Is Your Child A Born Entrepreneur?

Behavioral Science, Psychology, and Statistical Analysis are just some of the science disciplines/tools being used today to predict a person’s probable future. There are even scientific studies that monitor a person’s progress from childhood to adulthood.

Take this scientific study published onlineEntrepreneurship and Family Role: A Systematic Review of a Growing Research which studied how a child’s family greatly influences their mind towards entrepreneurship.

For example the study concluded that a failed family business negatively affects a child’s desire to be an entrepreneur while a successful family business positively affects a child’s desire to be an entrepreneur.

In a way, I can relate to this study. My family owned a small business which significantly increased our financial capacity. This catalyzed my mind to someday own my own small business too.

While most young children their age would be busying themselves pursuing juvenile fun, children with the entrepreneurial mindset have an almost singular focus: to make money. This is easy to understand but is more complicated than what you might think. A child who wants to earn money because he wants to buy something is not necessarily an entrepreneur. This child might be just materialistic and once they have acquired the things they want to buy, they stop thinking about making money anymore.

A child who wants to earn money because he wants to give it to those in need may not necessarily be an entrepreneur though in a way they are. Studies have shown that self-made millionaires are not fond of giving their money away.

This is as compared to people who are already rich to begin with. These people likely became rich by inheriting it and are more generous to the less fortunate. So we can come to the conclusion that self-made people are generally not that generous as a person.

These self-made millionaires know that you can succeed even though you started out with nothing. They know that if they started out from nothing to become a millionaire, nothing’s stopping them from starting out as a millionaire to become a billionaire or even a trillionaire.

You might have a friend whose always talking about becoming rich one day and buying expensive houses and cars. If you do have a friend like this, you would often dismiss them as a “dreamer” especially if they are poor.

But these dreamers are different from children with the entrepreneurial mindset. Before they even talk about how they are going to buy expensive houses and cars if ever they get rich, they would more than likely present you an idea or a business concept on how to get rich.

Usually, they’ve read about a successful business which makes a lot of money and they want to try doing it themselves. Sometimes they’ll even invite you to be their partner. You would also notice that they do not only have one moneymaking idea but several in their mind.

Usually, they would present you with their business plans which they’ve read also somewhere. Sometimes, they would come up with a moneymaking idea that is totally new that you might dismiss them as crazy or delusional.

But make no mistake, a child with the entrepreneurial mindset does not necessarily want to start a business. What they’re after is making money through any means possible. It could be by starting a small business, investing (like in comics or coins) or by inventing something.

While most children would be hanging around with other children for playing and other childhood activities, children with the entrepreneurial mindset like to hang out with more mature possible mentors.

This is because children tend to look for “heroes” at a young age. For example, in the world of superhero comics, Batman and Iron Man are very popular. This is because everyone thinks they should not only be a superhero too but billionaire business owners.

Batman and Iron Man are both superheroes and billionaires that is why they’re perceived to be very cool. But child entrepreneurs even go further than this, they actually idolize real rich people. But not necessarily the rich, they idolize the self-made rich people.

Children with the entrepreneurial mindset don’t really want to become rich by inheriting money. They want to become rich by doing it themselves. They might even consider themselves failures if they depended on their inheritance money.

This must be the reason why billionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson are so well liked by many entrepreneurial minded people. These two never depended on their families to support them while they were still starting to build their business empires.

This especially applies to more mature examples such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. These two people have become multibillionaires by being able to predict the future.

Elon Musk saw that in the future, climate change would be a big problem for humanity that’s why he started a technology company that concentrated on clean energy. Jeff Bezos meanwhile saw the potential of the internet and created Amazon.

But entrepreneurial children who would be the next Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are already busying themselves in learning about business and technology even at a young age. While most children would waste all their time playing video games these children do not.

They are actually learning how to programming video games or are learning how to make or market some other apps. Most likely, these children would be watching science fiction or science related content not necessarily for enjoyment or learning.

Rather, they scanning these science related content to see if there is anything in them that could make them money. In fact, many of the recent technologies developed today are inspired by science fiction media content.

Most young children have no idea how hard it is to earn money. Usually, as soon as they are given money they spend all of it on things they don’t necessarily need. This attitude becomes ingrained in adulthood.

You know these types of people, these are the kinds of people who have no savings despite having high paying jobs. These are also the kinds of people who usually borrow money, sometimes they even max out their credit cards.

A child who might become an entrepreneur one day usually already have a savings accounts even at an early stage. It even extends to the way they buy things. They usually only buy the cheapest and the most practical things.

These entrepreneurial children do not pester their parents to buy the latest trending toy like an Xbox or a Playstation. They know how hard their parents work in order to provide for them. They understand this even at an early age.

The real entrepreneurs too don’t waste a lot of money on cigarettes, alcohol and other unnecessary items. They have a very strong mindset that prevents them from being addicted to these wasteful and unhealthy things.

Most businesses ended up in failure that is why so many people refuse to start one. There are many people who go into business whose only desire is to make a lot of money so they can buy expensive things.

Although being rich is one of the good side effects of having a successful business, a real child entrepreneur would have started a lot of small businesses already to know that failure is very much a reality in business.

You could have a child who despite repeated attempts of starting a business or creating a moneymaking invention still always end up as a failure. You might be tempted to say that they should just give up and concentrate on school to get a high paying job somewhere.

But the mere thought of being an employee all their life shakes a real child entrepreneur to the bone that instead of giving up, their double down on their efforts to start even a very small business, successfully invest in something, or create a moneymaking invention.

Even before a child entrepreneur grows up to adulthood, their mind is already firmly grounded on what it takes to succeed: persevering on despite failures, always saving and always looking out to the future. They already know the bad odds of winning but are still willing to play the entreprenuership game.

Successful companies like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, eBay, Amazon and the likes have the footprints of child entrepreneurs all over them. Social Media have enabled young entrepreneurs to advertise themselves and their products at almost no cost.

E-Commerce has meanwhile enabled young entrepreneurs to create stores at almost no cost. Video sites like YouTube and TikTok have enabled young entrepreneurs to become artists and celebrities without needing the help of movie and television companies.

These digital medias know what young entrepreneurs need to succeed in the new economy and these digital medias could have been in the mind of child entrepreneurs (now billionaires) since they were young.

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