Robert Kiyosaki and Mike’s attempt to mint lead-nickel coins

Robert T. Kiyosaki and Mike’s attempt to mint lead-nickel coins was their first business venture: an ingenious, improvised production line that collapsed as soon as Robert’s father identified its product as counterfeit. The boys did not make money, but the failure redirected their ambition toward learning how wealth was built and established the contrast between a failed idea and the willingness to act.

An improvised business

The partnership began with the boys’ desire to earn money and their lack of any ordinary work available to nine-year-olds. An idea from a science book gave them a scheme: collect neighbors’ discarded toothpaste tubes and use the lead to make imitation nickels. They went door to door asking residents to save the tubes, keeping the purpose secret as their stockpile grew in a cardboard box beside Robert’s mother’s washing machine.

The growing pile soon became a domestic problem. Robert’s mother objected to the messy tubes and threatened to throw them out unless the boys did something with them. They pleaded for more time, explaining that production would begin once they had enough raw material; she granted them one week. Under pressure, Mike urged neighbors to finish their toothpaste sooner, while Robert assembled the production line. Their enterprise was driven not only by the wish to make money but by the practical demands of gathering materials, finding space, and meeting a deadline.

The production line and its exposure

Robert’s father arrived with a friend to find the boys working in the driveway, which was blocked by their equipment. White plaster powder covered the area. School milk cartons sat on a long table, and the family hibachi grill heated a steel pot over glowing coals. The toothpaste tubes were made of lead, not plastic: after the paint was burned away, the boys melted the metal and poured it into holes in the tops of the cartons.

The cartons held plaster of Paris, which formed the outer molds. Robert had spilled the bag of white powder in his haste, making the work area look as though it had been struck by a snowstorm. The boys carefully poured the molten lead into the molds using Robert’s mother’s pot holders. When the pouring was finished, Robert tapped the plaster cube’s dividing seam with a small hammer and lifted its top half. A lead nickel fell out.

The reveal made the purpose of the elaborate apparatus unmistakable. Robert’s father recognized that the boys were casting nickels out of lead; Mike confirmed that they were trying to make money. His friend laughed, while Robert’s father asked them to stop and sit with him on the front step. He gently explained the meaning of counterfeiting. The boys’ apparent breakthrough—the first finished coin—was instead the moment their business became untenable: the scheme was illegal, and production ended on opening day.

Failure, encouragement, and a new direction

Mike asked in a trembling voice whether the activity was illegal. Robert’s father answered yes, but did not reduce the boys’ effort to their mistake. He praised their creativity and original thinking and said he was proud of them. After about twenty minutes of disappointed silence, they began cleaning up. As Robert swept the plaster powder, he voiced the conclusion that he and Mike were poor, echoing the social comparison that had helped spur their original ambition.

Robert’s father answered with a different measure of failure: the boys were poor only if they gave up. They had acted instead of merely talking and dreaming about getting rich, and he urged them to keep going. His encouragement did not immediately solve their problem; as the cleanup continued, the boys still did not know what to do next. The distinction mattered nonetheless. Their first enterprise had failed, but the attempt itself was treated as a beginning rather than proof that they should stop trying.

Robert then asked why his father was not rich. His father explained that he had chosen to be a schoolteacher, a profession he loved, and did not know how to teach the boys to make money. He directed them instead to Mike’s father, whom his own banker had described as brilliant at making money. He distinguished wealth from its outward signs: a nice car and house did not necessarily mean their owners knew how to create wealth. Jimmy’s father worked for a sugar company facing financial trouble, while Mike’s father owned warehouses, a construction company, a chain of stores, and three restaurants. Robert’s father suspected that Mike’s father was building an empire and would become rich.

That possibility restored the boys’ energy. They resumed cleaning with new vigor and planned how to ask Mike’s father to teach them. Because he worked long hours and often returned home late, Mike left after the cleanup intending to speak to him that night and promised to call Robert afterward. The counterfeiting attempt thus closed not with a sale or a usable product, but with a fresh apprenticeship in prospect.

The lesson carried forward

In retrospect, the episode’s importance lies in the gap between the boys’ objective and what they actually learned. They had taken Robert’s father’s advice to learn to make money literally, devised a manufacturing process, and discovered only at its successful endpoint that their product was unlawful. The lead, plaster molds, milk cartons, and borrowed kitchen equipment make the failure concrete: initiative alone did not supply the judgment needed to turn an idea into a legitimate business.

The episode also establishes a recurring distinction in the book between Robert’s two fathers. Robert’s father is honest about the limits of what he can teach and points the boys toward Mike’s father; the latter becomes the anticipated source of financial instruction. The failed coins are therefore more than an isolated childhood mishap. They mark the point where the boys’ desire for money begins to be redirected into a desire to learn how money is made.

Later, the book connects this early experience to the boys’ lessons about emotion and decision-making. When Mike and Robert refuse increasingly high pay offers, including an offer of five dollars an hour, they reach a point at which the temptation loses its hold and they can think calmly. They are taught to recognize how fear and desire can keep people working for each paycheck and to avoid allowing emotion to control judgment. The earlier coin-making scheme is distinct from that later lesson, but it supplies its narrative starting point: two boys act on a crude idea, meet a hard boundary, and are encouraged to continue learning rather than mistake one failed attempt for a final verdict.