enterpriseforkids.com

Inspiring kids to be entrepreneurial.

Honey Pot of Gold!

May 11th, 2012

Flynn is a natural budding young entrepreneur and he is never afraid to chase an opportunity. He often comes up with brilliant enterprising ideas and the one idea he has planned to take on with ‘Enterprise for Kids’ is a definite money spinner!

Flynn - a budding Entrepreneur

Before I tell you all about Flynn’s awesome enterprising idea I want to introduce some “food for thought”.

Prior to us starting “Enterprise for Kids”, our children were following the same conditioning around money that we have, a conditioning that society encourages greatly……earn money, spend money, borrow money. Whilst many people may not see anything wrong with this, many of us actually spend far more than we have come in. So the cycle never gets broken and by the time we reach retirement age, we have very little to show for the many years of hard work we have put in.

That’s why building an entrepreneurial mindset is so important. Breaking old conditioned habits is even more important…and the younger you are, the less conditioning you have. So whilst we want to develop in our children, a great work ethos (work hard and with integrity), we want to develop a way to move beyond that….a way to spot an opportunity, then a way to take action and finally, a way to help others achieve the same success. This system moves a person from being the “worker” to seeing an “enterprising” opportunity, to switching on their “entrepreneurial” self, to finally becoming the “expert” in their field.

An entrepreneur’s focus is in the development of a great system and finding great people to run it. They use other people’s time and other people’s money to do the work for them. Their systems will continue even after they pass from this world. A classic example is Thomas Edison’s formula for General Electric. He is no longer with us, but his empire continues.

Enterprising Queen Bee

A Queen Bee is Entrepreneurial.

The Queen Bee most definitely comes under the bracket of entrepreneur! She controls her entire empire from within her hive.

Thousands of honey bees (the workers) head out of her hive each morning collecting nectar, pollen and other resources for the hive, such as water. The worker bees will risk life and limb and literally work themselves to death (a worker bee only lives a few weeks).

The Queen bee will have employees whose main job is to guard the hive from danger. Others clean the hive and many fan the hive to keep the temperature controlled. The queen will have her workers who care for the nursery and for her own needs.

All she has to do is eat and lay eggs!

A bee hive is a unique system consisting of many specialized individuals that each have a job to do. The system performs like it is a one large living organism. If the Queen dies, then she will be replaced by another Queen Bee, the workers keep working and the Hive goes on. Not a lot different to General Electric, Apple or Ford Motor Company!

Flynn negotiating a honey deal with his Grandad.

So What has Flynn’s Idea got to do with a Queen Bee?

Flynn’s enterprising idea has everything to do with our Queen Bee and her empire!

In fact his plan is to use her company’s product, honey.

Flynn intends to buy raw unprocessed honey at wholesale in bulk and sell it in smaller jars at retail. He has worked out his figures and can see excellent profit potential.

In fact, once his business gets underway he can see the potential for his business to grow quite substantially. So I won’t tell you anymore about his plans, but if you missed clicking on the link above, you can listen to Flynn himself by clicking this link which will take you to a short video of Flynn explaining his awesome enterprise idea and business plan.

Seeing as we’re on the topic of honey, I thought I’d share a few facts about honey, and in particular raw unprocessed honey…

Honey is considered a super food because it is a potent antioxidant crammed with rich nutrients. It’s a natural antiseptic, an antibacterial and a healing salve for wounds and burns, but not all honeys are created equal.

Raw unprocessed honey is one hundred percent pure, natural, unpasteurized and unadulterated. It is extracted from the bee hive in its natural form and bottled. It is not filtered or heated. Unlike processed honey, raw unprocessed honey retains all the enzymes, royal jelly, pollen, propolis, minerals, rich vitamins and carbohydrate content.

Mmmm… appears to be a fantastic product!

So what do you think? Is Flynn onto a real enterprise for kids’ potential success story! You will have to follow along with our blog to see how he goes.

In our next blog you’ll be inspired by another budding entrepreneur, four year old Chayse, as he show cases his business idea. It is as sweet as Flynn’s enterprising ideas!

New From Old!

May 9th, 2012

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 enterprise idea. 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 enterprise idea!

Amber

Next we will share Flynn’s business plan for his new enterprise. It is really a honey pot of gold!

Finding Enterprise Ideas

May 7th, 2012

Finding Enterprise ideas. Easier said than done! Coming up with a brilliant enterprise idea that can make enough money to achieve your goal…. and ones that you feel inspired enough about to keep you going when things get tough…………well, that’s a tall order for an adult, let alone a kid!

The trick is to spend some time brainstorming. What I explained to my entrepreneurial kids, was that they needed to think of all the problems that our small community town has, and then look for solutions!

By solving people’s problems you will create opportunities for enterprise. In the video (which you can view here), I gave the following example to my kids.

No body likes getting cold. Winter is drawing near and people are chopping wood ready to fuel their fires. They will need kindle to get their fires started.

Problem: No-one likes scrambling around outside on a cold and rainy day gathering kindle to get their fire started.

Solution: Collect bundles of gum tree sticks (they are full of fuel and burn easily), bundle them up and pile them in a wheelbarrow to sell to people who need the kindling.

So, step one was finding the problem, step two, the solution and step three would be putting it into action. What a great and simple enterprise idea.

So after giving this example, the kids had no trouble finding enterprise 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 looking after toddlers and babies. Everyday they are helping with their baby sister Akaisha. They feed her, change her nappy (diaper, for our American readers!), bathe her and take her for walks. They are both very skilled and have an ease with babies. They know when Akaisha is tired and they know how to soothe her when she is upset. This skill could lend itself to any number of enterprise opportunities.

Reading with siblings

Looking after Akaisha

The obvious enterprise would be baby sitting, but other ideas include:

Homework Support – Busy parents may need someone to listen to their toddlers read, learn spelling words and with writing practice.

Toddler Playmate – After school parents would appreciate an older child entertaining and playing with their toddler or baby. This would be more so in families with only one child as that child may lack in playmates. So why not offer to be a paid playmate.

Walk Younger Children Home from School – Busy parents may appreciate a responsible older child walking their kids home from school.

Sports/Dance/Art Trainer – Amber and Kaitlin could teach other kids how to throw and catch a ball, bat, bounce on a trampoline or kick a football. If not a sports trainer, what about Music or Dance Teacher, or Art Coach. Both Amber and Kaitlin are extremely good at art!

Kaitlin loves kids.

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.

Budding young musician

A tip for everyone: You can increase your value by up-skilling and becoming an expert in an area. You then create excellent enterprise opportunities for yourself. The more you increase your skill, the more valuable you become and the more you will be sought after by people. As a result, people will pay well for your time and knowledge.

For example, being a whiz on sorting computer glitches would make you very valuable to people who have computer problems, or being an expert pianist would create opportunities to teach others how to play the piano.

Many of these ideas aren’t new, but people, especially children, don’t take the time to look at their existing skill set.

Finding enterprise ideas can be fun and it isn’t that hard if you do a little thinking and brainstorming first. Our next blog will be very exciting!

Amber will reveal her enterprise idea that she will be embarking on in her quest to reach her goals…..so stay tuned…..

Lining up for a Goal!

May 5th, 2012

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 Olympics

Cathy 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 explaining

Flynn'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!

THE $100 Family Enterprise Project!

May 3rd, 2012

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…

Handing out the $100 notes!

Kids considering their goals

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 project

Raining $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………

Enterprise for Kids… Our New Beginning!

May 1st, 2012

Welcome to our blog Enterprise for Kids!

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.

Visit our About Us page to meet us all!