Brandon, Dean, Jonathan and Myah Luper are siblings who aspire to run their own companies one day. They are also all current or former USF St. Petersburg students. Below, the Lupers tell their story of being raised in an entrepreneurial household and how going to college together has made their sibling bond that much stronger.
Growing up as each other’s best friends and supporters, we always pictured staying together and creating something big. We grew up in a close-knit business family here in St. Petersburg and are all business management majors with the same plan of working together to continue to grow our family’s companies as well as develop new projects.
There are five Luper kids in total; four of us attend USF St. Petersburg. The fifth, Jordan, will hopefully become a USFSP Bull following his high school graduation. Dean, 22, graduated in December and was the first of the family to apply and go to USFSP. His decision has led the rest of us to follow in each other’s footsteps. Brandon, 23, will graduate in Summer 2019, while Jonathan, 21, and Myah, 19, both graduate together in Fall 2019.
Our family owns multiple businesses within the property management, automotive and retail sectors, which has motivated each of us to aspire to be professional entrepreneurs. Since we were young, our parents involved us as much as possible with their companies, shaping us into the young professionals we are today. Being involved in an entrepreneurial household at a young age naturally taught us knowledge, skills and consistency that is required to succeed in the business world.
We have taken multiple courses together during our college experience, which has taught us how to collaborate and work together as a team. Taking courses together has allowed us to discover the differences between our strengths and weaknesses, which will help us split up operations and tasks effectively as well as help each other in our weaknesses to push one another to use our strengths.
Going through our college experience together has not only strengthened our personal relationships with each other, but has helped us form important professional relationships as we work towards our goal of developing and running businesses together.