Sincerely, Your Small Business

Helping others is what sparks joy in Susan. Her experience as a Birth Doula in Honduras and Ireland led her to train in massage in 2017. After giving birth to her daughter in 2020, she holds a deep connection working with women in the prenatal and postpartum periods. Her favorite sessions are Thai massage and she’s beginning to incorporate more herbs into her practice! In 2021, she quit her full-t...

Carolyn Leasure is who you turn to when you want to fill your business with ideal clients – and still have a life offline. With Maypop Creative Studio (formerly SmallBiz Sidekick), she provides web design, messaging, & integrations for solopreneurs, service providers, & coaches who think “tech” is a scary word. Carolyn lays the groundwork for the smoothest online experience ever for you an...

What do you do when you meet a friend who shares your same dreams, energy level, and passions? Why you start a business of course! Chelsea and Flannery met through the small business network of Crozet and immediately started hosting pop-up markets together to encourage and support a variety of female entrepreneurs in and around Crozet. What started as a small side hustle quickly became a dream for...

Katie was born and raised in Orange County, California and in 2008, she moved to Sonoma County to pursue her bachelor's degree in Biology and found a passion for the health and wellness industry. By 2011, Katie became both an ACE certified Personal Trainer and Group Exercise Instructor and was managing both the Group Ex and Training Department at Sonoma State University. After moving to Charl...

Dr. Tamara Wilkerson Dias is an instructional designer, curriculum developer, and organizational leader with a background in learning and development across corporate, nonprofit, and K-12 educational spaces. She began her career in education, shifting into leadership development, professional coaching and consulting. Dr. Dias then transitioned to a grassroots nonprofit as CEO, focusing on the rete...

How often do you compare your old with your new self, and how are you showing up as your "whole self", whether it's for work or family? Listen to this episode as Holly and Ellen share about those things, as well as vulnerability with clients, what it's been like to give and receive support with your business partner, and journeying through money-mindset as female entrepreneurs....

What does "resiliency" mean to you? Listen in as Daniel shares about what that word means to him, and what it can look like to forge your unique path of small business ownership. Daniel Perry was introduced to jam-making 20 years ago and never looked back. 15 years ago, a year out of college, he started a jam business. He bought a tent at K-Mart, borrowed a table, and set up a booth at t...

Marc Boston is a children’s book author, and ordained minister. His stories emphasize the importance of diversity and inclusion and reflect on topics surrounding definitions of family values, and self-empowerment. Marc has published several picture books and was awarded grants from The Virginia Humanities, Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, and the Memory Project of the University of Virgi...

Alex Theriault, owner of Dogwood Refillery, a “Conscious Market”, followed her passion for sustainability to shift her career from corporate finance to small business ownership. Alex’s approach to Dogwood Refillery is based on the triple bottom line: people, and planet before profit; her priority is to educate the community about sustainable habits and curate an eco-conscious product offering. Fro...

Jen Siomacco (they/them) has been working in digital marketing, tech and user experience for more than 10 years. In 2020, Jen founded a small digital marketing agency in Charlottesville, VVITCH Digital, and since then they and their team of skilled creatives have helped more than 40 small businesses achieve their marketing goals. As a queer and disabled business owner themselves, Jen loves any opp...

Jessica Dang Norby (also known as your podcast host, Jess Norby) is a social media strategist who helps local small business owners go from feeling overwhelmed and annoyed on social media to more confident and at ease...and maybe even like they can actually have fun. Over the past 6 years, she has created and fine-tuned The Social to Selling Framework, a step-by-step guide to help business owners...

Kelly Cox is a 500 RYT, registered prenatal yoga instructor, birth doula, and licensed clinical social worker.  For the last 15 years, she has supported expectant and new mothers and it is through this work she became aware of the stress and depression that surround feeding infants.  As a breast cancer survivor, she is committed to making sure all survivors have access to human milk for their babi...

What does balancing "me time" with "work time" mean to you? Can scheduling social time outside of your business help with your creativity and energy? Listen in as Carly shares things that you might not think about when it comes to business ownership: what it's like to share space with a partner who occasionally works from home, learning how to balance alone time, socializi...

Born in Manila, the tiniest bit strange and a lot dramatic, PK Ross was probably meant for a life of crime boss’ mistress. Just kidding. Not about the Manila part; she was definitely born there. Hers is a typical tale of an Asian immigrant child whose only proper destiny was doctor or lawyer. But as luck would have it, after completing a degree in Biology, with a focus on genetics, at UVA, she los...

How important is boundary setting not just within your business, but in your household? At the end of the day, what do you wish the people around you to know about your journey as an entrepreneur? I had a deep conversation with Bunmi Adeeko Collins about all of the above, plus other things like what it's like to be the primary caretaker of your kids while running a business, pressures as wome...

Sliced. Cake Bar offers homemade cakes, cakes by the slice, buttercream shots, and cake flights™, like a beer flight, but with cake! Co-owners Megan and Rock Watson, aka the Cake Poppa, brought Sliced. Cake Bar to life after visiting a popular Dallas cake bar. Their imaginations lead them further to create a mobile cake bar experience and join the growing Charlottesville food truck squad.  Listen...

Kitty is a hot-mess mama and virtual assistant, aiming to provide small business owners and creatives less stress by completing tedious tasks and crushing their to-do lists. If you're ready to learn how to outsource your business tasks and laugh at the occasional mom drama, follow her on Instagram . Listen in as Kitty and Jess talk about the realities and boundaries needed to run a business a...

Cynthia began training in maternal child health through observing births and newborns in Rome, Italy in 1983. She then completed AMI Birth to Three, Assistance to Infancy Montessori training. After giving birth to her first child in 1986, Cynthia supported mothers from various countries in the Pacific Rim in their homes as a Child Development Specialist in Hawaii, teaching newborn care, feeding, r...

Ellen has a diverse background: she studied acting at Ohio University and moved to New York to pursue it, but quickly found that wasn’t the career for her. In her fifteen years in Brooklyn she managed a bookstore, was a kitchen manager for a cafe, studied pre-med at Hunter College, and then fell into the fashion world where she worked for many years. She’s now funneling her energy into Alakazam ,...

Linnea Revak believes in secondhand unicorns – the kind of magic that brings together intentional shopping and fun-loving fashion. Since 2015, Linnea has been curating secondhand and handmade at her consignment shop in Downtown Charlottesville — DarlingxDashing Boutique. She’s a University of Virginia graduate that fell in love and stayed in Cville. Growing up in a family where secondhand clothing...

Jeffrey Gleason was born in the northeast and went to high school in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, before heading to college out in the Napa Valley and Hawaii (Manoa campus on Oahu)...all while studying photography. Jeffrey moved from San Francisco to Charlottesville in 2009 with his now-wife. They were married here in Virginia and are now proud parents of 2 but soon to be 3 perfect children....

Chris is a baker based in the Charlottesville area, doing pop-ups all over central Virginia. She’s inspired by Americana and diversity, using local ingredients and her knowledge from fine dining to execute menus that change weekly. She’s originally from The San Francisco Bay Area, and attended Johnson & Wales University for an AA in baking and pastry, and a BS in Food & Beverage Entreprene...

Having immigrated from Kiev, Ukraine to the greater Richmond area of Virginia, Ruslana Remennikova (she goes by Ru) is a retired research scientist for Big Pharma, studying, discovering, and writing about gene therapies, vaccine sciences, and immunology for the last decade. Ru has diverse life experience that included her opening her own food truck and coffee shop, which was recognized by Food Net...

Elizabeth Hope Derby is a business and mindset coach for high-level entrepreneurs. She partners with women who want to make running their businesses easier and more fulfilling, so they can go from feeling like a stressed-out service provider to a joyful CEO. Her clients become more confident leaders, build more sustainable businesses, and learn how cultivate a work/life balance that’s true to who...

Renee Byrd is a performance artist, photographer, and musician. She is best known as the creator of wellness blog willfrolicforfood.com , the actor behind comedic characters like Sugar Gollum, and the singer/songwriter in Blonde Chalant. Listen in as Renee and Jess talk about rediscovering who we are, how we move through the different chapters of our careers, and what it means to let your authenti...