What if there is no business successor among enough grown-up children? If you feel that the strategic goals and their implementation do not find support in the family? The children know that they will not have an inheritance, but they do not realize. Such questions were asked to me by one of the subscribers. I will share my opinion about the family business, as well as analyze the main mistakes that businessmen make in raising children. How to develop an entrepreneurial spirit in a child and not kill a future businessman in him?
Family business: relevance
My company conducts projects not only in the CIS countries, but also in the USA and Taiwan. It is there that the topic of family business and its inheritance is very relevant. I would even say that Taiwan has a family-oriented business culture. In Russian-speaking countries, such situations occur, but much less often. Consider two main vectors that will help you understand this topic.
Don't pamper your children too much
Unfortunately, the children of businessmen very often grow up spoiled. Compared to children who do not grow up in such financially prosperous families, they have much fewer challenges. They have to struggle less to survive and to extract.
A child from an unsecured family learns from childhood to save up for a bicycle and find money for it, and for the child of an entrepreneur, a bicycle is something ordinary.
I once read about how the Rothschilds raise their children. I don't know if this is true or not, but hellish stories have been described. For example, that while studying at the university, the Rothschild children are the poorest students, they have no pocket money. And in general, they learn to earn money from childhood by hard work. In the CIS countries there is no culture of raising children, because all entrepreneurs are mainly in the first generation, so we often make a mistake and give too much to children.
But then they have no challenges, they have nothing to fight for, and this is a disaster! A 6-year-old gets an iPhone 11 just because "why not?" He makes no effort, no play or struggle. And entrepreneurship presupposes the presence of goals, barriers and the desire to overcome them. By bringing everything on a silver platter, businessmen are killing the entrepreneurial mindset in children.
My experience
Yes, I am also a wealthy parent, I have a daughter. And I know that this approach takes a tremendous amount of effort. You need to work hard to create games for your daughter, barriers, keep discipline, because it's easier to just buy!
Not everyone will become an entrepreneur
Second point: understand that not all people are born to be entrepreneurs from the beginning. Every person is unique. If a child was born into a family of a successful entrepreneur, this does not mean that his talents lie in the same area. Therefore, only one of the many Rockefeller children became an entrepreneur, and the rest went into art, science - where they can express themselves.
Competition with the parent
Where else can a child's unwillingness to follow in the footsteps of their parents appear? Imagine a child raised by a Rockefeller family whose dad is the world's first billionaire, the richest man in the country, made history through innovation and creative solutions. And he must compete with him, and he has very little chance of winning, because the title of the first billionaire in the world is the highest bar! But becoming great in a completely different area and winning in this way is much easier, which is why children choose this path.
Output
Raising an heir is a very delicate matter. Do not kill the entrepreneur in the child by giving him everything at once. Make him receive, win, earn, fight for every penny. My daughter cleans not only in our house, but also in the house of our friends, receiving 25-30 dollars for this. She spends the whole day cleaning. I give my daughter pocket money, but only if she fulfills all the affairs and duties according to the agreed list.
If businessmen do not do something like this, then their children will be lost and unhappy. Unfortunately, these children often develop addictions, because this is their way of dealing with depression.
Even if you raised your child the right way, don't expect him to become an entrepreneur. I absolutely do not expect my daughter to lead my company and run it after me. There are a lot of options for realizing in life, becoming an entrepreneur is only one of them.
Raise your kids creative and capable, but don't set them up for the future of running your business. If you want your business to be successful for a long time, develop a good management team and build a management system.
