A Partnership Is Formed

have gone to a different school with kids from families more like mine. After grade six, these kids and I would go on to the public intermediate and high school. There was no private school for them or for me.

My dad finally put down the paper. I could tell he was thinking. “Well, Son…,” he began slowly. “If you want to be rich, you have

to learn to make money.”

“How do I make money?” I asked.

“Well, use your head, Son,” he said, smiling. Even then I knew that really meant, “That’s all I’m going to tell you,” or “I don’t know the answer, so don’t embarrass me.”

A Partnership Is Formed

The next morning, I told my best friend, Mike, what my dad had said. As best as I could tell, Mike and I were the only poor kids in this school. Mike was also in this school by a twist of fate. Someone had drawn a jog in the line for the school district, and we wound up in school with the rich kids. We weren’t really poor, but we felt as if we were because all the other boys had new baseball gloves, new bicycles, new everything.

Mom and Dad provided us with the basics, like food, shelter, and clothes. But that was about it. My dad used to say, “If you want something, work for it.” We wanted things, but there was not much work available for nine-year-old boys.

“So what do we do to make money?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But do you want to be my partner?” He agreed, and so on that Saturday morning, Mike became my

first business partner. We spent all morning coming up with ideas on how to make money. Occasionally we talked about all the “cool

guys” at Jimmy’s beach house having fun. It hurt a little, but that hurt was good, because it inspired us to keep thinking of a way to make money. Finally, that afternoon, a bolt of lightning struck. It was an idea Mike got from a science book he had read. Excitedly, we shook hands, and the partnership now had a business.