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.

Brian Cloar | President & CEO

Christine and I have conducted mission trips to Kenya for many years now. On one particular trip, we visited a school for children with special needs and disabilities. To call it, a school is being generous. Christine is a Ph.D. in special needs leadership, and I am completing mine in cross-cultural service implementation. When we began to research what life is like for children with special needs in developing countries, we were heartbroken. It moved us to change things. We founded UnFinished International to make changes in these children’s lives who, at best, face horrible discrimination, and at worst, are not even allowed to live if they are born with a disability. Read more>>

Titus Benton | Nonprofit Founder, Author & Political Candidate

Most people don’t change until they have to. Something moves us so deeply that we know the status quo won’t cut it any more. The 25 Group was born out of this kind of frustration — tension around poverty, need and vulnerability existing in the same spaces as wealth, prosperity, and over-indulgence. In 2013 I had lived in Texas for two years and been around a lot of wealth for the first time in my life. That same year, I took a trip to India and was stirred by the lack of clean drinking water, nutrition, and healthcare. My wife and I re-imagined what our financial impact could be, and also considered how other people might like to participate. So by January 2014 we’d sold our house, started a nonprofit, and invited people to give small monthly gifts so we could turn those into large capital grants for organizations serving those at risk all over the world. Read more>>

Tran Dang | Photographer

I’ve always had a love for photography and for a very long time it was a hobby for me. Then one day, I thought, why not, nothing to lose! So I decided to turn it into a business. Read more>>

The Player Twins | Beauty Influencers

We’re Beauty Influencers with a love for sharing knowledge for all things beauty, skincare, and fashion. We launched our YouTube channel after Trenchelle posted a video about her journey with a prescription skincare product. We were surprised at the number of views the video received. This sparked the idea that there was an interest in skincare etc. Also ever since our college days at PVAMU, we are asked what makeup products are we wearing and where did we purchase an outfit from. All of these occurrences along with a strong desire to inspire others with knowledge led us to put into motion our YouTube Channel and Instagram. Our social media platform has expanded to include skincare and makeup tutorials, workout routines. clothing hauls along with our Amazon favorites and so much more. Read more>>

Lolita Woods

We started after Katrina, when our pastor told us we needed to come up with a product we can sell in case we have a disaster here. We can pick up our product and sell anywhere to continue to earn income. The program started and we sold each other’s product so we had 2 people selling crackling and my husband (Curtis) sold the crackling at the plants he would go to. There was an issue with the two and for a season they stopped giving Curtis the crackling but people were asking and that was his side hustle because he got a percentage for selling their product. I told Curtis “Let’s make our own” I did the research and with a couple of trials and errors we got it. We started selling our crackling and was told to stop for a season because one of the other guys started back cooking so Curtis took the other guys crackling back to sell and they wanted ours. Read more>>