Six tips to help your kids become entrepreneurs
— -- When you hear about kids like Abbey Fleck, who helped her parents achieve their dream home, adopt a few more kids and put all five through college on her Makin' Bacon money, it makes you wonder, how did she do it?
Well, if we're honest, it makes you wonder how your kids can become entrepreneurs — and maybe millionaires — too.
We talked to several kid inventors and their parents about what makes them different from the rest of us. What are they doing that we're not?
The good news is you don't have to give up your TV.
Sure, some of the kids are home-schooled and watch ZERO hours of television per week, like Oink-a-saurus inventor Fabian Fernandez-Han, but Cassidy Goldstein, inventor of the crayon holder, said TV is where she gets some of her best ideas. Admittedly, she's usually making jewelry or doing something else while watching TV, but still, it's OK — even helpful.
Some kids had a way in — their parents were inventors, like Fleck, or CEOs, like Sarah Bucknel, who invented Magnetic Locker Wallpaper. Others competed in contests through organizations like By Kids for Kids or FIRST Robotics — like Fernandez-Han, Nicholas Fornario, who invented the Tic-Tag-Tac vest, and the Inventioneers, who invented the Smart Wheel.
Still, Fernandez-Han's dad said he thinks it's important to teach kids not just to solve problems — but to find them.
Here are six tips from the kids and their parents for how your kids can become entrepreneurs, too.
1. Get them started experimenting young. It's not enough to just teach your kids: Eat your dinner, clean your room, do your homework, says Norm Goldstein, the CEO of By Kids for Kids and the dad of crayon holder inventor Cassidy Goldstein. Give them a lot of things to tinker with. Cassidy, for example, used to make animals out of pipe cleaners or clay while she was watching TV. Some kids respond to those "artsy" materials, others may be more technical, preferring Legos, for example. Whatever it is, let them find out what they like and what they're good at and, most important, give them the encouragement and confidence to take it to the next level. And don't just stand above them — get down on your hands and knees or sit with them at the table to help them or just to give them encouragement, Norm said.
2. Take your kids seriously. It's easy to park them in front of the TV, say "Don't touch that, I'll do it," or laugh off an idea they come up with as "Oh, those kids and their crazy ideas!" But one thing every kid and every parent said was that it's so important to take your kids seriously. When a household problem arises, like Cassidy and her broken crayons, ask them, "What do you think we should do?" Or, if your kid has an idea, like Hart Main's idea for Man Can manly-scented candles, say, "OK, let's figure out how to make them." Whether your kid becomes a millionaire or not, it will be an amazing lesson in business and a super shot of confidence that says, "Hey, I can do it!"
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