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 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.
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