Your Young Entrepreneur

Help Your Child Start a Business

By Kendeyl Johansen

Chris McLaws feels that her son has benefited from starting his own business. "It gives him a sense of accomplishment and he's doing something constructive and helping people instead of watching television or getting bored," she says.

Barcon is even learning some crucial negotiating skills. While it's fun to work with friends, she admits that problems do come up. But a little communication and compromise solve them. For example, when the club's first customer specifically asked Barcon to baby-sit, the girls drew a name out of a hat as they had agreed to do. "We talked about it and decided if someone requests a specific name and that person is available, that girl gets the job," says Barcon.

Stahl often speaks to students, teachers and parents about the lessons learned through entrepreneurship, such as motivation, drive, persistence, confidence, speaking skills and the ability to persuade. He feels entrepreneurial skills are useful in all parts of life and failure should be met with ambition. "Many times even the most successful business people failed at one venture or another," he says. "If [kids] have the true entrepreneurial drive, keep at it again and again."

To enhance your child's chance of start-up success, Stahl advises performing in-depth research on business concepts, markets and business models. This can be complex or simple depending on the business and the age of the entrepreneur. Jacob McLaws simply looked around his neighborhood, saw busy families with weedy yards and now he's well on his way to a surfing vacation.

So talk with your young entrepreneur, encourage the business ideas they have and help work out details. You could be grooming the next Bill Gates.

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