Start Small, Dream BIG

Start Small, Dream BIG

By Milken Center for Advancing the American DreamSociety & CultureBusinessEntrepreneurshipEducation
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Start Small, Dream BIG episodes

  • S3, Ep3: Boxer Briefs

    Following a successful career as a media executive, Fran Dunaway founded TomboyX with her wife to address an unfulfilled need: good and more comfortable underwear. Since 2015, Fran has used her years of experience and knowledge to raise the profile of TomboyX, and its inclusive, gender-neutral underwear, particularly its boxer-brief style, to disrupt the $13B undergarment industry.

    Listen to this week’s episode of Start Small, Dream BIG to learn more!

    29 min
  • S3, Ep2: What Was Your 2020 Supposed To Be?

    “What was your 2020 supposed to be like, and what did it end up being like, through to the present?”

    That’s the question Michelle Fishburne asked more than 300 people as she drove across the U.S. in an RV, collecting stories of Americans’ lives during the COVID-19 pandemic for her oral history project, Who We Are Now.


    Listen in as Michelle discusses the origins of the project and how her varied career prepared her to launch this new endeavor.

    30 min
  • S3, Ep 1: Silver is Gold in the Longevity Economy
    Elizabeth Isele is the Founder and CEO of The Global Institute for Experienced Entrepreneurship.
    She is an expert storyteller, speaker, and author. Her work celebrates the global impact of entrepreneurs in the longevity economy. Longevity economy entrepreneurs are the fastest-growing portion of the economy powered by individuals over 50 years. Elizabeth’s work views the American Dream as an intergenerational effort requiring teamwork, resilience and courage.
    Listen to this week’s episode of Start Small, Dream BIG to learn more.
    32 min
  • S2, Ep 12: Accolade
    “It's the responsibility of capitalism to not just build great businesses, but to have positive impacts on the communities that we work in.”
    At 23-years-old, Rajeev Singh co-founded the leading global travel and expense management firm, Concur. After 20 years working at and scaling the business, Rajeev left in search of a new endeavor that would give him a greater sense of impact and mission. Rajeev’s new venture, Accolade, seeks to reinvent how employees use their benefits and healthcare resources. In an often messy and confusing healthcare system, Rajeev’s mission is to personalize accessibility and drastically improve the experience of healthcare users.
    Rajeev shares his experience with local volunteering and campaign opportunities like All In Seattle, which launched early in the pandemic and encouraged business owners to put their unused business expenses back into the community. On this week’s episode of Start Small, Dream BIG, tune in to learn about Rajeev’s entrepreneurial drive and why he sees company culture and bringing a positive impact to the community as essential factors to building a successful business.
    24 min
  • S2, Ep 11: Street Art
    “We knew we wanted to create a company that would provide not only economic opportunity for the women we were serving but also all the wraparound support so that it would help them transition to a life of independence.”
    Rebel Nell is a jewelry company on a mission. Co-founder Amy Peterson started the social enterprise as a means to support women transitioning out of homelessness and domestic violence in Detroit. By providing work experience, housing support, financial training and educational opportunities, Amy and her company help women successfully enter the workforce - and make beautiful, one-of-a-kind jewelry in the process.
    Hear how Amy was inspired to create the business on a run through Detroit’s local street art scene, the challenges of starting a social enterprise rather than a conventional non-profit or for-profit business and how the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program helped Amy grow Rebel Nell while keeping their mission central to their work on this week’s episode.
    28 min
  • S2, Ep 10: GXA
    “She [my mother] really wanted for me to understand the value of hard work and the value of a dollar, and she instilled that in me at a very young age. At the age of 12, my mother gave me her checkbook and told me to balance it every two weeks when she got paid. So, that really was the first beginning step of my financial education.”
    On a flight to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, Alicia Makaye and her husband came up with an idea for a new business on the back of a paper napkin. They sought to build a business while fulfilling their commitment to their community and missionary work. After saving Alicia's income for a year, the couple launched GXA, an IT services company that builds technical infrastructure for other small businesses in the Dallas Fort Worth area. Now, with support from organizations like Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, GXA has been named one of the Most Inspiring Companies in Texas and one of the fastest-growing IT companies in the country.
    In this episode of Start Small, Dream BIG, learn more about Alicia’s educational journey, including her time in the Air Force, the financial lessons she received from her mother and where she hopes to take GXA from here.
    36 min
  • S2, Ep9: Powerful
    “One thing that is super important in marketing is making sure that, once you have a value proposition, you activate that image in every consumer touchpoint. If you think about packaging, the messaging, the product, the website, the brochures, everything has to talk to that specific segment with that specific value proposition.”
    Throughout his years in the corporate world, Carlos Ramirez helped numerous organizations rethink their marketing strategy to engage new clients and reinvigorate their brands. Always looking for a new marketing challenge, Carlos found one in the yogurt aisle of the grocery store, where he noticed the lack of products marketed towards fitness enthusiasts. Determined to create the Under Armor of yogurt, Carlos launched a high protein yogurt branded with dark colors as the first product of his new organization, Powerful Foods. Today, Powerful Foods sells a full product lineup in nearly 10,000 grocery and specialty stores in the United States and across the world.
    This week, listen to a new episode of Start Small, Dream BIG to learn about Carlos’s journey from Venezuela to the United States, his early entrepreneurial endeavors and the support he has found from Endeavor Miami and their network of entrepreneurs.
    23 min
  • S2, Ep 8: Building with Consciousness
    “The American Dream to me is very simple. America owes me nothing but the opportunity to participate in a free enterprise. That is the American Dream.”
    Former Marine Andy Williams knew that he wanted to bring the problem-solving mentality he developed in the armed forces into his work as a civilian. Andy found his new challenge in affordable housing and creating employment opportunities for other veterans who often are left out of the job market. His company, Rehab Warriors, teaches veterans a new skill set in home building and rehabbing, making them more employable while increasing affordable housing in lower- to moderate-income communities.
    On today’s episode of Start Small, Dream BIG learn about Andy’s decision to create a for-profit rather than a non-profit company to empower veterans in the workforce and increase their economic mobility, and how Rehab Warriors’ B-Corp certification holds them to a higher standard of operation.
    36 min
  • S2, Ep 7: Lola
    “The snacks that they had at the food pantries were not as nutritious as I would've liked, and they also contained things that my children were allergic to. And so, I started thinking about what would help satiate my husband's appetite, but would also taste good to my children. After speaking with my aunts, I came up with a recipe for a granola bar that was packed with really delicious ingredients, but that was nutritiously dense.”
    As a mother of five, Mary Molina began making granola bars when her family was confronted with economic hardship and had to rely on food assistance programs and food pantries. Faced with the need to provide her children with affordable, healthy and nutritious snacks, Mary began experimenting in her own kitchen, eventually perfecting her granola bar recipes. Gradually, Mary’s snacks gained fame in her neighborhood, and with the support of local small business groups and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, she was able to build her company, named Lola Snacks after her daughter, into a successful brand. Today, Lola Snacks is distributed by national retailers, like Walmart, and gives back by supporting organizations that fight hunger and local food banks to support kids who depend on food assistance.
    Tune in to this week’s episode of Start Small, Dream BIG to learn about Mary’s experiences as a successful entrepreneur who had her share of challenges and how she keeps her family involved in Lola Snacks even as the company has grown far beyond her home kitchen.
    21 min
  • S2, Ep 6: How the Sausage is Made
    “I got really invested in sausage-making because I felt like there was an opportunity there to really expound on that sustainability angle of sausage making and see how far I could take it.”- Cara Nicoletti
    Sustainability has been at the core of Seemore Meats and Veggies since Cara Nicoletti first thought about creating a sausage company and following in her family’s footsteps as a 4th generation butcher. She took what she learned from working in her grandfather’s butcher shop, and with Ariel Hauptman, who formerly worked at Greyston Bakery, built an innovative sausage company that combines excellent products with a conscious effort towards the fair treatment of employees and animals.
    With a mission to make humane meat more accessible to people, Seemore produces sausages filled with vegetables making them not only a healthier alternative but also a more ethical one. Through their commitment to sustainability and ethical business practices, paired with their tongue-in-cheek advertising, Cara and Ariel have found a niche for themselves in the meat market. Tune in to this week’s episode of Start Small, Dream BIG to learn about how their family histories inform their work, the experience of being female business owners in the male-dominated butchery industry, and more.
    26 min

About Start Small, Dream BIG

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Small businesses comprise over 99% of the companies in America and, before COVID-19, they provided nearly half the jobs in the country. Small business is one of the most trusted institutions in…