Category Archives: Uncategorized

Interview with:
Corey Bryson
Owner and Master Brewer
Balsam Falls Brewing Company, Sylva NC
Conducted by Devon Nease

• How’s business this time of year?
Busier now that the spring session has started at WCU. January / February are usually slower than other months. Spring, summer, and fall are the busiest times if the year.

• Tell me how you got into brewing beer?
Started home-brewing as a hobby with a friend while living in Tampa Fla. Joined a home-brew club and their brewing competition team, then became a certified craft beer judge for the competitions. The Tampa Fla area had a very vibrant craft beer and brewing scene that was a lot of fun to be a part of.

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This past week I was blessed in interviewing Selia Busey, owner and operator at Bliss Births Midwifery Services LLC. in El Paso, Texas. I met Selia through another subject matter expert (SME) interview I conducted this past summer of Rachel Curtis, a doula here in El Paso. When I first met Selia I was immediately drawn to her, she is intelligent, very down to earth and confident. I just couldn’t wait to interview her on her homebirth midwifery business and its successful growth.

Selia is a home-birth midwife, she owns a private practice. She is the only employee, although she does take on apprentices and sometimes hires independent contractors for certain services.  Selia comes from a strong family where her mother was a small business owner of a gymnastics gym when she was growing up. Additionally, growing up on a farm significantly helped introduce her to birth and its natural processes. As long as she can remember she has been interested in birth. After more than 8 years of schooling and training, she passed the board to be a Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) and Licensed Midwife (LM) in both Texas and New Mexico. She started Bliss Births nearly three years ago, after following her dream of being able to help women birthing in their homes, setting her own protocols, as well as, the flexibility to set her own schedule (as much as possible when dealing with births).

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Cathy Klovski of Taylor Street Sweets.  She has been running her own vegan bakery for over 2 years now.

Please enjoy our interview.

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I experienced major technical difficulties while completing this assignment. I did not realize my computer stopped recording after 13 minutes but I was able to get the key points. I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Dewayne Johnson. His father was also an entrepreneur and taught him a few things while growing up. While his father and Mr. Johnson’s brothers still run their furniture business, Mr. Johnson decided to branch off on his own. He started a tow truck business while he resided in New York. That was a one man company which he worked after his shift at a sanitation company. He later moved to North Carolina for a slower paced life, where he met his wife, Kimberly Boykin-Johnson. She is also his business partner and the mother of his twins. While still working another sanitation job, he opened his own dry cleaners.

With the first business being just himself, the dry cleaners was a different experience for Mr. Johnson. He hired about five employees to run handle the store, while he still worked a full time job. The only issue here was that employees were showing up late, and not putting forth the necessary work in his absence. From this experience he learned to be more hands on when running a business to make it successful. The final push for Mr. Johnson to become a full time entrepreneur came when his car broke down. He scheduled for work at 2am so when he told his manager the situation, he was warned that if he did not make it to work there was no need to ever come back. Forced to make it there, his wife drove him there with his one month old twins. He was then determined to retire after nineteen years and find another way to bring in the income.

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