the founder’s
Blog

For a long time, success has been sold as a departure. If you want to build something meaningful, the advice is almost always the same: move. Bigger city. Bigger market. Bigger network. The message...

In a region where small businesses are the backbone of the community, the most successful ones are not always the loudest or the biggest. More often, they are the most intentional. The Bush House is...

The economic development landscape for communities of all sizes is constantly changing, just like the economy itself. Technology continues to evolve, people are more mobile than ever, and a new wave...

Now that every company seems to have its own version of Spotify Rewind, it’s hard not to reflect on the previous 12 months. As I look back on 2025, it feels less like a single year and more like a...

Some Apparel is a play on the word “Some,” a nod to founder Kevin Sommers’ last name—but the story behind the brand goes far deeper than the name. At its core, it’s about choosing freedom: freedom...

327 East Main Street didn’t sit empty for long. Just a month after Some Apparel closed, ETSU senior Calli Hall stepped into the very same space with her brand-new storefront, Calli Rose, and with it...

Marketing is a massive, confusing, convoluted industry that seemingly changes every day. The same techniques marketers use today are different from the ones they used yesterday. The tools marketers...

Everywhere I go online, I see people claiming that SaaS is dead — that AI is going to wipe out the entire business model. There’s a mindset among “vibe coders” (and yes, I’m one of them) that this...

When I started my very first company, I was still completing my undergrad at Purdue University. I was going to school full-time and trying to get a mobile app development company off the ground. At...