Down a bumpy gravel path off Hill Road is a red house with a door in the back that leads into a narrow room. The walls are lined with movie posters, pencil sketches and racks full of resins and paints. Near the door is a desk covered in miniature plastic body parts, squares of sandpaper and a utility knife. This is Credenda Studios — a one-man operation for custom action figures. Or as his fans call them: designer toys.

“I have, quite literally, put everything into this,” Jason Hausske says as he leans in to emphasize his next thought. “But if an idea pulls you, you got to go.” Jason is the founder, CEO and driving force behind One4All, a social network for charitable giving. The company’s goal is ambitious: to transform giving from an occasional, passive activity to a more regular — and sometimes spontaneous — everyday occurrence.

Tom Gay knew he was onto something. The systematic process he used to build a thriving high six-figure consulting practice in just two years was working. Not just for himself, but for others, too. After all, for service providers, like attorneys, consultants and accountants, building relationships — and trust — is critical. But it is also time-consuming and hard to track...

“If a sleeping bag had a baby with a hammock” is how Lance Williams describes the Bison Bag, a project he started with his wife Julia in 2014. The idea: combine the warmth of a sleeping bag with the “setup anywhere” nature of a camping hammock. But this isn’t first foray into entrepreneurship.

Bob Lokken was happily retired… for about a week. After selling his previous company, ProClarity, to Microsoft, then spending several years on the Microsoft executive team, he decided it was time for a break. “I got a one-way to Scottsdale and played golf. Lots of golf,” Lokken says. “But after about a week, I was bored. I was too young to be done.”

From all outward appearances it looks like a typical mid-century home in a well-kept West Boise neighborhood. But enter through the side gate to a door that opens to the home’s garage-turned-workshop, and you immediately realize that nothing about this is typical. Beautiful, richly stained mandolins hang from a drying rack in the ceiling. And the walls, papered with jigs, close in on a compact but neatly organized workbench surrounded by every manner of woodworking tool.

The walls of Tech Savvy are adorned with motherboards and hollowed out computer frames. “This piece looks like a swimming pool — and these are the railroad tracks.” Brooke Lacey converses with small visitors in her shop while their mother searches through her purse in the reception area, showing them parts that make up a computer.

Kristi Saucerman has always liked helping people. Add to that her natural penchant for getting stuff done, and you get a sort of “super volunteer” — the kind of person who is always stepping up to help out.

Thirty years ago, Lori Fascilla was a statistic. Divorced, on her own, struggling to provide her 2-year-old son with the childhood she knew he deserved. ”I enrolled him at the best (childcare) center I could afford… and it was substandard at best,” Lori says. “It was excruciating to leave him there everyday. I already had a sense of failure and that just added to it.”

Shannon Hamrick’s love for the water was born in an Arabian desert. When she was just 6 years old, her family moved to Saudi Arabia where she and her sister, Amber, found themselves in a new country, learning a new language, and with little to do. “Pools are everywhere in Saudi,” Shannon says. “It was the only thing to do as a kid.”

In his previous life, Jeff Russell was a high-powered, high-flying business consultant for the world’s largest management consulting company. It was fun. The perks were great. And the work was interesting. But Jeff wanted more. The lifestyle and work didn’t align with his personal values.

Eric Leaman is not the kind of person to get stuck in a rut. So after hitting the three year mark as a referee for a Seattle adult sports league, making just $14 a game, he decided he needed to get out of that rut and start something for himself.