Establishing your own firm or practice is an incredibly daunting task. From myriad of legal and regulatory hurdles to the financial and career related risks, professionals who choose to start their own firm have to overcome so much and so we wanted to reach out to those who’ve done it successfully for advice, insight and stories.

Maricris Lapaix

Getting into the fitness industry came as a natural transition as an athlete. Volleyball was my main sport that I continued on to play collegiately. It was during my collegiate years that social media began to rise in popularity, and I had shared a lot of my collegiate experiences. I found that by organically sharing my athletic experiences my friends and family began to identify as someone with fitness expertise. Read more>>

Kristy Pridgen

I have always been the go to person for personal and business matters amongst family, friends and strangers on the outside looking in so I decided to start my non-profit organization “Inspiring Lady Bosses”… our mission is to assist our members (young ladies of color) develop and/or grow their business legally and successfully. The main steps in forming my non-profit was research and executing the information that I discovered and tailor it to my nonprofit according to its structure. Read more>>

Lisa Ash Drackert

Write your ELEVATOR SPEECH. If you’re ready to be a solo-preneuer in your field of expertise, the best advice I can give is this: build the 3 pillars of your business and define them so strongly that you can explain EVERYTHING you do and WHY you do it in less than 3 sentences. Read more>>

Katie Hake, RDN, LD, CPT

I always knew I wanted to be my own boss. In my early career, I found it very challenging to serve clients in the traditional clinical setting. When it comes to healing your relationship with food and your body through nutrition counseling, I realized I needed more than a 15-minute consult to truly have an impact. Read more>>

Leigh Lewis

I have been in practice for 20 years, the majority of those in someone else’s practice. I realized I was giving away a large percentage of my income to other people and did not have a commensurate input into how things were being run. In addition, I found myself working with people who did not share my values in patient care or offering gimmicky or non-evidenced based services. Read more>>

Maurice Harary.

What people don’t realize when starting a business is how important the journey is to the destination. Like the old adage Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither were great companies. It takes time, grit, resilience and oftentimes, many failed attempts, to get to a place of success. Especially today when the internet is full of success stories on Forbes and Entrepreneur, Read more>>

Janiel Youngblood

I decided to start my own church financial consulting firm when I was being recognized by my home church for just being crowned Miss Virginia Union University. I said that I just wanted to be used by God but wasn’t quite sure what that may look like since I was not a preacher or good singer or doing any of those things I considered really spiritual. When an elder told me that I would be a church accountant, it was like a light bulb came on and I saw for the first time how I could connect my technical skill with my passion for ministry. Read more>>

Dr. NaRicia Futrell.

As I was nearing the end of my master’s program for social work and obtaining my license to practice independently, I connected with a cohort from my master’s program and we began to start planning what a group practice would look like. We eventually parted ways and I continued with my plan beginning with reaching out to a lady I knew in Nashville who had a private practice. She gave me a framework for a blueprint and I sat down with my grandmother and built my blueprint. Read more>>