Calloway Cook is an interesting entrepreneur. In 2019 he started Illuminate labs, a herbal supplements company. Calloway created this venture to solve the transparency issues in the dietary supplements market. The way that Calloway had a personal pain and instead of hoping someone else would solve it, and in turn creating a business to solve his pain as well as many others’ pains is truly inspiring. Calloway saw a gap in this area of the market because of how much consumers were willing to pay for tested supplements that were proven to be safe. He saw that consumers wanted safe, tested products that actually did what they said they “did”. In the market he entered very few to no companies actually had their products tested and proven to be safe to consumers, instead it was a bunch of bologna marketing ploys to get people to buy products that may or may not work. Dietary supplements are extremely hard to perfect as someone who has taken many dietary supplements for sports, the process of finding the right ones requires a lot of research on the consumers behalf and endless days of reading articles just to find out this supplement you were looking at does absolutely none of the things it tells you it did. At Illuminate labs they test every single batch of their finished products at a non bias third-party non-profit lab. They then will publish the results of those tests and make them available on their product page for the consumers to see.
I think Calloway’s innovation is truly inspiring as he brings to life the true meaning of being an entrepreneur. He found the pain and solved that pain. Simple as that. He didn’t need some big moment or multiple ideas coming to each other, instead he felt a personal pain and saw that others had that same pain, and simply created a venture to solve that pain. I think his efforts truly reflect what an entrepreneur is meant to be.
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I love this idea! Being transparent with your customers and finding common ground from sharing pain is a great way to find new business ideas. I like that you defined what a true entrepreneur is supposed to be, finding pain and coming up with a creative solution for it. Good post!