The NorthStar Narrative

Transforming Education Through Entrepreneurial Mindsets

NorthStar Academy

Stephen Carter shares how entrepreneurial education is transforming Christian schools by developing critical skills and purpose-driven mindsets in students. What started as a simple coffee cart has grown into a nationwide movement helping students discover their unique calling through entrepreneurial thinking and real-world application.

• Entrepreneurship defined as "taking a risk to create something new for the good of others"
• Most in-demand skills from employers: proactive problem-solving, collaboration, communication
• Parents can foster entrepreneurial mindset by praising effort over talent
• Focus on seeing work as kingdom-building, restoring broken bonds
• Entrepreneurial mindset shifts students from consumption to creation
• Start small with minimum viable products and improve as you go

Learn more at SeedtreeGroup.com.


Stephanie:

Hi, this is Stephanie Shafer and you're listening to the North Star Narrative, a podcast from North Star Academy. I want to thank you for joining us. I hope you're encouraged, challenged and motivated by what you learned today. Enjoy the story. Hey everybody, Welcome to this week's episode.

Stephanie:

I'm, as always, super excited because God brings incredible guests our way.

Stephanie:

I have a new friend that I met unexpectedly in a remarkable way, and I've gotten to know him quite well over the past few weeks, and so I'm really excited. You get to know him. Stay tuned, pay attention, because it really is transformational what God is doing in and through him. So I welcome my new friend, Stephen Carter, who is from Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy, where I just got to go visit, and he also has Seatree Group, where he is working to train leaders to help students have a transformational mindset through entrepreneurship, to help students have a transformational mindset through entrepreneurship, and so I got to meet him at Converge 2025, wandered into his session short session, but extremely powerful and so I want him to share some of that richness and goodness. But we want to hear his story as well and if you want to, Stephen, we can talk for a moment. We can weave in there how God ordained the next part of me getting to Cincinnati and then a little bit of our future. But anyway, I'm so glad that you're here.

Stephen:

Stephen C Reilly. Stephanie, let's go. Okay, I am pumped as well. I will match your enthusiasm step for step, because this is the time to have the conversation around how we engage our students in truly becoming who God has called them to be. So I mean, bring it on, let's dig in.

Stephanie:

Yes, let's dig in. So tell us a little bit about your story. Where did and when did your passions develop so much for students and entrepreneurship and just give us a glimpse of the excitement God has taken you through on this journey.

Stephen:

Absolutely. I'll dig in with a glimpse, like you said, and I've been in Christian education since 10th grade as a student, and Christian college and then Christian teaching from a school perspective, and it was English. I was in the English department but I was the teacher who was doing everything. You know we're coaching debate team, we're doing cross country, we're helping with some of the plays and things. And when I was approached by my head of school who said, hey, we're going to get this rolling cart and we're going to put some coffee on it and we're going to let students manage the business and I want you to oversee it, I was predetermined to already say yes, what could possibly go wrong? It's a little rolling coffee cart. Listen, that was 12 years ago.

Stephen:

That little rolling cart turned into a full-fledged program that teaches the entrepreneurial mindset from a Christ-centered perspective to help transform the lives of students and step into who they are called to become. And that was not part of the conversation 12 years ago. 12 years ago it was here's a cup, here's some coffee and let's sell it. But what happened was we stumbled into the entrepreneurial mindset and then began to understand that when you help students step into growth mindset, develop their grit, redefine failure and truly seek opportunity. They get engaged, and it was the student engagement that grew it from that little mobile cart into a full-fledged coffee bar, into wood-fired pizza oven business, smoothie business, greenhouse business all these opportunities framed around the entrepreneurial mindset.

Stephen:

And so the journey has been how do we grow programs quick enough to meet the demand of students who want to learn this? Because it's based in skills, durable skills that set them up for success in every walk of life. And I always tell people Stephanie, kind of to close this piece of it we are not trying to just churn out entrepreneurs Now. Many of our students become entrepreneurs. What we want to do is help students think like entrepreneurs, and I will share the definition of the word entrepreneur by Jordan Rainer. He says entrepreneurs are anyone who takes a risk to create something new for the good of others. That's what we're helping our students step into as we develop these meaningful programs on school campuses all around the nation.

Stephanie:

Yeah, and being at your school, Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy, I got to see this firsthand. We got to interact and listen to and get to know students that are involved in this program and it's more than a program. It is a lifestyle, it is a way of thinking. It is transforming their minds and their hearts and giving them passions and developing their skills. And I got to see that all play out from them not scripted testimonies, like you would ask them questions and they share. And then the beauty of what they're creating through. It's not just a coffee cart anymore. You want to share it. It is elaborate.

Stephen:

It's elaborate, it's a laboratory, and I'm glad you brought that up, stephanie. And real quick, before I tell more about the laboratory, the story of how you got there is so important because you and I met at Converge and I said in that session I said we have a sold-out symposium event. And you came up to me anyway and you said, stephen, I'm supposed to be at your event. You had no idea when it was. You had no idea when it was. You had no idea like any of these pieces I had, three hours before had been informed by a school who was also at Converge. They said, hey, stephen, we've got a person who can't come, just letting you know there's an open ticket. I didn't even advertise it, I just said we're sold out. You walked up, you stepped into that place and you said I'm coming. I said, stephanie, it's a week from today in Cincinnati, and you said I don't care, I'm going to be there. And you are. You came and you brought that enthusiasm and that excitement and that vision.

Stephen:

And part of that event was saying, look, excitement. And that vision and part of that event was saying, look, you might look at these programs and say, oh, okay, so kids are running a business. They're running a coffee bar, they're running these different businesses. That's great. And I tell people, look closer, because when you look closer you see it's not just a business, it's a laboratory where they're developing skills in real time. And, stephanie, I even say look closer than that. When you look even closer, you see a microcosm of the kingdom of God, as students work together to collaborate, to problem solve, to effectively communicate. They're coming together to bring solutions to problems and to act out shalom. I mean I can't get enough of it. I cannot get enough of it.

Stephanie:

Yeah, me either had no idea what was in store for me going to Converge. I knew it was going to be great and the atmosphere was electric at Converge. Educators are in a new space than they have been in the last couple of years. They seem invigorated, they wanted to talk to people and build community. And so, meeting you, I was just like it's the next step and this is God's goodness. I'm sure you've seen it all throughout your journey. As you just take the next step, follow the next thing he asked you to do. He intersects your life with people that help challenge you and grow you and take you down the next path. And so you were that for me, you were that for NorthStar I'm super excited about the future and you were that for all of these schools. So talk a little bit about your business that you formed and how you're training these schools. And yeah, you had 60 educators packed in a room for what? Three days? And everybody was in awe.

Stephen:

You know 13 different states and 23 different schools and really it comes down to the student transformation. So I always tell people we root this program in Romans 12 too, where Paul says do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That is the key to this program is we're teaching the entrepreneurial mindset and we're doing it from a Christ-centered perspective. We're doing it in such a way that you step into what we're told in 2 Corinthians. Is that new creation? Anyone who's in Christ is a new creation. Old things are passed away, and so what happens as a result? If you go back five years, we're building this program in Cincinnati. I mean, the thing is popping off. It's going crazy. We're building a certificate track. We have more businesses than we know what to do with on this brick and mortar campus in Cincinnati, ohio.

Stephen:

I start fielding emails left and right from Christian schools around the nation saying hey, we heard about what you're doing. How do we get started Now? Listen, stephanie, I've been teaching the entrepreneurial mindset for seven years. At this point it took an embarrassingly long time before I thought oh, wait, a minute, here's an idea. I could start a business. Right, I could be entrepreneurial myself and step into this space to have the mission to help schools launch programs that engage their students around this entrepreneurial mindset. So I started with a pilot program three or four schools. We began testing, trying seeing if this works, seeing if we could replicate it, and it just worked. It worked because we had dedicated educators who we trained, who were bought in, we had engaging curriculum but, most importantly, students came to the space engaged in the mindset, got excited and that excitement became contagious.

Stephen:

You know we talk a lot about grit. Angela Duckworth tells us that grit is really about passion and perseverance toward long-term goals. Well, let me give you a long-term goal. The educational system in general is broken. We have the greatest opportunity right now to bring healing, to bring solutions into that space, and it's through engaging our students in a skills-focused approach, and real quick. I'm not arguing that we get rid of content or knowledge. That is incredibly important, but without the skills, that content is not actionable. That's the secret to the entrepreneurship piece.

Stephen:

People with an entrepreneurial mindset are biased for action and our students want that. They crave that. So when they see it, we begin to see flourishing, and that was a big theme at Converge. Stephanie is like we want flourishing schools. Well, flourishing schools require flourishing students, and our students will not flourish in environments where there's no passion, where there's no interest, where there's no real-world application. But we can create that through entrepreneurship. So four schools became eight schools, became 12 schools and now I'm working with over 25 schools to say let's replicate, let's build, let's grow. Now we're training elementary teachers, we're working with teachers at all different age levels to say this is not just a program, this is a mindset of how we can redeem our pedagogy in schools. We can focus on progress instead of perfection. We can change the way we teach. So, stephanie, we're just getting started at this idea of what truly transformative education looks like from the lens of entrepreneurship idea of what truly transformative education looks like from the lens of entrepreneurship.

Stephanie:

Yeah, and what's really cool is there's so many educators getting excited and passionate. You have to have that first and that's going to trickle down into the students. So it's so, so, so cool. I want you to also share a little bit more about the skills. So you told us in the conference that you interviewed businesses and the people who hire and what they want from students, and they're just not seeing it.

Stephen:

We're in an amazing day and age and we talk a lot, people rail a lot about this current generation. One of the figures I like to follow is Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, and he says people always talk about the snowflake generation, the snowflakes, and he says, well, we're the clouds from which the snowflakes fell, let's take some ownership over this. And so I set about to say, okay, well, if business owners are complaining about the millennials, about these younger generations, they're complaining about their work ethic and all these things. Why don't I just go talk to business owners and say what do you want? What are you looking for? What is it you seek out when you're hiring? And here's what's fascinating Business owner after business owner after business owner when you're hiring. And here's what's fascinating, business owner after business owner after business owner. What I didn't hear was oh, they know the periodic table of elements. Or they had a 4.0 GPA, or they had this amazing degree. Nothing against any of those things. It's not what they said. They said I want them to show up, I want them to do the work. I want them to look me in the eye and have a conversation with me. I want them to lead a team.

Stephen:

What they were listing were the skills. Now, we used to call these soft skills right, you know, back in the day, oh, the soft skills. Well, that's changing. We're now more and more you're going to see the phrase durable skills. These are the skills that last. And when you isolate them, like when you say, okay, what are the most important ones, the ones that come to the top. The most in-demand skills are skills like problem solving. Now we take it one step further. We say proactive problem solving. You know, we're not just going to solve the problem, we're going to keep it from being a problem in the future.

Stephen:

Number two collaboration. Collaboration. Schools are so good at cooperation. This is what my friend Joel Hazard from Fellowship Christian says. They're so good at cooperation. We want them to collaborate, which is messy. It means bringing in what might be contradictory visions and making them work together. It's synergizing. It means bringing in what might be contradictory visions and making them work together. It's synergizing. It's coming together and out of that to create something together that's beautiful, that works, that solves the problem.

Stephen:

Collaboration. And the third effective communication. Oh, my goodness. And we could talk all day. We won't do it, but we could talk all day about our generations and what cell phones have done, what screens have done to communication. You just put a group of students together and have them launch a business. They're going to learn very quickly that other people exist and they have to talk to them and look at them and make eye contact with them, and these are the skills that business owners are looking for. So whenever I talk to students that business owners are looking for, so whenever I talk to students, I say hey, great news, great news. The bar for success is so low right now. You just shake someone's hand, you've got a job. But here's the thing, stephanie, we don't want them to just stumble over the bar. We want them to vault over that bar. We want them to be so prepared with these skills that they just blow it out of the water, take it to the next level and really build into that mindset.

Stephanie:

So, so exciting. Okay, as I'm sitting here thinking about some of our listeners, parents. So there's parents listening right now. This is not just for schools. Parents can benefit from what you are sharing because they're the teachers at home, right? They're the guiders, the disciplers. So, as you've thought through this, you're a parent. What are some things parents can be doing right now to set their kids up for success?

Stephen:

I love this question and it's in many ways, I think sometimes in education an antagonism develops between parents and educators and there's all kinds of things that can happen or, you know, burrs that can take place. In many ways, parents have a massive opportunity here to leverage this kind of mindset, to even take the relationship with their kids into new levels and new opportunities, and so what I would say is a lot of what we're learning in the fields of growth, mindset and grit from people like Carol Dweck and other researchers is, as parents, we need to work a little harder to praise effort instead of talent. I think that alone is gold, because you know, it's so easy for us to say oh man, this comes so naturally to you, you're so naturally good at this, I'm so proud of how well you did on this. Let's praise the effort they put in, because when you praise effort, like what you praise is what you get more of, and effort trumps talent. Every time, in every study. Now you put effort with talent and you're off the charts. So that's one thing I would say to parents. Another and this is just kind of kind of kind of a silly one but boy, you want to develop grit Every like Disney sports movie ever made is a story of grit and overcoming odds and having a long-term goal.

Stephen:

I mean things like Cool, runnings and Rudy and all these great movies For your family movie night. Pick some of the stories that emphasize the values that you want your students to develop, or even the values that business owners are asking for. I want grit. I want people to show up. What are you watching? What are you listening to? What are you reading with your kids that emphasize those values? There are so many great books and stories out there. I'm actually working this is a project that I haven't finished yet my team and I are working on a parent guide to the entrepreneurial mindset and we're working with a couple schools who are going to share this with their parents to say you know, we're setting goals in the classroom. What if you had a goal as a family and you tracked it with a scoreboard and you got excited with your kids when you met that goal? You're not just achieving a goal, you're teaching them systems they can take through the rest of their life. So there's opportunities all over the place to engage on the parental level in this area.

Stephanie:

That was gold. Love it. Anytime I hear Stephen talk, it's gold. There's so many nuggets, so okay for students that are listening, kind of gear this toward them. So the goal and heartbeat of all of this is to be good stewards of God's kingdom, to know where you fit in, what God's calling you to. So all that you're involved in and you're seeing happen. Why would a student be interested in this? Where do they fit in? Can you just speak to them? Sure?

Stephen:

You know, when I see disengagement and disenchantment, it's often connected to a lack of purpose, a lack of meaning, a lack of direction. And it's very much true that if we don't know where we're going, we will certainly not end up where we want to be. When I look at the numbers and the polls and the surveys, I see very disappointing statistics born out of the fact that many of our students don't have a plan for their growth. They don't have a way to develop healthy habits to get them to where they want to go, and so they end up seeing life not as this amazing opportunity full of joy and meaning and purpose, but as something to get through. And I would just argue that there's a different way of approaching it. When we look at the entrepreneurship space, we don't look at here's a job or here's a career. We look at here's a vocation and here's a calling. It's going to look different for everybody and that's why we say you don't have to become an entrepreneur, but you develop the mindset of an entrepreneur. You see what you're doing as a pivotal role in building the kingdom of God here on earth. Like, look, stephanie. As believers, we are all called to be part of this grand project of restoration. You know, there are these broken bonds between God and humans, between humans and humans, between humans and the world. We're called to restore those bonds and when you have a mindset that has a vision, that has direction, that has purpose, you see everything that you do, everything that you touch as part of this larger story. That's the beauty of this.

Stephen:

Students will come in and they'll say I want to be an entrepreneur because I want to make a bunch of money. And I want to be very clear there's nothing wrong with making a bunch of money, there's nothing wrong with being driven to be financially successful. I want to know why. I want to know what's the larger meaning, what's the larger purpose? What good can you do out of that? If we're defining entrepreneur as someone who takes a risk, where are you taking risks in your life? Where are you, too, risk averse? If it's someone who creates something new, where are you stepping into creation? So much of our society is fixated on consumption. I want students to see creation. I want them to step not just into ownership but into stewardship. And when we do that boy, our entire perspective changes and we see our role as filled with meaning, filled with purpose and fueled with direction.

Stephanie:

So good, yeah, so exciting, and I'm thinking some people that this is brand new to this might seem a little overwhelming because we're giving you this big picture, but I promise you there are steps, it can be narrowed down and you start small.

Stephen:

You start small. I mean, Stephanie, that's the entire idea of entrepreneurship is you start with the minimum piece, the minimum viable product. You get going and then you improve and you build. I mean, we started with a rolling cart and a coffee pump. I want to emphasize that right, you don't start with a million dollar build out of a building. No, you just start and you do and you improve as you go. That's the key.

Stephanie:

And you get the students involved in taking ownership. Yes, students doing it, and that's where the beauty comes from. All right, so there's some websites everybody can go to Tell them about Cincinnati Hills Seedtree Group.

Stephen:

Yes, so read up a little more on the specifics. At SeedtreeGroupcom that's seed, as in S-E-E-D Seedtreegroupcom. That's seed as in S-E-E-D seedtreegroupcom. You can reach me directly at steven at seedtreegroupcom. That's Steven with a P-H. You can look at the program at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy. It's chca-ohorg. So learn a little bit more On the Seedtree website. You'll see case studies of some of the schools we're working in and see how this is working in other places around the nation, how it's growing in different pockets and areas, and really just become part of the movement. I have a podcast called the Entrepreneurial Mindset for Transformative Education. Follow along, get involved in the conversation, join the newsletter. This is a movement about changing education and transforming lives. Let's do it.

Stephanie:

Yes, let's do it. So everybody check out his websites, listen to the podcast and stay tuned here. I have a fill-in. He will be on again and there's some incredible things coming with moving. What can we do online? How do we take this from the brick and mortar, get really creative? And, yeah, I'm excited to see more of God's goodness each day. So thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with us. It's been a pleasure to have you on and, yeah, just super excited about what's next for you.

Stephen:

Thank you, stephanie. The pleasure is mine. I appreciate what you're doing and your mission and, yeah, let's build it, let's go.

Stephanie:

Thank you so much for listening today. If you have any questions for our guest or would like information about NorthStar, please email us. At podcast at nsaschool, we love having guests on our show and getting to hear their stories. If you have anyone in mind that you think would be a great guest to feature, please email us and let us know. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on upcoming stories.