Some of us were just raised to be entrepreneurs. I think that is definitely true for me. And yet, not all of my brothers who were raised in the same environment chose the entrepreneurial career path in life.
There is a good story about how the entrepreneurial spirit gets instilled in our children at the NY Times (via NFIB Smartbrief). It is a reflection by a small business owner, Barbara Taylor, about raising kids in an entrepreneurial environment:
People love to argue about whether entrepreneurs are born or made, with many
feeling that success in small business is somehow genetic. My husband has five
siblings. An entrepreneur raised all six kids, yet only one became a
small-business owner. I had no exposure to business growing up, yet here I am on
my second venture. Rather than calling it genetics, I think it has more to do
with children of entrepreneurs being the beneficiaries of an early education in
business.
One of my MBA students here at Belmont, Shawn Sweeney, is certainly exposing his young son Gunner to small business at an early age:
(Video is from theeastsidestory.com)
I often wonder this myself seeing as there is little to no entrepreneurial activity in my family and yet I ended up on an entrepreneurial venture. My sister however does not have the same entrepreneurial drive. From my personal situation I would argue more that it was due to the experiences and situations I was exposed to in my upbringing that led to my entrepreneurial activity as opposed to family upbringing.
That is an incredible video about such an amazing little entrepreneur. I just signed up for this service and I will encourage others to sign up as well.