Teach Your Child To Be An Entrepreneur
Teach Your Child To Be An Entrepreneur
- By: Frank Makrides
- Updated on January 20, 2021
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Working in the digital world can be rewarding for some and it can feel like a burden for others, especially when you take into account the amount of meaningless, dead-end jobs out there that your child can land themselves in early on in their career. Not only is a job like this financially challenging, but it can drain them mentally and physically to the point where they’ll have no motivation for the other things in their life. However, one of the best ways to ensure that they can earn money to give them the life they want by doing what they want is to teach your child to be an entrepreneur.
Teach Financial Knowledge Early
Link to resources to Teach Your Kids To Be Financially Responsible
One of the most important things your child isn’t going to learn in school is financial knowledge.
Things like understanding the importance of money and how to use it to your advantage get left up to us, the parents, to teach our kids.
Thankfully though, we’ve gone through the stresses that come with finances, so we are more than equipped with the knowledge to teach our children to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes we once did.
If you feel unprepared, there is plenty of information out there that you can use to clue yourself up on the topic so you can better educate your children before it’s too late.
Here is a link to the MyMoney.gov page for “Resources for Youth.” This page is packed full of fun websites, interactive finance games for your kids and so much more.
#1 Rated For Teaching Minors Financial Responsibility is Greenlight
Greenlight is basically a debit card your child can use that you, the parents, manage. It is connected to your bank account so you can transfer money easily (and automatically) send rewards for completing chores, and you are even notified every time your child uses the card. Best of all, there is an accompanying app that your child can use to see the chores you expect them to do, set goals, and they can even get a card with their selfie on the front.
Why is it great?
80% of parents who used this service reported feeling that their children learned more financial responsibility as a result of Greenlight. The app has a “spend, save, and give” section in the kid’s app. As your child earns money, they will be prompted to divide their money appropriately within these areas. As mentioned above, this teaches you to spend less than you earn and teaches healthy habits.
How do parental controls work?
Parents can set controls in numerous ways.
1. ATM controls – set maximum amounts children can withdraw from an ATM at any time.
2. Store specific controls – set maximum spending amounts at certain stores to reduce overspending.
3. Turn off or reactivate cards – if your child’s car is lost or stolen (or taken as a consequence), you can turn it off immediately from the app.
4. Set the interest rates (paid by you) to incentivize your children to save more.
Awesome extras!
• Round up savings option – there is a setting that sends all the extra change from purchases to the savings account.
• Referral bonuses – if you love Greenlight and refer it to other parents, you both get $10
• Direct deposit – teens with their own jobs can have their paychecks directly deposited to their Greenlight account.
• Chore reward – send your kids optional chores and if they complete them, the funds are directly transferred.
#1 Rated For Teaching Minors Financial Responsibility
With a lack of financial education for the most part in our society, Greenlight provides a platform that helps fill that void. Real-world lessons in financial responsibility Greenlight kids set their own goals, make tradeoff decisions and learn the power of saving. 89% of their parents said Greenlight has helped teach their children financial responsibility.
Help Them Start Enterprises Early
Just like showing your child (and displaying) how they should manage their finances, it’s also going to be best to get them to start their enterprises as soon as you possibly can, so they can fast track their way to success.
Now, don’t feel as though their first enterprise has to be the ideal life’s work, their dream job, or anything like that.
Think of it as a stepping stone to further success.
They could start their own car washing company or maybe you could both start on a business, perhaps walking dogs together for some extra cash.
Whatever it is, make sure it can get them used to working for themselves and solving problems so that in the future they’re going to be able to start the next Amazon or eBay.
Below is a YouTube video going over ways on how a teenager can start making money today.
Technology Skills
If you know anything about entrepreneurship at all, you’ll know the most successful people in the world all go down the tech start-up route, mainly because you can develop a simple app and ship it to millions of people in an instant.
The ROI for something like this is absolutely crazy, and really hard to mimic across other industries.
It would be smart to get your child up to scratch with things like programming and video editing to ensure that they have at least a basic understanding of tech so that they can further develop these skills if they wish to in the future.
A great way for them to learn new skills and have fun is by taking online courses. My number one recommended platform for this is Skillshare. They usually offer free trials and it is a great low-cost way to provide your kids access to knowledge instills in a vast array of industries. You might learn something new yourself, check out the link below to Skillshare. Just know there are age limits to access Skillshare and other online platforms and services so please check their terms and services in regards to this.
#1 Rated Starter Online Course Platform
Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative & curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more. Millions of members come together to find inspiration & take the next step in their creative journey. Create an online course & start earning passive income today!
Lead by Example
It’s all fine and well telling your child what to do with their future, getting them to start their own business so they can become the person they’re meant to be, but you’re going to want to also lead by example.
Now, of course, you’ll have your own working life to see too, but that doesn’t stop you from starting a business on the side, or even getting involved with your child’s car washing or dog walking business’ as we mentioned before.
Here is a link to the FDIC’s page on “Money Smart For Young People.” It breaks things down to help you teach your kids about financial literacy broken down by different age groups.
Have Them Problem Solve And Recognize Opportunities
Having success with a business is all about solving someone else’s problems.
Not only should you tell your child how important this is for business and its success but you should also encourage them to recognize this sort of thing every day.
Perhaps every time you walk past a business, you could ask your child what problem they’re solving and why the business could be successful or not.
This helps them understand and recognize opportunities but also to help them get into a more business-savvy mindset, in an interesting and enjoyable way.
Financial Goals
Setting financial goals is a great way to motivate yourself to do the work which is right in front of you so you can get the things you want in life, whether that’s a huge goal such as buying your own home or a smaller goal of getting the latest smartphones.
Although the latter isn’t the greatest use for your earned finances, it’s still rewarding to buy something for yourself that you’ve earned the money for…and your children should be taught this lesson too.
Whether you get them to start their business up so they can pay you rent or to help them save for the up and coming gaming console.
Financial goals are important in helping you stay motivated every day, so you should sit down with your child to see what might help inspire their future entrepreneur career.
Resilience
A key thing to understand about entrepreneurship, or literally about anything in life is the fact that problems can happen and not everything goes as planned.
There are to be plenty of failures awaiting your child in the future, but you should teach your child to welcome them.
Failing and getting back up is a key part of the whole process, and is actually very important for growing and becoming a highly successful entrepreneur.
Don't Pressure
With resilience in mind, you shouldn’t put too much pressure on them, especially at their young age.
You still have to remember that they are a child after all, and children just want to have fun and experience the world – so don’t force them to be learning and developing all hours of the day.
Teach them the importance of taking breaks and how relaxing can actually help them develop as taking a step back and looking at what they have been working on can be a great way for them to see if everything is going as planned or not.
Links for entrepreneurship, business startup information, free startup guide and business tools and resources
For more information on learning how to open your own business. Click the link to the usa.gov website.
Summary
If you want your child to be happy and have the opportunity to be in control of their own future, then teaching them how to become an entrepreneur should be within your best interests.
Although they don’t need to start their world-changing tech company overnight, they can begin the process of understanding the importance of their finances and how they can solve people’s problems to help benefit them and their bank account.
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Frank Makrides
Is a former financial technology industry executive, licensed realtor, real estate investor, an award-winning speaker, has been published, holds multiple patents and is passionate about all things personal finance and entrepreneurship. He is also a proud husband and father of 2 amazing children.
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