I'm the author of the book, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad."/ Maybe I should see a show of hands./ How many have read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad?" / Oh, good, some of you have./ Who has not yet read the book here?/Oh, good, there's some customers out there./ Happy to see that./ You know, as I say to the press, I'm a best-selling/ author. / I'm not a best-writing author. / But anyway. / So the first time I read the book, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is a true story of my two dads.// And the story begins when I was nine years old growing up in a little town, a little sugar plantation town called Hilo, Hawaii. / And I raised my hand in the fourth grade/ and I went to a very rich, / basically all-white school./ And I said,/ "Mrs. Gerald,/ when will I learn about money?" / And she says,/ "Money? /Don't you know the love of money is the root of all evil?"/ I said, "Not to me." / And she says, "You're here to get a job."/ I said, "No, I don't want a job, I just want to get rich."/So she says, "Go ask your dad." So that's where "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" started. /And my poor dad/ was the head of education for Hawaii. Very smart man, PhD, went to Stanford, University of Chicago, Northwestern./ And I went home and I asked dad, I said, hey, dad, when are we gonna learn about money? /And he says, "Never."/ I said, "Why not?"/ He said, "The government doesn't allow us to teach you that."/ I said, "That's kind of interesting."/ So he said,/ "If you want to get rich, go talk to your best friend's father." / And he's an entrepreneur,/ and someday he'll be a very rich man. / So that's how the story of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" starts./ When I was nine years old, I crossed and went to my rich dad's office./ Being an entrepreneur, and he started teaching his son and me/ about why the rich get richer. / And that's where my financial education began./ So I wrote this book,/ it came out in 1997. / So far, it's sold about 41 million copies in 50 languages throughout the world./ So... / I'll give you a little bit of my background./ Oh, thanks./ I don't do it for the applause, send in the cash. But anyway./ Anyway,/this is Hilo, Hawaii to New York City. I didn't do well in school. I was a straight C-minus student/ but// I did... having the old man as the head of education wasn't easy, you know./ So anyway,/ I got two congressional nominations, one to US Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, one to US Merchant Marine Academy at Kingspoint, New York./So I took New York because we're the highest paid graduates in the world./ And this is me at Kingspoint here./ And our starting salaries for most of us was about $100,000 a year back in 1965. So that was pretty good back then,/ not much today, / but it's pretty good back then. / And then when I graduated, / I got a job/ as a third officer on Standard Oil Tanker sailing the world./ And it was a great job,/except for one thing,/ the Vietnam War was still on and my moral conscience kind of got to me and I said, / maybe I should go fight a war./ So I joined the Marine Corps/ and I took a cut in pay from about 6,000 a month down to 200 a month as a Marine Lieutenant. / And it was a great decision./ I went to flight school in Florida, Pensacola, and it was right up the street here at Camp Pendleton/ and straight to Vietnam. / And it was really a great experience./ Loved the Marine Corps, loved the guys I worked with. / And/ it's a band of brothers, / very spiritual organization./ And when I came back, that's when my/ business career started./ It's my first business,/the surfer wallet business and all this. And everybody thinks, yeah, when you... when you / start getting successful, life's easy. Well, no, success is expensive./ I started selling these silly wallets and all of a sudden they took off /and I spent more time raising capital to buy more inventory so I could sell more. // But it was a great learning experience. / I learned to make a lot of money selling/wallets./