How To Start A Business For Kids
77
Useful Websites
- Ideas For Businesses Suitable For Kids
Getting kids started in business - Using Cashflow 101 Ideas With Kids
Teaching kids Rich Dad's wisdom about money and business - Creating Financial Literacy In Your Kids
Ideas for teaching kids about money and business - Ideas For Businesses For Kids
Information and suggestions about getting kids started in business - Kids And Money - How To Break Through
Teach your kids how to escape from the rat race
|
You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way-- And Live the Life You Want-- With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship
Price: $0.29
List Price: $24.00 |
|
What Color Is Your Piggy Bank?: Entrepreneurial Ideas for Self-Starting Kids (Millennium Generation Series) (Millennium Generation Series)
Price: $4.99
List Price: $10.95 |
|
The Kids' Business Book (Kids' Ventures)
Price: $3.00
List Price: $9.95 |
|
The Totally Awesome Business Book for Kids, Second Edition
Price: $10.75
List Price: $12.95 |
Ideas From Other Young Entrepeneurs
- Young Entrepreneurs - Fraser Doherty
Another example of kids making money - Fraser Doherty started his jam-making business at the age of 14. Winner of several business awards, he offers his advice to other young entrepreneurs wanting to make their business ideas a reality. - 2 years ago
- Young Entrepreneurs - Cameron Johnson
Young entrepreneur and teen millionaire Cameron Johnson was born to sell. From his first venture selling vegetables door to door, to a series of dotcom successes before he graduated high school, Cameron has shown a sharp business mind and a strong work ethic. - 2 years ago
- Young Entrepreneurs - Jason O'Neill
Nine-year-old Jason O'Neill of Temecula, California, started a business which two years later won him the 2007 Young Entrepreneur award. He shares his thoughts with other young entrepreneurs. - 2 years ago
- Business Ideas For Kids
Resources for parents to help their kids get started in business - ways for kids to make money, how to start a business for kids, how to teach kids about money and business, and how to build good money attitudes in your kids. - 2 years ago
- Young Entrepreneurs
Raising young entrepreneurs can be a challenge for parents, but with the variety of ways for kids to make money, and the rewards when kids make money, it is worth getting behind their interest in business, just as you do their interest in sports, drama, or woodworking. - 2 years ago
- Young Entrepreneur - Alexa Kitchen
Alexa Kitchen became the world's youngest professional cartoonist at the age of five. Alexa Kitchen, age 8, promoting her book Drawing Comics Is Easy (Except When It's Hard), Alexa Kitchen cartoons, Alexa Kitchen photos. - 2 years ago
- Young Entrepreneurs - Rachael Ford
Rachael Ford (right) with her twin sister, Erin. Hi, my name is Rachael Ford, and I am a Cash-Smart Kid! I am 12 years old and live in Sydney, Australia, and this is the story of me and my businesses. ... - 2 years ago
- Young Entrepreneurs - Divyank Turakhia
Divyank Turakhia, of Mumbai (Bombay), India, started internet consulting at the age of 14, and started his domain registration and site-building company two years later with $600 borrowed from his parents.... - 2 years ago
The First Step
If you only ever teach your child one thing about business, here is the one business idea that will make the greatest difference:
First demand, then supply.
Find a market, find out what the market wants, and then work out how to provide it.
A vast, vast proportion of businesses are started completely the wrong way. Someone has a great idea, or an invention, or something they are good at, or something they enjoy, and then they go about trying to find someone to sell it to.
This is a recipe for heartbreak, if not bankruptcy.
From the very first lesson in the very first week at Cash-Smart Kids, we are teaching kids this vital, vital concept.
We don't start out throwing around words like "demand" and "supply", of course - that comes later. We make sure that the child is doing the right thing, even if he or she doesn't know what the right thing is called. Kids learn by doing, and the basic ideas in business are not rocket science. Economists and MBAs like to throw around the big words, but in truth, the big words aren't necessary.
I introduced my kids to this concept by means of a simple Q&A session, which went like this:
Why do you want to have a business?
To get money.
Where does the money come from?
Customers.
Where are the customers?
Out there.
And where is the money?
In their pockets.
Why would they take the money out and give it to you?
Because there's something they want.
What is it that they want?
Ummmmmm ...
And suddenly they understood why we do market research!
If you don't know what the customers want, you can't offer it. And if you don't offer it, the customers won't hand over the money. And if you don't have customers handing over money, you don't have a business.
Encourage your kids to brainstorm the things that people are willing to spend money on - things they will pay other people to do, things they want a lot (like a cool drink on a hot day - more than one young entrepreneur has made their start selling cool drinks to captive groups of adults, for example at local markets, car boot sales, or sports fields), or things they love (their hobbies, pets, and other passions).
Then have them go out and actually ask questions of their prospective customers. Find out what the market wants to buy, and what they would be willing to pay.
Your kids will then be in a great position to invent a business idea that will actually make them money from the get-go - very important for keeping them motivated!
Teaching Kids About Money And Business
- Young Entrepreneurs Leverage Cherry Blossoms
Gwen Lefkowitz was perched alertly in her chair behind a table of $1 lemonade and two-for-a-dollar chocolate chip cookies. At about 11 a.m. she said sales had been brisk. - 4 months ago
- Young Entrepreneurs – S Tarek al Zubair And Hamad bin Sulaiman
S Tarek al Zubair is just 16, while his cousin, Hamad bin Sulaiman, is two years younger, and they have developed a working solar powered car. - 5 months ago
- Young Entrepreneur – Jonathan Fischer
Inspired by the tragic death of a Lunenburg teenager in a high-speed auto wreck, Jonathan Fischer wanted to create a machine that would alert parents whenever a child became too careless behind the wheel. - 6 months ago
- Impact Entrepreneurship Group Supporting Young Entrepreneurs
“When you’re in high school, a small business does look like the last resort but one of the key reasons is because of the way it’s taught,” Mr. Cao says. “Most teachers have not been entrepreneurs.” - 6 months ago
- Young Entrepreneur Devon Zielinski Wins Scholarship
Young entrepreneur Devon Zielinski was one of 60 high school seniors nationwide who received $10,000 a year over four years to attend a U.S. college or university. - 6 months ago
- Altwood School Students Win Entrepreneur Prize
Enterprising students from Altwood School, in Maidenhead, walked off with the top prize for their jewellery business at the 2009 Young Enterprise North Berkshire Area Final. - 6 months ago
- Young Entrepreneur – Cameron Collings
Cameron Collings started his first entrepreneurial venture at 6, selling candy, and built his first computer at 10. Today at 20, he runs a successful web-hosting company. - 6 months ago
Kids In Business - News
- Young Entrepreneur Spreads Cheer, With Oprah's Blessing
At age 9, Cameron Johnson started his first business, making greeting cards and party invitations on the Compaq computer he got for Christmas. Three years later, the Virginia native was making $50,000 a year selling Beanie Babies online from his parents' garage. - 2 years ago
- Student entrepreneur wins $40,000 national scholarship
Manitowoc Lutheran High School senior Jake Lindemann will be attending the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee next year at the expense of the McKelvey Foundation. - 2 years ago
- Lemonade Brigade wants to help raise money for local charities
The Lemonade Brigade is the brainchild of Mary Brent, 12, and Beverly Brown, 9, two sisters who have devised a way to help charities using lemonade this summer. - 2 years ago
- Young Entrepreneurs Could Win $10,000
The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards will provide ambitious and creative Australian students a chance to test their business savvy. - 2 years ago
- Students, teacher earn national entrepreneur awards
DaMarra Underwood, 15, of Sheraden, a student at Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, and Ben Bergel, 17, of White Oak, a senior at McKeesport Area High School, have been selected as recipients of the 2008 Global Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, spons … - 2 years ago
PrintShare it! — Rate it: up down flag this hub
Comments
Thanks for the comment, Mark.
I can understand that perspective. Our culture certainly seems to think that managing money is something best left until adulthood. And adults who have businesses often appear burdened.
I can only speak from my own experience here, but the kids I see out there doing creative things to earn money don't seem to regard it as burdensome, or even as work.
For my observation, it seems that to kids, earning money is as natural as spending it, until we adults and our cultural programming interfere and make it all serious and stressful.
Of course, if parents are pushing kids into it, that's just as bad as pushing them into beauty pageants or sporting teams or anything else to serve the parents' agenda instead of coming from the child's own interest. I blogged about that recently, actually, parents who seem to want to use their kids to make money for the parents.
I hear you on the growing up too fast, though - my girls started talking about having "boyfriends" at 10 or 11 years of age! It was interesting that once they started getting involved with adult activities, both in business and in community activism, their interest in become prematurely adult in their dress and behaviour dropped right off.
Of course, I only have girls - I'd love to hear from someone who has a boy. Is it the same with boys? Do they seem to want to grow up too fast?
Jenny
P.S. Your Forex page is really great - I wish there was more level-headed educational material around. Unfortunately, people don't seem to appreciate it, and advertisers don't want to advertise beside it. We tried to get a print magazine going a few years ago that would be all just like your Forex page, covering property, debentures (don't get me started!!!), shares, currency and futures trading, business, and whatever else people get into to try to get ahead. We just couldn't get enough advertisers to cover the cost of printing it. Good on you, and may you do many more like it!
Running a business and managing money are not the same thing in my book. I do think that kids should be taught the value of money. All girls over here too :)
I guess my issue with teaching them to run a business is that it is stressful and the only way to let them do it without the stress is to let them have free food, a free bed, no taxes to pay, a free computer to run the "business" on etc, and this will give them a skewed perspective.
It's a bit like the "free practice accounts" that you can set up at a forex site. If there is no money on the line, you act differently and there is little to be learned. Same thing. If they are not going to be thrown out of the house if they lose all their money, they will make different decisions. Therefore it's not really teaching them how to run a business. What do you think?
And thanks for the compliment - I try and say it as I see it. Costs me money sometimes, but I would rather do it that way.
I agree with you that it would be stressful to expect kids to launch into running a business as an adult does.
Just as we teach them to ride a bike by running beside them and holding it up until they get the hang of balancing, or do the handling of sharp knives and hot things when they are learning to cook, parents need to allow kids to expand into business activities safely and according to their capability.
I think most parents would already provide their kids with free food, a free bed, tax-free income, and the use of a computer. If the kids use those resources to learn ballet, nobody complains that it's a skewed perspective because professional dancers have to pay their own rent and food out of their earnings.
Business is an activity like any other, and it may or may not end up being a child's primary source of income as an adult.
I never had the build to be a professional ballet dancer, but I gained strength, poise and confidence from my ballet lessons, which I use for other things now. Kids will gain knowledge and skills from their business activities, in the same way.
Exposure to the process of creating value for a customer is a vital part of learning how money works. Even if someone spends their entire life as an employee, understanding that a business only exists to provide value to its customers makes that person a much more valuable employee than someone who thinks that money comes from showing up, doing the minimum required, and talking your way out of any trouble you might get into (aka employee mindset).
Just my 0.02, YMMV and all that ...
Jenny
P.S. Yes, I'm with you - you can't put a price on your integrity.
im very confused about those last few comments but this article really inspired me!
I'm glad you're inspired, Casey - I hope you turn that inspiration into something great!
hhow do you actually start a buisness?
Encouraging kids to start a business is sooooo much more than just making money. It teaches them people skills, time management, politeness, understanding of how the business world works (and doesn't work), dedication to a purpose, and just the ins and outs of human behavior and social psychology (fancy way of saying dealing with nice people and jerks). Lesson they will NEVER learn in school or the playground. I am proud to say that both of my daughters have their own businesses - both were self-created by them. My 12-yr old makes around $1200/year and my 7-yr old makes around $80-100/week selling items that they create and sell. The lessons they learn from 'selling' are invaluable.
in our modern world if a child realy wants to do it they will do it
I'm kind of confused
Hi, great article some very good money making ideas for kids and budding entrepreneurs.
Anyway, theres some really good and informative articles here about the Rat Race..
Its a site created to assist people to leave the 9 to 5 lifestyle. All the content is free to read, no subscriptions and no hidden agendas!!
not good info not explaning anything
i hate my job buy hing stuff u
i want to get money i love to have money and how do you do it ????? i dont know how to do it
Mark Knowles says:
2 years ago
Not a fan of this idea. Kids grow up too fast as it is. Why not let them be kids?