Our city is home to so many incredible businesses and so we asked the founders how they came up with the ideas for their businesses and have shared their responses below.

Reba Shapiro

For Tomorrow Wellness, LLC. was born out of a personal journey that was both challenging and rewarding. It combines the most impactful aspects of my academic and professional backgrounds and is a testament to my passion for assisting communities that hold a special place in my heart. Read more>>

Dr. B. Nilaja Green

My undergraduate education at Georgetown University taught me to be intellectually curious, socially oriented and expansive in my thinking. So, as an English and Psychology double major, I learned to think differently about mental health and recovery from psychological distress. I knew that while evidence based therapeutic approaches help many, often talking isn’t enough. We need to move beyond changing our relationship to our thoughts and emotions, to changing our relationships with our bodies. Everything is connected and when we leave the body out of mental wellness, we are missing an important piece of the health puzzle. Psychological challenges can disrupt our relationships to our bodies, especially when trauma is in the picture. Read more>>

Tina Vitolo | Doctor of Social Work, LCSW, and Empowerment Coach for Unconventional Mental Health Therapists

The idea for The Black Sheep Therapist emerged from my own journey as an unconventional therapist. Throughout my career, I found that traditional therapy models often didn’t resonate with the deeper, more holistic approaches I was drawn to. As I integrated nontraditional and spiritual modalities into my practice, I realized there was a gap in the support available for therapists like me—those who wanted to align their clinical work with alternative methods while remaining ethically sound and professionally competent. Read more>>

Lanae Reign | Lash Tech

So my business is a custom strip lash company. I came up with it when I decided to get individual lashes one day but through wearing individual lashes I did not like wearing them to sleep because wearing lashes to sleep bothers my eyes. In addition if you don’t go to an experienced lash tech you can have complications such as your eyes burning and your individual lashes shedding. I have experienced both and their were not pleasant experiences in addition getting individual lash extensions can be very pricey. So i decided to look into creating my own custom strip lashes that gave the look that individual lashes give but without the longevity of having to keep them on for a period of time. And I thought I would create it into a business for other girlies like me because not everyone can afford individual lash extensions nor to some people like sleeping with lashes in like myself. Read more>>

Trevor And Tashia Walker | Plant Lovers

It started during Covid when Trevor was able to work from home, and would come to visit Tashia at her home in Georgia, as he was living in North Carolina at the time. Tashia didn’t have a traditional office, but a plant room, with nothing but plants, we even had to buy him a desk! Read more>>