Jack White, husband, father of four, and creative entrepreneur, is passionate about teaching his children the art of entrepreneurship. As the owner of Jack White Land Co. and founder of the thriving Children’s Business Fair, Jack has created a platform that empowers kids to take their creative ideas and turn them into real-world experiences. In this interview, Jack shares his insights on fostering creativity and innovation, and the invaluable lessons of entrepreneurship in his children's lives.

1. What motivated you to start the Children's Business Fair? We homeschool our children, and while my wife is responsible for the majority (99.9%) of it, I’m tasked with teaching my triplet daughters finance. A large part of this lesson is entrepreneurship. The best lessons are ones you learn by doing, so we took the idea of a lemonade stand and figured the best way to draw a larger customer base would be to invite others to do their own “lemonade stands” in one event and have everyone market it together to make it a community event and draw a larger crowd. 

2. How do you encourage your children to come up with business ideas or products? I usually start by challenging the kids to pick topics they are interested in. Their passion to participate in the entire process lasts much longer that way. From there, we go through a series of questions to help develop the product idea, development and marketability. Finally, we test the costs vs. potential sales price to see what potential margins will be.

3. What lessons about creativity and innovation have your children learned through participating in the fair? For creativity, they have learned that there is more than one way to skin a cat. The creative lesson has been when you hit a roadblock to look for an alternate route. Be creative and find another way if you are determined. It is a lesson you cannot teach in a book…it has to be learned at street level.

As far as innovation…Edison said it best…it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. They realize it takes hard work to develop an idea to completion. As a result, they go through the idea process with much more of a knowledge base from the experience they’ve gained from doing it several times and the greater the success they have the 2nd and third time. 

4. How do you balance guiding your children with letting them explore their own ideas and make decisions in their business? We believe in failing forward, and many of their best lessons come from things not working out as planned. If we foster and encourage the journey of entrepreneurship, not just the successes, then we instill a lifelong desire to create. The girls continually ask me when the next one is and share ideas they have for their products for the next one.

5. How has participating in the business fair helped your children develop confidence in their abilities? Their confidence is best developed when an idea they came up with, developed and marketed, then gets sold to a customer. The glimmer in their eyes and smile on their face when the customer hands them the money is priceless. They now know they have created value and are being rewarded for that.

6. What role does collaboration and teamwork play in your children’s business?  The best story I can give as it relates to collaboration is not so much about how my girls interact with each other but with the other children's businesses. One of the things the girls love more than anything is to see, shop and support the other businesses at the fair. They now realize that to foster a community of entrepreneurs, you have to support the other adventurers doing the same thing you are. It’s not competing against the other children vendors, but how many people can we draw to the entire event so we can all do better.

7. What advice would you give to parents looking to foster creativity and innovation in their own children through entrepreneurship? “Perfect is the enemy of done" is an expression that means waiting for perfection can prevent you from even starting things. Create a framework for the kids to create and then let them fill in the blanks. They have a strange way of surprising you with what they know and coming up with ideas you couldn’t dream up. 

8. What "happy accidents" have come from working on the Fair? It inspired the girls and me to develop a finance game for children called Mr. Market. We developed it in our living room after the first fair and will begin shipping our first edition of the game in October. www.mrmarket.store