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.
Ayonna Thompson-Bowen
I came up with the idea of A1 Hoops Basketball LLC based on my basketball recruiting experience. I played my high school basketball in South Carolina and I felt that the border states North Carolina and Georgia gave more girls basketball exposure than South Carolina. I felt that the players in South Carolina was getting over looked for basketball schlorships because it wasn’t enough media attention to promote the players. Read more>>
Dot & Daisy
Dot & Daisy is a mother (Jen)-daughter (Jo) owned business. We began in the summer of 2020 when celebrations were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re creative by nature, so we started making balloon garlands for family & friends as a way to bring joy and signify a celebration! From there, we took things further. Read more>>
Steven & Jerica Edgerton & Jones
I always knew I wasn’t meant to work for someone else, that I wanted to be my own boss with my own business. Sitting at a desk taking IT calls day to day, I would day dream about creating a unique product in all kinds of industries until I came across something I knew I would love. Read more>>
Brittney DeJournette
My journey to entrepreneurship is a little different from most. It was never my dream to have my own clothing line. The visionary behind our brand was my late husband. After being disabled by a car accident, one day he came to me and said I have an idea for a clothing brand. I told him to go for it because I knew he could do it and it would be successful because he never gave less than 110% on anything he put his hands on. Read more>>
Lily Bamberger
Oak + Rose has a strong foundation of friendship and community. It is where our story starts. Small businesses are the foundation of the USA, with 37.1 million small businesses making up 99.9% of the economy. The freedom to have a passion, turn it into a business and change not only your life but the lives of the people in your local economy is something that is profoundly American. Read more>>
Ryan Lindsey
Well Slattsonville Records started in Jacksonville,Al . Being a huge young thug fan #FREETHUG I loved the way his label seemed to move as a family ,everybody was just as important as everyone else. His slatt stood for slime love all the time and being in New York I heard the Successfully Living In My Environment (Slime) moniker and wanted the imagery behind being slimey to change. For me slatt is SHOW LOVE ALL THE TIME. Because when I was wanting somebody to learn from and looking for that direction I didn’t have it. Read more>>
Gabriela Henriquez
How I came up with my business is easily one of the number one question I get. My mom and I started sewing when I was pregnant with my first baby in 2018, Read more>>
Victoria Livingston
When the pandemic hit the US in the spring of 2020, I had just thrown a birthday party for my then one year-old daughter. I remember watching the news and reading articles about how bad it was getting; then the stay-at-home mandate was enforced shortly after the world had gone into full-on panic mode. Read more>>
Deb Schaffer
In August 2006, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive breast cancer (triple negative), and during my first meeting with my oncologist, he shared that the prognosis wasn’t really good. In fact, his words to me were, “Let’s see what we can do to get you to two years.” Read more>>
Samuel Kjellberg
It was a simple concept from the beginning…we found that the truest way to honor the farmer, place, and process was to focus entirely on single origin micro lots. And that’s what we set out to do! Slowly, we realized there was a corner of the market in the Twin Cities to explore super rare, highly original nano lots. It is so exciting to experience the immense flavor potential! Read more>>
Shannon Gonzales
It all started back in 2018 when I kept seeing macarons popping up all over social media and was intrigued how they were made. I grew up baking with my family but nothing as intense as macarons. When we moved to Beaufort, SC I gave it a go and immediately fell in love with the process! I truly enjoy every step and variable of the process and loved experimenting with different techniques until I perfected it. Read more>>
Corinthian Mcleod
In 2009, I started doing freelance modeling. As the year progressed I noticed I started to spend so much on makeup artists, hair styles and travel. By 2010, I started to think if I just knew how to do my makeup I could save me and my girlfriends a little money. I mean it really didn’t look that hard I could figure it out. By September 2010 I was enrolled in Brio Academy a Cosmetology school offering makeup classes for certification. Read more>>
Maria Natale
I began selling baked Italian and Italian-American goods from home to raise money for my pitbull dog, Gio’s, knee surgery. After I raised enough money for his surgery, individuals continued to seek me out as there were no Italian markets with unique products in the area. Read more>>
Ashad Willis
I’ve always been someone who found cleaning to be a claiming and centering activity. This ultimately led to the original plan of getting into the AirBnB cleaning business. The funny thing is even though cleaning has always been one of those enjoyable activities for me, I didn’t have the first clue on how to go about starting a professional business. Read more>>
Katherine Dickerson
I live in St Louis, Missouri. My tribe is in Carnegie, Oklahoma, and it is challenging to get from point A to point B sometimes, like the car breaking down or lack of funds for a 10-hour trip. I was missing the very things that calm me down, energize me, and memories. Read more>>
Tennyson Corley
I have been a two dimensional artist for years. I have always been drawn to illustrrations, especially children’s book illustrations. I was raised by an illustrator, so maybe it comes with the territory. In 2019,I enrolled in a wheel throwing class at a local pottery studio and fell in love with clay. There was something cathartic and child-like about it. Read more>>
Arielle Page
I came up with my bakery idea by not being a big sweets eater. Whenever I wanted a slice of cake, I wanted only a bite here and a bite of another flavor. That being said, I always knew I wanted to open a bakery but wasn’t sure of what. I loved baking cheesecakes. I was really good at it! Read more>>
Mackenzie Dimatteo
When I was 8 years old, I learned I could bake for a living. By the time I was 12, I had already thought of a dozen different bakery concepts, and I drew an untold number of logos. Around the age of 16, my family and I had endured multiple hardships and I had begun working in the food service industry. Read more>>
Bernard & Jassmire Agyakwa
We launched Bomu in Winter of 2022. Prior to this, we spent much of the last few years in a place of leadership, where we built teams and planned events for a non-profit organization. After stepping away from the organization, we felt like we were at a loss. So much time and energy had been invested into that season of our lives, and yet, we felt like many of the values and hearts that we led and created still had a place in our lives. Read more>>
Loretta Markevics
I became a small business owner for the first time after spending 20+ years in C-suite roles at global advertising and PR firms. I can safely say that being an entrepreneur is the hardest job I’ve ever had and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I started two businesses back to back since joining the small business founder/owner community in summer of 2020: Read more>>
Alexis Arion
My best friend and I opened up a business together during the pandemic. We had a 2500 sq ft studio that housed different creative services such as podcast and photoshoots, it was Cincinnatis first ever creative studio. Many business owners that we marketed to would us our studio to create their content however they still looked for direction on strategy and how they would reach their target audiences. Read more>>
Brenda Clark
Owning your own business is a dream that many people have, right? This has always been the case for myself and my husband, Mike. When we were first married our business dream was to one day buy out part of his family’s farming operation; ten years into our marriage we could see that was not going to come to fruition. Read more>>
Michael Mader
The idea for Hippy Feet was born while I was a senior in college at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls in 2015. During the fall semester of my senior year, I suffered a traumatic brain injury after taking a fall from my longboard. This fall had caused a number of fractures and a head injury that forced me to take a semester of school off in order to recover and heal. Read more>>
Marquise Willis
After separating from the military in 2012, I wanted to continue my service in uniform. I tried for the Police & Sheriff Department and was rejected from both. After being rejected, with little too no explanation, I wanted to get back into uniform. Shortly after I started working for another Security company while going to school. In 2018, I decided that I wanted to continue my uniformed service for myself. Read more>>
Kristen Cooney
My friend ,Joi Stevens of Rockwall Doodles approached me about being a guardian for a male golden doodle that she was going to purchase from out of state …Mike and O talked about it and decided that we would do it …Murphy arrived and he quickly became the center of our world…we loved that boy more than we ever could have imagined possible … Read more>>
Kyle Horton
The idea behind my business started in the midst of the 2020 pandemic. Once I graduated from college in 2019, I had dreams of being a professional athlete. Those dreams unfortunately were altered by injury. During this time I was still training and working out. Unfortunately, during the pandemic School’s and University’s were closed as everything was put on halt. This created opportunity for me to still be around an environment I loved. Read more>>
Kevin Jones
As a young kid I always wanted to be a business owner. Working in communications for 15 years learning the ins and out about it was huge for me. That, along with my passion of electronics drove me to start my own business Jones Accessories LLC. Read more>>
Vanessa West
I’m a professional gift wrapper; had you told me I’d be doing this 10 or even 5 years ago I wouldn’t have believed it was an option, however, I would have loved the idea. The initial idea for the gift wrapping portion of the business began as a way to connect with my new neighbors after moving to Memphis, TN. We moved in 2020 during the pandemic and I was looking for a way to be a part of our community without the ability to socialize. Read more>>
Brenda Arce
My career has been in the staffing industry for over 16 years. I manage our Miami operations for contract and contract to hire roles in the administrative and accounting field for Fortune 500 company – Robert Half. I have always been active when it comes to being a leader for topics related to DEI. Read more>>
Connie Standifer
I am a Self Published Author, Poet, Blogger, CEO and Founder of P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Something Happens) Publishing Inc. Through our online Inspirational Store we offer one of a kind spiritually uplifting products as well as insight and guidance in the self publishing book processes. Read more>>
Tanesha Ash-Shakoor
As the Founder & CEO of Voices of Color, Tanesha Ash-Shakoor, J.D., I was given the opportunity to experience first hand how my testimony could affect the lives of victims and survivors. Upon sharing my testimony at a church service one Sunday, a woman in the congregation began to scream. Read more>>
Shelby McQuistion
The idea really formed when a family member started doing virtual assisting. I watched her grow and become very busy over a short amount of time and she couldn’t stop talking about how much she loved her job. I have been a Registered Nurse for a little over 8 years and having been SO burnt out in healthcare. Read more>>
Jacqueline Follmuth
My business was an accident. The summer of 2017, I was fresh out of graduate school and had been job searching for months. I’d gone straight to graduate school to avoid having to return later in life, but didn’t expect that to make me “over qualified and over educated” for the entry level positions I was applying for. I’d been graduated, broke, and unemployed for two months when I got desperate. Read more>>
BreAnna Jauregui
Growing up I’ve always loved gift shops and little boutiques. I could spend all day going in and out of those cute shops, and I’ve always thought about how much fun it would be to have one of my own. Fast forward many years, I found myself going to school to become a Graduate Gemologist and started working in fine and high end jewelry. Read more>>
Shana Wanco
Towards the end of college I knew that I wanted to work with letterpress. I wanted to find a job anywhere that would offer me the chance to learn the art form & also gave me an insight into the wedding stationery world. After getting my first job & knowing that particular company was not the long term path for me, I decided to do it on my own. Read more>>
Tracey Varrone
I see myself as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend, and neighbor who teaches. My approach to education and life is all about relationships…our relationship to the natural world, our relationship to community, and our relationship to home and family!! I believe that lifelong learning begins with connection and curiosity and that there is something sacred in sharing the learning experience in community. Read more>>
Melanie L. Denny
As an award-winning resume writer, I used my writing, teaching and coaching skills to help brilliant professionals land new jobs for the last 13 years. Read more>>
Divina Stennfeld
Photography had always been a side hobby of mine, but everything changed for me the Fall of 2016. I had just graduated from college and didn’t have a clear direction with what I wanted to do, so I decided to go live in Barcelona, Spain for 3 months. Before this trip, I decided to buy my first nice camera to capture my time abroad. Read more>>
Mayra Tellez Diaz
The idea of me making candles started in the beginning of 2020. I had been laid off work November of 2019 after dealing with injuries I sustained from a car accident and not being able to perform my desk job at the district attorney’s office I worked for. I was diagnosed with post concussive syndrome and I fell within the small percentage of people who don’t fully recover to have potential permanent damage. Read more>>
Linzy Laird
Lighthouse for Life is a small, local to the Midlands of South Carolina non-profit that was all birthed from a vision that our founder, Andrea Wind, had after hearing the story of a survivor of sex trafficking. Once she realized that sex trafficking is not this far-off problem that only happens in other countries, but rather it was happening right in her own backyard in South Carolina, Andrea knew she had to do something! Read more>>