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.

Allie Muñoz

I have always loved photography since I was a little girl. I took photos of everything – literally. I never thought, however, that I would actually be able to turn it into a business. In 2021, I bought a camera content kit because I wanted to try to be a content creator/influencer. I quickly found that I didn’t have a passion for that. But I fell back in love with photography after years of it being in the background as a past-time. I attended my first styled shoot in April of 2022 which is really when I took the plunge to learn about wedding photography, the right lenses, lighting, composition, posing, finances, etc. Read more>>

Anneke Odendaal

I had the idea for Pink Sparrow Social while I was managing the social media for a wellness company and initially it was going to be a Social media management company. I started out building clients through networking and cold calls and I offered a short trial window to prove my worth. This worked well and within a year of starting Pink Sparrow, I had built up my client base and was in the process of hiring some employees to help support the growing workload. Read more>> 

Mykel Hawke

Like many great things, some of the best ideas that change or even revolutionize, are often simple, subtle adjustments to current practices or other long standing traditions. And so it was with us. We started working in the humanitarian space in war zones, out our special operations medical skills to good use helping and teaching others to save lives on the front lines, long before the 9/11 era. Read more>>

Maura Hardman

This year for Pride, Seattle Cider Company is releasing a limited edition run of our Light Cider in special packaging. Beyond simply adding rainbows to our packaging, our team is partnering with a number of nonprofit partners in the LGBTQIA community to donate funds and raise awareness for their programs. We are also focusing a marketing campaign around the product and our partnerships. Our campaign is called “Love & Light” which feels particularly poignant right now. Read more>>

Gregory LeBlanc

This part is actually still very much in the work-in-progress stage. The first step for me was realizing that there is potential in the designs that I make. When I had that eureka moment that people actually enjoyed my models enough to buy them is when BrickshipsDesigns went from fun hobby to potential company. I joined an instructions company back in 2019, OmahaBricks, which really allowed me to start building my own base while participating with a great group of people. Read more>>

Melissa Benoit

In 2015 my husband and I bought 11 acres of land a few miles south of town. We thought we would use it for his landscaping equipment and to store plants he would use in his landscapes. We also considered growing a pumpkin patch and apple orchard We planted a lot of apple, apricot and pear trees! As fate would have it, a local greenhouse business was for sale. Read more>>

Amber Lynette

My starting process was a vision that I just wrote down. In January 2022, me, my sister and aunt had a vision board party. On my board I wrote “Esthetician School”. And of May 2022 I was in enrolled into my now Alma mater, Empire Beauty Memphis Colonial. Those 6months and 720 hours was such a rollercoster, but I’ll definitely take that ride again. As I was in school I was just listen to the teacher teach and as she was teaching, I would just day dream about how that’s going to me doing all the esthetics. Read more>>

Elijah Salgado

When I reflect on how my journey began, it takes me back to my high school years, around 15 to 16 years old, as a freshman or sophomore. Just like countless others, I carried a dream within me, and that dream fueled my relentless pursuit of experience in the music industry. Whether it meant being a flyer distributor for shows or working with booking agencies and management firms, I eagerly embraced any position that would broaden my understanding. Read more>>

Karen Holcomb

I opened the “Boutique Marketing Studio” in 2019 after owning a Boutique myself, since 2016. During this time, I witnessed firsthand the lack of marketing help the internet had to offer those in our niche. I had already held a marketing degree and so I put it to use helping other Boutique owners with their marketing. Read more>>

Fancy Dmeanor

There’s always a back story to the execution and mine came thru the trials of pandemic and being on lockdown’! Sitting at home and working from home gave me so much downtime! So a lot of time was spent on social media and just reevaluating life ! I have been into fashion from young girl so people always ask me why you don’t start a clothing line ! Read more>>

Alexus Davis

Where it all started? It all started before I knew it started. I would prepare food for myself as I moved out on my own at the age of 16. Living with my former boyfriend in his mom basement. His mom worked very hard and let me stay in her basement and welcomed me around her entire home. Well I never needed an handout or wanted to be anyone burden and truly appreciated her being so motherly when she didn’t have to; I offered to give her money. Well she told me I can just contribute to her home, and so I did. Read more>>

Jonathan McGrael

I love this question! This is one of those areas in brand building and in business that is often discussed and so rarely well executed. We are talking about STRATEGY and then the TACTICS that are used to support the strategy. First it’s important for us to have a shared understanding of what strategy means. The word strategy is thrown around so often in business and by failing to first define what it means, you almost certainly fail in execution. Read more>>

Kevin Murphy

Like a cartoon light bulb turning on, the idea for starting Tempo just hit us one date. With Covid-19 shuttering our favorite coffee shops, the summer of 2020 found Gee and I searching store shelves for cold brews that could obviate us making our own. Our own meticulous process was laborious, and we were feeling lazy; however, when we couldn’t find an equivalent product on store shelves, inspiration struck! Read more>>

Charoné DeShazier

What started as just a hobby, has blossomed into not only something that I am extremely passionate about & proud of, but also a full blown business. It was late 2021 when I took interest in jewelry making with polymer clay and before I realized it, a once a hobby, had now turned into a way to for me to express my thoughts that couldn’t otherwise be articulated through words. Read more>>

Taylor Richards

Heraboros is idea three or four, and really a combination of all my previous attempts. I have always strived to be a successful small business owner and thought that meant keeping my creativity to the side while only business was to be prioritized. Once I realized a healthy combination of both is what will ultimately foster long term sustainability I hate to use the phrase “it all fell into place”, because I truly have so much more work to do, Read more>>

Armelia Cox

First off, launching a business (during a pandemic) while I’m in college was probably the last thing on my mind at the time, but I had become so fixated on having a business. I was in college and had already took a few business courses, I also follow plenty of people who own really creative businesses on social media so I genuinely was like “I can do this” I grabbed my phone and went to doing my research. I’m already a super creative person I know for a fact I can create something from nothing. Read more>>

Jen Dallas

I wanted to be an interior designer since I was very young. I have always been sensitive and it greatly enhances my ability to design spaces. My Mom would hear me moving furniture around in the middle of the night when I was supposed to be sleeping. She was not at all surprised when I chose design as a career. After I received my Bachelor degree in Interior design, I pursued my dream to be a hospitality designer. Read more>>

Claudia Paganin Newlands

The idea came in February of 2020 when I was playing cards with my two brothers (now co-owners) while visiting our family in Brazil. I had been vegan for about four years and was looking to make a vegan version of the popular Brazilian dish pão de queijo, or cheese bread. When I was back in the United States — and quarantined in my house — I began working on the idea. Originally, the plan was to create frozen cheese bread to be baked at home, as this is what I often saw in grocery stores. Read more>>

Deborah Godfrey

To begin, I come from a family of entrepreneurs and true go getters. I’ve always wanted to start a business, I just needed to find my true passion within the business realm. In the midst of the Covid19 pandemic I had time to brainstorm, research and reflect. My love for fashion and creativity came into play. I decided to start the brand, ‘The Vanity Code’. I wanted a brand name that had an impactful meaning. A brand that would truly be one of one. The word ‘Vanity’ is defined as excessive pride in or admiration of ones own appearance & achievements. Read more>>

Shakisha Clark

21 years ago I was at the start of my IT career. I drove past a sign at Plano Senior High in regards to Homecoming Mum pick-up. A little lightbulb came on, since I had made my own mums with my grandmother. I thought this would be an easy way to make extra money on the side. Mums would then become way more than just a side gig, I was slightly obsessed with everything about them. Read more>>

Eliezer Rodriguez-Rodriguez

I always had the idea of having my own business, After many years in the restaurant industry, a couple of fail trial businesses. I came to the city of Harrisburg from Puerto Rico after the hurricane Maria with my family to work and try to have a better future with my family. When I came here I became Sous Chef at Los Tres Cubanos Restaurant for about 2 years. Read more>>

Danielle Caselnova & Jessica Meahl

So long story short, we got the idea when we went to visit our best friend’s mother to continue our annual tradition after she had passed. We were trying to talk her mom into getting tattoos and she had taken us to get permanent jewelry instead. We decided this would be something great for us to bring back home to offer to friends and family and to honor our friend. It was also a good reason for us to get together on a more frequent basis, meet new friends, and make a little extra doing it. Read more>>

Autum Stryker

When I was 13, an advertisement in the paper was put out for young people to learn how to be an entrepreneur and then later attend an entrepreneur eventI am always looking for new things to learn, so I attended the meeting. At the meeting, they went over product and what we wanted our product to be. Everyone choose the common products like jewelry, baked goods, and decor that they wanted to create and sell. Read more>>

Ron Dizon

It started on a napkin. I remember when my mom sparked a conversation mentioning coffees that came from the Philippines—wait—coffee from the
Philippines?! That was back in 2017. This moment then turned into my own obsession of figuring out why and how this was even a thing. My curiosity hit the gas pedal and all I could ever think about was finding out what Filipino Coffee was all about. I spent a lot of late nights just researching and obsessing, and learning more and more about this one crop that resides in the Philippines. I was in midst of my research when I was introduced to the Aeropress. Man, did that change how Read more>>

Intuitive Tara Thaler

I have been especially focused on my party and event business. It’s grown substantially over recent years. Shortly after I started reading Palms in High School, I went on a cruise for a week with my dad. One day I was reading some friends I made on the boat. We were hanging out in the disco lounge. The next thing I know, there is a long line in front of me across the dance floor. Read more>>

Valerie Barrera

Since I was a little girl, I have always been around the beauty industry. My mother and my grandmother are both cosmetologists, my mother did nails and hair, my grandmother did just hair. Always going to the salon with my mom seeing all the wonderful ladies she meets and how creative she was with nails and how these ladies left with such happiness made me want to do the same. I knew from high school I wanted to have my own business; I wanted my own salon just like my mother. Read more>>