After stam- mering and sweating through my memorized sales pitch on the benefits of a Xerox copier, all he did was laugh. After he was through laughing, he said, "Son, you're the worst I have ever seen. But keep going because if you can get over your fears, your world will be very bright. If you quit, you may wind up like me sitting behind this counter fourteen hours a day, 346 Rich Dab's Guide to Investing seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year waiting for tourists to come in. I wait here because I am too afraid to go out and do what you're doing. Get through your fears and the world will open up. Give in to your fears and your world will get smaller every year." To this day, I give thanks to that wise, older man. After I began to overcome my fear of selling, rich dad had me join the Toastmasters organization to learn to overcome my fear of speaking in front of large groups. When I com- plained to rich dad, he would say, "All great leaders are great public speakers. Leaders of great businesses need to be great speakers. If you want to be a leader, you must be a speaker." Today, I can speak comfortably to tens of thousands of people in convention halls because of my training in sales and my early training from the Toastmasters organization. If you are thinking about starting your own В quadrant business, I recommend those same two skills. First, develop the skill to overcome your fears, to overcome rejection, and to communicate the value of your product or service. Second, develop the skill of speaking to large groups of people and keeping them interested in what you have to say. As rich dad said to me, "There are speakers that no one listens to, there are salespeople that cannot sell, there are advertisers that no one watches, there are entrepreneurs that cannot raise capi- tal, and there are business leaders that no one follows. If you want to be successful in the 'B' quadrant, don't be any of those people." My first book in the Rich Dad series, Rich Dad Poor Dad, has been on the prestigious Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) best-selling booklist for well over two years. In the United States, it has been on The Wall Street Journals' best- seller list for nearly nine months, and it made The New York Times bestseller list in September 1999- When other authors ask me what my secret to getting on those lists is, I simply re- communications management 347 peat a sentence from Rich Dad Poor Dad. "I am not a best- writing author. I am a best-selling author." I add that I flunked out of high school twice because I could not write and that I never even kissed a girl in high school because I was too shy. I end by saying the same thing my rich dad said to me: "Unsuccessful people find their strengths and spend their lives making their strengths stronger, often ignoring their weaknesses, until one day their weaknesses cannot be ig- nored anymore. Successful people find their weaknesses and make them strengths.