Coming up with an idea for a business or creative project can feel exhilarating. Inspiration for a new idea can come from so many places and we’ve asked some great folks from the community to share their stories of how they came up with their ideas. 

Rachelle Schuster

Many years ago (in my mid thirties) I learned how to play the game Canasta. At the time, my children were young and prioritizing myself was at the bottom of my list. Canasta is a game with many rules so if you do not make a commitment to play on a regular basis it is hard to learn. The timing wasn’t right. Read More>>

Rasie Bamigbade

I observed many leaders show up differently, depending on who was watching, what was happening in the environment or what they were experiencing internally. My first thought, ‘go home and look in the mirror.’ How am I showing up as a leader. Do I do the same? Everything changed for me when I raised my awareness from my years of observations. Read More>>

Kristen Coy & Theadora Bulajic

We didn’t set out to start a business. My co-founder Teddy and I have always shared a deep intentionality around food, not just eating well, but eating with purpose. For us, food is about origin, memory, and connection. It’s the meal that reminds you of a place, the ingredient that tells a story, the gesture of making something thoughtful for the people you love. Read More>>

layla outita

My idea didn’t start in a business setting—it started in the kitchen. Being born and raised in Morocco, food was never just about eating. It was about gathering, sharing, and creating an experience. I remember being surrounded by the smells of slow-cooked tagines, fresh herbs, warm bread, and spices that filled the entire home. Read More>>

Nadeen

What’s up! I’m Nadeen, the founder of F4stcustoms and my longtime friend Neil is the Co-Founder. This whole journey started back in August 2023, but the spark came a little earlier. I’ve always been fascinated by cars, and I’ve always loved taking pictures of anything that caught my eye. Read More>>

Audrey Williams

The idea of Audrey’s Cakelicious came from a mix of love for my culture and for my community. As a child of Chinese‑Indonesian immigrants growing up in the Twin Cities, I was surrounded by many Asian cultures but rarely my own. Whenever my family and I travel to Indonesia over the summer, we always go to the local morning market. Read More>>

Andrea McGhe

I didn’t start out as a fitness enthusiast. I had always loved beauty, but when I gained 20 pounds my freshman year of college (2017), I had no choice but to become one. I originally started working out to ‘get the weight off,’ but I had come to thoroughly enjoy it. Around that time, I was doing beauty content. Read More>>

Jesse Mohler

I’d received a Hario pourover and some exotic coffee beans as a Christmas gift. From there, I started going down the rabbit hole of brewing methods and trying to get the perfect flavor extraction from my ground coffee beans. Then the wheels started spinning and I thought, man, I could start roasting my OWN coffee. Read More>>

Phylicia Lee

The Club House came to me so naturally, it didn’t arrive all at once, but the pieces all came together like a puzzle. I have been an athlete almost my entire life, I started playing volleyball at the age of 8. Read More>>

Eddie Wyatt

NextGenerationsFilmMakers didn’t start as a business idea — it started as a burden on my heart. I’ve always been drawn to storytelling. Photography came first for me — capturing real emotions, real people, real moments. Over time, that turned into videography, and eventually a deeper desire to step into cinematography and acting. Read More>> 

Karanie Miller

I took photography as a class in college and quite frankly fell in love with it. As I was going through the course, my work has always caught the eye of my professor. That’s when I thought to myself…I could do this. Photography is an art of expression. I’ve always grew up around art and the love of creativity. Read More>>

Devon Mckelvin

As a new business owner, the idea for HVAC Actor LLC came from a real place in my life where two worlds collided, my experience as an actor and my hands-on training in a skilled trade. In the acting world, there’s this well-known phase called the “starving artist.” It’s almost like a rite of passage. Read More>>

Leigh Achenbach

I’ve always been someone who thrives on order and simplicity—it’s just how I’m wired. But the actual business idea didn’t click until a pretty pivotal season of my life. I was born and raised in Tennessee and never planned to leave, but just three weeks after getting married, my husband was stationed in Los Angeles with the Air Force. Read More>>

Suzy Radonsky

My Suzy Rad Arts business didn’t start as a business, it started as a form of survival. At the time, I was a stay-at-home mom raising two neurodiverse kids and I was completely poured out. I needed somewhere to put my energy, something what was just mine, even if only for a few quite moments a day. Painting became that space. Read More>>

Jane Korneyko

I spent over a decade as a transformation consultant across healthcare, law, and professional services in Australia. Mergers, quality frameworks, digital transformation, operational redesign. My job was to walk into organisations where the structure had outgrown the strategy, and rebuild what wasn’t working. The problems were almost never unique. Processes layered on top of processes. Workarounds that became permanent. Read More>>

Sameerah Kwakye

My business started as a moment, a feeling—an experience I didn’t expect, but one I’ll never forget. My mother-in-law had received a package from back home in Ghana, and to my surprise, there was a small gift bag inside meant just for me. I remember reaching into it, not knowing what to expect and pulling out three long, beautiful strands of African waist beads. Read More>>

Luna Avila

Kind of a funny story, I decided to graduate high school a year early in 2019. I was seventeen years old, crying in my bedroom and holding my cat, with not a single ounce of ideas on what I wanted to become. However, I knew one thing. That I love clothes, I love making outfits, dressing up, admiring other individual styles on the street. Read More>>

Lisa Smith

Well first, you have to know who’s behind the brand. My name is Lisa Smith, and while I could give you my full life story, the truth is… David’s Body was born from a very specific moment, a very real feeling, and a little bit of faith. Read More>>

Chase Anderson

Everything started with my own experience as a content creator. I began building my personal brand on social media at the end of 2024. I just told my story and posted what my days looked like as a young professional trying to balance long work hours with staying in shape. Read More>>

Sarit Bridell

The idea for the International Partnership for Perinatal Excellence (IPPE) was born out of both urgency and a clear gap in care. In 2022 alone, more than 20,000 babies were stillborn in the United States, and it’s estimated that up to 25% of those losses are preventable. Read More>>

Danielle Mackin

I, like many people, picked up new hobbies during “Rona Arrest” (the COVID shutdown). I’ve always been an artistic person, but resin was a completely new medium for me. At the time, I was researching ways to update my kitchen countertops—I was over the linoleum but didn’t want the cost or maintenance that came with the usual options. Read More>>

Drastiko Rodriguez

So it started with my 1994 cadillac Deville I was rebuilding slowly. In 2021 I attended a trucks and coffee HTX with my older brother who at the time was driving a 73 c10 truck. Read More>>

Ellen Manilova

The idea of becoming a photographer came to me when I had my own child. Every day I watched him discover the world in new ways, laughing, being curious, trying something new. Very quickly I realized that these simple, fleeting moments can never be recreated. Even then, I understood that in 20 years, these would be the images I would value the most. Read More>>

Cory Mack

I enrolled in an AI and Python coding skills program at MIT and refined my skills by building a web-based education-driving simulator in 2 days using an AI stack. Read More>>

RAQUEL M RHODES

So picture it Sicily 1899 LOL…(Thank you Sophia, ‘Golden Girls) In all actuality, it was 2010 and I was working in retail ,specifically at a store called Dillard’s in Cincinnati Ohio and I was working in the shoe department. Read More>>

Gracelyn Sorrell

I had been writing my book for nearly ten years, cycling through at least three different titles, none of them quite capturing that elusive “it” factor. Then one day, sitting on my couch in Los Angeles and putting the final touches on the manuscript, something shifted. Read More>>