Lessons from the ‘Ice House’ inspire entrepreneurs
“Think big; start small; act fast.”
That was the advice from speaker Gary Schoeniger during a recent community breakfast highlighting the Ice House Entrepreneurship Program at the Akron Urban League. The program, which seeks to promote entrepreneurship among those who otherwise might never consider the possibility, was recently launched with support from the Knight Foundation.
The effort draws inspiration from the book “Who Owns the Icehouse: Eight Life Lessons From an Unlikely Entrepreneur,” co-written by Schoeniger and author Clifton Taulbert. “Icehouse” outlines ideas Taulbert learned from his Uncle Cleve, who owned an icehouse in a poor Mississippi community in the 1950s. The Missouri-based Kauffman Foundation funded a course developed around the book.
The Ice House Entrepreneurship Program at the Akron Urban League offers would-be business owners 10 weeks of instruction in building success. During the recent breakfast, each speaker was more motivational than the last, sharing stories about how entrepreneurship changed the lives of people who might have remained stuck in a cycle of little opportunity.
“You can live out your own passion or you can work to live out someone else’s,” said Michael Davis, vice president of programming at the Akron Urban League.
The accompanying video takes you inside the community breakfast and provides a glimpse of some of the powerful concepts that will be taught in the program.
Jennifer Thomas, Akron program director for Knight Foundation