Riaan Erwee, self-employed entrepreneurial homeschooling dad
My husband, Riaan, does not enjoy public speaking, but he often sprouts wisdom that is SO worth sharing.
He is not only an experienced self-employed entrepreneur, but a homeschooling dad for 20 years.
While sitting on a bus, waiting for delegates of the Global Home Education Conference 2018, to take their seats during a tour in Russia, we had a conversation about how homeschoolers need to raise entrepreneurs.
On the spur of the moment I decided to record what he was saying to me, on video with my cellphone so that I could share it with homeschoolers who need to hear his voice!
Riaan’s 3 Tips to Raise an Entrepreneur not a Worker
The quality of the video is not good enough to share, because of all the background clamour, but the transcription of what Riaan said is below:
“You have to create a safe environment for a kid. No kid can learn if they feel threatened, feel uncomfortable, feel shy, feel like somebody is going to scare them or bully them or anything like that. You’ve got to have a safe environment. That’s the first thing you have to create.
Then in that environment, you’ve got to create a person that’s got built-up self-confidence. Teach them who they are, where they come from, because that gives them a sense of belonging.
Once they have a safe environment, a sense of belonging, then you can start teaching them how to think for themselves. Within all of these things…when you do it… that’s when you educate them.
Obviously you teach them liberal* things, and how to read and write and do maths and whatever, during that period, but if you don’t have those critical things, you are going to have a person that is not secure enough to do things for themselves.
“To take a risk?” [Shirley]
Yes, because when they are confident in themselves, they won’t be scared to make a mistake…because they know who they are … they are confident.
Then let them make their mistakes and then you help them.
You give them a project and you say, “There it is. Do it.”
Don’t show all of it to them. Show them the basics and then say, “Alright, I want you to do this.”
Let them fail, let them try again and again. That builds confidence, that builds the will to eventually succeed, even though you failed…because eventually they will see that, “If I try 2,3,4,5 times, I CAN get it right,” – and that’s exactly what you have in business. That is the entrepreneur.
If you want to create a worker, teach him every single day what he must do. Tell him exactly what he has got to do, tell him when, where and how. Then you’re creating somebody that will work for somebody else, because they always just want somebody to tell them what to do.
“Ja, that’s a brilliant point.” [Shirley]
If you want to create an entrepreneur tell them, “I want THIS done. Here are the tools, this is how you can do it. DO IT. If you get stuck, come to me and I will answer your questions and I will try and help you where I can, but you have to do it.” That’s creating an entrepreneur.
You’ve got to create that from a young age, but, like I said – the environment has got to be there, the self-confidence has to be built up. Without those things, you cannot create the third one.”
P.S. The above is a very simple outline and each point can be further elaborated and requires more attention to detail.
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- Liberal Education is a system or course of education suitable for the cultivation of a free (Latin: liber) human being. It is an approach to learning that empowers individuals and prepares them to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. It provides students with broad knowledge of the wider world (e.g. science, culture, and society) as well as in-depth study in a specific area of interest.