Robert resigns from Xerox and starts his first company

Robert resigns from Xerox and starts his first company in 1977, converting a career chosen for what it could teach him into an entrepreneurial venture with his own money at stake. The transition marks the practical test of Rich Dad’s counsel: learn beyond the security of a paycheck, accept the possibility of failure, and acquire the skills to build a company rather than merely work inside one.

From Sales Training to Independence

After returning from Vietnam in 1973, Robert resigned his commission and joined Xerox. He was shy, and selling—especially knocking on doors and risking rejection—was the work he feared most. He chose Xerox not for its benefits but for its strong sales-training program, treating the job as a way to master a weakness rather than settle into security.

He stayed for four years, until he could consistently rank among the company’s top five salespeople. Then he resigned again, leaving an excellent company and a promising career after achieving the learning objective that had brought him there. The departure was not a rejection of work itself: it was the next step in a sequence shaped by skills to acquire, first selling and then company formation.

Founding the Company

In 1977, Robert formed his first company. Rich Dad had groomed him and Mike to take over companies; Robert now had to learn how to form and assemble one himself. His first product was a nylon-and-velcro wallet, manufactured in the Far East and shipped to a warehouse in New York, near the place where he had gone to school. The international production and shipment made the venture a concrete exercise in organizing a business, not simply an extension of his former sales job.

The first shipment left Korea on the eve of Robert’s thirtieth birthday. He describes his formal education as complete and the business as a test of his wings: failure could leave him broke. Rich Dad had advised him that going broke before thirty would leave time to recover. The timing gave that advice a sharp edge—the venture began at the threshold of the age by which Robert had been urged to take the risk.

Risk, Learning, and the Meaning of the Resignation

The move from Xerox to company ownership embodies the book’s distinction between working for immediate pay and working to learn. Robert had first used employment to gain sales ability, then left when he had learned what he needed from that setting. Starting a company demanded a different education: assembling an enterprise and bearing the financial consequences if it failed.

The account also frames the resignation through Robert’s broader view of financial risk. In the book, fear and desire can keep people reacting to paychecks and job security instead of thinking about where their choices lead. His departure from a secure, successful sales position and the possibility of going broke place that principle in biographical form. The episode does not say that risk guarantees success; it shows Robert choosing a venture whose result could not be separated from his own learning and judgment.

Continuing Beyond the First Venture

The first company began a pattern rather than ending Robert’s business education. He says that he still conducts business internationally and continues to seek emerging nations; his investment company later invests in South America, Asia, Norway, and Russia. The first product’s route from the Far East through Korea to New York thus belongs to a longer account of international enterprise, while the initial resignation remains the decisive break from a career pursued for security alone.