LouPreneur - Louisville KY's Entrepreneur Magazine

Resources for developing businesses in Louisville Kentucky

Diaper Fairy

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Diaper-Fairy

By JENNIFER RUBENSTIEN

Many of us think of glitz and glamour when we hear the word “entrepreneur.” Visions of Bill Gates  programming away on a computer, then heading to a black tie dinner to hang with the glitterati.  But examples of entrepreneurs come in a wide variety. “Mine is not a glamourous business,” says Emily McCay, local entrepreneur and owner of The Diaper Fairy. She says, “ I like to joke that we’re #1 in the #2 business.”

Emily started The Diaper Fairy, a cloth diaper laundry and delivery service, in 2010. Since that time she has also changed her definition of what it means to be an entrepreneur. “For a long time, I felt like I needed to be the one to do everything for the business – accounting, sales, deliveries, sorting, etc. It was very taxing and the business was not growing.” She realized a few months ago that she needed to either close up shop or make some changes, so she called the Small Business Development Center to get some advice. “They made me realize that just because I started the business, it didn’t mean I should continue to do everything. It was time to take another leap of faith and hire people who are skilled and proficient in the areas I’m not.” [Read more…]

Keeping Eyes on Your Newborn

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Keeping_eyesPresident, Blake Rutherford and CTO, Dominic Foster of Healthcare Observation Systems, LLC sat down in their Baxter Avenue office space to talk with LouPreneur about the success of their company and innovative product, NICVIEW.

NICVIEW, a play on words for NICUs, or Neonatal Intensive Care Units, is a webcam system designed to provide parents, families and caretakers the option of having real time web access to monitor their newborn infants admitted into NICUs. These specialized neonatal facilities are important for infants who are born prematurely or with life-threatening health issues but are not available in every hospital, therefore children with needs that require NICU admission are often far from home in a regional facility, instead of a local one. [Read more…]

Music in the Clouds

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IMG_0038Local entrepreneurs, Ron Karroll and Aaron Stack sat down at GLI to talk with LouPreneur about Collabra Music, a product where one can make and listen to music with the crowd…in the cloud!

Having loved music from a very young age, one thing that always inspires me is when various musicians cross paths or collaborate on songs that they normally wouldn’t. One of the best examples when that happens is at the end of awards shows. For example, at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Inductee Ceremony there is always an incredible ‘final’ jam consisting of various musicians, from various bands, belting out a classic tune that is usually one of the inductees’. Another would be during live shows when perhaps a member of the opening act joins the headliner for an impromptu on-stage collaboration. Either way, it is always very exciting to see and hear such moments.
To further understand the possibility of musical collaboration, another prime example would obviously be on the studio level. Whether an artist choses to invite ‘special guests’ to play on their recordings, do covers of other people’s songs, or even in cases of ‘tribute albums’ there are numerous ways in which various artists can come together using music as their outlet for artistic expression. [Read more…]

Finding the Supply for Demand

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IMG_0077 Loupreneur sat down with Jermaine Watkins, the President and CEO of Supply Ark, a Louisville business that provides distribution channels and seamless fulfillment strategies for military and government contracts as well as commercial bids. Since 2009, Supply Ark’s team of three has had an innovative focus on strategically winning contracts from the Defense Logistics Agency bid process. Watkins crafted a proprietary system that automates the bid process for the military’s miscellaneous items requests.

Success for Watkins comes from combining a tech background as a former employee of the US Army Corps of Engineers and as a website developer for Borders Unlimited Inc., a wholesale distributor of wallpaper borders for a company in Shelbyville, KY. Supply Ark grew out of his desire to be a self-motivator and from his childhood in which he was raised by entrepreneurs. “I got tired of working for a company and paying my own salary. I thought, ‘this is ridiculous, I can do this from home.’ I realized that if I can sell almost a million dollars in wallpaper borders, then I can make my own money doing something else,” jokes Watkins. [Read more…]

Making a Life in HR

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By NIKI KING

If Amy Newbanks Letke had her own reality show, it would be called “Say Yes to the Success” in human resources.

She’s made a career of saying “yes” to opportunities that have presented themselves in her respective field, including a decision to become an entrepreneur. In 2007, she founded IntegrityHR, Inc., a Louisville-based human resources consulting and outsourcing firm for small to medium-sized businesses. Since then, it’s grown to 11 employees offering a range of human resource services to clients around the country.

Her business motto is rooted in the same affirmative approach that motivates her. She wants to help other business leaders say ‘yes,’ too, and also “share, in a positive way, the consequences,” she said. [Read more…]