Real Happy Mom

Practical tips and encouragement for moms

Simple Tips for Teaching Your Kids About Money

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER

Money is one topic with my kids that I find myself hesitating around. Sometimes I feel like they are too young to understand certain concepts. But at the same time these kids like expensive things. Instead of having my kids grow up with the wrong ideas I had about money, I am changing that with the help of Chelsea.

Chelsea, from Smart Money Mamas, is on the podcast today to help us with tips for teaching our kids about money.

In particular, she shares:

  • Some of the best ways that she’s found to teach kids about money 
  • How our relationship can impact our kid’s views on money.
  • Tips on entrepreneurship and how we can teach our kids about being an entrepreneur

Check out the full episode to learn more. 

About Chelsea

Chelsea is the founder of Smart Money Mamas and its monthly membership community, the Motivated Mama Society. An ex-hedge fund manager turned financial educator, she is dedicated to changing the way we talk about money, helping moms connect with all aspects of their money in a way that lets them overcome emotional blocks, identify what they most want, and create healthy money habits that help them achieve their biggest goals. All while modeling positive money relationships for the next generation.
Chelsea lives in Connecticut with her husband (a rockstar stay-at-home dad) and two young and energetic boys

Connect with Chelsea

Links Mentioned

Subscribe & Review in Apple Podcast

Have you subscribed to the Real Happy Mom podcast? If not, I’m encouraging you to do it today.

I don’t want you to miss any upcoming episodes. I plan to add some bonus episodes that you won’t find on this website, and if you’re not subscribed, you might miss out on those. Click here to subscribe to Apple Podcast!

I would be so happy and grateful if you left me a review on Apple Podcast too. Reviews help Apple Podcast to know that this is a podcast for other moms so that other moms can find this podcast. Plus, it makes my day to read the reviews.

Just click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” and let me know your favorite part of the podcast. I really appreciate any help you can provide.

Don’t have Apple Podcast? You can subscribe to the podcast Google Podcast, Anchor, Spotify, Breaker, Castbox, Overcast, RadioPublic, and Stitcher.

Related blog posts

Join the Real Happy Mom Facebook Community

If you want to get more of what you hear on the podcast (with some fun, of course), hang out with other like-minded moms in the Real Happy Mom Community on Facebook.

Transcript of this episode

Real Happy Mom 0:05
You are listening to the podcast. Today inspiration, encouragement and practical tips. My name is Tony, and you are listening to Episode 162. Well, hey there and welcome back to another episode of the happy mom podcast super excited to have you back again. Because today we have a another awesome guest. Today, we have Chelsea who is the founder of smart money. Mama’s on today, and she is going to be sharing some really awesome tips with helping us with you teaching our kids about money. In particular, she shares with us some of the best ways that she’s found to teach kids about money, and also how our relationship can impact our kids views on money. She also gives us some really good tips on entrepreneurship and how we can teach our kids about being an entrepreneur. Because I always talk about how my oldest is my little Gary Vee, and she gave me some really, really good tips that I know that you can use if you have a child that has that entrepreneurial spirit. So definitely stay tuned to this episode. And stay tuned to the end because that’s when she really shares some good stuff about entrepreneurship. But before we jump into this week’s episode, I want you to definitely join me in the real happy mom Facebook community. There we will talk a little bit more about what’s going on in the podcast as well as get some more of that inspiration encouragement that you need throughout the week. The way to join is go over to happy mom comm slash community so that you can join me there. That’s real happy mom.com/communityallrightnowthatwehavethatoutoftheway Let’s go ahead and jump on into this week’s episode.

Real Happy Mom 1:54
All right, so we have Chelsea on the podcast today. Welcome to the podcast, Chelsea.

Chelsea 1:59
Tony. Thanks for so much for having me. I’m excited for this conversation. Yes, I

Real Happy Mom 2:03
am excited to because this whole conversation about money and teaching the kids about money is one that we haven’t had here on the podcast. So supermom to talk about that. Yes. So before we get into our topic for today, I just wanted you to share a little bit about you and what you do.

Chelsea 2:20
Absolutely. So mamas I am the founder of Smart Money mamas, where we help moms build wealth in a way that feels really good to them and pass on positive generational money ideas to their kids. I’m a mom of two little boys three and five are as they would tell you three and a half and five and a half. My husband is a stay at home dad. And I’ve been doing this running Smart Money mamas as my full time job for about three and a half years since George was born. So that that makes sense. But yeah, I just love what we do love seeing moms really build that confidence with money.

Real Happy Mom 2:52
Yeah, and I love your your mission and what you are doing, definitely something that we need. But I’m sure that you didn’t always start out like this. I was just wondering what got you to this point, like, what was your journey, especially when it comes to finances that that led you to where you are today?

Chelsea 3:08
Absolutely. So I was a kid who was always really enamored with how money worked in the world. When I was 13, I started reading my first like economics books by Milton Friedman, and really getting into investing trying to figure out how the money system work. And so I knew I wanted to do something in the money realm for at least part of my career. I’ve also always been really pulled to teach and do those things. And so I knew it wouldn’t be forever. But I wanted to go and kind of test my chops and investing. And so right after college, I went to Wall Street in New York, I worked there for several years doing equity analysis, which basically means making recommendations on what people’s what stocks people should buy and sell. And then I moved on to a hedge fund. And so there I was managing a large portfolio of investments in what is called distressed debt. So companies that are about to go bankrupt. And while this was super intellectually stimulating, and in many ways I enjoyed it, it was not really giving back to the world in a way that I wanted. And its work life balance was awful, was just terrible. And so when my oldest was born, we started to look at what other avenues there could be, which is hard because I was the breadwinner, right. And so Wall Street had fun. We made great money. I think at that point, when Henry was born, we were making mid six figures. And so we had been planning that I wouldn’t be there forever, but not to leave quite that soon. And so we started to think about what our what our bridges could be to get us to a different lifestyle. And so I started a blog as a hobby. In the meantime, I started answering moms questions about money. I was in this moms group of 250 other women who had their first baby the same month I had my first baby. And we’d been together since early pregnancy and so I’d become their like money person. And so I started answering their questions on the blog, and it grew from there. And so right before our second was born, I left my job. We had a two year runway of expenses. So we knew that we had some time to make the business work. And then so we left right before George was born.

Real Happy Mom 4:54
Nice nice in I love that. You said that you noticed that you weren’t Given the way that you want to, or at least contributing the way that you want to, because I think a lot of times we kind of get stuck on, you know, oh, this was my dream, oh, this is what I’m supposed to do and kind of have a hard time with pivoting. But I was just wondering, going back even into childhood, were there any things that like your parents were teaching you that you’re like? Yeah, like, as you grew up, you learn like, that’s not really right when it comes to money.

Chelsea 5:23
Yeah, so there’s a lot of things. So I had a father who idolized wealth. He had, you know, some other issues, we’re not in contact anymore. But one of the ones that he idolized wealth. And so for me, from a young age, something I took away was that I was going to be worthy of love and his attention, the more successful I was financially. And so acquiring money hoarding money was something that really started to tie for me. And money became a goal that was kind of an end in itself instead of a means to an end. And it took me a long time to unravel that, what I mean by that Tony is like, I made great money early in my career, I prioritize that and how I chose the work that I did, but I still couldn’t spend that money. Like in any even small way, I couldn’t enjoy it. Because to me, any depleting of my bank account was giving up some of my success, some of my worthiness of attention and things like that. And so I had to unravel that over time. And then as it became an adult, and I saw more through that behavior, I saw that my father in particular, spent money to look like he was wealthy without actually being wealthy. And so once I was old enough to understand that he was in a lot of credit card debt, he didn’t have the wealth that he kind of purported to love. And so there was a lot of things that I kind of had to unravel as I became an adult.

Real Happy Mom 6:39
Yeah, and the only reason why I really wanted to tap into that is because I think a lot of times, we don’t realize some of the stories or some of the feelings are just different things that we tied to money just from growing up. So I’m glad that you brought that up. So thank you for sharing that with us. Because, for me, it was, you know, watching my parents who were immigrants come in and work their little button. And I just thought, like, you had to work hard to get money. And now I’m learning like, some people don’t work hard, and make lots of money. So it’s these, these things that we learn over time, especially as kids. And that’s why I think it’s so important to have this conversation on how we can actually help our kids with learning about money and good and solid principles to teach them about money. So they don’t grow up thinking, Oh, I have to work really hard and work long hours to make, you know, lots of money or to be successful, or whatever the case is. So I’m just wondering, what are some of the best ways that you have found to teach kids about money?

Chelsea 7:42
Absolutely. So first of all, we all have stories from childhood about money, I want to just mention that research shows that some of our core money beliefs get set around age seven. And that’s the age that we really start to see money in the world, we understand that we use it to buy things and in such, but our brains are trying to create order out of chaos. So when we see anything that is stressful for us, or that is a big moment, we try to make a decision, and we try to make this black and white decision. And then we look for proof of that in the world, just how our brains work at that age. And the more proof we look for that thought whether it was contradictory, whether it was right or wrong doesn’t matter. We build this whole pile of evidence that that thought is right. And that thought can be buried in there for decades, right? And so having to peel that back and really think about what lessons are we giving our kids from a young age now, if your kids are older, I just want to mention, I’m gonna get into the strategies, but I just want people to understand if your kids 12 1314, and you’ve never really talk to them about money, it does not mean that you cannot change those root beliefs. What it means is that instead of approaching your kid, like they’re a clean slate, because you think I’ve never talked to them about money, they’ve never had to have a job we can start from from scratch, you have to understand that they do have some root beliefs about it already. And you have to come to that conversation looking to understand what are their original instincts about money? And how can we if we need to shift those things. And so the first thing is talking your kids about money on a regular basis, because it’s just a part of life. And I don’t mean sitting down and necessarily going through the budget or having big lectures about how investing works, or how bank accounts work, those things can be great. But in general, it’s just mentioning how you make decisions in the moment, right? If you’re in the grocery store, and you’re deciding between two things, explain to them how you’re making that decision. One of my exercises we do with our boys to partially distract them in the grocery store, and partially because it’s amazing is is to say like, Okay, we’ve got $20 for fruit this week. You guys go pick the fruit and it lets them practice their math, it lets them think about what the opportunity cost is. And they’ve noticed that if they get a crate a raspberries, they get a you know, a little crate, and that’s it. But if they go grab a bag of apples, they get a lot more fruit. And so they start to figure out what that cost benefit is and that’s a really good practice for them. And so you just want to work it into your into your language, and you also want to think about the word you’re using, right. And so that’s going to require you doing some own digging on what your money mindset is. But when they ask for something in the store, do you dismiss it? Make it seem like it’s frivolous or silly or stupid? Do you say you can’t afford it? And these are some things that can start to build negative mentalities with money. So you just want to watch that language and instead, choose things that are more problem solving based and more values based.

Real Happy Mom 10:28
Yeah, I love all those examples that you just gave. And I’m sitting over here thinking because I’m really trying to work with my kids in particular, but just because I feel like me and my husband, sometimes we can be so different, and how we view money and like how we talk about him from the kids. So I have been really conscious to make sure that I’m not saying like, Oh, we don’t have money, and I’m like, we do have money, we just don’t want to spend it on that, you know, like just being like, careful on like, how you say certain things. So I love how you brought up, you know, being careful about the words that you’re using. But I’m just wondering, like, in particular, like, I used to hear growing up, like, you know, oh, my knee doesn’t grow on trees? Or, oh, you know, we just can’t do that. Because we don’t have the money, like, what would you say, are some better ways of saying those kinds of things without it having that negative connotation that, you know, oh, we don’t have money. So we’re just, you know, stuck, and we’re not gonna be able to have anything kind of kind of feelings?

Chelsea 11:27
That’s a great question. So the first exercise I recommend all parents go through is to set your family money values. So we have a free workbook that can walk you through this, I’ll send you the link, Tony. And But basically, what you’re doing is first you’re in your partner, if you have one are talking through what are your money, memories and money histories? What is your relationship to money? What do you want your money to do for you and as your family? What are the things that are most important to you in the world, and the reason we have these conversations, and what lessons you want to teach your kids that’s really, really important. And then we have a one pager where you can summarize it and keep it all in one place. The reason it’s important to have these conversations is because you and your partner are going to give your kids different messages even when you do this exercise. But you and your partner want to agree on what are the base things, you’re teaching your kids and not teaching your kids. And you want to be able to present that to your kids, maybe not with the full one pager if they’re only four or five, six, but giving them pieces of that on a regular basis. So when a decision comes up, where you’re trying to decide whether to spend money on something, or they’re asking for something, you can always route back to this common ground, right? We are not saying no to this big yellow Lego set, we’re saying yes to a family trip to Disney in the summer. And so this is what we have to prioritize right now. Saying that we’re prioritizing different things in the budget right now is fine. Saying that, you know, we, we only buy new gifts at holidays and Christmas. Because we want to reduce waste, we have to figure out what that value is. And it can’t be the first time your child hears it. When they’re asking for something, right? This has to be something that they’re already familiar with, like oh, yeah, mom and mom and mom, parents were, whatever your family structure is. They always say that they always say that it’s really important that we take family vacation. So it makes sense that we’re prioritizing that. The other thing you can do, though, is get their problem solving brain working. You can say, hey, we’re prioritizing different things in the budget right now. But you could find a way to earn this money. Can you think of any ways you could earn this money and start to get them kind of churning? What those ideas are? Could they do extra or bigger chores? Could they sell some of the toys that they don’t use anymore, and really start to think of money not as something that is hard, limited and scarce, but something that if they use their brains, they use their creativity, they could find ways to get the things that they most want?

Real Happy Mom 13:41
Yeah, I love all of that. And, and you just got me thinking because I know for me, my biggest thing is I just don’t want my kids growing up with that bad relationship with money or thinking, Oh, money is bad, that kind of thing. So just really being careful. Like I said, with the words and I love how you given those examples. As far as brainstorming because my eight year old, I call him my little Gary Vee because he is all about his coins. He does not play. I’m like, alright, bro, like, I know you want to do this, like how you gonna get the money and he will like trying to sell everything. But the thing is, is like I guess I’m like struggling right now is like teaching him value. Because he’ll get like some of his old toys and be like, I’m gonna sell this for $300 I’m like, no one’s gonna buy that son. Like, it’s not even worth $2 Like, let’s bring that price down. So like trying to like you know, teach them about value and you know, even for them because like they see toys and they’re like, Oh mommy, I want it you know, that kind of thing. But I love how you saying you know, getting them brainstorming in and having them think about it because all they think is Oh mommy and daddy had the money. Oh, let me just go ask them so they can give it to me but I really have been pushing my son to like tell him all the time like you want all these things you need to get a job because oh But really just trying to get him to see like, you know, his money. I’m not like an ATM that’s just like throwing money out, you know, like we sometimes we have to, you know, work to get our money. Sometimes it’s a gift. But I’m definitely trying to instill those values. But like you said, I think it’s different for each family, like how the setup would look. But I love those examples that you brought up.

Chelsea 15:22
Tony, do you guys do allowance? Yeah, I know your kids are five and eight.

Real Happy Mom 15:26
Yeah. So we just I just started using as a green light, like, Yes, I just started using green light. So I’m in for those who are listening her like, what is she talking about? It’s a really nice app that helps parents with automating on their allowances, and then the kids can actually get a debit card. So they, the money can go into their account, they can spend, it’s really nice. And they can do investments and all sorts of stuff. But we just have the basic account, not trying to promote for them. I’m just saying that’s an option. But we do allowances, I think I have him down for $10 a week. And then if he does extra things like for school, because he does not like school, I will give him more to incentivize him to read more and things like that, which he doesn’t, but I’m trying. But yes, we do do allowances and use green light for that.

Chelsea 16:16
Awesome. So some of those things it can be really helpful is making sure that they always have a savings goal. So green light, I think does encourage you to do the save, spend give you actions, right, okay. And so first of all, anyone who’s listening, it’s really helpful to have those allocations for your money want to teach your kids from a young age, that money can do many things that we don’t just spend every dollar that comes in that we save, and that we give and bless others with that money, right. But saving, we have to keep age appropriate. And so sometimes parents think that saving needs to be for your kids college fund or their first car. But if that’s several, several years away, their brains aren’t yet ready yet ready to think long term. And so what we hear from adults who come into our community trying to hear money mindset solve money mindset issues, is that a lot of people whose parents for saving in that way, that kind of long term way, they build this really negative relationship to saving that saving is their money, like disappearing, like somebody’s taking their money. And that’s not what anybody wants. And so when it comes to saving with your kids, it’s creating some kind of goal always that something that’s reasonable for them, whether it’s a couple months out a year out, depending on how old they are, and letting them build the grit to save for something we want them to learn is that saving gets them bigger and better things that they want. And so every time they reach a goal, you can set a slightly longer goal start to stretch that ability to delay gratification. But with our kids, something that we do toniann Is every time they say they want something like we’re in the store, we’ve taught them that we should take a picture of it, Mom or Dad will take a picture of it on their phone, they each have a little folder in our Google folders. And so when they want to save for a new goal, they scroll through their pictures of what they’ve seen. And they pick something. And what you’ll see a lot of times, especially with our five and a half year old is that we’ll be scrolling through to pick a new goal. And he’s like, you can delete that one, you can delete that one and he figures out he doesn’t really need them. And it’s actually just the practice has meant that when we’re in the aisle at Target, most of the time, they don’t even ask to get something anymore. They’re just like, they might ask us to take a picture. But usually they kind of hold it, play with it, press the buttons for a minute and put it back and walk away.

Real Happy Mom 18:19
But I think that’s even a good thing for us as adults. Because listening. I just finished Tony Robbins. The What is it the Money Mastery wouldn’t any master the game? Yes, I just finished that. And I did the audio book because my boss thank you to my boss who gave it to me, it’s my birthday gift that was like one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten, because it really broke down some financial myths and things like that, that I didn’t even know about. But in there, he was talking about, you know, this one couple where the wife spends a lot and does a lot of things. So she did start doing that taking a picture and showing it to her husband, but the husband, what he did was he would go and find a better deal. So he had I think a week to find either a better deal or something. And if if he couldn’t find it, then she could go ahead and purchase it. But I love doing that for the kids. Because my son I promise. It’s like every day he showed me something. But now I will tell you this Chelsea. Now what he is doing is he’s gotten really smart because I have to watch them on my Amazon account. Because my little one has ordered things twice. $200 worth twice. I have to watch them every time. They don’t feel bad for me. But it kind of scared me when things were showing up at my door that I didn’t order but anyways, what he does now is he puts things he wants in the wish list. So my wish list is stacked with all his blade blades because that’s what he’s into right now. So it’s filled with it. But I noticed just like you said when he went back into wishlist, he was like, Oh, Mommy, I don’t want this one anymore. I have this driver down so I don’t need it. I’m like, okay, like I thought that was like the thing you had to have. But um, I love I love doing that and I’m going to start doing that now taking a picture and saving it, and then we’re gonna come up with a goal on how we’re going to figure out how to get that money in because mommy can’t buy everything.

Chelsea 20:08
So we just the last piece of that that we do is once they chose choose a goal. So right now, my My oldest is about three weeks away from reaching this goal for this giant Lego set. He’s been saving for it since March, which is amazing. But what we do is we print a cheat. And so this one’s Legos. And so for every dollar that this thing cost, there’s a Lego block, he colors in as he goes. But at the top of the page is a picture of him holding that Lego set from when he saw it in the store. And so every week when we sit down to do allowance, or he earns extra money, and he’s deciding where to put it, he sees him with the thing. And he sees how much progress he’s made, how many Legos he’s colored, and how much time he has to go. And that really helps him focus. Because that’s the other thing that we now see sometimes when we’re in a store, we’re scrolling Amazon, where he’s like, Oh, that’s really cool. But I really want my Ninjago Lego set more. So I’m gonna wait for my Lego set.

Real Happy Mom 21:02
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, definitely gonna take that one too. I love all of it. Because yes, I in things like, that I’ve noticed is like, kids know a lot more than you think. Especially when it comes to money. And so like sometimes, like, even like, my mom, she’ll come over, and she’ll try to, like, give my son $1 Like, I don’t want $1 Like I need $5 They know like, this is not gonna, you know, do a lot. So I’m definitely making see like they can make progress is like a big one for me. Because like I said earlier, Chelsea, like, I really just want to make sure that they don’t grow up with the negative beliefs about money or have a bad, bad relationship with money. I want them to be able to, you know, make money, spend money, give money, all the things and also safe. But I want them to do it smart. So I love these these waves that you’re bringing up here.

Chelsea 22:01
And entrepreneurship is a really amazing thing to do that you mentioned, your oldest son being your little Gary Vee, not only to teach money, lessons of entrepreneurship is incredible right to teach budgeting to teach profit to teach how you can work smarter to earn more money, all of those things. But entrepreneurship also teaches massive problem solving skills, like what is being a business owner, but solving problem after problem after problem to make things work better. So problem solving grit, the ability to prove to themselves that the things that they do can result in reaching big goals, right that that adults can respect that the work that they do that they can present their skills that they have that they even have skills, right. And so entrepreneurship, even if your kid doesn’t grow up in graduate college and become an entrepreneur, they have those skills, they have that creative thinking they have that money knowledge. And so I love encouraging kids to start their own businesses to find ways to earn money, whether it’s you know, selling old toys is kind of the beginning of that. But going beyond the lemonade stand, what could you What do you really love to do? And how could we make it a way that you earn money?

Real Happy Mom 23:05
Yeah. And I’m glad you brought that up. Because that was another big question that I had is about entrepreneurship and how as parents, we can support our kids with that, because I’ll be honest with you like, yeah, you know, real happy mom has been that kind of been true. But I still have my nine to five. So I still, like have something over here. This is not totally like what I’m dependent on as far as paying the bills. So it’s hard for me to teach my son that. And sometimes I find myself even discouraging him, which I’m like, I feel bad about later, because I’m like, I shouldn’t did that probably should have let him try to sell his toy for $300 and see what happens. But I’m just wondering for the parents, like, Are there any resources or tools that you have found that are helpful, especially for moms? Who are like, I don’t even know the first thing that, you know, we need to look at when it comes to starting a business?

Chelsea 23:53
Sure. So we have a financial literacy activity pack for kids. And it has in there a business plan for kids that walks through? What are the parents need to know what are the questions you should be asking your kids to kind of outline their business and really get them started? The one thing with your son toniann, is it’s not necessarily trying to let him sell the toy for $300, you could do that. That’s absolutely fine. What you could do is say, Let’s research what other toys like that are, are selling for and show him how to pull up the Facebook marketplace app and search for the toy and say like, oh, all the other ones are selling for five to $7. And then he gets to decide two things. One, is selling this toy worth five to $7 for him is he only thinking that he wants to sell it for 300 Because he doesn’t really want to part with it. But he would part with it for $300. So he gets to decide if he really wants to sell that toy. And if he does, then you can show him how to take pictures and put it on the app and like make sure that you’re you’re in the right price range and all those kind of things you can use it as learning opportunities when they come to that place. But the first you know, you always want to let them explore So ask them questions like, you know, what would you sell? Why would somebody want to buy that? Just don’t give them the answer. Just ask them. Why would somebody want to buy that? What is the benefit of buying it from you and start to pull the things out? Who would your customer be? Who do you think what kind of person would buy this? Like, is it another kid isn’t an adult? And let them think through kind of the base things we all do when we plan a business, but really let them kind of run with it and see what their answers are. One, they’re super, super fun to listen to what their answers to these questions are. And two, you can start to get a sense of is this something that they’re just kind of saying in passing, that they want to start as a business? Or are they really fascinated than they thought about it? And we should really help them get started?

Real Happy Mom 25:40
Yeah, definitely. I’m just thinking about asking my son those questions, I can already hear the answers, those are gonna be fine. Um, but last one about entrepreneurship. So the other thing that I’m struggling with is, my kids are really into YouTube, like most kids are, and they see these YouTube, I call them YouTube stars, who are doing they are YouTube celebrities, whatever you like to call them who are out there, and they’re doing big things, got millions of views, and making money doing great things. And they’re selling merchandise. So my son, of course, he wants you to channel Okay, fine, fine, we’ll set it up. Set it up. Now. He’s telling me he wants to sell merch. I’m like, bro, you don’t even have any degree? Like, how am I supposed to help him with that one? Because I think he just sees other people doing it. And it’s like, oh, yeah, I can do it, too. I’m gonna sell a whole bunch of T shirts for you know, $20 and make a ton of money. Like, how can I redirect that into the right path? Because I feel like he’s, he has a good start, but it’s just not there.

Chelsea 26:39
I think first, it’s starting with the conversation, right? Not necessarily saying to him, you don’t have any views. But saying to him, how do you think that channel sells so many T shirts who’s buying their T shirts and talk about that they have subscribers and that not every one of their subscribers buys a t shirt that actually a very small percentage of them do? And so you have to have subscribers? And maybe the and then it next question is how did they get those subscribers? Well, they’ve been posting two videos a week for three years, okay? Are you willing to post two videos a week for a while and see how your subscribers go? That’s all fine. And then the last piece is let them explore ways that they could actually sell merch, there’s actually print on demand services, which I’m sure you’re familiar with that I’ve limited cost to get started. But But sit down with them and say, Hey, to start your own merch thing, you know, we can go to Teespring, we can get you set up, you’re gonna have to pay this much money to have your account and this much money to do your design. If you can save that money up, I will let you set up a Teespring account, right and like, let him figure it out. I think that sometimes as parents, we don’t want our kids to fail. So our inclination is to shut it down. But sometimes what we can see is if we just let them get it out there, right, so he saves enough money, he gets his Teespring little page up, he’s got his YouTube page up, he’ll do one of two things, He’ll either decide this is too hard. And he’ll pick another venture that maybe is more successful, because that is also a lesson of being a young entrepreneur is learning to pivot and grow and scale. Or he’ll get really fired up and he’ll want to see that first T shirt sale right and he’ll start posting videos, and he’ll start telling his friends. And that’s great. Either way is great. But you got to gotta kind of let him figure it out.

Real Happy Mom 28:19
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I love all of that. And Jim, by the way, Chelsea, what he wanted to do is I he knows I have a Cricut and I can make the t shirt. So he wants me to make it.

Chelsea 28:30
Oh, okay. So this is this is another this is what I love. Okay, so now you can be like, here’s how much the T shirts are like we’re gonna put on Michaels Nakamura fingers Mr. T shirts, or here’s how much the stuff is for mom’s cricket. And here’s how much it is for mom’s time. Mom’s gonna give you a discount on your time because your kid, but this is the cost of a T shirt, and then see what his reaction is. Right? Yeah. Teach him how the fact that things have costs and that he’s not just free to sell this merch that there’s a process that used to pay your workers and all this kind of things. And so yeah, it’s always it’s always fun when they just expect us to do it for them.

Real Happy Mom 29:07
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I love it too. I’m like really fair. Like, I guess I work for you to

Chelsea 29:14
have a business and a nine to five. Sure I know. Your merch business.

Real Happy Mom 29:18
I’m just saying I got a couple of things to do some. But yes, I love this. This has been really, really good. Great, great, great stuff that you’ve been sharing here. And I know that moms are listening probably want more or want to know how you can connect. So please tell us how we can either connect with you or learn more of these lessons that you’re teaching us here about money? Absolutely. So

Chelsea 29:40
we’re at Smart Money. Mama’s calm, and we’re asked for every one of us on all social media platforms. Absolutely. Come hang out. I spend way too much time on Instagram. You can always come DM me ask your questions. I hang out there, but this has just been wonderful.

Real Happy Mom 29:55
Yes, definitely really enjoyed it. And one question I always ask before I let you go is what words of encouragement or motivational quote do you have for us real happy mom. Ooh,

Chelsea 30:08
one of my favorites is never forget how wildly enough you are.

Real Happy Mom 30:12
I like I like, love it. Well Chelsea thank you so much for coming on and sharing Now that does it for this episode. Good. I really appreciate you find the links that Chelsea mentioned here today. Head over to Real happy mom.com/onesixtwoandifyou haven’t already please leave me a five star rating review wherever you listen to this podcast. In particular, if you’re listening on Apple podcasts, this helps me out more than you know and gets the message out to other moms that this is a great podcast to listen to. Now that does it for today. I will be back again next week for another full episode. Take care and with lots of love

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

error: This content is protected.