Having lived the life of an entrepreneur since I was 17, there are days when I would not wish this life upon anyone. There are also days where I don’t know why everyone doesn’t start their own business!
Being an entrepreneur, Being a successful entrepreneur gives you the freedom to create the life that you want. It also is one of the most unforgiving lifestyles, because when you make a mistake you feel it in many areas of your life. I need my daughter to know that there are consequences to her actions, and on the flipside there can be a huge benefit for doing the right thing.
One of the things that I have learned after being in business for so long is that when you work to become a better business person you cannot help but become a better person at the same time.
- When you work to become a better salesperson, you will also learn how to be better at normal day to day conversations.
- As you learn accounting you become better at managing your family’s finances.
- Building a team on your business requires the same skill set as building a team and any other leadership capacity (family, church, etc.)
My daughter is seven years old. She has come into work with me for two full days within the past few weeks, as she is on Christmas break. She sees me as I am trying to close a deal, work with my team to solve a problem, get stressed out when things don’t go my way, and see me in real-time overcoming obstacles.
She will not get this real life experience by reading a book.
Another reason that I insist that she is around the entrepreneurial lifestyle is that she learns that my actions directly affect her life. I’ll give you an example: the other day she saw an ad for Disneyland and told me how much you wanted to go. I told her that it would take “at least three more social media clients before we can even think about getting Disneyland passes”. By telling her exactly what I need to sell to make her dreams a reality, she can correlate my growth in business to an additional comfort item for the family. This shows her that as an entrepreneur I have the opportunity, with a little more effort and action, to have an almost-immediate impact on the quality of life for my family.
On the flipside, when we had to give up Disneyland passes a couple years ago and my daughter wanted to know why, I had to tell her “the business is changing and we need to change with it.” She sees the good and the bad. She is able to, as much as she can at her age, understand why things are happening in our household and how they correlate to what is happening in my business.
This knowledge will give her empathy as an adult when her friends are laid off, and give her hope when she finds herself backed against the wall.
She will see that as businesses grow they also change; she will have the experience of being able to hire friends (and then have to do the hard work of firing them if they do not work out); and she can experience the positive impact of good business decisions when she gets to go to Disneyland again.
I encourage my daughters to be who they want to be and live the life that they desire. While they’re still young it is my job to show them the options that they have, and that is why I insist that they live the life of an entrepreneur with me