Page 49 - Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money

each other’s problems. Soon after I was hired, the company flew me to their
corporate training headquarters in Leesburg, Virginia. My sales training

officially began.
The four years I spent working for Xerox, from 1974 to 1978, were very
hard. For the first two years I was almost fired a number of times because I
couldn’t sell. Not only was I not selling and in danger of losing my job, but

I was also not making any money. But I had a goal to become the top
salesman in the Honolulu branch, and I faced my challenges with
determination.
After the first two years, the sales training and on the street experience

began to pay off, and I finally reached my goal of becoming number one in
sales at the Honolulu branch. I had solved the problem of being shy and
hating rejection, and had learned to sell. Even better, I was making a lot
more money than I would have as a ship’s officer or an airline pilot. If I had

just settled into a job after the war, I would never have overcome my fear of
rejection and my shyness, and I would never have reaped the rewards of
facing those challenges and conquering them. I learned a valuable lesson
from my experience at Xerox: solving the problem was the path to wealth.

Once I reached my goal and became number one in sales, I resigned to
take on my next challenge—building a business. Anyone who has built his
or her own business knows the first problem is, once again, financial IQ #1:
making more money. Since I now had absolutely no money coming in, I

had to solve financial IQ #1 quickly.

Before You Quit Your Job

In my previous book, Before You Quit Your Job, I wrote about the process
of building my first major business, a business that brought to market the

first nylon and Velcro surfer wallets. In that book I wrote about the eight
components that make up any business, and about how not having all eight
of those business components is the reason why so many businesses fail and
remain unprofitable. I believe it’s a very important book for anyone who

wants to be an entrepreneur and start their own business. It is important to
read that book before you quit your job.