We all want our kids to have better than we did.
My parents grew up financially strained. They were the first to go to college. They wanted me to have the best education I could get because, in their world, that was the key to a fulfilling life.
In the 21st Century, technology is accelerating so rapidly that information and communication technology is burgeoning on "psychic" (just think of Google) and the iPhone.
Social Media sites are not some novelty or a past-time any more. I rarely email anymore. The bulk of my communication is managed on Facebook and Text Messaging (SMS).
If Markets Are Conversations, then social media is bringing authenticity back to the marketplace. Companies and Professionals will thrive as they reveal their inner workings. How will they do this?
The clients and markets they serve will call B.S. on their social media profiles and they will lose business. Children have terrific B.S. detectors and access to social media as they enter the marketplace will give them a decided advantage when it comes to making major life choices.
For instance: Should I buy this product? Should I work with this business? Should I trust this person? What does my tribe suggest when it comes to...?
These questions are about authenticity and how we represent ourselves in the marketplace. No more anonymous companies, no more faceless internet marketers. The 21st Century market will require an entirely different set of skills for your children to thrive.
In fact, embracing and demonstrating authenticity on social media will be crucial for any professional who wants to thrive in the 21st Century. That includes Boomers and even reluctant or non-marketing oriented Gen-x'ers who have a vision for a business and could really use the inexpensive exposure for their business that social media provides.
To that end, a subset of the Enlightened Child Curriculum is a teen module I coined the Entrepreneurial Academy. It's a program designed to mentor teens with a vision. If they have a vision, they have a sense of what they wanna do, and a reason why they want to do it. This, combined with dependability and competence, is a model student for this program.
What a mentee will learn is:
1.) Timeless Principles of marketing and entrepreneurship
2.) 21st Century knowledge-work systems for getting thing done
3.) Social Media development and cutting edge techniques for improving sales
4.) How to schmooze with clients (who are Experts in their fields) and build a network
5.) How to absorb as much wisdom from each client while helping share the Expertise with the world in a way that is mutually lucrative
6.) Lifestyle Design strategies that create time and financial freedom (to do Good)
7.) The Basic Moral Intuition - Giving Back by Leveraging Freedom to Do Good & Marketing talent to create a Social Media Buzz around real issues and real solutions that ARE working
Basically, the Internship (as my Facebook pal Kevin Munro called it) would consist of me training the mentee how to set up various social media sites and then integrate them together to create a marketing funnel. This frees up my time to do more R&D on the Enlightened Child Philosophy, write, travel, teach... We all earn a handsome salary, and design our lifestyles to help us life our Purpose in life.
Beats hanging around playing xBox all day.
Once a child reaches late teens they should be financially liberated to the point where any educational experience they desire - from college semesters with specific teachers to $5,000 seminars, workshops or coaching periods they don't need to worry about money to live on or invest in the education. They should be flush from relatively passive cashflow.
By that age, they will have Internet businesses, promoted via social media very inexpensively, based on the training and experience they got interning with me at Social Media Maverick.
To read more about the Social Media Maverick Marketing Philosophy and how you can get your teen involved go to my Blog, or enter your name and email on the right of this blog.
Cheers,
Craig
to see original post and all my social media links, visit: www.enlightenedchild.com
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