In her new book, author and mother of two entrepreneurs Margot Machol Bisnow shares what she learned from interviewing 70 successful entrepreneurs and their parents. She found that the different ways these parents raised their children contributed significantly to their success as entrepreneurs.
Machol Bisnow highlights 10 specific “rules” for raising entrepreneurs that serve as a common denominator for raising entrepreneurs, and includes profiles of the 70 entrepreneurs she interviewed to show how those rules apply to their lives. Readers learn about the empowering childhoods of many of today’s influential entrepreneurs, including how people like Scooter Braun, one of the country’s top talent managers who built a media empire, grew up, or how the mother of Anne Wojcicki, founder of 23andMe, put unwavering faith in her to figure things out — even if it meant failing a few times at first.
The author lists many of the traits that children with an entrepreneurial mindset exhibit: they question why things are done a certain way and think up new ways to do them, they become absorbed in their own projects and put off homework or the projects they should be doing, etc. She also emphasizes that you can’t know for sure whether a child will become an entrepreneur until they get older, but that it’s important to keep the path open.
“You cannot make a child into an entrepreneur; you can only encourage these tendencies,” writes Machol Bisnow. At the very least, following this educational philosophy leads to happy and capable young people.
Rules like instilling confidence, embracing adversity, and letting the child lead may seem obvious to caring parents, but Machol Bisnow points out that while parents want to support their children, they are often afraid that the child will fail. As a result, parents often dampen their children’s spirits by trying to steer them in a direction they think will lead to their success. The result is depression and defeat in our youth. “Making your children follow a path you have chosen for them is a sure way to suppress their fulfillment,” she writes.
Machol Bisnow argues that encouraging a spirit of discovery, nurturing a child’s talent, and believing in their abilities are fundamental to raising an entrepreneur. And while many of the entrepreneur parents profiled knew intuitively how to best encourage their child’s interest, some of those interviewed initially found it difficult to give them unconditional support. However, when these parents saw how important it was for their child to pursue their chosen passion and dreams, they changed their mindset.
For example, the parents of Thomas Vu, the main producer of the League of Legends video game series, fled Vietnam as war refugees. They had high expectations of their children when they came to the United States. Although Vu’s parents did not understand their son’s passion for video games, they let it go and even gave him a new game (The Legend of Zelda) for which they had to scrape together money. He tells how the game led to his extraordinary career as a video gamer.
Essentially, Machol Bisnow provides parents with a guide to raising confident, compassionate, and capable children. She writes, “In order to believe in themselves, most children first need someone to believe in them. It’s probably no coincidence that every successful entrepreneur I’ve spoken to is supremely confident. Each of them had a mother and/or family member who believed in them and told them they could accomplish anything they set their minds to.”
For more information, visit raiseanentrepreneur.com.
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