My three-year-old daughter wants all things princess and in purple. My eight-year-old son wants a computer game or some Star Wars characters. If you have young children, you probably have had similar conversations with six weeks to Christmas.
But what could you buy your children that may be a real investment in their future?
With the digital world changing so rapidly, who knows by the time our children grow up, get qualified, have a career, what they might need or want? It is predicted by some, that there will be a huge increase in self-employed entrepreneurs in the next generation. No longer do you need to have a factory to be self-employed, most of us have a factory in our pockets. It’s called a smartphone.
Using online tools, we can order small runs of all sorts of things from overseas countries (www.alibaba.com), distribute them (www.ebay.com.au), have people pay online for our products or services (www.eway.com.au) or have our technical or design needs tendered to by experienced IT professionals anywhere in the world (www.elance.com). In fact, I recently came across a new term that defines these changes. According to some, the future is ‘global small business’.
Even if the next generation decides to choose a more traditional path and get a job working for an established organisation, I think the days of the paper resume are numbered. Information about your career history will be shared online.
If this is the case, what might our children need to equip themselves for the new economy?
The one thing that you can’t have two of is a URL, or the bit after the www in a website address. So when I had my children, one of the first things I did was to purchase their names as URLs. For example, I also own www.tracyangwin.com and www.tracyangwin.com.au.
It’s probably going to be difficult for you if your name is John Smith. But if not, it might be worth the modest investment to get your family their URLs. A friend of mine who is an international bestselling Australian author owns www.andrewgriffiths.com. The person who owns www.andrewgriffiths.com.au last offered to sell it to him for $250,000!
Who knows if my children will use these in the future, but they now have the option. Perhaps this is also a unique gift that you can give to your children this year?
If you have any questions regarding this please feel free to contact me at tracy@austpayroll.com.au.
Tracy is the founder and chief executive officer at the Australian Payroll Association and the director of Payroll HQ.
