Do you want to inspire your child to become an entrepreneur? Dr Thommie Burger gives his advice.
I saw this article on entrepreneur.co.za today. The article is titled “How entrepreneurship should be cultivated from a young age”.

I have often wondered why at primary school we were not encouraged to be more entrepreneurial more often. This article got me thinking quite deeply on the complex subject of cultivating entrepreneurship, why is it that we don’t focus more intentionally on creating entrepreneurs from a very early age?

In the article I have shared here, the author posits that we have a skewed view on entrepreneurial failure rates and are not stimulating and educating young entrepreneurial minds from a young age enough. I agree wholeheartedly, it made me think of my early school years. In my humble opinion, it made me realise that entrepreneurial flair and creativity was not actively curated, it was an afterthought.

Personally, I can count the number of school run entrepreneurial activities on one hand! This can’t be right, surely.

Looking back, my first school led entrepreneurial activity was in Grade 4 when we had to create business plans for a market that was to be held at the school. This was a brilliant exercise and I thank my Grade 4 educator for creating this once-off learning environment!

We were asked to come up with a business idea for a small business that could sell products/services at our school market. To do this successfully we had to create a business plan and budget for a business idea, raise the funds from parents, teachers and friends and then execute the idea. My business that I decide to run was going to be selling toasted sandwiches. My reasoning for choosing this was primarily because I knew people would be hungry! So I built the business plan, raised the funds (a whopping 40 ZAR) and then started to execute.

Along came my first pivot. Whilst I was planning for the upcoming market and preparing the resources to be able to sell I realised I needed two toasted sandwich makers to make the amount of sandwiches we planned to sell. So I loaned the equipment from family members. Once that was complete, I realised that we would need electricity. Then it struck me! Electricity supply was critical for many of the businesses that would be selling on the day. And so my first pivot began, I was going to supply electricity to the businesses at the market. To cut a long story short I went about locking down the supply of electricity, completely monopolising the electricity supply market. On the day profits were great in both businesses and this example of early entrepreneurial success has stuck with me for the rest of my life and has been instrumental crit in creating my entrepreneurial curiosity.

If only I was pushed to do more of these entrepreneurial exercises, I truly believe it would have been invaluable. Hence, I believe we should be more proactive about cultivating entrepreneurs from a very young age.

Remember, failure is a good thing! It’s not very nice but it is the learnings are what counts. Perseverance, resourcefulness and creativity is far more important. Instilling a fear of failure in young people may not only be a bad idea, it may limit them in the future.