Raising a Mogul: The Manual

By Tamara Zantell

The hardest job in the world truly is  #raisingamogul. Now you have the manual to guide you. We searched extensively for thought-leaders who slay parenting, influencing, leadership, entrepreneurship, and Raising A Mogul!

This manual provides:

A full resource on inspirational parenting
Why the old mindset towards children

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raising A Mogul LLC
• Release date: Jul 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733174114

Tamara Zantell

As a visionary, brand strategist, and remarkable parent manager herself, Tamara Zantell turned her 9-year-old daughter's kitchen table hobby into a million-dollar brand. She is the founder of Raising A Mogul, LLC, and Legacy Brand Creators, LLC, a boutique brand development and marketing agency. Tamara is committed to supporting families who aim to better position themselves toward building a reputable family legacy. She believes that your children possess dreams and passions that can be potential game-changers in any business industry.She is a mother to five superstar innovators and changemakers. Together or separately they have been featured on platforms such as AOL, USA Today, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Black Enterprise, ABC Nightline, TODAY, and more.She has successfully helped her clients build strong community relationships, deliver excellent products and services while creating systematic and diverse environments through culture, goals, and structure. She is equipped with advanced knowledge in launching an international brand, generating revenue, partnership development, and developing young moguls and family businesses for inevitable triumph. Follow Tamara on Instagram @raisingamogul_See what she's up to on Facebook @raisingamogul, @iworkforzandra, and at tamarazantell.com.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

I Raised A Mogul

Tamara Zantell

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Actually, I have raised several.

Here’s how…

My children are champions, warriors, leaders and pattern disruptors.

From the moment I knew they were on the way, I was on a mission to set up the life I wanted them to experience. Now, don't get me wrong, I understood that I would not be able to control everything, nor did I desire to. But I wanted to manage the interactions my children had with the big bad world, I wanted to choose what they saw and heard and when they saw or heard it. I wanted to have the opportunity to have whatever conversation was required in order to make sure they processed those things in a healthy way.

When many of us initiate the process of becoming a parent, whatever that looks like for you, we always say cliché type things like I'm going to be so much better than my parents, I'm going to do it right, I'll never do what my parents did. What we really mean to say is that we want to show them the world in a different way that we may not have experienced until we were a lot older, wiser, more cultured, more experienced. We want them to be able to control their destiny, to design their own life. We want them to not only make the world a better place by just being in it but, to love themselves and create an amazingly healthy lifestyle for themselves and whatever family they choose to create.

Essentially, I created my own ecosystem. I had these ideas of what parenting would look like or would be like but I also knew what being a kid was like, being a teenager was like, being a young adult was like and now what being an adult is like. I had to separate the two the life I've lived versus the way I viewed my parents while living it. I had to decide what I loved about my experience and what I didn't agree with so much. I took both of those and I created an ecosystem.

So let's talk about this ecosystem, I think it’s pretty genius. So, before you go there, no I did not take my kids and put them in a bubble. They are not bubble kids. I didn't shield them from everything wild and crazy in life. What I did was I simply created an environment that was conducive to where I wanted them to grow, to an environment conducive to the life that I wanted them to experience. Within our ecosystem there are things such as free thinking, open communication, transparency and I was also committed to not parenting with ego. I needed my kids to understand that mommy made mistakes too, daddy wasn't perfect but you know what we learn from our mistakes and here's what we changed. I wanted them to understand early that people are not perfect we don't idolize, we work hard we admit when we were wrong and we adjust accordingly. I wanted their expectations to be reasonable with what the world was going to deliver I didn't want to let them loose into the world thinking that perfection was actually a thing, instead, I wanted them to understand that they were great enough. They needed to know that they would always have more work to do, more to learn or experience, and also that a growth mindset was paramount. In our household, failure was understood to be a part of the growth process. They needed to learn that without failure, there would be no success. Through their failure they learned how to problem solve and think critically. I needed to prepare them for the real world.

So from the lessons that my husband James and I have learned over the years while parenting 5 children and 2 grandbeauties, we have taken a few tips or nuggets that we would love to share with you and your family. As you are reading this book you were going to read some of the most interesting stories about some of the most amazing young moguls written by some of the most dynamic parent managers on the planet. In between those stories James and I would love to share with you some of the operating procedures that we use to guide our family toward success.

I want to introduce you to RAMOS, the Raising A Mogul Operating System. This same operating system is what we have followed and ideology we implemented to raise the following humans that make up our most beautiful blended family:

King Josiah I’sa - 2 time Author, entrepreneur

Zandra - CEO of zandrabeauty.com, international speaker, philanthropist, and Author.

James Lyndell - Championship wrestler, championship football star and NFL Draft prospect

Jimmie Lee - Championship Football Star and scholar

Mercedes Lucia - CEO of VXXVI, a lifestyle brand and amazing mommy to my grandbeauty

And

By the grace of God our son in love William Henderson - NFL star, entrepreneur and the dopest dad ever.

So I would say we have done a few things right. Together we have built greatness, our children our legacy and one thing we know for sure is they are built for this.

This manual exist because it was necessary for me personally when my young mogul launched her brand at just nine years old. I was lost confused and desperate for the connection knowledge and community of other parent managers that was unheard of. I told myself if I could help her build her brand just big enough that someone would care enough to ask me how I helped her do it I would share it with every parent I came in contact with 7 years later raising a mogul was born.

I opened a community and invited every parent manager I had been blessed to come in contact with over the years. I created a safe place for parents just like me. Parents who didn’t place restrictions on their children, parents who were okay with their child standing out in their gifts, talents and abilities. These kids challenge the status quo and their parents had to be willing to do whatever it took to help them build an empire. Within the Raising A Mogul community is the opportunity to grow with those like minded, the space to honestly and openly share the good, the bad and ugly. Today we are Raising A Mogul - THE MOVEMENT!

How to read this manual:

Read it through once, skip around from story to story, paying close attention to those that resonate with you. Connect with each parent and get to know them better via their words. Take note of the lessons they share and learn from their failures, mistakes, triumphs and success.

In between the experience shared by the parent managers in the manual. James and I have left you with a series of what we call KERNELS.

kernel

noun

ker·nel | \ ˈkər-nᵊl \

Definition of kernel

1: the inner softer part of a seed, fruit stone, or nut…

2: a central or essential part of an operating system

3: a fruit seed

4: a subset of the elements of one set (such as a group) that a function (such as a homomorphism) maps onto an identity element of another set

These Kernels are like bread crumbs or nuggets of knowledge that you can use to build your own RAMOS. When raising a mogul, allow these principles, thoughts and affirmations to be the guideline in doing so.

Whatever you do, make it great!

I am Raising A Mogul.

CHAPTER I

Solid Foundation :

Structured For Success

James and Arriel Biggs

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We are James and Arriel Biggs, proud parents of two young entrepreneurs, Mikey age 11 and Ariel age four.  We are located in Saint Louis, Missouri, a city known for many things including our giving spirit and many non-profit organizations. Our son, Mikey the kid who knows the biz, owns a vending machine business called Mikey’s Munchies and is also the author of two books, Mikey Learns about Business, a bestseller, and his newest work Biz is a Wiz. In keeping with our family tradition, we gave our daughter her first candy machine business for her third birthday. She will launch a new business for her fifth birthday that  she calls Peace of Cake Peace of Pie Bakery. While we did not begin our journey as parents with the thought of nurturing our children into young business moguls, we soon realized that our calling would help not only our family, but many others along the way.

A great tool to engage with our children and community, we use entrepreneurship as a way to teach ownership, character qualities and life skills. We firmly believe that an entrepreneur is simply, a problem solver. When people have a need, an entrepreneur finds a way to meet that need helping both parties achieve a goal. We can’t guarantee that everyone who learns business skills at a young age will go on to own their own business, but we are sure that if we train them up in the way they should go, they will not depart from it.  Our goal in this chapter is to give you a solid example of how we put structures in place to run a successful growing family business and a non-profit organization.

James Biggs

Our journey began one day when Mikey was leaving summer camp and once again he asked for a snack out of one of the nearby vending machines. Trying to impress on him the value of a dollar, my wife told him that all the money he put into the vending machine went to its owner.  Right then and there, Mikey decided he too wanted to be a business owner.  Like most cautious parents, my wife tried to explain to him that he was too young to own a business, but Mikey is much like my wife and I were as  kids. We had a lot of BIG dreams and ideas, but the adults in our lives didn’t know how to nurture our gifts.  I remember not wanting Mikey to feel the way we did  as children. We decided to test his commitment and told him he would need to write a business plan, do his research and let us know how much all of this was going to cost. Within two days Mikey came back with everything we asked him for, including the name of his new venture, Mikey’s Munchies Vending. It was clear Mikey was serious about starting his own business and we knew he needed us to be his biggest supporters.

At the time, my wife and I both worked in the direct care field and we didn’t make a lot of money. We didn’t know everything about running a business but we did know we would need startup money for the machines, license, supplies etc. We got our game plan together to run a lemonade stand to get the startup money and that, along with the money that we gave him for Christmas, we were able to buy Mickey’s first two vending machines. As a bonus we found a mentor in the vending business with over 30 years of experience that has been a big support to us. We did all the things to make his business legal and the real work began. 

It didn’t take long before the whole family became students of the business. Not long after our purchase, we went to a networking event and Mikey met a woman looking for vending machines in her business and she hired Mikey’s Munchies Vending. Mikey fell in love with making a list of all the snacks, going to the store to replenish his stock and filling up the machines.  Of course his favorite part was collecting the money every two weeks. He quickly learning a lot about business including the major life lesson that he could not eat all the snacks. Another life lesson for Mikey was learning he had to get up and work even when he didn’t  feel like it (hot, cold, rain or snow). He learned quickly that Mom and Dad were not going to do all the work for his business. We were surprised and encouraged to see him learning hard work, dedication and commitment.  My wife and I realized that we had to be just as dedicated and committed as Mikey. We had to schedule time to drive him to the store to get snacks, to the machine locations, to the bank and TV and radio interviews. As his parents and business supporters, we also had to find time to learn about the vending business because we knew nothing at all. We each decided to absorb all of the information we could and trust in each other. We were committed to the company, but most of all, our family.

What I learned having a family-owned business:

Commitment

Just like a marriage, a business is a full-time commitment with a lot of work involved.  Sometimes you make money and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes customers love your product, sometimes they don’t.  There are good days and bad days, but we are in it to the end.

Revenue

Gross revenue is not the same as net revenue!  Just because you gross a $100,000 doesn’t mean you bring home $100,000.  After I learned about revenue and everything that had to be paid before we started to see a profit helped me to better understand why we should wait to take a salary from the business.

Efficiency

I learned about efficiency and how it affected our bottom line.  We had to ask ourselves a lot of hard questions and make the proper adjustments to run a successful family business.  How could we achieve the maximum profit with minimum wasted time or effort? We had to examine which products were selling and which were not. We had to look at our machine placements and see if the location was making money. We also had to turn down business because we didn’t have the capital needed for the demand. (This would have hurt us as a family and business.) To be efficient, we had to continue to evaluate everything.

James and Arriel Biggs

We had a lot of interest in what and how we were teaching Mikey about entrepreneurship at such an early age. Soon, we became respected leaders in our community and nationwide with many wanting to know our secret to encouraging Mikey and other children in our family.  We thought all we were doing was parenting. We quickly found out we had created a lifestyle of building generational wealth and helping others follow their dreams. This developed into us starting a non-profit called Young Biz Kidz.  Young Biz Kidz presents a positive, diverse and creative way to teach youth about business and financial education. YBK’s mission is to create a challenging interactive environment that