Page 146 - Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money

commanding officer and his team. Our job was to take raw data from the
war and turn it into relevant information.

Life-or-Death Information

As an information officer, I gained a tremendous respect for information.
Prior to Vietnam I never thought much about the subject. In school, I
thought the study of information was a joke. To me, information was just

data, mindless facts and figures, dates and times to be memorized in order
to pass tests. In Vietnam, information was more important. It could mean
life or death for my fellow pilots.
Today, I believe that I am a better entrepreneur and investor because of

my position as information officer. Today, I know that information can
mean life or death in war and the difference between being rich or poor in
business.

Information More Important Than Life

In the process of preparing to go to Vietnam, we were trained to process
infinite bits of information and be able to make split-second decisions under
intense pressure. If we did a good job processing the information, we lived.
If we didn’t, we risked death. Once I realized that my life and the lives of

others were dependent upon the quality of information I received, it became
more important than even my own life.
In a previous book, I wrote about the first day I came under fire in
Vietnam. I described the fear as well as the realization that the guy firing at

me wanted to go home as much as I did. In the book, I related my crew
chief’s words of wisdom reminding me that in war there was no second
place, no silver medal. It was gold or nothing. Watching real bullets
screaming up at us, I realized school days were officially over. As we flew

towards our death, years of training and information were being processed
into one decision, one action. The good news is that my crew and I returned
home that night. Sadly, the Vietnamese on the ground didn’t. There was no
second place.