Remember when you got your first taste of entrepreneurship? For me it was girl scout cookies. Back then I didn't even realize that I was a part of my own enterprise since I basically gave my mom the sales form to take to work. It wasn't until I was in high school that I truly started to understand what being an entrepreneur was and how you become enveloped in the competitiveness of being either the first or the best. I always went out wanting to be the best.
In high school I sold gourmet cheesecakes for my chorus class. I ended up becoming one of the top sellers and having the best sales pitch. I enjoyed it because I felt a sense of accomplishment. I experienced healthy competition. I got the opportunity to be responsible and learn basic accounting practices. I could choose who, how, and how often I wanted to target my prospects. Best of all I was able to run the show how I wanted to.
Nowadays kids are, pardon my cynicism, lazy. Everything is done for them. Creativity is lacking and the need to be independent is decreasing. How can we prevent today's youth from becoming tomorrow's robots? By encouraging them to not only think for themselves and be creative, but to also teach them how to be entrepreneurs. How often do you see a kid with a lemonade stand or talking to his or her neighbor about cutting grass?
Five reasons we should teach kids about entrepreneurship:
- We need them to learn responsibility in a fast paced, small business world. It's not enough to teach our growing kids about responsibility. When they get to a certain age, we need to teach them the next step of responsibility. Since I started my business, I've learn ALOT about responsibility and taking it for my actions. What better way to teach them than through experience?
- Helps their focused. So often doctors, teachers, and family members are misdiagnosing kids with ADD or ADHD stating that they lack focus. Well I honestly think it's because we don't give them enough to do. When I play my games on my iTouch, my attention span goes pretty quickly too. But when my focus is on things I need to take care of for my business or things I need to read to get ahead in business my focus is very narrow.
- Because let's be honest....school is not for everyone. If we continue to ignore the fact that some kids will never finish school and never go to college we are hurting ourselves as a culture. Some kids work better being hands on or learning from experience. Some kids want to be entrepreneurs but just don't have the attention span, time, or wherewithal to go to school. Experience is the best teacher.
- It has been said that kids are failing horribly when it comes to subjects such as reading and math because they just aren't engaging themselves enough. How do you teach a kids how to read when they don't feel like it and then teach him or her arithmetic? Have them read something that interests them, first of all, and then teach them arithmetic by learning how to count money and build from there. One of the ways I learned how to count was by money. In the business world, the one thing you have to understand if you want to make it is to understand how to count money...properly.From there you can build so many other things into it such as fractions, long division, and algebra.
- The most important reason we should teach kids about entrepreneurship....financial independence. As an entrepreneur, I feel free knowing that the money that is in my bank account or the check that has been made out to me was provided to me because of my hard work and skills. When we learn to work for ourselves, we gain a real sense of financial independence and freedom. We learn to be our own boss and make our own money. Financial independence and how we teach it to our kids will be what sets them apart from the hardships that we are facing now.
When we teach our kids to work for themselves and make a living off of it, every lesson we try to teach them comes full circle. From responsibility to focus to financial freedom the entrepreneurs that we breed today will become the innovators of tomorrow. We've all had a taste of entrepreneurship one way or another when we were younger, now it's time we give our children a real feast in entrepreneurship!
The Unemployed [but Empowered] Entrepreneur
