Vietnam War

The Vietnam War marks a turning point in Robert T. Kiyosaki’s education beyond the classroom: his year in Vietnam gives him intimate knowledge of both courage and fear, while military service also forms part of a broader apprenticeship in leadership. In retrospect, the war is less a self-contained battle narrative than a formative interval linking his study of risk to the career choices that follow.

Experience and Personal Courage

Kiyosaki recalls that after a year in Vietnam as a Marine Corps pilot, he had come to know both the brave, daring part of himself and the part capable of getting down on its knees and begging. He does not rank one above the other. Instead, he uses their coexistence to explain why financial ability requires not only technical knowledge but also courage: fear can suppress a person’s capacity to act, while boldness can turn that fear into energy.

The recollection informs his teaching about self-doubt. He had seen students know the answers yet lack the courage to act on them, and he argues that in the world outside school, boldness can matter more than being smart. Vietnam gives this argument a personal foundation: courage is not an abstract virtue for him, but something understood alongside fear through lived military experience.

Leadership and the Choice to Serve

Kiyosaki distinguishes his stated reason for joining the Marine Corps from his deeper objective. He told his educated father that he wanted to learn to fly, but says that he really wanted to learn to lead troops. The distinction reflects the influence of Rich Dad, who had taught him that managing people was the hardest part of running a company and urged him to learn leadership by leading men into dangerous situations.

Rich Dad’s own three years in the Army gave weight to that counsel; Kiyosaki contrasts this experience with his educated father’s draft-exempt status. Rich Dad warned that a poor leader could be “shot in the back” in business, making military leadership a practical lesson for future management as well as a test of responsibility under danger. The war thus belongs to a longer sequence in which Kiyosaki seeks skills his conventional education did not provide.

Return and Aftermath

Kiyosaki returned from Vietnam in 1973 and resigned his commission, even though he loved flying. He then joined Xerox for its sales-training program, not for its benefits. Shy by his own account, he found the prospect of selling frightening; after four years, he had overcome his fear of knocking on doors and being rejected and could consistently place among the company’s top five salespeople. He resigned again and moved on, carrying forward a different kind of training from the one he had received in military service.

In the book’s wider argument, Vietnam is a remembered stage in an education built through deliberate exposure to challenge. The episode connects leadership under danger with the later work of learning sales, forming companies, and developing financial intelligence. Its significance lies in that change of direction: Kiyosaki leaves the Marine Corps while retaining the lesson that courage and leadership must be practiced, not merely understood.