Corporations look to mindset education to support an entrepreneurial workforce.
The education and professional sectors share a historically bonded relationship pitting school and career thresholds against uniquely different human beings. Although experience and research unify to reveal new approaches to support human development, the individual remains the nexus of change. Transformation often boils down to a mindset or approach explicitly crafted by the individual to create specific opportunities.
Mindsets can start early, and organizations like the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) are helping many lower-income youths discover their confidence, motivation, and talents. Using a broad pool of Teacher Corps volunteers, local business leaders, and entrepreneurs, the program recognizes the power of community in bringing about possibilities.
Even companies are waking up to the importance of mindset as a powerful tool for success. Human Resource departments now provide programs to engage and listen to employees to develop and maintain dedicated talent. In addition, independent coaches are increasing efforts directly to individuals seeking mentoring. In a Forbes article on client success stories, coaches are helping individuals connect to their internal awareness to overcome challenges and bring out their ‘inner sunshine.’
One rising star in the training of mindset is Korie Minkus, a leading global brand strategist, CEO of Industry Rockstar, and recent author of BE…From Passion and Purpose to Product and Prosperity. Her efforts are helping clients define strategies for accelerated revenue, category mastery, and scale distribution to meet their growth goals. At the heart of Minkus’s approach is self-awareness and confidence coaching, which provides tools for business leaders and entrepreneurs to bring visions to reality.
Funneling over 25 years of experience in consumer products and Fortune 500 thought-action efforts, Minkus launched Rock Your Product in 2017. Her clear-cut decision-making approach has produced partnerships with the top global retailers and iconic brand leaders, including Marcus Lemonis, CEO of Camping World and star of CNBC’s The Profit; Facebook Live’s founder Randi Zuckerberg; and Kevin Harrington, the original Shark from Shark Tank, among many others.
Her journey to corporate success and influence began at the ripe age of eight years old. Not as a prodigy but as a child determined to overcome the stigmatization formed by a learning disability found in testing. Instead of folding to the lowered bar of expectation by the programmed nature of educators and experts, Minkus put the onus on herself to excel, holding herself accountable for creating academic and professional outcomes that she knew were possible.
This reporter had the pleasure of interviewing Minkus to learn more about her remarkable self-discovery that led to her makeup and future aspirations of bringing a determined mindset of self-advocacy to others.
Early Investment in Self
Rod Berger: Tell me about your early educational journey and coming from an academic family. How did your childhood impact you, and in what ways does it affect you today?
Korie Minkus sees a bright future for corporations emboldened with an entrepreneurial mindset.
Korie Minkus: My story is a journey of self-discovery and growth that drove me on my 37 years of passion, purpose, and where I am today.
I grew up in a highly academic and supportive home surrounded by parents focused on education, family loyalty, and hard work. My parents empowered my siblings and me to be open to learning. They instilled the idea of remaining inquisitive, asking questions, and elevating knowledge. As a result, I loved learning and still do today.
However, my confidence was shaken as an 8-year-old with challenges in school. Standardized testing revealed a learning disability and trusted educators and experts shared that my academic prowess would be limited. They suggested to my parents that I should lower my expectations of what I would accomplish in my educational experience. They predicted I would be challenged to finish high school and likely never be successful through college.
It was devastating and embarrassing at a core level.
I had to make a choice as an 8-year-old girl. Either I could let someone else’s limiting beliefs dictate my future or could hold myself accountable and create the outcomes I knew and thought were possible for me. At that very young age, I decided that this was my life, and to be unstoppable, I would have to become fully accountable to make it happen. Find the best mentors and work with the best educators and advisors to create the system and tools I could thrive in to make me as powerful as possible. It has been my mission ever since.
Incidentally, I graduated from college with two degrees and was consistently on the dean’s list, proving those early prognosticators wrong. I went on to be the youngest female executive sitting at the boardroom table. I found mentors to work with, Marcus Lemonis, Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, Lisa Nichols from The New York Times best-seller The Secret, and others.
I worked with top consultants to develop my business acumen and found the right people in the industry that could teach me everything from licensing partnerships to negotiating deals. It’s been an endless seeking and educating of myself.
Berger: Please talk more about that investment in ‘self’ and how that shaped your mindset and understanding.
Minkus: I share my story to shed light and how anyone can invest in themselves to become unstoppable. I believe that the greatest differentiator in business or life is you.
You can dump all your passion and purpose into your business, but if you don’t have the right mindset around yourself, then it will not work. You need to build yourself to be unstoppable. I am solution driven and help entrepreneurs surround themselves with a thinking process to create results. It comes down to building newfound confidence and understanding that you are the differentiator. Unfortunately, our traditional education system doesn’t teach us that.
Berger: I find not enough is spoken about the makeup of an entrepreneur. You would think we would need to understand the makeup of an entrepreneur to support the next generation because whether they like it or not, they will need that entrepreneurial mindset, even in a corporate space.
Minkus: It’s 100% about the entrepreneurial mindset. I chose to leave corporate after 25 years to rediscover myself. I started working with small business owners, micro brands, and entrepreneurs. Then, over the past few years, new opportunities opened up, and I started speaking back at corporate. It’s been a beautiful circle.
As I work with these organizations and companies (Johnson & Johnson, Fresenius Kabi, and various technology companies), I realize it’s not about people needing to leave to start their own companies. Instead, it’s about infusing the entrepreneurial mindset into their journey, whatever that journey may be.
While I work with many entrepreneurs with Rock Your Product, my vision is to help people in all facets of business. My heart’s big giveback is to return to corporate and help others improve their trajectory. Improving outcomes for women is also a big part of it.
Overall, the entrepreneurial mindset is about self-motivation and hard work. You need grit, persistence, and resilience to succeed. My book is written with passionate purpose as the central theme. It doesn’t matter what you do. If you can’t unearth your own purpose and passion within the work, self-motivation will not exist. You can’t stimulate grit from nothing; you must want it to make it happen. These are some of the foundational parts of the entrepreneurial mindset.
Leadership Mindsets
Berger: Do you find that certain leadership styles fit into the entrepreneurial mindset?
Minkus: Conscious leadership is a vital part of the process. It’s not just doing something because you’ve been told or instructed but taking an active role and consciousness as you create those outcomes. I would love to see more people in corporate take on the self-advocacy work and build self-motivation coupled with persistence and grit. Of course, every employer on the planet would also love to see that.
First, employees must create a mindset for their next-level capabilities, and next comes the company. Whether you own a company or work for a company, I’m a believer that business is not business to business; it’s people to people. To create that experience, you have to start with yourself.
Berger: Do you feel corporate needs to better recognize the entrepreneurial mindset to embrace the younger generation entering the workforce? Do you think corporations could use more education on the benefits of an entrepreneurial mindset to help them see it as a positive rather than an obstacle to long-term employment?
Minkus: If I were an employer, I would prefer to get the best two or three years out of a motivated employee rather than an extended commitment from someone who is not motivated or inspired. The mindset is vital for companies as a whole.
People who are happier and proud of themselves are confident. I see the way people borrow your confidence all the time in business. The more you project confidence, the more people are going to buy the experience of you. That means your brand, company, and product. So an entrepreneurial mindset is fundamentally about building confidence and is centered around self-advocacy.
Female Empowerment
Berger: Can you talk more about that empowerment, self-advocacy, and how it applies specifically to women in the business world?
Minkus: This mindset can empower women to find their voice, be bold, and be persistent. It’s not about being obnoxious about it but finding a path for themselves and allowing them to shine. So many women underperform because they don’t want to shine. They don’t put themselves out in vulnerable positions. I often say that the more uncomfortable you get, the more unstoppable you can become.
Giving women permission to get dirty and uncomfortable is something many are not raised to do. It’s a topic in my book—allowing women to understand how to become unstoppable. Ultimately, it’s not anybody else’s responsibility and leans heavily on self-accountability.
Almost every corporation offers money every year to employees to self-educate. There is great value in investing in yourself by using the development options available. I regret not using all the opportunities that were available when I was in corporate, and I now strongly advocate that for women in particular.
Women should invest in themselves, educate, and be bold and visible. It’s essential to elevate your own experience in who you are and what you’re doing. You have to pay to play, and that’s just how the world works. It’s not about being your best version for a better job but allowing one to thrive in every life experience. That is what the entrepreneurial mindset is all about.
Embracing the Uncomfortable
Berger: You mentioned that embracing the uncomfortable is important. Can you expand on that concept of discomfort as it relates to forging a successful path?
Minkus: Entrepreneurs have to put themselves in so many uncomfortable positions. They, too, have to learn how to sell brands, self-market, self-advocate, sell, and brighten themself up so that people see who they are and want to be part of their universe.
Almost every successful businessperson creates that movement and momentum for themselves.
The message I bring when working with businesses with Rock Your Product is that although business owners think their product fully represents their company, it’s more about teaching them how to capitalize on themselves.
It’s about becoming more competent as business owners and guiding them through that process. They must understand what it takes to create outcomes that impact the world and succeed financially with visibility and buy-in. It starts with the building of themselves.
A Delicate Balance
Berger: I find that many successful business people have a good relationship with opinion and independent thinking. How would you respond to that drive and confidence from an internal sense of knowing?
Minkus: There is a strong current against people in life telling them how to be. It’s easy for others to impose their thoughts on what success means. I view opinion as judgment versus someone independently standing up and bucking the system. In the product world, we call it being very disruptive.
There’s a delicate balance in maintaining independent thinking while being open.
You can shape your independent thinking around learning from others because we evolve as a society together. You can’t launch a product to market and believe it’s the best product if others don’t believe in it. You can have conviction and an idea that the product makes sense, but you have to figure out how your independent idea fits into the rest of the world’s societal way of thinking.
It’s a careful blend of confidence in what you’re going for as you weave in societal needs and wishes. Successful independent thinkers know how to create strong relationships with other people.
Berger: You speak of balance and the ability to learn and listen to others. Are there changes you see that are necessary to provide a better overall balance inside business models?
Korie Minkus, Ashley Black, and Lisa Vrancken explore the divine feminine and ways to live with … [+]
Minkus: In my book, I talk about the divine feminine and the divine masculine and how everybody on earth has both.
For many years, I had become overly masculine in my makeup while in corporate. I saw the imbalance and looked to shift it in myself. After leaving, I burned all my black pantsuits as a dramatic reaction to a newfound change.
Intuition, cooperation, relationships, and collaboration are divine feminine qualities. The masculine traits are logic, competitiveness, talent-oriented pursuits, math, science, and education. To possess good skills as an entrepreneur, you must embody a combination of all these skills.
The entrepreneurial journey brings divine feminine and divine masculine skill sets to help entrepreneurs understand that they have inner capabilities. They just need to be drawn out.
Business owners often think they have to do it alone, but that’s not the reality. Entrepreneurship should not be a lonely road; it involves investing in yourself by hiring the right mentors and coaches to produce lasting outcomes.
Along with all the business acumen I teach, from financial capitalization to human capital, it’s about providing an inspirational message to entrepreneurs. There is much to unearth if you’re willing to first invest in yourself.
One’s mindset used to be thought of as hardwired genetic blueprints resistant to new approaches. Now, mindset coaching is as integral to business success as understanding capitalization, marketing, and branding strategies. Korie Minkus represents a person possessing both traditional business modeling and mindset prowess in her arsenal of talents. It’s a double-edged approach that addresses the complexities and emotional realities of changing business and educational landscapes.
With self-accountability leading the charge, employers can craft models that educate and bring passion and collaboration to all involved. As more individuals discover the best version of their selves, the collective goal of a business is amplified. In the right set-up with guidance and assistance, no employer or employee should feel limited or on an island, as long as the likes of Korie Minkus have a say.
Interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.
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