Starting a business is hard because it’s a fight with yourself, an internal battle – gaining the courage to get started, etc. Scaling a business is different – the challenges you face are mostly external to yourself. Each challenge has a million mini-challenges. We wanted to create a space for conversations and stories around growth and scaling. Below, you’ll find stories and insights from successful entrepreneurs across a variety of industries and markets.

Kevin Summers

I have scaled up my one-person DJ company from a sparsely filled calendar of events for whoever would hire me, wherever they were celebrating, for whatever they would pay; to an optimally full calendar of events that I want to DJ, for clients that I’ve targeted, in desired locations, for the premium service price that I set. This was very purposeful and took about 4 years to fully implement in my market as a DJ. My story has some very transferrable ideas for other entrepreneurs, business owners, and creatives; and I’m happy to share here on CanvasRebel. Read more>>

Belén De La Cruz

I opened my first store with the support of my brother and the encouragement of my family, a great team, and a community that believed in me. I’m a self-made cook and entrepreneur, so I had to learn everything from scratch. We had to find a suitable location, set up a commercial kitchen, and become familiar with all the rules and regulations. For our second store, we had the learnings from the first one. Read more>>

Vi Nguyen

It took me 8 years to get Homads to where it is today. Most people don’t realize how difficult it is to build up to where we are because they are incremental steps each time with multiple setbacks throughout the journey. They often say that you should do things that aren’t scalable at the beginning and then at some point, you can automate it to scale further. I think that’s true but I think the part that sets experienced entrepreneurs and those still learning is the when. It was really difficult for me to distinguish when I should stop doing non scalable things and automate and vice versa. Typically you think it’s linear but there’s a lot of going back and forth. Read more>>