From the good old-fashioned lemonade stand to multi-location business enterprises, children have proven over the years to be a source of incredible innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. Wouldn’t it be great if you could help your kids to become entrepreneurs?
Being inclined to serve your community by providing valuable services is a deeply positive and rewarding trait. When introduced at a young age, this behaviour and general approach to life will put your kid in good stead for many years to come.
Tips to Support Your Child’s Entrepreneurial Spirit
If you’re looking to inspire entrepreneurial thinking in your children’s lives, or have noticed an existing spark for enterprise in your kids, our handy tips below can help you make sure your kids are in the best position possible to achieve their goals.
1. Encouraging Positive Habits
Encouraging your children to develop positive habits and behaviours is key to helping them become successful entrepreneurs. Making sure your children understand the value of hard work and interacting well with others is essential for their long-term wellbeing, and will aid them significantly in finding success wherever they seek it.
Teaching your kids to develop positive habits includes a few key lessons:
Putting in Effort for the Sake of an External Reward
Whether it’s treats for extended good behaviour or an official reward system for doing chores and homework well and on time, it’s important to show your kids that positive habits can directly lead to positive rewards.
Putting in Effort for the sake of an Internal Reward
Particularly as your children grow up, they will need to understand that hard work often pays off internally, through a sense of achievement and fulfilment that can’t be bought or sold. While this will come from your child themselves, talking to them about this type of success and showing it to them through your own actions can help them comprehend this concept.
Being Resilient
If you want your kids to succeed in life by any measure, it’s essential that you explain to them and show them that being able to get back up after a setback is far more valuable than striving for constant perfection.
The Value of Delayed Gratification
Show your kids that effort comes first, followed by rewards. Making sure they understand this can help them avoid falling into the trap of forgetfulness and procrastination that many aspiring entrepreneurs spend years trying to leave.
Being Willing to Learn and Ask Questions
Always encourage learning in your children. Whether it’s asking them about what they’re learning in school, reading to them, taking them to libraries and museums, or showing them educational media in general. Getting your kids to ask questions and learn more about the world around them will help them lead a more connected, interesting and successful life as they grow.
Asking for Help
Let your children know that it’s okay to ask for help, and important to seek assistance where they need it. Teach them to figure out who to ask for help and how, making sure they can be polite and clear when they need instruction.
Being Kind
For your children to find fulfilment and receive rewards for their efforts, they’re going to need to know how to work well with others, and the best way to do this is simply to be kind. Teaching your child to find the balance between asserting their own needs, while genuinely caring and showing that they care about others, will help to ensure that they become both a compassionate and a capable person.
2. Finding and Supporting Passions
The best way to develop a lasting entrepreneurial spirit is to connect your goals to your strongest passions. So it’s important to make sure your kids have hobbies or activities in life that they are truly passionate about, and have the space and opportunity to find something they care deeply about.
Maybe your child will find they love music: hearing it, writing it, making it, performing it, or all of the above.
Perhaps your child will discover a specific area of societal improvement that speaks to them on a personal level: protecting the environment, providing food and clothing to those in need, healing the sick, taking care of animals, helping marginalised communities.
Your kids may learn they adore painting or dancing or coding or swimming, or any number of other activities, but they will only do this if they have the chance to discover these things.
As a parent, you want the best for your children, but it’s important to understand that you don’t need to have them taking on new challenges at every second of every day. Why not talk to them, and watch the things they do and care about when they have the choice of how to spend their free time?
Find out what your kids feel strongly about, and support their passions. Show that you’re interested in the things that inspire them. Let them know you’re willing to put your time, resources, effort and energy towards helping them achieve the goals their passions create.
3. Helping Develop Skills
As you teach your children to form good habits and find their passions, remember that it’s important to help your kids develop skills: both general skills to help them throughout life, and specific skills that will help your kids achieve their own goals.
Helping your kids keep on track with their reading, writing and arithmetic skills as they grow up will set them up well for taking on the world of entrepreneurship. So will making sure your kids are as strong, fit, and healthy as they can be.
To help your kids achieve their goals, you need to understand the passions and convictions at the root of those goals, and work on forming all the important skills related to what your child cares about.
Maybe it means taking your child to regular lessons or workshops, teaching them your own skills one-on-one, or simply making sure they’re developing positive social skills as they interact with the world around them.
Conclusion
Whatever your child’s interests, hobbies or passions, he or she has the making to be the next child entrepreneur and make a significant change in the world. By supporting, listening to and encouraging your children, you can help them to learn what they need to become the entrepreneurial person they want to be.