Page 73 - Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money

“Broker” is another word for “salesperson.” In the world of money there are
brokers for stocks, bonds, real estate, mortgages, insurance, businesses, etc.

One of the problems today is that most people are getting their financial
advice from salespeople, not rich people. If you meet a rich broker, you
need to ask if the broker got rich from his or her sales ability or financial
ability.

Warren Buffett once observed, “Wall Street is the place people drive to
in their Rolls-Royce to take advice from people who ride the subway.”
Rich dad said, “The reason they are called brokers is because they are
broker than you are.”

GOOD BROKERS—POOR BROKERS

One of the problems of not having much money is that good brokers,
brokers who know what they are doing, often do not have time for you.

They are busy working with their higher net worth clients.
When Kim and I had very little money, one of our biggest challenges
was finding a broker who was willing to educate us. Since we didn’t have
much money, most brokers didn’t have much time. We also met many

brokers who only wanted to sell to us, not teach us. Yet we kept looking.
What we were looking for was a young stockbroker who was just building a
client base, one who was smart, a student of their profession, and also an
investor. Almost by accident, through a friend of a friend, we met Tom.

Initially, we gave Tom $25,000. Fifteen years later, our stock portfolio is in
the millions of dollars and growing.
After we were married in 1986, Kim and I began investing in real estate.
We decided to start with very little money. We met a lot of bad real estate

brokers who sold real estate but did not invest in real estate. If they did
invest, it was in mutual funds. Finally, we met John. Starting with $5,000,
he helped us grow our real estate portfolio to approximately $250,000.
While that may not sound like a lot of growth, it was accomplished in just

three years, during a very bad real estate market in Portland, Oregon. Today,
our real estate holdings are in the tens of millions and growing.

LESSONS LEARNED