Teaching Your Kids to Become Entrepreneurs

Tomorrow's business leaders and startup founders will be today's young kids whose parents have raised them with an entrepreneurial spirit -- a skill that is increasingly important as young people flood the startup world and the freelance economy grows.

As a parent, you inspire entrepreneurship by fostering the emotional skills your child will need, such as comfort with risk, effective problem solving, and a positive attitude toward failure.

Teach : What business owner doesn’t wish

Similar entrepreneurial success for their children, whether they have hopes to pass on the family business one day or can see their child creating their own. Duane Spires, a national motivational speaker and the CEO of Extreme Youth Sports (EYS) in Tampa hosts after school programs and summer camps that teach children ages five and up how to become leaders, develop confidence, and learn how to create successful lives through sports training and entrepreneurial education. Here are his steps to teaching your children to become budding entrepreneurs.

Teach: Goal setting

Teaching your children how to set and accomplish their goals is a fun and exciting activity! Did you know that written goals are over 80 percent more likely to be achieved? Imagine the possibilities!

Ask your children to define and write down their top 10 goals and then choose the one goal that would make the biggest positive impact in their life. That goal should be their main focus. Next, write down the steps necessary to accomplish this exciting goal and encourage them to start taking action on those steps immediately.

Teach: how to recognize opportunities

Many people never meet their full potential because they fail to recognize opportunity. Teaching your children to seek out opportunities and take action on them, will directly contribute to their level of future success.

Praise your children for pointing out small problems or setbacks in their lives that cause them distress such as: soggy sandwiches at lunchtime or not being able to reach items on a high shelf. Brainstorm solutions on how to resolve their troubles. This will teach them to focus on creating positive solutions, instead of focusing on the problem itself. This habit will allow them to create profitable ideas in their future businesses.

Teach: Selling Skills

This one ability will last a lifetime because it is applied to all types of businesses and careers. From selling products and services to customers, to raising capital from investors, this skill is vital to the success of any business.

Encourage your children to start with small projects like selling their old toys, starting a lemonade stand, or selling handmade goods. Let them price their products, sell to customers, and facilitate the transactions when sales are made.

Teach: About Financial literacy

This is one area that we all could use help with. Teaching children about money at an early age will instill a financial foundation that schools often fail to teach.

Give your children the opportunity to earn their own money through chores, their own small business, and helping you in your business. Teach them about paying themselves first and then giving back. Educate them about investing and how their money could be used to create more money in the future. Help them set up a bank account and learn about how to budget their income.

Teach: Marketing skills

Teaching kids about marketing is a great way to prepare them to attract customers to their future business. As you know, without customers, even the greatest business will fail. This is a very beneficial skill to learn while young.

Motivate your children to start observing marketing materials like billboards, promotional banners in front of businesses, printed advertisements in magazines, and television/radio commercials. Ask them what catches their attention about the message and also quiz them on how to identify things like: the headline, subheadline, and “call to action.” Encourage them to create their own marketing materials for their business ideas.

Teach: Learn From Failure

In school we were all taught that failure is bad. In the entrepreneurial arena, failure can be a great thing if a positive lesson is learned. Napoleon Hill, author of Think And Grow Rich, states that, “Every failure carries with it a seed of equal or greater benefit.”

Allowing your children to fail will force them to create new ways to accomplish their goals and learn from their mistakes. This will lead to confident children who know how to persevere when times are tough.

This lesson is simple. When your children fail, don’t punish, but instead discuss what factors lead to the failure and brainstorm ways to prevent it from happening again in the future. Always seek to find the “learning lesson” in each adversity and encourage your children to NEVER give up.

Teach: Effective communication Skills

Most children today are terrible at face-to-face and telephone communication because of the popularity of social media and text messaging. Successful businesses require that people actually speak to one another. Teaching your children to communicate effectively will provide them with the winning edge in business and in their personal relationships.

First, lead by example. Teach your children to be polite and respectful. Most importantly, practice maintaining eye contact when speaking in person. When using the telephone, teach your children to speak slowly and clearly. A bonus activity would be to practice communicating to your children with e-mails. Do not allow them to abbreviate words and phrases, but instead, write grammatically correct sentences that flow together and convey a complete message.

Teach: Helping Others

Why start a business if it doesn’t support a greater cause? It is important for your children to develop the characteristic of helping others. This attribute will allow your children to stay humble during periods of great success and it will give them the insight that a successful business provides benefits to more than just it’s owner. People that contribute to the success of others live happy and content lives.

When brainstorming business ideas with your children, ask them to choose a charity or special cause to support with a portion of the income that they generate. Explain the concept that all great businesses contribute to improving the lives of other people.

Teach: Independent and successful Skills

Wouldn’t you love to have independent and successful children? Of course! The entrepreneurial mindset causes kids to depend on themselves for their own success, which leads to well-rounded adults and future leaders.

The next time your children ask for money to buy their favorite toy, this is your opportunity to ask them to brainstorm ways to create the money through entrepreneurship. This will inspire creative thinking and it will cause the entrepreneurial juices to flow.

Teach: Leadership Skills

Children are taught in school to go with the flow and follow the rules. They are programmed to learn and memorize facts instead of becoming independent thinkers. Entrepreneurship forces children to think “outside of the box,” create unique solutions, and lead others. This will make your children leaders at an early age, and it will result in more income, opportunities, and self-confidence, in their lives.

Give your children the opportunity to lead their friends in fun activities such as: Outdoor sports, book clubs, music practice, and small business projects. You can also encourage them to propose toasts and small speeches at family dinners and birthday parties to give them experience in public speaking!

Source : Media

Teach your kids the money-saving habit

From pocket money to shopping, here are ten ways to get your children off to a good start when it comes to saving cash.

You can get your kids off to an early start when it comes to the savings habit and it could be one of the most useful lessons you teach them.

Here are ten useful ways parents can help demonstrate the importance of making the most of your cash:

Monitor pocket money

One of the most common and best ways to teach your kids the art of saving from the toddler stage is to give them regular pocket money. But you must ensure they slot some of this aside in an old-fashioned piggy bank, or get them to design their own miniature 'bank' made from a small box. They can slot their pennies away and as it gets heavier this will be a prompt to put even more in there to build up the sum. 

Give them a goal

Adrian Lowcock from independent financial advisers Bestinvest told MSN Money that parents should "set a goal for the money".

"This might be something they want to do or buy that is especially important to them such as a particular toy," he said. You could even encourage them by matching their contributions to their piggy bank, whether in the form of pocket money or cash gifts received for birthday or Christmas.

"When they buy what they have saved up for they will appreciate it even more and you will have instilled into them the lesson that saving can lead to great rewards," Lowcock says.

Get them to help with the supermarket shop

Shopping is another great opportunity to introduce the concept of saving. You can start off by putting together a shopping list and, with your kids, consider the cost of the items. This way, you can let them know what tends to be more expensive (steak, for example!) and that own brand goods tend to be cheaper. Add any vouchers that will take money off your purchases, take along your loyalty card, and you're set for a practical outing that will provide a useful money lesson.

Tips on how to save on your shopping

Show them how to search for a bargain

Explaining the value of comparison shopping, whether online or in shops, is another useful tactic. Also encourage them to wait for sales. Essentially, this boils down to encouraging your kids to search for bargains. You could make them wait for the sales for something they really want to enforce the point, says Andrew Swallow from IFA Swallow Financial Planning.

"This was the best saving tip for my kids as while many a time they might've wanted the latest game or CD, we would make them wait for this - it was hell for us but it did teach them good money habits," he said

Show them how to save on household bills

Rising energy costs are seeing household bills soar. Stressing the importance of switching off lights, and saving energy in whatever manner possible is not only aiding the environment, but also saving money. Tell them to turn off the tap when brushing their teeth, for instance, and explain the benefits of energy-saving lightbulbs. But whether they are five or 15, the key is to teach them the value of money in terms that they will understand, stresses Jason Witcombe from IFA Evolve Financial Planning.

"This means pointing out areas where you feel they are wasting money. So, if they are leaving the tap or heating on, explain that what they have just wasted could have bought some Ben Ten stickers or a Peppa Pig magazine," he says.

Ways to save on your household bills

Let them know the importance of finishing your food

Leftover food is money down the drain. We all remember our mothers telling us to eat our greens, but not only is this beneficial to your health, it also take the pressure off your wallet later in life. So tell your kids to eat all their dinner despite their protests! This way you can also encourage them to cut out sweets and snacks, and stick to healthier alternatives as they won't be hungry between meals. 

Pay them for doing (some) household chores

Try to determine certain tasks around the house that your kids can do and that you will pay them for. This could be anything from washing the car to cleaning the bathroom. The point is not that they will have to be paid to do their bit around the house, but that money doesn't come for free and that they will have to work for it. 

Lead by example

Children acquire a lot of their parents' habits, which will influence the kind of lifestyle they lead when they grow up. Develop your own money-saving routines that your kids will notice. This might include, say, filling up your fridge with supermarket own brands, and cutting out life's luxuries yourself from time to time. 

This could also extend to taking your kids to open their own savings account with a high street bank or building society when you go yourself, adds Jason Butler from IFA Bloomsbury Financial Planning. "The physical act gives them ownership and makes the savings issue real," he said.

Use free local amenities

Take your kids to your local library before you purchase the expensive books they need for school. Regardless of availability, it's a great habit to check before you spend hundreds of pounds on books that they might only need for one term. And be sure to make use of any of other free facilities around your area that are useful and fun - from museums and parks to free days out.

Get creative - and make it fun!

Rather than buying expensive greeting cards, encourage your kids to cultivate their creative skills. This is a hobby they can take into adulthood, and will save them stacks of cash on birthday cards and even presents if they decide to stretch to painting or knitting (especially useful if it helps them make presents for loved ones).

You could also use games to impart money-saving skills. Play monopoly with your children, suggests Jason Butler: "It is the best way to teach them the importance of saving, investing and buying assets."