Our community is comprised of some absolutely brilliant entrepreneurs and so we asked a few of them to tell us the story of how they came up with the ideas for their business.

Monika Cortez | Travel content creator | Travelling with Monika

I have been travelling around the world for years and my friends always asked me: where are you? When I started to use Instagram I decided to create an account to share with my friends my travel experiences and the account started to grow a people from different places around the world started to follow me and travel with me through my pictures, stories etc. When I started to receive direct messages, questions and the people started to follow my adventures and decide to create a better content, more professional… Read more>>

Joanna Smith-Griffin | CEO and Founder of AllHere

I started my educational career as a Miami Dade Public Schools student! My kindergarten teacher, Ms. Judith Valentine, valued my family as partners in my education and I carried that experience with me through grade school and college. It’s also part of what inspired me to go into education; after college, I taught middle school math and quickly learned that some of the biggest challenges to student achievement originate from outside of the classroom. Read more>>

Laur a Sintes | Owner and General Manager of School of Rock Coral Gables and Coconut Grove

Before we decided to open our own School of Rock, we experienced it as clients. Our children went to the original school in Miami many years ago. We realized it made such a huge impact on them, not only in the musical abilities, but also in their confidence and social life. After that, we realized that there could be a franchising opportunity, and we decided to jump on the chance even though neither one of us is a musician. Read more>>

Kiara Gray | Business Owner for kiagphotos

Growing up, I watched so many people both peers and older talk down about themselves. I watched them discourage their body type, skin color, hair type, lifestyle, & etc. The list seemed to be endless. Yet, from a young age this societal issue weighed heavily on my heart knowing exactly what it was like to feel that way. I sought a way to provide authentic joy and vision to those struggling to see the true beauty that they uniquely radiated. Photography was that solution. Read more>>

Raphael Mortati | Entrepreneur , business man

This all started in 2006. My father was a cardiologist but he was over weight, about 240 pounds, at that year he had his first grand daughter, he was 58 years old and he had several healthy issues due his bad eating habits. One night I asked him, ” Dad why don’t you start a diet? If you keep this life style you are going to die soon. He then started to cry and told me, I have tried all the diets you can ever imagine, but I am addicted to food and I can not change, next year he had a heart attack and passed away. Read more>>

Lauren Del valle | Licensed Esthetician, Massage therapist practitioner & Chakra healer

Before starting my esthetician business I have always been Interested in skin care and the spa industry. As a child I even had a pretend spa in my house so its funny to see how I have reached full circle with my passion. For a while I was very lost on what I wanted to do as a career and where my passion truly lied. One day after quitting a bakery job that I felt miserable at I was pulled to go to esthetics school as it was the only thing I knew for a fact I liked at the time. After doing so it opened so many door for me. Read more>>

Ashley Bowman | Owner of Cre8ur Studios, a shared workspace with a focus in the digital media arts.

We started as a Facebook group to connect other creative entrepreneurs in our area. We then noticed that there was a need for a creative space to provide content creators a home to create content for their business. We service an underserved neighborhood that houses a bunch of the creators in the Louisville Kentucky area. To promote the economic growth of our communities and to prevent us from having to travel outside of our neighborhoods to create, I decided to open a creative space in West Louisville. Read more>>