My family immigrated here to Australia from Kenya back when I was just a kid in 1970. They came out with little qualifications, money or possessions and were supporting a young family. In order to make ends meet, my mother became very good at hunting down a bargain at a variety of places, including thrifty stores, lawn sales, second hand shops and markets. Years later she opened her own second hand goods shop and did exceptionally well out of it as a small business.
Amber was looking for an enterpriseidea. She knew her Grandmother was an expert at finding bargains and then on-selling them for a profit. Her Gran suggested that Amber start her search at the local tip’s recycling centre, a place where thrown-away items are put aside, then sold to the public for next to nothing. Here was a wonderful opportunity to buy something, fix it up and resell it.
Gran is a great bargain hunter.Fossicking for "treasure"
The old saying…“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!” was to ring very true here.
So that is the basis of Amber’s new business.
To create something new from something old.
Her business plan is very sound and she’s definitely onto a winner! She is very proud of what she has come up with and shares it below in this short video. Just click the picture of Amber to view her new enterpriseidea!
Amber
Next we will share Flynn’s business plan for his new enterprise. It is really a honey pot of gold!
Business ideas for kids often begin with everyday problems, useful skills and a little creative thinking.
Coming up with an enterprise idea that makes money, solves a real problem and keeps a child motivated is a tall order for an adult, let alone a kid.
Children do not need a perfect idea to get started. In fact, many of the best ideas come from noticing what people need, thinking creatively and using the skills children already have.
Looking for enterprise ideas as a family.
Business Ideas for Kids: Finding Enterprise Ideas
Business ideas for kids are often found by looking closely at everyday life. Coming up with an enterprise idea that makes money, solves a real problem and keeps a child motivated can be a tall order for an adult, let alone a kid.
The trick is to spend time brainstorming ideas together and helping children notice the small problems around them.
What I explained to my entrepreneurial kids was that they needed to think about the problems in our small community town, then look for possible solutions.
By solving people’s problems, children begin to create real opportunities for enterprise.
Business Ideas for Kids Start with Solving Problems
In the original video for this post, I gave the kids a simple example. Winter was drawing near and people were chopping wood ready to fuel their fires.
Problem: No one likes scrambling around outside on a cold and rainy day gathering kindling to get their fire started.
Solution: Collect bundles of gum tree sticks, tie them up and sell them to people who need kindling ready to go.
Step one was finding the problem. Step two was finding the solution. Putting the idea into action would be step three.
What a great and simple enterprise idea.
After hearing this example, the kids had no trouble finding enterprise ideas of their own.
Using Skills to Create Kids Entrepreneur Ideas
Our mentor, Paul Counsel, often shares a great educational basis behind what it means to be entrepreneurial.
He encourages us to consider how we are an asset to others. What skills and knowledge do we have that could be of service to others? What are we good at?
For example, Kaitlin and Amber are very good with toddlers and babies. Every day they were helping with their baby sister Akaisha. They fed her, changed her nappy, bathed her and took her for walks.
Both girls were very skilled and had a natural ease with babies. Knowing when Akaisha was tired and how to soothe her when she was upset became second nature. These abilities could easily lead to real enterprise opportunities.
Everyday skills can become enterprise ideas:
Reading with siblingsLooking after Akaisha
Turning Everyday Skills into Enterprise Ideas
The obvious enterprise would be babysitting, but other ideas include:
Homework Support — busy parents may need someone to listen to younger children read, practise spelling words or help with writing.
Toddler Playmate — after school, some parents may appreciate an older child entertaining and playing with their toddler or baby.
Walking Younger Children Home from School — busy parents may appreciate a responsible older child helping with the school run.
Sports, Dance, Music or Art Coaching — Amber and Kaitlin could teach other kids how to throw, catch, draw, dance or play music.
Kaitlin loves kids.
These are not complicated ideas, but they are valuable and practical. Children can easily miss this point. Often, they do not realise that skills they use every day may be helpful to someone else.
Finding Business Ideas for Kids Through Imagination
All it requires, when finding enterprise ideas for kids, is a little imagination.
Take the time to identify problems and look at what assets you have that could help people. Helping people is the key to enterprise.
Many ideas are not new. However, children often need guidance to look at their existing skills and realise how valuable they already are.
Budding young musician
A tip for everyone: you can increase your value by up-skilling and becoming an expert in an area.
As your skill increases, your value increases too. Over time, people are more likely to seek your help and pay for your time and knowledge.
How Kids Can Start a Business by Increasing Their Value
For example, being a whiz at sorting computer glitches would make you valuable to people who have computer problems. Being an expert pianist could create opportunities to teach others how to play piano.
Many of these ideas are simple. The real lesson is helping children notice what they are already good at, then think about how those skills could help others.
Finding enterprise ideas can be fun, and it isn’t that hard if you do a little thinking and brainstorming first.
Amber will reveal her enterprise idea in the next blog as she begins her quest to reach her goals, so stay tuned.
Key takeaway: Business ideas for kids often begin with simple problem-solving. When children learn to notice problems, use their skills and think about how they can help others, they begin to see enterprise opportunities everywhere.
Where to Next?
If you enjoyed this post about finding business ideas for kids, you may also like:
Raise Entrepreneurial Kids — ideas for helping children build initiative, confidence and real-world skills.
Visualing a goal, evoking the emotional response within and taking the necessary action (whether it be aquiring the knowledge and skills or doing something physical) are all of the necessary ingredients to achieve a particular goal.
In fact all leading sports men and women do this. I remember reading about one of Australia’s very best runners, Cathy Freeman, who won Gold in the 1994 Canadian Commonwealth Games in both the 200m and 400m races. Cathy began her preparation for the 200m race two years earlier.
Every day she trained and visualized the race in her mind. Her visualization included every detail of the race from what she was wearing, the lane she was in and how she would run the race from start to finish. She even pictured the time she would get and how much it was to beat the second place getter. She was so mentally prepared that she had no doubts at all that she had the gold in the bag.
Cathy Freeman winning the 200 OlympicsCathy Freeman winning gold.
She had already won in her mind. As it turned out she ran the race perfectly with every detail of the race being as it was in her mind. She is a living legend!
Imagine if our kids were able to muster up that sort of determination and self belief! It would make anything possible for them. So our kids needed to see a real purpose in the kids enterprise project that they were embarking on. Without a real purpose that they could believe in, they would not have the steam to see it through.
Before we even considered kids enterprise ideas, I asked them to think of something that they would like to buy with the profits they were going to make from their enterprise businesses. It had to be something that they really wanted and something that they realistically believed they would be able to achieve.
Coming up with ways to spend the money was easy, even though at this stage they still had no idea what enterprise project they would be doing. But that didn’t matter. The Laws of the Universe would ensure that it all worked out. All they needed to do was establish a realistic goal that they could believe in with certainty. If the kids wanted their goal bad enough, and focused on what they needed to do to get that money, then the enterprise would be fruitful.
Once the kids had a visual on what they wanted, the next stage was to convert it into a dollar amount. I made a stipulation that their first enterprise idea may not completely reach the whole monetry target they had set for themselves, but it had to at least be able to pay my $100 back + $1. This we called ROI (or Return On Investment). Future enterprise ideas could contribute to the children realising the rest of their financial goal.
Finally, they needed to set an end date for the completion of their enterprise.
Amber's Vision Board. Click to view her explainingFlynn's Vision Board. Click his photo to view him telling about his goals.Chayse wants Nerf Guns! Click this photo to hear Chayse and Kit tell about their vision boards.
The kids jumped onto the computer to find images of the things they wanted to buy when they had made the money. These were printed and each of the kids constructed vision boards which I laminated (to make them special and long lasting). The vision boards are now stuck on their walls in their bedrooms where our little “enterprising team” can look, dream, think and evoke the visual pictures into their subconscious.
In the next blog we’ll take you through the process of how the kids came up with each of their “kids’ enterprise ideas.” See you then!
For our kids to develop the skills and habits of an entrepreneur, they need to begin somewhere. But where? The beauty of Cathy and I having a wealth creation Mentor at our disposal, is that we could take the invaluabe information we had been learning and apply it in small pieces to developing the mindset of our kids.
This process also involved us having a good, hard look at how we operate in our own lives in regards to planning, organising and taking ation. Cathy loves to plan things out in her head and on paper before starting a task, and once satisfied, will start when all structures are in place.
I, on the other hand, like to dive in and see where it leads. So a happy compromise was met and we decided that the kids just needed to come up with an enterprise idea and just get started. We could refine the process later.
Getting the kids to kick off with an enterprise project (when they have little idea as to where to even start), was easier said than done. But I knew that some of the things that had held us back over the years was “waiting” until all conditions were right. This saw us miss many great opportunities that were out there.
So we just “started”. Admittedly it was a bit like the blind leading the blind…but we went in with an open mind and decided to see what would happen and where it would lead.
Goal setting for "Enterprise for Kids"Chayse and Kit drawing their goals.
Check out our very first videos. The filming is pretty rough as we had our 15 year old daughter using her “creative” license whilst filming, but you’ll get the gist of what our project is all about if you watch them. Here they are…
For those of you who would prefer to read, I’ll give you the run down…
I presented of the kids with $100 each! (except the baby….as all she would do is try and eat it!)
$100 Family Enterprise projectRaining $50 Bills... and more!!
Wow!!!” was their first response. An early Christmas present!
“Ohhhh” was the next response. More sedate now that there seemed to be a catch. But they listened to my proposal.
They were to use the money as start up capital for an enterprise, and (much to their disappointment), weren’t to spend it on themselves. In fact they were to pay me back once they had attained their business goal.
I was a bit soft on them though. I also said that I would take the risk and if they were unsuccessful and weren’t able to pay back the $100, then I’d accept that and absorb the loss. I did this because I wanted them to give their enterprise a go and I was conscious that if they were hung up about having to pay me back, then they may worry about their loss and as a consequence not find the courage to even start to play the game.
Loaning the $100 was the first step in our elaborate plan to give our kids a shot at being entrepreneurial with their kids enterprise project.
Check out our next blog for the subsequent steps in our entrepreneurial quest………
We are one average, large and happy family daring to “dream big”. We are on a journey to escape from the “Rat Race” and join the relative few who have achieved personal and financial freedom. But we have seven gorgeous reasons to try. We hope to inspire others to follow our lead and to provide our readers with insights and ideas into how it can be done.
About to embark on our new entrepreneurial adventure!
Our story begins with a huge understanding of what it takes to be a loving and adventurous family with wonderful family and friends, but only a little understanding of what it takes to be financially successful. It is from this point, and with the help of a successful entrepreneurial mentor, that we will start our journey. It is our hope that our children can gain a financial education and success mindsets surrounding money whilst maintaining a genuine love of life.
We want to teach our children how to develop enterprise skills (ie: how to spot an opportunity), how to put that opportunity into practise (entrepreneurial skills) and of course, how to manage money successfully. In addition to this, we want them to appreciate and be grateful for all the opportunities they attract and learn to give back to the community in a way that makes a real difference. This process will take time, but we hope you enjoy the learning with us.
You will have the opportunity to follow each of our kids on their individual journeys, (and ours too!) We also plan to introduce some of our kids’ friends to “Enterprise for Kids” and our blog will follow their journeys too.
Conventional thinking may be challenged as we look and reflect upon our own belief systems and learn what it takes for a person to become financially and personally free.
So jump on board and let’s see where this exciting new adventure “Enterprise for Kids” takes us.
