A dad can’t find a bakery to make a birthday cake that can accommodate his daughter’s allergy-related needs. Two freelancers realize they need a way to organize all of their client contracts and can’t find software that adequately handles their use case. Necessity is often hailed as the mother of innovation – but not all ideas come from necessity. Unfortunately, in our experience, often media coverage of the ideas that powered amazing businesses and projects often stops at a very superficial level. The founders noticed a need and boom – idea. Often the ideation process has a much longer, more complex story and so we’ve asked some entrepreneurs and creatives we admire to go into detail about their ideation stories.

Alexis Mobley

For years, I longed to own a business but didn’t believe I was ready or could make it ‘successful,’ though I never defined success. Fast-forward to 2020, when the world reckoned with the question of ‘What’s next?’ On a whim, with no expectation of acceptance, I applied to an accelerated graduate program at New York University (NYU) and was accepted! One of the first classes, ‘Research Process and Methods,’ acclimated us to writing for academic audiences and prepared us for research and thesis work the following Summer. Read more>>

Dawn Ann Ritter

After being a high fashion model (Ford Models) worldwide, and then an actress doing tv and film for all of my adult life. This gave me the knowledge and strong opinion on fabrics and most textiles, and styles of what I like and what I dont; what works well, and what doesn’t. I also am very picky with my designs on washability, and the care factor. Quality is everything along with my designs being “Made in America”. Read more>>

Christy Hiler

In addition to owning an advertising agency, I co-founded an initiative, Own It, to shine a light on the lack of female agency owners in the advertising industry. Less than 1% of agency owners are female. When I discovered that 2 years ago, I set out on a mission with another female agency owner to track and significantly grow that number. What started as a website to make it easy to track the number of female owners has grown into a very active community, podcast and annual summit. Read more>>

Lauren Scham

I got my start working fetish shows and I had a couple of assistants with me. I didn’t want them to be left out on billing or credit in flyers but I also needed a catchy name for them. I just so happened to have a Gotham City Sirens comic in front of me and the name Ybor City Sirens was born! Eventually a “wonderful” pandemic occurred and there were no more shows. I grew tired of the fetish community and wanted a way out so I decided to take a leap of faith and go back to my nerdy roots. Read more>>

Kayla Bullard

Growing up in the 90’s what girl wasn’t obsessed with body sprays, perfumes, candles, lotions? I loved going to Bath & Body Works & Victoria Secret (Cucumber Melon & Love Spell anyone?) In college (studying to become a teacher), I worked two jobs: one as a waitress and you guessed it, Bath & Body Works. I loved smelling all of the new smells and setting the floor with new products that would come in. I continued to pursue and earn my degree in teaching (currently still teach Kindergarten). However, Covid happened. I was used to managing twenty-something 5 year olds… what was I going to do with my time? I kept myself busy with outside projects through the Spring and Summer.  Read more>>

Ruby Rachman

“If only I had more free time, I would…” That’s what most people say. In 2020, amid a global pandemic, my life came to a standstill. I was a sophomore in high school. My school was closed, and worse still, my ballet school – the place I’d spent my afternoons for the past 14 years – was ordered to be shut.  So yes, I had A LOT of free time. While many of my friends were bingeing their favorite shows on Netflix, I was searching for a creative outlet. I tried knitting, but it required too much counting. Painting was fun, but there were too many things to clean. Origami had too many steps, and my cranes would end up in a crumpled mess. Read more>>

Michele Hornsby

The “HOW” is quite interesting and in some ways by happenstance, faith and God’s Guidance. My Husband Ray and I lost our son, Justin, to suicide in March of 2017. Needless to say, we were lost and had no idea how to deal with the grief of such a loss. One day you feel you are coping better, the next, like waves in the ocean, the grief, sadness, useless feelings, and all that go with it, come crashing down on you, and made me wonder, will I ever feel complete again? I often tell others that losing a child felt like losing an appendage. A huge part of me was no longer there. I felt as if I were plucked from the earth, and literally watching life continue without being a part of it. Read more>>

Jane Ubell-meyer

Bedside Reading Celebrates 7 years! Once upon a time…. at age twenty-two, I embarked on a seven-day scuba diving trip to St. Maarten with a boyfriend. Unfortunately, upon arrival, he declared himself ‘just a friend,’ leaving me defeated, deflated, and seriously unhappy. Luckily, I had brought a book, “Cry to Heaven” by Anne Rice, which saved my trip.  This experience taught me always to pack a book when traveling, a lesson that stuck with me even after a successful career as a television and film producer. (GMA, ET WSJ-TV, and three films). Read more>>

Robin Rutledge – Taylor

My business, Alpha To Omega Wholistic Therapeutic Services, started in 2002 as a mobile spa party company. While going through some challenging life circumstances, my health was being negatively impacted. In attempts to avoid traditional western medical solutions, I began seeking natural remedies and practices. During my research of alternative healing practices, I earned certifications in herbology, aromatherapy and Swedish massage therapy. I was motivated and eager to share my newfound knowledge with my community.The positive responses that I received regarding my services were confirmation that this was a worthwhile endeavor. As my health continued to improve, I continued to learn more about natural healing, specifically naturopathy, and share what I learned with others. I became most excited to see how empowered the people that I served became when they were given practical sustainable strategies to improve their health. Read more>>

Patrick Boylan

I took eight years of piano lessons and hated every minute of it. I didn’t like having to practice the same song over and over. I got too bored with that process, like so many other music students. My teacher retired, and I started sifting through my parents sheet music on my own time, grabbing phrases I enjoyed and improvising around them, putting them into different music contexts. I then repeated that process over and over with other phrases and realized that, by doing this, I ended up learning the building blocks of what makes up the musical theater genre. I can now sight read pretty much any musical theater piece. I now have three residencies here in LA, one at a piano bar called Tramp Stamp Granny’s, and two at restaurants playing for dinner services. Read more>>

Laurelle Glover

The idea of creating protective styles for black men and especially black women so they could enjoy the beauty of braids and still feel beautiful every day and most importantly in a professional setting. Over time black women have rose to being CEOs, business owners or just women wanting to feel good in their natural hair, but most often the idea of going to a salon and getting braids will be a dreadful experience from waiting for hours to get serviced to sitting in the chair for 6-12 hours and the braids will not be the best quality but will be so tight that it will cause long term hair loose. I have known a lot of women that went through that so I decided to change the narrative by not only creating a safe space for these women but most importantly provide a fast and efficient service that will focus on hair growth with tension free braiding techniques and ensuring the best quality braids on the market. Read more>>

Mitch Gray

During my years of leading teams and businesses, I experienced the struggle and frustration of hiring great people for my team. I moved from employee to employee trying to find the right make up and personalities for the team I was building. It was all a crap shoot at best. After years of struggling with hiring and recruiting, and losing amazing people along the way, I decided to try a different approach to hiring and building a team. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing at the time, and couldn’t put a name to it, but years later I was able to identify the steps I took to finally build all star teams and attract all star talent. Read more>> 

Avery Baker

Back in the day, I was running a clothing store and hip hop shop called Grande Central the Hip Hop Shop. This was a time when CDs were still in demand and they actually brought a lot of traffic to the store as People came by to get music they couldn’t find anywhere else in the area. As I was placing orders with my suppliers, I remember thinking, “I need to create my own brand.” That’s when the idea for Boss Ambitionz first sparked. At the time, I was selling a lot of graphic tees, heavily influenced by hip hop culture, which played a big role in shaping my vision. Read more>>

Charlene Bagcal

My company, AMOROUS, is a lifestyle brand dedicated to hosting curated, provocative events for LA’s rebel, misfit, and disruptor creative professionals. We’re also committed to offering educational experiences and products that nurture the growth of aspiring filmmakers and content creators. The idea for AMOROUS grew out of my frustration with the typical creative meetups, often held in coffee shops or noisy bars that lacked the inspiration and vibe I craved. As a professional screenwriter and filmmaker, my work has always embraced the dark, seductive, and mysterious, so I wanted to create exclusive events for those who appreciate the finer things in life and share my passion for aesthetics. Read more>>

Carrie Ellis

For a brief but cherished time in my life, I lived on a farm and absolutely loved it! I knew I had to find my way back to the land, surrounded by animals and back in my element. If you ever meet my husband, Ryan, you’ll quickly realize he’s the biggest foodie and loves me with his whole heart. While I was dreaming of a farm, he was more focused on when he could eat the animals (cue the eye roll). He was fully on board with the farm idea, but his big question was, “How are we going to afford it?” Plus, there was no way we could have cows, pigs, and chickens at our current home, which we were considering remodeling at the time. Read more>>

Diana Moreno

To start, we love Colombian food and we missed its flavors. To get Colombian food we had to travel far from Indiana. So my daughter Brenda and I thought that there were many people like us who missed our food and we decided to start this Mr Patakon project. Our main product is Patacon (t’s a green plantain, flat and crispy) hence the name of the restaurant. It is a healthy, delicious and unique product as we prepare it here. We try to please all consumers in terms of flavors and fillings and everything about a Patacon. Read more>>

Desiree Blackshear

I created Women’z Women DownTravel Group in 2019 after the birth of my daughter in 2017. Throughout my adult life I always enjoyed traveling domestic and international. Once I become pregnant I keep telling myself I didn’t want to loose that part of me in becoming a mother. I took some time to get adjusted to motherhood then I was ready to start back traveling. In becoming a mom we sometimes loose ourselves and just focus on that one aspect of our lives. While working thru the adjustment of motherhood I wondered how many women just needed to wind down from their everyday life but was to busy to plan a trip, girls night , brunch or maybe they just didn’t have friends that wanted to do the same things. That is how women’z wine down came to past. We are a Women’z travel group that focuses on the self-care of the everyday women that needs to Wine Down from her busy life. Our focal point is Traveling, Networking & Community Service. Read more>>

Jennifer Johnson

After getting a degree in two dimensional studies/Painting , mind you, which everyone told me not to get… I ended up continuing to work in restaurants and being a server. Getting a degree, doesn’t equal automatic employment, especially when you’re an artist. I knew that working in restaurants wasn’t my highest calling, and that I needed to do something related to my degree, so I picked up a part-time gig teaching Painting lessons. Read more>>

Sophie Delcoure

I’ve been through some tough situations in life because of my physical and mental health, especially physical health. Then, I realized I also needed spiritual healing. Because of the experiences, it’s led me to learning and acting on all possible solutions so that I may be able to live a functional and happy life. I started by healing myself. (I’d like to mention here that “healing” is not the same as “curing” as healing is a continuous process throughout life to evolve and become better, whereas curing is solving a problem that will not return once resolved and is not a continuous process.) I needed to address several issues I was faced with emotionally, physically, and spiritually that had kept me from my potential and my authentic self. To be frank, it stole my happiness! As I went through (and still going through) the process, it became very clear that all of us need that kind of love, help, and support.  Read more>>

Quintina Rocio

My journey with AEZIRA began with my own personal healing journey. I was caught in a relentless cycle of shame, too afraid to ask for help, too paralyzed to acknowledge the depth of my trauma. It was as if I was living in a cage, one where the bars were made of my own fears and self-doubt. There came a point where I knew I couldn’t go on like this. Something had to change, or I wouldn’t survive. That realization was both terrifying and liberating. It was the moment I decided to take control of my life, to dig deeper into the reasons why I felt broken and to find a way out of the darkness. Read more>>

Jr Christiansen

The idea to start my photography business emerged organically from my experiences in the fashion and creative industries. I’ve always had a passion for photography, using 35mm and disposable cameras growing up, but initially, I didn’t consider it as a career. My creative journey led me to study advertising and fashion merchandising, after graduating from The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. I started working in the visual department for Nordstroms and Bergdorf Goodman. After leaving the retail industry I started working as a Fashion Stylist for music artists and styling fashion editorials. Read more>>

Kourtney Awadalla

I came up with the idea of creating sprouts juice from an idea of creating a late night sort of fast food but healthy vegan spot that you could get quinoa bowls, salad bowls, smoothies, juices and etc after hours like around 1-2am. This concept came about because back on 2013-14 I stopped eating meat and went pescatarian / vegetarian and at the time I would still go out some places to club with friends and the only thing open late that I could eat was fries lol. So my idea of creating a space where us more health conscious individuals could have something healthy to eat was thought of. Read more>>

Stefon Ikner

I have a degree in business marketing from Delaware State University, and the reason I start off by saying that because my major started off in accounting. A professor at my university said I always had a creative approach to issues and always seen a solution in a problem. My professor introduced me to marketing and immediately I fell in love, with both aspects of marketing business to consumer and business to business and on top of that I’ve always had a entrepreneur spirit. My first business was in elementary school selling bootleg Sega Dreamcast video games at the age of 9 and 10. Fast-forward to 2018 where I created my first LLC and company which was a online beauty store, which ultimately was not successful which is the reason I sold it. Read more>>

Emmy Olea

Being a podcaster was never in my plans. In 2017, I wrote a memoir that was supposed to be for therapeutic reasons, it wasn’t intended for anyone to read it. After a painful breakup in 2019, I traveled to Barcelona and rewrote the ending. I let my friend Jeni read it, and she said “Em, there’s something special here. You can help so many people if you let others read it”. When the world shut down, I set on a journey to try and get the book published. As I was gathering testimonials, one of my friends asked if he could pass the book proposal to someone who would be “riveted” with these stories. I said, “Sure, why not”. A week later, I received a phone call from that someone, and he asked if I’d be interested in taking my dating stories and turning them into a podcast. Read more>>

Hugo Sanchez

As a touring musician I always wanted to keep myself in the music industry. I just didn’t know if it was always gonna be through music. Being a newlywed I was looking on spending more time with my wife so I wanted to start some sort of business locally. I had always been to Go-To guy for any type of gear musicians needed so I felt that was a good place to start. The only thing was that being a musician didn’t give you the most financial freedom so of course I was scared of taking a risk. It took about 2 years for me to really decide to open up a store simply because I felt like we didn’t have the money or resources. Read more>>

Kristofer Vilcapoma

While interning at Lampdock at Blackhall Studio, I noticed that while they had a great business renting out lighting and grip gear to big movie studios, there was a significant gap in the market for indie filmmakers. Indie studios often have limited budgets and can’t afford the high rates that come with renting from places that cater primarily to larger productions. This sparked an idea: what if we could create a service that provided the same high-quality equipment but tailored it to the needs and budgets of indie studios? I realized there was an opportunity to make professional-grade gear more accessible to a broader range of filmmakers, which could ultimately help foster more creativity and innovation in the indie film space. That’s how the idea was born. Read more>>