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

I became the first Mentor-Facilitator of the Successful Entrepreneur Program at Independence Community College in 2006. My title had already been determined but somewhere along the way, I decided it better to let others decide whether or not to call me a “mentor” rather than calling myself one. I had my business cards reprinted to use the term Business Coach instead. 

I tried to do everything by what I thought was “the book.” New businesses should be started by people that had developed business plans, the bigger the better with five-year projections of sales and growth. Some invented their five-year projections with a spread sheet, but others found a plethora of software that would ask the questions and then generate the 60 – 80 page plans. The “market research” in the plans demonstrated how many people in the United States or maybe even in a smaller, applicable market area used a certain product or service. By deductive reasoning—certainly the new project would attract a certain small percentage of the “market”—we could plug these numbers into the software and come up with five-year projections, right? Once the projections are all done, it was just a simple matter of borrowing the $100,000 to $200,000 to launch the business. 

In addition to the business plan, I “coached” people about the taxes they’d need to pay, the forms they’d need to fill out and the long hours they would have to work. All these technical aspects of a new business are important. Business planning is important, but not the kind of planning I described above. All these technical aspects do little to inspire people to start new businesses. Nothing kills the enthusiasm of a budding entrepreneur with a new business idea like talk of 80-page business plans, taxes and long hours. 

After the first few years, late in 2011, I discovered that, contrary to what we’d been led to believe, most businesses are not started with big business plans and big start-up funding. Ninety-eight percent of new businesses are started with less than $10,000. This percentage is true even of today’s Fortune 500 companies. 

Most businesses start out very small with an emphasis on real, down to earth, market research. That is, “What problem am I solving and will people really prefer my solution over whatever they are doing to deal with the problem now.” The proof is in the sale and the key is to prototype (maybe at Fab Lab ICC) what’s called a minimum viable product and see if people like it well enough to exchange some of their hard earned money for it. That’s real market research. Most of the time, the minimum viable project is not quite right. Feedback from customers and prospects will lead to tweaks and changes that are possible because the prototypes were relatively inexpensive to produce. Even many venture capitalists are realizing that investing too much money in a start-up business that hasn’t actually sold anything is not healthy. The time to invest in a business to allow it to grow is after the tweaks and adjustments have been made following initial sales feedback. 

I learned of this in 2011 from Gary Schoeniger, founder of the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative, creators of the revolutionary “Ice House Entrepreneurship” program. Gary discovered the secret of starting small by both his own experience in growing his multi-million dollar construction management company after starting out cleaning gutters for people. “Ice House” celebrates and promotes the notion that nearly all businesses start small, validating their solutions through actual sales before “betting the farm” (or mortgaging the house) to finance a product no one wants to buy. 

Schoeniger has become a global thought leader regarding entrepreneurship education as “Ice House” is being adopted in high schools, community colleges and universities in countries all over the world. In August, I’ll be sharing the stage with Gary in eastern Ohio at a conference for small communities searching for their own paths to rural economic prosperity. He will be sharing his “Ice House” message and I will be sharing the positive effects of combining entrepreneurship (via “Ice House”) and the Fab Lab experience on our area rural economy. Our own “Ice House” class, “Entrepreneurial Mindset” will start on August 23 (Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 8 PM)