Entrepreneurship: When Passion Doesn't Pay the Bills

For most of us, becoming an entrepreneur and being able to spend our days making a lot of money around something we're deeply passionate about seems to be the professional goal. But what happens when we're unable to monetize our passions into something that sustains us financially?

The other day, I ran into a friend's adult daughter who was at this very crossroad. See, her passion revolved around music; she's well-versed in all genres, writes her own music and seems to be able to carry a tune as well as any American Idol contestant. (I'm tone deaf, but she sounds good to me.) She majored in music in college and had dreams of living comfortably off her talents. That is, until reality set in.

Today, at age 27, she works during the day as an office assistant; a job that pays enough to cover her bills. She still works on her music, but it's mostly on the weekends and she still hasn't made money from it.


The Mindset of an Entrepreneur



As a parent, I couldn't help but show her some empathy, after all we want nothing more than to see our kids happy all throughout their lives. What she lacked was the know-how to monetize her talents - the key component to being able to fully carry out one's passion as a career choice.

Like many young adults, the lack of knowing how to think like an entrepreneur and seize financial opportunities prevents them pursuing their passions. As a result, they are forced to take on jobs in careers of little interest because the reality of responsibility has come into play. They're disillusioned and rightfully so - their entire childhood has been spent honing those skills based on their talents with little consideration of how they will make a living at it.

The truth is, as a performer, she's replaceable. There are loads of people out there with comparable talents, some of whom get their 15 minutes of fame and many who don't. Those who do make it have figured it out. They know how to brand themselves, take necessary risks, spot opportunities and monetize their efforts. They've learned to think like an entrepreneur and apply those skills to their passions.

An Entrepreneur Monetizes His Passion

Socially, we tend to focus on building skill sets around our passions.  As kids, honing our talents provides an illusion that we will be at the top of our game and with good grades in school and a college degree behind us, who wouldn't want to employ our talented selves?  The reality is those who have learned the monetary value behind their talents and curb their ability to be replaced as a asset in the workplace will have a higher probability of having a career around their passions than those who don't.

It's delusional to think that the simple formula of grades, talents and a college degree is the ticket to the Professional Garden of Eden.  Like my friend's daughter and many of her peers, she followed that path because she was told that was the winning combination and right way to go.  Now, as an adult, she's realizing there was more to the equation and that the system failed her.  She's become dependent upon others for her financial survival as an employee as she watches her dreams of becoming a musical star slowly fade away.

An Entrepreneur is Made

Entrepreneurship spans all industries.  There isn't one career that doesn't involve an entrepreneur at the top.  And there's more to taking a product and asking people to buy it.  Other factors come into play and there are things people need to know (through formal and informal education) when starting and running a business.

Just like honing a specific skill around your passion, an entrepreneur hones his entrepreneurial skills.  Teaching a person to think like an entrepreneur takes time and practice; it's not something you just wake up one day and successfully do.  Sure, not everyone wants to become or is wired to become an entrepreneur, but everyone has the capacity to think like one.  For most, it's the difference between realizing and living out one's life doing what they love or working job because they have to.  Entrepreneurship is a necessary skill that compliments all others.

Find your passion.  Think like an entrepreneur!

Biz in a Boxx

Obama, You're Missing an Extra "E" in STEM

If you listened to President Obama's State of the Union Address on Tuesday, you probably caught a glimpse of his vague plans to improve our educational system by focusing on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) subjects to produce a more skilled workforce able to compete globally.

Will STEM Education Will Produce a Competitive Workforce?

Certainly grooming future scientists, engineers and technologists will produce a skilled and competitive workforce that could innovate new products, but the other half of the equation is getting those products to the marketplace. There's an assumption that if we educate today's youth in STEM education, they will choose those corresponding careers and, when they enter the workforce, there will be jobs available. Yet, jobs are created by people who start businesses, no matter their background, and not necessarily by scientists, engineers and technologists. There's no benefit to educating a workforce in certain disciplines if we cannot provide an adequate amount of jobs. It's simply a matter of supply and demand.

STEM, in all its rhetoric, is missing an extra "E" for Entrepreneurship.

Focusing solely on STEM education is a bandaid; STEEM is a solution. If you read my 8 Things I've Learned About Being an Entrepreneur, you'll understand that putting STEM education and reform as a national priority is a result of needing a cure to solve our current perceptions of being less than globally competitive. At some point, when we possibly have too many scientists, engineers and technologists out of work because supply outweighs the amount of jobs available we will realize that we should have implemented that extra "E" into the equation.

STEM Education Solves Half the Problem

In theory, STEM education leads to innovation, but STEEM allows for those innovations to be taken to the market successfully. That's where we can really shine in the global market.

Even Obama glorified his speech with tales of Brandon Fisher whose small drilling business aided in the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners and the Allen brothers of Michigan whose company manufactures solar shingles. These aren't just people who innovated products but entrepreneurs who took their ideas and inventions to the marketplace.

There are plenty of great ideas circulating the nation, many of which haven't come to fruition and never will. We don't teach entrepreneurship in our public school system. If we really want to flourish as a nation and be leaders in the global economy, we'll start implementing STEEM instead of just STEM into the equation.

Success to you!

Melissa

Biz in a Boxx

Why Every Kids Should Learn About Entrepreneurship

A myth behind youth entrepreneurship implies that your child will be ensnared in hours of tasks, taking away from his limited childhood. After all, he has time to learn the 8 to 5 role when he reaches adulthood and is forced to make his own way.

Lessons in Youth Entrepreneurship From a Lemonade Stand

There's more to youth entrepreneurship than your occasional lemonade stand that occupies little Jimmy's time for a few weekend hours. Sure it's adorable watching him craft his stand and signage and overly sweeten the lemonade that will make his customer's thirstier than when they arrived. But for those few hours, he's learning some very valuable lessons that he'll take with him the rest of his life.

Youth Entrepreneurship and the Value of Ownership

For most kids, having true ownership over something is rare. Sure, you may be teaching your kid about responsibility and financial management through delegating chores, but chores are a micro-managed activity. There's not a whole lot of creativity in emptying a dishwasher, making a bed or folding the laundry and putting it away. They are tasks that are dictated on performance and time. Though chores are necessary and an excellent way to teach important skill sets, but they are not activities that a kid has complete control over.

Part of what is so enticing about entrepreneurship is ownership - ownership over ideas and actions and the ability to make decisions. It's about freedom to call the shots and build something out of nothing. Over 700,000 people each year in the US take a stab at starting a business, partly due to the desire to be one's own boss. A sense of ownership doesn't begin at age 18; it's a powerful force than transcends all ages.

Youth Entrepreneurship Benefits Go a Long Way

Think back to when you got your first business card and the feeling that came from it. For some, it's a sense of accomplishment and a sign that you are creating a professional path for yourself. Think about what it can do for a kid who came upon an idea, acted on it and created something from it. He may not be bringing in a six figure income yet, but he did something significant all on his own.

There's nothing like true ownership. It builds self-esteem and self-awareness. From that sense of ownership, mixed with youth entrepreneurship, we find other life-long benefits emerge. That lemonade stand teaches financial literacy, decision-making, strategic-planning, creativity, mathematics, innovation, communications, accountability, risk-taking, teamwork and delegation. All this from mixing up some sugar and lemons and sitting on the sidewalk waiting for passerby's. What other activity will your child be doing that teaches all of these important skill sets?

Adulthood and Youth Entrepreneurship

The limited time your kid has to enjoy his childhood is undoubtedly valued; he likely won't see this carefree time in his life until he retires. Yet, the bulk of his life will be spent making his way through the world, independently taking care of himself and his family. All of the lessons learned from his childhood will carry over into adulthood and help steer him towards who he will become. Most will become employees who will work for those who possess an entrepreneurial mindset and took a risk to start something new. (Entrepreneurship: Beating the Odds.)

While as parents we don't know with certainty who our kids will become, we do know what they will need to know to get ahead and be competitive. And that's part of our job to teach them.

Get your kids involved in youth entrepreneurship by giving them the tools to have a positive first experience and watch how amazed you will become from the lessons they will learn.

Biz in a Boxx

Hey Mom...I'm Back!

Imagine the youth unemployment rate so high that after paying or borrowing tens of thousands of dollars on a college education, your kid ends up back home because he can't find a job and afford an independent lifestyle. Welcome Boomerang Generation.

There were three definite rules in our household while I was growing up - don't do drugs, call if you're going to be late and get out of the house when you graduate from high school. The latter may seem a bit harsh to some, but it really wasn't meant that way. It's was my parent's way of saying, "We've taught you to fly; now it's time you to start your journey."

And we did.

The Boomerang Generation and Youth Unemployment

The term "Boomerang Generation" has begun to emerge with Gen Yer's, so much that there's actually a Wikipedia page about it. CNN Money reported that in a poll conducted by Twentysomething Inc. some 85 percent of college students plan to move back home when they graduate, up from 67 percent in 2006.

A big part of the problem, of course, is the high, 15 percent youth unemployment rate amongst 20-24 year olds. Home seems like a viable option to many.

Youth Unemployment Has Long-Term Consequences

The high youth unemployment rate and the time spent out of the labor pool can be hazardous to both the parents who find they are financially supporting their adult children and the young adult who misses out on valuable time gaining work experience to build a solid career. While it may seem nice to have the kids home again, there are some long-term consequences to it all. If you're a parent who has to financially support your adult child, those expenses eat away at your retirement. If you're an adult child out of work for any length of time, it's time you have to make up when gaining and honing real-world skill sets.

Sure, large numbers of children, mostly single, have lived with their parents as adults for decades. But things were far different 100 or even 50 years ago. Women, especially, weren't abundant in the workforce and so they lived in their childhood rooms until they married and started a home of their own. No matter the statistics, the fact that kids are forced to move back in with their parents due to high youth unemployment rates and not social norms is significant.

Youth Unemployment Options

Bianca Fortis was a Boomerang Kid who found herself once again living with her parents after college while she tried to find a job in journalism. Bianca was dependent upon an economic system for her financial independence, a path most kids are told to follow. It seemed that if you went to college, those years of hard work would pay off in an immediate job, but the labor market is about supply and demand. If there's not enough demand for your skills and what you can bring to the table, then it's "hello Strawberry Shortcake comforter. It's so nice to see you again."

Kids will either grow up to be employees or employers, but never exposing them to both opportunities limits them as they venture down their career path. Even a kid who has developed an entrepreneurial mindset before he's reached college age has a much better propensity to adapt to these economic changes. Their financial survival skills are far stronger than those who have never been exposed. And if you think the current economic downturn won't happen again in your kids' lifetime, think again. It's cyclical.

As a parent, I'd love for my daughter to return home after she finishes college, but I don't want her to actually live at home. It's not because I wouldn't want her to be that close to me, but because she deserves to have a life of her own, to be productive, follow her dreams and accomplish her own goals. Preparing her now, before she leaves high school, is the best gift I can unselfishly give her.

Encourage your kids, of all ages, to get out there and make their own employment. Don't teach them to become dependent upon a system; this is America, home to entrepreneurship and because the youth unemployment rate isn't going to dip down low for quite some time.

Biz in a Boxx

It's a Matter of Numbers: Entrepreneurs and Job Creation

When it comes to participating in the workforce, we either work for entrepreneurs, are entrepreneurs or we work for the government. There's not much to it. We're either employers or employees.

Entrepreneurs

 
Although entrepreneurs make up just 11.5 percent of the population, ("Entrepreneurs: Beating the Odds") their ideas and abilities to take risks to form new ventures are the mechanisms behind job creation. If you're an employee, your paycheck is the result of someone recognizing an opportunity and taking a calculated risk to profit from it. If you're an employer, your drive and willingness to create a business helped put food one someone's table and a roof over their head.

The Jobs Entrepreneurs Create

According to the Kauffman Foundation, firms that are a year old create approximately 1 million jobs, while firms that have been in existence for 10 years create about 300,000 new jobs. Historically, from 1980 to 2005 almost all new net jobs came from companies that were less than five years old. These companies also innovate more new products than their older counterparts, which is a substantial benefit to consumers.

The Role of Future Job Growth and Entrepreneurs

The Kauffman Foundation also found that high-growth start ups like Groupon and Facebook are the most beneficial to both job creation and the economy overall. High-growth start ups not only invent new products that had not been largely commercialized, but they are rife with job opportunities. In less than 1.5 years, Groupon added some 350 people to its payroll.

Unfortunately, there are only about 15 high-growth start ups a year. At this rate, the GDP will double in about 24 years. If 45-75 high-growth start ups were formed each year, doubling the GDP rate would decrease to 18 years, according to Kauffman.

Training More Entrepreneurs

 
Entrepreneurs don't just emerge out of thin air. Even if you are an employee and wake up the next day, quit your job and start working on your idea and business plan, it's likely that you have years of workplace experience and skill set development behind you. Even then you may lack the knowledge and experience to actually run your own business.

Andrew Mason, the founder of Groupon, didn't just spring out of bed one morning, develop software and market it to the masses, despite his seemingly short rise to business success. Mason started on his entrepreneurial journey at age 15 when he opened up his food delivery business. The idea for Groupon didn't start out as a bargain, daily deal website either. The initial idea was to gather people to voice and fund relevant causes. And it was Eric Lefkofsky, the serial entrepreneur Mason worked for, who saw the monetary potential in Mason's ideas.

Having an entrepreneurial mindset can be taught, but it's this training that the majority of kids won't get in school. In order to increase entrepreneurial activity in the US, there needs to be training, formal and informal, and the earlier the better. It's those kids who are in the midst of their primary education who will determine whether the economy and job growth will flourish in decades to come. Grooming entrepreneurs and instilling the entrepreneurial mindset is the key to continued prosperity and success.

Success to you!

Melissa

Biz in a Boxx

Entrepreneurship: Beating the Odds

There's no other country in the world that praises entrepreneurship like the US. Our history books are full of inventors like Henry Ford, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison who not only took risks to bring new innovations to the market, but carried out the belief that free enterprise was at the cornerstone of the American Dream.

Few countries take advantage of the entrepreneurial culture like the US. According to The Economist, Europeans have less to gain from entrepreneurship because of higher tax rates and risks outweigh rewards. In Germany, the law prevents people who have filed for bankruptcy to hold a CEO position. Not so in the US where failure is a motivator for getting back on the horse (despite the sting.)

American entrepreneurs don't become successful businessmen and women overnight despite the shortened tales of their rise to the top that are depicted far more often than the long road it took to get them on the Fortune 500 list. Yet, the contributions these entrepreneurs of our largest and smallest companies provide are astounding when you really look at the figures.

Entrepreneurship: What Are the Odds?

There are approximately 237 million adults (age 18+) in the US in which 11.5 percent are considered entrepreneurs. (Thailand tops the entrepreneurial chart; 19 percent engage in entrepreneurial activity.) Some 29 million small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms and employ over half of the private sector. These small businesses are responsible for 93.7 percent of all exported goods as well as the majority of all new innovations. Rather amazing accomplishments from such a small sector of the population.

To put it in perspective, half of all kids under the age of 17 (41 million) play an organized, competitive sport in the US. By the time they reach the age of 13, nearly 70 percent have stopped playing. Today, there's approximately 4 million professional athletes, representing only 10 percent of those kids who first started playing a sport in their younger years. Hence, the odds of your kid becoming an entrepreneur is roughly the same as him or her becoming a professional athlete.

Beating the Entrepreneurship Odds

There are similarities and differences between venturing down the small business path and donning a high-priced uniform. Entrepreneurship can be learned, but like playing a sport, there's plenty of practice involved. If entrepreneurship just happened overnight, it would be akin to changing out a light bulb and calling yourself an electrician.

Most small businesses today are started by older Americans; 36 percent are between the ages of 55-64 while those 20-34 years old only account for 26 percent of new firms. The average age for those starting technology companies aren't your recent college grads either; the average age in that start-up sector is 39. Education, skill development and experience are key components to entrepreneurial activity in the US.

Entrepreneurship Training

From 2008 to 2009, entrepreneurial activity amongst those 6-19 years old actually fell by almost 40 percent. More troubling is that those under the age of 20 represent just over a quarter of the total US population - 85 million to be exact. Knowing how important entrepreneurship is to the economy, job creation and innovation would suggest that training is vital to the health of free enterprise. What would happen if business acumen was taught at the K-12 level? How many kids would have a leg up on the competition once they reached adulthood? How many more firms, jobs and innovations would be created in a shorter period of time? Will the next generation continue in their entrepreneurial efforts that made the US so great?

I'm still betting entrepreneurship.

Melissa

Biz in a Boxx

Youth Entrepreneurship: What's the Big Deal?

The benefits of teaching youth entrepreneurship go well beyond the obvious practice of taking a product and selling it in the marketplace. There’s not only a plethora is life skills learned through the practice of entrepreneurship, but for some kids, especially at-risk kids, entrepreneurship can show them that their future can be different.

Life Skills

There are a wide range of skill sets needed to run a business: decision-making, calculated risk-taking, financial management, creativity, strategic-planning, teamwork, leadership, mathematics, communicative (oral and written), etc.

Aside from these life skills, there are also intrinsic benefits to teaching kids entrepreneurship. For most, it can be the one thing in their lives that they truly own and have complete control over. They can see the cause and effect of hard work and the importance of accountability. Youth entrepreneurship builds self-esteem and self-awareness. It is also the one course in which failure is a component to learning. In other words, the business world accepts mistakes as part of the path to success.

In a report by the D.C. Children and Youth Investment Corporation, other positive outcomes include:

• improved academic performance, school attendance; and educational attainment
• increased problem-solving and decision-making abilities
• improved interpersonal relationships, teamwork, money management, and public speaking skills
• job readiness
• enhanced social psychological development (self-esteem, ego development, self-efficacy), and
• perceived improved health status

21st Century Skills and STEM Education

While we can see how teaching youth entrepreneurship relates to 21st Century skills, there are increasingly vast opportunities to incorporate STEM education into the mix.
Traditional courses simply teach students how businesses run by studying large established businesses. While this is a necessary component of case study, it’s unrealistic for the student to actually apply the knowledge in his or her own setting. Most businesses in the US are considered small and how the small business operates, grows and succeeds is different from its large corporate counterparts. To instill 21st Century skills so that the student knows the relevancy and how to apply it takes real-world practice.

Traditional business courses also do not incorporate STEM education, which is a vital component to product development and innovation. Typically STEM education and entrepreneurship are kept separate when in fact they are skill sets that should be married. For example: Our SciPreneur program is aimed at getting young girls interested in science by showing them the relevancy of their innovations. The girls spend time creating beauty products using their own formula by understanding what each ingredient does when mixed with others. When their products are formulated, they learned how to properly package them and start a business. The outcome is that they not only see how their scientific skills relate to innovation, but they also get to experience marketplace opportunities. And the results do not simply stop when the course is over.

If we turn the table, we can show students the relevancy of STEM education if entrepreneurship is a partner in learning. It’s easy to compartmentalize coursework in relation to future career choices. For example, I have a cousin who is a math major at Boston College. While she loves math and excels in the subject, she believes the only viable career choice for it is to become a math teacher. She hasn’t learned how her mathematical skill sets can transfer over to a variety of career options. If a student loves chemistry but doesn’t want to become a chemist and work in a lab, have we shown him or her other career options in which those skill sets are valuable? Have we shown them that innovative ideas have value in the marketplace and that they are necessary for the well-being of communities?

Community and Workplace Preparedness

Businesses keep our communities sustainable. They provide jobs, skill training and revenue. New businesses that enter the market keep prices competitive and offer products that solve problems. Yet, in order to keep these businesses viable, talent must be produced.
Teaching entrepreneurship does not always translate into creating entrepreneurs; but it can provide for an entrepreneurial mindset. This is advantageous whether the student becomes an employer or an employee.

Job preparedness must focus on more than writing a resume and learning how to interview, especially in today’s environment. Approximately, 17 out of 100 teens are gainfully employed, leaving the majority of kids inexperienced when trying to enter the workforce. Couple that with the fact that 15 million jobs need to be created to support the influx of the existing and future labor market makes delaying one’s career a definite reality.

Teaching Youth Entrepreneurship: Why Start Them Young?

Most students leave high school with little or no knowledge of the business world and those wishing to learn more will simply wait until they enter college (if they do at all.)
Kids see the world far differently then their adult counterparts. When young, their perception of risk isn’t thwarted by the financial responsibility to raising a family, paying a mortgage and saving for retirement. They are natural problem solvers who have yet to be jaded by the complexities of adulthood. Entrepreneurship can and should be taught beginning at the elementary school level.

Teaching entrepreneurship isn’t a complex subject that requires extensive knowledge of business acumen. No two businesses run the exact same way and there’s nothing written in stone that to be successful, one must think inside the box; 2+2 can equal 5.

Biz in a Boxx

Biz in a Boxx was developed to provide kids with an experiential education in entrepreneurship. Unlike traditional coursework, the system is designed for students to take any idea and create a business around it whether in a school setting, afterschool club or in their home. It’s not dependent upon a teacher with business knowledge to teach it, rather someone who will guide his or her students through the process. It enables students to take complete ownership over their ideas because it’s through that ownership that students learn those vital skill sets best.

Entrepreneurs aren’t created overnight. Like playing a sport or musical instrument, it takes practice.

The Risk and Failure of Entrepreneurship

Junior Achievement recently conducted a survey and found that 74 percent of teens stated risk and failure were the biggest deterrents for starting their own business.

I can certainly understand this mindset if it were coming from an adult, especially from someone with a mountain of responsibilities, like feeding a family and providing shelter. But why would a kid who has far more to gain than lose have such an aversion to risk? And what has dampened their psyche at such a young age to believe that failure should be avoided at all costs?

The beauty about entrepreneurship is that it’s one of those fields where risk and failure are vital components. They present opportunities for learning and correcting mistakes. If you’re an architect and design a building that crashes down or a doctor who cuts off the wrong body part, you’ve failed. There are no do-overs. But entrepreneurship is full of do-overs. It’s an accepted practice.

While risk/failure-averse teens won’t be the ones to necessarily jump off a bridge because their friends are doing it, there’s a propensity to avoid other things in which they can reap rewards, such as running for student council or trying out for a sports team. Naively fearing risk and failure isn’t selective but a learned behavior that flows across all decisions; learning how to take calculated risks and accepting failure as part of the process enables an analysis of each decision. And there are long-term consequences to raising a generation of risk/failure-averse people.

Starting and running a business isn’t solely about the benefits to the owner. Communities are dependent upon them for goods and services at competitive prices. They provide revenue to fund vital programs and jobs and income to provide for families. Our lives are better for each and every person willing to take the leap and start his own.

Where will we be with a country full of people who are crippled by the fear of risk and failure? Where could we be if they are not?

The Relevancy of Pond Scum and Entrepreneurship

When I was in high school, I opted to take aquatic biology instead of chemistry for the sheer fact that cutting into the head of a shark seemed much more appealing than studying proteins and molecules. I took science classes only to fulfill graduation requirements. It’s not to say that science wasn’t interesting because it was at the time. I just never found the relevancy to integrate it into a future career.

Before we got to use our scalpels to cut open our sharks, we had a project that revolved around water and organisms. The assignment was to find a pond, lake or reservoir and collect jars of water and scum from it. Fortunately, there was a small pool of water that formed in the fields behind my house from recent storms and my lab partner, Erin, and I were able to collect three jars of the stagnant water to bring to class.

There was a lot that happened in those jars over the next few weeks. At first it was rather mild – an organism or two emerged from the bottled scum; but by the end of the second week, new bugs were all over the place. And the jars smelled. Really smelled.

It was a cool assignment. Every day we’d come into class to see a new type of bug floating or flying inside the jars and we were able to identify them all. But what lesson did I learn from it? It’s been 25 years since I took that class, so how has it been relevant to my life?

Here’s what I know:

1. Don’t have a pond or stagnant water near your property.

2. Don’t swim in a pond.

3. Don’t open jars of pond water/scum in an enclosed room.

There’s a lot of what our kids learn in school that has life-long relevancy, especially when presented in such a manner. When it isn’t integrated into everyday life, understanding the usefulness of a topic becomes lost. Math is an excellent example of this. I haven’t had to prove a right angle since leaving high school, but I also know there’s probably a lot more I could have done and products I may have been able to invent had I found a connection to those earlier lessons.

In the world of entrepreneurship, there are people with great ideas who lack specific skills to fully develop those ideas and there are people with great skills who lack the ability to foster ideas and take them to the marketplace. They’re dependent upon one another. For those who can do both, you’re a diamond in the rough.

Just think of the ideas and inventions our society as a whole could come up with and develop if we simply understood the relevancy of our early education.

I don’t remember how I came upon Bianca Fortis’s blog, Young and Unemployed, but I was empathic enough to send her an email. Bianca is a relatively recent journalism graduate from the University of Central Florida who most likely had high hopes for easily pursuing her career once she completed her education. Like many, she just happened to have graduated during a period of high unemployment. She got the short end of the stick.

Bianca began chronicling her employment search back in May and has not yet been able to land a job as a reporter of sorts. She’s given up the independence she gained in college to move back home with her parents; it’s estimated that nearly 54 percent of college grads today are doing the same.

The short-term outcome looks rather bleak, especially in those states like Arizona, California, Nevada and Florida that are having a tough time rebounding from the recession. For places like Arizona, the AZ Department of Commerce estimates that it will take approximately seven years to get back to 2005 employment levels. (To put it in more perspective, in AZ the private sector added 700 jobs in September; the pre-recession average was 6,900.) For those of us with kids who will be entering the workforce then, you might want to delay converting their bedrooms into that second den or exercise room. Chances are they will be coming back home.

The long-term effects are even worse. If the young cannot get significant work experience until their early or mid-twenties, their entire careers are delayed. Experience is a critical factor in professional advancement.

We can prepare our kids for jobs all we want, but if those jobs aren’t there, they just aren’t there. Employment needs to be created.

As I went through Bianca’s blog entries I couldn’t help but think, “What if that happens to my own kid?” Would it be prudent of me to simply tell her to study hard and go to college because when she’s done, there will be a job waiting for her? It’s akin to telling her Santa brought all of her Christmas gifts – at some point we have to fess up that we lied.

I’m doing more for my kid. I’m instilling skill sets through entrepreneurship training that will give her options as an adult so that she doesn’t have to be financially dependent upon someone else. Besides, I don’t want her to be that adult child living in the basement because one day I’d like a craft room.

Is Old Fashion Business Fashionable?

This past weekend I had a meeting at a local outdoor mall and noticed the abundance of people either dining or shopping. It’s also a haven for young teens to gather and spend the afternoon perusing the latest trends. As I sat there at an outside table, I remarked how nice it was to see that this pastime hasn’t died, even in spite of the economy, and that the brick-and-mortar establishments still serve a purpose.

I’ve been noticing more stories lately about rising technology companies whether they’re digital, solar or medical. They are popular trends in the startup world. But, I also wonder how this new era of technology and the high use of the internet will change us as social beings.

My newspaper carrier was nice enough to toss me the local edition of the Arizona Republic on Monday, a day I normally don’t get the paper. In there was a story about a milkman in CA whose business is thriving.

Jim Pastor is a career milkman, having started in the biz after high school. Later he opened his own milk delivery business after contracting with a local dairy farmer. He delivers milk and other products (cheese, eggs, bread, butter) to over 4800 homes. He relies on word-of-mouth advertising from his customers who enjoy the convenient delivery and who are eager to support their local community.

So how is it that Jim’s business thrives in a world so focused on the digital age? What part of the human experience cannot be duplicated online? What are we, as consumers, willing to give up or accept in lieu of technology?

Redfining Customer Service or Defining It

The other day I was reading a blog post by Leslie Haywood, the inventor and entrepreneur behind Grill Charms who successfully swam with the Sharks on Shark Tank. On this particular post, Leslie talks about not having a receptionist and personally taking calls when her customers come a knocking.

We’ve become accustomed to the world of automation and voice recordings and pressing numbers on our phone to try to reach a live person. I don’t know too many people who actually like this form of customer service and yet it seems we accept it to the point of even doing it ourselves with our own businesses.

Leslie’s no small fish, but her willingness to connect to the consumer defies common standards. She’s smart. People do business with people they like. People. That’s the magic word.

I once wrote a complaint letter to Nordstrom and got a pleasant letter in return from Mr. Nordstrom. Now I have no clue if he actually wrote it or even signed it himself for that matter, but the fact is I didn’t get some lame response from someone else down the ladder. I liked that. I liked that I came away feeling as though my voice was heard.

That’s precisely what I like about Leslie. She wants to be in the trenches with her customers. She knows she’s not conforming to corporate standards, but she’s providing a face, a real person behind the product.

To me, that’s just good business.

A Jobless Generation

As a kid, I can remember my grandmother telling me stories of how people coped through the Great Depression. I now suspect that living through that era altered her life path mentally. Of course it all seemed foreign to me and the thought of experiencing anything remotely like it in my lifetime appeared more fictional than possible. After all, we’ve prospered as a nation; women’s lib had prevailed and technology was progressing. I was young and I had naive notions that my life would have fewer struggles than generations before me.

My generation, Gen X, has been rather removed from an extreme economic downturn like the one we are experiencing now. We’re older, in the midst of our careers and many of us are raising our own families. This is new to us and many don’t even know what to make of it.

Unemployment plays a large role, not just in terms of financial survival, but the havoc it wreaks on the psyche of those unable to land a job or those who are unemployed.

It’s easy for me to say, as a parent, that in the year 2018 when my own daughter embarks on a career things will be better. But according to Don Peck in the Atlantic, 10 million new jobs would need to be created just to bring the unemployment rate down to 5 percent today. “Even if the economy were to immediately begin producing 600,000 jobs a month—more than double the pace of the mid-to-late 1990s, when job growth was strong—it would take roughly two years to dig ourselves out of the hole we’re in.” Peck writes.

Youth unemployment today remains high. It’s estimated that only 17 out of 100 teens are gainfully employed. Employment means far more than a earning a paycheck and having pocket cash. According to experts, the state of the economy and the time line when young people enter the workforce have lasting impacts, positive or negative, on professional mobility and attainment. A college degree is no longer an employment guarantee.

Many of us already know that the Gen Y generation (our kids) are different than generations before. They tend to be more micro-managed in their activities and need constant direction to complete tasks. They also tend to be less entrepreneurial than their forefathers. Couple this with gaining necessary skills later in life will have a profound affect not only in their careers, but in their personal lives as well. Those with a sense of self-entitlement will have the rudest awakening when reality sets in.

Jobs don’t just appear out of thin air. They’re created by existing companies and new firms. They’re created through the innovation of new products and through people who have learned to think outside of the box, can take a risk and start something new. Those who wait for opportunity to land at their doorstep will likely find an empty stoop.

Entrepreneurship and High School Dropout Rates

I happened upon a great article by Julie Silard Kantor from the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. She writes about the foundation's mission to educate low-income youths, the high dropout rate (1.2 million) and the effects of teaching kids entrepreneurship.

When we think of exposing kids to the business world, we tend to think that it's a topic they are far too young to comprehend or something they don't need to be involved in at such a young age. Let's let kids be kids, right?

But teaching kids entrepreneurship is so much more than outfitting a kid with business cards and letting them dabble for a day as "business owner." Not only are kids exposed to a menagerie of important skill sets, but it's an opportunity to be creative in a relatively free-flowing environment. Furthermore, preparing our kids to lead independent, productive lives is a major component of youth entrepreneurship, just as much as it's a valuable component to our economy.

Kantor writes, "Many also fail to see the correlation between the health of the economy and the people who have a vested interest in its health: entrepreneurs."

Kantor continues with the fact that the US high school dropout rate could be positively impacted if entrepreneurship is introduced to kids early on. John Bridgeland's research in The Silent Epidemic reports that 81 percent of high school dropouts said they would not have left school early if the subjects being taught had more relevancy to life.

Go beyond the obvious benefits of entrepreneurship and the skills sets learned like decision-making, risk-taking, creativity, financial management, strategic planning, etc., and look at what it can do to heighten one's self-esteem. If you ever started a business as a kid you know what I mean.

When I created Biz in a Boxx, I didn't have any of the information on hand to support the value of entrepreneurship. I was 20 when I started by first real business and I remember everything it taught me. I remember walking on the UA campus with a stack of fresh business cards my dad had made for me and feeling as though I could conquer the world. I had no idea what I was doing, but the feeling was empowering and life defining. The data I have found fully supports everything that Biz in a Boxx is designed to do.

Check out Kantor's article at http://bit.ly/8vJR82.

For more information about youth entrepreneurs and how you can set a foundation for child's future, click here.

Teaching Kids the Value of a Dollar

By, Reba Rose, Guest Author

Well, I guessed I have arrived, am with it or perhaps even a cool grandma. Considering that this is my first time blogging and only last year I thought it was called blobbing, I think I have come a long way!!

Being a grand mother seems to have many specific obligations and responsibilities which are great because at the end of the day you can give these children back to their parents and you can relax. However, when did grandparents also become banks? In my golden years I seem to have become the National Bank of Grandma. Unlike real banks, I seem to issue no loans, I get no interest and just seem to pass out money to buy “stuff” whenever I am pressed with those infamous words….I need and I want. They kind of work like triggers or passwords. “No,” is a word that is very hard to say to grandchildren. I don’t know why as it was so easy to say to my kids.

The most logical way to teach kids about the value of a dollar is to let them earn that dollar. There are many kids in business today. They are called young entrepreneurs. Some are making thousands of dollars and some are making very little. But, they are all learning valuable life skills that are not taught in our schools. Biz in a Boxx teaches these skills and along with it the value of a dollar.

My grand daughter has started her own business and I hope one day to be able to say to her…I need and I want.

Grandma Reba

P.S. Listen, do yourself a favor, go here, check this out: www.bizinaboxx.com

Another Successful Young Entrepreneur

By, Andi Fox, Guest Author

Jodi has a rash in her armpits.

I think she has too much time on her hands; she’s lazy and bored, even though she’s out and about every day playing with her brothers and her friends. Maybe she needs to have a job to keep her busy and productive. Sure, the economy is awful right now, and she might have a devil of a time finding work, but what if she didn’t have to work for someone else? I’m sure she must have at least one good idea for her own business. Yeah, but she’s just a kid and would never know how to follow through on making the business become a reality.

I heard of something that would certainly teach her the fundamentals of starting and running her own business and she wouldn’t be so dependent on me for money. She’d have her own money to spend on toys and treats and other stuff that would make her happy and give her the freedom I know she relishes. She’d certainly have less worries and no more rashes.

I mean, why not? There have to be lots of kids’ businesses out there. OK, that’s the answer. I’ll get a Biz in a Boxx for her, let’s see that was www.bizinaboxx.com She will be another successful young entrepreneur. Oh, wait, that won’t work…..Jodi’s a basset hound.

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