Want to find out how to teach entrepreneurship to teens? Do your teens want to start a business and be their own boss? As someone who was unschooled throughout high school, was raised to be an entrepreneur, and now runs 3 successful businesses at the age of 21, I’m sharing everything you need to know about successfully teaching entrepreneurship to your teens.
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Why Teach Entrepreneurship for Teens?
For years now, we’ve seen articles all over the internet discussing changing workforces, the value of critical thinking, and how the most successful adults are good at failing.
Here at Nomads With A Purpose, we’ve been saying for years how the current system is NOT working. From a young age, we’ve been told a long list of things we HAVE TO DO. We have to…
- Do well in school…
- So you can get into a good college…
- To get a good career…
- So you can make a lot of money…
- So you can buy a nice house…
- Now we spend all our money on our house that we don’t even spend time in because we spend most of our life at the job that we only do so that we can have enough money to buy the house that we don’t even spend time in.
Back in 2015, my parents saw that it wasn’t right and if they didn’t do something about it, one day they might blink and their life will have passed by.
So that year, when I was only 14 years old, my parents decided to sell everything we owned and move into a 30’ RV to travel full time with my 4 siblings and I in tow.
I’m NOT saying you have to teach your kids entrepreneurship so that they ditch conformity and live off in the wilderness.
What I AM saying is that you should teach entrepreneurship to your teens because it’s time to stop looking at the traditional way of doing things. Traditional education has led to the worst epidemic of anxiety, depression, debt, and loneliness than ever before in teens and young adults.
We want to nurture teens who are happy, capable, and empowered to create the life they want.
That means they needs skills like perseverance, critical thinking, problem solving, mindfulness, grit, and self love. These are all skills teens learn through entrepreneurship.
Benefits of Entrepreneurship for Teens
By teaching teens to be entrepreneurs, you are teaching them a priceless skillset on how to become materially successful and emotionally successful.
Ever since I was in middle school, my mom has taught me entrepreneurship and because of that, I…
- Co-founded my first business at 15 years old
- Get to be my own boss & choose my own schedule
- Made 5 figures by 17 years old
- Get to travel full time and work from anywhere
- Make a living sharing my passion with the world
- Launched a 2nd business with my sister and my mom
- Became a mindset coach at 20 years old
- Gave a TEDx talk at 21 years old
- & Can honestly say that I’m not just happy, but FULFILLED
Imagine that by the time your teens are 20 years, they can…
- Have their very own business where they get to BE THEIR OWN BOSS
- Work from ANYWHERE in the world
- Feel valued and proud of themself because you, and only you, could create this particular business
- Wake up EXCITED that their gifts and talents are not going to waste
- Have freedom over their time and resources, to choose their own schedules and make their own rules for work
So if you want to raise happy, successful adults, read on and find out how to teach your teens entrepreneurship.
The Best Time in History for Teaching Entrepreneurship to Teens
It’s time to throw everything you know about teen education out the window.
Why? Because the world is changing FAST.
The world is always changing. But with exponential advancements of AI on the horizon, we are on the cusp of a big technological revolution. While this AI takeover can seem scary, from an entrepreneurial perspective it is actually giving us massive opportunities to monetize on our creativity and launch purpose-driven businesses.
As a matter of fact, in a Forbes article discussing the impact of AI over the coming years, “With AI automating repeatable and mundane tasks—from accounting to the assembly line—the skillset of the human workforce needs to evolve.”
In a more detailed report from McKinsey and across a variety of other sources on the internet, it seems everyone agrees that these 3 core skills will be of much higher value in the future:
- Higher cognitive skills like advanced problem solving, negotiating, and decision making
- Creative skills, the ability to combine ideas to create something new and unique, and be inspiring
- Social & emotional skills because robots cannot replicate human empathy and connection
If jobs are changing, the way we teach teens has to change too. Fortunately, the skills that are becoming more valuable in our shifting workforce are exactly the skills your teen will learn if you teach them entrepreneurship.
But there’s more.
Whether you like it or not, internet 2.0 is coming. The blockchain ecosystem is growing rapidly and based on the charts, it’s looking like it may crack up to be an even bigger tech revolution than the internet was (that’s saying a lot).
In this exponentially expanding internet ecosystem, there are going to be more opportunities than ever to monetize your creativity. And remember, there will be exponentially higher value on social skills, emotional skills, creativity, and problem solving.
Combine DEMAND with a PLATFORM to provide value and you’ve got a perfect recipe for successful business ventures!
This is the greatest time in history to become an entrepreneur…ESPECIALLY if you are a teen.
That’s why I launched Young Entrepreneurs Academy! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a creative, purpose driven business and I want to help as many teens as possible position themselves create happy, successful futures.
Young Entrepreneurs Academy is a monthly group coaching membership to help teens become entrepreneurs & create happy, successful futures. Join now with the free 7 day trial!
If you’re interested in learning more about big economic shifts that are coming, click here to watch my webinar: Positioning Teens For Success During an Economic Revolution
How I Became A Successful Teen Entrepreneur
While most articles you see on the internet about entrepreneurship for teens are written from parents perspectives, this article is different.
I’m writing to you as a happy, successful 21-year-old who was raised “unschooled” and actually became a successful teen entrepreneur.
Let me give a little background on how it worked.
I was homeschooled my entire life. I was very traditionally homeschooled (with curriculum and tests) until I was 14.
Then, like I shared earlier, at 14, my family moved into an RV and began traveling full time.
Living on the road and being educated through “worldschooling” opened my eyes and my mom’s eyes to the fact that there’s isn’t just 1 path.
My prior assumption that “I HAD TO” go to college was replaced with curiosity about all the other ways I could choose to live my life.
I was exposed to different forms of out of the box thinking through startup books, mindfulness activities, and philosophy books.
Co-Founding My Blog at 15 Years Old
A year later, my family bought one-way tickets to Europe and spent 6 months camping in a tent and RV through Europe. While I was on this trip, my mom and I got the idea in our heads to start a blog.
I began learning skills related to entrepreneurial vision, honing my creative skills or writing and photography, and I spent countless hours leaning technician skills like SEO and social media.
Teen Entrepreneur on HuffPost
What started as a hobby and passion project eventually turned into a full-blown business plan and that once tiny little travel blog has now become a multi-media adventure travel & wellness brand with more than 50,000 readers per month.
By the time I graduated high school at 18, I had successfully created a business that provided me with passive income through ad revenue and sponsorships. This accomplishment even got one of my articles featured on Huffington Post: How I Left Behind My Old Life At 14 And Became A Teenage Travel Blogger
From Teen Entrepreneur to TEDx Speaker
My business gave me PURPOSE and it changed everything. Since then, I’ve launched 2 more businesses, became a mindset coach, and in February 2022 at 21 years old, I fulfilled one of my childhood dreams of giving a TEDx Talk on what I learned about personal power and purpose through living as a nomad in high school. Watch the TEDx talk by clicking here.
All of that was made possible because of the decision I made at 15 years old to BE AN ENTREPRENEUR!
Meanwhile, most of my peers are in major debt (which means they’re losing money, not gaining money) and still haven’t finished their first 4 years of college!
How To Teach Entrepreneurship to Teens
As someone who is a real life case study for unschooling, teen entrepreneurship, and emotional success, let me start by breaking the myth about curriculum: It doesn’t matter.
When it comes to teaching entrepreneurship to teens, it’s not the lesson plans and workbooks that make an impact but trial and error around the 3 pillars of success.
Coming Soon: Business Ideas for Teens
3 Pillars of Teaching Teen Entrepreneurship
Vision & Creativity
Vision is a priceless skillset that will honestly transform your teen’s life. It’s is an essential component of being able to see the big picture of your business in its highest self. It’s also about seeing the life you want to live as an adult.
With those 2 visions, it’s easy to create an action plan but without them, you won’t know where you’re headed.
In my opinion, this is the most overlooked aspect of teen entrepreneurship.
Teaching vision requires consistency, supporting your teen with the right questions, in and out of school life, and repetitious encouragement to think about what they really want.
You also cannot be an entrepreneur without creativity. Creativity is not always artistic, it’s rather about doing something every day that is an intrinsically driven, unstructured thought or action. That can be art-form, it could also be writing, brainstorming random ideas, non-competitive sports, and anything where you’re fully immersed in for your own enjoyment.
Creativity supports the brain functions required to have vision. Sometimes, this creativity becomes something that is worth sharing with the world as a business.
Technician Skills
The next priority for teaching teens entrepreneurship is learning how to build. Now, teens have to gain the real-world technician skills that are required to actually get a business up-and-running.
Generally speaking, I promote the idea of teaching teens a little bit of everything in the early phases of their teen entrepreneur journey that way they can get an idea of what they like and what they don’t.
This is why in Young Entrepreneurs Academy, I teach students a general overview of skills first like SEO, social media marketing across different platforms, blog writing, graphic design, branding, web design, product design, and more.
Form there, they can specialize and choose what kind of platform and medium they want to use to create their brand and communicate their message.
Self Understanding
In creating a successful future, emotional success is just as important as material success. If you don’t teach your teens how to understand their thoughts and emotions, they will be a victim to them which is how most people operate in the world and leads to so many mental and physical health issues.
It’s important for everyone to learn self understanding but it’s especially important if your teen takes on the entrepreneurship route because it isn’t easy. They will be faced with a lot of tough work and a lot of failure (which is a good thing).
Mindfulness, integrity, and resilience are essential components that need to be taught otherwise it will leave teens burnout and wanting to give up.
As a mindset coach, my teen entrepreneur membership program places a large focus on learning skills of mindfulness. Learning mindfulness is one of the most transformational things your teen could learn. Even if they decide to not be entrepreneurs, mindfulness will stay with them for the rest of their life and give them the ability to make themselves happy despite the circumstances.
Top Teen Entrepreneur Curriciulum
Now you can teach the 3 pillars all on your own and find resources around each these topics. But you could also save yourself tons of time by joining Young Entrepreneurs Academy, my monthly group coaching membership to help teens become entrepreneurs and create happy, successful futures.
In the membership, teens and/or parents can join weekly live group coaching calls that provides simple next steps for your teen to start a business and gain the skillset for each of the 3 entrepreneurial pillars. The membership also provides an ultimate resource list for you and your teen plus weekly assignments for teens to build emotional and material success.
Hope this blog gave you everything you need to know about teaching entrepreneurship to teens. If you have any other questions, please let me know in the comments below and I will do another blog on FAQS!
Related:
- 10 Reasons You Shouldn’t Full Time Travel With Teens
- 5 Life Changing Lesson Learned After 5 Years of RV Living as A Teenager
- I Quit Social Media for 1 Month…Here’s What Happened
