There’s nothing greater in this world than raising a future entrepreneur. It’s our duty as parents to teach our children that they have the ability to control their own future and that they should create the path to be followed.
I recently wrote an article that got a lot of attention in YFS Entrepreneur Magazine titled: “How
to Teach Entrepreneurial Lessons to Your Children”. Children have amazing minds and need to know that self-employment is a very viable option for their future.
Our schooling doesn’t spend enough time teaching our children how to sell, public speaking, lessons on money or many others skills so critical in a successful future. This is our
responsibility as parents!
A favorite all-time Ted Talk of mine is by entrepreneur Cameron Herold. Cameron founded several successful businesses, one being 1-800-Got-Junk. In 2010, he gave one of the most viewed and inspirational Ted Talks in history titled: “Let’s raise kids to be entrepreneurs." This 19 minute talk is a "must listen" for all parents. We can teach our children what they’re not learning in school ourselves from home.
Entrepreneurial lessons can be found in almost every situation and I’ll share 3 recent ones we’ve shared with my future entrepreneurs: Mikey, Mandy and Katie.
Cra-Z-Loom
Cra-Z-Loom is like the hottest new fad and if you’re not familiar with it, you will be soon. Like the Pet Rock, Silly Bandz, the classic Parachute pants for those 80’s fans; Cra-Z-Loom is on fire. Here’s how this became multiple entrepreneurial lessons for our children.
We first walked through the entire process of how simple the idea is, but yet how an entrepreneur took action and made it come to fruition. How many people say they have a great idea but yet how few take action in making it a reality?
If I had a dime for every time I hear I had that idea, I’d be retired. Lesson taught: Take action. Imperfect action today is better than designing the perfect plan for tomorrow.
Next we taught our children what disposable products are and the increased opportunities they create. You see much like the popular Duck Tape phase my children went through last
year, they now are consistently purchasing bags and bags of these rubber bands.
Lesson they learned is that if you create a great product that is disposable and get it in the consumer’s hands, they’ll have to come back for more and more.
We went through tons of examples and finally my daughter said she’d sell tape and give away the tape dispenser. "Bam," she got it!
When we first got the product there weren’t a ton of how-to videos. After finding a few we saw some creativity that had a business lesson in it. You see this cute video has an affiliate link inside the description of the video. Each time an individual watches this video and clicks over to Toys R Us, if they make a purchase this little entrepreneur gets paid a percentage.
Lesson taught was that they could create several different How-To videos and also have affiliate links to a store for more rubber bands.
Immediately, our little entrepreneurs said that someone else was already doing it, which was the next great lesson: Competition means there’s demand and that many businesses can play in the same niche.
(here’s link for video: http://youtu.be/-OryEWkGFko)
Attending Meetups
Attending Meetups is a must. They’re such great networking events and you can build
such great relationships. They have so many networking options that anyone can find one that matches their desires. I attend several different ones and often bring my little future entrepreneurs with me. They’re great for teaching the value of networking and to get comfortable speaking.
This last Meetup my little star had to get up to introduce herself and though it was a challenge she later said it was easy.
My daughter met several great entrepreneurs, Jimi Olaghere of GeekCook and Anthony
Frasier of The Phat Startup, and really learned a ton. Jimi manufactures and sells a few different items and one was a backpack my daughter adored. Jimi explained how he manufactured this and marketed it.
Hearing how he did this my little one wouldn’t stop talking about how she wants to do the same thing with her name one day. Lesson learned was that there are so many different business opportunities and each of these people took action on their dreams.
My Kids Adventures
is a new online magazine designed to share adventures with busy parents that they can do with their kids. Daily a new idea is shared and they’re amazing.
We make this an entrepreneurial lesson by having our children read this daily and choose which ones they want to participate in. Creativity is essential in entrepreneurship and this really pushes their creativity daily. The ideas are amazing and they’re learning so many fun things. One of our favorites thus far has been: “How to Make an Adventure Movie With Your Kids”.
Entrepreneurial lessons can be taught daily to our children and we can help expand their futures to include being self-employed as an option. I encourage each parent to teach what lessons they can and definitely watch Cameron’s Ted Talk.
I hope it does for you what it did for me.
Wishing Entrepreneurial Successes to all families and future entrepreneurs!
Mike Kawula
www.selfemployedking.com