Raising Entrepreneurial Kids

8.2 MIN READ

Successful entrepreneurs are creative, have excellent communication skills and practical mathematics, are empathetic, and exhibit good problem-solving skills. The future requires leaders who can spot the right thing at the right time and have the confidence to act.

Business leaders of the next generation are young kids today, especially those with parents instilling in them the value of an entrepreneurial attitude. Raising entrepreneurial kids also equips them with the skills, the attitude, and the know-how to spot the right opportunities.

Such children are excited about life, prepared, and know how to handle whatever life throws them. Further, successful kids receive constant exposure to ideas revolving around entrepreneurship.

Raising your child with an awareness of entrepreneurship improves their life. Even if they don’t start their own business now, their entrepreneurship skills will steer them toward the right opportunities.

However, how can you help your kids get started on the entrepreneurial journey? We have the answer.

What Does Entrepreneurial Really Mean?

Dictionary.com describes an entrepreneur as an individual organizing and managing an enterprise. However, the definition leaves some gray areas that require interpretation. So a deeper exploration is critical.

Entrepreneurial is the act of starting a new business and handling most risks that come with the venture while gaining the most rewards. Setting up a business is entrepreneurship, while an entrepreneur is a source of a new service, good, idea, business, or procedure.

The entrepreneurial spirit plays a vital role in the economy, using the initiative and skills required to anticipate market needs for new ideas.

Entrepreneurial Traits

Entrepreneurial traits are the thought patterns, abilities, and characteristics we associate with successful entrepreneurs. While some kids are born with these traits, others develop them. Here are common traits of kid entrepreneurs.

Resourcefulness & Resilience

Unfortunately, an image of kids stuck in a boardroom in suits should not be your idea of a fun and playful activity. When you raise entrepreneurial kids, it means they can pursue a career path they prefer. While the economy direly needs doers, thinkers, and leaders, resourcefulness and resilience are necessary in all these roles.

Instead, consider finding fun activities kids can apply while on outings, at school, and at home. Applicable activities teach children to dream big and that the world offers endless opportunities. Plus, cultivate in them a mindset that creates the path to achieving success.

Other ways to encourage resourcefulness and resilience in entrepreneurial kids include:

Becoming their number-one fan and helping them improve their confidence
Looking for creative ways to experiment with multiple entrepreneurial ventures such as listing items on eBay, doing paying chores for neighbors, and playing selling games

Overall, make playing business fun and increase the chances your kids will carry on the momentum in adulthood.

Purpose

Entrepreneurial children love adding value and becoming decent individuals. The best entrepreneurs have virtuous characteristics that help them start responsible and valuable ventures. Focusing only on money and profiteering beats the purpose of a successful entrepreneur making a difference and serving their customers.

Related Article | Teaching Kids About Money: 10 Ways

Communication Skills

An entrepreneur’s communication skills dictate their success. Distinct communication skills to encourage when raising entrepreneurial kids include:

Conversing
Mastering body language
How to write in a direct and concise manner
Presenting in different formats
Negotiating
Mediating when your kid has to step up and resolve a conflict
Debating to start a healthy discussion of alternative options in a respectful, productive setting
Leading by instilling passion, trust, and confidence
Active listening helps your child debate, negotiate, converse, mediate, and lead

Creativity

Creativity is a critical trait for a kid entrepreneur. The skill helps your child devise products and processes. Creativity also helps your kid in several areas, including:

Optimal utilization of their potential
Generation of innovative and novel ways of carrying out business
Developing methods of designing an existing service or product to optimize business activities
Creating new perspectives on operations and financial challenges
Creating new niches by analyzing the current business approach and coming up with novel aspects

Supporting Your Kid’s Entrepreneurial Ventures

The best way to nurture the fiery entrepreneurship spirit in your kid is by supporting them in all their ventures. Here are five ways to support entrepreneurial ventures.

Cultivate a Business Mindset

An entrepreneurial mindset involves inward and outward assessment.

Looking inward involves encouraging the attitude and mindset your kid requires viewing their abilities, framing their successes and failures, and creating new ways to approach new situations.

Looking outward helps your child believe they can impact the business world or create a valuable item. The outward assessment also helps how your kid views the work involved and its place in their future.

So, help your entrepreneurial kid develop a mindset that guides them towards their big futures. It also means you help them view the best in situations and others while having a positive attitude toward change and disruption.

Decide on and Create a Business Plan

Help your child start a business they are passionate about to ensure they enjoy the experience and it doesn’t feel like work. To help them, have your kid create a list of their favorite things to do. For example, suggest a pet-sitting business for a kid who loves animals, or they can even design a mobile app if they are into phone technology.

Do not discount the business ideas as useless or “will never work.” Instead, consider the business a learning experience, so the result is not critical.

Next, guide your kid into thinking about all the different parts required to transform ideas into reality. The process involves helping the child put down the ideas and plans by writing a business plan. The document should have business goals such as financial and anything else. Plus, it’ll be fun revisiting the business plan after a few months.

Develop the Appropriate Skills

Most kids don’t comprehend money and how it works. So help yours to understand how money relates to the real world. For example, explain that one must work to earn money to afford a house, buy food, pay utilities, and purchase videos and toys.

An entrepreneur is in the business of solving problems and deciding daily. So make sure your kid is actively involved in making business decisions on their journey. For example, a simple one-page business plan will help your kid plan and decide how they run the business, find clients, study competitors, and figure out how to differentiate the service or product.

Search for Real-Life Opportunities

The best way to learn is by doing. Your kids learn more when they experiment, tinker, and make mistakes. Why not provide them with real-life entrepreneurial scenarios and business opportunities, so they get a taste of how to achieve success.

Don’t shield your kids from the outside world. Instead, create mechanisms to protect them as they explore real-life entrepreneurial opportunities. Guide your kids on talking with potential clients within the neighborhood, on social media platforms, or even with a marketing agency about a creative business opportunity.

Partner With Mentors

Entrepreneurs running a business at its entry-stage benefit from the help of a mentor or coach. The coaching concept revolves around the idea that an answer is available as long as you are looking and resourceful about the process. Partnering your kid with entrepreneurial role models will help them find these resourceful ideas and learn more about entrepreneurship.

Encourage your young one to connect, meet, and learn from entrepreneurs creating jobs, inventing products, or managing successful ventures. These real-world entrepreneurs will create a lasting image, and your child will believe that everything’s possible for them too.

Kid Entrepreneurial Organizations

There is a growing movement toward encouraging and teaching children to become entrepreneurs across the country. Some entrepreneurship programs are in core school lessons, while others are extracurricular activities. Here are a few opportunities available to your child:

Student Inc—A K-12 public-school entrepreneurship program offering a $2,500 Shark Tank-style grant to kids on completing a junior-year incubator class.
INCubatoredu—Another program that mentors and trains juniors on launching startups.
Acton Children’s Business Fair—A one-day annual event where kids between five and 15 years can sell services and goods they create.
Lemonade Day—Children in a specific city set up lemonade stands after undergoing a 14-step tutorial program on creating business plans, planning costs, and more business activities.
Whatever It Takes (WIT)—The program involves extracurricular classes running for nine months for high-school students in select cities. Students also earn transferrable college credits.
Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE)—A program in low-income areas worldwide that offers entrepreneurship classes to kids in school, camps, and summer programs.
Junior Achievement—A century-old extracurricular program for kids to understand entrepreneurship concepts and financial literacy and prepare them for the workforce.

FAQs

These are common questions we come across.

What Is the Most Profitable Business for Kids?

Some of the most profitable businesses for kids right now include selling lemonade, becoming an actor for kids with acting talent, babysitting, and writing Amazon toy reviews. If your child is good at a certain subject, they can also start an academic tutoring business.

Does Entrepreneurship Run in Families?

For years, we have known kids from entrepreneurial parents are more likely to become entrepreneurs. However, research shows that upbringing, not genetics, has the biggest impact on kids starting businesses.

The Bottom Line

Are you interested in raising entrepreneurial kids? A critical point to remember is that the process should be fun while instilling entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurship is a labor of love involving mistakes, learning from them, and starting over. Emphasize these messages while guiding your child through the entrepreneurship journey.

GET STARTED