Published in the Independence Daily Reporter January 17, 2018

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

At the Fab Lab, we’ve discovered that the kind of thinking inspired by projects in the lab, as well as the study of the way entrepreneurs think, are a benefit to people of all ages whether or not they become small business owners or choose to go to work for others. The Entrepreneurial Mindset, because it makes us all better problem solvers, is a benefit to all of us.

Technical Programs Need to Offer More Than the Specifics

Turns out others are making the same discovery. The Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative (ELI) is the company that developed the “Ice House Entrepreneurship Program” we’ve used since August of 2012 to instill this kind of thinking in our Entrepreneurial Mindset classes. I was honored in October of 2017 to share a break-out presentation with Bree Langemo, ELI president, about how our workforce development programs should include training to instill this kind of thinking, along with the technical training in the particular disciplines.  The presentation took place during the annual conference of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE). The audience consisted of work force educators from community colleges around the country and was focused on making work force programs more competitive. This really was not only about helping schools distinguish their work force programs from one another, but also about making the students more competitive as they enter the work force. My part of the presentation had to do with how the Fab Lab maker experience could add to more engaging work forces.

Engaged, Not Engaged and Actively Disengaged

Bree presented a startling statistic from the Gallup people about the state of current engagement of the work force. Only 13% of the employees in the work force are actively engaged in their work; involved and enthusiastic, taking positive action toward the missions of their organizations. Sixty-three percent are not engaged. They lack passion for their job and tend to look at the job as punching a time clock in exchange for a paycheck. Twenty-four percent are disengaged, unhappy and disconnected, bringing negativity to the work place and jeopardizing team performance. Think about this for a minute. It means that if you had 20 employees in a row boat, three are enthusiastically rowing in a forward direction; twelve are not really doing anything except maybe slapping their oars in the water while five are actually rowing backwards. This is what employers are faced with in trying to be competitive in their marketplaces.

Fab Force Offers Mindset and Versatility

We believe strongly in this idea and are developing a certification program we call “Fab Force.” It will involve a core group of classes, including Entrepreneurial Mindset. In addition, there will be a “buffet” of other classes involving introductions to all kinds of making and fabrication. Local employers have told us they like the idea of having someone show up for work with a problem-solving attitude and a variety of knowledge and skills. The employers say this makes them more competitive by having employees that are versatile and able to work in different areas of the company while interested and engaged in the company mission. Fab Force will be available in the fall of this year.

Participants in our work force programs as well as nearly any of our more traditional academic programs would benefit from having an entrepreneurial mindset and introduction to a wide variety of digital and manual making experiences. The combination of these two disciplines tend to make people much better problems solvers, more curious and much more engaged when they enter the marketplace, either as small business owners serving customers or workers enthusiastically engaged in a competitive business.

 

Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, January 10, 2018

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

Youth Need More Financial Education

“Youth need more financial education.” I hear that one a lot, usually followed up with something like “All young people should know how to balance a check book.” I certainly agree on the financial education but we’d better start saying “manage a bank account” instead of balance a check book. Most youth today barely know what a check is, let alone check book. In a world where bills are paid by debit cards and smart phones, managing a bank account is more about knowing how much money you have and if the withdrawals were authorized by you.

There’s a deeper need for youth, and the rest of us, to better understand wealth building and why it’s important to think about wealth building at an early age. Ask a bunch of young students what it means to be independently wealthy and you’ll get all kinds of answers, perhaps centered around the idea that the term means one doesn’t depend on any person or outside source of income.

“Independently Wealthy” Redefined

First, if your goal in life is to find something you love doing that helps other people, letting the money take care of itself, you don’t need to have a goal to become independent of the need for income from an outside source. I think a better definition for independently wealthy would be to be in a financial position to take advantage of life’s opportunities as they present themselves.

Three Kinds of People Regarding Wealth

Indeed, I believe we should define three kinds of people regarding wealth. First, the ones that are poor and will always be poor because they spend everything they earn. Second, the trapped, those that have too much debt for cars, houses and expensive toys they can’t afford. Third, the independently wealthy who, no matter how much or little they earn, save at least ten percent for future opportunities including retirement. The part about helping others should go on, even in retirement. Being independently wealthy, due to all those years of saving ten percent, gives you the greatest flexibility in how you serve others in retirement.

The Trapped May Have No Savings

Many times the trapped have no savings and therefore are the least likely to take advantage of opportunities. In addition if the trapped find themselves in business or employment situations that they really, really don’t like, they are afraid to leave because they will miss payments on the house, cars and toys while looking for the next opportunity. You don’t have to talk to many adults before you find one or more who are really miserable in their employment but are afraid to quit and find something else due to their debt.

 

The “Independently Wealthy” Have Advantages

The “independently wealthy”, those that have saved the ten percent of their earnings are in the best position to take advantage of opportunities that come along and get out of bad situations. The opportunity might be a car, house or business at a great price, if the buyer has cash. They have the confidence to quit a job they hate because they have enough money in savings to make the payments while they look for a new employment opportunity.

Save Ten Percent No Matter What

While there are all kinds of extenuating financial circumstances that we could use as an excuse not to save, no matter what happens, we should be able to put away ten percent without missing it. By the way, we should all be using insurance to militate against the worst financial calamities.

The overall goal in our life’s financial planning should be to put ourselves in a position to act independently in our quest to help others while making our living. Even if the savings plan is not implemented perfectly, I can tell you from personal experience, your financial picture can turn out fairly well, with enough money to pay your bills and take advantage of financial opportunities, all while helping others as you go about your daily life of “making a living.”

Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, January 3, 2018

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

A few years ago, one of our area Main Street program directors was lamenting the fact that one or two of the fairly recent businesses in the downtown area had closed. “It just seems like some businesses close as fast as others open.” I told her that we should be celebrating the fact that when spaces open up there are people ready and willing to open another retail establishment; we should be celebrating the churn and always inviting people to come and see what is new. This surprised her as she said she’d never thought about it that way.

In our area of Southeast Kansas, I’ve always thought there were a surprising number of businesses more than 100 years old. It would easily take more than two hands to count those businesses in Montgomery County alone. I’ve not seen any studies on this, comparing the number of 100 year old companies per capita, but it seems like we have a large number for a county of around 35,000 people.

Unrealistic expectation

Several of these businesses are in downtown districts and many people long for a stable group of businesses in a downtown area, all successful for 100 years that fill all the empty buildings and available spaces. In today’s world of increasing competition from the vast selection of the Internet and the “box stores” starting businesses that will last for 100 years will be challenging to say the least. We should be celebrating and encouraging business churn in our downtown districts. One definition I found for churn is “To produce something in an abundant and automatic manner.” We should be working to develop and encourage new entrepreneurs, willing to try new businesses in our downtown districts, in an abundant and automatic manner.

Start small and grow

The key is for the entrepreneur to start small, growing the business while tweaking the products and services offered to minimize the risk on the way to opening a retail store in a downtown district. Danielle Passauer, dba Platinum Designs, is growing her business in just such a manner. She came to Fab Lab ICC about one and one-half years ago, with a very small, fledgling business. She used our lasers for several months to grow her business into what she calls a “serious part time venture.” Now she has her own laser and other customization equipment at her home and during this last holiday season, she operated a pop-up retail store on certain occasions. She once told me that her goal was to have a full-time retail business in downtown Independence. She is reaching her goal in a measured series of small steps, reducing her financial risk every step of the way.

We should be replicating Danielle’s story all over Southeast Kansas, encouraging small start-ups that can grow into full-time businesses many even needing to hire employees to help serve customers. Nearly all of our business-related initiatives at Fab Lab ICC like Growth Accelerator and Women 4 Women are about helping and encouraging people start small and grow.

Start with a change in mindset

This is a different approach than starting big with big financing and it all starts with a change in mindset to that of what we call an entrepreneurial mindset. Before we get to cash flow projections and nuts and bolts business management disciplines, we need to learn to think in terms of solving problems for customers and starting small so corrections in our offerings are easily made as we learn what our customers really want. The Entrepreneurial Mindset class starts on January 17, running on Wednesday nights from 6:30 to 8PM through April 25. This is where we learn to think about solving problems in the marketplace and starting out small. There will be food before each class session.

Celebrate the churn

There will always be a churning of businesses in our downtown areas and indeed in our region with businesses coming and going as the market changes. With the right mindset, we can always have new (or reinvented) entrepreneurial ventures to fill the openings in our buildings and in our marketplace. The churn is what makes an economy vibrant and exciting. Let’s celebrate the churn.

Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.

Updated and Re-published in the Independence Daily Reporter, December 27, 2017

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

People who know me know that I don’t use the word “awesome” very often. While so many others have made it a tired cliché, I use it very rarely to describe only exceptional situations. The other day, a message came up on my phone that said “The New Year is going to be awesome. Look at these movies that are coming out.” This was followed by a list of the mostly forgettable movie titles scheduled to come out early in the New Year. Not only was that a perfect example of the over-use of the word “awesome”, but the idea that a hand-full of movies could make a New Year awesome made me laugh.

Every one of us has total control over whether the New Year will be awesome or not. The quality of the New Year, indeed, the quality of our lives is determined by the choices we make, the relationships we develop and the people we help along the way. There are examples all throughout history of people in every kind of situation who choose triumph over adversity. From minor inconveniences to major tragedies, it’s our choices of how we respond, not our circumstances that control the outcome of our lives.

In the Entrepreneurial Mindset class, featuring the Ice House Entrepreneurship program, we learn that one of the traits common to successful entrepreneurs is this realization that we can choose to control our personal destiny through the choices we make. We talk about taking time to respond to situations rather than acting immediately in a knee-jerk reaction. Through all kinds of adversity, these entrepreneurs, not only the ones we study in the video interview content, but also the area entrepreneurs we bring in as guests, have chosen to control their outcomes through what we call an internal locus of control.

One of the choices we need to make is to think positively, expecting good things and not bad things to happen. I know many people who have actually told me they expect the worst things in life. They get what they expect. Our society teaches us to expect the worst, once you pay attention to the messages. The pharmaceutical companies bombard us with messages telling us how sick we are and that we need to go to the doctor to prescribe their medicine for us. The news media quotes so-called “experts” telling us there’s a good chance we’ll suffer one kind of calamity or another.

Thinking positively doesn’t mean we won’t ever have a flat tire, but we can choose how we react to the flat tires of life and make decisions to minimize the number of flat tires we’ll have.

It will be an awesome New Year if we believe it will be and we make the choices and decisions to make it so.

The Entrepreneurial Mindset class starts on January 17, running on Wednesday nights from 6:30 to 8PM through April 25. Brian Hight, co-owner of Magnolia Scents by Design in Independence, Kansas and Greenville, South Carolina and participant in a previous Entrepreneurial Mindset class says “Small business will be the engine that will help Montgomery County grow. It takes a certain entrepreneurial mindset to start and grow a business, so having this resource to help develop that mindset available at Fab Lab ICC will be a big win for our area’s economic development.”

There will be food before each class session.

Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.