When it comes to next generation and private sector problem solving? Teach your children well.
Entrepreneur New Years Leader
Be inspired by the business resources in our guide and help you meet your goals in 2021.
January 17, 2021 4 min read
The opinions expressed by the entrepreneur’s contributors are their own.
A positive outcome for 2020 is the opportunity to offer your child a path to life as an entrepreneur.
The latest generation has recently seen remote learning and collaboration in virtual environments. Previously, the workforce could delay adjustments based on markets and financial resources without having a serious impact. Now many are forced to adapt quickly.
Taking the opportunity to show our youth the pros and cons of entrepreneurship could lead to great success in later years. This will be a generation that has understood social, political and economic situations on a global scale, while at the same time having its own inner aspirations to make a difference.
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Maintain your inner entrepreneur
As the CEO and parent, I try to pass on the qualities that enable my children to consider a similar career, while also giving them room to go their own way. There have been mixed reviews from schools along with theories suggesting that you cannot teach entrepreneurship. Unsurprisingly, a study conducted by OnePoll on behalf of Kodable found that 77% of parents supplemented curricula with home lessons to ensure their offspring are prepared for any real-world problems. In fact, over 80% of the families surveyed believe that education must better adapt to the jobs of the future.
Personally, we try to encourage our children’s creative thinking and show them how to look at different situations differently. Adapting to change while learning about failure shape the qualities of an effective entrepreneur. Harnessing the events of 2020 to point out alternative paths to success can create a desire to one day create an entirely new industry.
Related: 9 Traits Dominant Entrepreneurs Possess
Many gifted youth programs measure intangibles that many successful entrepreneurs use on a daily basis. Even if your children don’t have these traits, there are still plenty of opportunities to learn these lessons at home during educational moments and to examine why some businesses succeeded and others failed in 2020.
Prioritize the less chosen path
Exposing our youth to entrepreneurship can bring many benefits. When they can exercise their skills and develop traits that many small business owners possess, they will become better people and stimulate interest in areas they might otherwise not have considered. Curiosity, quick learning, the ability to seek independence, and a sense of self-confidence are not qualities reserved for the gifted.
When you learn something new, even if it doesn’t ultimately suit your offspring, you will know better how to interact with others. If they become executives buying from them or customers supporting them, they would have learned a valuable lesson about what it takes to keep, grow, and build a business.
Related: Common characteristics of gifted people
There are schools and organizations like The Lemonade Project that encourage this mindset in children. Showing them how to adapt to changes in the classroom, in the workforce, and in the world in general, can lead to skills that support entrepreneurship. Deploy STEM games, puzzles, or items around the house to create a problem for them to solve.
Range is about testing many areas to guide people towards what will ultimately enable them to be at the very top of their skills. When exposed to all sorts of online options that determine what it means to own a business, they will only get better at what they want to do in life. If you learn what entrepreneurship is all about, you may one day be the parent of a qualified professional who really knows what it takes to be successful.