How to Teach Your Kids About Your Business

As an entrepreneur, you can give your children an excellent, hands-on education on ethics, managing finances, customer relations, and other work areas that will help them with every-day situations and career choices in the future.

But how do you teach your children about what you do and how you pay for the items and activities in their lives?

One idea is to make them your “assistant for the day.”

To start, tell your children that you are going to have a special work day just for them. And if they do a good job at their new position, they will receive a special prize. And the prize doesn’t need to be expensive. You can arrange to have a special day together, get an ice cream cone, visit a friend, etc.

Then, when you have your “work day” together, show your child what you do and the outcomes of your work (paying electric and water bills, buying clothes, going to soccer camp or on vacation, purchasing gifts and tickets, etc.)

Helpful Task Tips

To help explain things, it may help to provide tasks for your child specific to each portion of your day. For example, you may want to have them:

· Pretend to sell an item to a customer;
· Take a phone message;
· Add or subtract sales;
· Organize files;
· Visit a client with you;
· Shop for supplies;
· Talk to co-workers;
· Enter data onto a spreadsheet;
· Clean up the office;
· Balance a checkbook, etc.

Obviously, you will want to plan activities in advance pertinent to your child’s age, abilities, likes and dislikes, etc. But by taking the time to show your children what you do to help pay for the things in their lives, they will have a much better understanding of why and how you spend your day when they are at school.

For more information on this topic, check out:
http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/03/21/teaching-your-kids-about-business-while-theyre-young/
http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/118570
http://lifehacker.com/337121/teach-your-child-about-business

Do you need help selling your self-published book? Feel free to contact me below with your questions, comments and suggestions. I’d love to hear from you!