Denver Educator Does a 180 in His Beliefs About Businesspeople
September 19, 2022
When Adam Melnick was in college, he was sure of one thing: Business people were greedy and never wanted to be one. Fast forward two decades, and his perspective have shifted by 180 degrees. Although he isn’t currently in business himself, as an assistant professor of management at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, he teaches others the mindset and skills they’ll need to be successful. “I just completely fell in love with entrepreneurship…
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How a Minnesota Teen Brought Her Entrepreneurial Spirit to Life
September 6, 2022
By the time Saint Paul College Business Instructor Linda Michel met Saint Paul Public Schools student Sandy Lee, the teen had already started two businesses—before age 17. Lee was enrolled in the Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program, which lets high schoolers earn college credits for free. She gravitated toward the entrepreneurial mindset in the Ice House model Michel uses within her course. Lee said that just as Uncle Cleve had responded to a need…
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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,…
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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…
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Adding to the Startup ‘Knighthood’ in Florida
July 19, 2022
As each new cohort enters the Self-Employment Workshop Program in Tampa, Florida, facilitator Carol Minor sets the tone by knighting the participants as finishers. “You can’t do anything halfway,” she tells the group with her trademark spunk. “You can shift and pivot, but you can’t start something and not see it through.” Minor starts on an upbeat note, but she’s a realist. She knows not everyone will finish the first eight sessions, where she…
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Gaining a Sense of Usefulness and Ending the Cycle of Poverty Thanks to a Cincinnati Nonprofit
April 7, 2022
When the nonprofit Greater Cincinnati Microenterprise Initiative noticed that the individuals it serves needed an extra push beyond the typical business courses to get their ideas off the ground, it introduced the Ice House model to develop their entrepreneurial mindsets. That addition started a series of shifts within the organization. A community development financial institution or CDFI could help would-be small-business founders access capital and gain skills. Ultimately, it changed how Executive Director Willie…
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The Hidden Science Behind Persistence
April 7, 2020
Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash Learn How to Think (and Act) Like an Entrepreneur Part 8/8 Throughout this eight-part series, I have attempted to describe core concepts distilled from my observations and analysis of “unlikely” entrepreneurs. My intention was to tease out the common and replicable factors that anyone could embrace. Among those observations was what appeared to be an almost Herculean ability to persist through a mind-boggling array of challenges, setbacks, and…
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Creating an Intentional Community
February 11, 2020
Photo by jose aljovin on Unsplash Learn How to Think (and Act) Like an Entrepreneur Part 7/8 In my quest to deconstruct the mindset and the methods of underdog entrepreneurs, I was searching for the common patterns of beliefs and behaviors that anyone could embrace. Among those factors was the influence of other entrepreneurs. Over time, it became clear that this was an extremely important factor—one that can drastically improve the odds of…
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Fortune Favors the Reliable
November 8, 2019
Learn How to Think (and Act) Like an Entrepreneur Part 6/8 Many famous entrepreneurs appear to have struck gold in their endeavors. Even if we hear the origin story of their success, something is missing from the retelling. In fact, they often took years filled with difficulty and multiple failures to get where they are. At a glance, it looks like luck, a chance encounter with the right person, or stumbling upon a solution…
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