How Parents and Teachers Can Introduce Entrepreneurship to Kids

Now before we get into today’s topic, here’s a fun fact. “What does the word education actually mean and where does it come from?”

Stay with me til the very end of the article to get the answer!

In this article completely against conventional commercial wisdom I’m going to share with you exactly how we as entrepreneurial educators introduce our subject to children and teens.

Why am I doing this? Why am I sharing our secret sauce? Well as a social impact organisation the way we profit isn’t just in pounds and pence but in our mission which is ensuring that every child has access to effective entrepreneurial education!

So let me start by saying this — I believe that entrepreneurship is the greatest opportunity for young people today. Why? Because until recently, with the advent of the internet and social media, entrepreneurship simply wasn’t available to children or teens because of the obvious financial barrier. Imagine trying to create your own channel back in the day or your own t-shirt business. The cost of both of those things would have been in the 100’s of 1000s of pounds.

But today kids can broadcast for free on YouTube and Vimeo and without even touching a piece of clothing start a clothing business on platforms like Printful or an apps like Shirt or KinCustom which I came across recently on Instagram. And no, that was not a paid promotional plug.

Now getting to the point, when I first started developing a youth entrepreneurship curriculum with our team, it started with lesson plans, worksheets and other resources which teachers are familiar with. As we started to rinse, repeat and tweak the content and its delivery, I realised that we needed a pedagogy. Now a pedagogy the method and practice of teaching a subject or theoretical concept. So whereas education is the process of acquiring learning, pedagogy is the approach to how that learning is actually taught.

I always describe entrepreneurship as a practical sport in so far as the only way to really learn about it is to do it. It’s worth noting that this is what draws a distinction between the topic of business and entrepreneurship. Learning about business can be a completely academic process and in most cases is. Kids can learn about how companies like Amazon, Virgin Atlantic or TikTok for example operate, increase their share value, manage profit and loss, annual statements, hiring practices, growth strategies, funding and so on.

And all of that is great learning.

However, I would argue that it doesn’t inspire kids to think they can do the same because it’s almost impossible for them to relate to, understand fully or see themselves in the shoes of businesses at such a large scale. Entrepreneurship however and the pedagogy we use at Ultra Education starts with…

Step 1, by exploring passion, so why did Jeff Bezos start Amazon, what problem was he passionate about solving? This is for me is the cornerstone of entrepreneurship because the process of starting a business is challenging and the only reason anyone in their right mind would do it is if they love it. I fell in love with the vehicle of entrepreneurship because I believe it has increased my life chances and helped me to not just develop a bunch of skills which I benefit from by what I value the most is how entrepreneurship helped an the introvert, unconfident child I was grow confidence and self esteem off the charts and a mindset which at this point makes me almost immune to failure, giving up and all of the critical feedback a business gets from customers, investors and stakeholders as it grows really quickly.

Step 2 in our pedagogy is research, so now that you’ve found a problem you’re passionate about solving, what else is out there? Who will your target audience be? And how do they currently solve that problem? One of our students recently came up with the idea of creating a natural skin care range without using harmful products. Realising that isn’t a new market she then looked at her target audience, researched the greater population of her local area which happened to be over 50’s and then came to the conclusion that her skin care range would target that audience. In her research she found out, that demographic spend a lot of money on skincare and also have a higher level of disposable income.

Step 3 is create — so is the solution that problem a product or service or maybe a bit of both. At this point the goal of the young entrepreneur is to come up with a prototype of that t-shirt, skin care range or record 1 minute of that youtube channel they want to launch. The important thing here is to take the idea off the page and create some version of it. Don’t worry about making it perfect, in fact there’s more value in getting feedback (which is learning) from a basic version of the product or service the child wants to launch within a few days or weeks rather than spending months with no external input. This crucial stage in the process of entrepreneurship is where many small businesses become unstuck. An idea is a bunch of assumptions which the entrepreneur seeks to validate whether they’re 8, 18 or 48 yrs old. The easiest ways to validate these assumptions about what your potential customers want is to ask your customers before you’ve fully developed the offering.

Step 4 — Profit and loss, so how much is this product or service going to cost to make, how much can you sell it for and what is the difference that allows the business to be viable or profitable? In one of the very first primary schools we ran our programme, we gave the class an exercise where they took a printed worksheet of a blank shoe, car, dress or sandal and given the task of turning it into whatever they wanted and price it however they wanted. it was an amazing class, the children came up with £1m dresses, shoes that helped you to fly, sandals with powers of invisibility and cars which could time travel!

When it was time for show and tell the children presented their ideas and the cost of the product. At the end of the session I’ll always remember the teacher saying that the exercise made them realise that their students had no concept of value, the cost of things, or how to value their time or anyone else’s. All skills I think we agree most people learn too late in life.

Step 5 sales and marketing — so your young entrepreneur has their new shiny product or service, but how will people know about it — that’s marketing, and how will they convince people to exchange it with their hard earned cash — that’s sales.

I remember when my daughter was promoting her first business at an event in north London, it was her vegan chocolate spread. She must have been 9 years old at the time, dressed up in her pink princess dress and little gold crown, standing behind her table full of jars of home made spread and her promotional pull up banner. An elderly gentleman approached the table and started kicking the tyres of her business, asking lots of questions and didn’t seem at all impressed until he asked her who’s business it was and she said — it’s mine!

You see the marketing of her product drew him to the table but it wasn’t until she revealed the most important part of her sales pitch — the fact it was her business and she wasn’t there as the hired help that the man was so impressed he bought one jar of vegan choc spread for him and another for his wife so she wouldn’t have any of his.

Step 6 — Are you still passionate about the idea? Not much can beat experience because this is where that young entrepreneur connects emotionally to their journey and draw a meaningful conclusion about whether they truly like something or don’t. I cannot tell you how many kidpreneurs we’ve taught who want to be successful you tubers until we tell them to they need to film once or twice a week, write a script, spend hours editing, designing their channel art and be consistent for a period longer than they’d like or expect.

And even though that’s a great journey for anyone who sticks to it, most kids in our experience think it’s all fun and games until you need to record a video when you don’t feel like it, or after spending an hour or two editing your video getting only a handful of views. That said, there are some kids who absolutely loved this process and have gone on to have huge success as youtubers or have used the platform to sell their products or services. The important thing here I always tell parents and teachers is that even if they make it through all the steps and don’t want to do that business anymore — they’ll have picked up a tonne of new skills along the way. Those skills they can apply to another business idea, project or employment later on in life.

Now, thank you for staying with me until the end of the article and as promised the answer to fun fact which was “What does the word education actually mean and where does it come from?” Education comes from the Latin educere, meaning ‘to draw out’. That is to say, true education is less about what you put into the student, and more about what you draw out of them. The reason we think entrepreneurship is an ultra education is because as i mentioned earlier, you’re drawing out the passions of your child as opposed to simply transferring knowledge or expecting them to learn by rote or repetition.

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This article was brought to you by Ask Ultra, the Entrepreneurship tuition app for kids. Available on both app stores, try it here!