Author: correllcoaching

Rebuilding Rural Economy One Entrepreneur at a Time Part 2

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter July 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

In the last column, I talked about how entrepreneurs think differently than many of us. When they see problems, whether in the things they do or products they use, or they observe other people having problems, they think “I wonder if I could figure out a solution for that and if people would buy it?” In business training, we call that finding a niche in the market, but it’s really about solving the problems of the marketplace. There will always be problems in the marketplace.

We invited 10 of our area entrepreneurs to a luncheon with Lt. Governor Lynn Rogers to briefly tell their start-up stories. Here are summaries of the remaining five entrepreneurs not included in the last column.

James Cantrell

In high school, James didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, but he knew it didn’t involve college. A chance meeting by his dad on a business trip led to the discovery of a jewelry repair school in a nearby state. Upon return, Dad showed James the repair school brochure and said “Here, you like making things with your hands. How would you like to learn to repair jewelry?” James entered the repair school immediately upon graduation from high school. Today he is Kansas’ only Master Certified Jeweler and owns stores in Coffeyville and Independence.

Julie Eisele

Julie and her sister had “stores” of many different kinds on the sidewalk growing up. She knew she wanted to do her own thing and also did not go to college. Eventually, Julie got her real estate license and in 2009, with the real estate market at rock bottom after the recession of 2008, Julie and husband George bought Midwest Real Estate. With no prior experience at running a business, Julie learned as she went. She often trusts her gut instincts when making decisions. Julie is a non-competing broker; she does not compete with the agents within her company. She gives them leads and makes sure they have everything they need to be successful.

Laurie Rutland

Laurie has a successful career as Finance Manager of Standard Motor Products in Independence. In 2016 she and friend April Whitson, also with a successful career in human resources, joined Fab Lab ICC and created “Fab Lab Divas” a series of events and workshops to show women in the community how to use Fab Lab equipment. Eventually, that led to the creation of Twister Design Company with Laurie and April buying their own laser and printing equipment. Both continue with their “day” jobs….for the time being.

Joanne Smith

Joanne earned a degree in journalism with a magazine emphasis, leading to a 22-year stint as regional manager of marketing and communications at Mercy Hospital in Independence. After the closing of the hospital in 2015 and several months of job hunting, she began contracting to do various marketing and communications projects. Soon, as word spread, Joanne became very busy and created Fab Creative Services, LLC. Most recently she purchased “Southeast Kansas Magazine” a high quality and well-respected publication.

Robert Box

Robert was graduated from Texas Tech with a degree in biology and immediately went to work for Bayer Crop Science in Raleigh, NC. He became aware of and grew to love the idea of craft beer brewing after frequenting a craft beer bar close to his work place. He moved back to hometown of Lubbock TX to be closer to family and starting his own with wife Jess. He set out to open a brewery in 4-6 months that grew to four years. He met up with master brewer Tim Hardy and joined forces, but progress was still slow. Lubbock was not particularly supportive of the effort nor were area bankers. Robert and Tim worked with a restaurant group to build a brewery but left when they realized they would never have decision making authority. Robert’s family moved to Coffeyville to be closed to Jess’ family. Trisha Purdon met them and helped line up investors and a supportive banker insisting that they launch the brewery in Montgomery County. Indy Brew works is scheduled to open in August.

There are hundreds of entrepreneurs in our region with similar stories of starting small and growing successful businesses. Several grow to a point where they have to hire employees to help fulfill customer orders. Several also buy and remodel buildings, buy equipment and otherwise spend money within the region to make their businesses work. Finally, although not all will become millionaires, some have and many more will. Most of these entrepreneurs will not cost a lot of money in the way of tax abatement and incentives, most will contribute time and money to make our communities better places to work, live and play. These kinds of entrepreneurs can have a major role in rebuilding our rural economy.

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns at jimcorrell.com.

Rebuilding Rural Economy One Entrepreneur at a Time Part 1

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter July 2019

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

Entrepreneurs think differently than many of us. When they see problems, whether in the things they do or products they use, or they observe other people having problems, they think “I wonder if I could figure out a solution for that and if people would buy it?” In business training, we call that finding a niche in the market, but it’s really about solving the problems of the marketplace. There will always be problems in the marketplace.

Our society has led us to believe that businesses start with big business plans by people with business degrees–if from an Ivy league school so much the better—and big money raised from venture capitalists. This is the myth of business start-up.

The truth is that 98% of new start-up businesses are started with less than $10,000 by people with no business degree. Starting small like this allows them to adjust their product offering as they learn very early what their customers really want. Whenever I can, I put my myth-busting hat on and spread the word about this 98% statistic.

I recently had a special opportunity to do some myth-busting. When the Kansas Lt. Governor (LG), Lynn Rogers, came to town for his only Southeast Kansas stop on what he called the Rural Prosperity tour, I had the opportunity to host an entrepreneurs’ luncheon with the LG so he could hear a few stories from our area entrepreneurs about starting small and building a successful business. Although some of them started with a bit more than $10,000, none started with the hundreds of thousands we think are required to start businesses. Not only is it important that the LG and other politicians know about the myth of how small business starts, they also need to realize the important role these small business start-ups all over rural Kansas (and America) can play in rebuilding the economies of our rural communities.

Here are summaries of some of the entrepreneurs that attended the luncheon.

Nathan Berg

Nathan Berg spent several years as an engineer before taking time off to spend more time with his family in leu of too much traveling. Since this decision, Nathan has used his entrepreneurial mindset, detail orientation and love of wood and woodworking to start Berg Reinvigorations, a company that can create custom timber and hardwood from tree to end user.

Curtis Lavine

In the early 1990’s Curtis recognized the need for quicker turn-around times in the certified re-building of jet aircraft fuel controls and Kansas Aviation was born. Curtis became one of the area’s first serial entrepreneurs starting or acquiring eight – ten other businesses over the years.

Doug Misch

In the early 2000’s, Doug and wife Gail liked to drive their Jeep to Colorado to meet friends while most of their friends used a trailer to get their Jeeps to the mountains. In those days, Jeeps did not come with arm rests, so Doug invented one. This evolved into a company, Misch’s 4 x 4, that invented and developed dozens of after-market Jeep products over the last 15 or so years. After selling the company two years ago, Doug helps other entrepreneurs in Fab Lab ICC’s Growth Accelerator program.

Terry Trout

Terry Trout was graduated from Pittsburg State University in 1996 with a degree in wood technology. He advanced rapidly in the industry become a plant manager of 100 employees at 24. Everything was good until corporate moved the plant after making Terry lay off all the employees. Terry was offered a demotion if he moved to either coast or Dallas Texas. He chose instead to buy an existing coffee shop having no restaurant experience. Today, Ane Mae’s Coffee and Sandwich House is one of the busiest restaurants in the area.

Jaden Roggow

Currently a freshman at Pittsburg State University, Jaden first came to Fab Lab ICC as a Sedan sophomore in a program for first-generation college bound students called Upward Bound (UB). Jaden learned how to laser engrave in one of the UB classes, giving his mother a customized cup. As Mom showed the cup to her friends, those friends asked Jaden to etch for them and Mom’s friends became his first customers. Today, Jaden is the most experienced laser engraving craftsperson we have as a Fab Lab ICC member and still comes to the Lab weekly with boxes full of orders to etch.

We’ll take a brief look at the other five in the next column.

Predicting the Unpredictable

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter July 2019

Many people don’t know that I did two years of hard time at the Amazon fulfillment center in Coffeyville between 2001 and 2003. At the time, the now defunct facility served as “overflow” regulator, serving all parts of the country. Facilities on the east and west coasts fulfilled orders roughly based on the customers’ geographic locations but when there was an overflow of orders at any other facility, the orders came to us. This made for a wildly fluctuating, seemingly unpredictable workflow, literally a feast or famine of shipping and receiving to do.

Among the most unpredictable workflows was the process of receiving individual items where less than case lots were needed. The individual receive line—we called it Rambo receive—consisted of one team unpacking boxes full or random items and scanning them into the system. Another team took totes of the random items to an area called random stow where they were put on shelves anywhere there was space. About every twelve inches of shelf was labeled with a unique location number and bar code. As the stow-worker put an item on the shelf, they would scan the item and then scan the location label so the system would know where the item was. There was a total of nearly 400,000 locations in the facility and when “pickers” went on a route to pull items to fill an order, the system would tell them, on their hand-scanner screen, the location where they would find each item.

The work flow for Rambo receive fluctuated as wildly as any other in the facility and the task of having the right size crew for the work each day fell upon the Rambo area manager. That was me. I had about twelve full-time employs on the Rambo crew yet some days the work required up to 45 people. At that time, Amazon came up with a concept called the “flexy” worker; part-time folks who agreed to be “on call” with one day’s notice to come in and work when we needed them. The Rambo manager was the one that made the call on a day to day basis of how many people to bring in the following day.

The incoming Rambo product was unpredictable. Amazon provided forecasts which were so inaccurate as to be nearly useless. It was a no-win situation for the Rambo manager, i.e. me. Backlogs of items to be received prevented timely filling of customer orders, a definite no-no. Bringing in too many people resulted in low productivity numbers and that was unacceptable too. So, the challenge was to take an unpredictable situation and make it predictable. How was I supposed to do that?

After the first couple of months I actually did get pretty good at having the right sized crew on hand each day, but it wasn’t some scientific formula based on forecasts—remember the forecasts were no good. I was not able to find a working crystal ball, so I didn’t have that advantage either. I can’t really explain how or why I became good at staffing but here is what I think. I was a “working” manager, meaning I helped do the actual work when I could. At first this was so I could learn the processes, but later I continued helping with actual work to show the team I was not too good to do the work. I believe that exposure to the work helped me develop a 6^th sense or “pulse” of the process and somehow that 6^th sense gave me a “gut” feeling of how many team members I needed to bring in on a daily basis.

A world where business and government leaders constantly harp on the need for “data driven” decisions doesn’t make allowance for decision making that is required when there is insufficient data. This leaves room for trusting your “gut” and I know many successful entrepreneurs who have come out of the closet and said they rely on “gut” decisions and predictions. We can all develop a 6^th sense, that improves over time, of predicting the unpredictable. This includes utilities and contractors who throw up their hands in trying to predict what hour or even day they will be able to show up at your site. While the 6^th sense does not always lead to perfect decisions, in most cases its better than the consequences of seemingly unpredictable processes for which we throw up our hands and give up managing at all.

The Race to the Bottom You Don’t Want to Win

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter June 2019

In our area, outside the city limits where cable won’t go, many of us live in a television “no-mans-land.” At my house, we have satellite TV and the Tulsa channels are where we get our news. We see a lot of car dealer commercials. Big city car dealers—local small-town dealers, not so much–are the best example of trying to win a race to the bottom. This is the race to have the lowest (apparent) price on new cars. They each want you to think they’ll give you the most personalized service yet offer the lowest price of all the competition. Cars have definitely become a commodity, even available from vending machines. In the case of big-city car dealers, many have developed this irritating practice of unexpected fees showing up on the closing documents to make up for the low price they advertised to get you in the door.

Some small businesses try a mix of commodity products with higher end products on which the margins are better. An example of this is the convenience store. They don’t make much money on fuel, the commodity, so they hope you’ll come inside and buy drinks or snacks which are much more lucrative. Sometimes I think some of them leave their fuel receipt printers broken to try to “trick” me to come inside, but that’s another article.

I’ve mentioned previously that I was a professional photographer in Garden City, Kansas from 1976 to 1987 BD (before digital.) I learned, the hard way, in the first few years that I did not want to be viewed as a commodity, at the bottom of the competition in price. Nothing is worse than photographing a wedding when you were chosen because you were cheapest. I ended up settling to have about the third highest prices in this market of 30,000 people. That took me out of the commodity category. People hired me because they liked my work and they liked how I worked with the people involved. When you’re hired to photograph a wedding because of your work, not because of your low price, things at the wedding go smoothly. The customer figures if they are paying you all that money, you must know what you’re doing.

I had not totally learned my lesson to stay out of the commodity business, however. Somewhere along the line I decided I wanted to bid on the school pictures for the entire district. In those days, school picture day for underclassmen (not seniors) was where the photographer came to school for a whole day at a time and photographed everyone in front of the same background. Then, packages were made and sent home on speculation so the parents could buy copies. The margins were awful, and the school board was bound by law to accept the lowest bidder, a perfect example of a commodity. I was young, stubborn and I resented the big national company coming into our town taking all that money. One year, I lowered the price so much that the board actually deliberated whether to accept my proposal or the national guys. Ultimately, they chose the national guys. I was mad at the time but looking back I’m very glad I didn’t win that race to the bottom. Fulfilling that contract would have been all-consuming. It might have even ruined the rest of my business. It was a race to the bottom I didn’t want to win although I didn’t know it at the time.

Most small businesses are best off to offer great customer service for a fair price, staying away from the commodity pricing and a race to the bottom they don’t want to win.