Six (6) Parenting Lessons I Learned with my budding 14-year-old Entrepreneur.

Pokemon Cards created a Teachable Moment in Entrepreneurship. 

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Parenting Lessons: How Pokemon Cards created a Teachable Moment in Entrepreneurship

Not too very long ago, my 14-year-old son asked me to help him do something he could not do for himself: Sell Pokemon Cards on Facebook Marketplace.

We all played for a few years, collecting a few more each release, even going to events. After his mom died, he kept playing but his brother did not.

He inherited his late mom's cards, then his brother gave up playing and gave his, then I gave up mine... by the end, he had well in excess of 7,000 extra cards (those not in his current playing decks or collections).

He asked permission to sell them, I suggested Facebook Marketplace. He diligently separated them into categories, grouping them in fair sets. Eventually, he needed my help listing them.

Since he is in school now and doesn't own a car or driver's license yet, I found myself responding to his ads and taking the cards and handing them off and collecting money.

As I look back on the last months, I have several things to glean from the experience.

Lessons in Parenting: What went well.

1. Place the ownership on them. Make them do as much as they can. Encouraging him to do all the pre-work allowed him to take responsibility for the quality of his own product and make a better sale. 
2. Encourage their diligence. I'm darn proud of him staying on top of the process, checking to see if there have been messages from buyers, and asking for feedback. 
3. Teach them to create value. He sold two very quickly, both to parents who used to play and are now teaching their kids. Both parents agreed that it was a fair deal, and great assortment. He did a great job organizing them in a way that was fair to the buyer and gave good value. He didn't need to do anything other than organizing them in a special way and sell that organization to create that value. 

Lessons in Parenting: Opportunities for growth.

1. Walk them all the way through. I could have opted to wait to schedule a time to sell the cards to ensure he would be there to meet the buyers. I didn't do that with the first one but I did with the second. That gave him the opportunity to handle the sale and meet buyers face to face. 
2. Your Engagement is Crucial: I could have been more engaged with him in the process. I treated it like an afterthought and didn't give him the same priority he showed the project. I doubled back to re-encourage him and tell him what a great job he did and was doing with the project.
3. Setbacks are inevitable. The rest didn't sell as quickly. He did some work to try to get them listed on Amazon and that hit a roadblock. So we learned that we could double back and get a new plan. So we paid for $1 worth of advertising to boost the listing on Facebook Marketplace. 

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Shalom: Live Long and Prosper!

Darrell Wolfe (DG Wolfe)

Storyteller | Writer | Thinker | Consultant @ DarrellWolfe.com

Clifton StrengthsFinder: Intellection, Learner, Ideation, Achiever, Input
16Personalities (Myers-Briggs Type): INFJ