Last week, I wrote about making money from your heart. This week, I want to focus on actually being an entrepreneur. The word entrepreneur comes from French and means, literally, one who undertakes, so this week, lets begin to look at what we could undertake.

In this series, I have included children, because the earlier entrepreneurial seeds are sown and lessons learned, the more self sufficient and financially savvy your children will be. That should help you in your old age too!

This post was inspired by a family conversation about children, money and entrepreneurship. I was recalling a competition at my school when I was a teenager. We were each given some small change and throughout the term (semester) we were encouraged to make it into more. My sister-in-law is a matron in a private boarding school. They ran a similar competition for the children there.

One young girl bought some sweets (candies) in bulk online. She made some small pretty bags and filled them with the sweets. Then she sold the bags, at a premium, to other children, friends and family as gifts. She turned the £5 she had at the start of the competition into £50 by the end of the term. That’s a 900% ROI in 10 weeks!

This girl was inspired to continue with the exercise and went on doing what she had been doing with the sweets but also looked to diversify. Last week, my sister-in-law overheard a conversation in the dining hall at the school. This girl was talking about how she was just about to buy her second property. One of her friends scoffed and said, “Don’t be silly, you’re thirteen years old!” She patiently explained. “I saved up the money I made, then made some more with that. Then I bought my first property, it’s in my Mum’s name. I rented that out and now I have enough to put a deposit on a second property.”

When that young lady goes to University, she won’t be needing any student loans. If she wants to spend her life studying Mongolian poetry or working with Bolivian street kids or even practising circus skills just for fun, she will be able to do just that. What a wonderful way to start your adult life - financially independent.

It’s never too late to get there, or, indeed too early to start. Here’s this weeks step forward.

Adults, take £10 or $20 note and carry it around with you. For your children, give them a smaller amount depending on your discretion and their age. This money is not to be spent or used at all this week. The idea is to become aware of how you could use it and make it into something bigger. How many ideas can you come up with?

A few times each day just hold the money, even talk to it and ask for ideas to come to you. Each evening just for 5 minutes, talk about the ideas you’ve had. If you don’t have a family around you, write them down or share them with a friend. See if you can get someone to do this with you. At the end of the week, you should have a few ideas about how to turn your money into more. Come back and join us for The Entrepreneurial Challenge Part 2.