Parenting Tips If Your Child Wants To Be An Entrepreneur

Gen Z, born between the late 1990s and early 2010s, have already garnered a reputation as the most entrepreneurially minded generation yet, with some 84% wanting to own their own company someday. And they’re optimistic about their chances. Thanks to technology and social media, it all looks possible from where they sit.

But their parents? Probably a little less sure.

Is there a market for what they want to do? Is this really something my child can earn a living doing? And—how can I help them develop the traits to succeed? These are just a few of the questions haunting the parents of these budding business owners.

Margot Machol Bisnow, who interviewed 70 entrepreneurs and their parents for her pathbreaking new book Raising an Entrepreneur, believes there’s an answer to all these questions—and it comes at the right time for Gen Z.

In her interviews, she recognized common threads that give parents a framework for the traits that young entrepreneurs need most. I connected with Bisnow recently to get to the heart of these commonalities—here’s what we discussed.

Traits of the young entrepreneur

Bisnow identified six core traits of the successful entrepreneur—and unsurprisingly, the cultivation of these traits begins in childhood.

1. Grit: Bisnow points to the work of Angela Lee Duckworth, who popularized the concept of grit. “Duckworth defines grit as ‘passion plus perseverance toward long-term goals,’” says Bisnow. “She found that grit is a better predictor of success than intelligence, family income, education, or talent. Grit is sticking with your goals. It’s never giving up. It’s being resilient.”

Grit, says Bisnow, is closely connected with how children are praised. “Children who are only praised for success, rather than for effort, don’t develop grit,” she says. “Children who are praised for their talent or their intelligence or their looks don’t develop grit.

“But when they’re praised for their effort and for their hard work, they learn to find joy in competition and they develop grit.”

2. Passion: “I believe every child is born with a gift—something that makes their heart sing,” Bisnow says. Sadly, many children are never given the opportunity to discover and develop it. “Their parents may think it’s a waste of time and tell them to focus on their studies,” Bisnow says. “Or they’re over-programmed with activities their parents think will be helpful when they apply to college.

“Instead, parents whose children became entrepreneurs understand that each child is unique in some way, and that a parent’s job is to help their children figure out their gift and then to nurture it and support it.”

3. Curiosity: Curiosity, says Bisnow, is a key trait among entrepreneurs—and it’s more than just wondering how something works. It’s also wanting to know whether they could do it better. This is why I call today’s young people the Why Generation: they ask why constantly so they can engineer a better outcome.

“Parents who raise curious children ask them lots of questions and persuade their children to ask questions,” says Bisnow. “They teach their children to look for ways to fix things or to improve situations. They encourage their children to look for creative ways to solve problems.”

4. Risk Tolerance: Bisnow believes that entrepreneurs are risk takers because they grew up knowing that if they took a risk and failed, their parents would still support them. “They grew up with parents who told them that their mistakes were bumps on the road to their success—that if they kept trying, they would succeed eventually. And their family continued to support them through all the setbacks.

“Being willing to risk failure leads to creativity,” continues Bisnow. “When you realize that what you learn from setbacks will eventually lead to your success you become resilient.”

5. Ability to Fail: Bisnow speculates that the main difference between entrepreneurs and other people is their attitude toward failure. “Entrepreneurs understand that failing is how they learn and grow,” she says. “As tennis star Billy Jean King says, ‘We don’t call it failure, we call it feedback.’”

Bisnow says that most entrepreneurs learned to compete while they were growing up, which taught them to figure out why they lost and determine what changes they should make to do better the next time.

“They learned not to get discouraged and to keep trying until they got it right,” she says. “As Roger Federer said recently while giving the commencement speech at Dartmouth, even he only won barely more than half of all the points he played in matches.”

6. Confidence: Confidence often begins in childhood, with parents who resist the opportunity to tell their children how to do or fix things. “They let their children figure it out for themselves,” says Bisnow. “As one entrepreneur’s parent told me, ‘It’s important to resist the temptation to make choices for your kids.’”

Part of the reason entrepreneurs are confident is because they were able to try different approaches, figure out what worked, and think of novel solutions to old problems. Bisnow stresses that they gained confidence because they eventually got really good at something they loved—that they had chosen.

“We paid for our son’s tennis lessons and our other son’s piano and guitar and voice lessons,” says Bisnow. “But we knew nothing about tennis or music. We didn’t encourage either of them in those areas and they were left to choose where to train and who to take lessons from. They were left to figure it out.”

Grades don’t predict success

In her interviews, Bisnow found no correlation between academic success and entrepreneurial success. “Many entrepreneurs were great students, and some breezed through Ivy League schools,” she says. “But many others were miserable in school. Some graduated from college; others didn’t, but neither path correlated to future entrepreneurial success.”

Bisnow found that as long as the young person was able to work intensely on something they loved—whether playing sports, writing music, making movies, cooking, acting, making something, selling something, playing chess, playing video games, running for student government, volunteering at a nonprofit or anything they had a passion for that they could work hard at—the skills they gained were as useful as learning how to get good grades.

“Many future entrepreneurs struggled in school because what schools value, such as telling their teachers what the teachers want to hear, often isn’t how their brains worked,” Bisnow says. “They’re bored sitting still for hours and hearing someone lecture. They don’t like spending time on subjects that don’t excite them.

“It doesn’t mean they won’t be successful entrepreneurs.”

Will your child become an entrepreneur?

Early signs of the entrepreneur spirit are often evident for parents who know what to look for, but sometimes kids will surprise you. “There are some common traits—they would rather spend 10 hours doing something they love than one hour doing something they’re not interested in; they are passionate about any form of competition,” says Bisnow. “But there’s no sure giveaway.”

Raising an entrepreneur calls for a different approach than many parents are used to. It certainly calls for something beyond the “helicopter parenting” model where the parent is always hovering in the background, ready to jump in and save the day.

“Entrepreneurs are bold risk takers who think outside the box,” says Bisnow. “If your children are only praised when they follow the rules, or if you’re only proud of them when they succeed, they won’t turn out to be entrepreneurs.”

With the right mindset, parents of future entrepreneurs can have a huge impact on their child’s success. Praise their effort, allow them to fail and give them space to pursue what they love—this is sound advice for any parent.