Founders : Talent

How did you come up the idea for your business?
For the last two years, I have worked with many people suffering from back pain, some for a short time, others for years, even decades. Over time, I realized that many of these clients’ pain was coming from, or made worse by, some of the same tight, weak and aggravated muscles. Once the proper muscle length and strength were restored in the body, the pain ceased altogether.

I was so thrilled that the steps to recovery worked that I couldn’t wait to share the program with everyone in pain. Because there are only so many hours in a day, I decided to create a program that could be done at home to alleviate back pain and prevent recurrence. The Get Your Back on Track program began in February 2012 and launched in April 2012.  

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
I am very lucky that Dr. John Tew of the Mayfield Clinic trusted me with his patients for whom surgery wasn’t an option. He knows the importance of flexibility, mobility and core strength, and sent me a number of his clients whose lives were defined by back pain.

Dr. Tew encouraged me to study, learn and implement a program for low backs. Without his trust and encouragement, I never would’ve taken this professional leap. He also encouraged me to create an at-home program because he had more patients to send, but my schedule was full.  

I have some amazing success stories, such as a client who couldn’t play golf for a decade due to back pain who now plays 18 holes, no problem. I have a lovely 83-year-old client whose back hurt so badly that she hadn’t slept through the night in 5 years; and now she does! The smiles I see -- and the tears of joy and gratitude from my clients who now can live life without restriction and the weight of pain -- are phenomenal! I’m thankful to have worked with them.

What inspires you?    
My clients inspire me. I cannot stand it when someone is in pain or is unable to travel, play sports, exercise or play with their kids or grandkids because of pain or other physical problems. When they come to me unable to live the life they intended, I feel it’s my duty to return them to a place of strength, balance and happiness.

I had back problems years ago, including sciatica and a back injury from a car accident I was in.  I was in a body that worked against me, but someone taught me how to make it work for me, and now that is my job, which I love! This is the gift that I was given, it’s my mission to pass it on.  I am inspired by people’s willingness, trust, hope and success!

What’s next for you and your company?
The Get Your Back on Track program needs exposure. That is our next step. I am thrilled with the opportunity to be in SkyMall magazine October through December, and I am thinking through and researching avenues such as the Home Shopping Network and perhaps even an infomercial.

Interview by Robin Donovan

Questions with Mary Beth Knight, Get Your Back on Track

How did you start your business?  
I was employed at Vivian Llambi & Associates for more than 12 years. I finally realized I wanted to try something new. With the support from my family, I resigned from my positions and started Place Workshop.

How did you come up the idea for your business?
I have thought about this endeavor for a long time. I wanted to create a “design first” company that strives to make unique and memorable places using all of our knowledge.

Sometimes, landscape architects can focus too much on planting design. While plants and trees are a very important part of what makes a place, planting design is only one of many tools that can be used to create a dynamic environment. We leverage our urban design skills to look at spatial form, color, functionality, lighting, color and ambiance.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
Springboard was a big help. We needed to create a smart business plan and they helped us get it going. The collaboration with the other entrepreneurs was priceless – it was a big help and a big ego boost to talk to people taking the same leap into business ownership.

Your business is very, very new.  How have the first few weeks been?
It’s been exciting. People told me it wouldn’t be 8-hour days, and they were right.  Right now, I wear a lot of hats – creating marketing material, setting up appointments to talk with clients and more.  Today, I’m putting together our office furniture; I’ve got my arms around the whole company at this point.

What’s next for you and your company?  
I would like to hire one or two new designers within the next year and open a Kentucky location.

Interview by Robin Donovan

Questions with Ken O'Dea of Place Workshop

How did you start your business?
My most recent project, Functional Formularies, is an organic, whole foods enteral (feeding tube) formula that I developed for my father after he suffered a very sudden and very severe traumatic brain injury. I could find nothing on the market that was not full of corn syrup, sugars, MSG, synthetic vitamins and loads of chemicals.

My father’s physical healing was so profound and so rapid after we began to give him the whole-foods formula that it set me on a whole new career path. I went back to school to study whole foods nutrition and started working as a health coach and health and wellness consultant. I also developed another line of both retail and “nutraceautical” organic whole foods based on a food-as-medicine model.

How did you come up the idea for your business?
My current business is nothing that I really ever sat down and thought, “Gee, I think I would like to do this as a business,” about. The idea was first born when the product that I needed wasn’t available in the marketplace, and then reinforced by vast number of people who consistently contact me looking for this kind of enteral formula for their loved ones. This business is purely a labor of love.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
I was accepted into Bad Girl Ventures’ second class, and was chosen as the winner, receiving the $25,000 interest-free loan, which has been a great help in launching the product lines. I also received a line of credit from Fifth Third Bank and a small loan from Sam Adams Brew the American Dream program. Most recently, I was one of four winners in the Innov8 for Health project and received a $5,000 prize, which will help in the test market trials of the enteral formula.

What inspires you?
My clients inspire me. One of my most favorites is former NFL linebacker Steve Smith. Steve was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) nine years ago. He has lost all central nervous function and has been on a feeding tube for about five years.

Steve’s wife, Chie, came to me a few months ago looking for our formula. Sadly, Steve had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes after he had been on the commercial formula for years. He was also suffering a lot of digestive issues, which we see quite frequently with those formulas. Chie started giving him our formula and within a few months time, his docs declared him free of diabetes.

Steve, and others like him, who have all the odds stacked against them, have an incredible will to live and super-human strength to keep fighting. Those are the people who inspire me daily and give me the courage to continue on this uncharted path.

What’s next for you and your company?
I have been working diligently to bring my whole-foods feeding tube formula to mass market production due to the many requests that I get from people looking for exactly the same thing I went searching for.

My goal is, first and foremost, to get the enteral formula on shelves and to the people who want and need it. Then, we plan to expand the line of functional foods as well as add more formulas to the enteral line of products.

Interview by Robin Donovan

Questions with Robin Gentry McGee of Functional Formularies

How did you start your business?
We worked on some mockups of our product, a tablet-friendly website, and found a technical co-founder to create a prototype, then searched for accelerator programs around the country to give us a boost to start-up. Eventually, The Brandery pulled us here and Over-the-Rhine made us stay. 

How did you come up the idea for your business?
My co-founder (and fiancée) Tatiana and I spent a lot of time road-tripping around America over the past few years, but were frustrated with the fragmented tools for discovering interesting and independent places to visit. We noticed a huge gap in the market for a platform that sits the center of road travel planning.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
No doubt The Brandery has been the single biggest resource for us. We also have a great relationship with the folks at Cincytech, Taft Law and many other, great forward-thinking firms here in town. We have benefited from funding, legal help, introductions and a great workspace.

What does a typical day in your business look like?
Every day we meet The Brandery in Over-the-Rhine, and work primarily on product development and building relationships with partners, curators and users. We tend to work late, so 4 p.m. is beer o’clock, then we work right into the evening.

What’s next for you and your company?
Roadtrippers is live at the moment, but we don’t bring too many users in at once; we’re still testing betas on batches of users. We plan to close our seed round, increase partnerships with state tourism departments nationwide and create some buzz around our upcoming launch.

Interview by Robin Donovan

Questions with James Fisher of Roadtrippers

How did you start your business?
I started Dogtown Cincinnati with an idea and hard work. After writing a solid business plan and finding the best location possible, I worked with the city to maximize the use of our proposed site and convinced Huntington Bank to fund our startup with a loan. There was a long construction process, but in the end we opened with a strong start and are thriving.  

How did you come up the idea for your business?
Dogtown Cincinnati is a pet care business that caters to exactly what I needed before I opened it. I had struggled to find a place to take my dogs that was centrally located, had flexible hours and would actually make me feel comfortable about leaving my dog there. The concept I had was built to address the specific needs of who I was. I was sure that other people had similar needs and desires for pet care, so I did some early research to confirm that.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
I worked with the local SCORE chapter (SCORE is the Service Corps of Retired Executives), which specializes in helping small businesses start up and succeed. In March 2012, I was named the SCORE featured client of the month. My SCORE counselor is C. Dennis Murphy.

Now that Dogtown Cincinnati has been open for a year, we are in need of expansion. I applied to be a Bad Girl Ventures finalist and am currently attending their classes which are geared toward teaching women the ins and outs of business by recruiting professionals in different fields to provide education on different topics.

In addition, Huntington Bank believed in my business plan. They decided to fund my startup company through the federal SBA loan program which supports small businesses.

What does a typical day in your business look like?
Between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m., our lobby is busy with drop offs. You’ll see on our valet camera – we have 15 webcams online -- that some of our customers pull up in front and don’t even need to get out of their cars because we come out to them and bring their dogs inside. Throughout the day, the dogs go from our inside daycare playroom to our outdoor playground at regular intervals and are pulled out of daycare for their meal times. They play with toys, on our playground equipment, and with each other.  

From 1 p.m. – 3 p.m., the dogs go to nap time in our bedroom-like boarding rooms and sleep while we clean the other areas of the facility. In the evening, starting around 5 p.m., it gets busy in the lobby again with pick-ups. Customers can resupply with dog food, toys and treats in our small shop before they go home for the night with their well-exercised dog.  

The dogs who are with us in the evening, or who are staying overnight, go to the boarding rooms to sleep and watch TV around 9 p.m. At this point, they are very tired and sleep like a charm!

What’s next for you and your company?
Dogtown Cincinnati is very successful. We have a building that is 1/3 finished, and our first goal is to expand our daycare within the building. Eventually, we also dream of turning our addition space into a 24-hour emergency veterinarian with its own entrance from the street. This part of the business will have all of the same ideals as our current business, but will offer the expanded services of pet health care. Once Dogtown Cincinnati is at full capacity, we will look at other ways to expand, such as additional locations in the suburbs and in nearby cities.  

Interview by Robin Donovan

Questions with Megan Gourlie of Dogtown Cincinnati

How did you start your business?
I’m a 23-year veteran of consumer packaged goods industry and clearly understood the need to visually verify retail initiatives. Up until now, there has been no user-friendly and fast way to collect, manage and communicate this information to sales teams.

How did you come up the idea for your business?
We started with the vision of being able to instantly see how products are merchandised at any retail location on the planet from the StoreFlix website. To do this, we invented a patent pending tagging process that assigned tags or labels to images and videos collected at remote retail locations. Once tagged, real-time reports can be created and the visual content collected can be shared on a social network for business.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
We used several local resources, including local creative database/web developers and Fusion Alliance for mobile app development. In addition, we partnered with the city of Mason for office space and regional networking. We are providing Mason with the first social network for municipalities.

What inspires you?
We’re inspired to wow clients with our technology and to reinvent how companies manage retail execution. We invent everyday at StoreFlix and love it. 

What’s next for you and your company?
Social, photo and mobile is where the web is going. We continue to innovate around these three key areas. 

Interview by Robin Donovan
 

Questions with Phil Storage of StoreFlix

How did you start your business?
We started the business around the idea of a compression garment to help the pain of engorgement and weaning.  The medication once available to help with lactation cessation has been pulled from the market due to side effects, so physicians currently recommend binding with Ace bandages, using cabbage leaves for pain relief or wearing several tight sports bras—not great options. 

Our current product, Nox, provides a better option.  We covered the elastic with bamboo, a very soft fabric that also has natural wicking capabilities.  We also added pockets on the inside for customized breast icepacks.

How did you come up the idea for your business?
We came up with the idea for Mamadoc during a walk around the soccer field as our boys were practicing.  Somi was weaning her third child at the time and told me about an idea for a compression garment.  I suggested a few fun taglines, and as we laughed and joked about possible names for such a product, we realized that with our backgrounds we could make a good team.  Somi is an obstetrician and gynecologist, and Kim’s background is in retail and pharmaceutical marketing.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
Family was very involved in our start-up:  Kim’s mom sewed our first prototype. Her cousin, Susan Young (Susan Young Designs) developed our logos and branding; another cousin, Monica Scalf wrote our copy.  Somi’s brother-in-law, Jim Caruso, designed our website and helps with search engine optimization and IT.  We found a local manufacturer to refine the designs and produce the products. 

In addition, we have a SCORE mentor, and we are utilizing the great resources at Bad Girl Ventures.

What inspires you?
 We are inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of this community.  Everyone is incredibly helpful and truly wants us to succeed.  Women in business in Cincinnati are very generous with their time, and ideas, and resources.
What’s next for you and your company? 

We hope to add a few additional products to our mix this year.  We are very excited about the response to our products from one of the largest maternity and pregnancy retailers in the country.

Interview by Robin Donovan

Questions with Kim Howell and Somi Javaid of Mamadoc

How did you start your business?
My partner, Tommy Tayman, and I are actually still in sort of a stealth mode while things are being developed, but we started putting things together on what we wanted to develop during this past Christmas. We locked ourselves in a small office in Knoxville and spent a few days hashing out the idea. We then spent three weeks locked up building the core infrastructure and getting the basics together.  It took us back to our college days when we would wait until the last minute to do a programming assignment and then spend all night putting something together.
 
How did you come up the idea for your business?
I’m partner of Cincinnati MasterCraft, a local boat dealership.  I oversee the marketing efforts and we are active users of social media.  The idea came from trying to find a way to engage our social media users more.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help? 
We haven’t quite utilized much yet.   But Cincinnati has a large amount of design talent and this is where would could use some love.  After getting some of the final core features implemented our next step will be to polish off some of the user interface and design aspects.

What inspires you? 
First and foremost, my wife and two daughters.  Also, I’m inspired by reading about other startups that succeed and just trying to do something big.

What’s next for you and your company? 
We will be launching a private beta soon.  We’re also looking to join a startup incubator to help with the launch.

Interview by Robin Donovan

Questions with Jason Haines of boostchatter

Questions with Amanda McDonald of Goose Alley Glass

Questions with Katie Bunschoten of KHBOffice Ltd.

Questions with Amy Elisabeth Spasoff of Amy Elisabeth Photography

Questions with Emily Frank of C'est Cheese

How did you start your business?  
My brother Scott and I are the co-founders of Memories of Loved Ones, or MoLo. We started our business with loans from our family after a mutual friend of ours, Keith Noble, passed away.  At Keith’s funeral there were many poster boards on display with original photographs.  Several years passed and the poster boards were eventually taken apart.

We started talking about how frustrating it was that Keith’s poster boards didn’t exist anymore and it got us to thinking – what do most families do with their pictures when they plan a funeral?  We found out that there are no good solutions available to families who want to preserve precious photos and memories of a loved one.

Once we had come up with our concept we decided to test our idea by offering our service for free to a friend that had lost his father.  We got great feedback and it confirmed that we had come up with a great idea.   

How did you come up the idea for your business?  
We couldn’t find any company that provided a service like this for a funeral.   There are tons of companies that can help you after a funeral but we are the first that helps you during that painful time. So, between Scott’s and my IT background, my background with Creative Memories [a program that helps convert physical photos and the like to digital images], and many other talents in our family, we were able to come up with a process that allowed us to provide this service to families very much in need of it.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
Everyone that works with us is either a family member or close enough they are like family.  We are lucky to be part of a large family with many talents so we have done the majority of the work in house using as much “free help” as we can get.  Without the many talents in our family we would not be where we are today.  

To be honest, I can’t say we utilized many local resources initially.  We are now involved in groups like Bad Girl Ventures, and we’ll be meeting with a SCORE counselor next week.  I am part of a local business networking group called the Westside Referral Organization, and we’re also a part of the Delhi Business Association.

What does a typical day in your business look like?   
Our headquarters is located in my home, where we converted one side of my basement into our office.  When we’re working on projects, we’re usually here.  

Life can be a bit crazy for us!  Since we deal with funerals, our schedule is constantly changing.  When we are meeting a family onsite, we can be found in the “MoLo Mobile,” a bright purple and green, 35-foot RV (it was wrapped by our friends at Advertising Vehicles) – you can’t miss us driving down the street!  

Inside the RV, we have scanners and cameras that allow us to convert everything from photographs and keepsakes to digital onsite while meeting with a family.  

The RV is fun and casual as well – just like us!  There is plenty of diet coke, M&M’s and other junk food all on hand; we try to make the family feel as welcome and at ease as possible.

What’s next for you and your company?
We are still a small business just working toward that “break even” goal, yet the business seems to evolve every day and we’ve come so far in just two years.  We see significant growth potential with our business, and have considered pitching our idea to angel investors and VC firms with the goal of expanding and offering our service nationwide.  

If I had a dollar for every person who has told us this is the best idea they’ve heard of in years, or said, “You need to franchise this fast,” I’d be a rich person!

For now, we are happy to continue spreading the word, growing our local market and helping to make one more family’s life a little easier every day.   

Questions with Katy Samuels, co-founder of Memories of Loved Ones

How did you come up the idea for your business?
My partners and I had a previous startup called Traveler’s Joy that was (and is) a honeymoon registry service.  SimpleRegistry is a much larger extension of that idea into the broader wedding registry marketplace.  In addition, SimpleRegistry adds a baby registry, fundraising, and custom event registration to help capture a customer through various life events instead of “one and done” type of use.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
Through my work over the past nine years and mentoring businesses in the area at places like The Brandery, I was able to build a great network of like-minded people.  When it came time to launch SimpleRegistry and we decided to go after outside investment, it was relatively easy to get in front of the right local folks.  Luckily, it worked out as CincyTech and others have already invested in our seed round.

What would you do differently if you started your business again?
I can’t really think of anything when it comes to SimpleRegistry.  It’s pretty new.  We have plenty of time to make lots of mistakes!  When it comes to my previous startup, I would have tried to start networking more at an earlier stage.  With Traveler’s Joy (started in 2004), I kind of put my head down for a few years getting it up and running and didn’t put myself out there and make many new friends in the entrepreneurial community during that time.

What’s next for you and your company?
We’re using our initial investment to ramp up our marketing and development budgets.  We’re still testing some things out but have seen great growth every month.  We hope to have 10,000 registries created this year and really look to expand that in 2013.

Questions with Tony Alexander, founder of SimpleRegistry

How did you start your business?
I assembled a working prototype made of toy balloons which I tested on several open bottles. When my wife tasted one that had been air corked for three days and enjoyed the taste, I knew I was on to something.

How did you come up the idea for your business?
My wife and I would each enjoy one glass of wine and then use a variety of wine preservers available to store the wine for a day or two. We found that all of the current wine preservation devices were not retaining the flavors and aromas in our wine. We were throwing away just as much wine as we were drinking, so we decided that there must be a better way -- a way to seal the wine at the surface of the wine within the bottle.

We diagnosed the problem and I saw a need to create a solution.

What resources here did you take advantage of and how did they help?
I contacted and asked advice from Cincinnati-area experts and consultants on how to manufacture a product which included design and trade-marking. Also, I sought the advice of a patent lawyer on the patenting process and how to get one.

What inspires you?
I enjoy solving problems and creating solutions that others can enjoy as well. Also, my love of wine helped.

What’s next for you and your company?
The next phase for Air Cork is growth and creating a presence in the wine market. After the International Housewares Show in Chicago, the company has received many orders. We are currently shipping the product to retailers in California, New York, Texas and many other locations across the country.

Interview by Robin Donovan

Questions with Eric Corti, founder of Air Cork