One of the challenges we’ve seen to true equality of opportunity is that schools and books often can’t (or choose not) offer access to one of the most equalizing resources – first hand stories of how successful entrepreneurs made their ideas a reality. If you grew up in a family or community that had many successful entrepreneurs you may have been lucky to hear many conversations and stories about starting and executing on an idea, but there are millions of people across the country who haven’t had the same advantage and so our hope here is to create a space where those stories can be told in a more public forum for the benefit of any and every aspiring entrepreneur.

Lauren Sorrells

When people ask how I started my graphic and web design business, I always smile because it really began long before I ever decided to “start a business.” It started the moment I picked up a pencil as a kid and realized I saw the world a little differently—through layouts, colors, and composition. Read more>>

Melissa Allegories

Gallery Walls to Quiet Moments: Dreaming, Creating & Growing Time2Bloom This year, I presented our first commercial solo exhibition in a gallery space, serendipitously showcasing eight pieces at The Robert A. Peck Gallery at Central Wyoming College in Riverton, Wyoming. It was also my first attempt at making a sale, as well as using the Time2Bloom brand package method. Read more>>

Barbara Baez Robinson

I actually started my business very slowly and very organically. At the time, I was working full-time as a senior medical billing supervisor (a role I had been in for over a decade) and I also had my business degree. Photography was something I did on the side, mostly on weekends, simply because I loved it. Read more>>

Sue C. Dugan

About eight years ago, I read an intriguing article in the DISCOVERY magazine about experiments scientists were doing on mice and chimpanzees. Basically, they were grafting a brown mouse head on a white mouse body. This information was intriguing to me and since I like writing speculative fiction (sci-fi, time travel, reincarnation), the idea stayed with me. Read more>>

Megan McNally

Many people ask me what my favorite part of making a film or short video is and my answer has been the same since college: that transient space in between idea to production. It’s in that space where anything is possible and the project exists how you imagine it. Read more>>

Mai Waller

When people see The Mace Anthony Williamson Foundation today — the partnerships, the grants, the doula program, the national recognition — they don’t ever get to see where it really started. It started in grief. In 2017, I lost my son, Mace, 12 days after a preventable birth injury. That moment broke me — but it also revealed my purpose. Read more>>

Eileen Stephenson

My favorite literary genre was always historical fiction, and generally the older the time period, the better. My favorite topics within that genre were English history and Roman history. I sometimes thought about trying my hand at writing historical fiction, but there already seemed to be an over abundance of writers in my favorite areas so I set that idea aside. Read more>>

Dana Stone

My entrepreneurial journey didn’t start with a big vision board — it started with pure survival. About ten years ago, I was working in corporate America, juggling four kids, and my youngest had not slept through a single night in his entire first year of life. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and knew something had to change. Read more>>

Orly Alshech

My journey started over 10 years ago when I began working as an office manager. That role gave me a deep understanding of how a roofing company truly functions from scheduling jobs and handling paperwork to supporting the crews and learning the business from the inside out. Read more>>

Giovanna Chaisson

Imagine, a 5-year-old finding you crying in the bathroom because you want to hide the fact that you are totally overwhelmed from her and her brother. Read more>>

Ashley Lindsey

I had just quit my job and was floundering. I’ve always taken photos for friends and family and was doing just that. I was talking with my friend during this session and she said ‘why don’t you do this?’ I said ‘do what?’ She looked at me like I was an idiot and said ‘PHOTOGRAPHY!’ I just kinda stood there. Read more>>

Carly Pepin

The idea for my business came from watching business owners, smart, capable leaders with real vision, hit a wall. They weren’t failing because their ideas lacked merit. They were failing because they lacked strategies, systems, processes, they had internal misalignment, and internal doubt that were overwhelming them long before the vision had a chance to come to life. Read more>>

Imani Hasiina

The idea behind The BleuPrint Creative Services Agency came from me realizing that my business is my artistry. I express myself through the art I create, the experiences I create, and by putting other people in position to create art and profit from it too. Read more>>

Mariana Álvarez

My name is Mariana Álvarez de Cervini. Wife, Mother and Daughter. I arrived in the United States in 2018 with many dreams and desire to get ahead. Since I was a child I always loved cooking, it is something that I am passionate about and to which I give myself 100%. Read more>>

Patience Hosey

I actually started my business from home while raising my kids. I was a stay-at-home mom, and makeup was my little escape—something that made me feel creative and connected. I began joining Facebook groups and doing makeup lives just for fun, really. I didn’t expect anything from it. But people started watching. Then brides started reaching out. Read more>>

Ben Kasle

I kept running into the same issue in the practices I worked with. Doctors were great at delivering care, but were not business guys. They struggled with expenses, vendors, payroll, and the overall financial picture, and that created burnout fast. Read more>>

Jose Figueroa

Played top tier baseball growing up became a scout then became a high school baseball coach in 2017 then I wanted to started my travel team called Figs Baseball Prospects so I built one of the toughest teams in the start of Florida becoming 8th ranked team in the nation Read more>>

Neel Somani

I was working at a hedge fund right before I started my company. Transparently, I left the hedge fund after I got my bonus, and I just didn’t think it was big enough! This isn’t an unusual story for quants at hedge funds. I was pretty much picking ideas based on what was the biggest and fastest growing market. Read more>>

Greta Muller

My journey to business owner started about 20 years ago with a trip to the grocery store. I was living in Dallas, working as a Talent Coach for a major broadcast talent coaching and placement company. And I was exhausted. I had spent over 200 days traveling the previous year and was well on my way to do it again. Read more>>

Honey Bryant

My story honestly started on one of those quiet nights where your mind won’t leave you alone. I had that little nudge in my chest telling me it was time to stop dreaming and actually move. I kept seeing this vision where all the parts of me could breathe together. The model. The actress. The poet. Read more>>

Phillip Corker

Like a lot of other knife makers that have sprung up over the last decade….’Forged in Fire’ played a big role. After watching a few episodes I ended up ordering a cheap forge off Ebay, got a chunk of railroad track, and started banging hot steel. It didn’t take. Read more>>

Patty Laushman

In 2022, I was working as a solo sales development consultant, and I decided that I needed a career change. I considered becoming a mental health therapist specializing in autism because when my family needed this kind of help, we had trouble finding it. Then I discovered autism life coaching as a field and thought it would be an even better fit for my personality. Read more>>

Ayoki Wright

I’ve always had a passion, a keen eye for creativity and I wanted to show what I loved and how easy creativity came to me. I enjoyed seeing designs overall, whether it was party or event flyers, billboards or even the creativity I saw in commercials. Read more>>

Matt Linder

TruckHouse didn’t start as a clean business plan or a polished vision, it started with a bunch of life experiences that slowly pulled me toward building something with my own hands again. I grew up working summers in my dad’s small boatyard in Sausalito. Every year I rotated through a different trade: sanding bottoms, grinding fiberglass, wiring, paint, mechanics, metalwork. Read more>>

Jermarcus Wise

For as long as I can remember, the idea of having my own media company was a movie I’d watched a million times in my head. It played like scenes from a film I was meant to direct. Still, that desire always felt just out of reach. I didn’t know when it would happen or how it could happen. Read more>>

Aldo Covarrubias

Let me take you back to the moment everything changed, not when the idea hit, but when everything I thought I knew about my future came crashing down. It was a regular Tuesday when I got an urgent mandatory meeting. I was a Partner Success Manager at a tech company: stable job, decent paycheck, the kind of role that looks good on paper. Read more>>

Cherise Klosner

I (Cherise Klosner) am a travelling wedding officiant based in Tacoma, WA and I officiate weddings all over the PNW. Over the course of the past 6 years I have married over 600 couples in some of the most beautiful and elaborate places but what many folks don’t know is that I also get inquires from couples who are just looking for something simple. Read more>>

Ciara Butler

My business started with a feeling before it ever became a plan. It was this pull I couldn’t ignore, knowing so many people had stories, ideas, and dreams they weren’t sure how to bring to life. While working in User Experience Design and publishing with tech companies in California, I saw incredibly talented people get stuck. Read more>>

Nicole Disney

Getting from idea to execution is an interesting concept to me. As a writer, the “idea” is the story inside me, and “execution” is not just putting the words on the page, but doing it in a way that allows the reader to experience it as I do. Read more>>

Cymone Jeans

Jumping into the world of taxes and financial solutions felt like a natural next step for me, and honestly, it was a bit of a prize. I already had a connection through Cherina Rowan’s, the owner of One Stop Taxes, who introduced me to the business. Read more>>

Rachel C

The idea for the Mindfulness Sticker Prompts came from my one-on-one Reiki sessions. I’d often encourage people to reflect, to write, to express themselves creatively but many would say, “Writing isn’t really my thing.” I realized that what they needed wasn’t just another journal, they needed an entry point. Something that felt approachable, playful, and open-ended. Read more>>

Nikolina Belic

I didn’t start with a grand business plan or funding. I started with frustration, and a deep feeling that I couldn’t keep working in environments that didn’t let me think, create, or be free. Read more>>

Kelly Harris

If you had told me a few years ago that my entire business would be built around storytelling, I probably would have laughed. Back then, I was a mom building a business in the margins: naptimes, late nights, and stolen moments between packing school lunches and refereeing sibling squabbles. Read more>>

Sandra Salvas

The last job I was in was for 7 years at the Utah Office of Tourism. I built the creative process, direction, and image/video library from scratch and worked with incredible teams driving new strategies for content distribution. There was alignment, autonomy, and trust. I was thriving on building relationships with partners, creatives, and coworkers with common the goal of working along side each other to push the creative as far as we could.  Read more>>

Dallas Rose

Bringing Mileta to life took almost seven years and a number of false starts along the way. I had always wanted to open my own restaurant, and after a few years working in the corporate world for Goldman Sachs, I knew I had to make it happen and get out of the rat race. I had a wife and a child on the way, so I couldn’t just quit my job and go full bore into getting the restaurant open. I started planning, researching, traveling, meeting industry talent, and looking for the right location. I viewed my job as playing quarterback. Read more>>

David Boop

Great question! I do several different things through my company Longshot Productions such as writing and editing. Each comes with a development path. When it comes to writing, I am sometimes given a specific theme or prompt, Otherwise, I come out with an idea that won’t let me go until I write it. Depending on the estimated length of the piece, I generally write until I find a good breaking point, usually somewhere around 1000 to 3000 words.  Read more>>

Elijah Yopp

At the time, I was working at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and I remember feeling completely unfulfilled. I knew this couldn’t be what my life was meant to look like. I had earned a degree in marketing but wasn’t using it and deep down, I knew that was my calling. Supplying people with rental cars just wasn’t it for me. Read more>>

Justin Williams

We started the Brick City Comedy Revue in the upstairs space of an Irish bar 11 years ago. We were happy to get 15 people in the audience in the first year, but we knew the city’s location and upward trajectory would pay off for us eventually. Every year, our peers’ careers grew bigger, and the audiences grew. This year, our show debuted with a lineup of comedians who have all done national television, in its own craft cocktail bar and performance venue, for a sold-out audience of over 100 people. Read more>>

Saphira Sanders

he way I actually started my business going from idea to execution was I wrote down absolutely everything i was thinking when it came to creative ideas, business plans, information i learned, etc. I always knew I wanted to work for myself at some point as well. I launched my business in 2020 since I had a lot of time to brainstorm because of the pandemic shut down. After gathering loads of information like how to obtain my LLC, property insurance, business banking, etc. I pretty much didn’t waste no time trying to find a store front to service my clients.  Read more>>