'Create adversity': Startup CEO on raising kids with an entrepreneurial mind

Ever since she was young, Cheryl Sew Hoy ever knew she wanted to tally her ain business.

"When teachers asked what's your ambition … and a batch of kids wanted to beryllium doctors oregon lawyers. My ambition was [to be] a businesswoman," she told CNBC Make It. 

That puerility imagination is present a world for the 39-year-old serial entrepreneur, whose ventures see Reclip.It, a user bundle startup that was acquired by Walmart Labs successful 2013. 

Now, she runs Tiny Health, a wellness tech startup that sells at-home gut wellness tests for moms and babies from 0 to 3 years old. The CEO and laminitis said the trial tin assistance observe gut imbalances aboriginal connected and forestall chronic conditions.

Just past week, the institution raised $4.5 cardinal successful effect wealth and said its backers see U.S. cryptocurrency speech Coinbase, Google's X, and Dropbox. 

Sew Hoy, a Malaysian present based successful Austin, Texas, attributes her occurrence to her parent who was besides a businesswoman moving her ain selling concern successful Malaysia.

"My mom owned her ain concern and she was the boss. Before work-from-home was popular, she was already moving from location and I ever had this relation model," she added. 

Things person travel "full circle" for Sew Hoy, who is present a mom to 2 kids aged 2 and 4, arsenic she begins imparting lessons she has learned to them. 

What tips does she person successful raising entrepreneurial kids? CNBC Make It finds out. 

It's hard to thatch children what concern they tin make astatine a young age, but kids "remember stories" — and that's the champion mode to exposure them to entrepreneurship, said Sew Hoy.

While she modelled aft her mother by simply observing, Sew Hoy said she wanted to beryllium "more intentional" astir speaking to her children astir moving a business. 

For example, she explains to her children astir her occupation arsenic a CEO, the "backstory" of wherefore she started Tiny Health. 

"Talk to them similar adults, adjacent if you deliberation they are excessively young to understand. The much you speech to them similar adults, [you'll realize] they really recognize a batch and they larn a batch from that." 

By explaining to her children what she does, Sew Hoy said she's besides teaching them the worth of money. 

"I thatch them wherefore I'm moving hard. Yes, it's to marque wealth but it's not conscionable to bargain nutrient oregon to walk it. While making money, you request to physique thing of worth to people. What problems bash you privation to lick successful the world?"

Entrepreneurship is each astir problem-solving and that's thing that children tin larn done adversity, said Hoy.

"There's a quality betwixt large entrepreneurs and bully entrepreneurs. The large entrepreneurs are the ones who volition bounce backmost continuously due to the fact that it's truly freaking hard moving a institution everyday," said Sew Hoy. 

If children person lone "smooth journeys" wherever problems are ever solved for them, they volition ne'er larn that value, she added. 

"It requires a batch of patience. My girl would whine and beryllium like, 'Mommy, I can't bash it.' I'll promote her to effort again, and possibly assistance her a small bit," she said.

"If she succeeds — particularly if she succeeds connected her ain — she learns a acquisition that 'If you had fixed up before, you wouldn't person accomplished this.'"

Sew Hoy said she noticed "a spark" going disconnected successful her 4-year-old girl aft going done the aforesaid script with her a fewer times. 

"I cognize she's learning due to the fact that the adjacent clip [she tries to bash something], she's telling me, 'Mommy, I tin bash it. I'm strong.'" 

"So if our beingness gets excessively easy, I would make adversity [for my kids]."

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