Why Parents Should Fund Their Children’s Businesses
The point of this article is to give the reasons and benefits of why parents should be the first funders of their children’s businesses.
Parents take on the responsibility of protecting and raising their kids. They want a certain outcome for their kids. So they put them through primary and secondary school, and then university.
They want their kids to have a career so that they — the children — will be able to take care of their families in the future also.
Parents want their children to prosper.
My parents did that. I am grateful.
FYI, I am not a parent.
To get to why I implore parents to fund their children’s businesses, let me take you through my little journey briefly.
I am from Ga-Sekhukhune is Limpopo, and it is where I did my basic education (primary and high schooling). Then I went to study for a diploma in accounting at the University of Johannesburg in 2005. Then I did a postgraduate diploma in forensic auditing.
Even before varsity, I always had the passion to become an entrepreneur. In line with being a liker of things, I registered my first business while I was doing my second year in 2006. I saved, got a weekend job, and I bought DJ’ing equipment. I tried my luck with the entertainment business.
However, that business never went anywhere. I redeemed myself by selling second-hand DJ equipment which I stocked at a repair factory.
Now, after I completed university, I struggled to get an accounting job. Parallel to the job hunt, I pursued further business ventures. I had a graphic design business. I would find a client and get a real graphic designer to do the work.
Later on, I taught myself how to do graphic design.
Fast forward to today in 2021, after a try in various businesses, a lot of them a failure and others a satisfying success, I realise entrepreneurship gave me a lot of crucial soft and hard skills, even before completing university.
Also having worked a bit, in hindsight, employment would have never given me all of the skills I have today.
At the time I got to be employed, I had a lot of skills. I was employment ready. I was advanced than my co-workers. And also, if I was to learn them through employment, they would have taken longer as I would have not owned the responsibility to learn them.
The pinnacle of this article is that you should fund your children’s business interests early on so that they can be advanced with skills and work-ready competitiveness.
[The sad and unsaid reality is, most youth struggle with basics at a new job: operating email, communicating (written and verbal), impulse control, social awkwardness]
Soft and hard skills only entrepreneurship could have given me:
- Neck to research a business idea and action it to live (a hard task)
- Neck to raise own funds (through part-time jobs) for a business idea
- Marketing, sales, distribution, and cash flow management
- Time management (if I am not on time, it is my reputation on the line)
- Verbal and written persuasion
- Project management
- Self-education (I had to learn graphic design because I could not afford a graphic designer. I taught myself so many other skills)
- Self-motivation
- Graphic/web/clothing design
- Writing (books)
- Editing books
- *And many other skills
If you fund your children’s entrepreneurship ventures, they will attain similar skills in line with their business interests.
With these skills, a child can go after anything they want.
It would make them very attractive to employers.
How to fund them | Learning to take responsibility
We’ve established the advantage of funding your children’s business interests.
The other crucial part is ‘how to fund’ them.
Importantly, they have to feel the pinch of putting their own money on the line also, to get a sense of taking and owning responsibility.
So, fund them partially. The other part has to be their own. I could be from their savings. If they don’t have savings, well, give them paying odd jobs.
If there is a supplier, let them pay their part first. Get verification (proof of payment) and only then pay the remaining balance to the supplier directly.
All in all, administer that that they pay their part first.
Like I said above, they will get a sense of taking and owning responsibility through putting their own money on the line.
- — — -
· More related posts are coming
· Free book: How to Start a Business Simple & Easy https://buff.ly/2WEymQb
· I will soon upload videos from my Business Me Young entrepreneurship workshops
· Call for fictional short stories that teach children about entrepreneurship https://buff.ly/3xG4S1m
· Video: It is the Cheapest and Easiest Time in History Become an Entrepreneur https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=811878196326809
