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.

Entrepreneurship Misunderstood; A New Vision for Entrepreneurial Mindset in Southeast Kansas

I think I've underestimated the potential of entrepreneurship (now, I would call it entrepreneurial mindset) since 2006 when I learned how to spell the word after accepting the position of facilitator/business coach of the Successful Entrepreneur Program at Independence Community College, Independence, Kansas.


For many people, the term "entrepreneur" implies business ownership or business "start-up". Certainly, that is true sometimes, but entrepreneurship can be interpreted as the practice of finding new ways to solve problems for others, many times with limited resources. Successful entrepreneurship includes continuous innovation as successful entrepreneurs knowing they always have to be looking for the next greatest way to serve their customers. Innovation sometimes means new inventions and/or new technology but many times it means a new twist on an existing idea.

Today I'm starting to realize that a goal of developing the "Mindset" among everyone in a region has a great potential to provide economic prosperity and overall satisfaction with life.

The overarching objective of Entrepreneurial Mindset, featuring the Ice House Entrepreneurship curriculum is to learn how successful entrepreneurs recognize problems as opportunities and figure out creative ways to solve them. Pretty much, no matter what any of us do with our lives, we are involved in solving problems for others, or at least we should be. This can be as a self-employed business person, or as an employee in someone else's company or organization. Entrepreneurship goes far beyond that. Our social, civic and government programs also seek to solve problems for others.

The eight life's lessons in entrepreneurship from the Ice House curriculum provide the central themes of the "Mindset". They are timeless and really have more to do with a way of looking at life and interacting with others than they do with specifically starting or running a business. (That's the reason no technical aspects of business management are studied in this class; only the "Mindset" of creative problem solving.)

So, while we do talk about business start-ups in this class, what we really emphasize is how to learn to become better problem solvers. Entrepreneurs can be at work both within other companies and organizations as well as within their own businesses. Employees that understand the "Mindset" will do a much better job at taking care of customers whether they be external to the company or internal customers within the same organization.

As more and more companies strive to be more entrepreneurial in our current entrepreneurial economy, look for more and more employees to come to the "Entrepreneurial Mindset" class and sitting down beside those with a goal to open their own businesses. All are looking for a new mindset to better view problems as opportunities and find innovative solutions.