Wondering how teaching children about entrepreneurship can change their lives? Empowering kids at a young age to learn about running a business can lead to increased independence and the potential for higher earnings over the long-term. This happens with the help of supportive parents that foster development.

Nurture and Motivate a Passion for Business 

Children don’t have to run a business, or even have a job, in order to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities. Helping your kids to recognize businesses in their daily routine can help them with self-discovery, creative insight, and an appreciation for monetary value. 
Thinking of ways to incorporate business lessons into your child’s lives include identifying the cost of their favorite toys, saving money to purchase something of higher value, or involving them in selling things online. Finding chores around the house and negotiating how much doing that chore should cost is another great way to nurture business sense.

Encourage Your Kids to Ask Questions

When children explore their environment or learn new concepts, they often ask questions to help them with general understanding. Instead of providing them with direct and firm answers, allow their curiosity to help them discover the world around them on their own terms.
With obvious safety considerations and precautions in mind, allow your kids to go into their community and engage with people from different backgrounds. The opportunities they might discover will allow their curiosity to grow while helping them formulate new questions to ask and evaluate different answers.

Set Short-term and Long-Term Goals

Since planning and goal setting are important factors in entrepreneurial success, practicing these positive habits will improve a child’s development. One of the easiest ways to teach kids about goal setting is to get them to practice the S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) technique. 
Ask your child to define and document their top five goals or objectives, and then apply S.M.A.R.T. to each of those goals. After carefully considering the actions necessary to accomplish these goals, encourage and support your child throughout the process to help them reach success. This exercise will help to increase your child’s confidence and give them a sense of personal accomplishment.

Articulate Financial Literacy

Teaching your children from an early age about financial literacy can give them a solid foundation for business. Unfortunately, most schools don’t teach about finance, or give enough attention to basic concepts of spending, saving and interest.
Educating your children about saving and investing can help them learn how money can be used to leverage business. Examples of how you can teach your kids about finance are to talk about what you do to save money, how you spend it, or what you spend it on. Even if you don’t take their advice or use their ideas, involving your children in money issues can help teach them about responsibility and nurture their entrepreneurial mind. 

Promote Teamwork 

Successful entrepreneurs manage employees, outsource professional tasks, and partner with vendors in order to keep their business running smoothly. In the same sense, children will gain a lot of experience in reaching common goals by learning how to play well with others.
Enrolling your child into team sports, academic clubs, or community music classes can help them develop teamwork skills. Any type of event that takes children into an environment of social activity is a great classroom for learning core people skills and values that can be applied to business. Also, practicing effective communication skills in a group setting allows kids to articulate their ideas, speak their mind, and solve problems.

Embrace Failure to Learn from Mistakes 

Although children learn that failure is bad in school, entrepreneurs know that positive lessons can be learned from mistakes. Failure is not entirely bad when it provides an opportunity to create new perspectives or ways to accomplish goals.
Rather than associating punishment with failure, open a positive conversation with your kids. Discussing the factors that lead to the failure, how it affected them overall, and brainstorming ways to prevent it from happening again in the future can help them develop positive problem-solving skills.

Be a Leader by Example 

Entrepreneurs often credit their success to the people that inspired and motivated them the most. In the same sense, children are often inspired and motivated by their parents in all aspects of their lives.
Leading by example is easy, and working hard, learning from your mistakes, and being respectful are a few things that you can do. By practicing what you preach, your child will absorb and develop the same habits of success.