Entrepreneurship

246 hours. For eight months, Kristine de la Cruz spent one hour each day working on a business plan. After 246 hours, Crème Caramel LA was ready to sell.

Crème Caramel LA, a custard and confection dessert bakeshop in Sherman Oaks, CA, may have only taken 246 hours to conceive, but the notion of owning her own business had been with Cruz for far longer.

A vacation that turned out to be more work than play sparked a crazy idea for Isabel Sanchez and her husband, Daniel Huerta, that led to Portland’s red-hot food truck, Churros Locos.

During a trip along the Oregon coast, Sanchez and her husband met a gelato business owner who was lamenting about the lack of smell exuding from his shop to attract customers. In a flash, inspiration struck.

As we head into our 10-year anniversary, Small Business Majority is blazing trails like never before, and our team’s hard work is paying off in spades.

Picture this: a young woman, Hipatia Lopez, is hosting a holiday party and working furiously to get her festive spread ready in time. Her husband is in the kitchen, frantically whipping up 100 empanadas to serve, a party favorite of the Lopezes’. Lopez enlists the help of her three children to seal 100 empanadas, a task she comes to find as dauntingly time-consuming. Then, inspiration strikes.

Some people are made to be leaders. At the tender age of 25, Ricardo Sibrian has bought into a restaurant franchise and now owns and operates it. He’s lighting his own torch, and looking to carry it forward like the true leader he is.

Sibrian’s Perkos Farm Fresh Café, located in Sacramento, CA, is an all-American diner experience. The man behind the restaurant is a millennial Hispanic entrepreneur, blazing a path toward conquering the restaurant world.

While your typical person may spot a nail salon and think of manis and pedis, Robert Pancoast and Julie Tobias-Pancoast thought of pizza.

The two spent four months planning and constructing in order to transform a derelict nail salon in Walnut Creek, CA into Pancoast Pizza, a pizzeria promising to bring a slice of the East Coast to Californians.

As we enjoy the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, here at Small Business Majority we’re celebrating a very successful 2014. And with a new Congress coming to Washington in January, we’re looking forward to continuing our efforts on the small business front in 2015.  See below for some of our biggest accomplishments from the past year.

As a tool, digital media’s ability to appeal to niche audiences is unparalleled. Susana Baumann is an entrepreneur who capitalized on its power to help an underserved group she herself is a part of: Latina businesswomen.

LatinasInBusiness.us, or LIBizus, is an initiative of LCS Worldwide Language and Multicultural Marketing Communications, a small business Baumann started nearly 20 years ago.

In less than three years, the Mid-America Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce has skyrocketed from the ground up to become an influential player in the Midwestern LGBT business community.

Founded by Dan Nilsen, CEO of Bishop-McCann, the Mid-America GLCC arose to fill “a big void in the Midwest for a gay and lesbian chamber of commerce,” said Michael Linctecum, executive director of the chamber.

Season greetings from Small Business Majority!

With the days getting shorter and the temperature getting colder, you should be shopping smaller.

As the holiday season kicks into full gear, Small Business Majority is extending our “Confessions of a Small Biz Shopaholic” campaign to encourage consumers to shop small this holiday season and to drum up business for brick and mortar shops nationwide.