6 Ways To Prepare Your Kids To Be Profitable Entrepreneurs

 

As you probably know, Generation Z (born in the 2000s) are actively entering the labor market. What makes this generation unique? At the very first opportunity, they start their own business instead of choosing traditional part-time jobs. According to Sparks & Honey, 70% of teens are already in business, such as teaching piano lessons or selling products online. 42% of Gen Z population say they intend to work for themselves.

This trend is confirmed by statistics from other resources: according to the GEM 2020/2021 Global Report, in 2020, the involvement of the 18–24 age group in entrepreneurship (illustrated by TEA, or Total early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity) has increased in 17 countries.

All these trends prove the importance of having an entrepreneurial mindset. So, the earlier you cultivate this in your kids, the better. Entrepreneurial thinking is what URLYstart will teach them to perceive any life difficulties as just challenges that need to be overcome.

Let’s see how you can instill some basic features of entrepreneurship into your child.

1. Help your kid with goal setting

Goal setting is important to keep us motivated and headed in the right direction. So, to succeed in any future endeavor, learning how to set realistic goals is essential.

“People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.”

— Brian Tracy, a motivational public speaker, and self-development author.

As a parent, you can be a mentor for your kid(s). Together, you can create a plan for achieving a certain goal (say, passing a test or exam successfully or winning a competition), define the tasks to be completed, and agree on the incentives to accomplish the goals set. As to an incentive — this may already be built into the completion of the goal (winning a competition) but if not, then providing something of value (such as a new bike, online game, etc) can be an effective motivator.

Learning how to plan the activities, breaking down goals into smaller tasks, tracking the progress, and systematically performing actions aimed at achieving goals will definitely pay off. A really good tool to help you help your kids is that of learning how to set S.M.A.R.T. Goals.

2. Show the importance of managing scarce resources

Resource management is one of the important tasks of every entrepreneur. Certain resources are limited, and it’s especially challenging to manage them.

Nowadays, with the intensification of business communication and the acceleration of business processes, the ability to manage time is crucially important. So, start teaching your child time management techniques early.

Here are some techniques to help you achieve this:

● To find out what the child spends his day on, use the “Timing” technique: draw up a chart with the start and end times of each task and ask your child to fill it out for several days running;
● Every evening, make a plan for the next day with your child;
● Make your day schedule flexible and include productivity times for owls and early risers.
● Explain to your child the importance of completing tasks on time without being distracted by unimportant ones.

3. Teach your child financial literacy

The importance of financial literacy can hardly be overestimated. That is, you can earn thousands of dollars and be left with nothing if you do not know how to properly manage your money and budget.

So, what can you do as a parent to help your child develop financial literacy? Here are some rational habits to cultivate from childhood.

Financial vocabulary

Talking to your kids about earning money (gross and net income), saving, budgeting, interest rates, deductions, etc, will do them absolutely no good if they don’t understand what you are talking about. Playing board games with them, such as Monopoly, or teaching them about earning an allowance is often the first way your kids will begin to hear and learn about financial terms.

Earning an allowance especially is a golden opportunity for so many financial lessons. How completing an assigned task list can earn them ‘income’. How setting aside a portion of that money to buy something they want means ‘saving’. How making sure they have some money for toys, some for going to the movies, and some for snacks equals ‘budgeting’.

Reasonable consumption

You can teach your child to rationally approach the issue of acquiring new things. There are many life hacks on this topic, for example, postponing a purchase for a while or saving the money it will cost to buy something.

In addition, there are effective ways to control purchases: shopping lists (groceries, gifts, back-to-school, etc), knowing your needs vs your wants, using only cash. and so on. Teach your child to use these life hacks, and reasonable consumption will gradually become a habit.

Budget management

Every entrepreneur should have a realistic idea of ​​their income and expenses. This skill is best developed already in childhood.

Keeping a diary or using special apps on a smartphone or a computer can be of great help. The main thing here is to record all the financial transactions and analyze them to gain an understanding of where the money goes. This way kids will quickly learn. why, for example, when $100 has been earned there is not $100 to actually spend.

It is important to teach kids that they should always save a portion of their net earnings. At their age, introducing this lesson as a way to save for purchasing a bigger item, such as a bike, can help them understand the value of money and the consequence of choice. It will help get them into the habit of not seeing their entire income as money to be spent on immediate needs/wants.

Capital creation

What if your child wants to grow their business? Using the example of $70 above, let’s say $20 went into saving for a bike, leaving $50 of net earnings. The option for the child now is to roll this money back into their business or to spend it on their version of grabbing a morning coffee on the way to work. Choosing the former option means they are investing money into their business to further its growth, thereby creating the opportunity to earn more.

What matters here is not the material benefits kids can get, but the knowledge and understanding about how to make money, save money and increase the amount they have to support their business.

4. Let your kid be a problem solver

Entrepreneurs solve a variety of problems daily, and no leader can cope with their responsibilities without the ability to make decisions. So, to help children succeed in life, it is worth allowing them to figure things out on their own.

The main thing is not to provide excessive care, but to support and guide. To be sensitive and attentive. We want our kids to use their brains, to puzzle out the answers to their own questions. With how elastic their minds are, the solutions they come up with may even surprise you.

You can help your kids improve their problem-solving by asking leading questions. For example, if they should ask “why are leaves different colors on the trees in the fall” rather than giving them the answer, ask in return “why do you think they are different colors?”. If the discussion to follow yields no answers, continue the research together at home. At this point, you are on an information treasure hunt with your kids. You are working together to come up with an answer, you are using different mediums to find the answer, and as a unit, you will find the answer.

5. Explain the importance of communication

Due to the popularity of social networks and instant message platforms, many children find it difficult to communicate in person. However, a successful business is based on the ability of people to build personal relationships with their clients and this, in turn, means developing and honing good communication skills.

If your child faces some difficulties, sit down with them and discuss how they are feeling, what their fear is, and how to begin to overcome it. Using some of the techniques we have talked about in this article will help your child gain self-confidence when approaching aspects of life that are challenging. Encourage open communication, lead by example, and let your child learn their lessons from all situations.

6. Brainstorm ideas with kids

How to develop creativity in kids? Perhaps the question should be ‘how to not stifle creativity in kids?’.

Give your kids time for unstructured play, where they can let their imagination run free. Based on his own experience, Cameron Herold says rather than reading his kids a story, it’s better to ask them to make up their own. This technique will help them look at things from a different angle and generate non-standard creative ideas.

“Why don’t you sit down with kids and give them four items, a red shirt, a blue tie, a kangaroo and a laptop, and have them tell a story about those four things? My kids do that all the time. It teaches them to sell, teaches them creativity, teaches them to think on their feet. Do that kind of stuff, have fun with it.”

— Cameron Herold, Business Coach, Founder of the COO Alliance.

 

Concluding Thoughts

If we can help our children, all children, in fact, to embrace the idea of becoming an entrepreneur from an early age, we can foster in them skills that will support them throughout their lives. We can encourage them to make our world a better place in their own unique way.

Whether or not you have taught your kids the basics of an entrepreneurial mindset already, you can move on to gaining real-life experience with them. Here at www.URLYstart.com, my team and I are working on a unique program to help students experience the exciting world of entrepreneurship. We guide them along to building their own online business from scratch. By following our proven step-by-step strategies, your kids will have firsthand experience doing something that huge portions of today’s adults never have — becoming their own boss.

Being a part of their journey from the initial idea through to the first sale is a priceless opportunity for any parent.

We would like to invite you and your kids to be a part of our grassroots youth entrepreneurship program to be launched on Kickstarter at the end of August 2021. We simply can’t wait for our program to be released into the world and to help thousands of people around the globe to experience a newfound type of freedom!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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