Is it time to switch them out? (you must keep moving forward)

Is it time to switch them out?

Talent mentors are there for a season and then you must keep moving forward

Listen in to a conversation between my wife and me as we discuss why and how often you should try switching mentors, teachers, and learning experiences. There are benefits to moving on from a mentor, no matter how excellent that person may be in his or her skill. Here are four indicators that it’s time to move on:

your child has learned everything he can and he needs more from another mentor in order to keep his talent relevant to the needs of other people.
you are in charge of who you choose as a mentor. If the mentor’s personal life is complicating the value he once brought to your child, it may be time to move on.
you can free the mentor of having to be responsible for full-on character training for your child. This opens the door to recruiting new mentors who want a specific, limited role.
it’s time to get out of your (and your child’s) comfort zone and be stretched with developing a new area of his talent.

Find out the other reasons why multiple mentors and teachers are a good thing to expect as you your young person keeps building a more complex and market valuable skill set.

Don’t forget to subscribe to my podcast “The 10ktoTalent Show” through iTunes. It is now listed for you to enjoy on your daily walks.

Of Courth! It’s May the 4th Be With You Day!

Jonathan

The Force is coming to MINECRAFT on May 4th, 2015.

Join the battle between the Separatists and the Republic.

If you want a socially safe, one-time Minecraft event* for your child to join and experience a great time with other boys and girls, you are invited to join my son Nicholas as he hosts his “May the 4th Be With You” party. Ask your Star Wars enthusiast if you are not familiar with that light hearted pop-culture celebration.

This up-front “fun” is powered in the background by the administrative efforts of my son Nicholas, who is 13 years old. This is an example of how to use a fun popular tool to gain real experience that will add valuable hours to a 10,000 hour talent journey.

As parents, you can listen to the episode on how Minecraft can be used to develop talent.

*Note: you will need your own Minecraft account in order for you son or daughter to join the game.

Podcast Episode: Can Minecraft Be Turned Into a Talent?

Jonathan

Can a gaming hobby, such as Minecraft, be turned into a real long-term talent? Yes, it can be! But you must re-cast the interest in a way that focuses on bringing value to others. When you switch from doing a skill for just your own enjoyment, to doing a skill so that it brings real value to other people, you transform the low-value hobby into a market valuable talent.

I discuss with my wife Renee about how we have been successfully able to turn one of our children’s talent into a potential for real long term talent.

At the end of this episode, we finish with this call-to-action:

Go listen to the interview by Wardee Harmon of Traditional Cooking School. This interview is a discussion on how you can gradually turn a traditional skill, such as backyard gardening, into a long term market valuable skill for your young person.

Podcast Episode: Why Parents Overlook Hidden Assets

Jonathan

Hello friends of 10ktoTalent!

Welcome to the very first podcast by Jonathan Harris discussing talent development in children. Listen to a conversation between me and my wife, Renee, as we discuss why it is that so many parents will overlook the hidden assets in their life in favor of staying average.

3 by-products of your teenager pursuing talent NOW

Jonathan

Have you ever found that a review of a favorite book really does a good job bringing it home?

Here is an excerpt from a book reviewer on Amazon commenting on the book “Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin

“The benefits of deliberate practice are that we perceive more, know more, and remember more in a specific domain of knowledge that we have chosen. This makes us more aware of our uniqueness as well as the uniqueness in others. The [Talent is Overrated] book suggests that over time we develop mental models of how our domain functions as a system.

As a result, we connect with every day events not as an isolated bit of data but as part of a large and comprehensive picture.”

I agree with this reader’s comment. The earlier your teenage son or daughter can find a way to focus around a long term talent, the more amazingly easy it is for him to succeed at what he wants to do.

This is because he is not learning one hour here in this subject and one hour over there in that subject. In a person without a specific talent focus, those are two disconnected work hours of his life spent learning various factoids pulled from two different domains of knowledge, but having little-to-no benefit of bringing added-value to each domain.

However, in a talent-focused child, those two hours are more than just two sequential hours of work. The two domains of knowledge augment each other’s value. This is because a big vision for the purpose of one’s daily work triggers an integration between normally separate domains of knowledge and skills.

This is the ideal: each new hour of learning in one domain is an hour that can be counted on to augment the value in another domain. It is a type of compounding effect.

Example: a 15 year old young man has a passion for flying and has easy access to training hours because of a good pilot friend of the family.

He discovers through the chatter from other pilots that there is growing demand for paid flight instructors on American soil to teach the future pilots from China and Japan (true story!). He hears that this new and growing demand is coming from the commercial airlines in those countries who prefer to have their people trained here. The English language and culture for communicating between pilots is the preferred common ground. This is creating opportunities for young pilots to start early careers.

This causes him to drop his Latin language course and decide to instead do daily language Skype exchanges with other young men from mainland China and Tokyo. This triggers an interest to dive deep into the WWII history of Asia (thus tying in another subject area).

As his pilot training increases, he then realizes that his love for the science of aeronautics is growing. This causes him to sign up for a special online course that will help him take a college level examination course in aeronautics.

I will stop at this point in the example, as I think you have now gotten the point.

Here is three by-products of pursuing talent on your young person’s mental health:

He will no longer experience that feeling of anxiety about all the things he does not know.
He will no longer feel isolated in an ocean of knowledge
But he will feel himself a conqueror on the verge of contributing something unique in his generation.

Three Things You Won’t Have to Say

Jonathan

Get your child to graduate from home with a 10,000 hour talent and you won’t have to say one of these three dreadful attaboys:

I’m just grateful he has a job.

Bless his heart, he’s trying.

At least he’s not doing drugs.

Not Ready for the Master

Jonathan

Follow me on Instagram at:
http://instagram.com/10ktotalent/

My 15 year old, on his way to forging and finishing 100 knife blades. He’s now on his 40th blade and he’s not stopping his journey. The master bladesmith had told him a couple years ago “first, you must work through a 100 knife projects and learn to understand the metal and the failures. Then and only then you can talk about taking lessons from a master bladesmith. You will then be prepared to understand” So said the Sensei to the wanna-be apprentice. #10000hours #talent #10ktotalent

A photo posted by Jonathan Harris (@10ktotalent) on Jan 19, 2015 at 11:55am PST

Can She Sew Her Food?

Jonathan

When trying to look at what can be used in a family’s environment, very often a skill asset is completely overlooked that could be one of the pieces of the puzzle to creating a unique and exciting talent for your child. Let us say for example that your daughter has a strong interest in cooking and also a strong interest in sewing. The normal reaction is to look down on one or the other skill because it is not clear how focusing on one or the other will add much value beyond knowing how to do the basics in the household. Remember that with the pursuit of inordinate talent we are also talking about talent that brings great value to others, so the initial reaction, as far as to how to judge it with bringing great value to others, is correct. There is not much value as stand-alone skill between those two. However, once you think of creative ways to dovetail skills already existing in your household, then the possible value starts becoming more apparent.

Back to the example: so does this mean I recommend you try to get her to sew her food? No, of course not. But what I do mean is you could encourage your daughter to sew specifically for clothing ware that fits the professional female chef or that fits the advanced home baker and cook. Having a strong, first-hand experience with the functionality needed to meet a kitchen environment, she can continually create and test better clothing options. She can even start testing and then reviewing on a blog various clothing ware offered on the market and demonstrate by video the pros and the cons as she bakes in the kitchen while modeling the work clothes. See what happened there at the end of this example? I managed to slip in a third skill, a writing skill, when I only wanted to talk about two skills! Now there are three skills working together, each giving strength to the other. Finding a venue to writing with a purpose and developing the voice of confidence comes natural. That’s because she is writing from the first-person point about two interests she both cares and knows about. The more skills that come together to support each other with purpose, the easier it gets to create something glorious for your child to pursue as an adult.

Your mission: find that one skill you are proud to see your child develop and then find a way to create a deeper value proposition by dovetailing it with a completely different interest in your child’s life.

Prepping: Do You Have Your Questions Ready?

Jonathan

In the book “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell, he has a chapter entitled “The Problem With Geniuses, Part II.” In that chapter, he discusses what seems to be quite a big missing social skill in children who are otherwise academically well taught, but can’t seem to socially climb the talent ladder within their talent field. He boils it down to one basic reason: those children do not know how to engage and question authority figures in a way that helps them make progress. And this lack of social intelligence hurts them later in their adult life. They tend to just sit passively and let authority figures drone on and on without ever knowing how to interrupt to redirect the conversation in a way that is more helpful to the child.

A typical example of that type of behavior is that when the child, with that lacking social skill, goes to the doctor’s office, he just sits there quietly with very little verbal feedback to the doctor, who in turn just gives instructions. But here is the most interesting part: this type of child is actually mirroring his parent’s behavior. It has been observed that when the parents of that same child visit the doctor for their own needs, they also sit very quietly with eyes lowered as the doctor engages in a monologue.

Compare now the very different behavior of the child who respectfully, but assertively, interrupts the doctor to provide him more accurate information about his personal medical condition. In response to the child’s questions, the doctor modifies or clarifies his original information for the benefit of the young person’s understanding. Where does that social intelligence from the child come from? This intelligent social behavior seems to be learned from the parents and not from an innate personality trait. In this medical example, the child has usually been prepped by his mother beforehand as to what kind of questions might be asked of him by the doctor. He’s also instructed by his mother to make sure to ask that authority figure to provide better information if he doesn’t fully understand to his satisfaction.

That is the key: parents, whether mother or father, are key to teaching their children by patterning and by explicit verbal instruction on how to vigorously engage themselves with experts. This is important. Because with that ability to question, they can make progress in their understanding that is applicable to their situation. Children do NOT naturally learn that skill on their own. Parents who believe that it can be learned and passed on, act on this belief and take time to instruct on how to address authority figures and on how to extract information from them.

This is why I frequently run through a little informal prep session with my own sons. I check with them to hear if they are ready to answer questions with an expert they are about to meet for the first time. I check to see if they are also ready with their own list of questions to ask. I also prep them with how to respectfully, but assertively, redirect adults off of inappropriate topics when the adults have social difficulty staying to the topic of their expertise. Sometimes we will also run through possible scenarios where we discuss how to handle an adult who is extremely introverted. We also talk about scenarios of the other extreme: how to handle an adult who is so enjoying the rapt attention of my respectful child that he forgets to actually “teach” to the situation at hand. All this respectful and balanced social engagement, instead of turning off adult experts, actually draws them in more into wanting to help a young person.

This teaching our children on how to respectfully engage authorities is one of the building blocks to talent success. This parental input makes a significant difference in the lives of our offspring. I encourage you to harness this social skill to teach your sons and daughters how to use in the context of the their talent growth. If you have an interesting story on how your child was able to use that social skill to win over an expert to helping them out, I would love for you to share it with me.

(updated: 1/17/2015)

Interview by Radical Personal Finance Joshua Sheats

Jonathan

Listen to a podcast interview by Joshua Sheats of Radical Personal Finance on my explanation of how you can go about discovering and developing talent in your child while your son or daughter is still young.

If you are the kind of person that likes to learn by listening in on a focused conversation between two people, then you are going to enjoy this type of podcast.

Joshua is a financial expert and likes to interview people with unusual insights on how to implement life-hacks that can dramatically change the quality of your lifestyle and that of your finance book. In this case, he was intrigued about how parents can put their children onto an amazing talent development path that will change their lives, without a big up-front investment in money. That’s why “yours truly” came on as a guest for his “radical personal finance” show.

During his interview with me he made the interesting point that if you take the talent approach seriously, then you are passing on the skills for your child to be able to be successful on his own merits. If you are a smart, intelligent kind of parent, you can create the conditions in your child’s environment that will reap enormous rewards in adulthood. The opposite approach would be for an otherwise smart parent to make it big with his own wealth creating abilities, but leave the responsibility of his child’s education to others. Such a scenario will likely have little impact on the behavior of the children according to Joshua, as the patterns of the adult descendants will already have been firmly entrenched by the time they get the inheritance windfall.

What matters most is the time spent now to mold your son or daughter while still in your household. Good news: That time spent does not necessarily depend on your finances as a parent. This means you can act on talent building now without having to wait for a future success date of your own . Chew on that insight for a while on the implications of what it means to pass on success to your children!

That was Joshua’s commentary during the interview, so if you want to hear more stuff like that, subscribe to his podcasts so you can hear his other interviews.

Parable of the Talents

Jonathan

Christ’s Parable of the Talents

Matthew Chapter 25:

14. “For it is just like a man about to go on a journey, who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them.
15. “To one he gave five talents, to another, two, and to another, one, each according to his own ability; and he went on his journey.
16. “Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them, and gained five more talents.
17. “In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more.
18. “But he who received the one talent went away, and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

19. “Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them.

20. “The one who had received the five talents came up and brought five more talents, saying, `Master, you entrusted five talents to me. See, I have gained five more talents.’
21. “His master said to him, `Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’
22. “Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said, `Master, you entrusted two talents to me. See, I have gained two more talents.’
23. “His master said to him, `Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’

24. “And the one also who had received the one talent came up and said, `Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed.
25. `And I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours.’

26. “But his master answered and said to him, `You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed.
27. `Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received my money back with interest.
28. `Therefore take away the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.’

29. “For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.

(Translation version: New American Standard Bible)

What is Your Family Identity?

Jonathan

Can your family’s unique set of strengths and quirky interests help your son or daughter’s long term talent? Yes.

Your family’s identity is one of the most overlooked assets for building talent in a child (tip: your family’s identity is what you think others would probably describe your family as). But if you understand how to use your family’s identity, you can use it as emotional jet-fuel. The younger the child, the more leverage you will get out of using your family’s identity to blast your child out of being in a state of being average. Harnessing academic goals and using personal interests are also part of the 10ktoTalent method, but it is the family’s identity that gives you the most emotional leverage in your child’s early years of talent.

Here’s a simple example of how you would enlist your family’s identity to push your child’s talent forward:

Imagine that your daughter has a serious core writing skill she is developing as part of her long-term talent. She takes her craft seriously. She is able to write with poise and conviction. Imagine also that your family’s identity is found in providing hospitality. Your family unit is known for being that hospitable family at church to whom everyone turns to whenever there is person or event that needs to be honored in an appropriate way. Your family knows how to get people together and you take great joy as a family unit in helping others to honor those important occasions in life.

Those two apparent disconnected pursuits could stay disconnected. And that’s how most people would see the situation. Most would look at the fact that your daughter is growing up in a hospitable family as completely the same as her growing up in a musical family…in other words your family’s identity is irrelevant. At best, it is meant for your daughter to tolerate or pass by your family’s identity as the proverbial ship in a dark night, while trying to find time for herself to carve her own way. At worst, it can erupt into serious family conflict, resolved by either the daughter or the family having to give up their focus in order to sacrifice for the other.

This the better way: you MAKE those two worlds of writing and hospitality connect. This requires some imagination, but not anything outside of a little effort. There are usually several ways that you could come up with to connect two worlds. One way would be to enlist your daughter’s writing skill to enhance your family’s already great strength in the area of hospitality. A writer needs something to write about and needs to write for someone. A young person especially needs quick feedback as to whether what she is doing is appreciated, or if it’s completely a talk to her bedroom wall. This immediate outlet for her writing is what you provide for her through your family identity. In practical terms, this would translate into such things as having her compose short biographical sketches of the people or events being honored for that occasion and in following up after with congratulatory and thank-you notes and summaries of the event for the rest of the people who could not be there. This range of events to be written for, and for which she would almost have free reign within the safety of her family’s sphere of influence, would be amazing. Typical events would be: birthday celebrations, retirement events, wedding showers, baby showers, memorial services, post-ordination receptions, visiting missionaries, receptions for guest speakers, etc. She can easily gauge the feedback she got from exercising her skill. All of this engagement through the use of her writing skills to provide value to others is guaranteed to emotionally super-charge her to want to take her writing skill to the next level.

Notice in the above example at how critical the use of her family’s identity and strength would be at a young age. If she were thirteen and wanted to do such things on her own, most likely she would be blocked (and correctly so) as being too young and inexperienced. Most likely she would not even have the vision or the social savvy to initiate on her own to such a service level to other people. But because it is her parents’ strength and joy to do hospitality, they can easily clear that way for her and protect her from any social danger. Eventually, yes, that daughter, without her parents’ involvement, might find a way on her own to get that involved, but that is not likely to be possible until she as at least sixteen or seventeen. The difference between her parents connecting her talent with her family, and her parents being disconnected from her talent growth is the difference of three years. It is probably even more than that as the developed skills compound in usefulness.

What is your family identity?

Exercise Talent as a Service to Others

Jonathan

This short compilation of aerial videos was taken by my 16 year old son who is on a journey to apply his skills so that can bring value to other people. This latest updated compilation is to show what he can do for businesses that need a view from above of their properties and commercial activities.

In one of those excerpts in the compilation, you can see the first free one that he did for a local engineering firm. Through a fortuitous meeting at lunch in our local pizzeria, a man connected to a big local earth moving project was intrigued by the possibilities of affordable aerial videography. After showing his drone to the man and what it could do, the rest of the engineering team was enthusiastic about letting him fly over so they could have a dramatic capture of the hard work they were doing. My teenage son’s cheerful and diligent turnaround in the following days with behind-the-scene editing and then providing them with links and video copies was what opened the doors for being approached by another engineering team. That team wanted him to document their project in another city – but this time for pay. I’m happy to report that the filming project has now come and gone and was a great success! Another big one is now lined up based on that last success. And on and on, this 10,000 hour talent journey will keep progressing.

What application does this have for your own son or daughter’s situation? Simply that in order to really grow your child’s talent in such a way that it brings value to other people, it is necessary for your son or daughter to gradually and systematically find ways to showcase and deliver to others with some aspect of value. This value for others means that it is not just the product itself that is important, such as the final video in this example, but also that it is served in the location, manner, and timing that is important to those who will benefit from the talent. As a parent, I take this service part of the talent so seriously, that I will halt my son’s normal school work schedule in favor of him being able to quickly agree to an onsite filming schedule that is convenient to the customer. I make the school schedule bend and flex in favor of my son’s talent development. I will make his normal math or English curriculum schoolwork step aside and allow my son to make it up later in the evening or on another day.

No matter where your child is with regards to his long-term talent development, there is most likely some aspect of it that he can use today to bring value to others besides himself. If he gets your creative parental support to find a way to do it at a young age, he will have a huge advantage of not having to wait till he is in his last year of high-school to find that creative application on his own.

Make your child’s education be the slave to your child, not the master. Make it stand up and sit down on your demand. You and your child are the masters.

My Wife and I Talking About our Lifestyle

Jonathan

My wife and I were interviewed by Ryan and Stephanie Langford from EntreFamily.com

These are the points we talk about:

Why starting small can be wise
How we decided it was time to become full-time entrepreneurs rather than continue in the corporate world
How to help your kids find their passion and develop a marketable skill early on
How to find learning opportunities that will develop and challenge you as a business owner
Why your own story may be one of the things that helps you most with effective marketing
Why professional development matters and we should always keep learning
How training kids early in responsibilities and independence allows them the freedom they need to make their homeschooling & entrepreneurial family lifestyle work (and with 8 kids, we should know!)

If you are interested in eventually changing your family life so that you are more of an entrepreneurial focused family, I recommend you sign up for the Langford’s podcast to hear how others are doing it.

Without Actually Causing Himself Harm

Jonathan

How do you know when your son or daughter is ready to step up to the next level of responsibility?

How do you know when it is socially or physically safe enough?

What can you do as a parent to get them to the next level of independence?

The answer to those questions is to decide as parents that you will look for opportunities to put them in situations that are just ***slightly*** beyond the current comfort level for both the parents and the young person. The goal is not to put them in situations in order for them to “sink or swim”, but rather to put them in situations where if it does not go as well as it could, the outcome will only be mildly embarrassing or mildly painful in the flesh. After the situation is over, you can assess the outcome as a parent. You either confirm, that yes, your young person is entirely ready to handle those situations on their own OR you can be grateful that you now know the specific areas in which he needs more instruction or guidance from you. In the latter case, you give him that targeted input so that he can improve himself.

For example: you suspect, but you are not 100% sure, that your son might be ready to handle working on a small project where he has been invited to help out with other very talented and focused men. You would ideally want him to be able to do this, but you are also not sure he can handle navigating the tricky water of a such a social gathering. You don’t want him to provoke some of the rougher adult characters by having your son call them out on their rough language, like he would normally be entitled to with a sibling at home. You also don’t want him to be so over-awed by the demanding and exacting orders of the other professionals to that he wilts under pressure. In that situation, do you let or not let your young man go?

It depends. Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ depending on the following:

YES: You let him go if you sense that should he accidentally provoke or wilt, the consequences would only go so far as a mild verbal chiding in response to his perceived cheekiness rather than a beer bottle to the head or only so far as having a bruised and blue thigh rather than a severed hand from the use of the power tools. If he only gets slightly hurt, then it is worth it. Next time he will know to be more careful.

NO: However, you should not let him go to a significantly more social or dangerous environment if he might accidentally trigger a fist fight or lose a limb due to his lack of experience. Scale him back down to something safer and let him prove himself first at that level before going to the next.

You can use that same approach when introducing your young person to social media. Start letting him interact with a small and safe circle of friends or acquaintances. Let your son or daughter interact in that zone of safety for a while. If your offspring does not get barked down by older relatives for having over-stepped his bounds and if he doesn’t rile the female acquaintances by insensitive teenage comments, then he is ready to handle a wider social circle. On the other hand, if he manages to make Suzie cry or triggers an upset phone call by an uncle, then you can have a private talk with him about how to better handle the interaction the next time around and/or make amends. Suzie and Uncle Phil will have brushed off the incident by the next day and your son will have learned a valuable lesson. It was worth the risk and now your son is operating at the next level.

In all of this decision making, your goal is not to try and fail him, but rather it is to stretch him and encourage him to go just a little further than he did before. If there is a little mishap, you are there to help him interpret how he can do it better next time. In this way you are like a coach who wants his athlete to push himself to the next level, without actually causing himself harm.

Update on My 16 Year Old Son’s Talent Journey

Jonathan

Watch my son’s latest video produced to bring specific value through the use of his aerial videography talent. Also, below is an update on my oldest son’s 10,000 hour journey to amazing talent:

This past week, my son Jonathan Jr. was able to take his talent development into a slightly new direction. This is consistent with our family strategy of remaining flexible to opportunities while building on the skills already acquired. This talent journey started a few years ago when our son was enlisted to help us in our family business by taking product photos for our website. He also interested himself in some of the business mechanics of the home business. We encouraged it wherever he was capable of contributing or understanding.

From simple photo taking projects, he grew into learning how to do small videos of my wife doing her product explanations and editing them for brevity. This again was part of a strategy of understanding that our own family environment had advantages he could learn to use for his own benefit. Keep in mind that my son’s original personal interests only played one part in this successful talent building strategy. The other parts are found in the family’s environment and are identified and released by his parents.

The next phase of his talent discovery and development process came when he met a family friend of mine who let him fly his new quadcopter drone with a small camera mounted under its belly. That’s when he realized that he could marry his burgeoning videography with the new affordable flying drones. The feedback he was getting was that there was room for him to bring value to a market that was not yet crowded. When he compared that opportunity to that of becoming a wedding photographer (a typical destination for those with digital cameras and aspirations of going professional), he realized that the wedding market was already very well served. There were would be little room for him in that venue long-term and he would have to beg and scrape for a living. But with the appearance of drones, he realized that this was an opportunity that he should not pass up. It was the classic case of “luck” coming to those who are prepared.

As he started approaching real estate agents to do some basic aerial shots of houses they had for sell or rent, he realized that he enjoyed to talking to grown adult men in the context of business. This in turn caused me to suggest he tap into the expertise of another family friend who was quite the successful salesperson in the insurance industry. That he did. With a few hours of advice and consulting (such as “don’t charge by the hour, but by the project”), Jonathan picked up some better techniques for pitching his service to interested parties. Soon he was engaged in weekly paying “gigs” that involved filming not only housing property, but also undeveloped commercial property. Each time he finished his project and handed off the finished video to the customer, he would also add it to his website. This built up his website as a living portfolio of his work. That public documentation in turn opened up more deals for him. From real estate aerial filming, it now seems to be jumping into some new opportunities involving documenting engineering projects from the air. This, at least, so far seems to leading him into a possible niche. We don’t know for sure, but opportunities and the dollar value that his customers are willing to pay him will be signposts to which way he should grow his talent.

What did we do right and should you do? As his parents, we did not panic ourselves into forcing a career name onto a growing and emerging talent. This allowed us to actively encourage him to pursue opportunities that we previously had never heard about. Because of this parental flexibility, our son is able to explore a growing field involving the application of new technology. And yet, I still don’t think that my son is yet ready to define himself with a career name, because his opportunities are still growing. For now, I’m okay if he says “aerial videographer”, but I doubt that is his end destination. This should be the same with your young person: have a focus, but expect that this focus is simply a building block to hoist him up to get to new and more exciting opportunities, as of yet unknown.

What are some of the discussions I’m having with him now? We have recently been talking about how he probably needs to get himself declared into a C-corporation, so he can position himself with tax advantages and flexibility in future partnering deals. He’s not making enough money yet that it matters, but we want to position him in the best spot possible for future growth. I picked up the phone and talked to an entrepreneur friend who is recommending we look at incorporating in the state of Wyoming because (among other reasons) it is only $50 filing per year vs. the $800 filing fee per year in California. Maybe Wyoming incorporation is an affordable option for him.

We are also talking about how much pleasure and success he is getting at pitching his service to others. This means he might want to think about how he can concentrate on getting new business. To do so he would have to job out the editing of the raw footage he is now doing by himself through the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription service. This in turn would mean he would have to start documenting the “recipe” he would want a contractor to follow so that it meets his customers’ needs. These are all conversations now, but our conversations will often lead to meaningful action in the months to come. I take all these conversations as serious, or more seriously, than his ability to memorize the history dates of a Western Civilization course. (By the way, we love and highly recommend the Western Civilization course by Tom Woods of the RonPaulCurriculum.com). We know that no one will hire Jonathan to give his opinions on history any time soon, but we are fairly certain that he will be amply rewarded as a young man if he delivers faithfully on his service to others through his talent.

Would you like to read the guide on how to create opportunities like that for your own student? Check out my e-course “How to Discover and Develop Your Child’s First 100 Hours of Talent.”

Activities Out of Your Comfort Zone

Jonathan

Today, I read this devastating insight made by another man inside a closed discussion forum that I belong to.

This is what he basically said:

“because many mothers control the homeschool content, even in the latter years of the boys under their roof, they tend to choose activities that train their sons to become good household managers, involving lots of nurturing and lots of household chores. The moms see it as their goal to finally train up a young man to be the kind of household helpers that they wish their husbands were. Those moms seem to not at all be worried and oblivious to the fact that their sons are not being groomed to actually lead and provide financially for a family”

Do no let gender confusion creep into your decision making process for your son. Yes, it is nice that he is making his bed, but is that going to be an appropriate substitute for his future wife when he doesn’t have the unmitigated drive to get on the phone and sell his services for cash? The age of twelve is a good age to start getting him on the path to putting himself out there to get outside jobs done. Those jobs might be brain-based jobs and not necessarily manual labor jobs. Start in small ways and build up. Get your husband involved for brainstorming real young man activities so that you can groom him to be able to look other adult men in the eyes. Those activities will be out of your comfort zone. That is good. Your son is not growing up to be a mother.

Guarantee Your Son’s Motivation

Jonathan

How would you like to guarantee your son’ motivation to learn by using your family’s strengths? Yes, you can do that.

I do not want you to hope your son develops real motivation. I want you to guarantee it.

First, you need to figure out what your family’s strength is. What is your family’s identity and your family’s drive? If you don’t know what I mean, think of what others would probably describe your family as being in this world and think of how others would describe what your family is best known for. That is your family strength. You might have that ONE THING that sets you apart or it might be several things merging together. It might be beautifully simple or it might be beautifully complex. Either way, you can harness your family’s energy to give your son that lift to the next level.

No two families will have quite the same identity, so you must engage your mind around understanding what it is that makes your family stand-out. Are you that family that lives and eats in the mechanical world on weekends and in the evenings, fixing cars and sharing tailgate food with other families at car rallies? Or are you that family that swims in the world of hospitality for your church and in having visiting guests from foreign countries share your daily meals? Those are both identities and strengths that can be harnessed to boost your son’s motivation to work and learn hard.

By the way, that kind of motivation fire will not be found in the back of your son’s textbook or in the eyes of his super-smart tutor. But it can be found within your family, if you know how to identify that energy and then know how to harness it to your son’s benefit. To be clear: your family’s current identity is not your son’s future identity – but, and this is an amazing insight, it is your family’s current energy flowing out of that identity that can be used to super-charge your son’s own motivation to excel.

I can tell you how to do it through my coaching e-course “How to Discover and Develop Your Child’s First 100 Hours of Talent.” Don’t hope for motivation – guarantee it.

The Process for Discovering Talent in Your Child

Jonathan

How do you find a focus around which your young person can start building a valuable talent? It seems like such a distant thing to hope for in the midst of textbooks, dozens of equally good curriculums, and too few hours left in the day to pursue anything else. It seems like it is just meant to happen to a lucky few to fall into a talent. But I am here to show you how that “luck” can be applied to each and every child in your household.

Here’s why every one of your children can develop a real talent while still under your roof:

You can start them young because you create a talent from the current uniqueness in your child’s life. You are not waiting for some mysterious future thing out there, that has no connection to your present life. Your environment of people and places, your family’s particular quirks and strengths, your child’s personal interests can all be merged together in a unique way that has passion and focus . You then give that focus a purpose by finding a way to bring value to others through that talent. This creates a feedback loop of encouragement, motivation, and productivity. This is a systematic process for discovering a viable talent that leaves plenty of room for passion.

Wouldn’t you like a taste of that kind of purpose in teenage son’s life? or how about your daughter finding great confidence in her unique productivity that she could carry with her all the way into her married life?

That is what the 10ktotalent process for discovering and developing talent can do for the young person in your home.

I give you here the basic process for discovering that kind of talent focus:

Step 1: Identify and list these items in your young person’s life into these four categories:

Personal Interests, Family Goals, Environmental Advantages, Academic Goals

Step 2: Merge together several items, one from each of the previous categories to create a poetically compelling fusion of strengths in your child’s life. On paper, try your hand at several of these fusions to see how interesting your options can be be. What emerges as the best is usually far superior than what you thought was possible before you started this discovery process.

Step 3: Take your favorite, most compelling fusion, and turn it into a believable and d0-able action statement for your child’s first 100 hours of talent focus. That is the beginning of your child’s talent. As your young person acts on it, his beginning talent will grow in complexity and branch out into previously unthought of opportunities.

Do you want help to make sure your son or daughter is on to the best talent possible? Then you may want to get my coaching help in this e-course “How to Discover and Develop Your Child’s First 100 Hours of Talent.”

Talent Principles for Homeschoolers

Jonathan

Homeschoolers have some advantages over traditional students that can be used to make talent growth much easier. Do you know what those are?

All children can develop talent of course, whether homeschooled or not. So before I tell you what the homeschool advantages are, let me first restate the principles for reaching amazing levels of performance that will apply to all young people in their quest for focus and excellence.

they start young (a few started late, but then they might not have had other normal family obligations such as in the case of Julia Child, who was childless – pardon the family name pun)
they practice daily (no exceptions here)
they actively decompose their talent into smaller skills (they were smart about what their talent was, not just hard-workers)
they merge skills and borrowed ideas from different fields (they wanted to break new-ground, not just preserve the past)

A great read for understanding the above principles can be found in these books that analyze how amazing talent was built in the lives of the top performers in the world.

Now, I am going to tell you what homeschool parents can easily do over other parents that will make the talent acquisition process significantly easier.

Homeschool parents can:

Use their environment and assets (so you don’t wait for a pie-in-the-sky opportunity that may never come)
Enlist their family goals and desires (so you don’t have dad rolling his eyes on another Saturday talent excursion that doesn’t make sense to him)
Have their child act out the talent in a way that gives value to others (so you don’t paint your child into a corner of being very, very, very good at something totally irrelevant to the marketplace)
Make the school curriculum feed their child’s talent (so your child has enough experience to actually have a chance at achieving lift-off by the time he is eighteen)

The more you can dovetail those assets into your child’s life, the more talent progress and focus can be achieved in a shorter period of time.