Thinking Like an Entrepreneur Involves Understanding Money

Our Students Are Curious About Money and We Should Embrace the Conversation

Author

Stephen Carter
March 31, 2025

One of my favorite ways to start a class is to ask students to get up, grab a dry-erase marker, and write all over the classroom whiteboards any and all questions they have about money. Nothing is taboo and nothing is off-topic: they can ask about wealth building, credit cards, taxes, get-rich-quick-schemes, the stock market, cryptocurrency, and student loans. 

After a few minutes, the whiteboards fill up with a range of questions that showcase not only the innate curiosity of the students around money but also their lack of understanding of how money works. Don’t worry–this newsletter is not an angry diatribe against an educational system that spends more time helping students understand the periodic table of elements than it does helping them strategically invest over time to earn compound interest. Instead, this newsletter is about the four biggest concepts our students need to understand about money before graduating.

And these concepts are inherent in the entrepreneurial mindset–when we combine growth mindset, grit, redefining failure, and opportunity seeking, with a keen understanding of how money works, the results are powerful. So here they are:

Concept ONE - create a revenue stream. Many of our students fixate on how to SPEND money without first understanding that first they must EARN money. While it used to be common for students to have their first “real job” by age 16, now many students don’t get a job until graduating college, and therefore have no hands-on experience with how one goes about “earning money”--the idea of creating value (often in the form of time) in exchange for money is only abstract until that first paycheck arrives.

Standing out as a Christian school while staying true to your values is more challenging than ever. At Seed Tree Group, we help schools implement a proven entrepreneurship program that empowers students to take ownership of their education, equipping them with life-ready skills and creating a distinguished school with engaged students, inspired parents, and energized donors.

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Imagine your culture infused with growth mindset, grit, redefining failure, and opportunity seeking. Imagine your team acting and thinking like entrepreneurs.

Stephen Carter