Raising Entrepreneurial Kids Through Real Life Learning
Mindset, Confidence & Leadership
Stories and lessons about confidence, resilience, leadership, personal growth, self-belief, and helping children think differently about life and possibility.
Jai and Kaitlin also attended the Green Super Camp Bali, although their experiences were a little different to Flynn’s as they were with teenagers from 14 to 17 years old and their learning and activities were different. They also had life changing experiences and returned to Australia with plenty of stories to share and noticeable positive changes. Here is Jai’s account in his own words….
Dance & drama!Jai being prepared by his team to present a talk to the group.
The Green Super Camp was a once in a lifetime opportunity! I reckon I learnt more in the one week I was there than I have all of high school! It’s hard to explain what we learnt, but it involved quantum strategies, learning how to trust, have integrity, be balanced, and be self motivated… We also learnt some easy ways to increase our grades!
The way we were taught these things were also very unique… there were so many skits and stories and we were involved in any way possible! Learning became fun and we found it easier to remember things. Everybody there was so friendly and strong friendships were formed quickly.
Green Super Camp BaliHigh Ropes Course.Building project.
Although the kids on the camp were from all around the world, we all got on really well and learnt a lot about each other!
The Green Super Camp Bali was very different to any other camp I have been on… Every morning, to be able to have breakfast, we had to stand up as a team and yell out this chant:…
Team games.Making friends... camp in the background.
“HUNGRY HUNGRY * clapclap * VERY VERY * clapclap * HUNGRY VERY * clapclap* VERY HUNGRY * clapclap* TI CALACKA PI A PI A TI CALACKA PI A PI A TI CALACKA PI A PI A MAKAN!”
At first we all thought this was really weird and immature and none of us were really comfortable chanting it, but after a few days, nobody cared about how they looked (another thing we learnt) and we all got right into it!
Green Super Camp Bali 2012
My favourite part of the camp was interacting with the people there and mucking around with new-found mates! And if I had to say my least favourite part of the camp, it would be the fact that we sat a lot and our bums were sore by the end on the camp but that was minor compared to how much fun we had. Overall this camp was an amazing experience and I would happily go back any day! I would recommend this camp to anyone who is experiencing problems in their life, or would just like to try something new!
By Jai
In our next blog we hope to visit Kaitlin’s account of the Green Super Camp Bali. She hasn’t put pen to paper yet, so possibly we will take a look at something else until she gets round to it. It will be interesting to see if the camp lived up to her expectations!
Twelve year old Flynn confidently exited through the International airport departure gate, heading off to a foreign country for an experience of a lifetime at the Green SuperCamp Bali!
Flynn dancing at the Green SuperCamp BaliThe kids are taught Quantum strategies to learn.Balinese martial arts in the Mud Pit!
Saying goodbye to our son at five in the morning, then watching him leave Australia, knowing that we would not be able to speak to him for over a week, left us with a feeling of tremendous pride… although we were struggling with letting him go.
Focus...... self confidence...... determination!
When Cathy and I learnt about the Green SuperCamp, we immediately knew that it would have tremendous character building benefits for our kids. We wanted to share their experiences on our Enterprise For Kids blog for our readers, as we strongly feel that the skills, values and knowledge that the Green Super Camp instils into kids are the same key attributes that will build future leaders and entrepreneurs.
Here is Flynn’s reflection of his camp in his own words!
The Balinese mud dance!Supercamp was an absolutely awesome experience!
Supercamp was an absolutely awesome experience!
The biggest challenge that I faced was going to Bali on my own without my parents. I just knew that I wanted to go on the Green SuperCamp, and to do that I had to go on my own.
I loved trying all the fun activities like mud wrestling, high ropes course, Balinese dancing and seeing all the zoo animals.
I became friends with kids from all over the world. There were kids from America, Australia, Bali, Indonesia, London, India, New Zealand and Japan. Everyone there were really nice, they were happy and they persevered with all the challenges. I liked everyone at the Green SuperCamp!
One of my favourite activities was the mud fighting because I learnt self defence and I learnt how to throw people over my back. This activity taught me the importance of perseverance and to never give up.
Learning...... the key to success!
We were taught how to use Quantum strategies to think and learn. As a result my reading has become seven times faster.
The Bali Green SuperCamp was a fantastic experience. I think that everyone should have a chance to go!
As parents we have noted a number of positive changes in Flynn since the camp.
Team Building...... responsibility and care!
At his school, the teachers have commented that Flynn has been making a real effort and that he has been keeping away from any sort of mischief. He has taken to reading books (which is something he normally avoids!), so much so that he has reached this term’s reading goal in only three weeks! He has an air of confidence and purpose with the things he does. This is evident with his responsibility with chores and with his focus and efforts when playing weekend soccer. Flynn has been easy to get along with at home and appears to be very happy with life!
Next up we share Jai’s experience at the Green SuperCamp Bali!
If you are visiting this blog because you are interested in running your own summer camp and you’re looking for a proven formula, then maybe this information could help.
We were delighted that our three eldest children were able to attend this year’s Green SuperCamp in Bali. They had amazing life changing experiences that have left them with new understandings and beliefs about themselves that will remain with them forever.
Kaitlin at the Green SuperCamp Bali.
Each of our kids applied for a Green SuperCamp scholarship. The scholarships would help us cover the cost of the camp. Kaitlin, Jai and Flynn each wrote why they wanted to attend the camp.
We are very inspired by the passionate words that they each wrote in their applications. Below we have some words from Kaitlin, and we are very proud of her passion and talent in getting her message across to the organisers of the Supercamp.
Here’s what Kaitlin wrote…
“I am the eldest of seven children in my family. We have been brought up to strive for excellence and to aim as high as we can. My parents have always been determined to give us kids the best opportunities possible to get the best out of life.
This year I have started year 11, and have found it quite difficult. I have been held up by limitations of my time and motivation. I would love to attend the “Green Super Camp” in order to break these barriers. I want a life where I can be a role model and inspiration for my siblings and others. I want to be able to contribute to the world and show so many people a way to be free, but I’m still trying to work out how to get there.
Kaitlin Flying like a fox!
I’m so keen to develop a mindset for success. I want to meet new people from around the world, and absorb their confidence and energy. My goal is to become a school prefect or Head girl and to be accepted into University. To do this I need to \understand and learn about myself. I want to know what it takes to be a leader and to be confident in myself to be one.
If I receive this Scholarship, I would be determined, open and ready, to absorb all the information possible for me to be the best person I can and to motivate others to be the same. This is an experience of a lifetime, and I’m ready for it now.”
You will have to wait for the next blog to discover what each of them learnt from their camp experience! Until then…….
On our journey, we are finding many opportunities coming our way. Some of these opportunities involve speakers who have achieved enormous success in their chosen fields of endeavour. What makes them so inspiring though, is that whatever message they give, whatever company they work for, the principles of success are the same. One such speaker is an inspiring Californian man named Jay Bennett. He has been extremely successful in his chosen endeavour of Network Marketing.
Jay Bennett
Jay is a very fit and healthy man whose appearances can fool you into thinking he is many years younger than what he actually is. He is a walking billboard for the health and well-being industry. Jay speaks with humour and confidence and has a very good message for people who are aspiring for success.
Jay Bennett spoke for two hours and had us all captivated by his insights and passion for helping others achieve health and success. His talk was titled the “Steps to Success”. I thought that his message was very powerful and wanted to share it with our readers.
Dream
If you haven’t really thought about what your dream is then Jay suggests that is where you should start. Identify your real dreams and what you want in your life. Where do you want to be in ninety days? One year? Three years from now? Set goals.
“You have to have a dream to make a dream come true!”
Foundation for Success- ABC’s
Attitude
• Having a Great Attitude always equals Great Results.
• Focus on the solution, not the problem.
• Associate only with positive people.
• Attitude does determine success in every area of your life.
Belief
• Believe in the industry, the company, the products, and financial opportunity.
• Most important- believe in yourself.
• Believe that you are more than capable and deserve success.
• Your level of belief determines your level of success.
• Listen to motivational audios and read motivational books and go to events.
Commitment
• Success is one step at a time.
• Following through on your dreams.
• Success is a journey not a destination- commit to the journey.
• Success is a matter of hanging on when others have let go.
Jay Bennett and Family
Jay Bennett made a big deal about mixing with the right people and keeping yourself focused and motivated. The best way to do that is to regularly attend talks and seminars such as this one.
I found a video of Jay talking about this very topic. Click Here to see him share his wisdom!
In the last blog we spoke about “who it is that teaches our kids about money”. We’d like to delve a little deeper with this topic in this blog. Our intention is to build an understanding of why most of us have settled into the role of being a “worker” rather than following the “entrepreneurial” path. You will also learn a little more about what we are endeavoring to achieve as a family.
Our kids, like all kids, want to have their own money so that they can have a little independence and buy the things that they want. In our family our children sometimes receive money when it is their birthday and they also get a little pocket money.
Kaitlin, our eldest, has a part time job working at a local Brewery serving lunches and doing the kitchen work. She works hard and it pays pretty well. However, to take on a job, she loses some of her weekends and time to do her school work and have a social life. She also commits time to regular baby sitting work for some of the families in the area.
At present the money mindset of my children is much the same as ours, which is likely to be the same as most other people, and that is to earn money, spend and borrow money!
Generally most of us either have a job where we give time for a salary or we have a business where we give our time for a monetary return. Whatever the case, we are tied down and limited with what money we earn and we sacrifice our time for it. Sound familiar?
The funny thing is, that right from an early age we are conditioned to accept this to be the norm and often our minds are generally closed off to entrepreneurial ideas and opportunities. Our schools train us and prepare us for the workforce. Our parents will do the same by pointing us towards a vocation.
Adding to this, media advertising, TV, politicians, universities and our peers all guide us towards getting a job. It is all around us, well intentioned people and institutions all keeping us on the “straight and narrow” pathway of getting a job (earn!), then spending our money on things (spend!) and then borrowing money to spend on more things (borrow!).
Finance companies advertising loans
Look at the people around you and you will see this pattern repeated everywhere. People with expensive things like houses, TVs, holidays, cars, boats and caravans. Most are servicing mortgages to pay for it all. The more things they acquire during their lives the harder and longer they have to work to pay for the things. Most people can see no way out of their situation and accept that this is what is supposed to happen. The average Australian spends about $1.15 out of every dollar they earn!
The Rat Race!
In fact most of us have been conditioned to accept this money mindset which locks us into the“Rat Race!”
Now you may challenge us by saying, what’s wrong with our kids entering the workforce, what’s wrong with spending what they earn and borrowing some more! Honestly, there is nothing wrong or right about it at all. It is just what it is.
For us though, we’re looking for a new direction where we have the time to follow our passions and to be able to give freely to our family, community and world without worrying how to pay for it. Our goal is to break out of the “worker” mindset.
We seek to know how the relatively few, “financially and time free” people managed to rise above the Rat Race. We want to know what they do that is different. How do they think and what is their conditioning around money mindset!
What’s more, we wish for our kids to grow up with the mindset of an entrepreneur! It is important to us that they get a “financial education”.
A Financial Education won't come from the teacher.
From what we’ve discovered so far, is that kids need to start very early to develop their entrepreneur mindset and the skills needed to manage money and build enterprise. They need role models who can foster a different thinking and parents who encourage and look for opportunities that foster enterprise. Open discussions about money and business will help to develop a financial education for kids.
We desire for our seven children to grow up having choices. We want their pathways to be wide with opportunity! We encourage them to follow their passion and not be conditioned into the “earn, spend and borrow” mindset. We hope that they will think differently, have belief in themselves and develop the habits of people who have achieved personal and financial freedom.
We know we have a challenge ahead of us, as our kids have already been conditioned from an early age. Using Kaitlin as an example; she earns money, spends freely and already has a debt. She is studying hard to go to university with all her friends and then ultimately to get a good paying job. Once again I’ll point out that there is no right or wrong about this, only that we would like her to see that there are other ways.
It is always going to be a challenge whilst we have that same conditioning and mindset. Although striving to change our thinking, we recognise that it will take time and persistence to learn new habits and shift old belief systems. However, we are very confident that this year, is the year that we will have a break through. We have enlisted the help of a Money Mindset personal mentor, who is helping us develop a new thinking. He is there to help us transform in our thinking through our actions…. and as we do so, so will our children.
With our up coming blogs we will share his education with you.
It’s amazing how life works sometimes. As you know, we have been sharing our kids’ experiences and jouney as they follow their enterprise ideas through to fruition. Certainly, as our learning and that of our children has accelerated over the past 6 months, other opportunities have landed in our laps.
One such opportunity came in the form of a friend and a simple email. She attended one of the workshops we have been doing with our mentor, Paul Counsel. She sent us an email with a link to something (in her words) pretty special.
Being school teachers and always being open to hearing about things that inspire children to think outside the square and follow enterprising ideas, the link our friend sent us truly was “special”.
Below is a snapshot of a concept that really had us super excited and super motivated.
The Green schoolAmazing bamboo structure
The Green SuperCamp is indeed a very unique and inspiring concept.
The school, located in the tropical paradise island of Bali, runs very forward thinking, engaging leadership camps that have attained massive results in the transformation of kids over a very short time. The SuperCamp uses a state of the art Quantum Learning System that delivers the very best in life and learning skills. We’ve seen no other camp or school use such forward thinking technologies that tap into a child’s mind and rapidly advance their abilities to read, and process and memorize information.
Trust activities and.......working in groups
The staff ratio to kids is 1:4 and they are all highly trained. In fact they go through 300 hours of extensive training in Quantum Learning methodologies and 290 specialized learning techniques that lead to outstanding results that they seem to get consistently get for the kids who attend their camps.
Lots of learning......loved by all
Listening to some of the videos posted on their website, we viewed teenagers who have gone from reading 200 words per minute to 1000 words per minute in just seven days. We have both worked in many schools and seen no one that can claim anything like that! Kids from all over the world attend the SuperCamps. They are particularly popular for American kids who travel to Bali during their summer vacation.
A bird's eye viewLooking up into the ceiling
The SuperCamps are held at the world renowned Green School campus. The founders of the school, John and Cynthia Hardy, built the new Green School almost entirely of bamboo. They wanted to set up a school that is at the cutting edge of environmental education, and also takes on a holistic view for the future of the Earth. Their school was never to be built in a city, but in the very heart of nature itself.
Solar panels in a natural environmentHut accommodation for the camp
It is designed to have the smallest carbon footprint by having compost toilets, to open walless rooms with natural lighting. The kids interact with animals that produce the methane gas for power. The flowing river that passes though the grounds also powers the school. To top it all off, the kids grow their own food to eat!
Green School’s mission is to “empower global citizens and green innovators who are inspired to take responsibility for the sustainability of the world”.
“The school has attained international attention for its revolutionary approach to education, with its focus on transformational education in a spectacular setting. It has built a reputation for its focus on nurturing our young leaders of tomorrow on sustainable living with a deep respect for our planet and each other.” (Quoted by CNN TV.)
The school bases much of its philosophy on the Steiner System. The early Austrian educator, Rudolf Steiner, believed in the philosophy of balancing education with social learning.
Social interactions....
...and just hanging about!
As we viewed the short movies of teens who share their experiences after attending a Green SuperCamp, we were astounded by their personal insights. They all go through a journey of self discovery where they get to build strong relationships with future leaders from all over the world. Many claim that Green SuperCamp is a life changing experience!
Leaping for joy!Kite building skills
They learn to live in the moment and be fully self expressed. They develop a responsibility for themselves and each other and they do things way outside their comfort zone. Activities such as rope climbing, Balinese dancing, mud wrestling, flying fox, and physically breaking wood, all contribute to building self confidence and leadership. Many kids manage to have massive break throughs in overcoming obstacles in their lives and their parents are astounded by their transformation.
Fun in the mud!Fun as a group
We are completely amazed that Green SuperCamp manages to have such a huge positive impact on kids in only a matter of days. If all schools could learn from this innovative school, then we would have a generation of kids who are very equipped to provide the leadership required for our future world. They have a camp designed especially for developing entrepreneurial teenagers. Now that is a first!. When has a school ever tried to foster in kids an Entrepreneurial mindset?
We have been so inspired by Green SuperCamp that our three oldest kids are attending the camp this year.
We will let you know in future blogs, how they go….although we think we already know the answer to that one! 🙂
