How Kids Can Make Money - Start-up Businesses For Kids

I must have been about 7 years old when my sister and I dragged our neighborhood friend out to the curb alongside our house to set up a makeshift lemonade stand on a sunny, Saturday afternoon. Visions of cars lining up to buy our homemade juice danced in my head as I tried to conceive what I would spend my share of the money on. To me, and like thousands of other kids, this was serious business.

To most parents, the lemonade stand is more of a way to get the kids out the door and occupied for a few hours. It's cute to see these little entrepreneurs mimicking business owners as they set up their products and position their cash register, cups and signage. Deep down, each parent is more concerned with who is going to clean up the mess once business hours are over.

In reality, that lemonade stand is more than a weekend project. It's the first stepping stone to gaining important life skills.

There's almost a 100 percent guarantee that every one of us, at some point in time, will need to know how a business functions, whether we become employers or employees later on in life. And yet, learning how to earn a living, independently or dependently, is largely ignored in our school system. If we know that our kids need these vital skill sets in order to survive financially as adults, how come we aren't preparing them before they leave the nest?

The common myth that many parents have is that to foster entrepreneurship, their child has to exhibit an entrepreneurial spirit. It's akin to excluding a child from taking math classes if they don't like math, or not encouraging a child to read if they don't like to read. While some kids show early signs of business acumen when they are young, others may not express an interest until they are older. If your child doesn't walk around with a briefcase, request business cards from Santa at Christmas, or dream of dollar signs while asleep, does it mean they don't have an entrepreneurial spirit? Does it mean they do not need to learn how to make a living?

If you had asked my parents whether my sister and I had an entrepreneurial spirit when we were young, they would have likely said "no". Neither one of us spent our youth plotting out financial opportunities. I started my first real business at the tender age of 20 while in college and spent the next 18 out of 20 years self-employed. My sister writes children's books. What transpired are two entrepreneurs whose parents never noticed an entrepreneurial spirit in them as kids.

Why is youth entrepreneurship so important? As Baby Boomers retire, Gen Xers and Gen Yers take over. The US economy not only thrives on small businesses for economic growth and employment, it survives because of them. As a community, we are great at product development, but because we largely ignore teaching entrepreneurship at the elementary and high school levels, many are left without the skill sets to know how to take their innovations to the marketplace. As we move towards a global economy, how do we compete effectively? Think about the long-term ramifications it could have on our economy.

Our youth have amazing ideas and their sense of risk is different from their adult counterparts. It's not that our youth can think outside of the box any better than adults. They don't even know a box exists. They don't have a family to support, a mortgage payment to make, or a utility bill that's come due. Their business allows them to take full ownership over something they've created, allowing that ownership to transfer over to responsibility and accountability.

When we teach youth entrepreneurship, we not only show them that their future can be different, but we provide them with skill sets that make them able to compete in a competitive economic environment. And when we teach our youth how to run a business the right way with the right tools, we set them up to succeed, not fail. All kids deserve the opportunity. http://www.bizinaboxx.com

Kids starting their own businesses Young entrepreneurs have amazing clarity, insight and confidence; and the number of successful CEOs under the age of 20 is growing everyday. And they're not prodigies. They're simply kids who took a chance. If you're ready to read more about how your child, grandchild or a child you know can start and run their own business, visit our Open for Business, Getting Started page.

Join the many people who have helped a child start a business and gain a sense of ownership.

Visit us today at http://www.bizinaboxx.com/Getting-Started

The best resource for a kids business will be written so he or she can take the workbook and start and run a business by themselves.

Visit us today at http://www.bizinaboxx.com/Getting-Started

M. Rose, MBA
President
Biz in a Boxx

Preparing Tomorrow’s Business Leaders