College or Entrepreneurship? How to Support Your Kids As They Choose Their Path

Another school year has come to a close—with many students donning caps and gowns in celebration of their hard work and their parents’ unwavering support. While juggling a business and raising kids is no easy feat, embracing your now adult child’s next chapter comes with a combined sense of pride, joy, and uneasiness as they prepare to leave the nest.

Of my four kiddos, all have left the nest with the sole exception of my seventh grader. My older son has been the one most captivated by the dream of entrepreneurship (seemed to work out well for Mom and Dad, and besides, how hard could it be?). His twin sister preferred a steadier, less frictious entry into the real world, while my younger son wasted no time after high school to head off far from home to an out-of-state school, resolved to experience life on his own terms.

As an entrepreneur who has started and built successful businesses, how should I support one of my children who wants to follow in my footsteps and embark on the same journey?

Tips for Nurturing an Entrepreneurial Mindset

My older son knew that his dad and I, over the course of eight years, had built a business and sold it to Intuit for $20 million. He knew that our second business was also successful and responsible for providing a comfortable life for him and his siblings. What he had a harder time understanding was not just the magnitude—it didn’t all happen overnight—but the very nature of the work involved.

Let’s compare the work of college to the work of business—something my husband and I went over often with my son to remind him of his options.

One nice thing about going to college is that the routine, though missing the securities of home, is familiar. College mimics the rhythms and values of high school—you go to class; you study; you do well on your homework, projects, and exams—albeit within a framework of more complete personal independence.

Compare this with entrepreneurship. If you’re fresh out of high school, buckle up! You’re in for a breakneck transition!

An entrepreneur needs to know how to make decisions at scale, to think strategically and long-term. More than that, nurturing entrepreneurial passions to fruition requires a heightened level of self-belief built on a foundation of past accomplishments as well as lessons gained through failures. For eighteen-year-olds who are still struggling to find their identity—and still developing their prefrontal cortex, for goodness sake!—the entrepreneurial school of hard knocks may end up knocking a bit too hard.

I’m not saying college is right for everyone, but I do encourage parents, especially those with the good fortune to have prospered in their entrepreneurial ventures, to help their children manage expectations and understand the very real possibility of experiencing failure along the path to success. You’ve lived it, so pass along your wisdom to help ready them for the highs and lows of business ownership.

For example:

• Explain the reality that achieving a work-life balance may seem elusive at times.
• Instill in them the importance of goal setting and metrics.
• Prepare them for making sacrifices—in the early stages of launching a company, they should be at peace with forgoing some personal luxuries.

How to Embrace a Practical, Efficient, and Flexible Approach to College

But what if your child has no interest in entrepreneurship?

As with anything else, when it comes to higher education, you’ll want to maximize your return on investment. And, of course, you’ll want your children to have the opportunity to embrace the next chapter of life with genuine enthusiasm, autonomy, and yes, comfort.

I encourage parents not to box themselves, or their children, into a corner by insisting that the only viable destination after high school is immediate enrollment in a four-year university. Tailor the college search process to not only your child’s specific career interests, but also to their level of maturity, self-confidence, social needs and other factors.

Realize, too, that your adult children could both go to college AND dip their toes into entrepreneurship. My son has many friends who went to college and also ran side businesses. One sold vintage T-shirts and actually made a decent living from it. His friend learned both the hard-knock way of starting things while also learning, through business classes in school, the rules and structures of running things.

Experience Is the Best Teacher

The lessons I’ve learned through my entrepreneurial journey will most likely save my son a lot of heartache as he embarks on his own. My job is not to shield him from mistakes, as learning from problems is one of the best ways in life to adjust, but to guide him on his journey from full dependence to independence.

My son eventually decided to pursue college, focusing on a curriculum that will prepare him to be a better entrepreneur. He is currently in his last semester at Chapman University and will be graduating with a B.S. degree in business administration with a minor in entrepreneurship. He plans to continue on to graduate school to pursue a Juris Doctor/Master of Business Administration degree.

As parents, we all want our children to find happiness, fulfillment, and success, but it’s important to remember that we’re meant to offer guidance, not control every decision they make. Your role now is to be a coach, a source of knowledge and support. Your children still need you, but they also need space to fail and succeed on their own.