Raising kids to be entrepreneurs

Idea

Business mentor, business coach and CEO coach Cameron Herold held a TED Talk about raising kids to be entrepreneurs.

In the first part of the talk he speaks about his entrepreneurship traits, which he developed early in his childhood.

• Find opportunities to make money
• Buy low and sell high
• Negotiate prices
• Offer alternatives of the same product and approach the clients with a question: "Which color do you like?" rather than "Would you like to buy this?"
• Employ others

If you observe several of those traits in your children, he/she might be potential entrepreneur. Cameron gives advice in the second part of his talk how to nurture entrepreneurship skills of your kid(s):

• Allowances by nature teach kids about having a job. Allowances teach the kids to expect a regular paycheck. Teach the kids to walk around the house and yard to look for things to get done. Then negotiate about what they will get paid to do the chores.
• The kids have two piggy bank accounts - a house account and a toy account. All the earned money money is divided in two parts. 50% goes to the toy account and the kids can spend all that money. The other 50% goes to the house account. Once in half year, the money is deposited to a bank and eventually ends up on a brokerage account.
• Do not read the bedtime stories every night. Read the stories four nights a week and have them telling stories three times a week. Give them random objects and ask them to tell a story about it. This teaches them to think on their feet.
• Get kids to stand in front on groups and talk.
• Show kids how bad customers and bad employees look like. Point out bad customer service too. Compliment good employees and service.
• Teach kids to sell toys they do not play with anymore. Sell them on Internet. It will teach them to negotiate the price and recognize the scammers. Then split the profit as described above.
• Nurture these entrepreneurial traits in kids: attainment, tenacity, leadership, sales, introspection, networking, handling failure, boot strapping and customer service.
• Do not medicate kids if diagnosed with attention disorder desease or bipolar disorder desease (nicknamed CEO desease) unless the symptoms are very bad
• Additional skills to be thought in classrooms: problem solving, to lead others, to want make money, public speaking, ask questions, learn from mistakes, how to sell, to never give up, be creative, how to save money, to ask for help and to see solutions

References

Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs

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