I recently listened to a woman tell me how her 10-year-old son wanted to start a business.
She told me how her son came to her with a great business idea and had asked her for $50 to start it, which she happily gave to him in support of his budding entrepreneurial endeavors.
This young boy's mother then went on to tell me that he never really did anything with his business and never quite got it off the ground despite her having given him the money and early encouragement to explore the opportunities before him.
She herself was self-employed and I asked her if she had given him the tools and knowledge to guide him along the way.
She said she had not and so I asked her, "If you were entering the world of entrepreneurship without having any knowledge or skill sets of how the marketplace worked, would you know what to do? How would expect your 10-year-old son to know?" We have great intentions when we try to help our children learn important lessons and life skills, but when we do it without giving them the proper tools to be successful, we inadvertently and unknowingly set them up to fail.
Kids don't have a true sense of failure like adults do.
They only know what failure means once we tell them they have failed.
Kids look at the world with open eyes.
They don't see barriers, but solutions to problems.
The young boy gained a sense of failure because his mother implied that he wasted her money on his idea.
The harsh reality is that the mother failed her son by not giving him the proper tools to get his business off the ground.
It's akin to giving a kid a bicycle without its wheels and telling him to ride.
Running a business at any age involves learning and consistently honing vital skill sets.
Kids make great business owners and, yes, they should be encouraged to seek out opportunities.
To help them actually succeed, not just now but in the future, kids need the hands-on tools to do it correctly from the start.