Books for Children About Entrepreneurship

Young and Mighty by Henry Patterson

I know - tl;dr

If the book is of no interest, scroll to the end for a preface to next week’s post on social media marketing. Or the ‘next’ post at very least. Weekly seems like a vague notion at times.

The book. Let’s start with why I like it.

There are some unique gems in this book, specifically the ideas for generating start-up funds. He gives a step-by-step on each idea which interestingly are business ideas all in their own right.

Second are the marketing and PR ideas. From my own experience with really successful young entrepreneurs all over the world, I can tell you everyone has a marketing savvy parent or mentor behind them. Such as calling the local newspaper to prompt them come to a key sale or market. It’s free advertising if you can convince them it is worth reporting on. And if it’s a local child trying to start a neat business, it is definitely interesting enough to report on.

Now for what I wasn’t keen on. Actually, it’s more what I think was added for filler.

There are insights from several adult entrepreneurs and not much of it is genuinely that useful to a child starting their own business. Most of the advice is too high level, or goes beyond simple advice to get a child started. Not to say it wasn’t interesting content, but it feels a little “filler” and slightly promotional just in the name on the list, <cough>Branson. However, I don’t think that was Henry’s intention. I think it spun out of the national attention he got with business celebrities and he’s sharing his network with young readers. I just don’t think the content is that useful or interesting enough to a 9 year old to warrant the volume of such content.

Still worth a read for sure but that’s my honest take.

Now to dive into Henry’s business idea which is the truly interesting bit.

To make a long story short, it spun out of a candy business idea his mother was starting and became a unique brand called Not Before Tea, which in turn became a children’s book called ‘The Adventures of Sherb and Pip’ ( a nod to his original candy design called Sherbet Pip) and eventually this book. That’s quite a business model for a child.

Here’s a quote from Henry when he was thirteen about being a young entrepreneur,

“9 years old and running a business isn’t young enough for me. I constantly wonder why I wasn’t doing anything for the first 8! I don’t know why society has this idea that life starts when you’re 18. It simply isn’t true. We spend the first 17 years of our life counting down the days until we finish school, but for what? Nothing changes overnight when you turn 18. You don’t suddenly become capable of doing anything you want. The earlier you start, the earlier you succeed.”

You can read the full interview here https://kingsinterhigh.co.uk/blog/henry-patterson/

The book features Henry Patterson’s business advice but he is joined by Jodie Hughes, Clare Yarwood-White, Rebecca Patterson, Ian Zant-Boer, Sir Richard Branson, Nigel Botterill, Ariana DeBose, Lavinia Drake, Faye Michel Jary, Mike Krieger, Cameron Mackintosh, Natasha Minter, Theo Paphitis, Laura Phelan, Tim Stockdale, Christopher Tendai, Holly Tucker and Sarah Willingham with advice for young entrepreneurs from their own experiences.

Yes I agree - that’s quite an impressive line-up of interesting and successful people. Just for the collaboration alone he deserves some serious kudos. Again - I would note that Rebecca (in the list of contributors), and Henry’s mom, and a key business partner for Henry. And boy are they!

After a little digging I discovered ANOTHER business they launched together. Check out https://www.myzellie.com/, seriously, this mom and son team are idea machines. And I really like the bags!

Henry has launched into yet another career recently as a recording artist, which is decidedly another entrepreneurial venture. Everything about music is promotion and selling. I think becoming an entrepreneur at such a young age has set him up for success in his new venture. I’m looking forward to listening.

It is actually Henry that will be, in part, one of my examples for the up coming posts on social media marketing and the young entrepreneur. He has had some experiences that can be seen as a cautionary tale for how “out there” we encourage children to put themselves.

Next week I’ll start with a simple breakdown of online marketing and the niche world of social media within that genre of marketing as a whole. Maybe I’ll throw in some stats and a little history of marketing vs advertising to offer a comparison. That’s if it’s not too boring to read after I write it. ;)

But I will definitely add when it works well for young entrepreneurs with examples, and when it is downright dangerous.