We love grabbing drinks with our entrepreneur friends because they always have the craziest stories. Sometimes it’s a big, unexpected win. Other times it’s a problem that came out of nowhere and couldn’t possibly have been foreseen. There is so much to learn from these stories and so we asked some of the brightest entrepreneurs and creatives in the community to share some of those stories below.

Philip and Heather Collier

It started out like most things do. Mundane.I reached out to a future bride on Instagram that had just found her dress at Bridals by Lori. I didn’t think I would hear back from her because every now and then, I send these messages introducing ourselves to see if newly engaged girls are in the market for a photographer. Sometimes I get responses, but most of the time, the hustle struggle is real and nothing happens. This time, though, this future bride messaged back quickly and said that even though she had just hired her wedding photographer the week before, Read more>>

Jacqueline Von Hardy

Hmmm…well….As a men’s dating coach, I guess I never expected to recieve so many text messages with pictures of cows giving birth (yes, really). Several of the men I work with are CEOs of multi 7-figure Dairy and Angus farms. I found myself fascinated but got more than I bargained for. It’s all good however, just don’t ask how they keep Steers from becoming big aggressive bulls… in fact don’t even google it, trust me on this. Read more>>

Steven Freivogel

Stories – everyone loves to hear wat goes on and I have two of them. One positive (among many I have had) and one negative (among a few of them) that I have experienced. Let’s start with the positive. While I have never done any paid advertising as I get all of the business by word of mouth. Yes, all of it. I did get a woman who need several websites for her clients. These came about because I had done ADA compliance for one of her other clients through another person and hence, they referred her to me. Read more>>

Leo Petruzzella

I guess in our industry, the crazy story keeps getting retold!! Since the majority of the repairs to peoples vehicles are being paid for by the insurance companies, much of our time is working directly with them as a service to our clients. Once the client has established the claim, we pretty much take it from there and administrate the claim with the insurance carrier. Typically that begins with us perparing and estimate, documenting the damages with photos and then uploading that information to the carrier. They then review the estimate and photos and send back an “approved” repair estimate. Read more>>

Joann Kandrac & Kelly Kole

We attended an interior design mastermind group in Las Vegas in January of 2018 where we met Phil Pallen, brand strategist, media expert and keynote speaker who specializes in personal branding and social media strategy. We were very impressed with his knowledge and expertise. At the event he was offering a “brand audit” which evaluates a brand’s position in the marketplace, strengths and weaknesses, etc. We decided to invest in that and after a wonderful presentation and ideas, Phil felt very strongly that he thought we would be great podcasters. Podcasting was definitely around in 2018 but it was still very new to us. We were open to the idea but had no idea how to make it happen. Here’s the CRAZY part! Read more>>

Laura Briscoe

When Laura’s Gourmet Granola was first introduced in 2004, it was with our first retailer, AJ’s Fine Foods. The original recipe was developed purely for my own enjoyment. If you like to bake, you know that you always have enough to share. I would share it with friends, neighbors, my trainer — even my daughters’ sports teams for halftime snacks. Over a few short months, people began to request baggies of it for gift baskets, or school snacks for themselves. My trainer at the time actually let me pay him for training with a few pounds. Read more>>

Christal-Joy Turner

The craziest thing that happened to the Bridge by H.O.P.E. Foundation, Inc. was the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic impacted everyone nationwide, but small businesses also took a major hit financially. For us, it was relatively difficult to operate in the same capacity that we were considering there were periods where the cities we operated in were shut down. So, it was a major adjustment to move all sessions virtually given the amount of students we service. We also do community service, so that had to stop during the pandemic as well until the world opened back up again. Read more>>

Marilyn Carroll

My company serves as consults for the education, hospital, and technology industries. We help to find synergy in products and services which may not be evident for each. We connect the dots and lines of each to help create solutions for our clients. In many cases we answer RFPs, and RFQs. Based on our response and demonstration of how we would approach solving the potential client problem determines if we are the winning responder. There was this one bid with a hospital in large metro area in Dallas, Texas were our response was not the winning response. Read more>>