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

The main management skills needed for success are:
1. Management of cash flow
2. Management of systems 
3. Management of people
The most important specialized skills are sales and marketing.
The ability to sell—to communicate to another human being, be it
a customer, employee, boss, spouse, or child—is the base skill of 
personal success. Communication skills such as writing, speaking, 
and negotiating are crucial to a life of success. These are skills I work 
on constantly, attending courses or buying educational resources to 
expand my knowledge.
As I have mentioned, my educated dad worked harder and harder 
the more competent he became. He also became more trapped the 
more specialized he got. Although his salary went up, his choices 
diminished. Soon after he was locked out of government work, 
he found out how vulnerable he really was professionally. It is like 
professional athletes who suddenly are injured or are too old to play. 
Their once high-paying position is gone, and they have limited skills 
to fall back on. I think that is why my educated dad sided so much 
with the unions after that. He realized how much a union would have 
benefited him.
Rich dad encouraged Mike and me to know a little about a lot. 
He encouraged us to work with people smarter than we were and to 
bring smart people together to work as a team. Today it would be 
called a synergy of professional specialities.
Today, I meet ex-schoolteachers earning hundreds of thousands 
of dollars a year. They earn that much because they have specialized 
skills in their field as well as other skills. They can teach, as well as 
sell and market. I know of no other skills to be more important than 
selling and marketing. The skills of selling and marketing are difficult 
for most people, primarily due to their fear of rejection. The better 

---

Rich Dad Poor Dad
127
you are at communicating, negotiating, and handling your fear of 
rejection, the easier life is. Just as I advised that newspaper writer who 
wanted to become a best-selling author, I advise anyone else today.
Being technically specialized has its strengths as well as its weaknesses. 
I have friends who are geniuses, but they cannot communicate effectively 
with other human beings and, as a result, their earnings are pitiful. 
I advise them to just spend a year learning to sell. Even if they earn 
nothing, their communication skills will improve. And that is priceless.
In addition to being good learners, sellers, and marketers, we 
need to be good teachers as well as good students. To be truly rich, 
we need to be able to give as well as to receive. In cases of financial 
or professional struggle, there is often a lack of giving and receiving. 
I know many people who are poor because they are neither good 
students nor good teachers.
Both of my dads were generous men. Both made it a practice to 
give first. Teaching was one of their ways of giving. The more they gave, 
the more they received. One glaring difference was in the giving of 
money. My rich dad gave lots of money away. He gave to his church, 
to charities, and to his foundation. He knew that to receive money, 
you had to give money. Giving money is the secret to most great 
wealthy families. That is why there are organizations like the Rockefeller 
Foundation and the Ford Foundation. These are organizations designed 
to take their wealth and increase it, as well as give it away in perpetuity.
My educated dad always said, “When I have some extra money,
I’ll give it.” The problem was that there was never any extra. So he 
worked harder to draw more money in, rather than focus on the most 
important law of money: “Give, and you shall receive.” Instead, he 
believed in: “Receive, and then you give.”
In conclusion, I became both dads. One part of me is a hard-core 
capitalist who loves the game of money making money. The other part 
is a socially responsible teacher who is deeply concerned with this ever-
widening gap between the haves and have-nots. I personally hold the 
archaic educational system primarily responsible for this growing gap.

---

---

Chapter Seven