Watch Turning Lemonade Into Helicopters Online

OK, so this is all about turning problems to opportunities, looking at the world as opportunity-rich, basically making something from nothing. But you know what? Being an entrepreneur is much more than just that. That’s the tip of the iceberg, or might be the core of the iceberg, but there are lots of other things that you need to do to be successful entrepreneurs. And one of them is: You need to be able to make your own luck. Now this is interesting: When I gave this talk three years ago, this didn't say make your own luck. It said, "The harder I work, the luckier I get," because that's what my father taught me. My father taught me that the harder you work the luckier you get. I really, really absorbed this idea and I learned to work really, really hard. But as I have been thinking over the last three years, I've learned that there are many other things you can do to make yourself lucky. Hard work is only one lever that you have at your disposal, because you can make your life lucky. You need to be open-minded. You need to be optimistic. You need to look at the world through a special set of lenses. In fact, one of my colleagues from Chile, Carlos Vinola, always says to his students, "If you go into a room and you do not meet someone new, at the least you've missed out an opportunity of learning something or making a friend, and at the most, making a million dollars. In fact, it's really true. He says any room there's a million dollars waiting for you. You just have to find it. It's funny because a couple of weeks ago when we were hosting Steve Ballmer as a speaker, that made sense. He was in his dorm and down the hall was Bill Gates. There was certainly more than a million dollars down the hall, right? So I encourage you to look around at all the people who are sitting right here. Where are the opportunities? And this happens everywhere all the time. Let me tell you a funny little story that brings this to life. A few years ago when my kid Josh was...