Have you checked out the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox, but you’re not quite sure if it’s for you? I've had a copy for 2 years, and here’s my honest review of it.
Debating whether or not the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox is worth it?
I reached out to Dave Ramsey's team to get my hands on a copy for a thorough review.
And I wasn’t disappointed – I think it’s an excellent tool to teach your teen all about business, and how to be an entrepreneur.
I’m going to “unbox” this for you so that you can decide if this is a tool to buy your child.
What is the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox?
Anthony ONeal partnered up with Dave Ramsey to create the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox, a teen entrepreneur kit and small business guide for teens.
This is actually much more than just a teen financial entrepreneur book on business – it's a full-on kit, including several guides to help your teen understand how a business runs, and how to start their own.
In the Teen Portfolio alone (just one component), your teenager is guided through:
- Picking an idea
- Pricing their idea
- Building a business
- Gaining customers
- Budgeting in their business
There's much more than that, so let's look at what's included.
What’s Included in the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox?
If you’re looking for an entrepreneur kit where your teen and child actually come up with their own ideas and get guided through how to bring them to market, then this is the kit for you.
Hint: if you’re looking for more of a business-in-a-box your child can pick up, assemble, and start selling, here’s my full article on 7 entrepreneur kits for kids.
Here’s what’s included in this toolbox:
- Teen Portfolio Book
- DVD of Anthony’s Training Video
- Parent’s Guide Book
- Pack of Thank You Cards
- Deck of Conversation Starter Cards about Starting a Business
- Goal Tracker Poster
- Access to the Free Entrepreneur Toolbox app
The Teen Portfolio Book is really cool – it walks your teenager through the 8 steps of finding a business idea, setting goals around it, creating a price, saving up money to pull it off, naming a price, winning customers, and much more.
There's a lot of specific information in it, such as:
- Invoice examples
- Weekly planning and budgeting worksheets
- Reflecting on how your teen's business idea is going to affect their life (and yours)
- How to figure out what's next in their business (to stop, to change, or to grow)
- Personal branding
- etc.
The Parent's Guide is another strong component of this kit.
It includes important ways to support your teenager, such as:
- Talking them through the difference between products and services
- Talking them through pricing, and confidence to ask people about money
- Helping your teen learn marketing (promotion and presentation)
- Talking points about how to deal with people as people and as customers
- etc.
The DVD has some real nuggets in it as well, such as the difference between a “warm market” and a “cold market”.
And the app? Let’s give that its own section.
Let’s Talk about the Entrepreneur Toolbox App
The kit comes with access to a robust, free Entrepreneur Toolbox app.
But don't let the name of the app fool you — it's also an impressive goal-setting and budgeting app for teens.
It’s got the ability for your teen (and anyone, for that matter) to set and budget for a savings goal, and then track it.
You can start a new savings goal by inputting how much it will cost to get, how much you have now, and then the date that you want to meet your goal. You then add in transactions towards your goal, and it automatically tracks your progress.
On top of that, it's got the ability to:
- organize a business calendar for appointments
- figure out profit potential for either a product or a service they’re thinking about trying out (there's a cool slider they can use for different earning scenarios)
- help with pricing their product or service
Okay – next up, what I really think about this toolbox.
What I Really Think about the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox
My thoughts?
Let's go over the pros, first.
First up, I think the look of this is perfect for teens (suggested age: 12-18 years).
It’s professional and sleek enough to make them want to pay attention to whatever business ideas and work they’re going to complete with it.
I really like the parent guidebook because it talks to you, the parent, about what your child will be learning in each of the 8 steps in their process.
Not only that, but it shares tips for how you can get involved with your teen’s business and help them through the process.
The Entrepreneur Toolbox App is also pretty awesome. It’s got the ability for your teen (and anyone, for that matter) to track savings goals, organize a business calendar for appointments, and even figure out profit potential for either a product or a service they’re thinking about trying out.
You’re reading my honest review, so I’d like to include everything I think about this toolbox (not just the good stuff).
While overall, I think this is an excellent toolkit for teens, I do have some feedback on a few things that could be expanded on:
- They offer a page of teen business ideas, but it'd be great if they could offer even more (in case your teen has trouble with brainstorming their own).
- Elevator pitches can be a bit difficult to figure out – it'd be great if they could make a formula for creating your own (there is some guidance, just not a lot).
Overall, I'm 100% into the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox (it also has 4.5 out of 5 stars from 192 reviews on Amazon). I think for most teens interested in learning about running a business (and wanting to start their own), this is perfect.
Amanda L. Grossman
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