Spending years building a business for someone else (even a parent) while being undercompensated is a powerful training ground. It forces a level of conviction, humility, and delayed gratification that can lead to explosive growth once you start your own venture.

Forcing children to do difficult, undesirable manual labor from a young age builds foundational character and discipline that pays dividends in later life. While they will hate it at the time, this 'character building' instills a level of resilience that modern children often lack.

When Jeff Braverman proposed a new, labor-intensive packaging service, his father and uncle refused due to the effort required. To overcome their resistance, he not only showed them the math proving its profitability but also took on the manual labor himself. This demonstrated his commitment and proved the concept's viability through his own actions.

Founder Janice Omadeke credits her entrepreneurial drive to a childhood game her father created. At dinner, he would ask his children to identify a problem they saw that day and design a business to solve it, including target market and go-to-market strategy, effectively gamifying problem-solving.

When Jeff Braverman joined his family's struggling nut business, he didn't just ask for a job. He made it clear he needed full control to implement his vision, promising to deliver results. This ultimatum was crucial for overcoming the founders' inertia and enabling true transformation.

At age 10, Clayton chose more seeds to sell (reinvesting capital) over an instant toy car prize. This philosophy of deferring gratification for long-term growth defined his entrepreneurial journey, shaping a discipline of plowing profits back into his business.

A professor's advice—that the greatest risk is 'working for the man'—deeply influenced Jeff Braverman. Seeing unhappy, high-earning partners at Blackstone solidified this belief. It gave him conviction to leave a lucrative finance career for his family's struggling business, reframing the entrepreneurial leap not as a risk, but as risk avoidance.

Instead of demanding commitment to a single passion, Jenna Kutcher's mother created low-stakes opportunities for her to explore many (e.g., job-shadowing a vet at age nine). This fostered a "try it on, see if it works" mindset, which is crucial for building entrepreneurial resilience and curiosity.

The founder hired an experienced CEO and then rotated through leadership roles in different departments (brand, product, tech). This created a self-designed, high-stakes apprenticeship, allowing him to learn every facet of the business from experts before confidently retaking the CEO role.