How Parents Can Encourage Their Kids to Become Entrepreneurs

So you think your kid might be an entrepreneur? Great. Here's how you can encourage them to grow into that instead of forcing them through. Stick around. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to improve your health, your home, and your hustle. If you're new to the channel, go ahead and click that like button down there, the little bell next to it. You'll get notified when my next video goes live. Today though, what we are talking about is how you can encourage your kids as a parent to become entrepreneurs. Now, how can I speak to this? Well, I am a father of 7 wonderful kids. Of those 7 kids, I currently have 3 under the age of 13 that have jobs and have either created their own business or have decided to go off and find a way to get into the workforce. Now, one of them is a babysitter. People would say maybe that's an entrepreneur, maybe that's not, but the others have founded official businesses where they run different jobs, scrap jobs, uh, bakery business. So I am speaking from a place of experience. I am also trying to encourage you guys that think you might have a little entrepreneur in your home, some simple ways that you can go about encouraging that without getting too crazy about it. So stick around. I hope this helps. Let's go. Before we hit this though, guys, I want to make sure that I clarify one point. Not every person out there is an entrepreneur, and I've spoken about this before. I've said not everybody's cut out to be an entrepreneur. That's not the lifestyle for you, and if it isn't for you, going out there and pursuing it because it's a really popular thing right now is just gonna drag you down. The same is true for your kids. If you go, wow, look at all the entrepreneurs out there, that seems to be the millennial thing to do, go out, be an entrepreneur, start a business. If your child isn't an entrepreneur by mind, it's going to break them when you push them towards this. It's not going to be the thing that they want. Now, As parents who— as a parent who is an entrepreneur, I can tell you that my desire is for them to have that. But I see in some of my kids that they may be people that don't want that in their life. They may not be the person that wants to go out and start a business and do it that way. So I have to be open to that as a parent, and so should you. Make sure before you get into this entrepreneur mindset and you start using these tips that it's something that you see in your children, something that they would have a desire for. Maybe sit down and talk with them about the different kinds of jobs people have, the This is what an owner looks like. This is what an entrepreneur looks like. Maybe they're a small business owner instead of a serial entrepreneur. Maybe there's somebody that doesn't want to own a business. They don't— that doesn't interest them. They want to be an employee and do their best there. Know your children is obviously an important thing, especially when it comes to this though, guys. Don't push them to be an entrepreneur if they're not. That said, let's go to the next topic. Number 1, creativity and imagination are crucial if you're going to be an entrepreneur. Your ability to look at a problem and create a solution is essential. Now, there's got to be 1,000 different Team exercises, brain puzzles, problem solvers. Constantly be giving your kids these different questions. Give them decisions. Let them make decisions. Help them solve problems, but let them come up with the solutions themselves. If they get stuck, give them a nudge in the right direction. You want to eliminate— if you think your child might be an entrepreneur, you want to eliminate I don't know from their vocabulary. Vocabulary. And I've spoken to this before in past videos. Whether you are an adult or a child, if you are an entrepreneur especially, And in this generation, I don't know cannot be in your vocabulary. You must go find an answer. You must create a solution if an answer doesn't exist. That's what an entrepreneur does. So first thing that you can do to help your child in that process is imagination. Get them reading, get them problem solving, give them puzzles, let them make their own decisions in the day. If they come against something hard that they can't figure out, don't give them the answer. Encourage them to come up with the answer on their own. This is so vital and so crucial if you're looking to engage somebody as a young child to become an entrepreneur. They need that brain juice flowing. Now I'm gonna, I'm gonna give a shout out to a guy here, Jim Kwik. If you want to get your kids pumping, Kwik Learning is a powerful resource that is gonna help your kids not only just become more imaginative, it really helps them activate their brain. You're gonna see all kinds of benefits if you go check out Kwik Learning, give it a look. Give it a feel, see what's going on. It's going to be a huge boost for anybody who's a parent of a small child, but especially those parents of small children that may be entrepreneurs. Okay, so that down, spark the imagination. What's next? Okay, you got little problem solvers that are imaginative. They know what's going on. Now they're producing ideas. Oh dad, I could start a business like this. Oh, we could do this, mom. Oh, what about this? And that's great. Don't shoot that down. This step is a 2-parter, okay? First part, buy them one of these, okay? If they don't have a journal, get them one. And this journal is for those ideas. My wife has one, I have one, my eldest daughters have one. They write things down in these bad boys. When ideas pop up, that's great. Ideas are ideas, and they're crucial and vital to any entrepreneur. But the reality is this, you're gonna have so many ideas pumping out of this kid that if you try to encourage every single one, it's It's not gonna stick. So get them a journal first and foremost for them to be able to look and analyze and understand what their ideas look like. They can go back maybe and see ideas from the past they haven't tried that they might want to. But the reality is this, guys, not every idea is gonna be a winner. Now, the added caveat to this is once they've got their journal and they think they found an idea that is bang on, this is for them, this is where they wanna go, this is what they wanna do, great. Don't give in to, Dad, I've got the idea, this is what I want. Instead, turn to, okay kiddo, you've got a great idea, I love it, show me a business plan. Show me what this looks like. How are you gonna get started? What's it gonna cost? How are you gonna market it? What's, what's the return on it? Is it worth your time? Is it not worth your time? Are you gonna hire employees? Make them do this legwork. This is legwork that whether you're a child or a grown adult that starts into the entrepreneur world, this gets left behind. This is the, this is the hard grind part of the hustle. that has to be in place. At least have a clear picture of where you want to head. It doesn't have to be perfect, but the ability to sit down and create a budget, to have an understanding of how you're going to market— all of these are so crucial and so vital. Now, if as parents you're not sure how to go about doing this, just Google it, guys. I promise you there's a million resources out there, probably locally with your state, province, or municipality, that will help you to walk your child through how to create a sound business plan. Okay, make sure you get this step in place. These are not pick and choose from the litter. This is do these in order, guys. Make sure they're an entrepreneur. Get those brain juices flowing. Journal gets the ideas. Once they've got a great idea, business plan must flow. Okay, great. What's the last point? Okay guys, here we are. Last point. If you want to be a parent that encourages your child to be an entrepreneur, you have to let them fail. Okay, and this is something that even our governments can learn from. So many times we see a big business fail, and what happens? The government swoops in and saves the day. It's kind of crippling, guys. I got to be honest. Why? Because time after time after time, we're seeing these companies require more and more bailouts. And the sad part about that is the more often you're bailing out that company, the less you're giving them the opportunity to create a solution. Or if they were unable to create a solution, realize that that may have been a failing venture, and they need to move on to something more successful. In either case, you need to let them get started with the business plan they've created. And as they face trials and hurdles, don't solve those problems for them. Again, let them use their imagination. Let them problem solve. If they come up against hurdles that aren't going to work, they may need to cut their losses and go back to the journal, find a new idea, create a new business plan. But you should always push them. Are you sure? Try harder. What solutions have you come up with? Let them brainstorm. Let them create those problems and let them fail. Failing is so important, and I think it's something that we take away from children as a whole, but essentially children as entrepreneurs. If you take away failure from them in these early inception periods, that's an extremely bad habit you're gonna teach them all the way through their entrepreneurial career. You have to learn to fail. You have to. And then you have to learn to pick yourself up, or you have to learn to overcome that hurdle and succeed. It's so vital, guys. I fail constantly at things. I have all kinds of ideas about things to do. These journals are full. 1, 2, I've got a 3rd one kicking around here. I've got journals all over the place in my office filled with ideas. Some of them worked, some of them didn't. That's okay. You see this giant comic collection behind me? That was a successful side hustle. That was a great idea. Book reviews, I love that stuff. That was a great idea. This YouTube channel, great idea. My consulting business, great idea. But trust me, for every good idea, I've had 10 that are bombs, absolute stinkers. And your kids as entrepreneurs need to know that that's okay. They need to learn that that will happen, and they also need to learn to try to push to make it succeed and understand when to cut their losses. If you come in, swoop in, save the day, and let it be okay for them to quit, it's gonna be bad. If you don't encourage them to overcome it and keep pushing forward as an entrepreneur after a failed venture, that's gonna destroy them, guys. So make sure, guys, Are they an entrepreneur? Yes or no? If yes, great. Move forward to the next step. What's the next step? Take the time to make sure that you're encouraging their imagination. Once their imagination is flowing and they're getting the ideas, journal and business plan. Once that's locked down, they've got their journal and business plan in hand. Let them go out and if necessary fail. Don't take that away from them. It's so crucial and it's so important. All right, guys. That's it for today. I hope that is helpful for you parents out there. If you guys have more questions and you are parents of small children that want to be entrepreneurs, let me know down in the comments below. I will be happy to answer any comments you guys may have. Question of the day is, how would you encourage a young entrepreneur to succeed? Let me know down below. If you like this video or you know any parent out there that may be struggling with this concept, feel free to share it out with them. See what comes of it. Thank you so much for watching, guys. Have a great day and I will catch you tomorrow with another video. See you then.