You’re The Boss and the Importance of Youth Entrepreneurship
Thin Mints and Samoas inspired my journey to becoming a youth entrepreneurship advocate. Many years ago, I watched my then eight-year-old older daughter sell Girl Scout Cookies and learn valuable life skills such as taking risks, dealing with rejection, and making eye contact. I wanted more kids to develop these life skills, so I started a new chapter in my career.
Since that fateful day, I’ve written three books on youth entrepreneurship in the Macmillan-published THE STARTUP SQUAD series, traveled the country speaking to kids at schools, libraries, and corporate events to inspire them to start their first business, and run a nonprofit focused on teaching entrepreneurship to girls in underserved communities.
You’re the Boss: A Kid’s Ultimate Guide to Starting Your Own Business is the culmination of everything I’ve learned about youth entrepreneurship over the past decade. It is the first how-to-start-a-business book for kids published by a major publisher. And it is about time.
Youth entrepreneurship isn’t just about kids learning how to start a business and making some pocket money. It’s about preparing our children for an uncertain future by building essential life skills. Through entrepreneurship, kids learn to be more comfortable taking risks, less afraid of failure, more outgoing, and better equipped to navigate an unpredictable future. Reports suggest that 75% of the jobs our children will grow up to fill haven’t yet been invented. So how do you prepare a child for a job that doesn’t exist yet? You teach them how to think. You help them become comfortable with uncertainty.
The goal of entrepreneurship education isn’t for every child to become an entrepreneur—although that wouldn’t be the worst outcome. Instead, the aim is to teach kids to think like entrepreneurs. Children who develop an entrepreneurial mindset will be more successful in life regardless of the path that they choose. They will grow up to be better doctors and lawyers and teachers and even better parents.
Kids with an entrepreneurial mindset learn to see opportunities where others see problems. They develop curiosity about the world and creativity to transform that curiosity into business ideas. They learn to say yes when everyone else says no.
Running a business helps children develop resilience. They become comfortable with risk, acquire grit, and learn to persevere through highs and lows. They adopt a growth mindset, understanding that their abilities are not fixed but continually develop. Most importantly, they learn that failure is an important part of the journey to success. We need to destigmatize failure. Entrepreneurs don’t say “win some, lose some”—they say “win some, learn some,” knowing that each failure provides valuable lessons for future success.
Children who start businesses also develop better communication skills and increased self-confidence. They feel less shy. We often tell kids not to talk to strangers—which is good advice—but eventually, they need to learn how to talk to people they don’t know. When we survey the girls that are in our after-school entrepreneurship programs we hear that running a business made them feel less shy and more comfortable talking to people they don’t know. It made them more self-confident and gave them greater self-esteem.
Entrepreneurship changes kids’ lives. Regardless of whether they aspire to be entrepreneurs, children who learn to think like entrepreneurs will be more successful in any path they choose. My hope is that You’re the Boss: A Kid’s Ultimate Guide to Starting Your Own Business will inspire children everywhere to start their own businesses and empower them to think like entrepreneurs. Pick up a copy for child in your life at your favorite bookstore or find a bookseller here.