How I started my first business...at 6 years old

"With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too.” 

– Yiddish Proverb

One day, I asked my mom and dad for ten cents to go to the movies with my friends.  Dad told me that if I wanted money, I had to earn it.   Well, considering it was 1943, and there was a war going on, there weren’t many job opportunities available to a six year-old kid. 

Even then, I must have realized on some level that because of my parents’ circumstances, there was only so much that they could do for me.  It seemed perfectly natural for me to take matters into my own hands and start my first business, although at the time I didn’t realize it was a business.  I just thought it was a way to make a few quick pennies to pay for a ticket to the movies. 

In retrospect, I realize that’s exactly what it was – providing a service to others which I could do better, or make it easier for them than if they were to do it on their own.  It also taught me that if you need anything, you have to work for it yourself. 

I think this was the beginning of my lifelong credo for business and life:  the Most Important Question in Life: “How Can I Help You?,” which is basically finding out what people need and helping them get it.

 
So, with the little I had available to me, I looked around my neighborhood for ideas.  I decided to take advantage of the resources that others left (or dropped) behind. I would go to all of the backyards of the crowded, six-story apartment buildings in my neighborhood, with my father’s size 12 shoe box in tow, and pick up all the fallen clothespins.  I took them home, washed them in the bathtub and dried them with a towel. Then I took my mother’s red nail polish and put a small spot on the top of each so people would know that they were mine.  Now that’s branding! 

I proceeded to go around knocking on doors and selling them three for a penny.  No one owned a washing machine or dryer in those days; women used a washboard in the kitchen sink to do laundry.  They hung the clothes on clotheslines from the window to poles in the back of the buildings.  The ladies appreciated my service, and before I knew it, they were knocking on my door placing their orders.  They would give my grandmother money wrapped in pieces of newspaper and write down how many clothespins they needed and their address and apartment number for delivery.

From then on, I always had money in my pocket for my friends and I to enjoy the movies, candy, Cokes, whatever.