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.
Corsavius Jackson.
An idea without action is just a dream. I didn’t want to have a dream of creating a board game forever so I had to take action and make it reality. My first step with WordUp! was figuring out what physical items I needed to take it from abstract to concrete. I went to Dollar General, bought some note cards, note pads and a pair of dice. Next I had to figure out what the actual scores for each letter should be. A couple hours of research and 50 notecards later I had the first prototype of WordUp! Read more>>
Travis Patterson
I started HireAE, also known as Hire Account Executives.com before the pandemic. I remember my first software sales position working in midtown Atlanta Georgia. I was given a shot of a lifetime to use my relationship-building and sales skills to present software for the first time ever. I was trained and how to present and then trained on how to sell the value proposition. With a background in human resources but more so with a focus and recruiting, Read more>>
SHURINA JONES
I started The Naked Bar with my daughter Christina. She felt the desserts I’d been making were better than any other vegan desserts we’d bought. We decided to start the business together,. We began by discovering what the legal steps were for selling food. We learned we needed to get ServSafe certified, then get a cottage license and business license. Those were the basics. There is so much more involved in starting a food business. Read more>>
Quanisha Gindraw
Divine Jewel actually started back in 2018, I had a bathing suit line. However, Divine Jewel Entertainment started in 2020. It was really just out the blue. I literally just was joking around, sitting around just writing. A month later, after getting very good feedback, I said I’m going to make it into a book. I already know the steps of becoming an independent publisher because my mom is actually an author and independent publisher (Menacing Whisper on Amazon). She was guiding me but then few weeks to month, I said I want to see it, visually. Read more>>
Ja’Maria Rutherford
I first started my business at the peak of Covid-19 in 2020. I have always had a passion for fashion and entrepreneurship, so I just started that new journey of mine with all of the free time I had. The start up process took at least 2-3 months. I started to think about what exactly I wanted to sell and who I wanted to be my target audience. I decided that I wanted to have a very broad target audience, where almost every woman will have something that would love and like to purchase. Read more>>
Jack Horsley
When I was around eight or nine years old, I discovered my mom’s digital camera, a little point-and-shoot one, and my obsession with picture taking began. I loved playing around with it and thought to begin this journey of taking photos. When I was 12 years old, I got my own digital P&S camera, kept shooting and at 15 years old, discovered photo editing by playing around with Instagram filters. I learned from there, it was fun to make photos look more colorful or dramatic or vibrant than they had started. Read more>>
Brandon Laubhan.
I played college baseball and graduated with a degree in Sports Medicine. I moved back to Las Vegas and realized early on that the 9 to 5 was not for me. Why? In sports you work on your skills daily and if you grind, there is no limit to how much you can improve and succeed. 9 to 5 was a paycheck. I wanted more and believed I could achieve any goal if I put in the work. Read more>>
Wanda Davila
The idea of opening a store-front as a short-term rental for businesses came organically in conversation with my husband. Many years ago I read about how storefronts struggling to keep long-term tenants were offering short-ter options. I did a market research in the Atlanta area and found few options in this market so I decided to take the plunge. Read more>>
Karina Ramos.
I remember sitting at my desk at my 9-5 watching the screen savers on my computer scroll by. Photos of all of the countries and places I wanted to visit automatically gracing my screen every minute when I had this overwhelming feeling of being trapped that came over me. I felt trapped in a job that I loved but felt under-appreciated and highly underpaid. I felt trapped in a company I knew had no room for my growth. I felt trapped with my finances. I had just gotten engaged and I wanted the wedding of my dreams and I especially wanted to travel. Read more>>
Grisell Careaga
Doing all the scary things… It was never an original idea but it was one that I felt deep in my heart, “Acceptance”. I, and those like me, wanted to feel accepted and be accepting of all love, the more unique, the more different, the weirder the better. That was it, it was as simple as embracing and celebrating everything outside of the traditional spectrum of events. Read more>>
Sharron Johnson.
I launched Critique Agency first in 2005 as a modeling agency. In 2018 I became an LLC under Critique Empire LLC branching into the entertainment field as a whole. I majored in Business Communications and Network Marketing. I wanted to bring everything that I do under one entity. I love educating models, working with artist and making people look fabulous, as well as supporting and branding other businesses. My goal is to be one of the top entertainment and branding companies worldwide. Read more>>
Anyelica Melendez
I’ve always been surrounded by small businesses, which means that I’ve never had a 9-to-5 job. Before digital marketing, I was studying to be a journalist since I had a liking for it. Yet, I went through experiences and met people that inspired me and opened my eyes to what I am doing now. Before the business happened,I created fun content for businesses but not as an official job skill. Eventually, I got to the point where I wanted something for myself. I wanted to create something that could allow me to leave a footprint on this world and for many generations to come. Read more>>
Selena Lightfoot
How did I start? I quit my job last year to be an full time entrepreneur with my business, but I started to realize music was something to do as well with my modeling career. I started to freestyle from my anger, I realized I had more potential than to just do my business and model. I eventually started to learn my own techniques as far as recording and taking my own pictures. Being your own photographer is really the best it’s like you’re your own hype buddy you get to do your own research and find apps to take pictures and edit them which will eventually become a new income source. Read more>>
Mai Gutierrez
Hi! My name is Mai Gutierrez, I’m the owner and principal at Studio Sin Fin. I was born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico. I’m an artist and designer. The artist focuses on sculpture and public art. The designer focuses on architectural and interior design. These two sides are not mutually exclusive, they thrive when dependent on each other. Read more>>
Genesis Gonzalez
For a long time, my sister, Mireysa and I have always been creative in coming up with solutions to issues that would arise in our everyday lives. One day, our father needed help in creating his online presence for his small business. We took up the task to make him the most creative website a small business could have. Throughout the process, we learned that we really enjoyed building and customizing. The more we learned, the more we knew that this was our calling. Being around successful entrepreneurs and business owners during my adolescence, who were passionate about their craft, inspired me to take the risk into the world of entrepreneurship. Read more>>
Corisa Lewis.
I’ve had a love for cooking and eating good food every since i was a young girl helping my mom prepare holiday meals for our family and friends. I’ve been hosting parties, cookouts, events, etc. since my early twenties. The idea of starting my own business actually came from a conversation I had with my best friend. I told her i wanted to start my own business and she reassured me that i could do it because i basically already had my clientele and to just step out on faith. Read more>>
LaShawn McMullen
I like to say my business found me. I created my product, TH Grow, as home remedy to keep my husband’s hair clean while he worked in a dirty environment. He needed something that was convenient and effective. I had recently completed some nutrition courses and had been actively putting my new knowledge to good use. The spray that was created was absolutely perfect for what we needed. It smells great, so you look forward to using it. It has a cleaning property, so we knew it was keeping his hair clean. Read more>>
Coach & JoAnne Tyson
We spent a weekend of watching documentaries on Netflix (What the Health, Forks Over Knives) and never took a bite of meat or dairy again! But we had no clue what to eat after that! For our 1st vegan meal, we went to a local vegan restaurant that we were referred to and it was not good..at all! Over priced, lacking menu variety, no flavor….just no! We started joining online groups & reading recipe books, blogs, articles, you name it & we started testing out the products & getting to learn what vegan products simulate no vegan items and one of the 1st was the chocolate chip cookie! Read more>>
LaTange Baker
I started making All Natural Body Productz for my family and as gifts. Then in July 2019 a childhood friend Selena said to me I should be a vendor at a stageplay that she was acting in. I got instantly nervous. I had no labels, no logo, no idea how to start and be ready in a month for stageplay. So, I started brainstorming. My son Miles created a logo for me. I then started looking on Amazon for nice jars. I had to order labels and signage. Then the most important part…pricing my productz. Read more>>
Kenedra Byrd
I began this business with two things in mind: friends/family and love. I’ve wanted to become an entrepreneur for a while before launching but did not quite know what I wanted to do. I have always loved interior design but thought it would be too much to dive into with a full time job. Quite honestly, I was discouraged because I did not know exactly where to start. Read more>>
Alexandra ‘Alyi V’ Ventura
I started Growing Up Latina about five years ago. I always had this vision of telling our stories from the Latina lens. It was important for me to create a space where Latinas could be seen, be heard and live out loud. I always had the end goal in mind, but I really did not know how to get started. I just remember telling my videographer at the time that I wanted to record my conversations I had a radio background and always had a passion for interviewing, so I told him one day, ‘this is it, I’m going to do it’. Read more>>
Dan Jones
I’m moving back and forth between idea and execution every day. That’s the fun part, and I’m driven to do that for personal development and mental health. I’ve really just scratched the surface of marketing anything. Writing songs and posting art, cartoons, and fliers is ritual, it’s a big part of what gets me up in the morning, and it’s part of healing and growing and feeling alive. Read more>>
Scott Rowan
My greatest fear has always been mediocrity. Through the process of building a company, I’ve learned the best way to overcome mediocrity is tenacity. Not giving up, and striving to move forward is the greatest hedge against failure. I started Row One Productions when I was eight years old. Though not officially incorporated as a business entity at the time, we were making films. Kids making movies with their family video camera is a common pastime, but we stuck with it. Read more>>
Alexa Orth & Cadence Miller.
You know, it all started as an idea. One day Cadence and I were talking about the possibility of starting a true crime comedy podcast. We both knew we loved true crime and what can we say, we’re pretty funny too. After extensive research, we decided that we could do it! We instantly started purchasing the LLC, domain, hosting platform, equipment and many other things. With the equipment, I got lucky because Cadence had a podcast previously so she was able to hook it up with the mics. Read more>>
Luke and Hannah Luzicka
Our story is unique in that we are a husband and wife team who have been involved in ballet our whole lives. When Luke Luzicka retired from dancing at Kansas City Ballet, we discussed the idea of opening our own school and working within our community. We wanted to be in the Northland and wanted to go to an area where there where no other classical ballet schools. Having grown up dancing and teaching specifically classical ballet, we both felt that using our knowledge and experience to educate the next generation of dancers was the best way for us to give back to our community. Read more>>
Bernard Whitehead
For me it was a long process from idea to execution. YAH HAYAH launched in late 2020 and I originally had the idea in 2017. In that time from Idea to executing was a lot of brainstorming the structure of the brand, and some procrastinating haha. Through all of that I was never really “ready”, just something I had to take action on. First thing I did was got most core designs done first, then started on the search for vendors and went from there. Read more>>
Amanda Wollet
As a child my parents always took my sister and I on great Michigan Vacations. We owned a 1950’s silver bullet airstream, and my dad would hook it up to our blazer, my mom would pack the camper with everything we needed, and we would head north. Now, when i say we would camp…we would camp! My dad would find the most remote area in the upper part of Michigan, and we would set up camp in the middle of deep woods. There were times, my sister and i would be caught taking showers in the rain out in the middle of the woods! It was such a great childhood. We would do this every summer. So, as a child, I was able to experience my beautiful state to the fullest and really learn everything Michigan was about. Read more>>
Janiyah Jacobs
~A Diamond In The Rough~ Shéic Exchange Formally Known As “The J.Renee Stylez” Originally Started In 2019 As I Was In College On The Campus Of Alabama A&M University As A Personal Styling And Custom Clothing Business. Owning A Business Was Always Dream, I Got The Idea Of Starting What I Didn’t Know Was A Business At The Time From One Of My Late Professors Who Had A Big Impact On My Life. Fast Forward To 2020 “The J.Renee Stylez” Fully Rebranded Into An Online Boutique Known As “Shéic Exchange”.. Through Out The Past 3 Years This Entrepreneurial Journey Has Not Been Easy But I’m Grateful For Where I Am. Read more>>
Karra Kolura
As far as I can remember I always had my own style, and my own way of doing things! I became a hair stylist after facing life challenges and years of legal holds on my life. A mother of 2, I struggled to make ends meet after relocating for Atlanta and dropping out of college at AIU Buckhead. I haven’t always made the best decision but I always put in the work to change my circumstances. Read more>>
Amy Knight
I started Urban Daisy Events with my two oldest daughters. After looking at spaces for over 2 years, we finally signed our lease 4 days before lockdown in March 2020. We went from feeling excited and motivated, to feeling completely deflated. However, looking back now, it gave us time to complete our vision and design for the space, time to focus on our must have items and let go of a lot of things that now seemed unimportant. Read more>>
Alexa Stone
As a kid I always loved a good graphic tee and sneaker. I remember all the girls would wear the skirts and nice buttons but not me – give me a graphic tee and sneaker! Rue 21 was my best friend growing up. In 2017 I started to sketch out t-shirt designs and logos but I was too afraid to push forward with it! I also was in the midst of applying to graduate school and as a first generation high school graduate – applying to get my master’s was even scarier! Read more>>
Nakeisa Jackson
After living with HIV for over 8 years I decided it was time to take what I learned and share it with others. I didn’t see other people doing what I was doing and realized there was a need. I decided to start an organization but first I wanted to share my story. I began to look for a book coach and a business coach. I eventually got a game plan to get started. The first step I took was to determine the problem that I solve and explored the ways to solve it. I decided a book was the best way to start and also share my story on YouTube. This was strategic, so people would know who I was before the book was completed. Read more>>
Nikki Cunningham
I have been in the title industry for 20 years now. I have been a receptionist, typist, processor, funder, and closer. I have worked for many well-known title companies throughout the Davidson County, Tennessee area. I love what I do. My husband and myself are entrepreneurs by heart. 2 years ago, my husband started persisting that we open up a title company and I wasn’t sure that I was ready to do so. Read more>>
Kristen Rodriguez.
Growing up, I always loved taking photos. I remember constantly walking around with a camera in hand trying to convince my friends to let me do their hair and makeup and take their photos in my backyard. During my college years I was going to pursue a degree in education. While in college and working a 9-5 in a local doctor’s office, I quickly realized the education field was not what I thought it was. Working a 9-5 was not what I wanted. For months I began praying for God to bring clarity for what He wanted in my life and to give me the courage to take whatever those steps may be. I knew the route I was going wasn’t quite right. Read more>>
Aaron “Uncanny” Phillips
My career in event management began well before I knew it began. I had the idea to throw theme parties for some time and the first that became a series were my Halloween parties. Beginning as house parties that grew into theme nights at different small-medium sized venues and eventually grew to become one of the biggest Halloween themed music festivals in the Midwest, “Hollowicked”. Read more>>
Amber Johnson
When I was younger I always liked to create and work with my hands, but I never saw it as a sustainable career path. Painting something pretty came somewhat naturally to me, but it was just a sporadic hobby. I needed to get straight A’s, take all the AP courses I could, go to University, and start the “grind” like everyone else. It was all about how I could make a living and support myself, and possibly a family one day. I feel like that is the way most of us start out, and the path we begin. That’s the only option we can see. Read more>>
Maria Hermesa
I always knew I wanted to own my own company and work for myself.Beauty and fashion have always been important to me. I’ve always been ask ed if I model myself and I never wanted to be in the spotlight like that. One day it hit me I want to showcase beauty and fashion behind the scenes. So I decided to start a modeling agency. I researched all the steps I would have to take and a month later after countless nights of googling and phone calls I registered my company through my state. Read more>>
Mo Clark
I’ve had a lipstick line since 2016. I started with 50 tubes of lipstick in a plastic bag. I literally recruited some of my friends and contacted my friend; celebrity photographer Fabian Butts, and booked a PhotoShoot. From there I decided to just post like crazy on social media. I connect with a young man in Alabama and he had some models and they wanted to use the lipsticks in a PhotoShoot, so that was a great start. From there I expanded to eyelashes and eyeshadow palettes. Read more>>
Dominique Nixon
For the past decade I have been working as a Licensed Cosmetologist. When the world shut down due to the Pandemic , I was devastated. The career I worked so hard in and loved and the way I was able to make a living to provide for my 2 kids was at a stand still with no steady income coming in and a big cloud of negative energy and thoughts filled my mind. I was in a space were I could not focus on my own self love and self care and I knew something needed to be done but had no clue we’re to start. Read more>>
Sabrian Bruton
This really is a great question for myself as well, because I knew I always was Destined to become a business owner or leader in my community. I was raised by a righteous spiritual man who impacted many lives and took care of four generations before the lord called him home, he implicated morals and high values in me. I wanted to become what he stood for, but on my own two feet, life and experiences quickly begin to come at me and I begin to do as any teenager boy and got sidetracked from my true values, start hanging around the wrong people. Read more>>
Stephen & Natalie Morris
For many years, we attended anime and comic conventions as attendees enjoying the various activities and wares for sale. Over time, we noticed that one of our friends had their own unique artistic ability. We encouraged each other’s strengths to design products with an art style that incorporates the elements from Japanese Culture and anime/manga. We believed that other people would share interest in what we had to offer. We started attending conventions studying what made other vendors successful and what challenges they faced along the way. Read more>>
Nicole Kasper
I graduated with a music history & music business degree from UCLA in 2014. I had dreamed of pursuing a career in the music industry and specifically was interested in A&R. I had always been the friend who knew of cool new artists before they popped off. I loved music discovery and given my background as an Artist myself I dreamed of supporting a new Artist break through the noise. I moved to Nashville three weeks after I graduated without a job and began the grueling job interview process. Read more>>
Adam “Dj Jesse James aka Tommy Howard” Murphy
It started with self observation and observation of other fans like myself. I’m a fan of hip hop/rap; from mainstream to underground, I just watched how to engage with fans when it comes to presenting new music to them (whether the artist was notable or just starting out). I literally seen the beginning of marketing music on the internet from day one, 1998/1999. It started out with message boards and soundclick to social media / spotify (etc) we see today. When Napster hit, maaaaan, record labels didnt know what to do or think. The internet def took away a lot of power from the radio and djs. Read more>>