The Who, What, When, Where and Why of TEDxICC

On April 29, at Memorial Hall in Independence, Kansas, Independence Community College (ICC) will host TEDxICC, only the second TEDx event held in Kansas and the first by a Kansas community college.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and according to www.TED.com;

“TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages. Meanwhile, independently run TEDx events help share ideas in communities around the world.”

ICC Associate Professor of Communication, Konye Ori, had help organize a TEDx event in his previous life at a community college in Indiana.  He volunteered to prepare the application to TED to host a local, independently organized TEDx event in Independence.  The primary requirement to host a TEDx is to provide a day of diverse speakers all with “ideas worth spreading”.  We received our approval  and a planning committee was formed  adopting a theme of “Rethinking Tomorrow”.  Another requirement is to make high quality videos of the presentations for upload to the TED web site and posting to YouTube.  We’ve hired a professional production company to do the recording to make sure the quality is top notch.

We went to work finding speakers; some we knew and some found out about our event on the TED web site.  We have a great lineup of 13 speakers for the day, each agreeing to present their “idea worth spreading” in 13 minutes or fewer.

Our TEDxICC presenters are not paid; they participate for the exposure and to include a TEDx presentation on their resumes.  It is not our job, as organizers, to make sure the content fits within any particular “view” of “rethinking tomorrow”, but rather to present a day of diverse topics for consideration by those in attendance and those viewing the videos afterward.

The best answers for change come after listening to several points of view and using our critical thinking skills to build our path to the future.

Come and join us for a day of “ideas worth sharing” on April 29 from 9:00am to 3:00pm at Memorial Hall in Independence.  Students are free but need to register; tickets for non-students are $30.  See http://www.indycc.edu/tedxicc for the link to register and list of presenters.

Entrepreneurial Mindset: The Greatest Rural Opportunity

The greatest opportunity for our rural communities is an entrepreneurial mindset.  When everyone in a community has “the mindset” problems are solved, markets are fulfilled, jobs are created and communities grow. In Independence, I attribute the creation and development of Fab Lab ICC to an ever-growing circle of entrepreneurial thinkers.

Such was my message as a panelist on Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Kansas Rural Opportunities Conference in Dodge City recently.

When I began developing the Successful Entrepreneur Program at ICC back in 2006, I looked at entrepreneurship only through the lens of small business ownership.  But, in about 2010, I began to realize that “entrepreneurship” is a mindset, a way of thinking that everyone needs.  I began to realize that rural communities need to become more entrepreneurial in the way they think about the problems and challenges of the new economy.  In my 5- minute introduction, I presented a rapid-fire list of “Top 10 Tips to Develop Entrepreneurial Mindset” in a community.

 1.        Become a community of entrepreneurial thinkers

a. Informal weekly entrepreneurial gatherings, such as the Entrepreneurs Brown Bag Lunch and Breakfast series in Independence and Coffeyville.

             2.        Become a Network Kansas “E-Community”

                        a. Gap financing for start-ups and existing businesses

             3.        Don’t spend big money on consultants or business recruiters

             4.        Initiate Entrepreneurial Mindset training for community members

a. “Ice House” entrepreneurship program for community members and college students

                        b. “Youth Entrepreneurs” for high school students

                        c. “Catfish Tank” challenge for elementary and middle school students

             5.        Invite youth to come home

                        a. Give high school graduates a mail box as a future welcome home

 6.        Develop your own “Shark Tank” scenario

            a. Instead of consultants, use your use funds to sponsor start-ups

 7.        Learn about SBIR/STTR grants for small for-profit entrepreneurs

a.       Some very small mom/pop operations have been successful

b.      Kansas Small Business Development Centers can help

8.        Work with Network Kansas to offer the “Economic Gardening” initiative to established businesses ready to grow to the next level

9.         Promote the beginning steps of business succession planning

a. Help businesses “tune up” and stay responsive to the market long in advance of preparing to sell

10.       Build a Fab Lab or other Maker Space

a. Every community has enough money to support one when people realize what it will mean for community pride and the local economy

            As good things start to happen in these “entrepreneurial mindset” communities, businesses and individuals from outside become interested in coming to town to become a part of the action.

Let's Put a Moratorium on Spending Any More Money for "Experts".

We should put a moratorium on spending any more money for “experts” in the following areas: 1.) Community branding, 2.) Business attraction, 3.) Community market studies.  For all the money we’ve spent—and I think it may be upwards of $200,000 in the Montgomery County area—for these “experts” in the last 20 years we have little to show.  We can do better.

Community Branding - These “experts” tell us to clean up our towns, fix our streets, and to make sure our way-finding signs clearly show visitors and new people how to find our businesses and attractions.  Usually, they tell us we need a “theme” to attract visitors, but that we have to determine the “theme” ourselves.

Business Attractions – These “experts” tell us they have the connections to bring in all manner of attracting businesses to make our communities thrive again; manufacturing for jobs, restaurants and shopping.  They can even find a grocery store to come into a small town that hasn’t been able to support one for years.

Community Market Studies – These “experts”, depending on how much we pay them, use all many tools, i.e. credit card transactions, surveys and polls to tell us how much “leakage” we have in money that our citizens are spending away from home.

It’s time to think about things differently in how we attract people and businesses to our area and quit spending money on these “experts” while we’re doing it.  A friend of mine nailed it several years ago when he said “The best way to attract people and businesses to a town is be entrepreneurial and innovative and develop the local economy from within.”

If you think of the really “hot” areas of the country regarding economic development; Austin, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Northwest Arkansas and others, you’ll notice many don’t have “themes”.  They have entrepreneurs and innovative people that are doing all kinds of cool stuff.  The cool stuff first attracts people looking for the “experience” and then businesses who want to get in on the action.

The best “theme” for any community or area is to become known for the innovative entrepreneurs that solve problems in new and creative ways.  This movement starts by developing an entrepreneurial mindset in all of our commercial, private, public and government institutions.  Everyone in an area can learn to be innovative and entrepreneurial.  Once that starts to happen, we can create the solutions ourselves without spending another $200,000 on “experts”.

The Fallacy of the Market Study

Small cities and towns in rural America struggle to meet the challenges of declining populations.  Businesses in these towns now face not only the “box store” competition that has been with us for decades, but now an ever increasing presence of competition on the Internet.

Many of these cities end up engaging in the “Market Study”.  The Market Study is not cheap.  It usually requires several visits by the consultants to the city and most of the time local volunteers spend many hours polling visitors and shoppers.  All the information gathered is combined with all kinds of demographic and statistical information available through various government agencies and Internet sources into a big cauldron of stew.  The stew is cooked—often for excessively long periods of time—until it can be poured into the bowel of the completed market study.  Meanwhile, the town’s folk have anxiously awaited the long and expensive (many times upward of $50,000 or more) Eureka information that will give them the answer to the town’s growth challenges.

The results finally arrive, sometimes after threat of legal action due to the delays.  The town’s folk pour over the details, looking for the Eureka idea that will spur growth.  There is a nice history of the town, and analysis of the town’s demographics.  There is typically a nice table showing dollar figures for all the categories of the goods and services the survey respondents buy.  Those dollar figures shown in black indicate more is purchased locally than purchased elsewhere, while the red figures show how much the folk are spending outside the city (they call this “leakage”).

Some people actually read the study from front to back.  Rarely is there a Eureka idea.  Here are some characterizations I heard summarizing a study for a Southeast Kansas town of about 9,000 population.  (Please note I said characterizations by readers of the study, not necessarily the study itself.)

·        The town is really doing pretty well compared to other rural cities in small town America (is that really what the people that paid the money for the study want to hear?)

·        We have some leakage, but one is in clothing.  Everyone knows you have to have two or three clothing stores in a cluster because that’s how people like to shop.  (Really?  There are examples of some of our small towns of independent small clothing stores making it.  What if we study them to figure out how they are managing?)

Thinking back over the nearly ten years I’ve worked in entrepreneurship and small business development, I can’t think of a single new business recruited or started because of information in a market study. 

The problem with the market study is that it’s built around “conventional wisdom”.  Good innovative business models fly in the face of conventional wisdom.  Conventional wisdom says don’t start a restaurant; it’s such a tough business to make work.  But people do start new restaurants and the ones with concepts people like thrive if they are operated properly.  Conventional wisdom says don’t start a clothing store unless you can be in a cluster.  But then there are stores scattered among our small towns that are doing well.

In today’s world, even the local market changes quickly.  So, even if the data gathered in a market study were to be helpful, is already becoming very old by the time there’s a long delay in producing the finished study.  So, don’t look to the market study to provide you with the Eureka discovery.

The best solution is to inspire entrepreneurs that have been shown how to uncover problems in the local marketplace and work toward solutions that people want.  There’s really no way outside consultants can do that regardless of how much they are paid.

New Entrepreneurs - A Common Notion Needs to be Challenged

I've noticed a common notion among aspiring entrepreneurs and even existing business owners. This includes students in the classes of my Successful Entrepreneur program at Independence Community College and businesses up and down Main Street. The notion inhibits successful profits (i.e. what many small business owners use to make their living) and sometimes causes businesses to die after suffocating under the weight of their overhead.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, we need to begin challenging this notion early. I'll demonstrate the notion here by paraphrasing what I hear from my students quite regularly.

"I want to offer my customers more value; bigger, better, faster.....whatever my customers they want that's not being provided by my competitors. "I want to meet or beat my competitors' prices."

If you're an aspiring entrepreneur or existing business owner and your strategy is offer more value while at the same time meeting or beating your competitors' prices, I'd like to present some ideas here, in the form of a challenge, for you to think about.

The first part of your strategy is great. All businesses should always be looking for ways to offer more value. Adding more value--benefits not available from competitors--is the key to attracting customers to you. Its the key to attracting customers from outside your normal trade area. If you are truly successful at adding a value that customers want, they will pay more. If product/service offering is truly perceived as a greater value than available from your competitors, customers will pay more.

Most of the time, creating this greater value for your customers will increase your costs of doing business. When businesses spend the extra time and money creating greater value for their customers while using a pricing strategy to "meet or beat the competitors' prices" they put themselves into a time/cost squeeze that is difficult or impossible to sustain.

If you put the extra money and effort into creating a greater value for your customers and price yourself too cheaply, you could go out of business (from losing money) or end up working long hours making less money than if you worked in a minimum wage job.

The key to small businesses surviving and thriving in the future is not to offer low prices, but to use innovation to create a greater benefits (not available from competitors) for which customers are willing to pay more.

Character First Provides a Great Tool for Developing Core Values

Character First provides a great tool for helping develop a set of core values for businesses and organizations.  Core values go a long way toward engaging and valuing employees, elements that lead to happy, very productive employees.  Unfortunately, many business owners and managers don't get this, relying on "management by numbers" and hiring only based on technical skills.  The business schools have never really taught about the importance of core values and character in the workplace; most never will.  That's why there's a whole industry of companies like global Character First (now part of Strata Leadership, LLC) showing organizations that will listen how to engage their employees by using servant leadership and core values.

(Email invitation to my contact list yesterday.)
July 9, 2013

Hello:

Several area small business owners have asked us to coordinate a group training session to help them initiate Character First.  On August 6, we have the opportunity to participate in a Character First Orientation Training in Independence Kansas.  Through a joint effort, the Innovative Business Resource Center (IBRC) and the Successful Entrepreneur Program at Independence Community College will host the training at ICC's West campus providing a cost effective way for small business owners and other organizational leaders  to take advantage of this training.

Training hours will be from 9:00 to 5:00 and include a light lunch and refreshments.  Cost of the training is $149 per manager/leader payable to IBRC.   Registration is open with links at www.ibrc.org or you can call me at 620-332-5470 to register.

Since 2006 when I began to work with entrepreneurs and small business owners through this program at ICC and the Chambers and Main Street groups in both Independence and Coffeyville, I've observed small businesses and organizations struggle to "engage" their employees to enhance the relationships with customers, vendors and coworkers.   Although experiencing organizations with disengaged and dissatisfied employees is common, there are also the exceptions;  organizations with employees that excel in serving others seem to enjoy what they are doing while receiving a sense of  fulfillment in their work.  What makes the difference?

I have become convinced over the last couple of years that having a set of common, core values in a business or organization is an essential element to hiring and retaining employees that will be actively engaged in serving customers, vendors and coworkers in better and better ways while at the same time receiving a sense of purpose from their work.  Any time is a good time to start the effort to establish a culture of common values.  For new businesses, the absolute best time is to start just before or after the first employee is hired.  For existing businesses with one to many employees, there is no better time to start a new culture than right now.  Once the culture is established each new employee will embrace it. 

Character First provides a methodology of using 49 character traits as common values for the organization.  Each month, small groups within an organization studies the featured character trait and how it is relevant to the success of the organization.  Eventually, a culture of character develops which provides many of the common values needed for the organization to be most successful.  If you’re not familiar with Character First, there’s a great introductory video on the Character First web site:  http://www.characterfirst.com/

Character First Orientation Training is a full-day program that introduces Character First to business leaders in a way that explains, trains, answers questions, and practices techniques to help roll-out the Character initiative in an organization. Through lecture, Q&A and demonstration Character First materials are presented to lay the foundation of this culture shift. “At the end of the day, leaders will walk away knowing the steps to implement Character First in their organizations”, says Beau Bailey, training facilitator with Character First/Strata Leadership. LLC.

Please feel free to call me at 620-332-5470 with any questions you may have.

Jim Correll,
Facilitator/Business Coach
Independence Community College
Independence, Kansas

Community and Relationship Building Needed for Entrepreneurship to Reach Full Potential

Long before the Ice House Entrepreneurship program was developed, Clifton Taulbert evolved from an entrepreneur and first time author into an author of several more books and nominee for the Pulitzer prize for his second book "Last Train North" in the early nineties. His work connected with so many people that along the way he's become an Internationally known speaker and community builder. His message to us on the evening of May 29 will go far beyond entrepreneurship, telling us how entrepreneurship is but one of the values we can embrace to build stronger families and communities.


The kind of grass-roots economic development the entrepreneurial mindset can bring to my community will not reach it's full potential without the the community and relationship building that Clifton Taulbert has been speaking about Internationally for the last 20 years. I suspect the same is true of many communities including yours.

Please feel free to come to Independence, Kansas on May 29 and hear Clifton's message. You'll think he's talking to you about your specific situation and community. For my distant friends and contacts, if you come to Wichita, Tulsa or Kansas City you'll be within a couple hours drive of of Independence. This will be a memorable evening and worth your time, no matter from where you come.

Tickets and information about this special event are available at www.ibrc.org.