Are you thinking about starting a business? If so, we think you’ll enjoy reading about how these seasoned entrepreneurs thought about the question when they were in your shoes.

Devin Blackburn | Freelance Photographer / Content Creator

I don’t remember a specific thought processes behind starting my business, it just sort of happened, I started my photography business when I was 12 years old, believe it or not. My parents purchased a camera for my 12th birthday and that’s when my interest in photography began. I started shooting birthday parties for my friends and family and even shot my aunts wedding at 12 years old as well. I decided to start advertising when I was 14 and slowly began building my portfolio and client base. I am now 25 and am continuing to build my client base and working more now than ever! Read more>>

Knight Campbell | CEO | Outdoor Guide | Executive Coach

I made so many mistakes when I first started Cairn Leadership Strategies. People look at the entrepreneur life as if it is glamorous, and I certainly fell into that category. I imagined huge profits in the first year because I loved the service that we sold, but I did not understand product market fit and I had not set out to solve a pressing problem (two things I always advise potential business owners to consider up front). I began with ideas of climbing mountains with CEOs, and quickly realized that I did not have a market or a business model that would scale. Over the last six years my team and I have addressed those issues with multilevel offerings that solve specific problems for businesses. Read more>>

Tim Devlin | Landscape Architect & Botanical Designer

I started my own business to find personal fulfillment and joy. To create projects and connections I’m genuinely proud of and passionate about instead of viewing work as simply “a job.” The business was born from the idea of sharing creativity with others externally instead of seeing internal validation from an internal corporate ladder. Starting my own business allows me to pursue many of my interests, which include landscape architecture, environmental justice, floral design, and weddings/events. Being a business owner has allowed me to be a part of several industries, learning more about myself and life in the process. Read more>>

Mikki Raye | Fgsc business manager and animal lover

With over 30+ years in the cat rescue and adoption business, Pamleslie found that the typical adoption events were stressful for the cats and that they did not show well as a result of the transportation and the loud and sometimes very overwhelming retail places they were being transported and showcased. Around 2013, Pam was inspired by the cat café craze in Asia and she realized that a cat lounge would be a much better environment to introduce rescued cats to people interested in adopting a kitty. Since she had no firsthand knowledge of food, and cats really were her wheelhouse, she decided to focus solely on a cat lounge versus a cat café spot and partnered with her daughter and fellow cat lover Mikki Raye to open their own cat lounge in downtown Long Beach ca. Read more>>

Jeremy Smick | Owner of Thick As Thieves Palm Springs

Before we started this business, our friends would visit our home and would talk about how awesome it would be if they could shop the things in our home. That idea stuck with us, and one day we decided to seriously look into it. Our vision for the shop was that it would mimic our authentic lifestyle from our unique antiques, to the furniture that we sit on, to the clothes in our closet. It would be highly curated and designed with only things we ourselves would want to be surrounded by. Once we had the direction, it was a matter of finding where we wanted to open. After scouting a handful of cities, locations and buildings, we eventually we landed on Palm Springs, CA! Read more>>

Patti Blake | Astro Photographer and Night Sky Advocate

To me, seeing is believing. I call myself a night sky advocate because I find myself showing thousands of people the Milky Way, telling them about a meteor shower or simply asking them to go outside to see how incredible the moon looks. My business so far is to simply encourage people to love the night sky. The places where it’s visible shrink a little bit every year because of light pollution. If I can encourage someone to turn a porch light off after 10 p.m. on a Wednesday, I call my efforts successful. Read more>>

Cara Fairfax | Perinatal and Early Childhood and Family Therapist. Founder/Owner of Babies, Kids, and Families

I love being a therapist! It is an honor to be invited into the raw and vulnerable moments of someone’s life and watch them heal and grow. I have learned so much from all the jobs I have held over the years while working for a company but I always felt limited in what I could do. Working for myself allows me to lean into the work I love best and what I do well while and limit the work I dont enjoy. As a private practice owner I was able to develop a practice that excites me – every client I work with is my ideal client. I can make my own schedule, create my own culture, make time for trainings and research, seek the conusltaiton I want and need and I dont have to ask someone to do so. I am able to create a specialized practice that serves the people I care most about – pregnant women and families with babies and young children. Read more>>

Jill Spruance | Chief Visionary Officer & Soapmaker at Basilwood Farm

I like to think of myself as the reluctant entrepreneur because when I began this journey in 2010, my thought wasn’t necessarily that it would become a business, but that it would definitely be a place where people would want to come and gather and enjoy the property. I had been a homeschool mom for 15 years, at which point I had worked myself out of a job. I did not want our five-acre parcel of land to be unproductive, so I began researching what we could do with the property to make it work more for our family. Sooooo I bought two goats, planted a tremendous garden and planted more fruit trees. We already had chickens. After the realization that two goats provided a surplus of milk after creating yogurt, cheese and fresh milk for everybody, I looked for other things to do with it because there was NO WAY that stuff was going down the drain! Read more>>