The last few days I have been really enjoying Don Lancaster's "Incredible Secret Money Machine II". I found a link to an entire copy of it on his website. He never made the link obvious, prefering to spoonfeed people bits and pieces of it. Anyhow, I found the full book, downloaded it, and immediately put it in both my phones and my android tablet. I've been reading it, and it is like finding an old friend.
I've been asking myself for years, how did I get the entrepreneural gene? Eventhough I've been working for Adobe for almost 5 years, I still feel like a consultant/entrepreneur about it. I'm constantly suggesting to my friends, especially ones who are out of work, to start their own businesses.
My father worked for the railroad (B&O, then C&O, then CSX) his whole life, spending several years before retirement being laid off but still drawing pay, and has retired with a nice pension. My dad was always spending a lot of time reading, and I remember him working on these crossword like contests where the letters of the alphabet would be given numeric values, and you'd attempt to fill in a crossword like grid with the highest valued words you could find. You sent it in with a few, and if you were the highest winner, you got the chance to enter another round, with different letter values and a different grid, for yet another fee. If you got through enough levels, you'd win a car. I marvelled at the hundreds or maybe thousands of people they must have had sending in $5 or $10 fees for several rounds just to win a $20K car. He had waxed papers of all the words in the dictionary of various lengths that he would fill out for each contest, and then erase for the next contest. I think the last contest he ever did might have been the one where I programmed my first PC clone, a Sanyo MBC 550, in the summer of 1984, to solve the entire contest within a minute or two. I had my dad type in his word lists, which took way longer than the computer took to solve the puzzle. I think he may have realized the futility of it at that point. Or maybe he did more by hand after I went off to live on my own, don't really know.
Anyhow, point being, my dad was no mental midget who sat around watching sports and burping beer. (He did like to watch the late show and eat potato chips and drink soda, but that's a different issue). So I figure watching him always have some project he was writing notes about was a helpful influence, although I was too interested in my own electronics projects and computer experiments and learning about chemistry to pay much attention to what he was doing.
I don't know anyone in my family who had a work for themselves kind of business..... I know one distant relative who it was whispered among the family had gone bankrupt three times, but I had no idea why. My grandfather worked for Ford Motor Company most of his life, and I think retired from there, but finally went bankrupt after my grandmother's chemotherapy bills went through the roof.
In high school I had my own candy business selling candy to the other kids who liked to stay after school, either working afterschool, playing sports, or playing in the computer lab. Back in 1982-83, senior year of highschool, I made at least $600 profit from $0.35 candybars and loan sharking, and taught myself double entry accounting to keep track of it all. The little old ladies in the business office of the Catholic High School had heard about me giving loans to other students for their lunch and snack needs, and they used to lecture me about the evils of usury. I just responded that I was not a Catholic, and besides, I never charged interest on the IOU slips I printed with the plotter on my pocket computer. I called loans the 8th wonder of the world because no one was ever required to pay interest on their loans. Just encouraged to add a little extra donation on payback to ensure the availability of funds the next time they needed a loan.
However the little old ladies got to a few of my customers and talked them into "never a borrower be." For the students that wouldn't take a $0.15 loan towards a candybar (and voluntarily add a couple of nickels the next week when paying me back), I had to find some way to get their last $0.20. So I programmed a Radio Shack PC-1 with a lotto game they could play for a nickel a spin: Three "random" digits, if two of them matched, they won a free candybar, if all three matched, they won two free candybars. Of course I say "random" because you can be sure that the program knew how much it was taking in and paying off. 
If ever I go to a high school reunion, I should make sure I have a PC-1 with me with that program, and a bag of snickers and M&M's for everyone to win. And my little black book that I recorded everything in, I still have that book, somewhere. And maybe an authentic 2"x2" loan slip that still remains unpaid.....
After reading ISMM for the first time in at least 20 years, I think that is the book that gave me my jump start to entrepreneurism. I dont know how old I was when I first read it, probably was in my teens, I already knew of Don's excellent electronics articles. But it became a part of me in a way that I dont even realize. I must have nearly memorized that book. So much of it seems like I just read it yesterday. I knew some terms were from the book, like granfalloon, and I've explained the concept to many others while giving proper attribution, but so much of the rest just became a part of my DNA.
I suggested it to Wayne Green to make sure he includes it in his Secret Guide to Wealth.