As many kids do when they are young, they dream of what they want to be when they grow up. Most want to be a firefighter, a police officer, a teacher, a doctor, or like myself a dolphin trainer. When they are thinking of what they want to be not many ever say they want to be an entrepreneur. For whatever reason it just doesn’t seem to be one of the top choices. Teaching kids about entrepreneurship and showing them that it could be a future career for them is part of what the BizKids camp is all about. BizKids is a week full of interactive learning, activities, games, field trips, and meeting real entrepreneurs. Each camp starts with the kids choosing a business idea and over the course of the week they develop their business plan, get a loan, work on their cash sheets, do some marketing and prepare themselves for Market Day! Market Day is the highlight of the week, it’s where each camper is finally open for business, ready to make some money and put all those new skills to the test!
Last year was my first opportunity to work with BizKids. Seeing the kids excitement over being able to start their own business and make their own money reminded me of a Ted Talks video I have watched awhile back. It was a talk by Cameron Herold about raising kids to be entrepreneurs.[1] In the video Mr. Herold talks about some of his experiences growing up and having entrepreneurial characteristics that his parents tried to encourage from a young age. In the video he talks about a different way of parenting than what is the norm of society. Society teaches kids to go for great jobs in big corporations, but those corporations were once started by an entrepreneur, so why not teach and encourage that? It’s important to nurture entrepreneurial traits because these kids might one day have the solution to solve some of the problems in the world. The traits he points out that are important to inspire are: attainment, tenacity, leadership, sales, introspection, networking, handling failure, and customer service. We need to be aware of these traits because if we don’t get kids on board at a young age they might miss an opportunity because they are not groomed to think in that way. Entrepreneurs are people who have passion, ideas and see the needs of the world and have the courage to stand up and do it while putting everything on the line for it. He states that we must teach children to fish and not simply go buy the fish, we have to nurture the right skills from a young age.
These are the top skills Mr. Herold believes we should be teaching to our youth:
| • Problem solvin | • To want to make money |
| • To ask questions | • How to sell |
| • To be creative | • To ask for help |
| • To lead others | • Public speaking |
| • To learn from mistakes | • To never give up |
| • How to save money | • To see solutions |
No matter what career your child chooses these are great skills to teach them when they are young. The video then finishes with another little video about entrepreneurship and saying “I think kids could change the world as entrepreneurs, are you ready to help make it happen…’. If you have a few minutes click here to watch this video and see why it is important to raise kids to be an entrepreneurs.
This is what the BizKids Camp is all about! It helps to teach these skills at a young age and encourage kids to learn about business and more specifically entrepreneurship. They learn the ins and outs of running a business as well as the values, attitudes and skills needed to be successful in today’s economy. With three camps running this summer I look forward to seeing all the ideas they come up with and helping them successfully run their business. Make sure to save the date and come check out market day to see all the hard work and support our young entrepreneurs!
Posted by: Kendall Kerbashian
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_herold_let_s_raise_kids_to_be_entrepreneurs.html