For as long as any of us have been alive, we’ve been told that the path to success is pretty straight and narrow.
Get good grades, participate in extracurriculars that look good on a college application, get a degree, get a job, climb the ladder, retire. Starting a business has generally not been something that high school guidance counselors encourage young people to do. It’s viewed as a gamble at best, but usually it's painted as something that only works out for some people, and only then by some type of magic trick or extreme stroke of luck.
But that narrative is beginning to unravel.
Not only are parents (rightfully!) becoming more and more skeptical of college as something that offers a solid return on investment for their kids, but young people are proving that starting your own gig might actually be the way of the future for a generation who feel largely locked out of access to the American Dream.
September's jobs report came in ugly, with employers barely hiring and the bottom rung of the corporate ladder freezing over.
Young people are being locked out of the entry-level jobs that used to be the stepping stones to adulthood and a career, and they know it. Growing numbers of Gen Z have quit waiting around to get hired and have started their own small businesses instead. It looks like those risks are starting to pay off.
Right now, young founders are the ones doing the hiring while the big companies sit frozen. Young people have started to see entrepreneurship, once considered the risky path, as a safer and more prosperous bet.
Huzzah!
You love to hear it.
I’ve spent a good bit of time talking with parents over the years, and a lot of their worries about their kids always come back to the same idea. They say things like, “I worry that my daughter is a little entitled," or that, "she doesn't really understand the value of things," or that it seems like their son, "assumes that stuff just shows up."
Though they might use different words or examples, what they’re describing is the same fear: that they're raising someone who knows how to spend a good life but has no idea how to build one.
I think about this a lot because, to me, it's the real divide between people, and it has very little to do with how much money someone has. Some kids grow up seeing the world as a pile of stuff to consume. Others grow up seeing it as an endless supply of problems to solve and value to create.
Being a builder isn't a personality trait that everyone is born with. It's more of a set of skills, and like any skill, it takes root the most solidly if it is acquired early and practiced often.
The problem is that a kid can go all the way through school and never once encounter the most valuable lessons. They'll learn what a noun is and when the Battle of Hastings happened, but then they graduate at eighteen having never priced a product, served a customer, lost a little money on a questionably-sound idea, or felt the jolt of a stranger handing them a dollar for something they made with their own hands.
Schools are pretty good at turning out employees. They do almost nothing to turn out people who can build things.
That’s why we created Business Basics.
In our Grade 3 course, third graders handle real money and real responsibility. They set their own prices and find out the hard way what happens when they set them wrong. They practice talking to customers, they make budgets, they work through problems, and they learn to manage their time. At the end, they plan a giving project of their own, because a kid who learns to earn money by creating value ought to learn how to use what they have to help others as well. Money and responsibility, serving people, setting goals, solving problems, giving back—the stuff most of us (if we were lucky) picked up by accident sometime in our twenties, taught to eight-year-old kids.
Imagine the possibilities!
A child with this type of education grows up different. Money doesn't just appear for them, and it doesn't scare them either. They've made some. They know how it works. And they know they can do it again.
Business Basics has been really well-received, and the feedback we get the most is simply: "When does the next one come out?"
I’m happy to announce that Business Basics Grade 4 is coming, and pre-orders open now!
It picks up where Grade 3 leaves off and pushes further, for kids who are ready for more.
But you don't have to wait on Grade 4! Grade 3 is available right now, and for a lot of kids, it offers the first real taste of making something instead of just buying it.
The job market our kids will inherit is wildly different from the one we experienced. If we want them to succeed, we’re going to have to teach them skills that aren’t taught in classrooms and on campuses.
We’re building the resources to help you give your kids a head start.
— Connor
