We all want our children to grow up and be successful. We want to see them become confident, motivated, and resilient adults. Raising children with an entrepreneurial spirit can help to give them a can-do attitude. It can teach them analytical skills and leadership qualities.

At the very least, teaching these skills to children will give them many skills to thrive throughout life.

An entrepreneur has vision, drive, confidence, determination, and persistence. They can adapt, grow and change their approach according to shifting markets. Being an entrepreneur requires the ability to think for yourself, take calculated risks, and reach for big dreams. You must love a challenge and be able to think of creative solutions. Entrepreneurs tend to develop effective problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, which are valuable for any career path, not just running a business.

By introducing our kids to entrepreneurship at an early age, the experiences—both positive and negative—can help shape their future and may be the start of something amazing.

But we need to teach them how to be entrepreneurs so they can learn what it takes to be one. As founder of Storm Family Martial Arts, I am passionate about imparting the knowledge and experience I have acquired over my years, and ultimately what I wish someone had taught me in my earlier years.

During the October half term I held a 2-day event on Entrepreneurial and Leadership for 10–15-year-olds – Champions for Life, which was attended by a number of students across all the academies.

Running a business can be daunting and let’s admit…. hard work, so I wanted to create an easy and fun way to introduce bite-sized modules covering the concepts of what’s involved in starting.

We looked at what a business is, and what it involves, like personal performance, marketing and sales, and then had them think about a new business idea they could start up.  What did they enjoy, what was their passion, their skill set.

They then went through the journey of creating a strong strategy and business plan looking at business names, logos, budgets, marketing and social media, even how the business would be launched.

This exercise encouraged the children to really think about a business concept, identify their target market, list their competition, show how they would promote their business, figure out how much they would charge for their product or service, and much more.

The highlights of the 2 days, the guest speakers……

Mark Striat, who is about to complete his PHD in Social Media and Marketing, talked about the power and importance of an on -line presence to a business and its reputation….as well as the pitfalls it can bring, along with personal branding and its impact.

Chris Hiscox, a young CEO with 70 staff working for him in a business he founded at the age of 21 demonstrated that passion, hard work and determination can create dreams!

And Kieran Shepherd, the magician…. he had more than a few tricks up his sleeve! He taught the magic of public speaking. He revealed that standing up in front of others…. selling, influencing, is about telling a story. It was amazing to watch the confidence of the children grow in such a short space of time. And lots of fun was had learning and showing off the new tricks they had learned.

Raising a child with entrepreneurial spirit doesn’t mean they have make owning a business their lifelong career.  However, it will give them the qualities they need as they develop a growth mindset to follow their own dreams and be self-starters.

The feedback was positive with those who attended saying they were taking away new learnings. I will be looking to run another 2 day event in 2023.