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.

Deja Lawrence

Okay! So the craziest thing that’s happened to me and my business….. Is getting to custom color some units for Tia Corine. a very popular NC artist. She is so superrr sweet and cool and I am so happy she gave me the opportunity as a supporter of her personally to show love with my small business Service By D Co. Read more>>

Tapree Collins

I started my entrepreneurial journey at the age of 19 years old. At that time, resources were scarce to none, especially for someone that was starting from scratch. Ground zero. No trust fund, no degree, just myself and a dream. Read more>>

Autumn Kanistras Kate Healey

Covid – When the world shut down….our business absolutely could have too. All events were canceled – and we were flooded with cookie order cancellations. Autumn had resigned from teaching a few years before, and Kate had just resigned after having her third baby about 3 weeks before the world shut down. We knew we couldn’t let our business fold – there had to be a way. Read more>>

Katerina Kladis

One of the best stories to happen to me is my Vogue feature, I was featured in Vogue a couple times already. Our first feature was titled “Juicy Couture’s biggest Collector” I met the writer and let her know I’m a big rare Juicy Couture collector I had to submit my entire Juicy collection to Vogue, they wanted to do the story on me. Read more>>

Dana Birke

I have been making ‘Name Charms’ since I first started making jewelry. They’re the perfect gift for anyone who wants to old a loved one close to their heart! For many years, as a personal gift, I would often give a name charm when a baby was born or sadly when a loved one or pet had passed. It was simply something I had always done. Read more>>

Dian Mullis

I have a Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics degree and I was working as a Director of Engineering for 6 years when I lost my job in 2019. Prior to losing my job, for several years I had it in my heart to have my own concrete business, making countertops and other functional art pieces but I was apprehensive about leaving a solid, well paying career. Read more>>

Leslie Cockerell

Covid hit us hard in 2020, My father Fred Reed, we all called him Big Fred, was diagnosed on the 11th of November and died November 25th, the day before Thanksgiving. He had driven to Chicago October 28th to pick up 7000 bottles and they were in his Borger, TX warehouse staring at us, I was at a loss, my husband, John and I had our own business, J&L Design, we remodeled homes and had two clients at the time, which was full-time. Read more>>

Matt Feldman

After a year and a half of development and commercializing the process to make our mushroom jerky, we were ready for launch. We started creating buzz on social media, alerting our investors that were launching soon, and getting our Shopify site and Amazon pages ready to go. Read more>>

Amy Minor

I started Blue Hour Photographers in April 2022, barely anyone knew I opened it. I love shooting landscapes and was working on a project to make products for stores. I had 3 locations I wanted to get to at sunrise. The last one was one of the Operation Bumblebee towers in North Topsail. Read more>>