“Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy,” Or, Optimal Engagement in the Workplace
April 10, 2024
When I first heard Michael Stipe cry out that line from the R.E.M. song What’s the Frequency Kenneth? something about it stuck with me. And it still resonates with me today. I was relatively new to the workforce, and that one line said a lot about what I saw every day in my workplace. I was surrounded by incredibly bright, capable people who, on the surface, seemed at best apathetic. Were they really apathetic,…
Read more
Unplugging the Entrepreneurial Way: Strategies for Success in a Distracted World
March 7, 2024
Original written by former ELI President Rob Herndon Maybe you’ll see the humor in this blog by the end, maybe not. I sure did as I was writing it. Around this time in 2021, I wrote a blog titled “A Managerial vs. Entrepreneurial Approach to Leadership.” At the end of the piece, I mentioned how future blogs would deliver more nuggets of wisdom. My assumption at the time was that I’d pump out a blog…
Read more
Diversity, Inclusion, and Racial Justice in Entrepreneurial Mindset Education
September 6, 2023
A Call to Listen I originally wrote this post as a response to a very important question. “How do white and non-black educators promote self-empowerment through entrepreneurship without invalidating the experiences of Black and Brown people?” How do we acknowledge the reality of systemic racism while teaching about the benefits of entrepreneurial thinking as a path to empowerment? The events of recent years have put a global spotlight on the systematic racism that bars Black…
Read more
How the Ice House Model Helps Independence Community College Fulfill Its Economic Development Mission
August 3, 2022
The small southeastern Kansas community of Independence has a healthy downtown. This is true despite setbacks in industries like coal mining and oil production. Business coach and longtime resident Jim Correll believes the Ice House model deserves a share of the credit because many successful downtown business owners have participated in the Entrepreneurial Mindset course through Independence Community College’s Fab Lab ICC—including the current president of the Chamber of Commerce. For the past decade,…
Read more
Why A Little Mental Turbulence Can Be a Good Thing for Early-Stage Startups
July 26, 2022
After welcoming each new cohort of idea-driven participants to Entrepreneurial Mindset Training, facilitator Joel Barrett issues a warning: Turbulence Ahead. Barrett is a business development consultant with the Missouri Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He and his colleagues use the Ice House model to redefine entrepreneurship as the self-directed pursuit of opportunities to create value for others by discovering and solving problems—and he has firsthand experience with the…
Read more