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.

Amber Gray

I started my virtual assistant business out of frustration with my VP of operations job and a desire to make a more meaningful impact on the world. My goal from the beginning has been to create something that scales and provides work opportunities for as many freelance VAs as possible and to improve the success rates for small businesses everywhere. I knew I needed others to join me in doing that, but I had to start from ground zero. Read more>>

Kendall Cherry

Most people see my success as a copywriter and how I hit six figures in revenue within our first year of business and think that it’s always been this way, like I was on overnight success story. But before I got here, I had been an entrepreneur for a couple of years, and my first few business concepts failed…hard. If I could give myself one piece of advice, it would be to remember that it’s not always the first idea that gets you to find that massive success. When you run a business, the slower (better but harder answer to accept) is that you learn the business skills that will help you grow. It’s not something you learn from a textbook and it’s not from buying the right course, it’s truly just how much time you’ve spent in the game. Read more>>

Jen Taylor

We opened the doors at Delta Life Fitness Friendswood on December 17, 2018 — a day I will never forget. Since then, we have grown tremendously as a business, and though it has been amazing, it didn’t happen overnight. The endless days leading up to opening day were exhausting, but I didn’t realize that was the easy part; I didn’t even know what hard work was yet. I didn’t know that I would be all the things that my business needed — the front desk, the sales associate, the childcare worker, the maintenance girl, the janitor, the handyman… Read more>>

Dr. Shamieka Dean

The greatest scaling strategy is mindset. While there are many tools, tips, and techniques to scale a business it is only as successful as your belief system. Belief systems become birthing systems. Once I did the mindset work, my income and impact increased drastically. The biggest mindset shifts I had to make were money mindset, desire to deserve and next to now. I decided that no amount of money would intimidate me. I decided that money worked for me and I didn’t work for it. Read more>>

Alexander Ladouceur

Working hard and taking a lot of risk benefited myself and my business through the many years of doing photography. Everything matters of how you work with others, no matter how good of an artist you may be. My clientele has skyrocketed about 70-80% more than a year ago because I kept true to my work and kept true to my work ethics. Showing up 15-30 minutes early, calling/texting to give a heads up, having quick turnarounds, being honest and real, keep it fun and friendly, and being polite are all my trades in keeping my business successful. I see my future as this: I work with 1 clientele, a chain of events occur, thus creating more opportunities and experiences for my future. Read more>>

Alyssa Gay

Back when I first drummed up the idea of starting my own business, I didn’t want a team. In fact, I swore against it. Growing up engrossed in small business, I saw the challenges that both being a business owner and having a team brought. I started as a one-woman show – but soon realized that with how passionate I was to inspire and empower business owners to take back their life by outsourcing their marketing efforts, and that if I wanted to help as many business owners as possible, I couldn’t do it alone. Read more>>

Van-adam Pierre

Initially, everything started over social media. Me & a couple of childhood friends at the time created a slogan (popularized after Drake’s “Y.O.L.O” saying) called “R.O.L.O”, which stands for “Roll One, Light One” and it grew into something I didn’t expect at that moment. At the time not only was the meaning fresh but the idea of happily & freely smoking marijuana wasn’t totally popularized and was still seen as a bad thing. Read more>>

Desiree Thornton-Swiney

In April 2022, we celebrated 12 years in business. Often times people tell me how easy I make it look, but I quickly correct them by saying it has been and still is the most difficult yet rewarding journeys of my life. There is so much that goes into starting, maintaining, and growing a successful business. Just within the past two years our business faced a numbers of challenges. During COVID we had to learn how to keep our business afloat despite everything that was going on around us. Read more>>

George Puga

Before covid started La Cajita was participating in different community pop-up shops and I also got the opportunity to partner up with a good friend at Casa XoVi in Barrio Logan where I was able to have La Cajita Dulces & gifts at the shop. Months later when Covid hit, La Cajita took a big hit due to no longer being able to participate in pop-up shops and retail stores. During that time I took some time to look into new products, and make changes to the website and work on my advertising. Read more>>

Katina Harrison

Our customer based has tripled since we opened in 2017. We went from manually taking orders on sticky notes to a fully automating our ordering system and customer database. Converting customers to our new way of fulfilling orders was not a easy process. We launched our first Shopify e-commerce site in the Spring of 2019. We moved our customers database from my cell phone to Mailchimp. Building our current customer base has not been easy. Initially customers were slow to migrate. Read more>>

Alexis/Sanarr Day/McLaughlin

digitalXmedia was founded in 2019 based on the owner’s agency and client-side experience and their desire to add value to the marketing support ecosystem by streamlining the resource acquisition process, making it more affordable for business owners and more accessible for marketing professionals. But it did not start out that way! Read more>>

Christie Saxer

In May of 2021 I finally decided that I was done working for someone else and making them rich while at the same time being taken advantage of like so many other employees out there in the working world. When I first decided to open my business, I sat down and thought to myself: Okay, you know no one out here in Denver (I’m originally from Illinois) so how are you going to get yourself out there? Here’s what I know: I know that I not only saw my mother attend, but often times tagged along with her to the Chamber of Commerce events back home and I know that that’s a great way to meet the right people that can help you grow in more ways than one. Read more>>

Boss Shan Boss Shan

A lot of people see the glitter but don’t see what happens behind the scenes. Scaling up requires more than just spending more money. It wasn’t until I started treated my company like an actual entity and incorporating structure that helped me grow my business from hundreds a month to bringing in six figures a month. I hired coaches, created systems so I could work smarter not harder, and built a team so I wasn’t doing everything myself. Read more>>

Cara Vasquez

I love this topic because it’s so true, that from the outside, it looks so easy. Like we woke up one day and said, tomorrow I’m going to open a business! and then it all runs smoothly. No one sees the months or years of planning, how difficult it can be to get a loan or a lease for your first business or how many hours go into the day to day. Before, during and after “success” there are bad days, the days that everyone calls in sick or even worse, the days that no customers show up! Read more>>