Been building an online brand with my teenage son the last few months, but looks like there’s a change of plans…
Every other day he has part school/home release where I spend 60-90 minutes with him teaching him about business. Most of that time has been spent building him a new skateboarding apparel brand called Skater Haters.
Been cool watching it grow. In addition to him learning branding, marketing, video creation, we also sprinkled in SEO. He has dozens of #1 rankings on Google already.
But, before summer break I noticed he never wore his own gear.
The last week of school we spent the hour walking around the block together. I wanted to feel out his interest in continuing to learn throughout summer, what schedule we’d do it on since he didn’t have a class schedule, things like that. He agreed he wanted to continue, we’d learn more about marketing, maybe record some videos.
Then… I waited.
It’s his business I’m helping him build, not mine. I want to help him learn and earn it, not just hand it to him.
Waited to see if he’d take action, or ask/engage after school. Whole summer went by without him mentioning it.
When school restarted, I didn’t restart entrepreneur hour to see if he’d notice. School started and he noticed real quick we weren’t doing “cool stuff” anymore.
Sat down and talked with him that he’s got to put in the work. This isn’t a handout. We talked about options.
We’re going to pause on the skateboarding brand while we:
- focus on flipping
- he has some inventory of Beanie Babies we priced on eBay and scored at a thrift shop like a year ago that we never finished listing
- revisit the white label printer of Skater Haters
- part of why he didn’t rock his own brand was he wasn’t proud of the quality (love hearing this)
- and he wants to redesign the swag
He doesn’t HAVE to build a skateboarding brand. I just want him to learn entrepreneurship. If that means he’s passionate about a different path, let’s pivot. So, we’re pivoting.
Inspiration reinstated.
