Starting and growing a business is hard, but often deciding to start the business in the first place is even harder. We asked some successful entrepreneurs from around the community to open up to us about how they thought about starting a business.

Alexia Bullard | Cannabis Content Marketer

Seven years ago, I started out copywriting and then writing about business and marketing for trade publications and business software companies. As a marijuana and CBD consumer during this time, I found it difficult to come across detailed cannabis product reviews and information. It seemed like everything sounded the same, or just didn’t tell me enough about what I wanted to know. I decided to start a content marketing business in the cannabis industry so I could provide content that would serve as a resource for consumers striving to learn more about marijuana and hemp. Read more>>

Till Roman Hartwig | Co-Founder & CEO at tilltheapp

As a kid, I just wanted to become rich to be able to spend as much time as I want with my family and friends and the things I love. Later I understood that money alone is not going to make me happy and I simultaneously became more and more aware of all the things that could be improved in our world. I just love to sit down with smart people to figure out how to solve meaningful problems. Read more>>

Grace Francis | Founder + Photographer

I graduated from CU Boulder in 2020 and found it very hard to land a job during the pandemic. I started building my freelance business first by reaching out to friends and family to create my own clientele. As the year went on, jobs were still very difficult to get as I was in a pool of candidates that ultimately had a lot more experience than I did. Since my freelance business was doing super well, I decided “Why start a sole proprietorship and make it official?” Then Deku was officially born in January 2021. Read more>>

Candice Arancibia | 3rd grade teacher

Our encouraging words, listening ears, hugs and high fives make a big difference in the lives of the students we serve. The summer of 2020 magnified our society’s tremendous need for collective healing. As elementary school teachers, we knew that it was our time to love on our students because that is what we do. But how to do this from a distance? What we needed was love, sweet love—self love, more specifically—and our hope was that this project would empower our students to do just that: radically love themselves and teach their community how they can also radically love themselves. Read more>>