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Entrepreneurship Training Is Not Easy

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

Entrepreneurship training and the design of entrepreneurship programs is not easy, especially for the benefit of existing small business owners struggling to grapple with all aspects of running their businesses. Few have time, money or inclination to get business degrees. Training has to cut to the chase, be affordable and not take a long time. This fall, through a collaboration among Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College (ICC), Coffeyville Community College (CCC) and the Montgomery County E-Community (a Network Kansas initiative), important and effective training in small business management will be offered in an 8-week program; 4-weeks at the Fab Lab in Independence and 4-weeks at CCC in Coffeyville, starting September 10. (www.fablabicc.org/events 

Early Business Programs Were Not About Starting Businesses 

In the 20th century up until the 1980’s there wasn’t much thought given to entrepreneurship and small business start-ups. The prevailing thoughts, in between stock market crashes, wars and depressions was that big business and government would care for us, providing jobs and pensions for a comfortable retirement. Generally, the education system was changed to develop workers for manufacturing and industry. This included business programs in higher education that had everything to do with training to become a mid-level manager in a corporation and nothing to do with how to start and run a small business. The ongoing mantra of big business, and these business education programs was “profit is the number one goal.” That largely remains today, and we still see plenty of instances of greed and corruption in big business due to the excessive emphasis on profit. Plenty of the “entrepreneurship” programs at 4-year schools are just repurposed mid-management business curriculum with a few “entrepreneurial” aspects mixed in. 

Top Business Goal Is Not Profit 

Thanks to Gary Schoeniger founder of the Ice House Entrepreneurship program, in 2011 I changed my whole way of thinking about entrepreneurship education. Primarily I learned that the number one goal of business should be to provide unique and innovative solutions to the marketplace, letting profits take care of themselves through business management techniques as customers gladly pay for solutions to their problems. 

In 2006, ICC president Terry Hetrick recognized that traditional business curriculum did not provide a good training solution for existing small business owners. He and the administrators at the time created a vision for a new training program they named the “Successful Entrepreneur Program” (SEP) and then hired me, a non-academic with small business experience, to develop it. From the beginning, we offered a two-year, non-transfer, degree program in small business management for entrepreneurs. I developed most of the curriculum myself as I never met a business textbook that I liked. In the two-year program, I covered most of the major topics; marketing, value creation, sales techniques, practical legal issues, financial management for owners, and developing a niche in the marketplace. In the first four years of SEP, I had maybe 12 – 16 people go through the program. To this day, several have done well in business and have told me what they learned in the program was helpful. There were two problems; 1. Hardly any small business owners care about getting a degree, and 2. A two-year program is perceived as taking too long, making recruiting difficult. 

After discovering Ice House in 2011, I shifted away from the two-year program and offered just one class beginning in the fall of 2012, Entrepreneurial Mindset featuring the Ice House Entrepreneurship program. The objective of Ice House is exclusively to change peoples’ thinking to realize that to have a successful business, the emphasis has to change from profit as a primary motive to providing great market solutions. It turns out that this change in thinking is good for everyone, whether employer, employee and in business, personal or academic lives. Today, more than 100 people have had their mindset changed by this class and it is still offered twice each year. (The next one is in August. www.fablabicc.org/events) 

Providing a Small Business Management Training Solution 

The Mindset class is very good at changing mindset and helping people become better problem solvers and even validate whether or not a solution they want to provide is going to be useful. What has been missing since 2012 is the actual business management training covering the topics I’ve mentioned earlier. Developing an abbreviated version of the original 2-year program has been on my list for 8-years, but the development activities of Fab Lab ICC starting in 2013 have prevented much progress. Now, the Center for Entrepreneurship at Wichita State University (WSU) has provided a solution and Montgomery County E-Community is bringing small business management training, called “Growing Rural Business” GRB to our county this fall starting September 10. 

The folks at WSU have been facilitating this series around Kansas for a couple of years. The content is different and non-academic. Reviews from participants is always positive. Network Kansas is making a substantial investment in our local E-Community organization to make this training possible at a very reasonable registration cost for small business owners. 

With Entrepreneurial Mindset and Ice House covering the front end of a business start-up idea through product launch, the GRB training series provides much needed training in the specific management needs of small business owners. More information about GRB is available at www.fablabicc.org/events 

Jim Correll can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellksThe views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of Fab Lab ICC or Independence Community College. Archive columns and podcasts at jimcorrell.com. 

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