What is an entrepreneur?
Wikipedia defines an entrepreneur as: An entrepreneur is someone who organizes a system to create a product or service in order to gain profit.
I define an entrepreneur as anyone who thinks outside the box and is willing to take risks.
Do you have a child that never does anything the normal way? My son has never done a household chore in the normal way. I used to get frustrated and wonder why he couldn’t just do it the way I taught him. My way was fast and efficient. His way took hours to devise and implement.
He would always come up with some contraption to tackle the task at hand. The trash cans were never carried to the end of the driveway. They were attached to a skateboard or arranged precariously on a scooter. They were pulled, pushed, and propelled, but never carried. The floor was mopped with rags attached to his feet which eventually led to the sock mop. The duster was duct taped to a long pole to see if the entire room could be dusted from a single sitting position. (The duster was even tied to the ceiling fan blade to see the room could be dusted without human intervention. This led to some mishaps with his belongings but in his mind the ‘cool’ experiment was worth the loss.)
adsense#larrect
I’m sure some of you are smiling and shaking your head. You too have one of these budding entrepreneurs. As a parent we can decide to encourage their creativity or squelch it. I am not saying that we support destruction, but I think we are too quick to discourage. I know I have this tendency.
Look at the positive side. Think about all the wonderful traits they are developing:
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• Critical Thinking – they evaluate the task at hand and look at ways to solve their problem
• Creativity – they think of ways to implement their solution
• Taking Risk – they don’t know if their solution is going to work but they aren’t afraid of failure
• Commitment – they are quite focused on developing their solution
Look for ways to channel their thinking. Give them opportunities to take risks in other areas. Make sure their ideas employ safety measures. I’m not advocating bodily harm for the sake of free thinking. Encourage consideration of consequences and outcomes of experiments. (In the duster/fan experiment, he moved his prized possessions out of harms way.)
Our tendency is to discourage our entrepreneurs. To see how you are strangling your entrepreneur, visit www.EducateYourEntrepreneur.com
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Linda Joseph is a homeschool mom and entrepreneur. Her goal is to train her children to work for themselves by developing the mindset, skills, and self-discipline it takes to think like an entrepreneur. www.EducateYourEntrepreneur.com is focused on resources for training entrepreneurs. Read success stories about teenage entrepreneurs. Go to www.WebTechJo.com for more information about Linda and her entrepreneurial pursuits.
