Raising Entrepreneurs

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The life of an entrepreneur is an never-ending series of trying something new, succeeding or failing, taking that feedback and moving on. As they start their entrepreneurial careers, our kids will try things that don’t work out.

The school system does a pretty good job of getting kids to focus on getting things right. The only problem with that is that it can also make them afraid to try things in case they “fail”. Even in the modern school system, where in a lot of places kids aren’t given grades, or even an accurate picture of their performance against what is expected of their grade level, kids are still learning that it’s excruciatingly painful to get things wrong. Put your hand up in class, blurt out the wrong answer, and you become instant cannon-fodder. They learn to keep their heads down.

As parents, we need to combat this indoctrination. We need to be utterly thrilled when our kids try something and fail. The only reward kids get for trying over and over to master something is our support and encouragement. We praise them loudly as they fall over time and time again learning to walk. We applaud the horrible noises that come out of their violins and saxophones. In just the same way, we need to be upbeat and encouraging about each and every attempt at making a business work.

This may be quite challenging, since we, ourselves, went through that very same school system, and we, ourselves, may be wound up and anxious about money, about failure, about “losing”.

If you find it difficult to honestly applaud your child’s failures as learning experiences and steps along the path to success, you may need to put in some work undoing your own indoctrination. Get a book like Suze Orman’s The Nine Steps To Financial Freedom, buy or borrow some guided meditations, do a seminar, or sit down with a counsellor and talk it through. (Although in that case I’d say - choose the counsellor carefully! They might be in a worse state then you are. Lots of people in the helping professions have terrible money issues themselves.)

As Winston Churchill says “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

When your kids fail, help them work through their natural disappointment and “get back on the horse”. It worked when they were learning to walk, and it will work when they are learning to be financially independent, too.

A friend of mine recently asked a 13-year-old what he was going to do when he left school. He said “nothing”.

“What do you mean ‘nothing’?” she asked.

“I’m going on the dole (unemployment benefits)” he said. “When you work the government takes all your money in tax, so there’s no point.”

She was dumbfounded. And when she told me about it, so was I.

This kid has reached high school without even the most basic understanding about how the world works.

Somebody needs to let him know that when you’re in business, you get significant tax advantages, for a start. And that where he lives, the first few thousand dollars of income, even if you are an employee, are tax-free. And that giving up one’s right to do things of value for other people and be rewarded for it is so psychologically damaging that it is better to work for no money at all, just for appreciation, as a volunteer, than to give up on working!

My friend pointed the boy’s mother to the Cash Smart Kids website (www.cash-smart-kids.com). I hope she succeeds in educating this kid before he becomes yet another lost soul.

I’m still astounded. In this day and age, with all the resources we have at our fingertips, how are kids slipping through the system with such self-destructive beliefs?