In our view, far too many ideas die at the imagination stage. It’s not because people are lazy, we think the primary reason is because many people don’t know where or how to start. So, we connected with some sharp and generous entrepreneurs who’ve agreed to share their stories of how they went from idea to execution.

Tevyn Grayson

I started the business as a DBA, which is now known as Grayson Accounting Service. I saw how much entrepreneurship was growing out of the pandemic and wanted to be available to support. The intent to start the business has always existed, but that moment in time–post pandemic–gave me the last push I needed. I initially invested into a computer and business cards. From there, I expected calls from potential clients to come in pretty regularly and that was not the case! Read more>>

Liv Dellanno

It all started when I was 24, feeling lost and frustrated in my career while working at a prosthetic company (which I know sounds exciting out of context but I was an office administrator so the most exciting part of my day was scanning insurance cards). I spent my free time applying to marketing jobs, as that seemed to make the most sense with my past work experience. However, nothing felt right, and I found myself in a state of uncertainty and stagnantion. Read more>>

Yvonne Moryc

In 2008 I established my business as a wedding photographer. In 2012 I belonged to a women’s networking group and one of the ladies wanted me to take boudoir photos of her for her 50th wedding anniversary present to her husband. Word traveled fast throughout the group and soon enough I was photographing those ladies in the networking group quite a bit. I fell in love with that niche right away! Read more>>

Keyva Clark

I had been doing political work for nearly 10 years and was looking to do something different. After deciding to come back to Los Angeles, my career was feeling like it was starting from the bottom. I was working as a bi-coastal and doing some consulting work, but I wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go next. Read more>>

Angela Woodward

Here are some tips to follow that we followed for our project: Conduct market research: Start by researching the demand for an indoor dog park and restaurant in your area. Look for existing competitors and evaluate their offerings. Identify your target market and understand their needs and preferences. Create a business plan: Develop a comprehensive business plan that outlines your concept, target audience, pricing, marketing strategy, operational details, and financial projections. This plan will serve as a roadmap for your venture and help you secure funding if needed. Read more>>

Brit Schwab

About ten years ago I started to become more and more fascinated with photography but always assumed I had to go to school for it. I was just wrapping up my bachelors degree in education and didn’t think it would be wise for me to go back to school and pursue photography. I decided I would just buy a basic starter camera and play around with it instead. I then started watching videos and researching on how to capture the perfect shot. I then upgraded my camera and continued to learn more and more on my own. Read more>>

Dominique Turner

I’ve known since I was in middle school that I wanted to be a writer. Even as I worked full time in youth development, I knew it was temporary. I quit my job before my daughter was born because I wanted to stay home for awhile. Shortly after my daughter arrived, the pandemic began. During that time, I had the pleasure of helping a first and second grader with their reading skills. I loved coming up with stories and activities and writing stories with them. Read more>>

London Clarke

I wanted to write books from the time I was a young girl. I was an avid reader of all sorts of fiction, and as I went through elementary, middle, and high school, I wrote “stories” all the time. But as an adult, finding an agent, much less a publisher, was not easy. I went through many years of trying to go the traditional route. After tons of rejections, I finally got an agent in 2010. But after a year or more of trying to sell the book I had at the time, it went nowhere. Read more>>

Jon Fedkiw

I attended a writer’s group for many years called Old Pueblo Playwrights (or O.P.P. for short) in Tucson AZ, before moving to Lakeland FL. I took the O.P.P. model, laid it out in front of some friends, and they agreed to my vison… in their kitchen. It was October 2017, and this was the second time I was trying to launch this organization on the East coast, and we decided the first thing to do was find a place to meet. We started meeting in the public library realizing immediately that the room the library gave us was too small and not very private, so we started asking friends if they knew of a space we could utilize. Read more>>

Krystal Noble – Mayse

I remember the dream vividly. I sat on a pink couch with a microphone in my hand and a smile on my face as hundreds maybe thousands of adoring fans listened intently to my message. I awoke from my slumber shortly after the vision, and as I sat up in bed; I allowed myself to dream and imagine what that would feel like. I have always had the desire to inspire, encourage and help others, and I had often dreamt of doing so with my blog, events or even a podcast. Read more>>

Judy San

One of my friends back in CA was a candlemaker and I LOVE supporting small businesses. So, when she launched her business, I bought every candle she made and was so inspired by the scents that she came up with because it brought me back to when I was in middle school. From that, I purchased a candle making kit off of Amazon because I wanted to start making my own candles but I never even touched the box. Read more>>

Jessica Gorby

I decided that photography was what I wanted to do for a living over fifteen years ago. I’m an artist who wanted to go to art school but decided to go to college for healthcare because it was the field my mother recommended. She knew that making a living in the arts is very challenging, and I do not regret my decision because I pursued photography on the side as a hobbyist after graduation. Read more>>

Kim Gomez

Kourageous Vision is a nonprofit 501c3 here in the beautiful state of Utah. The work of Kourageous Vision has been underway for the last seven years. It wasn’t until five months ago that I decided to embark on a much grander scale collaborating with other women who share the same desire and excitement to support women in building respect and confidence, sharing hope and faith within their communities, and building a foundation for years to come. Read more>>

NAHJEE GRANT

While I was working a full time job I had an idea for a children’s story and I had to take action to see this story come to fruition. I made the conscious decision to invest most of my paycheck from my job into finding an illustrator. $20 would be my allowance from the paycheck every two weeks. There weren’t as many online resources to self-publish books as there are now back in 2012 so I had to learn by trial in error. In January the following year my first children’s book was published and I haven’t stopped since. Read more>>

Andrew & Lesly Fraire & Mejia

It all started back in May 2020 when the whole pandemic chaos kicked in. Those were tough times for everyone, including us. Jobs were getting axed left and right, and it felt like hope was slipping through our fingers but we had to find a silver lining – and we did. Life slowed down, giving us a chance to pursue things we’ve always dreamed of doing. So, we thought, why not learn some e-commerce skills? Read more>>

Justine Alexander

For years, my sister and I had always joked about me having my own spot with items tailored to her likes and incorporating my family throughout the menu. I had always thought that when I had my own place I could evoke the feelings of home and comfort that I had growing up, but in a refined manner. Read more>>

Dustin Lindley

I started my leatherworking journey in December of 2022, but my passion for it had developed two years prior to that. Initially, the prospect of starting off seemed overwhelming, as there were so many different avenues to explore with leather. I spent hours scouring leatherworking subreddits and watching YouTube tutorials on crafting wallets, bags, belts, and shoes. With so many options available, I felt like I needed to know exactly what route I wanted to take before beginning. However, I eventually realized that the most important thing was just to start. Read more>>

Madison Richards

Currently I work for Left Coast Holdings, a Vertically Integrated cannabis company in Northern Michigan. We have 3 Retails, 2 brands, and an outdoor grow with 42,000 plants. My role in the company is marketing, I am the content creator, social media manager, retail marketer, and farm marketer. I also take on the role of sales and attending brand events, along with brand development. In the company the ‘main decision’ makers are all men, and until I joined the team, all the products were male focused. Read more>>

Sherelle Daniel

Not only do I host my own talk show “Real Talk With Relly” but I am also the owner of a lip gloss company called “The B. Kai Collection” This May sound crazy but for both business, I needed to get the logo made first. Normally that is considered a last step but I needed to see the vision. I needed something to base the rest of my ideas off of. Seeing the logo first helped me with the type of set up I wanted for my talk show. And from there the rest of the ideas just started pouring in. Read more>>

Dontez Rash

Around 2019, I started doing personal training and sharing nutritional information. As my clientele began to grow, I was noticed by the co-creator of the Resistix device. He offered me a business proposal I couldn’t refuse. I then went through a vigorous training process with him to learn the Resistix Training system and become the heir of the system and its entirety. Read more>>

Jamala Wallace

As I found myself reading more magazines, learning about interior design, home décor and the importance of creating a space that makes you happy to come home to, I realized I discovered my passion in life. One night while reading a few websites, I thought to myself, here I am reading theirs and being inspired, so why not create my own to inspire others. Read more>>

Jay Woller

As a family, we’ve brainstormed business ideas for years. The dream of entrepreneurship was a hobby that passed the time on road trips and filled quiet spaces on family vacations. In 2020, while on vacation to Colorado, our entrepreneurial journey started amidst Covid-19 social distancing and personal job uncertainties. We felt it was time to take control of our career paths and embark on a serious search for business opportunities. Read more>>

Gloria Sampson

Turning ideas into reality is an exhilarating journey. In my business, the challenge lies not in generating ideas but in securing the necessary funds to bring them to life. While the lack of money can be a hurdle, it doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm. Read more>>

Megan D’Ambrosio

I’d made cookies a few times, just for fun, but did not actually get started until I made the move back to my hometown in 2020. I had no plans at the time to turn my creative hobby of cookie decorating into a business, but friends/family started reaching out saying “do you sell your cookies?” or “can you bring cookies to the party?” A few fulfilled orders for friends and word of mouth led to a whole lot of cookies and the start of my business. Read more>>

Crystal Wilson

I believe that the first step into going from an idea to execution is to really get in tune with the Holy Spirit and allow God to give you what I call “spiritual & prophetic downloads”. You have to have a conversation with God and ask him what He wants you to execute (and when is the right time to do so). I also had to learn to not just pray for what I wanted, but to listen to what “HE” wanted to do through me. Read more>>

Raoul Benavides

We were all in Covid lock down and I found my self in a very creative mind space. I was doing a lot of walking, cooking and self care. One night, I had a dream about my grandfather, Eleno Rodriguez Ochoa. He founded a candy company in Monterrey Mexico in 1940. That night, Ghost Honey – Heart Soul Heat everything just came into focus like the idea had always been there and it was just waiting for me to discover it. Read more>>

Kevin Holy

We have been around maple syrup production our entire lives but never actually produced maple syrup ourselves, just spent time helping others. When we purchased our farm in 2008 we had no intention on making maple syrup, we were actually a livestock farm with horses, cows, and chickens. We tapped our first trees in 2013 strictly as a hobby with 10 trees and a turkey fryer. Fast forwarding 10 years we now have several thousand trees and turned it into a full time career. Read more>>

Christina & Mitch Smith

We first came up with the idea for Herbivore Bites during the pandemic lockdowns after taking an online cooking class. It had only been 9 months since we started our plant-based journey and we wanted to learn how to cook more plant-based foods. (When you switch from eating everything to only eating plant-foods, there is an adjustment period for not only your body, but your taste buds and we were struggling with certain food cravings.) Read more>>

Karla Cummings

I have always been a creative person. I have worked with different mediums such as painting, warm glasswork, refurbishing furniture, and now making candles to name a few. I started making candles in 2016 when I was selling products as a glass artist. I started making candles in recycled wine/beer bottles. They were a big hit but it was a very time consuming process to get the bottles ready for candles to be in them. Because of having a full time job as a school counselor alongside doing my side business I needed to make my process easier. So I decided to switch to container candles. Read more>>

Alicia Cochran

I was an exhausted mother of two babies when I hired a professional Sleep Consultant. After 4 nights, my child was sleeping through the night. It was in that moment I knew I HAD to become a Sleep Consultant so I could offer the same relief to other exhausted parents. I reached out to my Sleep Consultant and asked her how she got started. She referred me to the certification program she took. Read more>>

Johnny Vagianos

Denzel Washington once said, “Dreams without goals, are just dreams and they ultimately fuel disappointment.” Having a creative mind was a gift, but it was a relentless drive fueled by ambition which launched my ideas into reality. “The JV Show” began as a small hobby in 2021 to serve as a distraction during the pandemic. Read more>>

Cherisse Stephens

Covered In Glam Boutique, LLC was launched in February of 2020. Before then, I would design specialty pieces for me and got so many compliments. So, I decided to launch the business and see if people would respond. Years prior to 2020, I would host home shows and invite family and friends to shop with me. It was always successful and so much fun. Read more>>

Stephen Murphy

When I’m passionate about an idea or belief, I’m all in. Whatever lights me up, I will conquer. The recent years leading up to 2018, I had a deep desire and a pull to change the direction my life was headed. I always wanted to build my own company brick by brick to display my artistic expression, but I never developed the motivation or discipline needed to explore those avenues. That was until I discovered Hydrographics. A opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Read more>>

Mone’t King

I’ve always known I was going to be a part of the fashion industry someway, somehow. I felt it in my bones. The one thing I didn’t know was what I would be doing specifically. It took some time, but it was Gods timing, to realize I was made to design; I am a Fashion Designer. I used to draw outfits as a child, for fun; it’s funny how when you’re younger you just know your calling and as you get older you forget. Read more>>

Keith Willard

They say that entrepreneurs are born that way. I believe that wholeheartedly. Throughout my career, I have always leaned towards positions that allowed me a lot of freedom. In my twenties, I was the Executive Director of a small not-for-profit. I made my hours and had few limitations. The success of the organization was dependent on whether or not I was successful. Read more>>

Peter Jordan

We started the business based on a need we noticed after visiting a larger city. Why doesn’t Richmond Virginia offer valet parking at any of the nightclubs or restaurants in the downtown area. Being that parking in so limited and it would help increase traffic to the city. After we had the bright idea we started playing around with some names and landed on 1st Choice Transportation LLC, which began my journey into being a business owner. Read more>>

 Ke’Nyzjah Ferebee

Ever since I was a little girl, I had always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. I watched my father work hard, and my mom study entrepreneurship in college. I planned never to have to work for anyone else. I was inspired by famous entrepreneurs’ determination, creativity, risk-taking, and many other skills that helped them be successful. My only struggle at the time was finding my passion. Read more>>

Nelida Munnerlyn

What made me say “Just Do It!” I was working for a company and I didn’t feel valued, protected and respected as an esthetician, I noticed that I was falling right back into that rabbit hole that I was in before, I knew that I had the knowledge to branch off on my own and I remember praying to God and asking him to give me that courage and the strength to do this on my own. Read more>>