Nurturing Your Daughter's Inner Entrepreneur

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of speaking with Leslie Coles, Co-Founder & Executive Director of The Moms as Mentors® Project, a non-profit dedicated to giving moms the tools and opportunities to be mentors in their daughters’ daily lives, ultimately helping their girls to grow into confident and influential women. Moms as Mentors has recently launched a crowdfunding campaign, and we are proud to support their campaign (our coloring book is one of their rewards!).

Read Leslie's guest post about her organization and why it's important and support their campaign today!. Side note: we did not ask her to write such a lovely intro about us! We were totally surprised and totally flattered.

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Nurturing Your Daughter's Inner Entrepreneur

Princess Awesome exists because Founders Rebecca and Eva, two capable, hard-working, creative women turned their idea for a business into a reality. And thank goodness they did! Princess Awesome offers quality products that real girls and mothers want, and ones that aren't available anywhere else.

The original idea alone would not have been enough for them to build Princess Awesome into what it is today. Rebecca and Eva also needed an entrepreneurial spirit, resilience and confidence. Confidence not only in the idea, but in their own capabilities as entrepreneurs, business owners and risk-takers. Confidence that they could weather the challenges that all start-ups inevitably face.  

How can we raise our daughters to have these qualities?

It starts with empowering them when they are young.

That's why, at Moms as Mentors®, we help moms nurture confidence and an entrepreneurial spirit starting in kindergarten. In our mom-daughter entrepreneurship program Make It Count!we are always amazed by the creativity and innovation the girls and moms display.

In our business-plan activity, a mom and girl came up with the idea for an "International Girl" Doll Store," a spin-off of the popular American Girl store. The first-grade girl informed me confidently that the store would have to charge more for the dolls than American Girl. Her reason? Because they would have to go do research in other countries to develop their products and the pricing off the dolls would have to reflect those expenses. That's the kind of creative thinking and confidence we want to promote in girls throughout their development.

How can moms help instill an entrepreneurial spirit, resilience and confidence? Here are 4 tips.

1. Encourage their imagination and creativity. If they have an idea or an invention, ask them questions about it, like "How would you go about turning this idea into a business?" or "What would it take to bring your idea for an invention into an actual product?"
2. Share success stories that involve grit and determination. So often we don't tell children that most successful people didn't have a straight path to success. Girls need to know that taking risks and trying to do something big sometimes results in failure. And that success comes from not letting failure paralyze you, but fuel you for the next challenge you tackle.
3. Expose them to real female entrepreneurs.The next time your daughter wears her Princess Awesome "Busy Dress," why not tell her about Rebecca and Eva? Show them the "About" page on their website for the girls to see the women behind the business.
4. Check out these two children's books:

• The Most Magnificent Thing (by Ashley Spires) about a girl inventor that sends the message that it’s important to persevere, even when it feels like everything has gone wrong.

• The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes(by Mark Pett and Gary Rubenstein) about a 9-year-old perfectionist who has never made a mistake in her life…until she does!

Do you have any tips on how to bring out the inner entrepreneur in young girls? Share them in the comments section!

And, for more ways to empower your daughter, check out our top 12 tools in our Empowerment Toolkit for Moms and Girls here. Learn more about Moms as Mentors.