Last week we left off with: "My life went on as such but by fourth grade the bug to start selling and making money on my own was crunching on my skin until I had to do something about it. "

----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------

And now continuing:

We had since moved away from the house that had the future mafia members as neighbors.

I saw my first opportunity when one of the children in the neighborhood broke their toy truck. I was quite handy at fixing things and most of these children had way too much money given them from their parents in my opinion. So I saw a chance to do a great service for us all. They could get their toys fixed and have an avenue to get rid of their excess funds and I would generate a honest income.

So I offered to fix the truck for 5 cents and the transaction went off without a hoot. I even washed and wrapped the truck before giving it back.

This resulted in a flood of toys being brought to me to fix and soon my bedroom had a pile of fixed, washed, and wrapped toys waiting for payment.

To me it looked like a great pile of money. But there was unrest in the business world. Some of the children could not come up with their nickels to pay me for fixing their toys and I refused to give it back to them.

I then started tacking on a storage fee of 1 cent per week. An uproar ensued.

My brother was a sympathyser for those of the unrest and started nagging me to return the toys to their owners. I told him that I was owed money and they would not receive it until I was paid.

And then it came. The great crash of the summer of 1968. It was caused by my brother. My little brother. Only 5 years old.

He went to my room took all the toys and redistributed them to their owners. I was financially and emotionally devastated. So I quit the toy repair business since I could not afford security to guard the merchandise.

Having never forgotten those pennies exchanging hands with our previous neighbor boys for something so simple as Koolaid I decided to try the beverage industry one more time, this time with my mother's permission.

However I was about to learn that there is more than one kind of business adversity than the two by four board over your Koolaid stand. And from this I learned a business trick I never forgot.

My mother let me have enough sugar and Koolaid for one pitcher. I built my own table from scrap wood and set up out front of the house. Business was good and I sold enough Koolaid to go to the store, buy a 5 pound bag of sugar a couple packs of Koolaid and come back home. I gave my mother back her original investment, a fast return.

Sales went great all week. And then it happened.

A life altering event.

You can read all the chapters of "How To Be an Entrepreneur" by going to http://salessuccessmagazin e.com. These stories are copyrighted by Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. 1995 thru 2005. Any person using this article must publish it without modification and include authors bio and links.