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

 

What is it that enables entrepreneurs to identify opportunities that others overlook? And how do they mobilize the resources and marshal the resilience, the creativity and critical thinking that enables them to transform their ideas into thriving new businesses that not only generate wealth, but create new jobs, revitalize their communities, transform their organizations, or reinvent their careers?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been intrigued by the entrepreneurial mindset – not so much the larger-than-life icons of Silicon Valley – but the everyday “unlikely” entrepreneurs – the underdogs and the misfits who may not have big ideas, access to venture capital investors, or advanced degrees – yet somehow manage to succeed. In short, I wanted to understand how underdogs win.

My initial thought was that if I could somehow deconstruct the mindset and the methods of the everyday entrepreneur it could be helpful to others – not only to aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners – but to anyone who may be searching for a pathway towards a more prosperous and meaningful life. Perhaps it could also be useful to those who sought to cultivate entrepreneurial thinking in their students, their organizations, or their teams.

Like a detective trying to solve a mystery, I set out to interview the underdog entrepreneurs to understand not only how they do what they do, but why – what were the underlying beliefs and assumptions, as well as the circumstances that were driving their behavior? Little did I know, I was about to embark on a journey that would forever change my life.

In this eight-part series, I will describe eight core concepts distilled from hundreds of hours of interviews with “unlikely” entrepreneurs. As you will see, they are deceptively simple concepts that anyone can embrace.

Part One: The Power of a Compelling Goal

Among the hundreds of entrepreneurs I interviewed, one thing that stood out was that they all seemed to articulate a vision, something they were striving to achieve. And, what most failed to realize is that by doing so, they were tapping into an extraordinary power; the power of a compelling goal.

Having a compelling goal can shift our perspective and change our behavior in ways that can have a profound impact on our lives. Similar to the awareness of a threat, a compelling goal elicits a psychological and physiological response that energizes and engages us in ways that can enable us to accomplish extraordinary things.

For example, a compelling goal is likely to elicit intrinsic motivation, thus enabling us to become more focused and engaged, creative, resourceful and resilient. Those who are intrinsically motivated are driven by innate curiosity, a desire to seek challenge, to learn and to grow, while those who are extrinsically motivated are driven by fear of punishment or the promise of external rewards (carrots and sticks). Numerous studies suggest that those who are intrinsically motivated (driven by meaning and purpose) tend to outperform those who are extrinsically motivated by money, letter grades, or other external (separable) rewards. In fact, external rewards have consistently shown to undermine intrinsic motivation. (Research also suggests that challenging goals tend to elicit higher levels of performance than easier goals.)

The pursuit of a compelling goal is also likely to foster an internal locus of control – a subtle shift in perspective that can also have an enormous impact on our behavior. In psychology, the term locus of control refers to the degree to which we believe that we have control over the outcome of events in our lives. (Those with an internal locus of control believe they are responsible for their actions while those with an external locus of control believe they are driven by outside forces that are beyond their control.) While these beliefs are often deeply-held and largely unconscious, they can make an enormous impact on our behavior.

Simply put, a compelling goal orients both our conscious and our unconscious mind towards a more positive future. It empowers us to choose the life we imagine rather than accepting things as they are. It instills within us an optimistic outlook that in turn, helps us develop the resilience and and the resourcefulness required to rise above our circumstances and to overcome the challenges and setbacks that we are sure to encounter along the way. In other words, a compelling goal elicits hope, which Gallup defines as the belief that the future will be better than the present, coupled with the belief that we have the power to make it so. And, according to Gallup, hope is a better predictor of success in school than any other conventional measure. It can also help companies prosper.

Without a compelling goal we are more easily distracted and therefore more likely to spend rather than invest our discretionary time, energy, and resources. Without a compelling goal, we are much less likely to go the extra mile, to show up early and stay late, we are much less likely to take it upon ourselves to develop our innate abilities, to challenge ourselves, to learn, and to grow. In the absence of a compelling goal, we are much less likely to develop the resilience and the resourcefulness required to persist when faced with difficulties. In other words, without a compelling goal, we are much less likely to develop entrepreneurial attitudes and skills. And without those skills, we are much less likely to impact the world.

“He who has a strong why to live for, can bear almost any how.”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The world has changed in ways that now require everyone to think like an entrepreneur. Yet, too often we mis-attribute the entrepreneurial mindset to a unique personality or hereditary traits – things over which we have little or no control – while ignoring the social, environmental, and situational factors that can either encourage or inhibit the development of entrepreneurial attitudes, behaviors, and skills. And by doing so, we may be overlooking a vast reservoir of untapped human potential, not only in ourselves, but in our children, our students, our workforce, and our teams.

Therefore, if we are to understand and embrace entrepreneurial thinking, we should begin by asking a simple question: Do you have a compelling goal? Is there something on the horizon that your are striving to achieve? If not, why not?

After all, having a compelling goal is simply a matter of choice

 

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.

 

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

My guest columnist this week is Joanne Smith, owner of FAB Creative Services, a multi-specialty marketing company based in Independence, Kansas. She works closely with the Fab Lab ICC team on many projects. The latest was to take on the huge job of being “camp director” for the 3-week girls STEM camp that ended on August 3.

Anything Boys Can Do Girls Can Do, Too!

(or, “What I learned at summer camp”)

By Joanne Smith

I’ve spent the last three exhausting weeks in the throes of chaos, directing a summer camp for more than 90 teen and pre-teen girls. Many races, socio-economic backgrounds and a variety of learning abilities came together for this camp. There were extroverts, bookworms, itty bitties who skipped everywhere they went and brooding teenagers who were harder to impress. There were jammy pants, flipflops, too-high heels, lots of untied shoestrings, unwashed morning hair and full makeup. Several misplaced phones, a few head and stomach aches, lots of Band-aids distributed and some hurt feelings soothed.

Girls ages 9 to 15 were all in one venue for full days, Monday through Friday for three weeks, so, you guessed it…there was drama. There was crying. There was screaming. There was music, singing and dancing. There was pizza, ice cream, fruit snacks and the dreaded school lunch food. There was occasional whining, some attitudes, LOTS OF NOISE, spills and messes!

There also were field trips, guest speakers and a final project expo to showcase the girls’ learning and creative thinking.

Yep, we had it all at camp, except for one thing – limitations.

Amidst all the fun, drama and noise, there was learning and discovery. There were new concepts in 3D modeling and printing; circuits and coding; virtual and augmented reality; design thinking, empathetic problem solving and hands-on creativity. There were opportunities with no race, background or gender boundaries, and the girls were encouraged to explore as far as their imaginations and initiative would take them.

This was the Verizon Innovative Learning Girls’ Summer STEM Camp, funded by the Verizon Foundation in partnership with the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) and hosted by Independence Community College and Fab Lab ICC. The only camp of its kind in Kansas, ours was one of only 16 such camps happening across the country this summer. Exclusively formatted for middle-school age girls, the tuition-free camp – yes, it was entirely FREE – was designed to expose girls to the above concepts and stimulate their interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), career fields where women are historically under-represented.

Indeed, while for the 15 days of camp the opportunities for these young females were limitless, real-world statistics tell a different story that hasn’t changed in more than a decade. According to NACCE’s research, a staggering 86 percent of engineers and 74 percent of computer professionals in today’s workforce are men. The percentage of women in STEM careers has not improved since 2001, specifically within engineering and computing fields.

Programs like Verizon Innovative Learning for girls and the Fab Lab’s “Women 4 Women” initiative for adult women are working to make a dent in the statistics. Women 4 Women, supported by a two-year grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, is designed to encourage women of all ages and backgrounds to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and explore new opportunities, either for business or pleasure. Launched in April, the program incorporates insights from existing women entrepreneurs (an advisory team, if you will) into educational workshops for other women interested in discovering new outlets (for creative thinking) and inlets (for profit and/or fulfillment). Examples of workshops offered thus far are “Problem Solving the Entrepreneurial Way” with a multi-business woman entrepreneur; “Women in the Workshop” featuring opportunities to make projects in the Fab Lab; and “Business Building Basics,” with sage advice from a retired female accountant. Some of our Women 4 Women program participants also got involved as volunteers for our STEM camp, modeling character and offering encouragement and frank advice to our campers. It was the perfect mash-up.

The STEM camp and the launch of the Women 4 Women program are great first steps – huge strides, really, in too-high heels, flip flops and untied shoes – on the journey to changing the face and gender of entrepreneurship and business leadership in southeast Kansas and beyond. The journey will continue with monthly workshops for both our STEM girls and our adult women participants, followed by a repeat of the three-week girls’ camp next summer.

No doubt the coming year will be exhausting and jam-packed, with everything from drama to dancing…everything but limits, that is… No boys and no boundaries allowed!

 

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.

 

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

In a previous column, I talked about how the Ice House entrepreneurship program was a revelation to me when I met founder, Gary Schoeniger in October, 2011. In 2012, I took steps to add the Ice House class to my Entrepreneurship program in the fall semester. That made me an early adopter with only ten other community colleges in the world offering Ice House at that time. At the same time, we began seeing the advent of Fab Labs and Maker Spaces around the country and world. At some point early in 2013, a few of us exposed to “Ice House” thinking began to visualize a maker space in Independence, Kansas.

In October of 2013, I made a presentation at the annual conference of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE), the same conference at which I learned of Ice House two years earlier. The hotel restaurant, Sunday night before the start of the conference, was quiet. As I was contemplating getting something to eat, in walks Ice House founder Gary Schoeniger and Kauffman Foundation’s Thom Ruhe. The $2billion Kauffman Foundation is a supporter of the Ice House program. I knew Schoeniger fairly from the 2 ½ day Ice House facilitator training sessions in May of 2012. I had met Thom Ruhe, but didn’t know him as well.

Gary was walking around, talking to someone on his phone so I made small-talk with Thom. He had just returned from the Vatican on a three or four day trip to present at a conference of Cardinals about how entrepreneurship offered the best hope of alleviating global poverty. Although suffering from jet-lag and extremely fatigued he asked about my upcoming presentation at this conference. I told him I was going to talk about how community college technical programs should include more entrepreneurship and a Fab Lab to facilitate more experiential learning. He commented that Kauffman had just helped a community college with a million dollar maker space. I joking said “Why don’t you help us, I think we can build ours for $100,000?” He said “I like the way you’ve helped Gary promote Ice House. Write up a proposal and ask me for $50,000 saying you’ll raise the other $50,000 and we’ll see what we can do.”

The next day I saw Thom talking to a bunch of people, telling them how tire he was from the Vatican trip. He mentioned that he was so tired the night before, he didn’t much of what he said or did. I took him aside and said “You remember the $50,000 don’t you?” He laughed and said he did.

At this point, we didn’t even have approval from the college to build the Fab Lab even if we did have the money. Over the coming months, the letters and correspondence with Kauffman Foundation led to the matching grant of $50,000. At the same time, some college pieces fell into place and by March 2014, ICC president Dan Barwick agreed to a Fab Lab in the Cessna Learning Center if I could raise the money. The matching came from a local entrepreneur in May and the Kauffman Foundation funds came through in June. We began a frenzied effort to bring in the needed equipment and material while we repurposed the building space so we could open Fab Lab ICC on October 1, 2014.

Fab Lab ICC started as a thought and a vision among a small network of Ice House Entrepreneurship Program enthusiasts followed by a chance encounter with a funder on a Sunday night in Orlando, Florida in October of 2013. Now, just four years later, we’ll have the grand opening or our 6400 square foot Fab Lab addition; that project coming about after a series of chance encounters and random collisions. Since that Sunday night back in October of 2013, we’ve learned to have the vision, write it down, work toward it and the see the required resources come about to make it happen, sometimes in the strangest of ways.

 

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.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter July 2018

We routinely receive requests from other communities to come to Fab Lab ICC for tours. Generally, such communities have heard about Fab Lab ICC or other fab labs and maker spaces and ask to come and see what we have. We recently hosted such a group from Okmulgee Oklahoma. The group leader there had attended my presentation at the National Main Street conference in Kansas City last March.

The groups touring have many questions, but the first nearly always is “How did you get the funding to get started?” I’ve been asked this many times, recently by a person that helps communities with entrepreneurial economic development. So, as they say on television “This is my story….”

The story of the origin and initial funding of Fab Lab ICC is a story of unlikely networking and unplanned collisions of people and experiences. Some would use the term “coincidence” but I don’t believe in coincidence.

The collisions started with my revelation about entrepreneurial education in October of 2011 when I met Gary Schoeniger and Clifton Taulbert at a conference in Portland Oregon. Gary is founder of the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative, developers of the Ice House Entrepreneurship program. Clifton Taulbert is an internationally recognized speaker and Pulitzer nominated author. In a totally unplanned collision, Gary met Clifton in his home town of Tulsa Oklahoma while Gary was in town to video-interview a different successful entrepreneur. With a half-day remaining until his scheduled flight to return home, he asked a couple of people if they knew any other good entrepreneurs to interview. Someone came up with Clifton’s name and when Gary called him, Clifton graciously agreed to a short-notice interview.

In the interview, Clifton revealed that he learned everything he knew about entrepreneurship back in the late 1950’s on the Mississippi Delta in a still segregated south. At this time, all African-American men and teenage boys went to the cotton fields every day to labor. All, that is, except Clifton’s Uncle Cleve. Uncle Cleve owned the only ice house in the small town of Glen Allan Mississippi. Cleve had little start-up money and certainly no formal business education, yet he managed his own business. When Clifton was 13 years old, Cleve asked him to go to work for him in the ice business. Clifton went on to help bring the Stairmaster to market and later owned substantial interest in one of the Tulsa banks. All while becoming an international speaker and author.

After the interview with Gary Schoeniger, the two spent several months getting to know each other and eventually co-authored a book called “Who Owns the Ice House?” The book is organized around eight life’s lessons from an unlikely entrepreneur. The Ice House Entrepreneurship program was developed around the lessons in the book using video interviews from dozens of entrepreneurs telling their stories. Turns out, all the entrepreneurs in the video series, and the local entrepreneurs who come to our classes as guests, talk about the eight lessons in one way or another.

When I found out about Ice House, I knew it was the revelation I’d been searching for as far as a means to inspire and educate people about entrepreneurship and small business ownership. Although I’ve always considered myself quite entrepreneurial, exposure to Ice House and the related way of thinking about problem-solving led me down a path that has resulted in the development of Fab Lab ICC and related initial funding. We’ll cover that in the next column.

 

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.