Teach Your Child Entrepreneurship

As the owner and founder of TeaCHildMath and small business entrepreneur,  I am frequently asked how to teach children entrepreneurship. 

My recommendation is to have your child actually run a business such as a lemonade stand.  Have your child compute the cost of the lemons, the sugar, the cups and other incidentals. 

At the end of the day, have your child count up the sales and figure out the net profit.  Your child is solving some real math problems in a real context, not only addition and subtraction but multiplication and division.  What was the net profit at the end of the day if 15 cups of lemonade at 50 cents each were sold and the cost was 5 cents per cup?  Math in a real context is powerful.  Your child is holding a fistful of dollars and a cup full of change.  He/she is very interested in how much money he/she made and how to increase profits next time. 

Discuss what factors increase sales such as selling on a summer day, cost of products, lemonade stand location and developing salesmanship skills by engaging with customers.  What of advertising with a bigger sign and maybe one posted on the corner?  Discuss whether diversifying the product line by selling chocoate chip cookies would increase sales.  One lemonade-stand entrepreneur in my neighborhood found, not surprisingly, it was cheaper to buy chocolate chip cookies at Costco and reselling them.

A dollar your child earns is worth so much more than the dollar you give him. Think also of your child’s pride and satisfaction in running his or her business.  Why not teach your child to be resourceful at an early age?  Why not develop these entrepreneurial skills?

Entrepreneurship is developing an idea, product or service and selling it.  Start with a lemonade stand; the lessons learned here are Basic Entrepreneurship 101.

Tags: , , ,

Comments are closed.