Learn Business Through Neighborhood Work

I made my first entrepreneurial money when I was seven. Around the neighborhood, I looked for small jobs I could do: shoveling snow, cutting grass, raking leaves, trimming bushes, painting fences, washing cars, building a compost bin, or walking a dog. I was looking for little projects where I could contribute and make a few dollars.

I shared that example while answering a university student who was already studying civil engineering and spending time on construction sites. He asked whether he should wait until after school to start a business. My response was that the work did not have to begin with a finished degree or a fully formed company. I pointed to small opportunities close at hand.

How the paper routes changed

When I was ten, I had a paper route. By eleven, I had four. I kept the papers delivered and asked for more. The newspaper normally did not allow one person to have more than one route, but I said it allowed me to take on additional ones because customer satisfaction was high. I did not complain or make excuses about delivery, and the papers arrived.

As the number of routes grew, I had other kids in the neighborhood deliver them. They kept 75 percent, and I kept 25 percent. That arrangement meant I could earn from routes without personally delivering each one. At eleven, I was already thinking about the work differently: not only how to do a route, but how to organize the work and keep the service reliable.

The small jobs and the paper routes were two different examples. One was finding useful tasks around the neighborhood. The other was building on a paper route by asking for more responsibility and involving other kids in the work. I offered both examples to a student who thought business would have to wait until university was finished.

Start with what you can do now

I told him to look for places where he could apply the knowledge he was learning, take on a small project, and create value. In the video, I described that as a way to begin before graduation, rather than setting the whole idea aside until later.

The point was not that a child’s paper route maps neatly onto a contracting company. It was that the student did not have to wait for the final version of his plan before he could begin learning through work. He already had classes and construction-site experience. Small projects could help him see where those skills might be useful, while he continued to develop them.

I have also discussed a different path in my article about earning a raise by thinking like an entrepreneur, where the question is how to find entrepreneurial opportunities inside a job.