This is an as-told-essay based on a conversation with Joslyn Kelly, owner of J’s Breakfast Club in Gary, Indiana, which experienced a major power outage following a derecho, or a widespread, long-lived wind storm, on August 11. As of Thursday evening, over 57,000 customers remained without power, according to Northern Indiana Public Service Co. This
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Masashi Nakamura, 29, who is running Nakamura Farm, a small Wagyu farm in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. His words have been edited for length and clarity. I was working at a meat processing facility in Tasmania when my interest in Wagyu began. It was 2024, and I
Smokey John’s has been serving barbecue in Dallas, Texas, since 1976. It was already losing money when a devastating fire destroyed the entire restaurant in 2017. So, brothers Brent and Juan Reaves had to rebuild it from scratch. Their bet paid off. Today, Smokey John’s makes nearly $4 million in annual revenue and goes through
Garbage removal is, at its core, a simple business model with a relatively simple startup plan. When Kirk McKinney decided to start his own junk removal business as a teenager, he already had an idea of the industry. After discovering a landfill near his home in Massachusetts, he began collecting discarded speakers, electronics, weights and
This As They Told It essay is based on a conversation with Nick Lappen, an American bartender and businessman based in China. His words have been edited for length and clarity. I first visited China when I was 22 on a road trip from London to Mongolia, and the experience left a lasting impression on
Kirk McKinney was riding his bike near his home in Massachusetts about six years ago when he came across a gold mine: a dumpster full of trash, sure, but also speakers and electronics. “Someone had thrown away this perfectly good pair of speakers,” he told Business Insider. “I asked the guy at the landfill if
