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

Recently I saw a Tulsa news story about an upcoming shortage of construction workers.  Companies there have all kinds of construction jobs to be filled and not enough job applicants to fill them.  There was an interview with a teacher at one of the local technical colleges. He said something to the effect of “Young people today don’t want to work hard and they don’t want to work with their hands.  All they want to do is work with computers and play video games.”  Nothing could be further from the truth and had I one of the bricks shown in the news story; I would have thrown it at the TV.

We see, every day at Fab Lab ICC, that young people DO want to make things with their hands and they will work hard if they are doing something they find fulfilling.

Here’s the disconnect. The construction companies want to keep doing business as they have in the past so they tell the technical schools “Turn out more construction workers, we need them.”  The schools then develop programs to churn out construction workers, but the young people don’t enroll.

The problem is not that young people don’t want to work hard.  BTW, there have been plenty of people in every generation who have not wanted to work hard.  The reason, for all generations is this; people want fulfilling work.  At the end of the day they want to feel like they’ve accomplished something good.  In the past, people were willing to accept jobs they hated.  Today’s youth are putting up their hands and saying “Whoa, I’m not buying this obsolete economic model where I am expected to go to work for others and keep working at a job I hate because I have too much debt for a house that’s too big and too many new cars.”  (OK, they don’t really say it like that but that’s what they mean.)

Instead of urging young students to enter the aforementioned teacher’s program to “learn to be a carpenter so you can go work for someone else your whole life” we should be teaching them how to be entrepreneurial in the way they choose to solve problems for others.  Once presented the choice, some will become employees and many will become independent business owners.  Many will even enter the carpentry programs of the world to learn how to make things.  No one works harder than an entrepreneur working to control his/her own destiny.

Those construction companies in Tulsa with all the open “jobs” will end up hiring independent contractors to get the work done.  We should be teaching students that they should strive to solve the problems of others as their life’s work whether working for others or having their own businesses.  Our education system should be showing them how to choose their best path.

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.

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

An outbreak is usually something you don’t want to happen. In the movies, outbreak is usually some horrible, infectious and contagious disease that threatens the whole human race until the stars of the movie figure out how to contain and eradicate the disease. There is usually some internal conflict among the team members and many times some kind of love story thrown in.

We’re seeing innovation and entrepreneurship in our region become contagious and infectious; an outbreak of a good kind. Since I’ve been paying attention, starting in 2006 with the launch of the Successful Entrepreneur Program at ICC, I’ve seen a gradual increase in innovation, but not the outbreak I’m seeing now. I believe the outbreak starts with a hunger for learning by doing and making. We all have it and it’s hard to satisfy without actually making.

Teachers from all over the area have been coming to the Lab to visit and brainstorm about how get their students involved in making projects and things; experiential learning. The logistics and expense of transporting the students to the Fab Lab is always a challenge. Early next year, we’ll have a mobile Fab Lab and we’ll be working to make it available to area schools so the students can have the “make” experience without having to travel.

Robotics clubs and classes are popping up all over. We have active robotics activity in our county. Before presenting about Fab Lab ICC to the Pittsburg (KS) Rotary club recently two girls from their high school robotics program made a brief announcement about the 100 pound robot they were preparing to build.

At any given time, we are working with 8 – 10 entrepreneurs actively working to start businesses or bring new products to the marketplace though their existing businesses. Several times each year, we have an event called “E-Ship (Entrepreneurship) Showcase” where many of these entrepreneurs will display their businesses and products in a different kind of “meet and greet.”

One thing we’ve learned, starting in the fall of 2012, with the advent of the Ice House entrepreneurship program in our community class called “Entrepreneurial Mindset” is that one doesn’t need a lot of money nor a business degree from a fancy business school to start a successful business. In fact, 98% of the Fortune 500 companies were started with less than $10,000. Entrepreneurship can be inclusive. Innovation can be inclusive too with the growing number of Fab Labs and maker spaces making expensive equipment and knowledge available to community members for low membership fees.

We’ve been thinking for a while about how we might lower the barriers to women and veterans becoming involved with Fab Lab ICC and small business ownership. This is part of our overall plan to make entrepreneurship more inclusive. Turns out the $2B Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City is also very interested in lowering barriers and making entrepreneurship more inclusive. With the recent announcement that we were awarded an $82,000 grant for a program to help women get into business, our “Women 4 Women” program starts early in 2018. A big part of that program will be to connect our great area women entrepreneurs with women who have always wondered about getting into business, but lacked the knowledge and confidence to explore this option.

The Entrepreneurial Mindset—the community class scheduled to roughly coincided with school semesters—makes people more self-confident; a special form the psychologists call self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is an essential ingredient in becoming an entrepreneur and small business owner and also has a positive effect on our personal lives as well.

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.

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

I’ve learned that most entrepreneurial concepts are timeless, mostly, I think because they have to do with human behavior and human thinking. So, many books about essential entrepreneurial mindset skills are current, even if they’ve been around for a while. Such is the 1995 book called “EMyth Revisited” by Michael E. Gerber.

I went to work for Independence Community College back in 2006 after then president Terry Hetrick had a vision for a nuts and bolts entrepreneurship program to help community members develop and grow their businesses. Dr. Hetrick wanted a program that was “nuts and bolts” as opposed to academic so he sought not an academic professor or MBA to run the program but, apparently, someone like me. I had owned a couple of small businesses and then worked in manufacturing about a decade in two different Boeing supplier companies. I had only one semester of accounting, but learned the rest along with other management skills through ten years in the photography business in Garden City from 1976 through 1986. In the two manufacturing companies, I worked in accounting, production and inventory control, scheduling and even manufacturing planning. Nearly all the learning was on-the-job and much of it came the hard way, through experience and making mistakes. I often joke that I got this job because of all the different work experience and the fact that I couldn’t stick to one career. Now, I believe all that experience, plus the knowledge of nearly twelve years at ICC have set me up for what I’m doing today. We have Fab Lab ICC now, but the original vision of Dr. Hetrick to help community members develop and grow their businesses is still at the core of everything we do.

I have no major regrets about the way my career stacked up; indeed, the opportunity to be involved in the creation and development of Fab Lab ICC and its potential to help people from all walks of life is an extreme privilege and honor. I have one minor regret. Until a few years ago, I always thought I was too busy to read regularly.

I did not discover “The EMyth Revisited” until a few years ago, some 15 years after it was published in 1995. Even that version was an update of the original “EMyth” in 1986. The subtitle is “Why Most Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.” Gerber, an author and business coach does a great job explaining why so many small businesses fail, often when the owners become burned out after several years of working so hard.

He makes a point that every business needs an entrepreneur, a manager and a technician. The entrepreneur watches out for new business opportunities and is concerned about making the business so good that customers prefer it over competitors. The manager takes care of the day to day administrative details of running the business; cash flow, accounts receivable and payable, inventory and other activities not directly related to providing products and services to customers. The technician in a business is the one that is directly responsible for taking care of customers.

The key to a business being sustainable in the future depends on the entrepreneur always looking for new business opportunities and the manager working to “systematize” the day to day operation. In very small businesses, the owner has to be all three. Many get caught up in wearing only the technician’s hat, working long hours just to satisfy customers. This can go on year after year while the entrepreneur and manager hats sit on the shelf. When this happens, sales diminish and eventually burnout takes over and the business closes.

There are ways the small business owner can learn to wear all three hats, building a sustainable business with processes that run smoothly. I’ve recommended this book on several occasions to small business owners struggling to make more than a “wage-rate” living from their businesses. We are working hard to run Fab Lab ICC like a business and implement the “EMyth” principles even though they are approaching 25 years old. Even businesses involved in the latest technology need to incorporate these timeless principles.

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.

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

We’ve Told Them To Leave

It’s a common question at community and economic development meetings. It’s usually prefaced with discussion about the general decline in population in rural areas of Kansas. And then someone says “Why are our young people leaving?” The answer is that the youth are doing just what we’ve told them to do. For at least the last 60 years, we’ve told them to leave. The message, from our families, our schools, our peers, indeed, all of society has been that the opportunities are all “out there somewhere” and to be successful in life, you’ll have to go somewhere else. That part of the message has been very direct. A more subtle part of the message is the implication that if you come back to your home town, it means you couldn’t “cut it” in the city. So, off they’ve gone for generations, many never to return and we wonder why they have gone.

How do we change this?

Here are three things we should be doing. 1.) Change the message; 2.) As they leave to find fame, fortune or education, tell them they are always welcome to return and 3.) Invite those already “out there” to return.

1.)        Change the message to one that says opportunities lie within finding solutions to the problems of others and that you can solve problems for others as an employee of a company or as an entrepreneur and small business owner. There are problems, hence, opportunities everywhere.

2.)        At 18 – 20 years old, most youth want to see their home towns in the rear view mirror; that’s natural. We need to encourage them to “go out into the world” and find their way to a happy and fulfilling life by solving problems for others. However, we need to also say that their home town is part of the “world” and there are plenty of problems here that need to be solved, and, that they are always welcome to come home. Humboldt, Kansas gives each graduating senior a personalized mail box as a symbolic invitation to return at any time.

3.)        Every small town should have a process for inviting the home-town youth to return. This effort would include a database of youth identities and locations discovered through inquiries with local family members and class reunion organizers. Then, systematically, young people are invited to return. Of course everyone won’t be interested in coming home, but even a success rate of 10% would be impressive.

I’ve noticed that the best and brightest young people returning to the area as entrepreneurs and professionals are coming back to be close to family. We should do everything we can to encourage them to come back to their families and that there are opportunities everywhere, especially in their home towns.

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.