Passing the Baton

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You may not be ready to pass your small business on to your children just yet, but you can use your business to teach them valuable skills and to help them to develop characteristics that might catapult them into business ownership one day.  Even if your child does not become an entrepreneur, the characteristics that they learn from you can be valuable in life, regardless of the career path they chose. 

You may not realize it, but your children are watching you all the time, perceiving and internalizing the way you handle certain situations, as well as the way you interact with customers, partners and even employees, every day.  “…most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action,” as written by Albert Bandura, in his social learning theory.  Therefore, it is important to model behavior that you’d want your children to imitate, even in business.

So the next time you come across an iffy business proposition, an employee makes a mistake, or a customer rubs you the wrong way, think twice about the little eyes that may be watching you, before you react.

Resources for Young Entrepreneurs

http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/

http://www.sba.gov/services/specialaudiences/youngentrepreneurs/index.html