This is Ryan right before he left to go on his first interview for a busboy position at the local sandwich shop. He was nervous. Very nervous. I knew he would be, so a few days before the interview we began role-playing. I wanted him to feel comfortable and confident that he was qualified for the job.

Although it’s always hard to know exactly what questions are going to be asked during an interview, there tend to be some standard ones.

We started with those questions:

■Why are you interested in this job?
■What makes you qualified for the job?
■What is your greatest strength/weakness?
■When can you start?

Then I tried to get creative. It’s been awhile since I’ve been on an interview, but here are the questions I aksed him:

■How would you handle these scenarios? A customer is upset because they feel their order was not handled properly. Or Your shift is over but your replacement hasn’t shown up. What do you do?
■How do you describe good customer service?
■What are your expectations for this job?

To build his confidence I reminded him of all the work experience he had. It’s hard to toot our own horn but sometimes we simply need to do it. Besides, unlike a lot of kids his age, he’s been working since he was eleven years old. First it was his once-a-week paper route which he kept for five years. When he was 13, he began reffing soccer in the fall. And then there was all the in-between stuff like doing yard work for our neighbor or cat-sitting for weeks at a time. All of that shows initiative, responsibility, and commitment. Employers like that. So mention it!

I also told him that if he was asked to describe what sets him apart from the others, he should talk about the times he went above-and-beyond in his responsibilities. Like when he decided to run the newspapers up to the doorstep of his subscribers. Or when he stayed to ref the next soccer game when the scheduled ref didn’t show. This shows you’re willing to put in the work…and then some.

I told him, they’re going to learn a lot about you even before you answer that first question. Did you arrive on time? How are you dressed? How did you introduce yourself? Did you offer a nice, firm handshake? How was your eye contact? All of these are clues to who you are as a person. And how you relate to everyone you meet is an indication of your inter-personal skills. Those are very important to an employer.

We role-played until he felt like he was ready. And although he was still nervous, he was less so knowing that he had prepared.

As he drove off that afternoon to learn more about how the world works, I was hoping that one lesson that day was learning that 5 minutes before you leave for the interview is not a good time to discover that you’ve misplaced your dress pants and that your shirt needs to be ironed.

Nobody likes to make mistakes. They’re annoying, frustrating, and sometimes even embarrassing. Often make us feel like we’ve done something wrong.

Unless we change the way we think about them. And when we do, we can discover that mistakes are one of the most powerful teaching tools we have.

Consider your child being in charge of making a class poster for the school play. He brings home the poster board and stencils and begins to work. “Do you want some help?” you ask. “No,” he says and without another thought picks up the first letter and stencils it with colored marker on the board. Then he does the next letter, then the next. Pretty soon he realizes that he’s going to run out of room on the board because he didn’t first plan out the lettering. Frustrated and annoyed, he throws the pens on the table.

You, on the other hand, feel a lesson coming on. You know that this is a great opportunity to teach him some life lessons in a “controlled” environment. In a way that doesn’t make him feel belittled and “stupid” you help him come up with ways to solve the poster problem. You remind him that making mistakes is not a bad thing as long as you’re willing to learn from the mistakes.

Had you insisted he take your help from the beginning, he may have felt like he wasn’t capable of figuring things out on his own. And you would have robbed him of the opportunity to learn how to deal with problems in a constructive way. By not forcing your help on him, you showed him that you respected his decision to make the right choice. Mistake or no mistake, this builds trust. And trust builds confidence…something our kids will need to manage effectively as adults.

The Money Connection: Allowing your kids to make money mistakes while they’re still under your tutelage is important. Better now when the mistakes are cheaper. Although you may find it hard to let your child spend money on something you just know is a poor choice, it’s important you let them experience the consequences. The key, again, is to have the conversation. Why did you make that choice? Was it a good one? How could you do it differently in the future? Kids don’t necessarily know how to work through problems unless we teach them. And teaching them how to effectively manage money by using the power of mistakes is a priceless opportunity!

Photo Credits

I love this video from Verizon about the power of empowering our kids in their young business adventures!  Let them DREAM BIG and TAKE ACTION!

I wrote an article not too long ago called Lessons from the Lemonade Stand and did a podcast on it too!

Talk to your kids today about ways they can make money this Summer. Ask them what they would like to do with the money they earn and who they might be able to help with a portion of the money they earn! Now THAT is a powerful and empowering conversation!

All parents want their children to succeed in school. And since Kindergarten is a child’s first exposure to “formal” schooling, preparing them for success is an important first step on the academic ladder. But “preparing” our kids for academic success does not mean completing reams of worksheets and stacks of flashcards. It’s actually a lot easier than that. It simply requires looking for opportunities to seamlessly tie “lessons” into daily life. And the good news is, because these lessons are done in the context of things that are meaningful and relevant to children’s lives, deeper learning takes place.

Money is a good example. Most kids are familiar with it. In fact, most two-year olds already know that this thing called money buys stuff. By the time they are four and five, they’ve had a lot of money experiences, from watching mom and dad pay for things at the store to receiving money as birthday gifts. We can use these opportunities to sneak in some lessons and begin to prepare them for what they will be learning once they head off to school.

The Kindergarten curriculum includes learning about coins: their names, values, and some simple equivalencies. The following activity covers each of these in the context of having kids set their first personal financial goal. Seem lofty? Believe it or not, given the opportunity, and with your guidance, 4- and 5-year olds are quite capable of learning how to use their own money to purchase something they want.

The “lesson” begins as soon as you hear your four-year old utter the words can I have? That’s because the question, Can I have, creates a teaching opportunity that is immediately relevant and meaningful. The answer, Sure, let’s create a goal that will help you save enough money to buy it, will help your child learn skills that will become useful in Kindergarten and beyond.

Since it’s important that kids experience success with their first financial goal, start with an item that has a relatively small price tag…under $5. Through an allowance or some Above-and-Beyond Jobs (extra things kids can do to earn money), help your child figure out about how long it will take her to achieve her goal. Print and fill in the My Savings Goal activity sheet. Then print out the paper coins (from the My Savings Goal activity sheet) and cut out and paste her target amount onto the activity sheet. Help her find a clear jar where she can begin to save her coins then have her tape on a picture of the item she is saving for. This will serve as a concrete reminder of her goal.

As she earns money towards her goal, have her color in the coins on the activity sheet. This is a good time to talk to her about the names of the coins and their values. This little one is called a dime. It’s worth 10 cents. Have her describe some of the unique characteristics of each coin: rough edge, smallest, silver, etc. You can even talk about equivalencies such as ten dimes equals one dollar. Just keep in mind that learning takes time. Right now it’s about exposing her to the coin names and values and introducing her to different equivalencies so that when she enters Kindergarten, she’ll bring with her a familiarity which will make classroom lessons on money a little easier.

As her jar slowly fills up, not only will she be learning about coins, but you’ll be reinforcing delayed gratification, not always an easy skill for a youngster to learn. She’ll need on-going words of encouragement from you and perhaps even little saving reminders. Soon, with your support, she’ll walk into that store with her money jar and walk out with her coveted item. There is nothing like the sense of personal satisfaction for having accomplished something you set out to do. We do not want to deny our kids this feeling. We also don’t want to deny ourselves the opportunity to watch our child hand over her hard-earned money with heavy anticipation and excitement, knowing that she has learned some very important life skills.

Kindergarten is a very exciting year. It’s a year of social, emotional, and physical growth. But it is also the beginning of their academic journey. Looking for everyday opportunities to prepare our youngsters for this incredible journey can turn out to be that extra nudge of confidence they need to help set them up for success.

If you have kids, this is a much watch video and perfect for Money Money Monday!

So you’ve got kids and you’re beginning to give thought to the idea of giving them an allowance. If you’re like most people, you’ll follow one of two typical allowance approaches.1 The first approach ties allowance to the completion of chores. The second approach emphasizes allowance as practice money to teach basic money management skills. Both approaches teach important lessons. But is one approach more effective than the other? Turns out, the answer is yes.

My goal is to address the two allowance approaches in a way that gets you to think beyond any personal experiences or biases you may have. To do that, I’m going to use current research in motivation theory to determine the effectiveness of each approach.

Motivation

What motivates us? That was the question asked by psychologist Edward L. Deci over three decades ago. Since then, his research and collaborations with Richard M. Ryan, combined with the research of countless others, has given us a framework within which we can come to understand human motivation. This framework, called Self-Determination Theory, developed out of the study of extrinsic and intrinsic rewards, the two forces, if you will, that move us to do something.

Extrinsic rewards come from without. Think stickers, grades, and candy. The focus is the reward so once the reward is removed, the desired behavior typically disappears. In addition, because we habituate quickly to extrinsic rewards, the reward needs to increase over time in order to maintain the desired behavior.

Intrinsic rewards come from within. They are things like the sense of accomplishment or personal challenge that we feel as a result of doing something that we find interesting. Intrinsically motivated people were found to be persistent, hard working, and happier when they felt they were in control of their own lives. Self-Determination Theory attributes these findings to meeting three psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

· Autonomy refers to our need for free choice.

· Competence is our desire to master things that are interesting to us.

· Relatedness refers to our need to be connected to others.

The conclusion from the research is that intrinsic rewards, rewards derived from the activity itself, are more sustaining and contribute more to our personal well-being than extrinsic rewards, rewards that come from without. In fact, extrinsic rewards were found to have a substantial undermining effect on intrinsic motivation.

Self-Determination Theory Applied to Allowances

How do two seemingly unrelated topics – Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and kids’ allowance – fit together? Since it makes sense that we would want to promote intrinsic motivation in our kids, we can use SDT to evaluate how well each of the allowance approaches promotes the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Click here to read the entire paper as a pdf.

Teaching kids the work ethic of earning money is an important life skill.  Here are some tips to help you get started.

Saving money is hard.  And for some kids it’s really hard.  But it’s also important.  As parents, we want to develop healthy saving habits in our kids.  This is the first in a series of Kids Money Quick Tips devoted to encouraging and motivating kids to save.

The truth is there are a lot of secrets to learn in order to be successful in Life and in Business!

I’m really excited about this upcoming online event that my friend Thad Bong is organizing at the start of August! It’s called Passion Profit Secrets, and it’s happening from the 2nd of August to the 6th of August.

He’s invited 10 Top Expert Passionpreneurs to share all their secrets of how they turned their Passion into a personal cash machine… and how you can too!

Here’s a sneak peek of the speakers and what they’ll be sharing with you:

Paul Evans (President, Info Market Results LLC)
Discover your unique personal value and profit by sharing just that!

Deb Ingino (President, My Wired Style)
Harness your Passionpreneur strengths to achieve peak performance and profits.

Carrie Wilkerson (The Barefoot Executive)
Attract a horde of raving fans and paying customers to your business!

Barry Chandler (The Bar Blogger)
How to use a simple blog to kickstart your Passionpreneur empire.

Perry Lawrence (Ask Mr Video)
Use video to create celebrity-like recognition and influence that leads to profits.

Snowden McFall (President, Fired Up! Professional Speaking)
Get fired up to succeed without stressing out and burning out.

Marta Costa (President, VA-4-Hire)
How to design the ultimate Passionpreneur business around your dream lifestyle.

Laurie Taylor (President, Flashpoint! LLC)
Plan your Passionpreneur business so that you make and keep more profit.

Sarah Cook (CEO, Raising CEO Kids) <=================== That’s me! 
Create a culture of entrepreneurship – Passionpreneurship in your family.

Bob Burg (Bestselling Author with John David Mann of The Go Giver)
Why giving is the key that will propel you into stratospheric profits.

Yes, that’s right, I’m one of them! And here’s the best part – the entire event is 100% free to attend LIVE.

So what’s the catch?
Thad’s actually recording all the conference sessions and packaging that as a premium level product to sell after the conference is over. While the conference is LIVE, he’s giving free access to only a very select group of people. Since you’ve been such loyal members of the Raising CEO Kids community of mine, and I’m speaking, I asked him if you could join in and he said Yes… so you’re in!
Just head to http://bit.ly/PassionProfitSecrets to get your free all-access pass.
I’ve been told that his webcast service can only support up to 2,000 listeners and I’m very sure that there will be at least 20,000 people wanting in once the word gets out, so you’ll want to grab your spot before it’s too late!

Here’s the link again: http://bit.ly/PassionProfitSecrets

I’ll ‘see’ you there!

Sarah

PS – When you register e-mail me the confirmation email that you get from Thad and I’ll send you a FREE GIFT!  You will love it!