Constraints Breed Creativity: Stephen Carter

In this episode of the Just Schools Podcast, Jon Eckert interviews Stephen Carter, founder of the Seed Tree Group and director of the entrepreneurial program at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy. They explore how constraints breed creativity and how fostering an entrepreneurial mindset transforms education.

Carter works with schools across the country to help them start similar entrepreneurship programs that focus on transforming student and teacher engagement rather than just adding new programs or tools.

The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Each week, we'll talk to catalytic educators who are doing amazing work.

Be encouraged.

Books Mentioned:
Teaching the Entrepreneurial Mindset: Innovative Education for K-12 Schools by Stephen Carter
The Seed Tree: Money Management and Wealth Building Lessons for Teens by Stephen Carter
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

Connect with us:
Baylor MA in School Leadership
EdD in K-12 Educational Leadership
Jon Eckert LinkedIn
X: @eckertjon
Center for School Leadership at Baylor University: @baylorcsl

Jon Eckert:

All right, Stephen, welcome to the Just Schools podcast. Really excited to have you on. We've been wanting to have you on for quite a while as I think you're leading some of the most interesting work in schools right now. So tell us a little bit about your background and what got you to the point that you're at right now in your career.

Stephen Carter:

Jon, thank you. I'm pleased to be on this podcast, and love following your work and what you're doing as well.

Really, the journey was a journey through Christian education. I started in 10th grade in Christian education, graduated from a Christian school, went to a Christian college, started teaching at a Christian school, landed at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy in Cincinnati, Ohio when I was 24 years old. So that means they took on a teacher who had no idea what he was doing, and they took a risk, right? And I cut my teeth on those early years as an English teacher. And I made a discovery early on, which was if you say yes to things, you will get a lot of awesome opportunities.

I should also point out, Jon, you'll get some not so awesome opportunities, i.e., let's start a debate team at the school. Let's coach cross country. Let's get involved with the fine arts, different aspects of writing, critical reviews for plays. I said yes to everything. And that meant that 11 years ago when Dean Nicholas, who at the time was our principal, came to me and said, "Stephen, we've got this idea for this coffee shop for students. You should help run it," of course my answer was yes, never mind the fact that we are about to welcome our second child and we had all kinds of irons in the fire. The answer was yes.

What I didn't know, Jon, is that would completely change my life. I talk a lot about transformation. That was the defining moment of transformation, when it was here's an English teacher who in my mind had no business starting an entrepreneurship program, stepping into this space, discovering a passion that came alive through student engagement, and now 11 years later, just to borrow one of your favorite words, flourishing, a flourishing program that has now enabled me to help impact schools around the nation as they start programs that enable students to thrive and then flourish through just meaningful engagement. So it's been a journey of discovering what it means to truly engage students around the entrepreneurial mindset.

Jon Eckert:

Well, and I'm curious, and I've never asked you this but did you have an entrepreneurial bent prior to taking this on? It feels like to just jump into what you've done and saying yes as a form of being somewhat entrepreneurial, but did you have that in your background at all?

Stephen Carter:

Well, Jon, I did, but I had repressed it because I thought you had to repress that to be a teacher, right?

Jon Eckert:

Oh, right, yeah.

Stephen Carter:

Because if you're a teacher, you're the academic. You're the person who contains the knowledge. You can't have an entrepreneurial bent. I had a lawn mowing business when I was in school, a babysitting business. I would go door to door passing out flyers to do anything around a house to get some money. I even sold my lawn mowing business when I went to college, not for much money, but the point was I had just repressed it. And when I stepped into this space, it just all came flooding back and it took me on a journey of discovery into what does a renewed mindset really mean? I talk a lot about Romans 12:2 when Paul says, "Don't conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." I experienced it that first year starting an entrepreneurship program in real-time, and then I saw students do that as well and it's just been a journey ever since.

Jon Eckert:

Well, I think it's fascinating and maybe a sad commentary on our profession that it feels like you have to set aside that entrepreneurial mindset to be a teacher. And so I've worked with a group that was the Center for Teaching Quality, now it's Mira Education, but they wrote a book a number of years ago called Teacherpreneurs, and how do we get educators to think more in a more entrepreneurial way about this really human task that we do with students. And so I think that's why I've had such an affinity for your work. You're literally working on entrepreneurship with kids.

But I think even just in the way you've built out what you've done at CHCA and now working with schools all over the country, I've seen that mindset in you as I know you've had to overcome some challenges. So what were some of the biggest hurdles for you getting to where you're at now? Because I think there are a lot of schools out there looking at entrepreneurial programs, and obviously there are going to be different challenges, but I would imagine there would be some similar obstacles people might have to get over. So what were two or three of the biggest challenges you had getting this going?

Stephen Carter:

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. I can look back on it and say they were formative, and I would almost call them constraints more than challenges. And the principle that I now realize I operate out of is that constraints breed creativity. So now I seek them out, Jon. I'm like, "Yes, give me a constraint."

So for me, there were a couple big ones. Budget was huge. I'm remembering this. I document this in the book. I went to Dean Nicholas early on. This was a motif in the story. I go asking for money and I leave with very little money or none. That's a constraint. Here's what I've told him multiple times. "If I had gotten the money for the program that I asked for, it wouldn't have grown like it did." The constraint was budget.

Another constraint, time. Time is the number one thing. You talk to school leaders all the time. Time is the biggest constraint. Our teachers are strapped. There's no bandwidth. There's no time. And I would just say the beauty of this is it helps us understand how to better manage our time so that we begin investing it.

And I think the third, this is one I don't talk about a lot, but it was getting over the sense of being almost hypocritical in a space where I didn't have an MBA. I wasn't an entrepreneur technically at the time, and I felt like an imposter. And I'm in a school, like many schools listening, of business leaders where the parents own businesses and they have MBAs and they have these degrees. And I just decided in that moment, I would own it and ask for advice and ask for help and what should I be reading? Who should I be talking to? And it opened up more doors than I ever possibly imagined.

Jon Eckert:

So you mentioned the book, and it's a great book teaching the entrepreneurial mindset, innovative education for K-12 schools. I love it that you built... Because the SeedTree Group is your... That's your group, right? So you've published it that way. Again, it's a great blueprint for it. But I have to have you share a little bit, I don't know if I have the name quite right, but was it the Leaning Eagle Coffee Cart? Wasn't that-

Stephen Carter:

The Leaning Eagle Coffee Bar.

Jon Eckert:

Can you give a... That story just makes me laugh every time I hear it. Can you just give us a little bit-

Stephen Carter:

Oh, my goodness. Well, so we're-

Jon Eckert:

... the genesis of the... Yeah, go ahead.

Stephen Carter:

So Jon, you're referencing our flagship business. And when we launched this whole program in Cincinnati, we started with a rolling coffee cart and three little rolling carts and we're not... This was Jason Oden was a teacher at the time who was instrumental in this. And we built the permanent location and we were going through some naming pieces. Well, the school was going through