Over the years as we connected with incredible from folks from almost every imaginable industry we realized that every nook and cranny of our economy is full of small business owners, artists and creatives who live and breathe what they do - and their stories are nothing short of heroic. It's the immigrant parents who…

Having to overcome unexpected problems is a hallmark of entrepreneurship. Almost every business owner, artist, maker, and creative we know has had to deal with countless unexpected problems that arise in the journey and so we asked some brilliant folks from the community to share their stories of the unexpected problems they've faced along the…

We asked some fantastic entrepreneurs and creatives to tell us about their first job in their field. Check out their stories below. Erika Olivas Way back before I became an Emotion Code Practitioner, I was in a deep state of depression and was suffering from chronic pain in my feet. I was diagnosed with chronic depression…

Often, those who tread off the beaten path are misunderstood or mischaracterized and so we asked folks from the community to reflect and tell us about the times they've been misunderstood or mischaracterized. Jake Reinhart I think it’s a common experience to feel either misunderstood or mischaracterized. Consider the current-day media landscape. We’re inundated with snippets…

Over the years, after talking with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, artists and creatives, almost every success story we’ve heard has been filled with stories of failure. Unfortunately, in our view the media rarely covers these parts of the story – instead we often read summaries that make it seem like success happened “overnight.” However,…

Stories are incredibly powerful – their ability to teach, inspire, and create understanding is why we are so in love with storytelling. Most stories have a defining moment and so we’ve asked some of the most talented, insightful folks across a broad range of industries and markets to tell us about a defining moment in…

Internships and apprenticeships, when done right, give interns and apprentices life long lessons. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, these opportunities aren’t accessible to many and so we wanted to invite folks who have had these experiences to share some of the lessons they’ve learned. Maryssa Gray In the tattoo industry apprenticeships and overall career growth…

You’re working hard, things are going well, piece by piece you’ve built a life you are proud of, you’ve overcome obstacles and challenges, beat the odds and then you find yourself at the center of an unexpected dilemma – do you risk it all to keep growing? What if growing means leaving the job you…

The chapters in our stories are often marked by wins and losses. Getting a new job, getting fired. Getting a life-threatening medical diagnosis, beating it and getting a clean bill of health. Too often, due to a societal expectation of modesty and humility we are discouraged from talking about the risks we’ve taken that led…

  Being a business owner isn’t easy. There are amazing highs, but the lows are often quite intense as well. Somedays it feels like the problems never stop – regardless of how much success you achieve. The problems just grow, evolve, morph. So we asked business owners if they sometimes wonder what it would be like…