Introduction

What is Business?

Business is what people do after they finish going to school. School helps you to prepare yourself with many of the basic skills you will need for business. Business includes terms like working, career, job, profession, occupation, stores, factories, restaurants. Business provides almost everything you use or are involved in outside of your family and school.

What’s the rush with teaching kids business?

You are basically a kid for about 20 years and work for 40 to 45 years (your working years).We suggest that you start thinking about business, asking questions, observing what people do and try and understand what you would like to do, what you may be good at doing and what a good job fit would be for you. Don’t feel pressured because you don’t have to decide and yes you can and will change your mind – many times.

It is easy to learn about business as you do business?

Watch and learn. The best way to learn about business is to think about business and ask lots of questions. You will be surprised at how much you already know about business, because as a customer of many businesses, you are involved in business as you do business with businesses.

You are doing business as a customer. If we look at the customer side of business (the person that buys the product or service) you will start to understand how the business operates or how it serves its customers (businesses provide the product or service). If you understand how to manage customers, you have learned a lot about business.

Another approach to introducing you to business is to visit our “introductions” sections called “Kids Intro” and our “Parents Introduction”. Both parents and kids should have the same goals in mind while exploring business preparation.

Activities:

  1. Name some businesses that you often use for products and/or services.
  2. Name some businesses that you know about through parents jobs, neighbors, relatives and friends of your  parents etc.
  • What kind of products do these businesses sell and what kind of services do they provide? What is the difference between a product and a service. Example: a toy is a product while a haircut is a service?
  • Why do you do business (buy things) with a particular business?
  • Do you look at choices of businesses and how do you make your decision?
  • Which of the businesses do you prefer and why? Which brand of products do you prefer and why?
  • Do you think you could work in these businesses and why?
  • How can these businesses do a better job of what they are offering?

Now that you have identified a number of businesses, many products and services and reasons why you would do business with a business; you understand why businesses exist and what it takes to do business.

Business is as simple as providing products and services for people. Businesses exist because; people demand (need or want) what a business is providing or businesses feel that they can create a demand by providing a product or service. New businesses develop as new needs are discovered and businesses stop when they don’t have people, like you, buying their products or services.

It is business, that provides the things you eat, use in your home, play with and drive in. It is businesses that figures out how to make things, send them to stores and to let you know what they are selling.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when you look at a business;

 What is it that the business does?

Name the activities that you think they have to do to provide the product or service. (think of the many steps that a business takes in whatever it does) Think of all the jobs/tasks the business does to provide you with the product or service.

Example:

A bicycle business; sells bikes, sells bike parts and accessories and repairs bikes.

The bike business;

  1. sells to customers,
  2. advertises and promotes the business to find customers,
  3. manages a website, email and social media,
  4. operates a store,
  5. hires staff,
  6. trains staff,
  7. pays staff,
  8. pays taxes to governments,
  9. buys bikes and parts to resell to customers,
  10. pays bills such as hydro, rent, cleaning, repairs,
  11. helps out in the community
  12. cleans the store,
  13. many more activities to operate a bicycle business.

What is important to this business?

Again, the best introduction to business is to notice, wonder & think and try and figure out what it is that the business is doing. Most businesses are not that complicated. Step up to the challenge and give some thought to what businesses are up to;

  • Notice – just look and watch what goes on in a business.
  • Wonder – you have a great imagination so wonder what it takes to do what a business is doing.
  • Think – just think about what is going on. As you start thinking about particular businesses, you will be amazed at what you learn on your own.
  • Figure it out – ask questions, and try and figure out what the business is all about and how they could do it differently.

Activity

  1. Think of a few businesses your family buys from and list the many activities you see them do.
  2. Try and figure out what TeachingKidsBusiness.com is doing as a business.
  3. After you have given some though to the question then check-out the strategy of TeachingKidsBusiness.com to see what we are trying to do. This can be found in the “About” section.