Pass on Your Knowledge

It happens every summer and it’ll keep happening: when school gets out, teenagers start to look for jobs to earn some extra money.

What kind of job they decide to get will vary depending on the person, but often you’ll find that enterprising individual who will attempt to start up a summer business of their own to make money.

The types of businesses will certainly vary from the traditional lawn mowing services and babysitting services to something a little more out of the ordinary. The great thing about a business like this is the fact that most teenagers are able to simply go for it in a way adults with a family to support might not be able to.

More importantly, this is a very important learning experience for teenagers to get a feel for the business world and how to manage finances.

One thing I don’t see enough of, however, is teenagers marketing their businesses. I see it on occasion; a flier up here or there telling people someone will cut their lawn for X amount of dollars.

I think what often happens is that teenagers are left to their own devices in order to learn by doing, which is perfectly fine in some regards, but when it came to almost any job I did I was always trained beforehand.

This is a great chance to pass on some of the knowledge you have to a future generation of small business owners. If you lay the proper foundation now these teenagers will have a lot of experience and previous knowledge of what they’re doing when it comes time to start up a real business later on in life.

And there are all sorts of simple and cheap forms of marketing they can do. Business card printing is a perfect example. Help them design their own business card and have a handful of them printed up to hand to people on the street.

Every small business is going to use business card printing eventually, and now they’ll know some of the basics for getting their own.

Talk to them about good places to put up fliers in the area, and ask them how much they know about the people they’re trying to market to. Get them thinking about these kinds of things, and not only when they see more business because of it, but they’ll have a firm foundation in marketing.

I wish there were more teenagers trying to learn the workings of the business world at an early age. That’s the kind of experience few things can match. A textbook will never be able to teach you as well as actually going out and doing it for yourself.
 
Take everything you know about business and start passing it onto the business leaders of the future.