At age 6, Rachel Shein went door-to-door selling her little
sister's birthday party balloons-until her parents caught her.
By the end of elementary school, she was hawking brownies at the
local ball games because she figured they were higher margin than
lemonade. That same year, she was keeping the sales and expense
ledgers for her mom's needlepoint store and her dad's real
estate office.
Today, Shein and her husband, Steve Pilarski (also the child of
entrepreneurs), own a multimillion-dollar bakery business in San
Marcos, California, supplying pastries to coffee shops from Los
Angeles to the Mexican border. They love the excitement, the
creativity and the challenge of running the company, and they want
to pass on that entrepreneurial spirit to their three children.
Nobody's sure if great entrepreneurs are born or made, but
parents and schools around the United States have been embracing
the value of teaching entrepreneurship to kids. From the venerable
Junior Achievement Inc., an organization that reaches 4 million
young people nationwide each year, to the mom and dad who bring
their small-business problems to the dinner table each night,
America's next generation is grabbing a ride on the
entrepreneurial tidal wave. A recent Junior Achievement poll showed
that nearly 75 percent of teens indicated they would like to start
their own businesses someday.
So Much to Gain
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The benefits of teaching kids how to run a business are endless,
according to Doug Miller, director of Children and Youth
Entrepreneurship Education at the Ewing Marion Kauffman
Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering
entrepreneurship. "Kids gain life skills like responsibility,
follow-through and communication. They learn business skills, like
how to manage scarce resources," he says. "But most
important, kids gain tremendous self-esteem as they try to overcome
obstacles or see their ideas start to work. It all sounds too good
to be true, but we have 20-plus years of research that says it is
[true]."
There are a variety of ways for kids to sample from the business
buffet of life. In the Shein-Pilarski household, the kids come to
the bakery from the time they're born. "I'd show up to
a customer meeting with a plate of scones in one arm and Spencer in
the other," remembers Shein. "We share our enthusiasm
with the kids, our love for what we do every day." Shein and
Pilarski also talk about the bakery's problems in front of the
kids-but not always all the ramifications. "We may lose a big
customer, and Steve and I are thinking to ourselves 'How are we
going to pay the mortgage?' We may share the information, but
not our fears."
For other business owners, like Dr. Chris Miller, 53,
psychologist and founder of the brainstorming and product design
firm Innovation Focus Inc., raising entrepreneurial kids
means giving his children a significant role in the business. When
each of his sons reached the ripe old age of 10, Chris let them tag
along to client meetings to participate. Some companies were
skeptical when the junior help walked in the door. But it made
sense to include them in his line of work, explains Chris.
"For example, teenagers get headaches, too, so it was
important for the client team from Excedrin to hear young
people's attitudes toward headaches, how they feel about taking
medicine," he says.
And what do the kids say? Chris' son Noah, a twelfth-grader
who plays on his school's lacrosse team, gets a huge kick out
of the whole experience. "I love to travel. I've gone with
my dad to Chicago, New York, Colorado. I help get the session
ready, like laying out name cards, hanging up displays." But
he's most proud of his ideas. "After a big idea session,
my mind is empty. I'm exhausted, but it's a good
exhaustion. Like I've done something valuable." The
approach also seems to be working for Chris' business.
Innovation Focus, based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, won the 2002
Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Services in
Central Pennsylvania.
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