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Foreword

by Robert Kiyosaki

The Four Most Important Business Skills an Entrepreneur Must Have

There are many people who have a million-dollar idea for a product, yet they never turn their ideas into money. There are also millions of people who would love to quit their job and start their own business, yet their dream of being a business owner remains only a dream. Instead they choose to cling to a secure job. And of the people who do take the plunge and start their own business, many soon fail. Statistics show that 90 percent of all new businesses fail in the first five years—and that 90 percent of the 10 percent that do survive the first five years fail before the tenth year. Why?

Many experts say that people fail to start their own businesses, or fail soon after starting, due to two primary reasons. The reasons are a lack of money and a lack of business skills. Of the two, I would say that the lack of business skills is the most important. In other words, if you have the business skills, you can create the money. But if you have money and no business skills, the money is soon gone.

When my rich dad was training me to be an entrepreneur, he often said, “There are four main skills an entrepreneur must have or learn. They are sales, accounting, investing, and leadership.” He also said, “If an entrepreneur is struggling, it is often because he is weak in one or more of these business skills.”

The books I write focus on two of these important business skills. They are accounting and investing. Most of us know of business people who have failed or struggled financially because their financial statements were not in order, or they squandered their money, failing to invest and reinvest their profits.

Blair Singer is a valued Rich Dad Advisor because he teaches some of the most essential skills for entrepreneurs: Sales, team building and leadership. His first Rich Dad Advisor book, Sales Dogs, is a must read for anyone who is or plans on being an entrepreneur. In my opinion, the ability to sell is the most important of the four business skills. I have met so many people who have great ideas but are unable to sell their ideas or their products. Without sales, there is no need for the other three skills— because there is no opportunity to use them.

The second vital skill Blair Singer is world famous for is his knowledge of team building and leadership training. One of the reasons my rich dad was glad I spent four years at a military academy and six years in the Marine Corps was for the leadership training. One of the reasons many entrepreneurs fail is simply that they lack the ability to build a team that will do the impossible to make their business a success.

In this book, you will learn about the Code of Honor. In my opinion, as a Marine Corps officer and pilot, it was the code of honor that gave my men and me the courage to operate as a unified team, overcome our own fears, and perform tasks that seemed impossible. Today, in my own businesses, it is this same code of honor that is core to much of my business and financial success.

The ability to lead and manage people is a vital business skill. In my opinion, one of the reasons many small businesses fail to grow or simply fail is that the entrepreneur does not put together a strong team and often quits the business out of exhaustion. My rich dad often said, “Getting people to operate as a team and do what you need them to do is the toughest task of any business owner.” He also said, “Business is easy. Managing people is hard.”

Read this book and find out how you can build a powerful business team that operates as a team and gets stronger even though the challenges get taller.

From another perspective: Lately, there has been much ado about the loss of jobs to countries such as China, Vietnam, and India. Today, even Mexico is losing jobs to these countries. The problem is so bad that many politicians promise that they will create jobs or punish companies that export jobs. Thankfully, most of us know that politicians’ promises are often only promises, not to be kept.

Recently, on a trip to China, I learned that China has a larger unemployment problem than the West. I was told that every year in China, 18 million highly educated students graduate and enter the work force looking for a job. The same is happening in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and other countries.

One of the reasons that job losses in the West will continue is that there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who are willing to work for four dollars a day. With transportation, communication, and technology costs going down, the idea of a secure, high-paying job with benefits is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Promise as much as they like, no politician can stop this global development.

Today, in spite of this global trend of job competition, students still go to school so they can find a secure job once they graduate. Talk about an obsolete idea. One of the reasons this book is so important is that today, the world needs more entrepreneurs, people who can build businesses and create jobs, rather than people who need jobs.

– Robert Kiyosaki