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.
Rachel Nelson
I scaled up by investing in my brand. The branding (or rebranding) process is where you get radically honest about who you are, what you stand for, and what makes you different. That clarity shifts everything. From there, your brand becomes an outward expression of your truth. Read More>>
Shana Wanco
My business really transformed in 2020/2021 when I decided to no longer print all our work by myself, & shifted to taking work outside of my community & state. I realized I needed someone to help me in the studio to assemble all the work as my business got larger. I started with interns from the local university, which didn’t always pan out. Read More>>
Kirsten Fisher
I always had a big vision and ambition for Imagine Home Organization, the luxury home services company servicing Tampa Bay and Sarasota. However, when I started, it was just me, figuring out all the things that were going to work (and not work) along the way. It was a shoulder surgery that forced me to hire my first employee. Read More>>
Chrishara Richardson
⸻ When I first started CeceCollections, I was doing hair from my mom’s house… taking clients outside. No glam studio. No fancy setup. Just passion, faith, and a dream. I picked up a few marketing tips in cosmetology school, but the real shift happened when I decided to become a student in life — not just in school. Read More>>
KJ Blattenbauer
From the outside, my business looked successful long before it felt sustainable. I had clients. Media wins. Revenue coming in. But I was tired. I was saying yes too often. Over-delivering to prove my value. Tying my income directly to how many hours I could physically produce. It worked, until it didn’t. Scaling for me wasn’t about hiring a big team or going viral. Read More>>
Jason Betancourt Gina Fourell
When I started Crucial Entertainment, it was originally just me, some low end CD players, turntables, and a pair of beat-up speakers. When I met my now business partner Gina, every changed and started moving upwards week by week and year by year. Read More>>
Barrett Culpepper
By creating our own training system. The biggest challenge for us being such a niche service was finding new qualified techs. I needed a way to expedite the typical apprenticnheip experience. We spent years being understaffed. The clients were always keeping us busy with work but demand made our turnaround months out. Read More>>
Crystal Claudio
Success doesn’t always happen overnight. For me, it took years of dedication, hard work & a lot of marketing. In the beginning, I was working a full-time job while taking clients before & after work in our home. Read More>>
Mary Katherine Mason-Alston
How did I scale up?
Step by step — and by never biting off more than I could chew.
I started out of my house, baking in my own kitchen and buying packaging in quantities I could both afford and store. When the time came to move into a commercial kitchen, I found one close to home with an affordable rate. By using their licensed facility, I was able to legally sell my product wholesale. Read More>>
Abby Souffrant
Scaling didn’t happen overnight – it happened in layers. And honestly, there were at least two different “scale-ups”: the first was scaling myself from doing everything manually, and the second was scaling the business into a repeatable engine that could serve more businesses consistently without sacrificing quality. Read More>>