After tens of thousands of conversations with business owners, we’ve concluded that one of the key determinants between thriving and struggling businesses is how appreciated customers feel. While that insight might seem fairly commonplace, what’s rare is discussion on how business owners go about making their customers feel appreciated. So, we reached out to some…

Kindness begets kindness. So, wanted to create a space to share and amplify stories of kindness with the hope that it inspires a chain reaction. Esther Kentish The kindest thing anyone has ever done for me was give me tough love. When I was about eight, following the death of my mother, I was…

Coming up with an idea for a business or creative project can feel exhilarating. Inspiration for a new idea can come from so many places and we’ve asked some great folks from the community to share their stories of how they came up with their ideas.  Rachelle Schuster Many years ago (in my mid…

Going from idea to execution isn’t easy. Part of the difficulty is that often there is no playbook to follow and while we can’t offer a playbook either, we wanted to create a space where aspiring entrepreneurs could read the stories of how some very smart, very thoughtful entrepreneurs form the community got started. Sarah…

Establishing your own firm or practice is an incredibly daunting task. From myriad of legal and regulatory hurdles to the financial and career related risks, professionals who choose to start their own firm have to overcome so much and so we wanted to reach out to those who've done it successfully for advice, insight and…

We asked some of the brightest folks from within the community to reflect back on their days in school and to share with us a story of when they learned a particularly important or impactful lesson. We’ve shared highlights below. Zelda Stanfield For most of my life, I didn’t realize that the very thing I…

Our Storytime series is based on the premise that stories are one of the most powerful ways to learn and so this series explores topics we think matter greatly to the success of small business owners and artists and creatives. One of those topics is showing customers that you appreciate them because there is a…

So many of us parent the way our parents did – because it’s the only example we’ve had a chance to see up close. We think one of the ways to remedy this is to create a space where people can share stories of the things they feel their parents did right, so we can…

Kindness begets kindness. So, wanted to create a space to share and amplify stories of kindness with the hope that it inspires a chain reaction. Jenny Dirks Although I’ve been surrounded by many generous people, there’s one particular instance that stands out., especially in those early days of my jewelry journey. I was still pretty…