Midas Touch : Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich-And Why Most Don't

Book Details

Title	Midas Touch: Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich — And Why Most Don't
Authors	Donald J. Trump, Robert T. Kiyosaki (Foreword by Mark Burnett)
Publisher	Plata Publishing, Scottsdale, AZ
Year	2011 (October 4, 2011)
Edition	First Edition
Series	Trump-Kiyosaki Collaboration Series (preceded by Why We Want You to Be Rich, 2006)
Language	English
Pages	240
ISBN	9781612680958
Genre	Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics, Personal Finance
Dewey	658.11 — Small Business / Entrepreneurship
Size	666 KB
Extension	EPUB

About Midas Touch by Trump and Kiyosaki

Midas Touch: Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich — And Why Most Don't is a business and entrepreneurship guide co-authored by Donald J. Trump and Robert T. Kiyosaki, published by Plata Publishing on October 4, 2011, with a foreword by television producer Mark Burnett. This book represents the second major collaborative project between two of the most globally recognized names in business and financial education, following their 2006 co-authored work Why We Want You to Be Rich. Where that earlier volume focused primarily on the urgent need for financial literacy in an era of economic uncertainty, Midas Touch sharpens its focus specifically on the art and science of entrepreneurship — asking not just why entrepreneurship matters, but what concrete qualities and habits separate the rare entrepreneur who builds lasting wealth from the far more common one who merely creates additional stress and complexity in their life. The book was published against a backdrop of high unemployment and slow economic recovery in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a context that gives its central argument — that entrepreneurs, not governments, are the true engine of economic prosperity — a particular urgency and relevance.

The intellectual core of the book is organized around five components that Trump and Kiyosaki identify as the defining characteristics of what they call the Midas Touch — the quality that enables certain entrepreneurs to consistently turn their ideas, deals, and ventures into gold. The first component is strength of character, which the authors position not as a moral abstraction but as a practical business requirement: the resilience, integrity, and self-discipline that allow an entrepreneur to navigate failure, pressure, and ethical challenges without losing direction or credibility. The second component, F.O.C.U.S. — an acronym for Follow One Course Until Successful — challenges the popular myth of the diversified entrepreneur, arguing instead that the deepest wealth is built through sustained, single-minded commitment to one domain of mastery before expanding elsewhere. The third component, brand, examines how the world's most successful entrepreneurs understand that their brand is not merely a logo or a marketing campaign but the total perception their customers, partners, and employees hold of their business and of them personally. The fourth component, relationships, explores how the quality of the network an entrepreneur builds — and the trust they invest in maintaining it — directly determines the scale and speed of their business growth. The fifth and final component, which Trump and Kiyosaki describe as "the little things that really count," addresses the often-overlooked operational details, habits of mind, and cultural practices that distinguish businesses that scale from those that stagnate.

What makes Midas Touch practically valuable for readers is the consistent double perspective it offers: throughout each chapter, both Trump and Kiyosaki share their own experiences, failures, and insights on the subject at hand, speaking in their own voices and frequently disagreeing with each other. This dialogical structure prevents the book from becoming a monolithic prescription, instead giving readers two distinct yet complementary models of entrepreneurial thinking to examine, question, and adapt to their own situations. Trump's examples tend to draw from high-stakes real estate development, global branding, and the media industry, while Kiyosaki's draw from his background in financial education, small business building, and the philosophy of the Rich Dad ecosystem. Together, these dual narratives illustrate that the five Midas Touch components are not the exclusive property of any one industry, personality type, or scale of business, but are transferable principles that any entrepreneur can begin developing regardless of where they currently stand. The book also addresses how to evaluate business ideas before investing time and capital, how to determine whether one has the temperament for entrepreneurship, and how to recover productively from the failures that all successful entrepreneurs inevitably encounter.

Midas Touch is aimed primarily at aspiring entrepreneurs who are seriously considering starting a business, as well as existing business owners who feel their ventures have plateaued or are generating effort without proportionate reward. It will resonate strongly with readers who have already engaged with Kiyosaki's Rich Dad philosophy and are ready to apply its principles to the practical challenge of building a business, as well as with those inspired by Trump's deal-making approach and looking for a structured framework behind his apparent instinct. The book requires no prior business education but benefits readers who bring an honest willingness to self-assess: the authors are frank about the psychological and behavioral demands of entrepreneurship, and several passages invite readers to confront whether they genuinely have — or can develop — what it takes. It is suitable for both solo founders and team leaders, and its short chapters and anecdotal style make it accessible for time-constrained readers who prefer to read in focused bursts.

Midas Touch has maintained a strong reputation among its target readership since its publication, accumulating thousands of reviews on major platforms and consistently receiving praise for the candor and specificity of its examples, as well as the productive tension created by its two-author format. The foreword by Mark Burnett — the television producer behind The Apprentice and Survivor — adds a third entrepreneurial perspective that frames the book's broader argument about the cultural and economic value of entrepreneurship. The book sits at the intersection of the Rich Dad series and the broader Trump business canon, drawing from both traditions while offering content original enough to stand independently as a reference guide for entrepreneurs at any stage. For anyone seriously engaged with the question of why some businesses succeed spectacularly while others of similar ambition quietly fail, Midas Touch remains a direct, experience-rooted, and thought-provoking answer.

Key Features

• Co-authored by two of the world's most recognized entrepreneurial figures — Donald J. Trump and Robert T. Kiyosaki — with a foreword by television producer Mark Burnett, creator of The Apprentice.
• Organized around five actionable Midas Touch components: Strength of character, F.O.C.U.S. (Follow One Course Until Successful), Brand, Relationships, and Little things that really count.
• Features a unique dual-voice format in which both Trump and Kiyosaki share their own experiences and perspectives independently within each chapter, providing two distinct entrepreneurial frameworks in a single volume.
• Directly addresses the critical question of why most entrepreneurs fail to build scalable businesses despite genuine ambition, offering a diagnostic framework rather than generic motivational advice.
• Explores the role of personal brand as a strategic business asset, drawing on Trump's experience in global real estate branding and Kiyosaki's Rich Dad media and educational platform.
• Unpacks the F.O.C.U.S. principle as a counter-argument to the myth of entrepreneurial diversification, making the case that deep mastery and sustained commitment to one domain is the primary driver of breakthrough wealth.
• Covers relationship-building as a core entrepreneurial competency, explaining how the trust, reputation, and network quality an entrepreneur cultivates directly determines the ceiling of their business growth.
• Includes frank discussion of entrepreneurial failure — what it looks like, why it is inevitable, and how the world's most successful business builders use it as a developmental resource rather than a terminal outcome.
• Published in October 2011 at the height of post-2008 economic recovery, giving the book's central argument — that entrepreneurs, not governments, create real prosperity — a historically grounded urgency.
• Serves as the second installment in the Trump-Kiyosaki collaboration series, building directly on themes introduced in Why We Want You to Be Rich (2006) with a sharper focus on business-building mechanics.
• Addresses the practical question of whether a reader truly has the temperament and character for entrepreneurship, offering honest self-assessment prompts throughout the text.
• Available as a compact EPUB file of 666 KB, making it instantly accessible across all digital reading platforms for entrepreneurs on the move.

About the Authors

Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City, the fourth of five children of Frederick and Mary Trump. He attended the New York Military Academy from 1959 to 1964 before enrolling at Fordham University for two years, then transferring to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, where he graduated in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics. He joined his father's real estate company, Elizabeth Trump and Son, shortly after graduation, eventually taking it over and renaming it The Trump Organization. Over the following decades, Trump built a global real estate, hospitality, and branding empire encompassing skyscrapers, hotels, golf courses, and casinos across the United States and internationally. He became a major cultural figure as the star and executive producer of the NBC reality television series The Apprentice (2004–2015) and The Celebrity Apprentice, which brought his deal-making philosophy and boardroom persona to an audience of tens of millions. As an author, Trump co-wrote The Art of the Deal (1987) with journalist Tony Schwartz, a book widely considered a business classic that spent 51 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and subsequently authored more than ten additional bestselling books on business, success, and negotiation. He served as the 45th President of the United States from January 2017 to January 2021, and was re-elected as the 47th President in November 2024.

Robert Toru Kiyosaki was born on April 8, 1947, in Hilo, Hawaii, into a Japanese-American family. He graduated from the United States Merchant Marine Academy in 1969 and served as a Marine Corps helicopter gunship pilot in Vietnam before beginning his entrepreneurial career in the 1970s. His landmark book Rich Dad Poor Dad, initially self-published in 1997 in partnership with his wife Kim Kiyosaki and subsequently published commercially, became the #1 personal finance book of all time, spending more than six years on the New York Times bestseller list and selling over 40 million copies in more than 100 countries. As the co-founder of The Rich Dad Company, Kiyosaki built a global platform for financial education encompassing books, seminars, coaching programs, and the CASHFLOW board game series, which teaches financial literacy through experiential play. His core philosophy — that financial education, entrepreneurship, and real asset investing are the true foundations of wealth — has fundamentally influenced how tens of millions of people worldwide think about money and business. His collaboration with Donald Trump on both Why We Want You to Be Rich (2006) and Midas Touch (2011) reflects their shared conviction that the world needs more financially educated entrepreneurs, and that traditional academic and government institutions are structurally unable to produce them.

Related Books

• Why We Want You to Be Rich: Two Men, One Message — Donald J. Trump and Robert T. Kiyosaki
• Rich Dad Poor Dad — Robert T. Kiyosaki
• The Art of the Deal — Donald J. Trump and Tony Schwartz
• The Cash Flow Quadrant — Robert T. Kiyosaki
• Think Like a Champion — Donald J. Trump
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It — Michael E. Gerber
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future — Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
• The Lean Startup — Eric Ries

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q : What exactly are the five components of the Midas Touch as defined in this book?

R : Trump and Kiyosaki identify five essential components that separate entrepreneurs who consistently build wealth from those who struggle: Strength of character, which encompasses the integrity, resilience, and self-discipline required to lead a business through adversity; F.O.C.U.S. (Follow One Course Until Successful), the commitment to mastering one domain before attempting to diversify; Brand, understanding that a business's reputation is its most durable and valuable strategic asset; Relationships, building and nurturing a network of partners, mentors, and collaborators based on genuine trust; and Little things that really count, the operational habits, details, and cultural practices that determine whether a business scales or stagnates. Each of these five components is explored through both authors' personal business experiences, giving the framework concrete grounding rather than abstract theory. The authors argue that possessing all five — not just one or two — is what distinguishes an entrepreneur with the genuine Midas Touch from one who merely has occasional good luck.

Q : How does Midas Touch differ from the authors' previous collaboration, Why We Want You to Be Rich (2006)?

R : Why We Want You to Be Rich (2006) was primarily a book about financial literacy and the urgent need for ordinary people to take personal responsibility for their financial education in an era of shrinking middle-class security. Midas Touch, published five years later, narrows its focus significantly: rather than addressing the broad population of financially passive individuals, it targets specifically those who want to build businesses and are asking why their entrepreneurial efforts are not translating into the wealth and freedom they imagined. The 2011 book is more operationally specific, more willing to discuss failure in detail, and more structured around a clearly defined five-part framework. Together the two books form a natural progression: the first establishes the philosophical case for financial self-reliance, while the second provides the entrepreneurial methodology for achieving it.

Q : Why do Trump and Kiyosaki argue that entrepreneurs are more important than governments in driving economic recovery?

R : Throughout Midas Touch, both authors argue from personal experience and economic observation that governments are structurally incapable of creating the kind of high-quality, sustainable private-sector jobs that drive genuine long-term economic prosperity. Published in 2011 during a period of stubbornly high unemployment following the 2008 financial crisis, the book reflects both authors' conviction that stimulus packages and government job programs treat symptoms rather than causes. In their view, only entrepreneurs — who take personal financial risk, identify genuine market needs, and build organizations that generate real value — can create the conditions for broad-based economic growth. This argument is consistent with the broader libertarian-leaning philosophy that runs through much of Kiyosaki's Rich Dad canon, and aligns with Trump's long-standing advocacy for private enterprise over government economic intervention.

Q : What does F.O.C.U.S. mean in the context of this book, and why do the authors consider it a defining trait of successful entrepreneurs?

R : F.O.C.U.S. stands for Follow One Course Until Successful, and it represents one of the book's most counterintuitive but consistently argued principles. In an entrepreneurial culture that often celebrates diversification, the pivot, and the simultaneous management of multiple ventures, Trump and Kiyosaki insist that the deepest and most durable wealth is built by entrepreneurs who commit relentlessly to mastering a single domain before expanding. Both authors cite their own trajectories as evidence: Trump built his empire by going deeper into real estate before extending into hospitality, entertainment, and branding; Kiyosaki built the Rich Dad platform by staying relentlessly focused on financial education before licensing it across books, games, and coaching. The authors acknowledge that focus is psychologically difficult — particularly for creative, opportunity-oriented entrepreneurs who are naturally drawn to the excitement of new ventures — and devote considerable space to strategies for developing and maintaining it.

Q : How does the book address entrepreneurial failure, and what do Trump and Kiyosaki say distinguishes how successful entrepreneurs experience it?

R : Both authors are unusually candid about their own failures in Midas Touch — Trump discusses business bankruptcies and deals that went wrong, while Kiyosaki recounts ventures that collapsed before the Rich Dad philosophy took hold. Rather than treating failure as an aberration to be minimized, both authors present it as an integral and necessary part of the entrepreneurial development process: the mechanism through which business judgment, resilience, and character are actually forged rather than merely tested. The key distinction they draw is not between entrepreneurs who succeed and those who fail, but between those who treat failure as information and adjust accordingly, and those who treat it as a verdict and stop. This perspective on failure as a developmental resource — rather than a shameful outcome to be avoided or concealed — is one of the book's most consistently reinforced messages and one that readers frequently cite as among its most practically valuable.

Q : Why is Mark Burnett's foreword included, and what perspective does he add to the book?

R : Mark Burnett — the British-American television producer responsible for creating Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Celebrity Apprentice — was a natural choice to write the foreword, given his professional relationships with both Trump (as his producing partner on The Apprentice) and Kiyosaki (who appeared in Rich Dad-related media). Burnett's foreword adds a third independent entrepreneurial perspective from the entertainment and media industry, a domain that neither Trump nor Kiyosaki claims as their primary expertise. His inclusion also lends the book a degree of external validation: Burnett is himself a textbook example of an entrepreneur who arrived in the United States with minimal resources and built a globally dominant media production company through focused execution and bold relationship-building — a living illustration of the Midas Touch framework. His foreword contextualizes the book's central argument within the entertainment industry's own demanding entrepreneurial dynamics, broadening its relevance beyond real estate and financial education.

Q : Is Midas Touch appropriate for first-time entrepreneurs with no prior business experience?

R : Yes, Midas Touch is explicitly written to be accessible to readers who are in the early stages of exploring entrepreneurship, as well as to those who already have business experience but are seeking a clearer framework for understanding why their efforts are not generating the results they expected. The book requires no background in finance, business law, or marketing, and its anecdotal, conversational style makes complex entrepreneurial concepts approachable for general readers. That said, it offers the greatest value when read with genuine self-reflective intent: the authors pose pointed questions about character, focus, and motivation that invite readers to honestly evaluate whether they have — or are willing to develop — the specific qualities the book identifies as non-negotiable for entrepreneurial success. First-time entrepreneurs who read this book alongside Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Cash Flow Quadrant will find they have a remarkably solid philosophical and practical foundation for building their first venture.

Q : How does the concept of Brand as developed in Midas Touch go beyond conventional marketing advice?

R : In Midas Touch, both Trump and Kiyosaki treat Brand not as a marketing or communications discipline but as a fundamental expression of an entrepreneur's character, values, and reputation — the total perception that every stakeholder in a business forms through every interaction, from how calls are answered to how disputes are resolved. Trump draws extensively on his own experience building the Trump brand across real estate, television, and licensing, arguing that the name on the door of a building carries a financial value that is entirely a function of the promises kept — or broken — behind it. Kiyosaki parallels this with the Rich Dad brand, which he describes as built not through advertising spend but through the consistency and authenticity of the financial education philosophy it represents. Both authors agree that brand damage is far easier to inflict and far harder to repair than most entrepreneurs realize, and that the little things — the operational details, the customer experience, the ethical choices in moments of pressure — are precisely where brand equity is either compounded or eroded.