I’m Jonelle Prokopchak, owner and creator of the trademarked fitness method called Zen Barre®️. I own a yoga studio as well as an online barre certification company. I help other women get certified to teach Zen Barre classes so they can help women feel good about themselves.

Your bio says: Through the creation and practice of Zen Barre®, she fuels her entrepreneurial spirit and passion for human services. Jonelle believes the fitness journey empowers and inspires by connecting the mind, body, and soul. She utilizes this holistic approach in her practice, teaching and methodology of the Zen Barre®. When not teaching or furthering the Zen Barre® curriculum, Jonelle is a Speech Language Pathologist. 
 
Where did you grow up?  What was life like?  Did you have an entrepreneurial family member?  Is there anything looking back that started as a kid that lead you into what you do now?
 I grew up in a small community called Dallas,PA. YES there is a Dallas somewhere else besides Texas. 🤣 I came from a family of entrepreneurs. My grandfather started a company that my father currently owns and runs. There was boss status in this blood well before I came along. Growing up I had no idea what I wanted to do- but I always had that drive to helps others. 

Hello! I’m Ashlee and I am a Holistic Nutritionist and Wellness Influencer with Simplholistic. I work full-time at Simplholistic to create protocols, recipes and videos that help women live a seamlessly healthy lifestyle. Women’s hormones and gut health are what I specialize in, particularly autoimmune disease. 

I grew up in Alaska with my mom, brother and sister. My family was pretty broken and lacked ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirits. We lived paycheck to paycheck but my sweet mom did everything she could to watch us soar and excel. Looking back, all of the hardships and financial suppression brought me to where I am now. We can play the victim in life but I prefer to use my difficulties as rocket fuel! 
 
Where it all began:
When I was 16, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, Celiac Disease and a host of other immunological deficiencies. I knew NOTHING about nutrition or alternative medicine so, NyQuil and antibiotics it was. It didn’t take long for my body to start shutting down. Luckily - shortly after - I found the world of holistic healing and changed my life forever. I enrolled in college for nutrition for myself and couldn’t put the books and research papers down. Since then, I have healed myself (still working on it!) and helped thousands of women to remove the barriers keeping them from being well. 
 
The Passion behind the business:
My job is incredible. Each day I get to see “infertile” women become pregnant, PCOS clients gain their energy back and highly immunodeficient women get their livelihood back. I get to facilitate healing for women all around the globe and watch them KICK BUTT once their back to their best selves. 

The Motivation on the hard days:
My clients, followers and family members. I believe God gave me this gift and unique ability to retain massive amounts of nutritional and scientific data for a purpose. If I decided to throw in the towel, who knows how many women would miss out on being well. 

Tell me a little bit about you, your business, and what you do.
I am the co-owner and lead graphic designer of The Visual Identity Vault in Fairmont, MN where Nothing is Impossible with a Great Identity! We are a printing services company, capable of taking care of your brand with paper printed products, signage, banners, promotional products and decorated apparel. We also do specialty sublimation printing on a variety of materials as well as laser cutting and engraving.

Where did you grow up?  What was life like?   
I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa and had a wonderful childhood. I was rather shy, but started working at a young age which developed a great work ethic. I started with babysitting and then worked at a Benjamin Franklin and then worked at a hotel in various departments throughout high school. I also worked at a bingo parlor on weekends for a friends grandmother.

Did you have an entrepreneurial family member?
I did not know anyone entrepreneurial in my youth, but developed those ideas with my husand and in our early years of marriage.
 
How did you get into your profession/industry?
I had gone to college for business management/sales and marketing and had generally held administrative positions. Elementary school secretary before moving to Minnesota and then assistant to the director of an orthopedic clinic after moving to Fairmont. My husband and I had developed an action photography business when our boys were young and when my position at the clinic was going South, I quit that job and went back to school for graphic design and we changed our focus from photography (because more and more people had their own digital cameras) and changed our focus to screenprinting, shirts on site and so on.

y name is Tabitha Melvin and I am a Regional Vice President with Primerica. Our mission is to help families earn more income, become properly protected, debt free and financially independent. We do this by providing financial literacy, a financial coach and a complimentary financial needs analysis. We make finance FUN, so you don’t want to run. 

​I grew up in Marshall, Mn and graduated from MSU in 1995 with a bachelors degree in elementary education and early childhood special education. I have one younger brother and my parents were married for 36 years before my mom passed away of cancer at 59. My dad was a successful business owner and shared with me a tremendous work ethic and how to get along with people. But most importantly he taught me what integrity truly meant as a business owner and woman. I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. I just didn’t realize God would shut the door on my teaching career so I could teach middle income families the rules of money that I had never been taught. It was always a sign. I was always unhappy in the corporate world and soon realized being my own boss was hard but what I truly wanted to do. 

Hi my name is Dr. Matthew Hodgden. I am a physical therapist. I help people get their life back. I do this by digging deeper into people’s stories to find out what they can no longer physically do but wish to do. We then find out why they are no longer able to do these things; it is usually due to: pain, loss of motion, or just fearful of trying. We then develop a plan to correct the impairments that are holding the person back from trying these activities and then meet these goals in order to fully restore an individual’s value of life. For example, I just finished up with a client that woke up 5 to 6 times at night due to pain; we were able to address her issues and, in only 4 visits, she is now sleeping soundly -- waking up refreshed and ready for the day.  

 I grew up in a split family my entire life; my mom, whom I primarily lived with, was in Holloway, MN (near the SD border) and my dad lived in Nimrod, MN (closer to Brainerd). Although I had 4 siblings, I essentially was raised as an only child by my mother and step-father which provided opportunities for me to learn how to push myself to always learn something new. The healthcare field has always been my direction of path as I was the youngest first responder in the state of MN at the age of 14 years old. After that, I became an EMT and went on to attend Paramedic school.  My father owned his construction company, so at a young age I also saw the benefits of being my own boss and, therefore, owning my own business has always been a dream for me.

I was originally planning to be a heart surgeon due to the family history of heart attacks before the age of 55 in my family. I was fully qualified and very confident that I would have been successful with this path but heart surgeons have an 89% divorce rate and I had been in a committed relationship (that eventually lead to my wonderful wife and now amazing two children), so I chose a healthcare career that allowed me to also balance well with my family life.  The Physical Therapy profession allows me to get to know my patients, really make them healthy, and have a great quality of life.

My name is Ryan Wempen. I run Kato Moving & Storage.  We are a professional mover for the Southern MN area to or from anywhere in the world.  We have our own fleet of moving trucks and team of professional movers. We will go to your house and pack, load and move to your  belongings to your new home.  We also move business offices, pianos and safes. 
 
A majority of our moves are “local,” meaning they are within 50 miles from house to house.  Then, we do many moves each month that are more than 50 miles whether within or out of state, we can do them all.  We are a Mayflower agent which is the largest mover in the country. 
 
We also have over 1000 self-storage units at 3 locations and several warehouse locations for keeping your belongings. 
 
 The History
I grew up in St Peter and moved all the way to Mankato (10 miles away).  My dad worked/works for several non-profit businesses as the business manager – so I did grow up seeing him have to figure out how to keep these businesses shifting to stay viable.  He was always plotting a plan to grow or improve the various places he was involved with.  I think this did teach me lots on how to make adjustments as needed.  I have 3 brothers and a sister and all of them have businesses, rental property, or are running businesses in the area; so we must have all picked up some of this growing up. 
 
In my first business, which is still in operation, Sellers Minnesota, an estate sale company; we ended up moving or cleaning out many self-storage units over the years, I got interested in buying a location.  So, after a few failed attempts, I finally got one purchased.  After growing this business, I used this location to grow my locations.  I ended up buying a moving company because they had some self-storage I was interested in.  I did feel this was a great addition to my group of companies because it allowed me to shift some of the heavy lifting from myself to the professional move crew.  
 
 The Motivation
 I love that every day is different.  I have to work hard and long hours but it does not feel like going to work because I like what I do!  We have a great team and that also makes each day fun to talk to the crew.    
 
 The Tough Days
 I like the pressure days, so no hard days for me.
 
Most Valuable Lesson Learned
 Be honest, fair and take care of the customers and employees!