Hannah Hoobyar, author and business owner at YogaForKidz.com, looks back the first half of her teen experience and after years of teaching Yoga for kids and is now gearing to launch her first event for entrepreneurial teens.
Lots of people talk about teaching yoga to kids. Many do it well. But almost none of them are kids. At the age of 13, Hannah Hoobyar,who had been doing yoga for about 5 years by then, published her book “Yoga For Kids: The Basics” . “I do it to help me get ready for tests, deal with things when life gets tough, relax when I am stressed, and wind down after a tough day.” Hannah explains how yoga has helped her to master herself and find inner peace and allowed her to step up to and master challenges.
In the mean time, Hannah is 16 and venturing out into greater and larger entrepreneurial activities. Her goals now: to show teens that they can develop their passion and share it for the greater good of those in need of their insights.
Hannah unleashed her passion for yoga by starting her business YogaForKidz with the purpose to introduce yoga to as many kids as possible. Her mission to make yoga cool for even the coolest kids has been the jump start to a fascinating entrepreneurial journey. Since walking the talk, Hannah is now deep in the organizational phase for a fall event to encourage and edify young entrepreneurs to define and walk their own paths.
“Most great entrepreneurs I know are nothing like the other kids,” notes investor, consultant television personality, Barbara Corcoran. “They’re almost like tangent lines – those lines that seem to go nowhere. Nothing connects them, until they get out in the real world. Then they connect just fine.”
This rings true with Hannah’s experience and she shares her insights into the life of the entrepreneurial teen. “Business minded young people, especially 13 year olds like teen designer, entrepreneur and activist Maya Penn likely will not have many peers to talk to. Because they wont likely have the social aspect around them. In school, you have a whole scope of kids in the same age, doing the same stuff. But as an entrepreneur, as a young entrepreneur, you are rather isolated — there are not many, if any, in your social circles who have that entrepreneurial spirit.”
“It takes a lot energy to raise the entrepreneurial teen and they benefit a lot from the support they get at home,” says Tracy Hoobyar, Hannah’s mom. “In our case, Hannah comes from a very entrepreneurial family. If parents can be committed to helping and supporting their kids, we will see more and more amazing things happening thanks to young entrepreneurs.”
Tracy Hoobyar goes on to explain that a whole culture of respecting the kid’s opinions, teaching that there is not a box out of which they need to think outside and that the sky is truly the limit will help them to think what they want rather than default to the way most kids generally think about themselves and the world.
It boils down to cultivating questions and breaking out of the “I’ld love to do this, but it would be so hard and I don’t know how” frame of mind.
Questions like:
- What would I need to do to make it work?
- Is it possible?
- What resources would I need to have to accomplish this?
Tracy shares her key insights of the entrepreneurial child, “A giving attitude seems to be a strong motivator which propels these youth to move towards greater acts of genuine service.” This rings true with the recent TEDTalk featuring teen entrepreneur and activist Maya Penn.
As Warren G. Bennis, pioneer of the contemporary field of Leadership studies, points out “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.” So too, parents and significant adults in the lives of business minded young people will encourage the young entrepreneur to listen to the music and find ways to express it to the world.
“Think outside the box, think big and don’t be scared,” Hannah shares. “You are special, not weird. And keep on thinking big.”
To learn more about how Hannah teaches kids to be in control of their inner world with the help of yoga, visit YogaForKidz.com or hook up with Hannah on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hannah.hoobyar/.