Blog

Entrepreneurship skills to teach kids by implementing everyday habits

Share on social channels

Why Entrepreneurial skills are important to teach at young age?

As technology becomes a huge part of our everyday lives, there’s a greater need for people who can think outside the box and understand new technologies, such as
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. It isn’t about forcing your child into a career that is popular or some people might say “trendy”, it is about giving them the opportunity to see and understand the World around them. How they can live what they can become.

  • It prepares them for the future job market
  • Teaches them important life skills
  • Helps them learn difficult subject matter
  • They’ll gain a better understanding of how to make money

Entrepreneurial skills and entrepreneurship as a profession itself just aren’t being taught in schools yet, but to know these skills at a certain level, is required to be the best at any career. To mention some of them here, we are talking about:

  • Critical thinking
  • Financial management
  • Problem solving
  • Resilience
  • Vulnerability
  • Commitment
  • Leadership
  • How to sell

The importance of modeling these skills to children

One of the most critical parts of being a parent is passing on essential skills and knowledge to your children. One of the best ways for kids to learn about entrepreneurship is through hands-on activities where they are taking part in a live setting. Kids learn best when they are involved—whether they are teaching something, telling a story, or are actively engaged in a project, they can have the chance to learn and remember these crucial lessons.

Parents have many opportunities to model entrepreneur skills in everyday events. Trips to the bank or store, making a purchase, and demonstrating negotiating skills are small ways to encourage entrepreneurship.

What kind of habits can you implement into their everyday life?

“Allowances teach kids the wrong habits…
Allowances, by nature, are teaching kids about a job, but an entrepreneur doesn’t expect a regular paycheck.
Allowance is breeding kids at a young age to expect a regular paycheck. That’s wrong if you want to raise entrepreneurs.”

– Cameron Herold

We have found this TED talk with Cameron Herold from 2010, which is quite interesting. Let us highlight some parts of this talk, when he is talking about entrepreneurial habits he is implemented to his everyday life and can be easy to do for anyone.

He says that instead of teaching our children allowances, we can teach them these habits:

  • Ask them to walk around the house and the yard and looking for things that needs to get done.
    They can come to us to tell what it is, or we can just tell, that:
    “Here’s what I need done.”
    and then we negotiate what they’ll get paid for.

This way they don’t have a regular check, however they have opportunities to find more stuff to do and get paid for and they’ll learn the skill of negotiating and of finding opportunities as well.

He recommended the following routine when it comes to financial management, which will force that savings habit.

  • They can have their own piggy banks and the distribution of their money will be like:
    50% of it goes to their house account and the other 50% goes in their toy account.

Anything in the toy account they can spend on whatever they want, from the house account every six months, the money goes to the bank.

Last, but not least he is talking about how to teach kid creativity and to sell, which is an important skill to learn as well.

  • Instead of reading bedtime stories every night, four nights of the week read bedtime stories and 3 nights have them tell stories.
  • Try to sit down with kids and give them 4 items, anything you find in the room? 
    For example, give them a shirt, a pen, a plush and a book, and have them tell a story about those four things!

For online activities, check out  www.mykidsy.com.