Teaching Entrepreneurship to Your Child

What is the value of teaching your child the value of money and the value of entrepreneurship at an early age?

This past weekend my daughter at age 3 and ¾ took her first venture into being a saleswoman. At our two-day rummage sale she wanted to sell cookies and kool-aid so we put up the money for the supplies and let her have her shot at making some money.

During the first day she was amazing and stayed with it for almost 8 hours, which as most of you know is an amazing feat for an almost 4 year old. She was asking all of our patrons “Do You Want A Cookie” before they even got out of their cars, and most would favor her with some patronage. It was quite humorous and people throughout the day mentioned that we had a born business women on our hands.

This weekend made me start thinking about the right and wrong ways to teach our children about the value of money and the value of hard work. I mean I believe that I emulate the value of hard work in my every day work and show that to my daughters. Yet, I still want them to understand that money comes from hard work and that it mut be respected.

The money that Diva-J did make (just over $40) was provided to her and she had the choice of what she wanted to do with it (though we encouraged her to save at least ½ of it). She decided to purchase some Disney polly pockets and to save the other ½ in her savings account. All-in-all I do think that we taught her some about the money that she made from her work, but I do know that there is more that she needs to learn.

After thinking about this, I decided to examine this a bit more for resources that I could use with my own girls. I found the following resources:

August 7, 2008 |

Comments

3 Comments so far

ThisAliCat, Poker August 7, 2008 6:30 am
Great post! My 9&6 yr old girls did something similar…on Canada day last month, they wanted to sell glow sticks at a fireworks display at one of the larger community parks. They bought 150 glow sticks for $13 at the local craft store.

By the end of the evening, they sold 130 of them for $75 total. They were so excited, I took them to the mall the next day where they spent half of the money on an outfit and books and told me they wanted to save the rest.

After that event, I’ve noticed their increased attention to the cost of things and their comments on how much they’d have to make to buy more things …
trysh, Crafting August 7, 2008 8:48 am
I think you gave her some good lessons - and she learned a lot just from doing the work!
Thanks for sharing this - took me back to my lemonade stand days….
Erin Curtin August 7, 2008 1:57 pm
Hi, here’s another resource for you:
http://www.UnleashingIdeas.org - all about Global Entrepreneurship Week, Nov. 17-23,2008.

Global Entrepreneurship Week encourages youths around the world to be entrepreneurial, think innovatively and pursue their original ideas. The Week also aims to educate about the cultural, social and economic benefits of entrepreneurship – at the local, national and global levels.

In addition to thousands of activities being planned by partners, a few signature activities are designed to connect bright young minds across the globe:
Unleash It!
Unleash It! uncovers challenges, then links them to enterprising problem-solvers – via a Web site (within UnleashingIdeas.org) where companies can post challenges/problems, and most are “open source,” allowing anyone to post a potential solution. Some challenges are sponsored and carry an incentive for the company-chosen winner. Anyone can issue a challenge, e-mail your challenges to challenges[at]unleashingideas[dot]org.
The site should go-live the first of September.

Speed Network the Globe
Happening Tues., Nov. 18 during the Week, we hope to have a record-breaking number of people speednetworking, around the world.
Networking is a skill that serves everyone—whether they ever consider starting an entrepreneurial venture or not. Anyone can organize a speed networking session in his/her community — talking to each other, local entrepreneurs, potential investors, community leaders, or anyone else interested in learning from–and sharing with–others. We are encouraging everyone to plan speednetworking events to mark Global Entrepreneurship Week at the local level. E-mail cspavin[at]unleashingideas[dot]org to learn more about what you can do to help network aspiring entrepreneurs.