Rich Dad Poor Dad is a starting point for anyone looking to gain control of their financial future

“You want to know
a little about a lot” 
was rich dad’s 
suggestion.

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well as in sales, reservations, and marketing. He was grooming Mike 
and me. That is why he insisted we sit in on the meetings with his 
bankers, lawyers, accountants, and brokers. He wanted us to know a 
little about every aspect of his empire.
When I quit my high-paying job with Standard Oil, my educated
dad had a heart-to-heart talk with me. He was bewildered. He could 
not understand my decision to resign from a career that offered high 
pay, great benefits, lots of time off, and opportunity for promotion. 
When he asked me one evening, “Why did you quit?” I could not 
explain it to him, though I tried hard to. My logic did not fit his 
logic. The big problem was that my logic was my rich dad’s logic.
Job security meant everything to my educated dad. Learning meant 
everything to my rich dad.
Educated dad thought I went to school to learn to be a ship’s 
officer. Rich dad knew that I went to school to study international 
trade. So as a student, I made cargo runs, navigating large freighters, oil 
tankers, and passenger ships to the Far East and the South Pacific. Rich 
dad emphasized that I should stay in the Pacific instead of taking ships 
to Europe because he knew that the emerging nations were in Asia, not 
Europe. While most of my classmates, including Mike, were partying at 
their fraternity houses, I was studying trade, people, business styles, and 
cultures in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, 
Korea, Tahiti, Samoa, and the Philippines. I was partying also, but it
was not in any frat house. I grew up rapidly.
Educated dad just could not understand why I decided to quit and 
join the Marine Corps. I told him I wanted to learn to fly, but really
I wanted to learn to lead troops. Rich dad explained to me that the
hardest part of running a company is managing people. He had spent 
three years in the Army; my educated dad was draft-exempt. Rich dad 
valued learning to lead men into dangerous situations. “Leadership is 
what you need to learn next,” he said. “If you’re not a good leader,
you’ll get shot in the back, just like they do in business.”
Returning from Vietnam in 1973, I resigned my commission, even 
though I loved flying. I found a job with Xerox Corp. I joined it for 

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one reason, and it was not for the benefits. I was a shy person, and the 
thought of selling was the most frightening subject in the world. Xerox 
has one of the best sales-training programs in America.
Rich dad was proud of me. My educated dad was ashamed. Being 
an intellectual, he thought that salespeople were below him. I worked 
with Xerox for four years until I overcame my fear of knocking on 
doors and being rejected. Once I could consistently be in the top five 
in sales, I again resigned and moved on, leaving behind another great 
career with an excellent company.
In 1977, I formed my first company. Rich dad had groomed
Mike and me to take over companies. So I now had to learn to form 
them and put them together. My first product, the nylon-and-Velcro 
wallet, was manufactured in the Far East and shipped to a warehouse 
in New York, near where I had gone 
to school. My formal education was 
complete, and it was time to test my 
wings. If I failed, I would go broke. 
Rich dad thought it best to go broke 
before 30. “You still have time to recover” was his advice. On the eve 
of my 30th birthday, my first shipment left Korea for New York.
Today, I still do business internationally. And as my rich dad
encouraged me to do, I keep seeking the emerging nations. Today my 
investment company invests in South American countries and Asian 
countries, as well as in Norway and Russia.
There is an old cliché that goes: “Job is an acronym for ‘Just Over 
Broke.’” Unfortunately, I would say that applies to millions of people. 
Because school does not think financial intelligence is an intelligence, 
most workers live within their means. They work and they pay the bills.
There is another horrible management theory that goes, “Workers 
work hard enough to not be fired, and owners pay just enough so that 
workers won’t quit.” And if you look at the pay scales of most companies, 
again I would say there is a degree of truth to that statement.
The net result is that most workers never get ahead. They do what 
they’ve been taught to do: Get a secure job. Most workers focus on