Raising Entrepreneurs

From last week’s MyCentralJersey.com comes news of another great initiative.

Middle school and high school students will create their own businesses – working alongside successful New Jersey business owners — at the Young Entrepreneur’s Academy, an eight-week, Summer Saturday series, July 11-August 23 at the Academic Resource Center, which serves middle and high school students in Essex and Union Counties.

Open to boys and girls ages 11-17, YEA! uses the fundamentals of entrepreneurship to promote creativity, basic understanding and skills in money management, business concepts and financial literacy. It encourages students to frame their dreams, and current interests into future money making and career satisfying professional options. Using tactical problem-solving approaches, the program enhances confidence, creativity, self esteem and self reliance.

It’s so great to see these small programs popping up - of course, you can’t hope to get all the concepts across in just a handful of Saturdays, but exposure to the concepts is a great first step, and the kids will retain some of the material, each in their own way.

At least there are summer activity options beyond making candles and going to camp these days!

Image: riot jane

I was just reading an article today, and I thought I’d share it with you all, because it really makes an excellent point.

The writer moved into a new house, and found a “buried treasure”. I’ll let you read the details for yourself, but the point of the article is wondering what sort of mindset you would need to have to stash what was, for the time, a small fortune, in a corner of your house and keep no record of doing so.

Why do people have such fearful attitude towards money?

What’s worse, if such attitudes existed in our family in the past, how do we free ourselves of them in the here-and-now?

Because if we don’t, those inherited attitudes will poison any efforts we make to get ahead financially, or to teach our kids better habits with money. As Catherine writes,

While it is obvious that you have inherited some wonderful family traits like beautiful blue eyes, musical talent, sense of humor, passion for the arts or a grand work ethic, there is also a very good chance that you have also inherited a strong fear or even aversion to wealth and abundance.

It seems ludicrous to think that we might have fear of or aversion to wealth and abundance, when we think that we desire those things so passionately.

The messages, though, are quite subtle, yet pervasive.

For example, are you offended and annoyed by the blatant prejudice against wealthy people displayed by mainstream TV dramas?

Or hadn’t you noticed?

Choosing an example at random from my recent experience, my family watched an episode of Law And Order SVU yesterday. In this program, a young woman fell from a penthouse balcony. During the course of the program, the wealthy family who owned the penthouse were gradually exposed to have little or no family affection, an amoral willingness to manipulate the system to prevent their kids from suffering the consequences of breaking the rules, a sense of entitlement, and incestuous emotional dynamics. Oh, and the habit of procuring prostitutes for the boys in the family from age 13 or so.

This is not uncommon. In fact, if you run through in your mind the various protraits of wealthy families, both documentary and dramatised, can you find even ONE example of a hard-working, self-sacrificing, loving parent who does all the right things for their kids in terms of encouragement and emotional support - and is wealthy?

We are told, by our family programming and by our culture, that if we become wealthy we will be unloving parents.

I personally know several families who have millions in assets and/or seven figure incomes. For the most part, they are more caring, emotionally mature, and pleasant to associate with than your average office worker, school teacher, or nurse.

It bugs me when I see these lousy portrayals of wealthy families in the media. If they were consistently stereotyping black people or Mexicans in the same way, there would be uproar and protests in the street! I know the image doesn’t match the reality.

Sure, some wealthy people have bad attitudes, especially those who were born into wealth.

But on average, you will find more love, compassion, emotional maturity and spiritual development in a bunch of self-made millionaires than you will in just about any group of employees.

So, there you are - that’s one place to look for those hidden fears and aversions to being wealthy. Let’s see how many others you can come up with for yourselves …

Image: freeparking

Still waiting on word from the publishers …. nothing ever happens when promised! Sigh.

Meanwhile, I want to remind everyone of the great opportunities which are available to entrants in the competition - for example, having your business mentioned in a magazine which goes out to 6 million readers!

Whether you win or not, being in the competition has all sorts of ongoing benefits. For example, young Rhiannon’s video has been seen by news outlets all around the world, and is currently featured on Peter Economy’s blog.

I know there are lots of people out there intending to put entries in, but procrastinating.

Do it NOW!

The longer your video is online during the competition, the more exposure your business will get.

Following on from last week’s conversation about “helicopter parenting”, I was thinking about some of the other, unintended consequences of pouring so much energy and effort into making life easier for our kids.

Kids are far more savvy than most of us give them credit for. If their parents are running themselves into the ground, pouring all their energy and focus into providing every possible opportunity and advantage for their kids, the kids know that they are darned-well expected to return that investment in the form of material success - getting good marks, getting into the right college, getting a good job, even marrying the right kind of spouse.

The more effort the parents put into their kids at the cost of pursuing their own interests and dreams, the more pressure the kids feel to follow the path their parents have laid out for them, whether or not that path is a good fit for them.

Even when the path is a good fit, and the young person would have chosen it of their own volition, pressure to perform can leach the joy and self-expression out of what might otherwise have been a satisfying and fulfilling career.

Kids can feel this pressure in their business activities, as much as in their schooling.

If you are encouraging your kids to branch out into business, or they have started of their own accord and you are supporting them, it is vitally important that you, the parent, do not get focused on results and accomplishment.

The greatest value from running a business is not the income, or the accolades, or the value it adds to a resume. The greatest value from any business journey is the fabulous growth and learning opportunities which arise from the journey - and the confidence and self-reliance that result from making use of those learning opportunities.

Just as your child can benefit from a few years of ballet training, even if he or she doesn’t ever progress beyond the end-of-year concert at the local church hall, because of the habits of good posture, grace, and core strength it develops, your child can benefit from a few years of running a business, even if that business never makes more than nickels and dimes.

Focusing on the journey, and the lessons learned along the way, will free your child from the burden of parental expectations, and allow him or her to blossom according to their own design. It is this freedom which the children of helicopter parents do not have, and it is this freedom which we yearn for when we look back to the time when kids were left to be kids while parents got on with their lives.

Our kids can have the best of both worlds - interested, involved, protective parents and the freedom to make their own choices and learn from their own mistakes. As long as parents are aware of the downsides of anxious hovering, parents can curb their tendencies to overprotect and work on checking the training wheels and then letting go.

Photo: carf

Today we welcome back Amanda Van Der Gulik, Mompreneur and enthusiastic advocate of teaching kids good money habits from an early age.

“Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees!”

Does this saying sound familiar to you?

I bet you are probably one of many who heard this often growing up, right?

If not, you were lucky.

Let’s turn a new leaf and start raising our own children a little differently.

How about we change the way we answer our kids when they want something that requires money that we do not have or refuse to give.

For example:

Jonny wants a new pair of brand-name, high-endurance, running shoes.

“Dad, I really need a new pair of ‘brand-name’, running shoes. They are the coolest and all the kids have them. I want a pair too! If I don’t get a pair of them, then Shawn’s going to beat me at basket ball and you know, I’m 10 times better than him at basket ball!”

Here are two different replies:

Dad replies with,

“What do you think I’m made of?  Money doesn’t grow on trees you know!“

or

Dad replies with,

“Well son, if those shoes mean that much to you and you truly feel that Shawn will have an unfair advantage over you in basket ball, then what is your plan? How do you plan to buy those shoes?

Can you think of something that you can do, or make, or service, that can raise you the money so you can buy your own pair?

If you really want those shoes, son, then you’re going to have to come up with a good way to buy them. I believe you can do it.

Come back to me when you have a plan and we’ll see if we can work it out together.

Good luck kiddo.”

In Dad’s first reply, Dad shuts Jonny’s hopes down but ALSO teaches him, although unintentionally, that life is all about ’scarcity’. Jonny learns from these negative replies that money is hard to come by. That it is difficult to get what you want in life. That other people will always have more than you.

And the list goes on and on…

On the other hand in Dad’s second reply, you can see that Dad is turning on the creative juices in his son’s mind, “okay, so I want these new shoes,  how can I go about making the money to get them myself?”.

And as well as getting Jonny’s creative juices flowing on some easy ways for kids to make money, Dad is also teaching some other incredibly valuable life lessons.

Like: Abundance, Optimism, Faith in his son to find a way to fulfil his desire.

He is teaching him to be responsible for himself as well as encouraging him to come up with a plan and then to work together on making that plan come to action.

This alone will diminish any thoughts of theft as an option.

So how are you talking to your own kids when it comes to money?

See if you can pay attention to the next time your child asks you about money.

Listen to your own reply and then meditate on it for a minute or two.

How did that answer come across to your child?

Was your child turned off of money, or encouraged to take responsibility to come up with a creative way to attract their desired goods?

I hope you have enjoyed this thoughtful session, and I look forward to writing the next. If you have any specific topics that you would like me to talk about please just leave a message and I will do my best to answer your topics of interest where concerned with kids and money.

Cheers…Amanda van der Gulik…Excited Life Enthusiast!

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