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.
Brittany Cobb
When I started my business in 2009, it was a seasonal flea market pop up. I grew up in California and shopped markets, antique malls and vintage stores my entire life. When I moved to Dallas in 2001, there wasn’t a lot of options to shop this way. The idea to create my own was out of a need. I was also a lifestyle editor at the time meeting talented artisans, creatives and small business owners daily. I had the contacts to put a pop up market together — way before they became trendy — and I went for it. I wanted to solve a problem that I had, but knew deep my in vintage loving soul others had too. I was right and it worked! For ten years I continued to grow the markets across Dallas and even Houston. Read more>>
Brent Schwanbeck
As a woodworker, I was drawn to the idea of using some of our local Texas timber to build furniture. I found it difficult finding a local source for local timber, and ended up driving out to a small sawmill in east Texas where I purchased a truck bed full of local oak from Texas trees. As I was half way through my long trip home driving through road construction, I noticed a tractor pushing over beautiful mature oak trees into a large burn pile! To that company, these stately Texas oaks were waste that needed to disappear. I saw a different purpose in sustainably sourcing these local trees that are being removed and giving them new life by preserving their beauty and producing slabs and furniture out of them. Read more>>
Lacey Tezino
Passport Journeys was born out of the grieving process that came with losing my mother to stage 4 lung cancer. From diagnosis to death, we had 9 months to reconcile, heal and grow together. My mother and I became extremely intentional about our relationship and how we spent our time because we knew it was limited. After she passed away, I tried many different methods to cope with the loss. The only tangible relief that I felt was by traveling and visually marking my grief journey through passport stamps and new countries. One day it hit me – I didn’t want my grief to be in vain or only about suffering. I wanted to promote intentional bonding, Read more>>
Jamie Andrews
I was a stay at home mom for 20 years for my two daughters. I worked various part time jobs and volunteered much of my time with whatever activities my girls were involved in such as Girl Scouts, School events, concert band and marching band in high school. While volunteering, I had also been making cakes for 10 years or so for friends and family and they always encouraged me to sell my cakes!! After my girls graduated from high school I needed to go back to the work force and find a full time job so I decided to give selling cakes out of my home a try. Thus Sparkling Divine was born! Read more>>
Chandleur Macksood Macksood
While building my career and working long shifts at one of the world’s largest companies, I struggled to find healthy options that were also affordable and convenient. It was difficult to not grab the pizza in the break room when I had a moment to take a break, however I knew that eating healthy would make me feel better at work and in my daily life. Healthy food was always something that was important to our family growing up, and I often spent time with my mom cooking in the kitchen. When I found Clean Eatz, it was the perfect synergy of healthy food and my passion for cooking. Read more>>
Daniela Honegger
Created with a passion for nature and a love for family. Hello. My name is Daniela Honegger and I am the owner of Queen of the Meadow. I was born and raised in Switzerland and immigrated to the U.S. in the summer of 2004. Since I was a little girl I have loved being outside in nature, gathering plants, and herbs to create my own magic potions. It was later, while I was living in the rural Truchas Mountains of Northern New Mexico, that I started to realize processing herbs is my passion. An important part of my journey was working at Artemisia Herbs in Dixon, New Mexico.The amazing herbalist, Susan Feavearyear, taught me an incredible amount about medicinal plants, how to develop products with them, and how to bring a final product to the shelf. Read more>>
Joseph Groh
On June 15, 2008 I was on an aerobic bike ride around the trails of Lake Grapevine, Texas. At one point, the trail turned sharply left, and sand on the sidewalk because my front tire is skid off into the rough. I was thrown headfirst over the handlebars, which broke my neck at the C4 vertebrae. As a result, I was paralyzed from the shoulders down. While I was still at Parkland Hospital in ICU, a neighbor who was well-connected in the physical therapy world contacted a local 501(c)(3). What happened next was nothing short of extraordinary. Working with my wife, they replaced the steps into my house with a concrete ramp and poured a sidewalk from there to our driveway. Read more>>
Eric Caraig, Matt Kwong, Benson Tran N/A
Back in high school we all used to work at the same boba shop. We all ended up working at the company for many years and learning the business which lead to us pursuing our own store. We all studied business in school, so naturally we wanted to start our own brand and create something unique in the food industry. Matt pioneered AZ for us and shortly after Benson and I made our way to the valley. We wanted to bring a fresh take on boba and bring something new to AZ. In doing so we wanted to incorporate art, fashion and technology into food. Read more>>
Aaron Stouffer
Picture it – Palm Springs, 2014. I’m poolside sunbathing with a cocktail in hand, flipping through the current issue of Palm Springs Life. The San Jacinto Mountains are seemingly touchable, Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” is flowing through a distant speaker, and I am still soaking in my inaugural exploration of the picturesque Vista Las Palmas Neighborhood. I’m glued to the magazine cover – a vibrant illustration of the Kauffman House, which I was quite familiar with from my academia days and the owner’s additional home (Falling Water) designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in my home state of Pennsylvania. I quickly learned that the cover image was designed by local Palm Springs artist, SHAG. Hold my cocktail! Read more>>
Doug McCraw
The idea for FATVillage (Food + Art + Technology) was a synthesis of thinking about collecting art and tech space as an environment. It made sense to me that these two incredibly diverse perspectives could live and play together so well under one roof. We started with an old warehouse district in Fort Lauderdale which had only industrial uses. We converted these spaces to art and technology uses and began to assimilate and curate these types of businesses. The result of this process is a thriving environment for multiple creative businesses. This has provided a foundation for a new joint venture development with Hines Development Corporation out of Houston, Texas and Urban Street Development in Fort Lauderdale. Read more>>
Krisha Crosley
I had an 80 hour birth!! If you don’t know how long 80 hours is…that is 4 days!! 4 days of consistent 5 minute apart contractions. Days in, I was wracking my brain on how am I going to help this baby cross her finish line naturally…I finally asked the husband, “do y’all have a rolling pin in your kitchen?” He replied “YES”. I used the rolling pin to roll out her muscles in her legs and pelvis area. She started saying “ohhh that feels so good. Don’t stop.” Her tones of labor and body movements started to change. Read more>>
Johanna Flores
Once I knew I wanted to venture out on my own and work for myself, I knew that I wanted to do something different for my community and women like myself. Seeing that there was nothing like that around I wanted to help as many women as possible. The gym can be a very intimidating place for many women but I wanted to change that. When I left the big gym I decided to set up a space in my home and start training clients there. Although, it was a small area to work in I wanted to give them an amazing training experience, fun and without the fear and intimidation of a big gym. From there I knew that my approach was the right one, to provide my clients a positive Environment where they did not need to feel intimidated but empowered to reach their goals. Read more>>
Mike and Erin Vara
When we set out to write our business plan for Fit Social Club back in 2017, we had one goal in mind – to build a community space for everyone to come to have fun, work out and be social. We both had years of experience operating under someone else’s roof, and now we wanted to be able to build something with our vision in mind. We chose Dallas not only because it was our original client base, but also because it was being underserved in our industry compared to other big cities such as New York and LA. Read more>>
Sam Barnes
A number of years ago, I started kicking around the idea of breaking the traditional tutoring model. The usual model teaches students specific academic topics for the next exam, but it fails to have any kind of long-term focus. I began to study the deficits and challenges that many students face and devise a framework for solving them holistically. When the concept became baked, I made a tough decision to part from a promising EdTech start-up and pursue a venture on my own. That’s how I founded Star Tutoring Centers. Our emphasis is on building executive functioning skills, in addition to academics, so that students can build towards independence in learning. We want our students to be able to study and perform well not just with our tutors, but also at home or at school. Read more>>
Lucia Martino
It all started because of the lack of connection that I had with the type of education that exists today. Before I started Little Creative Souls, I always felt in my heart that even with society having changed so drastically, we could still make a difference in our children’s childhood. I wanted to start changing things here. I’m sure everybody agrees that our best memories of childhood happened while in an outdoor environment. Building forts, making mud pies, sleeping under the stars, playing hide and seek, running races, climbing trees etc. Nowadays, children don’t play like we used to do. When we were kids we would come home from school, go outside and play until the sun came down and dinner was ready. For some reason, that really doesn’t happen anymore… Read more>>
Jelani Hashim Bracey
Our organization, B.L.A.C.K. 2 LIFE was formed in April of 2017 when our Chairman, Michael Merriweather, Jr., invited myself and one of founders, Kenny Presley, Jr., to organize and raise money to collect and pass out books and school supplies to children in an underserved community in North Dallas. We held our first book drive in the parking lot of a shopping center and a total of 10 Black men decided to show up and help us out. This event led to us organizing a 5 city book drive (Dallas, New York, Atlanta, D.C., and Shreveport) providing 5000 books to children in underserved neighborhoods across America (1000 books to each city). Read more>>
Denise Clifton
Business to me is art in action. I am a very creative, passionate multi-faceted, and idealistic person with a strong drive to use my time here on the planet to make a difference. Growing up I knew that a traditional job would feel suffocating and unfulfilling. A career that required years of additional time spent in college, also was unappealing to me. At 18 I was in a hurry to begin living and experiencing life as an adult, and more school was simply repelling to me. I entered the workforce my senior year in high school and by the time I was 23 I had developed a knack for retail. I enjoyed creating an inviting atmosphere for guests. Read more>>
Emily Mills
Since I was a small child, my faith and entrepreneurship have overlapped. I always felt connected to a purpose bigger than myself and knew the creative arts and innovating ideas brought me great joy. I loved to sing, write music and poems while exploring how to make enough money so I could buy a vanilla Dr. Pepper down the street from my house. I enlisted my two younger siblings to help and sold repurposed toys and God-awful cookies to my retired neighbors. Eventually I ended up at Baylor University pursuing a calling in ministry which naturally did not seem to be a “successful” attempt at earning a wage. Read more>>
Jon Kopp
Back in 1998 a friend of mine had closed on his new home and had asked me if I would be willing to help him paint his garage floor. I said sure and that’s all we did. We cleaned out the floor and rolled on the paint. It looked so nice I said to myself this looks really nice but of course we had done it all wrong. Paint is cosmetic, not designed for garage floors or any floor – reasons being there is no chemical resistance, nor any UVR protection. Painting has absolutely no purpose other than cosmetic. Read more>>
de Laurence Burnes
In April of 2o2o (during COVID-19) when my chess company, The Knight School Dallas, was slow because schools were shut down, I was trying to figure out other ways to make money. I figured since I had always wanted a second business, this would be the best time to create it because I had so much free time. Many business ideas went through my head, but I had to find one that I was passionate about. As I was sitting on the sofa, one night, I realized how much I love going to brunch. Brunch is a social outlet that allows me and my friends to catch up, enjoy the food, and enjoy each others company. Read more>>
Tatiane Siqueira
My life has changed completely once I had my own first child. I needed to give birth to a new version of me and I recognize it all started even before the birth of that baby itself. Preparing and getting informed for such a transformational moment is very powerful in strengthening the mother, the couple, counting on the support of a doula, someone who navigated this time and had supported others do the same was to me clearly essencial for a satisfactory experience. Read more>>
Shanae Kidd
I first launched my online boutique in 2018 and honestly it was a flop, the only sales I got were from friends. The silver lining was the process. Although I had gained a base of business knowledge by obtaining my MBA, the process of actually creating my business was more impactful than any degree and it forced me to learn at an even higher potential. So although the 1st launch was to crickets, the skills I taught myself turned out to be invaluable. Instead of giving up, I decided to pause and re-think my business idea. As a lover of fashion myself, I turned to asking myself what problem I could solve. Read more>>
Helen Crawford
I am a licensed, practicing Architect. For a long time I worked on very large projects, including skyscrapers, and university research buildings, all the while wondering what it would be like to focus on design questions and projects that were small, but impactful. I didn’t know how to answer that at the time, so I continued working at a big scale for years, and let life happen. My husband and I set out to buy a house with a few requirements. We wanted the smallest, well-built, historic house we could find on a nice street in a walkable neighborhood. The year was 2002, and we found a 1,000 square foot gem of a house that needed a bit of work, slightly east of Downtown Atlanta. Before making an offer, we made a quick sketch of the house and lot at a coffee shop. Read more>>
Callie Crews
Seven years ago my mother was diagnosed with melanoma cancer. Melanoma is the most dangerous type of skin cancer. She realized that educating us, her daughters, about sun safety was the most important thing she could do to protect us from getting melanoma. When we learned that almost 90 percent of melanoma cases were preventable, we knew we had to do something to help others learn about this too. We decided to create a bracelet that would be both fashionable and remind you to protect your skin from uv rays. We learned about uv detecting beads at our elementary school and the idea evolved from there. Read more>>
Kina Bale-Reed
In my early 20s I worked as a receptionist for a recruiting company and within 6 months was promoted to recruit COBOL programmers. This was right before Y2K so there were tons of job openings in this field. I did that job for a few years before I felt completely unfulfilled and un-creative and decided to return to school. I loved theater in high school and studied it a bit in college but never really pursued it. So, I quit my corporate job, enrolled in KD Conservatory, and waited tables through graduation. The school had a job opening about 8 months after I graduated and I jumped on it. It was a front desk position and part of the job was coordinating casting sessions with local casting directors and getting a front row seat to the process. Read more>>
Darren Heitner
In early 2014, I was already a successful lawyer. Roughly four years out of law school, I had a strong paying job, was quickly building a book of business, and working with clients who had interesting issues. Yet, I needed change. It took a scary accident on the highway, where life flashed in front of my eyes, for me to reconsider whether I was truly happy in my position. I asked myself, “if not now, then when?” Many of the clients that I had brought into the firm I was working at asked me to quarterback their cases over my boss who was much older and more experienced. Those same clients urged me to go off on my own so that I could call the shots. Read more>>
Katherine Rothman
I spent several years as the vice president of another Manhattan PR firm representing medical doctors in the field of public relations during the mid-1990’s. Most entities who retained PR firms were large corporations or celebrities at that time. It was a novel concept for doctors to engage PR firms. Most of the clients were elective practices such as dermatologists, cosmetic dentists, cosmetic surgeons, and ophthalmologists performing Lasik surgery. Since they operated outside of managed care and were not typically receiving hospital referrals, they needed media exposure to impact these competitive arenas. The business lessons I learned while there were invaluable and the PR experience. Read more>>
Michelle King
I struggled with a lot of darkness in my teens and twenties including eating disorders, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideations. I always felt so ashamed feeling bad about my life, and because of that – I never spoke about it. So that darkness just became this heavy burden as I got older and ‘found myself’ as an adult. It was no wonder I felt so alone and trapped when I got married and had my daughter at 29. I remember looking in the mirror and feeling like the person looking back at me was screaming trying to just be heard. Here I was in an awesome marriage to the love of my life, a new mom to a beautiful, healthy baby, and living a seemingly happy life. Read more>>
Freddie Polk
Essentially, I am always creating and doing different projects for myself and my friends. Weather it is making fabric jewelry, baking, designing clothing. During the beginning of the pandemic, I was working part-time as a Contract Nurse Care Manager. Then the company closed due to the Pandemic. Usually, I participate in Art Shows such as Arts Goggle here in Fort Worth, Texas where I live, Also, I would participate at other local vendor shows and venues such as the State Fair of Texas in Dallas, Texas. But their arenas also shut down. Being isolated and Home bound I started playing with some Sunglasses I had and adding repurposed stones and other eye-catching designs to them. I belong to several Craft groups on Facebook where you can showcase your creativity… Read more>>
Christine Morgan
The cigar industry is a male dominant industry. After being in the presence of prominent doctors and attorneys while they partake in a cigar and whiskey, a few bells went off. I knew I needed to learn how and what to smoke to become part of the “cool club “. Also I quickly learn this was an expensive habit, therefore I needed a way for it to generate me some income. After a little research in the South East states, I noticed the lack of Mobile Cigar Lounges as well as the lack of female owners. I knew if I was to step into the male dominant area, I better come with my A game…..and I did. I came with a one of a kind Mobile Cigar Lounge Read more>>
Aundrea Scott
Growing up on the East Coast, in Philadelphia hairstyling was major in the community. Philadelphia was one of the trending cities of hair and fashion. I was inspired by my Aunt Felicia to become a hairstylist at the age of ten while I worked side by side with her as a shampoo assistant. As the years went by, I tried to get away from the hair industry, not because I disliked it. I felt like I wanted to explore my options. I tried, but couldn’t seem to find anything to give me that joy! As I became an adult, I found myself taking clients after my 9 to 5 job. As a mother of two children and being released from a major company I knew it was time to pursue my passion. Read more>>
Joey Hanna
It was a date night that sparked an idea and turned into an adventure of a lifetime! Matt, who is now my husband, was an avid homebrewer. He was very involved in the homebrew community, QUAFF Home Club, and loved visiting local San Diego breweries with friends. He took me to one of his favorite breweries to sample their line-up, my first craft beer brewery tasting experience. I was amazed at the energy and camaraderie that this tasty beverage had created. Young (21+), old(er), brewery shirts, suits, people arrived solo, or with a group just to have a pint and a good time! Immediately intrigued, people watching commenced. Read more>>
Sophie and Chloe Warren
We first started Sweet Bee Sisters in 2009 when we were just 5 and 7 years old. At that time, our parents started beekeeping as a hobby and had beeswax leftover after their first honey harvest. They didn’t want to just throw it away so our mom started looking for ways we could use it. Now you have to understand that our mom is a person who never stops moving and never stops having crazy ideas. One of her crazy ideas was having her three young daughters use the beeswax in a way that would make them money. During her research, she found that one of the main uses for beeswax is in cosmetics, specifically lip balm. Read more>>