I’ve talked several times on my podcast about how my husband and I have set up a kind of business incubator for our kids. It’s like a mini Shark Tank model, aimed at teaching them business skills and life lessons during their high school years.
Since we homeschool, it’s pretty doable. By the time they’re 14, they’ll mostly be done with traditional schoolwork and start this business program. They’ll still take their SAT and ACT and earn a standard high school diploma, just in case they choose to attend college. But because entrepreneurship is such a big part of our lives, we want to give them the tools to start their own businesses if they wish.
If our kids decide to go to college, we’ll support them fully. However, inspired by the Thiel Fellowship, we also want them to have the freedom to chase their big ideas early on. Both my husband and I are entrepreneurs, so this is a way for us to spend time with them and share what we’ve learned on our own business journeys.
When we first began our own businesses as adults, we learned a lot of lessons the hard way. Running a business can be tough, but we’ve gained invaluable life lessons through those challenges. However, we learned these as adults with a family to support and bills to pay. We value those lessons but want our kids to learn similar ones while the stakes are lower.
Our business incubator has also led to an agreement we have with our kids. Specifically, before they can get their driver’s license or their own cell phone, they have to run a profitable business for one year. We picked these milestones because they’re really motivating for teenagers, but they also require accountability, which running a business can teach.
When we considered the values and skills we wanted to pass down, we realized many of them can be learned from starting and running a business. For example, running a simple business like pet sitting or a lawn mowing service requires problem-solving and responsibility.
We’ve always told our kids that an entrepreneur is someone who finds a problem and solves it. Entrepreneurship involves chasing opportunities beyond the resources you currently have, which encompasses problem-solving and risk-taking. We want our children to see the value in identifying a problem and figuring out how to solve it—ultimately benefiting others in an impactful way.
Being a business owner means having self-motivation and discipline since, most times, there’s no boss setting hours or handing out tasks. We try to stay hands-off. Once our kids have an idea and start working on it, we don’t continually remind them of their tasks. They’re responsible for managing their own schedules and responsibilities related to their business.
My husband often says, being successful means doing the right things, long enough, consistently. Running a business teaches this lesson in consistency. It’s not about being good at something just once; it’s about doing what’s necessary for success over the long haul. We also emphasize helping others and solving problems consistently.
Most businesses involve interacting with a variety of people. Even as a kid, my pet sitting and babysitting gigs taught me customer service and negotiation. We want our children to engage more in face-to-face interactions, especially since digital communication is so dominant.
To show their business is profitable, our kids need to track their finances. My own parents taught me personal finance early on, so I learned business accounting relatively easily. We’re aiming to provide our kids with financial literacy from an early age. They learn to use accounting software to manage expenses and income, and to create profit and loss statements.
Goal setting is a frequent conversation in our house. Just like personal goals in activities such as sports or music, business goals are crucial for success. We help our kids set monthly and yearly business goals and develop plans to reach them.
Starting and running a business pushes creative and critical thinking because new problems arise with no guidebook to follow. Solving them demands creativity and thinking outside the box. We’ve learned a high tolerance for risk and failure is valuable, something I had to learn the hard way as an adult.
Entrepreneurship requires solving a problem or pursuing an opportunity beyond existing resources. This often means no clear path forward, and we help point them in the right direction during the initial stages. Testing ideas through real-world conversations helps refine them.
Sometimes in my own business, I’ve hit obstacles I couldn’t overcome alone. Seeking advice from others who have faced similar challenges has been invaluable. I’ve discovered the importance of asking for help and building a community, which I hope to embed in my children too.
Now let me break down how our business incubator works for our kids:
First, we help them come up with a viable idea. We don’t generate ideas for them, but we guide them to think of things they’re interested in or problems they can solve creatively. The business doesn’t have to make a ton of money, just be profitable. Even before they’re required to start a business, they’ve already tried their hands at local projects and blogs.
Once they have an idea, they must draft a business plan. It includes the mission, potential customers, costs, projected income, marketing strategies, and goals. If their idea needs startup funds they can’t cover, we discuss investment options. They pitch their idea to us, like on Shark Tank, to secure support.
We work with them to understand the legal and tax aspects of their business idea. They join meetings with our lawyers, bankers, and accountants to learn these systems firsthand. We also teach them to manage business finances using spreadsheets or QuickBooks, creating profit and loss statements to check profitability.
When they start turning a profit, we introduce our methods for saving, giving, and investing money. Learning about business and finance is part of their upbringing, so they’re familiar with these concepts by the time they’re teenagers.
Our goal is to raise well-rounded, capable adults who can handle whatever life throws their way. Different people might approach this differently based on personality and resources, but this system fits our family well. What skills do you focus on teaching your kids?
