go to personalsuccess equation.com it's free as a guide that I've developed. But when I start working with somebody, Larry, I share this on every interview, every talk, but I also use it with my clients because usually it's the power of association and that confidence that need the most work. Somebody's been successful and then they plateau. And they usually plateau because they've stopped meeting new people, they've stopped networking, they start growing their power of influence. And so when you have the right people around you, the right people on your team and that confidence isn't there. You have a bad day, they won't let you stay there, they bring you back up. And so usually people walk through that formula and they can realize I need to get out, I need to expand my sphere, I need to stand in my own power, I need to be my own hero. And amazing things happen when they start following the formula.

And so as you've gone out there, like when you started the ranch, how did you learn about the ranching and the cattle and all of that?

We brought in the right people. We brought in people who were very connected within the industry here you can know a lot about cattle, but if you're not, it's a good old boys club, quite frankly. And people know each other. And we were the, they were considered us the rich people coming into this little town, we not well liked because they felt we were invading them. And so it was like supporting the initiatives in the town, doing a fishing retreat for the kids, all that stuff. Trying to elevate our goodwill within the community. But as we started with the cattle ranching, we had to bring in people who understood kettles and not just understood how to raise them, but understood our territory. Our grazing rights is very rocky. It's not, you know, it's not your nice long, big pastures. People that are experienced in that understand it. We had to bring somebody in that had a good relationship with the Forest Service to communicate and do our grazing plans. So yeah, there's a lot of technical side of it. And we brought in somebody who knew how to do that to work alongside us so that we weren't like. Because we were. We consider us city slickers. Right. So we needed to bring somebody in that knew what they were doing and have them help support what our goals were.

Yeah. And it's not that these people, it's not what they cost, it's what it's going to cost you if you don't have them involved. If you have to learn their lessons for yourself, life is short. Life is too short to learn all the lessons yourself. Trial and error is the best teacher.

That's why I say about having a mentor. Having a mentor is they've been where you want to go. They're going to steer you around those pitfalls and they're going to open doors of opportunity. They're going to create powers of association that have. Accelerate your success. Yeah.

And just like you said there, it's not just necessarily business or technical skill. It's like someone who knows the community, knows how they think, knows how you can come in and get through those hurdles to get to know people and make those, those fears go away. That's priceless. It allows you to get settled and get integrated in community in record breaking time. And they probably didn't have to have a college degree in that. They just had to live in the town and know everybody. And so how did you go about finding the people to associate with in this arena? That was not your forte, not something you had a lot of experience with. And the point I'm bringing up here that I want to let people know is how transferable these skills are. Sharon. It's not just you apply it to business, to finance or to whatever. It's being successful in any area of life. The same skills like power of association, things like that.

Well, you know, your strategy may change. Our strategy when we first went in was we wanted to Use all local materials. We wanted to use all local people. We wanted to invest in the community. We wanted people to see that we were bringing in good commerce to the community. We quickly found out the local materials were not the right kind of materials. They were inferior. And it's like, okay, I guess that's out. And then we found out one of the days we went up there, and half the people at the bar were on our payroll. So instead of working, they were at the bar. So you get to the point where you have to understand, you had to find, yes, you want to support the community. You don't want to be the big bad wolf coming into the community, but you also want to make sure that you do it and do it properly and do it correctly. And so it takes management. It takes trial and error. And we built a beautiful lodge. It took us three different construction companies to get it done. But that doesn't change who we are. We're continuing to support whatever we can do to support the community, but with our eyes wide open, as opposed to with our finger. We're. We're no longer doing things with our fingers crossed. So. But it's really important, no matter what you do, any new business you go into, you need to study it. You need to find the people that are in it. You need to see what they're doing. That's correct. You need to see what they're doing and the mistakes they've made. And, you know, don't go blind, because that's just crazy with it. As much information as there is available today, particularly with the Internet, when you want to do something new, somebody's already done it. So learn from them. Do the research, get studied as to what the mistakes are, what those pitfalls are. Find a mentor to help you make sure it works.

Well, the thing is that people, you had to do this. I mean, you do it. And I did it without the Internet and all of this stuff at our fingertips. You know, I asked one of the guys who had won some kind of. They made some kind of blanket or shawl or scarf or something, and they won their most successful out of the shark tank for one of the years, one of the seasons. And so they had come up with this thing you wrapped around snuggle something where you're on the couch while you're watching TV or something. I said, these two brothers who knew nothing about sewing or anything like that. And I said they were, hey, they're out of Phoenix, I think, anyway, so. Or Scottsdale. And I said, where'd you guys Find out how to get these made, he said. Google, he said, I typed it in within five minutes. There's a plant an hour south of town. And boom, boom, boom. We went, one phone call, one trip, one prototype, and we're in business. But it wasn't like that in the early days. So when you sort through and find people, I always start as far up close to the top there is and work, work off of that. How do you go about finding the people to, to model and to, you know, to follow, you know, because a lot of the people will write, but like you, where you are at this point, you know, you've written a lot of books, you've got the information out there, you're on podcasts, you're probably on YouTube and things like that. So you can narrow down your search. And a lot of times you find people talking on exactly the subject that you're interested in, if you'll go digging for it. How did you go about it narrowing down someone if you just don't know who is the person to get?

Well, you do your research, you have those conversations. And one of the biggest things, Larry, is, you know, I teach a negotiation class because if you're the little guy and you're with a big company, you have to figure out what the chain of command is. So sometimes it's not the person in the room that you're with. You need to know who's not in the room that's the decision maker. And it's important to understand that. And part of that is just getting to know the people, asking the right questions, listening, finding out what their goals are, both personally, professionally, and corporately, so that you have the opportunity to create a plan that's going to answer their goals. And so many times we're so enamored with our goals that. And we don't, we don't research and find out how we fit into what they want to do. And it's really important to do that. And as you're negotiating, the other thing is to know that when you're in contract with somebody, when you get a deal, you have to be very careful about the contracts that you sign. Everything that you want needs to be in that contract, because that person on the other side of the table may not be there next year.

Right.

But you still will. And so, I mean, we had this experience with a publishing contract. We had a publishing contract, and we don't do a traditional. Mike and I actually kind of upended the publishing industry into the first joint venture type of deal with Rich Dad. And so I negotiate that I have the opportunity to speak to every. Every different department so that we can move forward on marketing plans. And nobody gets that except me. And so I put that into the agreement. And I put into the agreement that every year there's certain amount of money that they agree to put into merchandising, into advertising. And again, the company had never agreed to that. And so we're three years into our contract and that person's gone. And all of a sudden the new guard is going to. Well, and I said, I need to talk to. So, no, you can't do that. I said, yes, I can. And I said, and I believe you guys are in default because you have not spent the money we agreed to for marketing. Well, we would never agree to do that. And I said, read the contract. Right. So they had to go back and look at the contract. So it's very important when you're the little guy, to make sure you're very clear on what your expectations are, very clear on how you're going to communicate with them, very clear on what their roles and responsibilities are. So. Because again, that person is more than likely not going to be in that chair. It's going to be somebody new, and they're not going to have a clue unless it's in writing. So.

Well, how did you, for example, something seems like it's out of the purview of what you were doing, all of a sudden decide, we're going to have the best coaching company in the world come represent us. How do you go about finding. And by the way, it's the best coaching company then. Then the same one today, or is that. Is there a turnover in that?

Well, I haven't been with rich dad since 2007, Larry, so I don't know who they're using for coaching right now. But when we decided we wanted to go into coaching, I started a research project of my team looking at all the various coaching companies out there. And we made site visits and we went to see what they were doing. We went to see what their software program was, how we could monitor it, how we could make sure that we could listen into the coaching calls, how we could train their people. So we had things that we needed. And so we. We talk. I think, gosh, hard for me to remember how many companies I talked to, but probably four or five. And so then we worked through that process to the point where we were down to one or two. And it was just negotiating what the deal was and understanding that we get. They got what they wanted and we got what we wanted and it was a great relationship. So they had the software developed for the call floor, call center. They had the actual software programs for people to do the coaching on a regular basis and the ability for me to call in and listen in to our coaches to make sure they were doing what they wanted to. So we, that program worked very well and there are other clients that use them for coaching. I interviewed them. So it's just a matter of doing. Just like buying a piece of real estate. It's all due diligence, figuring out whether you have a compatible brand that can support each other.

One thing is conversation. The other thing is there's no getting around seeing it with your own eyes, is there? I mean, it's one thing to have a conversation or zoom or this and the other, but when you go in and you're there in person, that's a whole different dynamic.

Well, I developed the coaching program and then we went up and we did the teaching to the coaches and getting them prepared. And then I had one of our employees was in, he was the lead guy in the coaching and he would go up there regularly to make sure they were doing what they needed to.

What do you find is the best use of your time right now that keeps you of all the things you've done, all the things you could do, what do you find is the best use of your time? Gives you the best bang for the buck in terms of personal satisfaction. Make the impact you want, enjoy, meet new people, still stay engaged and inspired. What's the best use of your time right now of all the things you.

Do, Would you say, well, it's an interesting question because there are several different things that I enjoy doing. And right now, at this point in my life, if I don't enjoy it, I'm probably not going to do it. So I love speaking. I'm speaking four or five times a month at live events because I can impact more people that way. My number one priority are my one on one mentoring clients that I work with and help them elevate their businesses. I absolutely love that. And for me, that's my time. It's not what I teach. I teach assets, but I do that because it makes me feel good. I limit myself to the number of clients I have just because the amount of effort and energy that I want to put in for each of them and then I'm continuing to write. I have another book coming out this year and so I enjoy that. So at each level I may not be impacting When I'm doing one on one mentoring, that's I'm impacting one person. But that one person has lots of other people. So I'm helping impact them. And for me, that the at the end of the day, my goal, my team has kind of taglined me legacy of creating legacies. I love helping other people establish their legacies.

That is beautiful. Now give me your take on this. You'll hear that everybody's got one good book in them. You know, if they're in business, business leader, they've got one good book in them. But when I found, when I got in that mode, all of a sudden I came up with about. I was working on 40, 50, 60 different titles. And so this would be a great, this would be a great book. But then I went along, I've got the one book serial winner and I made my claim. It's out there. It's got 630 or 40 reviews, five star reviews on Amazon. And that's my statement. But you're the rich dad, poor dad would not be the foundation and the movement and this, that the other if you hadn't continued to expand it. I feel like I got bad advice on the idea of stopping with this because right off the bat I had a trilogy. The trilogy was like, this is the fundamentals. This is how you get yourself personally fundamentally organized to be successful. From that, now you're going to create opportunity to do bigger and better things. So now you're going to need to expand. You need to get a staff, you need to get a team. So like how do you create a winning staff? And then the third book was going to be after you've got some success, you got a good team, you start to feel cocky and you start to say, how competitive can we be? How good can we be? And you start saying, what would it be? What can we do to give ourselves a chance to be number one, to really go continue to grow all the way up to the top at all. And so becoming Elite was going to be the third of the trilogy and they never got. And I think I've lost all the notes and everything.

There's still time for you to write that number two and number three, Larry, make that trilogy a reality because that's how the books allow you to impact more people more quickly. Based on 24 7, you don't need to be there. So books are a fantastic way to get your message out. And absolutely, if you feel that you have a trilogy, go for it, make it happen.

But your thing would not have I Mean the Rich dad, Poor dad would not have the worldwide stature in 110 countries and this or the other if you'd stop with one book. Is that right?

We sold our first million Rich Dad, Poor dad books in the first two years. And right at the end of the second year, we came out with Cash Flow quadrant. So the book really had a life of its own. I don't know that I can say we would have sold as many if we didn't have the other books behind it. But we built a brand. The brand was what we built globally. Rich Jeb, Poor dad was the icon of the brand, but it was the games, it was the education, it was the coaching, regional seminars, it was all the books. So the brand was built, but it was on the back of a very popular book.

Now, what do you mean you're out of the Rich Dad, Poor dad organization since 2007?

Yeah, I left 10 years into the relationship. I brought it to the top of the game. We were at the height of our success, and I was miserable because Robert wanted to go into franchising. It was a great model for us financially, but it wasn't a good model for the franchisees. And so I made the decision to leave. And it was amicable for about 60 days till the value of the company came in. And then we were in litigation for a year. And so I left. And I tell people, sometimes you have to close the door for other doors to open. Had I not made the decision to leave Rich Dad, I wouldn't have been on the President's Advisory council. Had I not made the decision to leave Rich Dad, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to step into the world's largest personal development brand, the Napoleon Hill brand, and help revitalize it after the financial crisis of 2008. And so I thought Rich dad was my legacy. And somebody upstairs said, no, there was much more for me to do.

Yeah. And so is that primarily what you've done since 2007 as far as how long do you stay with the Napoleon Hill Group?

Well, I was never employed by them. I worked alongside them. I authored four books in cooperation with the Napoleon Health Foundation. I was on the presence of advisory council for both President Bush and President Obama. And then my most recent book is with Inc. Magazine. It's called Exit Rich. And it is helping people understand the basic components of building not just a successful business.

Right.

Successful business that can be sustainable, scalable, and salable. My book this year is about how money works for women. So specifically, we're looking at Women in every age bracket from 19 to 84 and the different financial issues they face.

Pretty cool. That exit and the exit strategy book. That's a point that I think is going to do a lot of good for entrepreneurs because it's the old this. It comes up from time to time on these interviews. The fact that when you. You're building your business, a lot of times you're forgetting build that thing so it could exit. There's an exit strategy in there.

So get so excited about their product and selling it. They don't build the structure to make sure that it's sound and to make sure they don't have the right contracts.

Yeah.

You don't ensure that they own their own intellectual property. All those things I go through in the book. XR Rich. Yeah.

Fantastic. Well, I think that book's needed by the way, so I think you made a great choice for a topic and I will look forward to seeing that come out. Anything you want to say as a going away word for a final word here for the people that listening?

Absolutely. Thank you, Larry. Yeah. Exit Rich has been out for about a year and a half. So you can get that on Amazon or my website. Sharon.

It's already out. Okay.

Yeah. Exo Rich. You could order through my website. I'll sign it for you. Just let us know the names. And a couple years when the pandemic hit, I was just frustrated with all the negativity and as I said early on when I get mad about something, I started a new company. So I started something that's a daily motivational tip. It's called atm. Kind of a play on bank deposits, but it's a abundance tips and mentorship. And it's a couple minutes every morning where you can just hear from me and get you excited about the day and start your framework for the day in a positive outset. So that you can find out more at atm.sharonlector.com atm.sharon lecter.com yeah. Atm.sharon lecter dot com or you can just go to sharon lecter.com the website and you'll find it. But we're. You are the CEO of your own life. You are in charge. And so we have three things we can control. Our thoughts, our words, our actions.

Yeah.

And so. And we're all where we are today because of the choices we made before today. You want something different, you want something better, you want something more. Just start making different choices.

Yeah.

And think and be very guarded about your thoughts, your words and your actions.

Yeah. And the follow up on that is to admit that the circumstances you're in, there may be some circumstances you're in that you're not happy about. And you've got to trace that back to say, what did I do? What decision did I make that got me into this situation? What can I learn from it? Because that's how we all improve. So, Sharon, this has been absolutely fantastic. You've been very kind, generous with your time, and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk more in the future. And I'm looking forward to your new book.

Well, thank you, Larry. I appreciate that. Appreciate the opportunity. And thank you so much.

All right. I will want to get out to that ranch sometime.

Cherrycreeklodge.com all right, goodbye.

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