12 Steps To Turn Your Children Into Tech Billionaires

The new generation of children are digital natives. Parents have the responsibility of ensuring that their children are tech-smart and savvy. That they have all it takes to be tech billionaires in future. A serial entrepreneur Charles Tips shares his tips on how to raise a billionaire; see summary below.

12 steps on how to turn your kids to tech billionaires.

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Step 1: “Make them aware of the full range of life options.”

“The world abounds with the opportunity to lead whatever life you want, but you have to demystify, demystify, demystify for them to be able to see what makes businesses go,” says Tips.

Step 2: “Do NOT send them to public school NOR to the prep schools that are just our public schools on steroids.”

There isn’t one recipe for every billionaire. Mark Zuckerberg attended a prep school for high school; other billionaires never graduated 12th grade.

However, someone as atypical as a billionaire is going to need an atypical education. He says his kids began working an assortment of jobs when they were pre-teens and travelled a lot doing things like filming documentaries and driving boats.

“If you want conventional minds, get them a conventional education,” Tips says.

Step 3: “Teach a love of work.”

In other words, don’t let them be lazy. Because, according to Tips, “getting rich takes work” for which you need “stamina.”

Step 4: “Teach a love of people”

By “loving people,” an entrepreneur is able to know what products other people will want and need, especially people who are different.

“My household was famous for all the people who came trooping through. People I met stranded at the airport. Japanese Homestay girls. Aux pairs. Local homeless guys dropping by for a shower and a meal,” Tips writes. “Make sure [kids] understand that they are not above or below anyone else.”

Step 5: “Teach generosity.”

By generosity, Tips doesn’t mean money. Being present is more valuable for others.

“The only real wealth is the time you have, and whenever you have a chance to use your time well for others, do it and do it fully,” he writes. “Giving money without time can be a way of creating distance.”

Step 6: “Teach the mental nexus.”

The only way to know how tough entrepreneurship is is to live it. If you haven’t, find your kids a mentor who has.

“One must taste failure time and again and be inspired by it. One must be armed with a variety of rationalizations for continuing on despite doubt, buffeting, adverse opinion,” Tips writes. “entrepreneurs must be superhuman to deal with the tragedies they themselves can be the authors of. The trick is, you can’t teach that mental nexus if you have not lived it yourself. If you haven’t, then apprentice them to someone who has.”

Step 7: “Deal with Various People”

Anthony Ortiz is a tech-savvy teen on Facebook. He and his friends like to pull online pranks and occasionally “hijack” Facebook pages that have lots of likes.

If you teach your kids to only associate with good people, they won’t learn how to deal with the jerks. And your kids will need to know how to interact with and defeat all types of people to win in business.

“The world is full of assholes and swindlers and your kids will need a radar for it, and they need to suffer the consequences so that they develop an arsenal of techniques for dealing with it,” Tips writes. “They need to be superb judges of character. You can’t teach good behaviour by isolating them from bad behaviour.”

Step 8: “Make them teen outcasts.”

If your kid doesn’t do well in school or have a lot of friends, that may actually benefit his or her entrepreneurial career, Tips says.

“I’ve talked with VCs who confessed to being a little disappointed if they don’t see an F or two on a possible CEO’s college transcript,” Tips claims.

Step 9: “Teach numeracy.”

Your kid needs to be great at math, and preferably able to calculate things on the fly in his or her head, says Tips. Otherwise, they will “have a difficult time putting deals together.”

Step 10: “No allowances. No ‘Joe’ jobs.”

Some kids that get allowances become successful, like Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel. But Tips doesn’t recommend spoiling your kids if you want them to become billionaires. Rather than allowing them to get “traditional” jobs, he suggests nudging them to get a job in sales, because that’s a valuable skill to master.

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Step 11: “Get a grubstake.”

A “grubstake” is an investment. If you don’t risk your money and invest it, you won’t make a lot of money in return.

“No grubstake. No billionaires,” Tips writes. “You can’t be a capitalist without capital and the willingness to put it all at risk.”

Step 12: “Worthy.”

Worth is the most important thing you can teach your kids to set them up for success. The sooner you learn to get in touch with your own feelings of what is right and what is wrong, the better.”

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