Author Archive for MantzellBL18

WE – Women in Entrepreneurship

Posted by MantzellBL18 
· Thursday, December 3rd, 2020 
· 1 Comment

Youngstown, Ohio is a smaller city on the outskirts of Ohio that has circulated entrepreneurial ventures in and out of storefronts for decades. A company called the Youngstown Business Incubator developed a program they like to call the WE Program, short for Women in Entrepreneurship. The WE Program “creates economic opportunities for women through entrepreneurial education and training, mentoring, and networking.” Their focus specifically on women branched from a mission to promote “minority-owned enterprises,” which they hope will bring personal and community growth.

The WE Program emphasizes three phases – WE Create, WE Launch, WE Grow – that women can apply for, according to whatever stage in the entrepreneurial startup women find themselves. The WE Create phase is a “four-week program that offers four workshops and educational sessions to help women who are ready to enter the world of entrepreneurship but need help developing an idea.” This phase is for the imaginers, the ones who have the ideas but have no clue where to start and need some structural workshops. The WE Launch phase “includes ten weeks of classes that teach the fundamentals of owning and operating a business.” The primary focus of the WE Launch phase is to take already-started businesses and aid them in launching their product or service into the market. The WE Grow phase, phase III of the Accelerator Program, “gives women four weeks of marketing strategy and tools to grow their existing businesses.” Each phase has an application that can be completed on the Youngstown Business Incubator website, and any woman can apply. Each program applicant is reviewed and applicable to win a grant award from each program, which has significantly changed the course of many women’s businesses within Mahoning Valley. Check out the program for yourself!

Youngstown Business Incubator

 

Find the website here: https://ybi.org/we/

1 Comment
Categories : Business, Coaching, Content Entrepreneurs, Creating, eCommerce, Education, Great Ideas, Marketing, Mentorship

The Esther Home

Posted by MantzellBL18 
· Tuesday, December 1st, 2020 
· 2 Comments

There are multiple rehab programs for people struggling with addictions, all differently structured, and the impact that these rehab programs are having on people is crucial. The Esther Home for Women can be found in Warren, Ohio and was described as “an alternative path to rehab where women are able to live, receive counseling and build a spiritual relationship with God in a structured environment,” by executive director, April Mack.

The home has been opened since the summer of 2016 and is modeled after a program that was started 17 years ago in Georgia  by Tammi McKinney. McKinney’s program has helped over 100 women re-establish themselves into society, and she is now involved with the Esther Home, hoping to aid in making the same impact in Ohio.

The Esther Home sits on a beautiful property of eight acres and once was a desolate house in desperate need of a major renovation. With the help of Project 180, a non-profit organization, $800,000 in renovations were poured into the house, making it comfortable and “home-like” for 12 residents and two staff members.

Women who struggle with drug, alcohol and other addictions live at the house for seven months while receiving counseling and parenting classes. For the following seven months after their stay, women stay connected to the program with mentorship and counseling services. The model revolves around a long-term goal to love these women through the entirety of their trials, most importantly through the love that God first showed for his people. Mack said, “We help the women get back into society in a healthy way. This home is a place of hope for them. We show them there is hope as we build their confidence… We want the women living here to discover who God created them to be. We want to talk about their futures.”

The Esther Home is hoping to work with children in foster care who have been affected by assorted addictions in the future and donations are greatly appreciated. The Esther Home is an example of a social/redemptive enterprise that sees no end to the impact that they could have for the Kingdom of God, bringing women into a place of hope, love and redemption.

Image may contain: tree, sky, house, outdoor and nature

 

Project 180 has a Facebook Page that provides more information about the Esther Home and how volunteers can help, even during the pandemic. Check it out for more information @ https://www.facebook.com/Project-180-1147858808627411/

2 Comments
Categories : Housing, Mentorship, Ministry, Redemptive Entrepreneurship

Just Two Dads and A Bunch of Medicine

Posted by MantzellBL18 
· Tuesday, October 6th, 2020 
· 3 Comments

Talc, acetaminophen, red dyes, beetroot extract – are these terms familiar? The answer is probably no, unless you’re someone with medical knowledge of medicines.

David Johnson and Max Spielberg are two longtime friends who sought out to ask themselves what were necessary ingredients in their allergy, common-cold, and pain medicines they were taking, as well as giving to their children. When it came down to the research they found and conducted alongside doctors and scientists, a lot of over-the-counter medicine contained a lot of unnecessary ingredients – aka inactive ingredients – that have actually proven to have health consequences. Between their two financing and legal expertise’s and their research, Johnson and Spielberg launched a medicine business called Genexa.

Genexa is “an over-the-counter medicine brand that’s dedicated to making clean medicines,” and has now found themselves in over 40,000 stores – Target, Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS, Kroger, and Whole Foods – as well as having an online presence on their own personal website and Amazon. Spielberg commented on the matter saying, “We like to call it real medicine made clean.” Genexa offers an adult product line that has a greater focus on the antacid, laxative, and cough and cold categories, but also has a product line for children that focuses on allergies, cough and cold, pain, fever and sleep products.

Johnson and Spielberg recognized a gap in the knowledge everyday people had about the over-the-counter medicines they take, discovered a need for “cleaning up the products,” and took to their solution by committing their mission to making a difference in peoples’ lives, “staying the course, keeping their head in it, and grinding it out.”

 

How Two Dads Are Disrupting Medicine

The article provides a grand amount of information that is not included in this post, so for more information, visit:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/357142

3 Comments
Categories : Health, Medicine

Rent The Chicken

Posted by MantzellBL18 
· Sunday, September 27th, 2020 
· 3 Comments

Chicken renting – excuse me?

Jenn and Phil Tompkins founded Rent The Chicken three years ago, due to an identified need for fresh eggs in peoples’ personal backyards. The idea seems absurd, but Rent the Chicken is now a nationwide venture with 40 affiliate farms and even locations in parts of Canada. According to customers as well as the founders, the difference between fresh eggs and store-bought eggs is incomparable.

The idea came to Jenn and Phil simply based off of a search for crazy business ideas. Their crazy search has created what now gives each customer a coop, four hens, all the feed, all the supplies, and full support from Jenn and Phil throughout a typical six-month adventure. Jenn and Phil like to say, “yard to table.”

Since starting the business three years ago, Rent The Chicken now have 10 rental families who also have their Hatch The Chicken program, which takes three weeks for the eggs to hatch and another two weeks to care for the baby chicks. Rental families are provided with the essentials – incubator, fertilized eggs, book, cage, feed, water dish, feed dish – and then chickens begin laying their own eggs around six months.

More often than not, rental families become attached to their chickens and they become pets. Because Phil and Jenn understand the attachment that can take place, they do offer the option for renters to adopt their own chickens.

Certainly unique and original – that’s what this is.

 

In the News:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=I6lfyeuWmGc&feature=emb_logo

On Their Website:

http://www.rentthechicken.com/p/news.html

 

 

3 Comments
Categories : Agriculture, Food, Healthy Lifestyle

Black Founders Matter

Posted by MantzellBL18 
· Saturday, September 12th, 2020 
· 2 Comments

Whether or not someone politically disagrees/agrees with the entire Black Lives Matter movement, no one can argue that Marceau Michel’s entrepreneurial idea was ahead of the events surrounding this summer and one worth acknowledging.

Michel’s original business plan was to develop a new on-demand staffing company called Werkhouse that had won a start-up pitch competition in Portland, Oregon, two years prior. Unfortunately, what Michel argued was racial discrimination from investors eventually led to an idea with little to no funding. After months of time spent on finding investors, Michel launched a t-shirt company that featured the phrase “Black Founders Matter” and an upraised fist, which he sold online through Shopify in order to automate his sales. What Michel didn’t realize while his business was active, was that his shirts became a “catalyst for a new investment fund dedicated to Black-owned businesses that the accidental venture capitalist sees as entwined with racial justice.” After the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this summer, Michel raised $1 million in a month for the fund with his t-shirts. What Michel plans and hopes to do with the funds he’s raised is no longer put them towards his Werkhouse, but instead help others in his position as a black entrepreneur overcome the obstacles white founders don’t necessarily face when pursuing a start-up.

Michel came from failure and turned it into a way to help others in similar situations of his own. Michel knew that the average of investors funding for white start-ups versus black founders was significant – 17% versus 1.5% to be exact – but his outlook on the statistics against him only gave him a greater sense of how to create change for the diagnosed problem. Michel knows all too well the problem he’d love to fix and has been recognized on many different occasions for his efforts to do so. His entrepreneurial story only begins here and he’s gone on to create relationships that have excelled him in the world of business and social change, which he only continues to expand in the future.

 

To read more of his story, visit here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/business/black-venture-capital.html

 

2 Comments
Categories : Uncategorized

Forever – the Memory Keepsake Website

Posted by MantzellBL18 
· Thursday, May 7th, 2020 
· No Comments

Memory is one of the most treasured parts of each person’s story, but many people rely simply on their mental abilities to store their memories. In more recent years, social media has served as a platform to store memories, but it’s not the most dependable and they’re not platforms that will forever exist.

FOREVER is a 2012 Tech Startup, based out of Pittsburgh, that makes it easy for all of your memories to be “digitized, secured, and ready to be enjoyed for generations to come.” For a one-time price, customers are given what they call FOREVER Storage that’s guaranteed to last for your lifetime plus 100 years. The FOREVER Storage design ensures security by backing up in multiple places across multiple regions, which can be shared for generations to come.

The FOREVER business design is unique, offering an assortment of different ways that customers can creatively store their memories, whether through picture albums, different designs, scrapbooking, videos, or digital art. Their website not only offers their main product – FOREVER Storage – but also sells notebooks, a FOREVER Box, and photobooks.

Personally, this isn’t something that I would pay to use myself, but I can certainly see the attraction for people who want an easy, dependable way to store their pictures and videos so that generations to come can enjoy and easily access those memories. It’s worth checking out their website, despite your interest!

 

https://www.forever.com/

 

Couthy Complete Collection Digital Art - Digital Scrapbooking Kits

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Categories : Creating, eCommerce, Film