Going from idea to execution isn’t easy. Part of the difficulty is that often there is no playbook to follow and while we can’t offer a playbook either, we wanted to create a space where aspiring entrepreneurs could read the stories of how some very smart, very thoughtful entrepreneurs form the community got started.

Dr. Katrina Burruss

Lit for the Culture™ honestly started as a love letter to the Black woman. Not the celebrity. Not the influencer with millions of followers. But the everyday Black woman carrying brilliance, creativity, trauma, purpose, gifts, exhaustion, resilience, and dreams all at the same time. The woman writing books after surviving heartbreak. The woman launching a business while battling depression. Read More>>

Oyafunmilayo Lee

All GoodT Things didn’t start as a business idea. It started as a remembering. I became deeply curious about why things like Florida Water felt so familiar spiritually, even before I fully understood the history behind them. As I researched more, I realized these weren’t just products. Read More>>

Adriana Rivas

The idea did not come to me in a single moment. It built slowly, the way most real things do. Read More>>

Kristian Gilmore

Sometimes as creatives, we get so focused on the idea and even the planning stage that it never makes it out of the storyboard. At first, that can feel inspiring, but eventually it becomes a distant memory, stuck in its infant stage instead of becoming full grown. You have to accept that it won’t be perfect. Read More>>

Stacy Ennis

I started my business in a one-bedroom apartment in the Dominican Republic (and worked from my bed because it was our only room with AC). I tried building a travel writing business, but that proved ill-compensated, so I switched gears, eventually setting a personal challenge to send thirty query letters to thirty publications in thirty days. Read More>>

Luke Pilgrim

What makes our work unique is that we are involved in every part of the process. We are not just the people coming up with the ideas. We are also the ones out in the field filming, editing, shaping the story, and ultimately delivering the final product. Read More>>

Pouria Safa

Back in 2013, there were not many real estate photographers in the market. Most realtors were taking photos with their phones or basic cameras. At the same time, property staging was becoming more popular, and I saw an opportunity in real estate photography. I decided to give it a shot. Read More>>

Annalisa Summea

I was published for the first time when I was nine years old. I won a statewide contest. My poem was chosen to read at an event at the governor’s mansion. So from a very early age, I had the writing bug, and I got my first literary agent when I was 23. And from that point on, people asked me how to get published. Read More>>

Brandi Zapchenk

It started with a guided meditation I didn’t take seriously. I was in North Carolina in 2012, facilitating an event for social entrepreneurs, and a friend led the group through a visualization exercise — imagine what your life looks like ten years from now. I closed my eyes and saw a riad. Read More>>

David Bober

so fuzzy, sometimes romanticized notions of what one’s ‘goal’ or destination may look like I think can be both positive and also carry risk. If you accept from the outset that life rarely follows a script and that the unknowns relating to your journey may be significant that may temper disillusionment along the way. Read More>>

Rebecca Nicholson

It was December 2022, and I was sitting in the chair at the salon getting my hair done. I was excitedly telling Silvia, my hair stylist and owner of the salon, that my husband and I decided we were going to take the risk and open up my years-long dream of an independent kitchen retail store. Read More>>

Kira Simmons

Honestly, it didn’t start with some big master plan—it started with me just baking, like I always did. I’ve always been the one bringing desserts, trying new recipes, just doing it because I loved it. But at some point, I had that moment like… wait, why am I not taking this seriously? Read More>>

Laura Doman

Sometimes, the answer is right there in front of you. It can even be part of the “silver lining” everyone talks about when life gets turned upside down and things go terribly wrong. Covid was one of those moments for a great many people. But while it disrupted everything we considered “normal,” it also opened doors to opportunities that may not have existed otherwise. Read More>>

Brianna McNar

Starting Off the Fields Media Training was deeply personal for me, and the foundation of it really began while I was a student at The Ohio State University in 2016. At the time, I became the first Black female sports reporter for the university. That experience changed my life. Read More>>

Lisa jacovsky

It didn’t begin as a perfectly mapped-out plan—it started as an idea that stayed with me long enough that I knew I had to do something with it. At first, I was simply curious. I had this vision for a children’s book, but I didn’t rush into writing right away. Instead, I spent time researching—really understanding what makes a children’s book work. Read More>>

Nikki Rozell

Honestly, I’ve always been selling something. When I was little, I was drawing pictures and trying to sell them to anyone who would take one. I’d also “run” a pretend restaurant out of a play kitchen and charge for food. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was my first exposure to business. Read More>>

Alicia Blanchar

I remember sitting at my desk around 3 or 4 am in the morning brainstorming about the name of my business I originally started out as Cakes by Sade. I would only bake velvet cakes like red velvet etc.. then I moved to actually selling dinners and from there I’ve been doing it every since. Read More>>

Yayi Dia

I didn’t rush Eleveé Co., LLC into existence, instead, I gave it room to grow into something intentional. The idea first came to me in September, not as a fully formed business, but as a realization. I had already been doing the work for years—creative direction, brand storytelling, PR strategy, event curation—just under my own name. Read More>>

Indhu Sekar

Greg, a licensed General Contractor with nearly 15 years of experience, had long been positioned to establish his own firm. With deep technical expertise and a trusted network of highly skilled trade partners, the foundation was already in place—it simply required the right moment. That moment arrived in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which significantly impacted our home and surrounding community. Read More>>

Natalie Poindexter

**How did you actually start — walk us through the process of going from idea to execution.** The idea for Scaffina didn’t come from a lightbulb moment. It came from watching the same problem play out over and over again with my nonprofit clients — and finally getting tired of watching it. I’m a grant writer turned funding systems architect. That’s what I do. Read More>>