如何培养出下一代企业家？这个高赞TED演讲值得一看！（附视频&演讲稿）

I would be willing to bet. I’m the dumbest guy in the room, because I couldn’t get through school; I struggled with school.

But I knew at a very early age that I loved money, I loved business and I loved this entrepreneurial thing. I was raised to be an entrepreneur.

What I’ve been really passionate about ever since — and I’ve never spoken about this ever, until now — so this is the first time anyone’s heard it, except my wife, three days ago.

She said, “What are you talking about?” I told her that I think we miss an opportunity to find these kids who have the entrepreneurial traits, and to groom them or show them that being an entrepreneur is actually a cool thing. It’s not something that is a bad thing and is vilified, which is what happens in a lot of society.

Kids, when we grow up, have dreams, and we have passions, and we have visions, and somehow we get those things crushed. We get told that we need to study harder or be more focused or get a tutor.

My parents got me a tutor in French, and I still suck in French. Two years ago, I was the highest-rated lecturer at MIT’s Entrepreneurial Master’s Program. It was a speaking event in front of groups of entrepreneurs from around the world. When I was in grade two, I won a citywide speaking competition, but nobody had ever said, “Hey, this kid’s a good speaker. He can’t focus, but he loves walking around and getting people energized.”

No one said, “Get him a coach in speaking.” They said, get me a tutor in what I suck at.

So as kids show these traits — and we need to start looking for them — I think we should be raising kids to be entrepreneurs instead of lawyers. Unfortunately, the school system is grooming this world to say, “Let’s be a lawyer,” or, “Let’s be a doctor.” We’re missing that opportunity, because no one ever says, “Hey, be an entrepreneur.”

Entrepreneurs are people — we have a lot of them in this room — who have ideas and passions or see these needs in the world and decide to stand up and do it. And we put everything on the line to make that stuff happen. We have the ability to get the groups of people around us that want to build that dream with us.

And I think if we could get kids to embrace the idea at a young age, of being entrepreneurial, we could change everything in the world that’s a problem today. Every problem out there, somebody has the idea for.

And as a young kid, nobody can say it can’t happen, because you’re too dumb to realize that you couldn’t figure it out. I think we have an obligation as parents and a society to start teaching our kids to fish instead of giving them the fish — the old parable: “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

If we can teach our kids to be entrepreneurial, the ones that show the traits to be, like we teach the ones who have science gifts to go on in science, what if we saw the ones with entrepreneurial traits and taught them to be entrepreneurs? We could have these kids spreading businesses instead of waiting for government handouts.

What we do is teach our kids the things they shouldn’t do: don’t hit; don’t bite; don’t swear. Right now we teach our kids to go after really good jobs; the school system teaches them to go after things like being a doctor and being a lawyer and being an accountant and a dentist and a teacher and a pilot.

And the media says it’s really cool if we could go out and be a model or a singer or a sports hero like Luongo or Crosby. Our MBA programs do not teach kids to be entrepreneurs. The reason I avoided an MBA program, other than that I didn’t get into any, since I had a 61% average out of high school, then a 61% average at the only school in Canada that accepted me, Carlton, is that our MBA programs don’t teach kids to be entrepreneurs. They teach them to work in corporations.

So who’s starting these companies? It’s these random few people. Even in popular literature, the only book I’ve ever found — and this should be on all your reading lists — the only book I’ve ever found that makes the entrepreneur a hero is “Atlas Shrugged.” Everything else in the world looks at entrepreneurs and says we’re bad people.

I look at even my family. Both my grandfathers and my dad were entrepreneurs. My brother, sister and I, all three of us own companies as well. We all decided to start these things because it’s the only place we fit. We didn’t fit in normal work; we couldn’t work for somebody else, we’re stubborn and we have all these other traits. But kids could be entrepreneurs as well.

I’m a big part of a couple organizations called the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and the Young Presidents’ Organization. I just came back from speaking in Barcelona at the YPO global conference. And everyone I met over there who’s an entrepreneur struggled with school. I have 18 out of the 19 signs of attention deficit disorder diagnosed. So this thing right here is freaking me out.

It’s probably why I’m a bit panicked, other than all the caffeine I’ve had and the sugar. But this is really creepy for an entrepreneur. Attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder. Do you know that bipolar disorder is nicknamed the CEO disease? Ted Turner’s got it. Steve Jobs has it. All three of the founders of Netscape had it. I could go on and on Kids — you can see these signs in kids. And we’re giving them Ritalin and saying, “Don’t be an entrepreneurial type. Fit into this other system and try to become a student.”

Sorry, entrepreneurs aren’t students. We fast-track. We figure out the game. I stole essays. I cheated on exams. I hired kids to do my accounting assignments in university for 13 consecutive assignments.

But as an entrepreneur, you don’t do accounting, you hire accountants. So I just figured that out earlier. At least I can admit I cheated in university; most of you won’t. I’m also quoted — and I told the person who wrote the textbook — I’m now quoted in that exact same university textbook in every Canadian university and college studies — in managerial accounting, I’m chapter eight.

I open up chapter eight, talking about budgeting. I told the author, after they did my interview, that I cheated in that same course. She thought it was too funny to not include it. But kids, you can see these signs in them. The definition of entrepreneur is “a person who organizes, operates and assumes the risk of a business venture.”

That doesn’t mean you have to go to an MBA program, or that you have to get through school. It just means that those few things have to feel right in your gut. We’ve heard, “Is it nurture or is it nature?” Right? Is it thing one or thing two? What is it? Well, I don’t think it’s either. I think it can be both. I was groomed as an entrepreneur.

When I was growing up as a young kid, I had no choice, because I was taught at a very early age, when my dad realized I didn’t fit into everything else that was being taught to me in school, that he could teach me to figure out business at an early age. He groomed us, the three of us, to hate the thought of having a job and to love the fact of creating companies where we could employ other people.

My first business venture: I was seven years old, in Winnipeg. I was in my bedroom with one of those long extension cords, calling all the dry cleaners in Winnipeg to find out how much they’d pay me for coat hangers. And my mom came into the room and said, “Where are you going to get the hangers to sell to the dry cleaners?” And I said, “Let’s go look in the basement.”

We went down to the basement, and I opened up this cupboard. There was about 1,000 hangers that I’d collected, because, when I told her I was going out to play, I was going door to door in the neighborhood to collect hangers to put in the basement, because I saw her a few weeks before that — you could get paid, they used to pay two cents per coat hanger.

So I was like, well, there’s all kinds of hangers, so I’ll just go get them. I knew she wouldn’t want me to get them, so I just did it anyway. And I learned that you could actually negotiate with people. This one guy offered me three cents and I got him up to three and a half.

I even knew at seven years old that I could get a fractional percent of a cent, and people would pay it, because it multiplied up. At seven years old I figured it out I got three and a half cents for 1,000 hangers. I sold license plate protectors door to door.

My dad actually made me go find someone who would sell me them at wholesale. At nine years old, I walked around in the city of Sudbury selling license-plate protectors door to door. And I remember this one customer so vividly — I also did some other stuff with these clients, I sold newspapers, and he wouldn’t buy a newspaper from me, ever. But I was convinced I was going to get him to buy a license-plate protector. And he’s like, “We don’t need one.”

I said, “But you’ve got two cars.” Remember, I’m nine years old. I’m like, “You have two cars and they don’t have license-plate protectors. And this car has one license plate that’s all crumpled up.” He said, “That’s my wife’s car.”

I said, “Why don’t we test one on her car and see if it lasts longer?” So I knew there were two cars with two license plates on each. If I couldn’t sell all four, I could at least get one. I learned that at a young age I did comic book arbitrage. When I was about 10 years old, I sold comic books out of our cottage on Georgian Bay.

I would go biking up to the end of the beach, buy all the comics from the poor kids, then go back to the other end of the beach to sell them to the rich kids. It was obvious to me: buy low, sell high. You’ve got this demand over here that has money. Don’t try to sell to the poor kids; they don’t have cash. The rich people do. Obvious, right? It’s like a recession.

So there’s a recession. There’s still $13 trillion circulating in the US economy. Go get some of that. I learned that at a young age.

I also learned, don’t reveal your source: I got beat up after four weeks of this, because one of the rich kids found out where I was buying my comics, and didn’t like that he was paying more. I was forced to get a paper route at 10 years old. I didn’t want a paper route, but my dad said, “That’s your next business.” Not only did he get me one, but I had to get two. He wanted me to hire someone to deliver half the papers, which I did.

Then I realized: collecting tips is how you made all the money. So I’d collect tips and get payment. I would collect for the papers — he could just deliver them. Because then I realized I could make money. By this point, I was definitely not going to be an employee.

My dad owned an automotive and industrial repair shop. He had all these old automotive parts lying around. They had this old brass and copper. I asked what he did with it, and he said he just throws it out. I said, “Wouldn’t somebody pay for that?”

And he goes, “Maybe.”

Remember: at 10 years old, 34 years ago, I saw opportunity in this stuff, I saw there was money in garbage. And I collected it from the automotive shops in the area on my bicycle. Then my dad would drive me on Saturdays to a scrap metal recycler where I got paid. And I thought that was kind of cool.

Strangely enough, 30 years later, we’re building 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and making money off that, too.

I built these little pincushions when I was 11 years old in Cubs. We made these pincushions for our moms for Mother’s Day out of wooden clothespins — when we used to hang clothes on clotheslines outside. And you’d make these chairs. And I had these little pillows that I would sew up. And you could stuff pins in them.

Because people used to sew and they needed a pincushion. But I realized you had to have options, so I spray-painted a whole bunch of them brown, so when I went to the door, it wasn’t, “Do you want to buy one?” It was, “Which color would you like?”

I’m 10 years old; you’re not going to say no, especially if you have two options, the brown one or the clear one. So I learned that lesson at a young age. I learned that manual labor really sucks. Right, like cutting lawns is brutal.

But because I had to cut lawns all summer for all of our neighbors and get paid to do that, I realized that recurring revenue from one client is amazing, that if I land this client once, and every week I get paid by that person, that’s way better than trying to sell one clothespin thing to one person, because you can’t sell them more.

So I love that recurring revenue model. I started to learn at a young age. Remember, I was being groomed to do this. I was not allowed to have jobs. I would go to the golf course and caddy for people, but I realized there was this one hill on our golf course, the 13th hole, that had this huge hill, and people could never get their bags up it.

So I’d sit there in a lawn chair and carry for all the people who didn’t have caddies. I’d carry their golf bags to the top; they’d pay me a dollar, while my friends worked for hours hauling some guy’s bag around for 10 bucks. I’m like, “That’s stupid. You have to work for five hours. That doesn’t make sense.

Figure out a way to make more money faster. Every week, I’d go to the corner store and buy all these pops. Then I’d deliver them to these 70-year-old women playing bridge. They’d give me their orders for the following week. I’d deliver pop and charge twice. I had this captured market.

You didn’t need contracts, you just needed to have a supply and demand and this audience who bought into you. These women weren’t going to go to anybody else because they liked me, and I kind of figured it out. I went and got golf balls from golf courses. But everybody else was looking in the bush and looking in the ditches for golf balls. I’m like, screw that.

They’re in the pond. And nobody’s going into the pond. So I’d go into the ponds and crawl around and pick them up with my toes, just pick them up with both feet. You can’t do it onstage. You get the golf balls, throw them in your bathing suit trunks and when you’re done, you’ve got a couple hundred of them.

But the problem is, people didn’t want all the golf balls. So I just packaged them. I’m like 12, right? I packaged them up three ways. I had the Pinnacles, DDHs and the really cool ones. Those sold for two dollars each.

Then I had the good ones that didn’t look crappy: 50 cents each. And then I’d sell 50 at a time of all the crappy ones. And they could use those for practice balls. I sold sunglasses when I was in school, to all the kids in high school. This is what really kind of gets everybody hating you, because you’re trying to extract money from all your friends all the time.

But it paid the bills. So I sold lots and lots of sunglasses. Then when the school shut me down — they called me into the office and told me I couldn’t do it — I went to the gas stations and sold lots of them to the gas stations and had the gas stations sell them to their customers. That was cool because then, I had retail outlets. I think I was 14.

Then I paid my entire way through first year of university at Carlton by selling wineskins door to door. You know you can hold a 40-ounce bottle of rum and two bottles of coke in a wineskin? So what, right? But you know what? Stuff that down your shorts when you go to a football game, you can get booze in for free. Everybody bought them. Supply, demand, big opportunity. I also branded it, so I sold them for five times the normal cost.

It had our university logo on it. You know, we teach our kids and we buy them games, but why don’t we get them games, if they’re entrepreneurial kids, that nurture the traits you need to be entrepreneurs? Why don’t you teach them not to waste money?

I remember being told to walk out into the middle of a street in Banff, Alberta. I’d thrown a penny out in the street, and my dad said, “Go pick it up. I work too damn hard for my money. I’m not going to see you waste a penny.” I remember that lesson to this day.

Allowances teach kids the wrong habits. Allowances, by nature, are teaching kids to think about a job. An entrepreneur doesn’t expect a regular paycheck. Allowance is breeding kids at a young age to expect a regular paycheck.

That’s wrong, for me, if you want to raise entrepreneurs. What I do with my kids, nine and seven, is teach them to walk around the house and the yard, looking for stuff that needs to get done. Come and tell me what it is. Or I’ll say, “Here’s what I need done.” And then, you know what we do? We negotiate.

They go around looking for what it is, then we negotiate what they’ll get paid. They don’t have a regular check, but they have opportunities to find more stuff, and learn the skill of negotiating and of finding opportunities. You breed that kind of stuff. Each of my kids has two piggy banks. Fifty percent of all the money they earn goes in their house account, 50 percent goes in their toy account.

The toy account, they spend on whatever they want. The 50 percent in their house account, every six months, goes to the bank they walk up with me. Every year, all the money in the bank goes to their broker. Both my nine- and seven-year-olds have a stockbroker already.

I’m teaching them to force that savings habit. It drives me crazy that 30-year-olds are saying, “Maybe I’ll start contributing to my RSP now.” Shit, you’ve missed 25 years. You can teach those habits to young kids, when they don’t even feel the pain yet. Don’t read bedtime stories every night — maybe four nights of the week, and three nights, have them tell stories.

Why don’t you sit down with kids and give them four items, a red shirt, a blue tie, a kangaroo and a laptop, and have them tell a story about those four things? My kids do that all the time. It teaches them to sell, teaches them creativity, teaches them to think on their feet. Do that kind of stuff, have fun with it.

Get kids to stand up in front of groups and talk, even if it’s just in front of their friends, and do plays and have speeches. Those are entrepreneurial traits you want to be nurturing. Show kids what bad customers or bad employees look like. Show them grumpy employees.

When you see grumpy customer service, point it out. Say, “By the way, that guy is a crappy employee.” And say, “These are good ones.”

If you go into a restaurant and have bad customer service, show them what bad customer service looks like. We have all these lessons in front of us, but we don’t take those opportunities; we teach kids to get a tutor.

Imagine if you actually took all the kids’ junk in the house right now, all the toys they outgrew two years ago and said, “Why don’t we sell some of this on Craigslist and Kijiji?” And they actually sell it and learn how to find scammers when offers come in. They can come into your account or a sub account or whatever. But teach them how to fix the price, guess the price, pull up the photos.

Teach them how to do that kind of stuff and make money. Then 50 percent goes in their house account, 50 percent in their toy account. My kids love this stuff. Some of the entrepreneurial traits you’ve got to nurture in kids: attainment, tenacity, leadership, introspection, interdependence, values. All these traits, you can find in young kids, and you can help nurture them.

Look for that kind of stuff. There’s two traits I want you to also look out for that we don’t get out of their system. Don’t medicate kids for attention deficit disorder unless it is really, really freaking bad. The same with the whole things on mania and stress and depression, unless it is so clinically brutal, man Bipolar disorder is nicknamed “the CEO disease.”

When Steve Jurvetson, Jim Clark and Jim Barksdale have all got it, and they built Netscape — imagine if they were given Ritalin. We wouldn’t have that stuff, right? Al Gore really would have had to invented the Internet.

These are the skills we should be teaching in the classroom, as well as everything else. I’m not saying don’t get kids to want to be lawyers. But how about getting entrepreneurship to be ranked right up there with the rest of them? Because there’s huge opportunities in that.

I want to close with a quick video that was done by one of the companies I mentor. These guys, Grasshopper. It’s about kids. It’s about entrepreneurship. Hopefully, this inspires you to take what you’ve heard from me and do something with it to change the world.

“And you thought you could do anything?” You still can. Because a lot of what we consider impossible is easy to overcome. Because in case you haven’t noticed, we live in a place where one individual can make a difference. Want proof? Just look at the people who built our country: Our parents, grandparents, our aunts, uncles. They were immigrants, newcomers ready to make their mark. Maybe they came with very little or perhaps they didn’t own anything except for a single brilliant idea. These people were thinkers, doers, innovators until they came up with the name entrepreneurs. They change the way we think about what is possible.

They have a clear vision of how life can be better for all of us, even when times are tough. Right now, it’s hard to see when our view is cluttered with obstacles. But turbulence creates opportunities for success, achievement, and pushes us to discover new ways of doing things. So what opportunities will you go after and why? If you’re an entrepreneur you know that risk isn’t the reward. No. The rewards are driving innovation, changing people’s lives, creating jobs, fueling growth and making a better world.

Entrepreneurs are everywhere. They run small businesses that support our economy, design tools to help you stay connected with friends, family and colleagues. And they’re finding new ways of helping to solve society’s oldest problems. Do you know an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs can be anyone. Even you. So seize the opportunity to create the job you always wanted. Help heal the economy. Make a difference. Take your business to new heights, but most importantly, remember when you were a kid, when everything was within your reach, and then say to yourself quietly, but with determination: it still is.

Thank you very much for having me.

我敢打赌说在座的各位都比我聪明，因为我在学校里成绩很差，无法完成我的学业。但我很早就知道，我喜欢经商和赚钱、喜欢这种创业的活动，我生来就是一块做企业家的料，并且我对创业一直以来都非常热忱。

我之前从未说过这些，一直到今天。除了3天前我对我妻子说过这些话外，你们就是第一次听到这些话的人了。因为那天她问我要演讲的题目是什么，我就告诉她，我认为我们丧失了一个大好的机会去挖掘一些具有企业家潜质的孩子，去打造他们或者展示给他们看：当一名企业家是很酷的一件事情，而不是一件招人诋毁的坏事。

挖掘具有潜质的孩子

当我们还是成长的孩子时，我们有梦想，也有自己所热爱的事物和美好憧憬。但不知什么原因，它们被渐渐抹灭掉，似乎不再为我们所拥有。取而代之的，是我们被教导要更努力学习，更专注一点或者多参加课外补习。

我的父母给我请了一个法语家教，但我的法语还是很烂。两年前我有幸成为麻省理工学院创业硕士班里面评价最高的讲师。当时我要在来自世界各地的众多企业家面前演讲。

在大学二年级的时候，我赢得了一个市级的演讲比赛，但没人对我说过：“瞧，这个孩子演讲得很不错，很有潜力。虽然他注意力不集中，但他喜欢到处走动，激励身边的人”；也没人说：“给他请一个演讲的教练吧”；他们只会建议给我请一个家教来弥补我的不足之处。

所以孩子们展现了这些潜质，而我们要开始寻找这样的孩子。

我们应该把孩子们培养成企业家而不是律师。但是很不幸，学校的教育体系都把大家的观念训练成固定的模式：做一名律师或者医生。我们失去了一次机会，因为从未有人说过：“你要做一名企业家”。

一名合格的企业家应该是这样的：一旦有了想法和热情，或者看见了世界的需求，就会挺身而出，开始动手实践。我们会想尽一切办法来实现自己的想法，也会有能力吸引到和我们同样的人加入进来，和我们一起实现梦想。

我想如果可以让孩子们在小时候就萌生做企业家的想法，那么现在世界上的很多问题都可以得到解决，只要出现问题，就会有人提出解决之道。作为一个孩子，没有什么事情是不可能完成的，只是你还不没有一定的知识储备，没有足够多的经验去解决它们。

我认为作为家长和社会都要承担起一个责任：要教会我们的孩子如何学习知识，而不是教给他们知识本身。

有句谚语说得很好：“授人以鱼不如授人以渔”。如果我们能教育孩子们成为企业家，尤其是那些具有企业家天赋的孩子们，就像我们培养有科研天赋的孩子们成为科学家一样。如果我们发现了那些有经商天赋的孩子并教会他们成为企业家，世界将会怎样？

我们本来可以让这些孩子们到处经商、保持市场的活力，而不是在家里等待着政府的救济。但我们现在所做的，是告诉孩子们这个不能做，那个不能做；不能打人，不能咬人，不能骂人。现在的孩子被教导：将来一定要找一份很好的工作。

学校的教育告诉他们要立志成为医生或是律师、会计师或是牙医、教师或是飞行员；媒体则灌输他们要成为模特、歌手或是成为像Sidney Crosby（加拿大职业冰球手）那样的运动明星……我们的MBA教育并没有教会孩子们如何成为企业家。

我之所以不去读MBA——除了我不够格这个事实之外（因为我高中平均成绩只有61%，而这61%的平均成绩在加拿大只能上Carlton这样的学校）；另一个原因则是我们的MBA课程并不教我们如何成为企业家，而是教学生如何进入大公司工作。

那么又是谁创立了这些公司呢？是那些数量很少的企业家。

甚至在大众书籍中，我能找到唯一的一本将企业家塑造成英雄式的人物的书——《阿特拉斯耸耸肩》（别名《地球颤栗》），其余的则带着有色眼镜看待企业家。

我想起我的家人，我的爷爷和外公都是企业家，我的父亲也是，我的兄妹和我三个人都开了自己的公司，我们都决定了创业，因为这才最合适我们的。我们并不适合做普通的工作，没办法在其他人手底下工作，因为我们太独立固执了，当然还有其他一些企业家独特的性格促使我们这样做。

但孩子们也可以成为企业家，我在两个全球性组织里面担任重要的职位（创业家协会和青年总裁协会）。我刚从巴赛罗那演讲回来，在那里参加了青年总裁协会的全球年会，那里我遇到的每个只要是企业家的人，都对学业束手无策。

注意力缺乏症的19种症状中，我被诊断出18种，这很可能是我现在经常心乱的原因，当然，也有可能是我喝下的咖啡因和糖分在作怪。但注意力缺乏症和躁郁症之类的东西会让一个企业家觉得很恐怖，躁郁症甚至还被戏称为“CEO症”。Ted Turner（CNN创办者）有此症状，Steve Jobs（苹果CEO）也有，网景公司的三个创办人也都有此症……

你可以在孩子们的身上看到这些征兆。企业家的定义是“组织并且运营一个商业活动，并承担其所带来的风险”。这并不代表你必须要去读MBA，也不代表你一定要从学校毕业，这只代表着，你在心中能够正确地判断事情的好坏与否，就足够了。

我们也听说过一个人的成长到底是天生的还是后天培养的，是前者还是后者？我觉得并不是两者其一，而是两者都有。

我绝对不会成为一名雇员

第一次做生意——卖晾衣架

在我还是个孩子的时候，我并没有太多选择。很小的时候，当我父亲发现我不能够很快适应那些在学校里教导的东西时，他就开始教我如何做生意，他训练了我们兄妹三个人，这让我们讨厌在别人手底下做事，让我们憧憬着创建公司并且雇佣其他人。

我第一次做生意是在温尼伯，那时我只有七岁。我当时躺在卧室的床上打着电话，我打给了温尼伯所有的干洗店，我想知道干洗店愿意付多少钱买我的晾衣架。

我的母亲走进房间问我：“你去哪弄晾衣架来卖给干洗店呢？”我说：“我们去地下室瞧瞧吧。”于是我们到了地下室，我把橱柜的门打开，里面有近一千个我收集的晾衣架。因为当我跟她说我要出去找其他小孩子玩的时候，我其实是到附近挨家挨户地收集衣架，并且把它们放到地下室准备出售。因为几个星期前，我看到她把衣架卖给别人，通常每个衣架卖2分钱。

所以我想，有很多种晾衣架呀，我应该去收集一些衣架，虽然我知道她不想让我去做这些事情，但我还是去做了，因此我还学会了和别人讨价还价。

有个人付我3美分，但我和他谈价谈到了3美分半，甚至在我七岁的时候我就知道，我其实可以把1美分拆成更小的单位。当累计很多这样的单位后，别人仍然可以付给我钱，每一千个衣架，我可以赚3分半。

9岁——卖车牌保护框

我还挨家挨户地卖车牌保护框。我的爸爸更是让我去批发市场，找那些愿意卖这些东西给我的人。当我9岁时，我逛遍了Sudbury城，向那里的人家挨家挨户地卖车牌保护框。我记得很清楚有这么一位顾客，因为我也卖给顾客们其他的东西，我有卖过报纸，但他从未向我买过一份报纸。

当我很有把握地觉得会说服他买下一个汽车牌照框时：

“我们不需要这个玩意。”

“但你有两辆车呀，但它们都没有汽车牌照。”

“我知道。”

“这辆车的牌照都已经破旧了。”

“是的，那是我妻子的车。”

“那不如我们在你妻子的车前面试一试我的这个，来看一下它会不会更耐用一些？”

于是我把2个车牌框各放了一个在那两部车上。即使我不能卖4个，至少可以卖1个，这在我很小的时候就已经明白了。

10岁——卖漫画书和送报纸

我也从漫画书中收获很多。10岁的时候，我在Georgian Bay的小屋外卖漫画书。我踩着单车去到沙滩的尽头，从那些穷小孩那里买漫画书，然后我会重新回到沙滩的另外一边，把书卖给有钱的小孩。

很明显，没错，低价买入，高价卖出。在这富人区，你会有很大市场的。但是不要尝试卖书给穷小孩，因为他们没有钱。但富小孩有，那就去赚他们一把。

需要提醒的是，千万不要暴露你的入货地点。在赚了4个星期后，我被揍得很惨，因为一个富小孩发现了我买漫画书的地方，而他不想给这么多钱。

10岁那年，我又去送报纸了，我爸说：“这会是你的下一门生意”，他让我请一个人去送一半报纸，我照做了，意识到那些小费会变成收入的主要来源后，我开始去收集所有报纸订户的小费，而我请的人只是负责送报。因为不久后，我意识到，我可以从中赚钱。可见，我绝对不会成为一名雇员。

11岁——推销针垫

我11岁当童子军的时候就在做一些针垫，母亲节的时候送给我的妈妈。我用木制晾衣夹来做这些针垫，因为我们习惯把衣服晾在屋外的晾衣线上。另外，你要做这样的椅子，而我有这些缝制的小枕头，你可以别一些小别针在它们身上。

人们过去总会自己缝小枕头，而他们会需要针垫。但我所知道的是，你可以有选择。实际上，我可以把它们都喷成棕色。然后，当我上门推销的时候，我不是说：“您想买一个呢？”而是：“您想要哪种颜色呢？”因为我当时只有10岁，他们一般不会拒绝我。特别是他们可以有2种选择：可以要棕色的或者无色的，我在很小的时候就有这样的经验。

我还知道，人力并不值钱，比如割草工作就很辛苦。但是不论如何，从同一个人身上得到长期收入，也算得上是件十分不错的事情！

培养孩子的企业家特质

我们在教育我们的孩子时，会买幼教玩具。但是如果他们是将成为企业家的孩子，为什么我们不给他们玩那些能够培养他们企业家特质的游戏呢？为什么不教导他们别浪费钱呢？

我记得我在Alberta的Banff被赶出街道，因为我把一分钱扔在街上，然后我爸爸说：“把它捡起来。”他说：“这是我辛辛苦苦挣来的钱，我不会让你浪费任何一分钱。”时至今日，我还记得这个教训。

零用钱让孩子养成坏习惯

零用钱让孩子养成坏习惯，应教会孩子怎样利用这些钱去赚到更多钱。企业家不会期望有一份常规的收入，零用钱让孩子从小时候就只期待有份稳定的收入。对我来说，如果你想去培育企业家，给孩子零用钱是错的。

我有三个分别是2岁，9岁和7岁的小孩。现在，我让我的小孩在房子和前院四处查看，寻找一些需要完成的工作，然后回来告诉我有什么工作。或者我会跟他们说：“这是我需要完成的。”然后我们讨价还价，他们闲逛去找有什么可以做的，然后我们就会谈定工作的酬劳，这样子他们就不会有稳定的收入，反而有更多机会去寻找商机。同时，他们也从中学会了谈判和寻找商机的技巧。你要培养他们这些习惯。

我的每个小孩都有2个小猪钱罐，挣来的或者别人给的钱一半都会存到他们的家庭钱罐里面，另一半则存在他们买玩具的钱罐里面。

他们可以用玩具钱罐里的钱去买任何东西；另一个家庭钱罐，每6个月，就会存进银行，他们会跟我一起去。

每年，银行里的钱都会交给他们的股票经纪人。我9岁和7岁的孩子都各有一个股票经纪人，但是我仍然要他们养成储蓄的习惯。

如果到了30岁才说：“或许现在我想开始把钱存进我的创业支持计划里面。”那么，我会疯掉的，因为那时我已经浪费了25年，我必须在孩子还没有金钱观念的时候就教他们这些好习惯。

让孩子来讲故事

不要每天晚上给他们读床边故事。可以每星期有四天晚上给他们讲故事，剩下的三晚让他们来讲故事。

尝试一下，和孩子一起坐下来，并给他们4样东西：一件红衬衫、一条蓝领带、一只袋鼠玩具和一台手提电脑，然后让他们围绕这4样东西讲一个故事，我的孩子经常这样做。这会训练他们卖东西的技巧、训练他们的创造力，训练他们快速思考。试试看吧，你会有不同的感受。

教会孩子辨别是非和真假

让孩子在众人面前讲话，尽管听众可能只是他们的朋友。让他们表演话剧和进行演讲，也会培养孩子应当具备的企业家特质。告诉孩子们什么是不合格的客户，什么是不尽责的雇员，告诉他们脾气暴躁的雇员是怎样的。

当你看到糟糕的客服态度，要向他们指出说：“看，那人就是个很差的雇员。”然后说：“这些才是尽职尽责的”；如果你走进一间餐厅，受到了不好的服务，那就告诉孩子们不称心的服务是怎样的……其实我们随时随地都可以学到新东西，只是我们没有利用好那些机会。相反，给孩子请家庭教师就是一种浪费机会的形式。

想象一下，如果你把孩子所有在家里的垃圾和两年前就已经过时了的玩具都拿出来，然后说：“为什么我们不开始把这些东西在Craigslist和Kijiji上卖了呢？”，他们就会开始卖它们，并学到怎样分辨收到的e-mail订单的真假。

那些骗子会入侵你的账户、子账户或者其它的什么东西。但是，要教他们怎样定价、估价，怎样放货物的图片，教他们诸如此类的东西并从中赚钱。然后他们得到的钱，一半存到他们的房子钱罐，另一半存到他们的玩具钱罐，我的小孩就很喜欢这样的方式。

成就、坚韧、领导力、自我反省、互助、价值观……这些企业家特质你都可以在小孩子身上找到，然后你可以针对这些特质对他们加以培养。

我们其实并不了解他们的世界，不要认为他们是多动症，就让他们吃药，除非他们的情况真的是非常严重，就好像我们对待躁郁症、紧张和抑郁一样，除非情况严重到要进医院，我们一般也不会吃药。

躁郁症，俗名叫CEO综合症。因为Steve Jurvetson、Jim Clark和Jim Barksdale都得过这病，但是他们建立了Netscape，想象一下，如果他们吃了利他林（药物），我们就不会有那东西用，Al Gore就真的成了发明因特网的人了。

这些技巧和其它一些要培养的特质都是我们应该在课堂上教授的。我不是说不要让小孩成为律师，而是说怎样让企业家在人们心中，也能够得到像其他职业一样的评价标准，因为在这个领域有着大量的机会等待大家去挖掘。

企业家可以是任何人

最后我想说，我们其实生活在一个个人也可以做出巨大贡献的世界里，看到那些建设我们国家的人了吗？那些人里面有我们的父母、爷爷奶奶、叔叔阿姨们。他们可能是外来移民，来到这个陌生的地方，也许他们刚来的时候并没有那么富有，甚至身无分文。他们是思想家、实干家、发明家，直到他们自己给自己命名为——企业家。

他们改变了我们对“可能”的想法。尽管当时的生活可能是艰难的，但他们清楚地知道该怎样把我们所有人的生活变得更美好。现在，很难知道什么时候我们的看法会被眼前的困难所扰乱，但是，混乱中蕴含着成功的机会，并督促我们去发现解决事情的新方法。

那么，你会抓住什么样的机会，又为什么抓住这样的机会呢？

如果你是一个企业家，你知道所冒的危险不是回报。的确，回报是发动革新来改变人们的生活、创造就业机会、加速经济增长，并创造一个更美好的世界。我们四周都有企业家，他们经营小生意来支持我们的经济，设计工具来让我们和世界各地的朋友、亲人和同事保持联系。与此同时，他们正寻找新方法去解决社会上的老问题。

企业家可以是任何人！所以，抓住机会去创造一份你一直想要的工作，支持经济、改变现状，把你的事业建设到一个新的高度。

但是，最重要的是，要记得当你还是孩子的时候，当所有你想要的东西你都可以得到的那个时候，尝试去在心底埋下一粒种并呵护它成长，直到它长成大树，那个时候你就可以坚定地对自己说：“看吧，现在仍然是这样！我的选择没有错！”

成功企业家的10个特征