Encourage Your Kids to Ditch a Few Days of School and Become the Next Bill Gates

School is important. But knowing life skills, such as how to earn money, the smart way, is even more important. Kids are getting taught how to draw a right angled triangle with a compass, and when Galileo was born, but what about the real world? Most kids in high school are getting average grades, and working a minimum wage job. Then there are the straight A students, who are going to get scholarships to good colleges.

And then there are the fair few who are doing something totally different. Making websites and earning money. Starting businesses. Traveling the world. I'm one of those kids. Am I just lucky? No. Yes I've got the computer whiz dad, but so do my other sisters, and they don't have 3 websites. I had inspiration. All it took was my dad telling me about how he makes money by advertising on his websites one day, so I built a website. And then before I knew it I was making $1000 a month and speaking at the BlogHer conference. And from that I got the motivation to create more websites, make more money, and speak at more conferences. I spoke at SMX West, Ypulse and DMA08. And everywhere I went I was meeting new people, inspirations themselves, like Ashley Qualls from WhateverLife.com and Harrison Gevirtz, who are both self-made teenage millionaires with their own companies. Success stories of kids like these are read by parents to their children, who may then get inspired to start their own blog and make an asset for themselves, at only 12 years old. It really is the dawning of the new generation of entrepreneurial kids.

Want your kids to have real world skills, to make money while they sleep, to be teenage CEOs? Don't leave it up to the schools. They're busy teaching kids how to solve some extensive equation for "x". Take them to conferences like the Elite Retreat. This conference is the creme de la creme of all online marketing conferences. Only the smartest online marketers, like Jeremy Schoemaker, are speakers, and they give away their most secret, genius tips. The upcoming one in February is close to selling out. And it was only just announced the day before yesterday. My dad, Stephan Spencer, will be one of the speakers, and I will most likely be attending. I can't wait!

Turn your kid into an entrepreneur. Teach him or her about the value of passive income and of building assets--much more valuable than what the average school is teaching. And those aren't just life skills, but the skills that'll separate your kid out from all the wage slaves, and possibly transform him or her into the next Bill Gates.

Comments

[VoteforPedro]

Only the smartest online marketers, like Jeremy Schoemaker, are speakers, and they give away their most secret, genius tips.
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LOLz! This gave me a laugh. Is Jeremy your cousin? I'm in IM and have never herad of him.

[zukervati]

Thank you Zoe and please keep up the good work. I will try my best to take your advice.

[curiousasheck]

and possibly transform him or her into the next Bill Gates. . . . .

When all else fails lower your standards.

[KillTheMessenger]

We let Homer Simpson answer this one.

Homer Simpson: "Do'h!"

[HockeyMom]

Wow, love it. My children go to a top notch public school. In third grade I complained about the huge amount of homework sent home each night. I was told they were training my kids for JOBS!

Now when the administrators and teachers talk all I hear is the noise Charlie's Mom makes in cartoons. wa wa wa..

[KillTheMessenger]

Homework has a very practical educational function: it's learning by doing. One can not learn long division by simply learning the algorithm. One has to do it over and over and over again until it becomes automatic. That's just how the human brain works, we need multiple passes over the same information before things really sink in. At least that's true for most of us, there is a tiny minority of really smart people who can remember everything close to perfectly after the first time. If your kids where among these highly gifted, you would know it.

The problem with the US school system is that it teaches the wrong ways of thinking about problems (stressing creativity over proper analysis) and too few facts (access to millions of facts and derivations is required to make ANY sense of the world). As a result students leave the system with a mindset that is prone to guessing (because there is not enough basic information available to them) and believing (because they judge by the creativity of offered information rather then its actual truth content).

If your school is any good, it gives more, not less homework than the average.

You are right to criticize the response you got to your complaint. A school is not supposed to train for jobs. Schools, and that includes high schools, colleges and universities are only supposed to give students the intellectual tools to learn what's required for the real world in the real world.

[dadw5boys]

USE A CALCULATOR

[PATina]

Man... I'm so glad you wrote this. While having the basics taught in school is great... but there has to be a PRACTICAL, REAL LIFE experience to education to make it relevant. There are so many people who don't get this. I understand that there only reference is school and more school... but they need to understand that living life can be a better education than anything you can get from a textbook. Congrats on your success... and I look forward to seeing a more successful you in the future.