EPISODE 10
As we headed back to the store, rich dad explained that the rich
really did “make money.” They did not work for it. He went on to
explain that when Mike and I were casting five-cent pieces out of
lead, thinking we were making money, we were very close to thinking
the way the rich think. The problem was that creating money is legal
for the government and banks to do, but illegal for us to do. There are
legal ways to create money from nothing, he told us.
Rich dad went on to explain that the rich know that money is an
illusion, truly like the carrot for the donkey. It’s only out of fear and
greed that the illusion of money is held together by billions of people
who believe that money is real. It’s not. Money is really made up. It
is only because of the illusion of confidence and the ignorance of the
masses that this house of cards stands.
He talked about the gold standard that America was on, and that
each dollar bill was actually a silver certificate. What concerned him
was the rumor that we would someday go off the gold standard and
our dollars would no longer be backed by something tangible.
“If that happens, boys, all hell will break loose. The poor, the
middle class, and the ignorant will have their lives ruined simply
because they will continue to believe that money is real and that the
company they work for, or the government, will look after them.”
We really did not understand what he was saying that day, but
over the years, it made more and more sense.
Seeing What Others Miss
As he climbed into his pickup truck outside his convenience store,
rich dad said, “Keep working boys, but the sooner you forget about
needing a paycheck, the easier your adult life will be. Keep using your
brain, work for free, and soon your mind will show you ways of
making money far beyond what I could ever pay you. You will see
things that other people never see. Most people never see these
opportunities because they’re looking for money and security, so that’s
all they get. The moment you see one opportunity, you’ll see them
for the rest of your life. The moment you do that, I’ll teach you
something else. Learn this, and you’ll avoid one of life’s biggest traps.
Mike and I picked up our things from the store and waved
goodbye to Mrs. Martin. We went back to the park, to the same
picnic bench, and spent several more hours thinking and talking.
We spent the next week at school thinking and talking, too. For
two more weeks, we kept thinking, talking, and working for free.
At the end of the second Saturday, I was again saying goodbye
to Mrs. Martin and looking at the comic-book stand with a longing
gaze. The hard thing about not even getting 30 cents every Saturday
was that I didn’t have any money to buy comic books. Suddenly, as
Mrs. Martin said goodbye to Mike and me, I saw her do something I’d
never seen her do before.
Mrs. Martin was cutting the front page of the comic book in half.
She kept the top half of the comic book cover and threw the rest of the
book into a large cardboard box. When I asked her what she did with
the comic books, she said, “I throw them away. I give the top half of
the cover back to the comic-book distributor for credit when he brings
in the new comics. He’s coming in an hour.”
Mike and I waited for an hour. Soon the distributor arrived, and
I asked him if we could have the comic books. To my delight, he said,
“You can have them if you work for this store and do not resell them.”
Remember our old business partnership? Well, Mike and I revived
it. Using a spare room in Mike’s basement, we began piling hundreds
of comic books in that room. Soon our comic-book library was open
to the public. We hired Mike’s younger sister, who loved to study, to be
head librarian. She charged each child 10 cents admission to the library,
which was open from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day after school.
The customers, the children of the neighborhood, could read as many
comics as they wanted in two hours. It was a bargain for them since a
comic cost 10 cents each, and they could read five or six in two hours.
Mike’s sister would check the kids as they left to make sure they
weren’t borrowing any comic books. She also kept the books, logging
in how many kids showed up each day, who they were, and any
comments they might have. Mike and I averaged $9.50 per week
over a three-month period. We paid his sister one dollar a week and
allowed her to read the comics for free, which she rarely did since she
was always studying.
Mike and I kept our agreement by working in the store every
Saturday and collecting all the comic books from the different stores.
We kept our agreement to the distributor by not selling any comic
books. We burned them once they got too tattered. We tried opening
a branch office, but we could never quite find someone as trustworthy
and dedicated as Mike’s sister. At an early age, we found out how hard
it was to find good staff.
Three months after the library first opened, a fight broke out in
the room. Some bullies from another neighborhood pushed their
way in, and Mike’s dad suggested we shut down the business. So
our comic-book business shut down, and we stopped working on
Saturdays at the convenience store. But rich dad was excited because
he had new things he wanted to teach us. He was happy because we
had learned our first lesson so well: We learned to make money work
for us. By not getting paid for our work at the store, we were forced
to use our imaginations to identify an opportunity to make money.
By starting our own business, the comic-book library, we were in
control of our own finances, not dependent on an employer. The best
part was that our business generated money for us, even when we
weren’t physically there. Our money worked for us.
Instead of paying us money, rich dad had given us so much more.