We’ve been the owners of Toy Joy for the past 5 years, and the management team for the past 7. A lot has happened, and we’ve been asked to share our story. No names, just an account of our
experiences.

There is a TL;DR at the bottom for you lazy lurkers. I know this is a long read.

My husband and I started working at Toy Joy in 2006. My first holiday season, I worked 55 hours a week. We LOVED it. The colors, the excited customers, the smell of plastic. We started at $7.50 an hour, but we didn’t care. And we were good at it. Within 1 year, we had both been promoted up to store managers, and learned a lot of amazing things about my favorite store. I was selecting the toys to put in the store, and building displays, and making the signs. Some things were odd – the owners only showed up every month or so – but it was our first experience working at a small business right out of college. We were happy being a part of Toy Joy.

Becoming Owners

In 2007, the owners approached us with the suggestion that we purchase the store. We were shocked, and concerned. We couldn’t imagine our beloved store going away. We wanted it to be there forever, an icon to wonderfully weird Austin. My husband talked me into considering it. That was all it took. Once you start putting work into getting an SBA loan, you don’t want to give up. Our families saw that we were good at our jobs and supported us. We had no idea what we were getting them into. [Read more…]

Think Austin is weird enough? If I had to write it from scratch, I’m not sure I could come up with a story that encapsulated Austin’s weirdness as well as this real life tale: a portable acupuncture business genius shares an East Austin space with a mermaid tail maker and a lollipop maker.

Their locale is painted in purple and green, resembling a quaint cottage. And Modern Muck, the acupuncture business in question, is a perfect distraction for someone like me to escape the day-to-day chaos and knots that bind each of us into our own modern day muckity-muck.

David Taylor is the crafty mastermind behind the bike-powered method of delivering Chinese medicine directly to you at your home, office or in the comfort of his East Austin location. David took a non-traditional route. His studies in science and pre-med eventually led him to his recent graduation from AOMA. With a tranquil bedside manner, David invites his patients to “relax, refocus, revitalize” by way of his innovative, mobile medicine practice. [Read more…]

It’s the next great American dream: build an app, drop it on iTunes or Google Play, and watch your bank account grow exponentially. Ideas for the next great app are plentiful, but it takes a special brand of person to actually run with it and build a company.

Favor was one such app born out of an idea from two recent college grads, co-founders Ben Doherty and Zac Maurais. They wanted to create a service that made it easier to ask and fulfill favors for people in your neighborhood.

“Initially, we envisioned a user going to a grocery store and logging in to the service to see if anyone else in your area needed something,” said Zac, CMO of Favor. Now the service has morphed into a full-blown in-app experience that allows you to get virtually anything in Central Austin delivered to you, with just a few taps on your smartphone.

When the neighborhood version of Favor didn’t exactly pan out the way they intended, Ben and Zac recreated the service as a beer and burrito delivery service and focused more on a mobile interface. The service was launched in early 2013 in San Luis Obispo, California and quickly became a hit with students in the area. The success plateaued after a few months, however. Growth was limited to people who only wanted beer and burritos, and the guys were ready for something bigger and better. [Read more…]

This guest blog article is by Daja Gegen.

Kathryn Gonzales has always had a fondness for stories, particularly those of the elderly. She is founder and owner of local business Live Oak Legacies, a family history service committed to capturing a family’s most important stories.

Through Live Oak Legacies, Kathryn provides clients with audio and visual media that document the stories of their loved ones, giving back to the age group she is so fond of. [Read more…]