Peter Mullin, a 2010 graduate of Oak Park and River Forest High School, has a career many would consider an entrepreneur’s dream: he owns OPC Kicks, the Berwyn sneaker store focused on the resale and customization of high-demand footwear. 

How he got to where he is today is certainly not by a stroke of luck. Mullin had the relatively rare opportunity to study entrepreneurship in high school. 

Entrepreneurship education is widely considered to be a niche part of American school systems, one that should only be pursued by people planning on a career in the field. However, given the values that entrepreneurship teaches, some are rethinking that idea, saying that the values of an entrepreneurial education help students with various types of career interests reach success.

At OPRF, entrepreneurial education is an established part of the curriculum. Business Incubator, a full year course, offers students authentic entrepreneurial experience as they are tasked with developing their own start-up. 

Matthew Prebble, who has taught business education at OPRF for 15 years, said that over his last eight years of teaching Business Incubator he has observed that its students are prepared “a little better for college and career.” 

“Entrepreneurship really isn’t just about business,” he said, but rather the “entrepreneurial mindset…being able to operate at a high level in a range of different situations and contexts.” The course teaches students the skills of critical thinking, problem solving and group collaboration.

OPRF’s student entrepreneurs have plenty of chances to demonstrate these skills. Sophomore Alec Olson started Spoke Cafe, his own mobile bike cafe, when he was 13. He believes entrepreneurship has taught him how to work hard and learn “how to focus up and get something done.” 

Olson has taken the Business Management class at OPRF and is an executive board member in the school’s Business Club. Olson plans to take the Business Incubator class next year in hopes to expand his knowledge on entrepreneurship and all of the important life skills that it teaches you.

Zoe Hendrickson, a senior at OPRF, and a founding member of “Breakthrough,” a rage room designed for teens and winner of the Most Investable Business award for the 2023 Business Incubator class, expressed how grateful she is to go to a school with such an expansive entrepreneurial program. “A lot of people don’t actually have a lot of access to [an entrepreneurial education],” she said.

Hendrickson went through the Incubator program in 2023 and is now one of seven members in the Business Accelerator class, dedicated to furthering students’ knowledge in entrepreneurship with more independent, self-guided projects. The incubator and accelerator classes teach students “how to actually connect to your customers and your target audience,” Hendrickson said. “You use [this] in your daily life, not just in business.”

 Mullin attributed much of his success today to the principles that his education and experience in entrepreneurship taught him. While he was always interested in making money, he had an even greater interest in learning how to do things for himself, hence his life-long desire to start his own business. 

Mullin started what would become his life’s work, customizing shoes, when he was 16. When Mullin entered OPRF, his main interest was in art, but he knew that getting educated in business would only be beneficial for him in the future. 

He combined his business acumen and his artistic skills by painting shoes, a project his friends and teachers supported. “People were happy to see a kid interested in starting a business,” he said.

He specifically credited Derrick Purvis, a 14-year business education teacher at OPRF, for allowing him to do what he needed to do to continue to build his brand within the walls of the school. “As long as I got my work done, Purvis would let me look at shoes on eBay during class,” he said. 

Mullin’s college education was “a huge springboard for my business and being able to build my brand,” he said. “The whole college education, for me, was focused on things that would benefit my business and benefit me being an entrepreneur.” The teachers at Loras College, his alma mater, allowed him to “tweak my curriculum to focus on my business,” he says. 

Looking back on his past education in entrepreneurship, Mullin had no doubt that it taught him valuable life skills. However, he made sure to say that what matters most of all is getting actual hands-on entrepreneurial experience. “There’s no book that’s going to teach you every little thing,” he said.

Mullin explained that his most valuable asset throughout life has been being good with people. Being able to talk to people from various backgrounds has helped him make connections and grow his business. He says he would not be where he is today without that asset, and it is something that he mastered throughout his education.

Entrepreneurial interest among teenagers is strong, according to a 2021 survey of 1,000 teens ages 13 to 17 conducted by Junior Achievement USA. The survey found that 60% of teenagers today want to start their own business instead of working a 9 to 5 job. What’s behind those numbers is up for debate, but many believe that it is due to the values that having an entrepreneurial mindset gives students.

For Mullin, the most important factor of his success was, “not getting too down on myself, not quitting because something went wrong,” he said. Instead, it’s about “looking at the failure like ‘okay, how do I make sure it doesn’t happen again?’”