Raising Cash Smart Kids

Every now and again, I meet someone who is new to the area of financial education, and when that happens I find that I need to go back to basics and explain why it is that we believe business experience is a vital part of a well-rounded financial education.

I find that many people get focused on the earning of money when they think about business for kids. Many people see business as difficult, and stressful, and as a complicated way to make money. It seems to them that understanding business is optional, as most kids will never need that understanding.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Kids gain so many benefits from running a business, above and beyond the money they may earn.

Business Understanding Benefits Consumers and Employees, As Well As Entrepreneurs

Even as a consumer, if you understand how business works, you are much less likely to be conned, overcharged, or exploited. As an employee, your understanding of the business model your employer uses will make you more valuable, help you to make the right choices when using your discretion, and enable you to choose the right time and the right supporting arguments to ask for that raise.

Business Experience Develops Character

Quite apart from any financial benefit, running a business develops your child across a range of personal qualities. A business has been described as “one of the best personal development programs available”.

Whether it is dealing with unhappy customers, trying to make sales, managing contractors, or managing their own emotions of excitement, apprehension or disappointment, doing business will put your child in learning situations which develop his or her character and attitude. Business provides the best possible feedback – immediate and accurate. If you get your marketing message right, customers show up. If you treat your customers badly, they go elsewhere.

We have devoted ourselves to shielding kids from the “harsh realities” of the world, but a little controlled exposure to reality is very important preparation for real life!

Business Experience Builds Confidence

Doing business enables a child to negotiate with adults on an equal footing, as a professional supplier of good or services. The experience of being taken seriously is incredibly important, particularly in the tween and early teen years, when our culture really doesn’t offer kids much opportunity to interact with adults as peers.

I cannot stress enough how important it is for kids to have the sense that they can provide something of value, which adults will take seriously. Kids are not stupid – they know when adults are cooing “oh, that’s lovely” about a painting or poem, but don’t really mean it. They won’t treject condescending praise – any praise is better than no praise – but they hunger for real, valid affirmation. They yearn to be able to do something worthwhile, and be appreciated for their contribution with no allowances required for their age or cuteness.

Once a child knows their accomplishments are genuinely impressive at an adult level, it relieves a primal anxiety about how they will make their own way in the world as adults.

Too many of our kids never get this sense of their own capability, and become children in adult bodies, still uncertain and anxious about their ability to function in the adult world. Early business experience can provide that vital sense of competence and self-sufficiency, even when the actual business earnings are no more than a few dollars.

Business Experience Teaches The Real Value Of Money

When a child is too young to have a regular job, the only way they will learn the connection between providing something of value and receiving money in return is to have a business.

As we all know, the “something for nothing” mentality is at plague proportions in our culture, and it causes a lot of misery. Early business experience, coupled with parents who are responsible about allowances, will give kids a good, solid foundation of visceral knowledge that money comes as a result of providing value – and that they have something of value to offer.

What better attitude to instil in your kids?

Of course, it is also important to teach them how to manage their money responsibly – to save, invest, give, and to make wise spending decisions. Business experience is not the be-all and end-all of financial education.

Business education, however, makes an important contribution to financial understanding, which cannot be replicated using allowances alone.

This is why we created the Cash-Smart Kids program, to provide an integrated approach to financial education – one that covers all the bases.

Jenny Ford is a financial educator, holder of a B.A.(Hons) in Psychology, a Diploma in Training And Assessment Systems, and an Advanced Diploma in Business Management, and mother of three girls, all of whom started businesses aged between nine and twelve. Jenny’s blog can be seen at Raising Entrepreneurs.

Enter the Cash-Smart Kids YouTube Video Competition – do you know a child with a business? Make a video and they could be featured in a new book to be published in 2009.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait…

It’s a rushed week this week, as I am preparing to go overseas this weekend. I’ll be flying to Stockholm to speak at a conference, and then on to Washington to attend another conference.

In Washington, I’ll be catching up with Shonika Proctor, who is coaching those remarkable business kids from very underprivileged backgrounds. I am looking forward to hearing more of their stories, and I’ll share them with you soon.

I have had a press enquiry – if you are in the north-eastern part of Sydney, Australia, and you put an entry into the competition, your regional newspaper, The Manly Daily, will do a story on you and your business. Now, we don’t have an entry from that part of the world yet, so the field is wide open!

I don’t need to tell you what it can mean for your business to have a story in a paper with a readership of over a million people.

So, any Aussies ready to grab this opportunity?

I had an email last week from Steve Gillman, from unusualwaystomakemoney.com – he has had a link from his site to the Cash-Smart Kids site for a few months now. He’s going to be letting his subscribers know about the competition, so I am looking forward to hearing about some unusual businesses!

If you’re stuck for an idea to get your business going, have a look at Steve’s list of ways for kids to make money.

Still waiting on a large number of promised entries … you know who you are! As I say every week – get them in!

I can’t promote your videos and Hubs if I don’t have them …

A short post this week, because I have been sick and haven’t caught up on the competition updates from around the world.

Still waiting on news from the publishers, and still waiting on a large number of promised entries – come on, it’s summer holidays in the US now – no more excuses!

Much more next week, I promise …

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

From last week’s MyCentralJersey.com comes news of another great initiative.

Middle school and high school students will create their own businesses – working alongside successful New Jersey business owners — at the Young Entrepreneur’s Academy, an eight-week, Summer Saturday series, July 11-August 23 at the Academic Resource Center, which serves middle and high school students in Essex and Union Counties.

Open to boys and girls ages 11-17, YEA! uses the fundamentals of entrepreneurship to promote creativity, basic understanding and skills in money management, business concepts and financial literacy. It encourages students to frame their dreams, and current interests into future money making and career satisfying professional options. Using tactical problem-solving approaches, the program enhances confidence, creativity, self esteem and self reliance.

It’s so great to see these small programs popping up – of course, you can’t hope to get all the concepts across in just a handful of Saturdays, but exposure to the concepts is a great first step, and the kids will retain some of the material, each in their own way.

At least there are summer activity options beyond making candles and going to camp these days!

Image: riot jane

Still waiting on word from the publishers …. nothing ever happens when promised! Sigh.

Meanwhile, I want to remind everyone of the great opportunities which are available to entrants in the competition – for example, having your business mentioned in a magazine which goes out to 6 million readers!

Whether you win or not, being in the competition has all sorts of ongoing benefits. For example, young Rhiannon’s video has been seen by news outlets all around the world, and is currently featured on Peter Economy’s blog.

I know there are lots of people out there intending to put entries in, but procrastinating.

Do it NOW!

The longer your video is online during the competition, the more exposure your business will get.

We had a rush of people coming to look at the competition rules last week, so I am guessing that someone has been publicising the competition, or the press release – or maybe we have had some press coverage that I haven’t heard about yet.

If you happen to have seen a new story about the Cash-Smart Kids YouTube video competition somewhere, please drop me a line in a comment on this blog, or via the contact page and let me know!

We’re still waiting to hear from the publisher we like the best, after an initial warm response – who knows how long it might take them to come back with an offer?

In the meanwhile, though, keep the entries coming in – so far I have seen about one percent of the entries that people have spoken to me about actually materialise, so I know there are an awful lot of good intentions out there.

Let’s see those good intentions turning into some ACTION!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait…

Eight-year-old Nzinga Ajamu has her very own jewelry-making business.

“I discovered my passion for making jewelry during my jewelry-making class in school,” she told the Daily News in Memphis, referring to a cultural arts curriculum course she took last year. “I enjoyed making jewelry so much that I asked my parents to buy beads for me so I could make more jewelry. Also, I made a necklace, bracelet and ponytail holder to wear to school. … When I would go places people would compliment me on my jewelry and they would say, ‘Where’d you get that jewelry?’ and I’d say, ‘I made it,’ and they could not believe that I made it.”

Nzinga’s creations were so attractive that people asked her to make jewellery for them as well, and before long she has a thriving business.

Nzinga comes up with the designs for the jewelry – sometimes, she said, the ideas come at night while she sleeps. She also sets her own prices and keeps up with all the orders.

“It’s her company and she handles everything herself,” Veda said. “And we do everything we can to keep it that way.”

But school always comes first, Nzinga’s mother, Veda, told the Daily News.

Education, Nzinga’s parents are teaching her, is the foundation to achieving the high goals the girl has set for herself. Nzinga doesn’t see Queen Nzinga’s Creations as just a fly-by-night business. This is just the beginning for what she hopes to achieve as a “grown-up.”

Already, Nzinga is envisioning having her own retail space to run her business, and developing a broader market and a larger production capability.

Meanwhile, she markets her creations through her website, www.nzingascreations.com.

Keepin’ it brief today – we have the flu in the house.

We have had a nice, positive response from at least one publisher about the book, the project, and this competition. Peter and I are going to be interviewed by Costco magazine in a few weeks’ time – this goes out to over SIX MILLION readers.

If you want a chance to have your business mentioned in that interview – get off your tootie and put your entry in!

Check out the competition rules if you haven’t already. The rewards just for entering are very, very worth it.

Shonika Proctor, teen business coach, shares her knowledge of ways for kids to make money, even when they are under 16.

Po’ No Mo’

5 Tips on How Youth Under Age 16 Can Make Money

In his internationally best-selling book Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out, Dr. Farrah Gray, a self-made millionaire by age 14, discusses how, in one of the first of his many business ventures, he painted rocks and sold them as door stops door-to-door for $1.50 each when he was only 9 years old.

Despite common misconception, you do not have to have money to make money. All you need is a great idea and a persistent willingness to put that great idea into action. Here are 5 ways you can make money in the 21^st century, even if you’re not yet 16 (or 14, for that matter), and even if you don’t have a dime to your name.

1. Competitions: Enter business plan competitions such as the ones offered by NFTE.com and BlackEnterprise.com. All sorts of contests and competitions exist for young budding entrepreneurs, and the cash or scholarship prizes you may receive are only half the benefit. The other half is the name recognition you can carry with you into your burgeoning business life as being the chosen winner amongst all the many entrants in such illustrious, business-related competitions.
2. Advertising: Seek sponsors and advertisers for your product or service. For example, sell advertising space on the flyers, postcards, and – yes – websites you put out there to promote your own business. The advertising funds you generate will pay for the production, printing, distribution, etc. of your own promotions, essentially making it free advertising for you!
3. Sharing Your Experience: It doesn’t matter how young you are. We all have expertise in something, even if that something is simply being ourselves. We’ve all lived unique lives and we all have an important story to tell. Get the word out about your endeavors by writing articles on the subject for your local newspapers. Write about the subject of your business. Write about your own experiences starting a business. Usually small local newspapers are looking for filler content. With just a single publication credit, you will instantly start to become known as an expert at whatever you do. You may even get paid a few dollars or more for your efforts, though that isn’t the point. The point is to get more free advertising for your business by writing about what you know best – you and all that you are up to.
4. Technology Training and Consulting: Put that way it sounds so lofty and complex, but it isn’t. As a member of the younger generation, you have natural abilities to work with computers that may seem like nothing but second nature to you but are a hot and valuable commodity to people of older generations who didn’t grow up with all this newfangled technology in their homes. You’d be surprised how many people older than you don’t know how to make a web page (or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised). The point is, even if you can do it in your sleep, there are people who will pay you big bucks to teach them how to do it, or more – do it for them. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and all the other social networking and bookmarking sites as well as blogs, newsletters, and ezines are the new media. And guess who the experts are in this new media? That’s right – you are! And as a related bonus tip, you can even offer a free course for small business-people at your local library on the importance of having online presence, and then at the end of the class offer to sell your expertise to build their pages. Give them a discount if they order your services on that day.
5. Odd Jobs: This is one suggestion that never goes out of style. Random odd jobs like cutting grass, raking leaves, dog walking, shoveling show etc. may not be the most exotic, novel, or interesting forms of making money. But they’ve been around forever for a very good reason – because they work. This type of work may not be directly related to your business or business idea, but you can take heart that the entire time you’re toiling away at some seemingly boring task for some extra ducats, what you’re really doing is serving a much higher purpose – raising valuable funds for your business’s success.

Tired of being po’? Of course you are! Well, get over it – literally! Because you can easily be po’ no mo’. All it takes is a little innovation and a willingness to make it work. Problems equal opportunities. Be resourceful and creative. Make money by solving problems that exist around you, and before you know it you’ll have solved the problem of being poor and well on the way to your well-deserved riches.

Shonika Proctor, aka the Nika’Nator, is a youth and teen entrepreneur coach. She helps aspiring and emerging young entrepreneurs to demolish drama and build dreams. www.renegadeceos.com.