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Thank you so much for joining us today, my name is Donna Duffy and I am a professor and
department chair for the entrepreneurship program here at Johnson County Community College.
We have the opportunity today to talk to you about a new course that we have developed
in the entrepreneurship program and that is called the entrepreneurial mindset. I wanted
to share with you a little background on how this particular course evolved and then we
are going to follow that with an opportunity for you to listen to some students who have been through
this course and see how that has impacted their learning and their lives. The particular
initiative started with some work that the Kauffman Foundation here in Kansas City has
been doing and it was extremely important for us to partner with them in working on
this particular initiative and taking this initiative to a course. The initiative that
the Coffman foundation had worked on is called the Ice House Project. The Ice House Project
is a combination of a book authored by Clifton Talbert and a video series that was produced
by the co-author Gary Schoeniger. I want to show you the book itself, and the book is
called Who Owns the Ice House and the subtitle on here says Eight Lessons Learned from an
Unlikely Entrepreneur. The gentleman that is pictured here is the teacher in the book,
and his name is uncle Cleave and uncle Cleave's nephew is Clifton Talbert the author of this
particular book. Clifton grew up in the Mississippi Delta in the 1950's. During that time period
all African American people in that part of the country, all his family had ever done
was clipped and chopped cotton. Clifton didn't know if there was going to be a different
life for him until Uncle Cleave took him under his wing. And the answer to the question of
who owns the ice house is Uncle Cleave. The work that the co-author did Gary Schoeniger
was to interview current day authors. And he interviewed some fourteen different entrepreneurs
that are featured in all of the video segments in the particular course. What is most interesting
for the students is to realize that the lessons that Uncle Cleave taught Clifton in the 1950's
are exactly the same as the lessons communicated through the videos where Gary Schoeniger interviewed
these fourteen different entrepreneurs. The lessons that are in the book and throughout
the materials that are so important for students, the power of choice, the importance of those
choices that we make. The opportunities that we have in this world to solve problems for
others, the importance of being able to take ideas into action, the importance of knowledge
and the power of knowledge the importance of the brand, our brand how we present our
self the importance of the community that we are a part of and the persistence in which
we need to pursue our goals in our lives. These are some of the lessons that are in
the material but are also in what you will hear from some of the students. I think if
there is a particular motivating factor for why we as well as the Kauffman Foundation are
particularly interested in communicating this information to students is what we have learned
is that entrepreneurship is a mindset that can empower ordinary people to do extraordinary
things. I wanted to also share with you and close before we move to some of the students
comments is a quote from Clifton Talbert "what I experienced was timeless and universal,
Uncle Cleave's personal commitment to success lived out in front of me shifted my perspective
of how I could live my life, he just lived differently and consistently and in my presence
I realized that I could be different when everything was driven by tradition and low
expectations. Uncle Cleave hired me and showed me a different way of making a living and
over time a different way of living my life. Uncle Cleave wanted more for me, over time
I wanted more for myself. I realized the future did include me". I have always wanted to be
an entrepreneur; my dad was an entrepreneur so growing up through that life, I am originally
from Ethiopia so I was born there and growing up there its interesting how entrepreneurship
works there and here is just completely different. Over there what drove me first was seeing
that he had like one hundred to two hundred employees and having that power, having that
responsibility, being an economy for those people and making your own decision and the
life stuff that we had, that was something that interested me in the beginning. So I
wanted to surround myself with people like that who want to be an entrepreneur like me
or even are entrepreneurs and are successful at it. One of the things I came up with was
why don't I go to a college that actually teaches entrepreneurship. And the first thing
that caught my eye was the mindset you know. Mindset, I think that is the most important
thing so that is why I joined this class. Ethiopia being a really poor country I saw
really bad things happening to kids where you can literally just see their bones, I
really felt bad, and I always said to myself I can always run my dad's company and we can
always live comfortably. There is no way I can help other peoples who are suffering.
Those kids are the persons who need the most help of anybody in this world because they
are suffering for survival and that is the most important thing. So I said you know we
got a green card we were lucky. So I saw this opportunity if I go to America I have this
land of opportunity, I have seen people already successful who came from America and be with
people who I had always admired like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Steve Jobs then there
is a chance for me to be somebody. One of the benefits of being an entrepreneur is that
you get to make money. And especially here you get to make a lot of money and that way
I can take that money and help those kids who have no chance to be like us. They might
not grow up to be a president or a big person but at least let them have the choice to become
somebody. Growing up I think they deserve that right, growing up I think that they can
become a criminal, but they have the right to choose that life. Right now they don't
have the right even as a human being. And that's not right. Bill Gates he was criticized
for being rude and just into business. But now he is saving a million people in Africa
ever year. Because one of the medicines he came up with for malaria. And if he had never
become a billionaire then he never could have done that. That is one of the things I am
taking away from that point. Going into the class I was just interested in meeting people.
And working with and talking with entrepreneurs because I was just really interested in that.
What I found for the class was actually completely different. The first time you go in you see
these chapters that talk about knowledge or that talks about taking action, that talks
about saving money. And the first thing that comes to mind is oh I know that. Everybody
knows that saving money is important, but this basic is what happens is you are not
actually doing it. And when our instructor goes in detail about it they go how many of
you are saving every month, how many of you are saving. And you go well I'm not saving
anything. So that is something where there is this example that I can give it is on losing
weight. You know I have struggled my whole life trying to lose weight and I hated myself,
there was a point in my life where my stomach was like that, I couldn't even look down.
But the thing is I know what to do. I know the solution; it is a very easy solution.
You exercise and you eat right, and it's not just my problem hundreds of millions of Americans
have this problem. Americans have this problem we blame the food but we know what to do to
solve it, but we are not doing it. And I can bet you, you can ask anybody who is not happy
with their weight you can ask them have you tried to lose weight at least once? And a
ten year old can tell you yes I have tried it once. That's what this kind of class teaches
is. You know what the solution is, you know saving is important, you know being honest
is important, you know working with people will help you grow your business but for some
reason you are not doing it. You are feeding yourself a bad habit to harm yourself. So
it would be cool to have the opposite of that, a good habit. It would be cool to say every
day I'm going to eat a salad and every day you exercise. And every month you save money
if you have this habit and you don't even know that you are doing it, you are just doing
it. It's a game changer, but how do you get to that point? There are different techniques
and some of the techniques that we learned in the class are what you think is what you
become; you know controlling your thoughts. Focusing on yourself, you know different techniques
that you learn in this class. And that's one of the things I really got out of it. I got
another thing which is new to talking with people early on in the age of this class.
There is a group called CEO Team and I get to meet those teams and like last time we
got to talk to the founder of Price Line. You know good luck to me talking to him and
finding him by myself and talking to him for hour that probably wouldn't happen you know.
He's a billionaire but now I get to sit with him for an hour and talk to him in these meetings.
And the other things I got was a mentor, we went to Kauffman Foundation and there was a
panel of entrepreneurs talking about their business, how they started and how they succeeded.
And one of the guys was thirty years old, had ten startups that were successful and
all this time he was actually just helping the entrepreneurs. I met him and he is now
mentoring me and he said come to my office. And you know the way I have gotten to meet
him was by joining this class and in this class you interact with different groups.
And that is one of the things I have learned. When I was 15 I started going to local concerts
and then I turned 16 and I started being a part of a venue and booking shows and promoting
it, even just like running the door. It just kind of grew into me wondering why I wouldn't
just do this forever (laughs). Watching everybody's excitement and energy made me just want to
be around it forever. I think I ended up in this class by accident; one of my classes
didn't fit in the right schedule so I took a different business class. I'm super impressed,
that first day I was apprehensive of packets and videos and I thought it would be more
of a tutoral type of a class, just watching and filling things out and then the second
day Emanuel started talking and Marco started talking and we just realizes that everybody
was just talking about themselves and that it was a classroom full of really great ideas
and really awesome people that want to do cool things with their lives and want to further
themselves and are trying to further themselves. Like that discussion time that we have in
class and the way that one idea will completely blow up after it rolls around the classroom
a couple of times. And everybody just kind of feeds off of each other and gives each
other the good ideas and offers advice of the next step and where to go. Ted and Serena
like made it work with nothing and I know a lot of them did and I know that a lot of
people do. plus it was like a father and daughter thing. And that was really impressive for
me to watch her go to school and be pregnant with twins, that was very impressive to me.
If you have passion that you really like whether it be music or art or building things or accounting,
whatever you want to do. If you have a passion I feel like this is the class to take to make
you realize that you do have that passion and that you can show it off and make it grow
and share with other people. If I really can do anything with myself and with my life I
would want to be the best I can be. And that to me is owning my own business and being
my own boss and being able to have people that look up to me and have people that I
can put my own two cents worth in to and kind of you know help them. My dad always though
you can be whatever you want you know a doctor or a lawyer, but I had never heard of entrepreneurship.
I wasn't born in an entrepreneurship family. I didn't think I would just start my own business
when I grow up. I think its more or less that there are a lot of people out there now a
days that want to better themselves and a lot of people want to do that through entrepreneurship.
This course is a great first step in because it gives you an outline of what entrepreneurship
is and what abilities they have and what needs to be put into their mindset so that they
can see the future basically and how they are going to have their own business. And
that's what really got me was the description of it. It just sounded so interesting and
I had ahah moment in every chapter. In every chapter there is something that I had
previously thought but I hadn't seen on a video or with someone explaining it. Like
you know branding that is a little log that you got on the side, what colors you choose,
whatever but it's really what you want your customers to see out of your business. And
that is really what it is about, it's not about the flashiness, it's not about stuff
like that. And that's, that was one big ahah moment. The next step is just keeping this
mindset growing and just keeping it in my daily life, it has taken over almost my entire
way of thinking. You look at everything differently as an entrepreneur; you see things for what
they could be rather than what they are. And that has been huge to me. I have taken it
to where I work now, my customer service has gotten better, there are a lot of things that
my manager has been saying that I am doing better. And I realize that is part of me being
an entrepreneur and that's the basis of it is that these things that you can implement
into your life now will change your life forever. If I had anything to say to anybody thinking
about taking the course is that you should go for it. The entrepreneurship mind is yours
to have but it is you who needs to go and grab it. My dad was back in Venezuela, he
used to have this business where he would fix cars and all of that. So from there he
used to work himself, by himself and I just wanted to do something individually. I mean
something that you can do myself and help my family. I mean try to work together, we are
a big family of ten siblings so I realized that by working for somebody I wouldn't be
the same as working for myself. If I could work for myself it would be better I can have
them work together instead of them all doing their different things. The whole thing of
being yourself when you working and doing what you want and just being aware of your
product and you believe in them and you know what you have so that if something happens
it is something good. My brother started his own flooring business in Texas and I started
mine here and every day you learn something new. When working for other people it is always
the same thing. It's always the same thing when by myself you learn something different
from each customer. You get a lot of knowledge and like they say you look from the top. I
started doing art, I started doing drawing and photography but then I realized that the
people I was going to school with, after they graduated it was hard for them to find a job
and to do something with what they have so when my brother started his own business,
I said might as well start doing the flooring stuff and just going to Johnson County and
just get something out of it. And just recently I took this Mindset Class and it just totally
just sweeps your mind because you can see how other people and how if they did it then
you can do it. You learn all of this about branding and all of these things I thought
I knew. But when taking the class it's like oh I knew all of this. But at the end there
is a part of the class that I didn't know about. This mindset class has probably been
one of best of all of them that I have taken because it kind of shrinks everything in one
class. Basically I took the class to learn more about what I was doing and the mistakes
that I was making. If I would have taken this class before I wouldn't have made as many
mistakes as I did. One hundred percent I would have made a lot more money than spending money
on things that I should have never done. If I had taken this class before, it wouldn't
have happened. And I took this class just to learn from that and get experience from
other people and just to see what they were doing and what they did to succeed. This class
is really helpful and I think it will help a lot of people and just open their minds.
I would definitely recommend this to anybody, not just as an entrepreneur but life in general.
Just the mindset about people, what they think, it's about assumptions and beliefs. It's all
about what you think and what you expect and how hard you want to try sometimes it gets
to the point where you kind of lock yourself but you should keep pushing yourself and trying
hard and I think this class will do that a lot because each chapter, each person motivates
you. I have been putting it in practice every day I go to work and it is tough. Because
after you get it all set up and find a way to keep moving forward that is the hard part;
think outside the box. That is where I am right now, it's tough and it gets to the point
where you either quit or you keep going. That is the difficult part. And you are going to
have people telling you, maybe you shouldn't and it's up to you whether you should go for
it and I am going to give it a try not worry about it. What I am seeing in the Ice House
course is a curriculum that asks me to think about the soft skills of life and he soft
skill development is something that has been seriously neglected over time. Your typical
curriculums we would have is that of how do I read a balance sheet or how do I prepare
an income statement, how do I do a forecast if I'm on the accounting side, how do I go
ahead and do the marketing, how do I do the market share, how do I go ahead and do whatever
that particular curriculum does. What the Ice House curriculum is asking you to do is
how do I get along with people and how do I go ahead and continue in a way that helps
me continue that drive forward to get the best out of people. Then what I am able to
do is reinforce those life skills, the soft skills, and the interpersonal connection,
the thought process of being sure that I live up to my promise. Frankly this generation
of student I think has a very different approach as we all did as we are going through the
process of how I behave, and what are the appropriate behaviors that I follow and somewhere
along the line maybe something hadn't been handed off. We are going to go ahead and highlight
those key skills that people have. That is where I see a very specific benefit for what
the Ice House Program is doing. What I would tell my peers is lighten up and that life
is a journey and through this journey you are going to have a lot of different types
of experiences and you are going to have to do things. And some of the things you are
going to have to do is learn about something that you are trying to be good at. Or at least
have enough fundamental knowledge so that you are not being taken advantage of. Allow
the student to be able to bring more of what they know into the mix as opposed to you trying
to cover off topics one through eighteen on agenda or a syllabus, this course isn't for
everybody. This is about how do you get the student to one open up, be mindful of this
topic and give the opportunity to reflect on it and let them channel their thoughts
on how they can maybe embrace it and take it forward. If it's about me then maybe I
am driving it and they become a clone of me and we sure don't want that. I want them to
be the best that they can be within the skills that they have and within their capabilities.