Field Trip Ideas For Homeschool Entrepreneurs

This post was inspired when one of our readers wrote and let me know about an excellent article she had recently written, 50 Field Trip Ideas For Homeschoolers. If you scroll all the way down to #49 (!), you will notice the suggestion for a field trip visiting a local entrepreneur and having them ‘show you the ropes‘.  I’m not sure what I would say to a homeschooler if they asked me to show them the ropes, but I would like to share some field trip ideas that can help encourage ‘The Entrepreneurial Mindset’.

One Idea, Many Variations

Basically, it’s really one idea, with thousands of possible variations: Visit any business and watch how it works from the owner’s point of view. This may not sound too exciting, but if you determine to get inside the owner’s head and discover the passion behind his business, you may be surprised at what you find. Ask for a tour of the entire building, and see how much information you can draw out of the owner with questions such as:

• How did you choose this location?
• Did you have to do much to get it ready to do business in?
• How did you find where to buy your goods?
• What do you do in a typical day?
• What is your favorite/least favorite part of running your business?
• What do you do for advertising/increasing business?
• (If they have employees) Is is hard to find employees? What do you look for in a potential employee?
• What made you choose this type of business?
• Where do you hope to be in 10 years?

To round out the experience of understanding how different businesses work, visit at least one business in each of these areas:

• Manufacturing-a business that makes something and sells it to other stores
• Retail- a clothing store, grocery, etc.
• Service- Accounting service, construction office, cleaning service

Visiting more than one in each of these areas would be ideal, because it goes without saying that a business is only as good as the person running it. After your visit, discuss with your children what you think the different business owners could do to improve their businesses, or what you think they are doing best.

Do Your Homework

As a parent, if you aren’t sure what interest your child will have in a particular business field trip, you may want to call ahead and chat with the owner. Explain to them what your objective is in touring their business and ask what drew them to their field at the beginning.  Ask them what they think the most interesting part of their day might be to an outsider and for ideas to show what running their business is really like. Some businesses will be easier than others to enliven. It could be difficult to make much of a visit to an accounting office, but a short and sweet visit would still serve its purpose. Visiting a landscaping office won’t show you much about what really happens, but if you could meet the owner on a job and ask to watch (without interference) as they unload equipment and set about their task, that could be fascinating for many – especially teen boys. Make sure they still see that there are other parts to the job such as giving estimates and doing the billing. The idea is to show them the big picture, not just the fun part.

Absolutely every place you could possibly go on a field trip, even a park, is a business of some sort. You will give that entrepreneurial brain an even better workout if you answer these questions after any visit or field trip:

• If I wanted to start a (park, museum, theater, planetarium, store), what would be the first thing I would need to do?
• What kind of building or land would I need?
• How would I find the money to start it?
• What kinds of people would I hire?
• What are some of the items I would need to buy to start the business?
• How much would you charge?
• If it was your business, what would you do differently?

These are just a few to get you started, but the idea is to start your student thinking about all the details involved in running the variety of places they go everyday. Even government funded institutions like a school or a post office must be run in a business-like manner.

Your child may have zero interest in having their own business at this point in their life, but understanding how the world is run, one business at a time, will completely change their point of view. Once your child starts to view the working world from an entrepreneurial perspective, they will become infinitely more valuable as an employee. Every business owner wants someone working for them that sees the big picture, not just someone doing the minimum duties for a paycheck.

Take a Virtual Field Trip

If a field trip isn’t in the immediate future, the Food Network has a few shows that involve starting and running a business that could fill the gap on a rainy day. One is The 24 Hour Restaurant Battle which challenges 2 couples to start a restaurant within 24 hours. Obviously, it’s not realistic to think you could accomplish this in the real world, but it does give you an overview of many of the details of starting a restaurant. Be sure to mute the TV during commercials and use that time to discuss your teen’s opinions on what is going on and how they would do things differently.

Another show is The Great Food Truck Race. Food Network creates some crazy circumstances for these trucks to make the show more interesting, but many of them are great for illustrating what a real business owner might face. One of the shows put all the trucks in a city that none of the owners were familiar with. This created the challenge of finding good vendors of the supplies they needed. Watching how  problems like these are solved under stress and discussing them later is an excellent way to cultivate the entrepreneurial mind.

How Is It Made?

I have always loved watching how things are made. If you do, too, then you will love this show. Unwrapped goes to the factory that makes your favorite food and shows you exactly how it’s made in mass quantity. Many times the show reflects on the food company’s early beginnings and how they made it to the big time.

I hope this encourages you to take a closer look at all the different places you visit every day from a entrepreneurial perspective. Take pictures of your adventures and we’ll post them here if you send them to us!

Anyone have other ideas for an entrepreneurial field trip?

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