We reached out to some of our favorite entrepreneurs and asked them to think back and tell us about how they decided to start a business. Check out their responses below.

Dr. Christa Smith

I called my business Touchstone Health and Wellness. A touchstone is a type of rock that is used to test the quality of gold. The gold is rubbed along the touchstone, and the streak produced tells you the high quality of the gold. My goal is to help people realize their strengths, their power, and their goodness. Read More>>

Annie McInnes

Because I was an art teacher, it only made sense that face painting was an extension of my interest. I started by rewarding my students with free face painting several times a year. They helped me to develop my designs and create what was in demand. Read More>>

BARBARA STAFFORD

I’m not sure I can take credit for this but would rather give it to my husband. We would entertain and my friends would often ask me for my recipes or even the entire menu! In old school days, I’d run to the copy shop and scan my recipes to hand them. Read More>>

Jill Manning, Ph.D.

When I started my private mental health practice, my vision was to create a highly specialized and healing space for adults navigating the aftermath of sexual betrayal. Having worked in larger clinics, I saw how institutional limits, such as session caps or narrow treatment models, often hindered the depth of healing clients needed. Read More>>

Andrea Wintergerst

I had already been working on my blog for about 5 years and realized if I wanted to continue to do things my way, monetizing it was not really an option. Simultaneously, I was still creating things in my free time that I looked at one day and realized I could maybe sell. Read More>>

Shea LeJeune

I began loving psychology as a teenager. I was obsessed with personality profiling, birth order, love languages—anything I could get my hands on that had to do with psychology or sociology, I was there for it. Most of my actual time, though, was spent studying the arts. Read More>>

Megan Dare

My motivation for starting my own business was so that I could be a part of the process of seeing children grow, learn, and make progress with goals. Working at large companies I found myself spending less and less time working directly with children and more time supervising very large caseloads. Read More>>

Christopher Schneider

I found I harbored an unusual amount of curiosity and patience when it comes to learning new technology and being able to deliver it back to the new users I was training at my W2 jobs with good feedback and success. The ticket count by new users diminished significantly when I took over the onboarding part of the IT Department so it was proved once again that education and training was the solution. Read More>>