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.

Conrad Paul

Haha, man, its pretty wild how it all started really. It was late October 2021, and I was working a 9-5 at a local cigar shop on Melrose called The V Cut. After having the covid virus, I was suppose to return back to work once healed. But I kinda just, never went back. Instead, I packed a bag for Palm Springs for a few days & stayed at my boy’s to get away from the city. Turned into 10. Read more>>

Ticada Guyton

Since my early twenties, I’ve wanted to write an autobiography to inspire other young women with whom I shared similar experiences. While my experiences were not firsts of any kind, I did have a unique twist in my story because for some odd reason I was able to beat the odds; I didn’t become a statistic as many of my predecessors did after experiencing so much at such an early age. So, after graduate school, I began to put pen to paper. Unfortunately, my writing project was in progress for over 15 years. I would start and stop writing every few months. Read more>>

Taylor Patrick

I dropped out of college during covid-19 so around fall semester of 2020. I needed something else to do fast as i wasnt going to school, i always had an interest in hair wigs specifically. I started to do my own hair ans would always get compliments such as “I love your hair! Who did it?” Or “I love your hair do you have any business cards?” Read more>>

Jesse Robinson

I had worked for a handful of other Los Angeles TV/Film production companies, in a variety of roles, from media sales to writing to directing and story producing. In a half-decade of working on productions for other companies, I came to the realization that I now possessed the knowledge and industry connections necessary to be able to launch a business of my own! Read more>>

Israeio Holloway

As a survivor of abuse in 2015 I chose to never become a victim again. My resilience to motivate others by sharing my testimony to inspire and position myself as an overcomer by defeating the odds against me as an image of hope was critical. I incorporated Hope and Divine Purpose Transitional Living Home, Inc. in the State of IL. Read more>>

Susan/Tom Bryenton/Malengo

Once we realized what we wanted to do – provide emerging CPG brands with the education & networking they required to be successful – we met a like-minded person & decided to partner on solving the problem. We knew we wanted a national presence. Many organizations exist on a local level, for knowledge & connections, but those only exist in major “food hubs.” We wanted to give every entrepreneur across the country an opportunity to meet with industry experts & investors, and best present their emerging company to investors. Read more>>

Marcus Tamez

Rabble Rouza Records started out simultaneously with our music group Heretic Klick in late 2004 early 2005 in our mother’s garage, me (Marcus Wicked-T Tamez)and my brother (Eddie Sin-X Tamez) started to record our own music, once we found our sound we decided to get serious about our music. There was alot of ups and downs at first from dealing with bad promoters and losing money to trying finding good Studios and engineers. Read more>>

Bradley Banks

Honestly, I’m still in the process LOL. I didn’t know I was a business until I started operating as one. So for a while, I was getting booked without having all of my business in order I would just show up and sing. Although my background was in artist management I knew how to handle business for others but when it came to myself I was slacking. I took a moment to become my own client and put myself through my management plan. Read more>>

Alexander Justin Gonzales

How did COA Pictures begin? Just like every artist and filmmaker the idea of creating a business was daunting but necessary. As an artist we’re so focussed on creating the art first that monetizing and creating a business structure seemed nearly impossible. COA began in 2017 before selling my first feature film. Read more>>

Hannah Kik

Taking a project from idea to execution has been a deeply rewarding adventure that has shaped my career in photography and creative direction. It all began when I discovered my passion for photography at the age of 13 by convincing my younger sister and neighborhood friends to model my mother’s vintage prom dresses for elaborate photoshoots in the backyard. . By the time I was 14, I had secured my first paid client. Read more>>

Stella Carakasi

Our story began in early 1993 as pioneers in sustainable fashion. My business partners and I were early eco-fashion disruptors when we launched the first hemp clothing collection in the Read more>>

Kristina McInnis

It all began with a simple idea, a spark of inspiration that danced into my mind. Growing up in a family deeply rooted in business, I had always been exposed to the world of entrepreneurship. So, one day, I decided to take the plunge and turn my passion for marketing into a reality. Read more>>

Steffani Aquila

The mission of my business, which is more like a ministry, was created out a very festive family life. I was gifted with many vibrant, heart-warming, memory making opportunities to celebrate seasons and feast days throughout the year. That part of my life made a lasting impression on my faith, the way I appreciate culture, and how I participate in the world around me. Read more>>

Jasmine Brooks

I transitioned from teaching in the classroom to working in a high school in 2014. It changed my life. As the college success coordinator at Voyageur College Prep, I didn’t realize that the coaching, the one-on-ones, the presentations, and parent meetings would prepare me to launch JMB Advising. In the summer of 2016 my college mentor Jenell Mansfield reached out to my as and said she needed someone to lead her knowledge for college summer program. Read more>>

Albert Kelly

I started a clothing line So Rocky Clothing in 2020. I was finding and utilizing vendor events /pop up shops to network and earn money for my brand. What I noticed is a lot of the events were poorly organized and didn’t have a lot of traffic. As a well known Dj & event promoter in my area that prompted me to solve that problem by hosting my own vendor events. Read more>>

Vanessa Vega

COVID had just turned for the worse and schools had closed down to do virtual learning. I was now faced with the decision to quit my 8-5 office job, to become a stay at home mom of three kids with two doing virtual learning. I found it very difficult to not work so I decided well I am home, I had saved all this money, why not finally do something for myself. Read more>>

Christina Williams

Coming up with an idea for a business is probably the quickest part of setting up a business. The rest of your life will be spent figuring out how to bring the idea to life, and how to put out all the fires that come with operating a business. Once I understood that I wanted to sell vegan glosses, I spent around 4 months locating suppliers and testing out samples. Read more>>

Kristen Johnson

In the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, I was deeply inspired to make a meaningful difference, and I knew that identifying a cause I was personally passionate about was the crucial first step. That’s when the idea of starting my HBCU nonprofit foundation began to take shape. I understood the power of education and how historically black colleges and universities played a crucial role in empowering black students. Read more>> 

Laura Green

I am primarily a painter although I have worked in other media in the past. I use my own photographic references, and that is as simple as scrolling through my phone to a recent outing or event that I found to be meaningful or aesthetically pleasing. For example, I was working on a series where I wanted trees from the San Diego area. Read more>>

Whitney & Calvin Trapp

After determining that our mobile business would be out of a trailer, the hunt began for the size that would work best for us. During covid, there seemed to be a limited number of trailers available for purchase. Calvin lucked up on a brand new one on Facebook marketplace from a guy who was unable to start a business of his own. Read more>>

Keishawn Blackstone

I started Play with 150$ on my credit card , the idea of creating a company that can big as big as some of the worlds biggest conglomerates sounded pretty unreal however taking the risk i know with time could be just as big as the vision. Making a solid business plan with a mission that i had to stay true to was step one in the process. The start of Play came shortly after Tak3 One Productions which at the time we were just focused on content and creation in film production . Read more>>

Carlos Battey

Starting an idea can be exciting and stressful at the same time. Music always spoke to me ever since I was a child and I always wanted to make an impact not just in my life but others as well. As I became seasoned in the music business, I went on to sell over 30 million records as a Grammy award winning songwriter. Read more>>

Jamie Jude

I was visiting LA from northern California. I was hanging out with my two childhood friends; George Bladon and Koutn Hagopian. All three of us had developed an interest in film throughout high school and had each produced little videos of our own attempting to showcase our skills. That night we were getting dinner and we were all feeling creatively restless, wanting to make something…anything. Read more>>

Bianca Pietersz

Every seemingly unrelated endeavor I have done thus far in life has somehow culminated into what I am doing now. I grew up on stages and in auditions singing, acting, and dancing and was very dedicated to performance in my youth. I always used visual arts as a meditative way of process my emotions and started my first business selling portraits and art which later evolved into animation and Augmentd reality. Read more>>

Niya Johnson

My son, Mansa, is my inspiration. Teaching him takes me back to my childhood, specifically the first 10 years of my life when I would line up my teddy bears and pretend they were my students. I had so many other hobbies and interests, but one thing I never doubted was that I would always find joy in teaching. Read more>>

Mila Shmurak

Where do I begin? I guess I should start by giving a short history of my family. My parents came from Russia in the 70’s with little money and language. They met here and started a family and started a family business, Knitwear Doctor and ButtonHam Palace, which my sister and I grew up in. We would go there after school, help customers and learned the entrepreneurial way of life. Read more>>

Chase Elder

my chef career started in restaurants which is pretty common. what is unusual is that I started at the top and worked my way down. I was given an opportunity to manage a kitchen before I even knew how to butcher a chicken! I knew I wanted to be a chef. I knew I didn’t have time or financial means to go to culinary school at 29 years old. Read more>>

Jamie Poe

When we started the R&D process, we thought “piece of cake- we have 50+ years of culinary experience between us”- SO WRONG. The journey of creating great tasting, vegan shelf stable, just-add-boiling-water dehydrated meals that are free of artificial flavors and preservatives proved to be a bigger challenge than we thought. We must have iterated 50+ times, and even the first ones we launched with were not what we intended to put out to the world. Read more>>

Beth Nori

I have been lucky in that my journey has been very organic. I am a big believer in “following the bread crumbs” and saying yes to opportunities. I began as a very green graphic designer at a cutting-edge marketing company. I worked hard, delivered good work and took initiative. Gradually, as colleagues moved on to other opportunities, they would reach out with small projects here and there. I worked my full-time job by day, and well into the night on freelance opportunities. Read more>>

Nakira McCrea

For as long as I can remember I knew I would own my wine business. I’d researched how to start one in the past however, I didn’t find much information on the subject. The night I decided to go for it I couldn’t sleep and went down a rabbit hole researching and found more information than I’d found in previous years. From that moment on I’d spent months learning and cold calling industry experts. Read more>>

Emily Harper Petrie

I have always love photography as a form of self-expression, empowering others, and storytelling. At the beginning I was living in my college town of Columbia, Missouri, and I did a lot of passion projects asking my friends to model for me and style them in vintage clothing pieces, volunteering to photograph music festivals, and things of that nature. At some point the friends I had photographed began referring me out to their friends and word of mouth was my main form of marketing, aside from an online portfolio I kept on a free Weebly site for many years. Read more>>

Melany Bibiano

When I was still in high school 2017 . I had no passion to be in school ended up being home schooled and I just had too much free time on my hands & of course too much free time ends up getting you in trouble . I wanted to stay focus but I couldn’t . I ended up picking up hobbies to keep my mind busy but nothing was catching my eye . Read more>>

Erin Keene

Once I finally decided to pursue the idea of opening a wine shop, I became a bit of mad scientist. I was living in a tiny studio apartment at the time and the pandemic was in full swing, so I was able to put all of my time and energy into the plans. There were endless handwritten lists, tabs of excel docs and open bottles of wine everywhere. Read more>>

Eme Carranza

The first time I remodeled my house, I decided to knock down a wall. When I returned to see how it turned out, the space had changed and therefore my way of inhabiting it. That was the point where I realized the capacity we have as humans to alter the environment in which we live. To design the scenarios of our life. Read more>>

Tylla Ovezova

Throughout my experience, I learned that Ideas, no matter how brilliant, hold little value if they remain only as concepts. The act of executing those ideas is what brings them to life and allows them to have an impact in the real world. Read more>>

Brady Gibson

As i began picking up on design and starting to feel confident in it after 2 years of practice, i took another risk & quit my job and forced myself to focus on design full time to pay my bills. I began a 365 day project – doing a design every single day for a year. This project turned into 2.5 years – with the result of gaining a large following, a large amounts of clients, and most importantly a huge burning passion for design with lots of experience under my belt. Read more>>

Mike Smith

I started detailing cars at a very young age. I would use my parents driveway up until I got my drivers license. Once I had my drivers license, I had freedom. I had the freedom to go mobile. I would pack all of my supplies in the back of my truck and offer mobile detailing services. This was an on and off again process. I would get other jobs thinking they would provide better and find myself falling back into detailing again. Read more>>

Lauren Fontein

We envisioned the concept for The Artist Tree when we were applying for retail and lounge licenses in the city of West Hollywood. Since we’d been working in the cannabis industry for so long, we really wanted to create something that broke the mold – something new and unique that would stand out amongst Los Angeles’s hundreds of pot shops. We also wanted to create a space that would be inviting to a wide variety of customers – a place where newbies would feel comfortable, while also catering to hard core stoners. Read more>>

Raven Roth

Going from an idea to execution wasn’t a very long process when I started up my business. The idea of me becoming a lash artist came arose my freshman year of college when my best friend and I were looking for part-time jobs. She thought lashing would be a good side job for me while in school and started to look more into it for me. Read more>>

Miss Jojo Joanna Burke

When you find something you really love the thought that follows is how can I set myself up to do this for the rest of my life? Is it possible to make a career out of doing something that brings me this much joy? Perhaps so if I turn it into a business, so let’s start where what everything in life comes down to, money. Read more>>

Katie Rose Lee

My interest in photography began around two years ago. I had just finished my first year of college and realized that I hated the major I was in, and my job wasn’t bringing me any joy or fulfillment either. That summer, I played around with my dad’s camera taking the standard nature and flower pictures. I was hooked. I knew this was what I wanted to do. Read more>>

Lee Fountain

It was always my dream to become an anime character if I’m being honest. A power fantasy I’ve had since I was 12 years old watching Dragon Ball Z and Tenchi Universe on Toonami. I’ve always been a student of the arts and was obsessed with every medium of it. Music, dance, movies, illustrations, all of it. Read more>>

ROCKWOOD PRODUCTIONS

I ORIGINALLY STARTED MAKING BEATS BACK IN 2015, I WAS INSTANTLY IN LOVE WITH THE PROCESS WHEN A FRIEND OF MINE SHOWED ME THE SOFTWARE HE FOUND THAT WAS USED TO CREATE MUSIC PRODUCTION. OVER THE YEARS I THOUGHT TO MYSELF THAT I COULD BE A GREAT MUSIC PRODUCER AND CHASED THE CRAFT DAY IN AND DAY OUT. THE YEARS OF WORK IT TOOK TO LEARN EVERYTHING THAT ENTAILS MUSIC PRODUCTION WAS FAR FROM SHORT. Read more>>

Ilana Zweschi

Having an art business is non-linear. This is one of the best and worst things about it. There is a lot of freedom but also a lot of uncertainty that can lead to the whole thing dying out. The biggest test of an artist is continuing to make art because everything in your life demands that studio time– paying jobs, social and family engagements, errands, etc. Read more>>

Jon Paton

I did a ton of research both online and in the kitchen. I traveled across the midwest making meals for friends and family, acquiring as much feedback as I could, I spent weeks putting the initial business plan together, did and re-did the math about a hundred times. I looked for commercial space for months, and when covid hit, an opportunity to rent a kitchen fell into my lap. Read more>>

Amanda Immurs

I was a child that loved to make things and get my hands dirty. Drawing was always a favorite past time. When I was in high school a family friend past away and I was gifted this persons painting tool box which included all the things I needed to teach myself how to paint in oil. Twenty five years later oil is still my go to medium of choice. Read more>>