Starting a Kid’s Business is Child’s Play

By Jayne Berkaw

In my last blog, I talked about encouraging your child’s entrepreneurial spirit to begin driving home the point that a plan for earning money is as basic to financial security as a plan for how to use the money you earn.

There are plenty of opportunities out there for your child to earn a buck or two.  Depending on their age, the opportunities just grow as their skills and maturity grows.  The key is to put together a plan of action and then do it!  Below is a simple guide to help your child get started in preparing for their venture:

• Business Description Decide what kind of business you wish to start.  Describe it making sure to include a name for the business, what services or products will be offered and where it will be located.
  • Name: Poop-be-gone
  • Service: Yard clean up (weekly or bi-weekly)
  • Location: My neighborhood

• Goals Write down the goals for the business.   Think about things like how much money you’d like to make, and what you’d like to learn from the business.
  • Earn $1000 to put towards college savings

• Market Research It’s important to understand your prospective customers and what needs of theirs are you meeting, how much you’re going to charge, who your competition is, and why customers should choose your product or service over the competition.
  • Market : People with dogs and fenced yard   (20 in my neighborhood)
  • Price: $5.00 for weekly or $7.50 for bi-weekly clean up
  • Needs: Doing a job most people don’t like doing themselves, giving back time, improving the comfort of their yard
  • Competition: People who clean up after their own dogs, Sallies Doggie Helper
  • Reason to choose my service: $2.00 less than Sallies, flexibility

• Marketing/Sales Coming up with the business idea is definitely the most fun part, but getting paying customers is the most important.  Getting the word out about your business and following up with potential customers is going to determine whether you business will succeed or not.  Persistence is key!
  • Initial Marketing (creating awareness): Develop fliers and place in mailboxes
  • Follow up sales: Following week, go door to door and talk with potential customers about my service and reasons why they should go with me.

• Funding For Poop-be-gone, the only tools needed are a shovel or pooper scooper and bags.  If you don’t have these than you’ll have to purchase them.
• Training Not a lot of training is needed to pick up doggie poop.  But if you were thinking about starting a web design business and you didn’t have the necessary computer programming skills, you’d either have to learn or go back to picking up poop.  There are a number of resources (family, friends, library books, internet) that you can tap into to learn what you need to know.
• Employees Do you need your little sister’s help to ensure you get to all of your customer’s houses or can you handle it on your own?  If your sister is going to help out, how much are you going to pay her?
• Safety It’s important to make sure you understand the risks involved with your business.  Using our Poop-be-gone business example, a major risk is the dogs themselves or slipping on the poop .   Here you’ll need to make sure the owners keep the dogs in the house while you perform your duties.   Talk to your parents and get their help as you go through the process of developing your business.

The internet offers a plethora of resources to help kids plan their business ventures.  Just a few I discovered from a quick search:

• http://www.bizkids.com
• http://internetbasedkids.com/
• http://www.life123.com/parenting/young-children/business-ideas/great-business-ideas-for-kids.shtml
• http://www.ehow.com/info_7759993_basics-starting-kidowned-business.html
• http://www.moneyinstructor.com/art/childbusiness.asp
• http://life.familyeducation.com/business/money-and-kids/29596.html

Even the old stand by lemonade stand can be a great experience in business development for a child.  Talk it up, respect the ideas your child comes up with, and support them in their ventures.  It will come back to you many times over when your child sprouts ideas and develops them with confidence in every area of his or her life.  Then it will be your turn to pat yourself on the back!

Copyright Starting a Kid’s Business is Child’s Play © 2011. All rights reserved

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 at 2:31 PM and is filed under Blog, Earning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Tagged: earning money, entrepreneur