Burrell, 33, who still works full-time in sales and marketing in the food industry, decided to do something about it. In March 2010, after months of market research and consultations with women, she opened The Frock Shop, a dress-rental emporium currently serving the Chicago area.

Helping her build her business—The Frock Shop launched an online dress-rental service this past October as well—is 100 Urban Entrepreneurs, the nonprofit foundation that offers $10,000 startup grants and business education to young urban businesspeople nationwide; Burrell was brought into its most recent funding-and-mentoring program. “One of the great things about the 100UE program is that it made me focus not on temporary needs but rather on what is needed to help The Frock Shop grow in the long term,” she says.

Burrell—who majored in international marketing at the University of Alabama—has built her dress inventory to around 350 pieces, giving her clients maximum choice. The premise couldn’t be simpler: Assess your needs, find something you like that fits, rent it, wear it and return it. The Frock Shop handles all shipping, quality control, repairs and cleaning. Rentals start between $40 and $50—an enormous, risk-free bargain considering the astronomical prices commanded by such dresses when new.

Looking ahead, Burrell plans to further develop her Website to take The Frock Shop beyond Chicago, and would eventually like to expand her inventory to include “jewelry, pageant, career and possibly men’s designer wear,” she says. “We get asked about all that a lot.” In the meantime, though, she’ll stick with her core customer as she builds her business. “There has to be a way for women to look fabulous for all the special events in their lives without breaking the bank,” says Burrell. For women in Chicago, that increasingly means a trip to The Frock Shop.

Read more about Jennifer Burrell and The Frock Shop at 100urbanentrepreneurs.org

Harding keeps it cool with his new fruit drinks Cool Fruit Sensations (Image: Courtesy of subject)

As sales pitches go, Don Harding Jr.’s is elegantly simple: “Who down South, with our blazing heat, would turn down a refreshing fruit beverage made by hand, right in front of you, using fresh fruit?” he asks. Hey, search us. We’ll take one — and we’re not alone.

Harding’s company, Cool Fruit Sensations, has been in business since late 2008. It’s headquartered in Harvey, Louisiana, just south of New Orleans, and the product is straightforward: strawberry, kiwi, pineapple, watermelon, orange, blueberry, mango or peach are variously combined with lemon, lime or tea to create one of a possible 25 drink combinations. It’s healthful, it’s refreshing . . . and it’s selling like mad.

“My wife, while bored at home, started playing around with different fruit combinations,” Harding says. “We introduced a couple at a farmers’ market, and the response was ridiculous. We started out making $200 at farmers’ markets; now we gross as much as $10,000 for a two-day festival.”

His solid track record has begun to pay off: Cool Fruit Sensations was recently brought into the funding-and-mentoring program of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs, the nonprofit foundation that provides $10,000 startup grants and business mentoring to entrepreneurs nationwide, and even greater rewards possibly await: In March, as part of New Orleans Entrepreneur Week, Harding is competing in a business-pitch competition sponsored by Idea Village, a nonprofit that promotes entrepreneurship in the Crescent City. First prize? $70,000. If he wins, two days later, he’ll participate in an even larger competition whose top prize is $100,000 in cash and services.

Harding and his wife (who run Cool Fruit Sensations along with Harding’s brother) are born entrepreneurs: They also run a staffing agency, Know-It-Alls, from which they’re able to hire additional help whenever they need it. They might soon need plenty; Harding’s immediate goal for 2012 is to open his first physical retail space. “We’re constantly bombarded with the question, ‘When are you guys going to open your first location?’ ” Harding says. “The next step is to do exactly that.”

Once it opens, Harding is probably correct to assume even greater sales. Healthy, top-quality ingredients, expertly prepared, it seems, are a hit wherever they’re offered. “All our drinks are made individually by hand, using real fruit,” Harding says. “We’ve competed with alcohol, water, soft drinks, yogurt, popsicles, smoothies and beer. Nothing has been able to sell next to us.”

Click here to read a Q&A with Harding and learn more about Cool Fruit Sensations, visit 100urbanentrepreneurs.org

“Hubs are more about what you care about, not who you know,” says Womack, 33, a Youngstown, Ohio, native who began his college career on an academic scholarship from OSU. “We’re not just a sports blog — we’re a hub for current and former students to share information.” That includes not just opinions about the football and basketball teams but also career services, photo and video sharing, community blogs and more.

Womack got a degree in mechanical engineering technology, skills he employed in developing OurBuckeyeHub. (In his day job, he’s a mechanical engineer for the Defense Logistics Agency in Columbus.) He has put those talents to good use, having recently been brought into the funding-and-mentoring program of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs, the nonprofit foundation that provides $10,000 grants and eight weeks of intensive business mentoring to promising startups across the country. Although he’s focusing strictly on OSU for the moment, Womack’s plans are as big as the entire college universe. Currently in development are OurGoBlueHub.com (for Ohio State’s hated rivals, the University of Michigan) and — in an indication of the scope of his ambition — OurCollegeHub.com. “The battle of the social networks is over, and Facebook has won,” he says, sanguine about the potential for a business model like his. “Welcome to the age of the hub.”

To help attract attention to OurBuckeyeHub, meanwhile, Womack has enlisted numerous former Buckeye stars, including hoops standouts Scoonie Penn and brothers JJ and Jared Sullinger, as well as controversial former running back Maurice Clarett. He’s always on the lookout for notable Buckeye fans, whether former athletes or not, to help him build his business. “I’ve tried to reach out to John Legend, who I hear is a big OSU fan,” Womack says. “So if you’re reading this, John, hit me up!”

Read more with Maurice Womack on 100urbanentrepreneurs.org

There are likely plenty of those in Tallahassee; the area’s high concentration of students (Florida A&M and Florida State University both call the Sunshine State’s capital city home) means a double-dip business opportunity when it comes to gourmet baked goods like the ones Blanks offers. Her customer base is made up not only of those students, but also their parents, who want to deliver a little home-baked love to their often far-flung kids. (Blanks also caters to those who are extremely meticulous about what they eat; Sunny Days offers a full line of vegan baked goods as well.)

Blanks, 26, first got interested in running a bakery during her sophomore year at FAMU, majoring in business administration, “when friends and church members would ask me to bake cobblers, pies, cakes and cookies for them,” she says. “During my business training, I learned something that changed my way of thinking: ‘When you do what you love, you never work a day in your life.’ I realized I wanted to do it professionally.”

She’s now doing exactly that, having completed the funding-and-mentoring program of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs, the nonprofit foundation that offers $10,000 startup grants and eight weeks of guidance to entrepreneurs across the country. She’s gaining additional visibility as well through regular appearances sharing recipes and other tips as “The Domestic Diva” on WCTV, Tallahassee’s CBS affiliate.

Perhaps the biggest boost to Blanks’s business, though, is her husband, Michael, who recently got involved with Sunny Days’ daily operations. He “handles the deliveries and Web site orders, and also works with frosting the cakes,” Blanks says, adding with a laugh that “we complete each other — I always have the huge ideas, and he has the ‘let’s keep this in perspective’ attitude.” Sounds like a sweet partnership — and a promising business model to expand within Tallahassee and beyond.

For more on Rachel Blanks and Sunny Days Bakery, visit 100UrbanEntrepreneurs.org.

Left to right: Tre Baker and Lawrence Watkins of Ujamaa Deals (Image: Courtesy of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs)

Group buying—harnessing the power of crowds to secure great deals and discounts on products from companies both local and national — has a proud Web pedigree; Groupon, which more or less pioneered the concept, has (despite some recent difficulties) turned into one of the hottest Internet startups of the last decade.

Applying that business model but focusing strictly on African-American businesses is Ujamaa Deals (ujamaa is a word of Swahili origin that has come to signify the notion of cooperative economics), an Atlanta-based business (formally scheduled to launch this fall) founded by Tre Baker and Lawrence Watkins.

The model is straightforward: “The [partner] businesses have no upfront costs, but pay a percentage of the deal amount,” Baker says. “For example, one daily deal may be $20 worth of food for only $10 at a local restaurant. The restaurant would give us a percentage of the $10 for each deal sold. If nobody purchases the deal, the business pays nothing. There will be one main deal and several side deals once we are able to build a sufficient deal flow.” Simple, and it’s been proven to work. The goal of Baker and Watkins is to focus the power of group purchases on the African-American economy, which they estimate as close to $1 trillion annually.

The duo seem well-positioned to pull it off: Baker, a 27-year-old Louisville native, he started his first business eight years ago, at age 19, and has degrees from both Vanderbilt and Harvard Business School. Watkins, also 27 and a graduate of both the University of Louisville and Cornell, is the owner of Great Black Speakers Bureau, a company that connects organizations with African-American speakers for events; he also recently founded a subscription-based Web site called Great Pro Speakers, which helps professionals turn their expertise into income by teaching them the motivational-speech basics.

The two friends’ business goals received a boost recently when Ujamaa Deals became one of the newest companies brought into the funding-and-mentoring program of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs, the nonprofit foundation that offers $10,000 startup grants and eight weeks of mentoring to talented young urban businesspeople across the country.

Baker’s confidence in particular is infectious, and bodes well for the ultimate success of Ujamaa Deals. “I can almost guarantee that none of our competitors has done as much research about how to tie daily deals into the bigger picture of economic empowerment as I have,” he says. “This is my life.”

Read more on Baker, Watkins and Ujamaa Deals on 100UrbanEntrepreneurs.org

Fit for Success: Entrepreneur Naima Woodson (Image: Courtesy of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs

The sorry state of American children’s health has become, by now, something close to a national crisis, with obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems evident even, in some cases, in very young children — and rates are higher among minority kids.

Aiming to ameliorate those troubles while instilling in children a lifelong love of good nutrition and physical fitness is Naima Woodson, the founder of Los Angeles–based Fit for a Kid. Woodson’s company brings a range of exercise and nutrition programs to preschools, private institutions, child-care facilities and individual homes throughout the L.A. area for “concerned educators and parents seeking to engage their children in meaningful physical activities,” as Woodson puts it.

Woodson, 34, a certified children’s fitness and nutrition consultant, had long worked part-time as an independent trainer and nutritionist. Her goal had been to launch Fit for a Kid this summer, but the sour national economy caused a change in plans. In March 2011, “I was laid off from my full-time job of nine years,” she says. “That pushed me into self-employment a little earlier than expected.”

The launch of Woodson’s company was aided by 100 Urban Entrepreneurs, the nonprofit foundation that offers $10,000 in startup-financing grants and eight weeks of mentoring to ambitious urban businesspeople nationwide. Now partnering with 15 schools in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties, Fit for a Kid offers one 45-minute session per week, covering such topics as gross motor skills, good nutrition and basic physiology. “For reinforcement in the classroom and at home, educators and parents are provided a weekly newsletter outlining the topics covered,” Woodson says. “Unlike formal extracurricular sports and children’s gyms, Fit for a Kid benefits parents with the convenience of having their child participate in our program while they’re at school.”

Those schools, meanwhile, can incorporate the topics covered by Fit for a Kid into their daily curriculum, giving the good-health message extra resonance in impressionable young minds. It’s an important cause — not to mention, you might say, a healthy business model as well.

For more on Naima Woodson and Fit for a Kid, visit 100UrbanEntrepreneurs.org

With his new business, Estores remains a cut above (Image: Courtesy of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs)

Saving time and money—not to mention looking good—are core tenets of entrepreneurship. Ryford Estores, a born entrepreneur, knows that as well as anyone—and he has thus blended all three features in his development of The Self-Cut System, a unique three-way mirror that enables anyone to cut his own hair.

Well, maybe not anyone; Troy Polamalu and Joakim Noah might have a hard time getting their locks under control on their own. But if you’ve got a close crop and are tired of spending money (not to mention half your Saturday) at the barbershop, the Self-Cut System is for you.

Estores, 27, runs the business from his home in Ossining, New York, just up the Hudson River from Manhattan. A part-time nurse, he has long wanted to run his own company. A device that helps people take control of their hairstyle seems, as he puts it, like “a highly sellable product.”

He was given a boost not long ago when he was brought into the funding-and-mentoring program of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs, the nonprofit foundation that offers $10,000 startup grants and eight weeks of business coaching to today’s most promising young businesspeople.

His primary markets? African-American men, as well as one institutional customer with plenty of commercial weight to throw around: the U.S. military. Estores’s products are currently available for purchase at MilitaryShoppingChannel.com, which is owned by legendary entrepreneur Kevin Harrington, of Shark Tank fame — an outlet with explosive sales potential for Estores.

Want to save time and money (nearly $800 a year at $15 for a weekly cut, not counting tip) but worried you’ll make a hash of the job and end up looking like a dog with a skin disease? Don’t be. Each Self-Cut System comes with an instructional DVD; you can watch the videos online as well. Besides, “cutting your own hair is like riding a bike,” Estores says. “Do it a couple of times, and you never forget how.”

For more on Ryford Estores and his Self-Cut System, visit 100urbanentrepreneurs.org

Seeking to help other women in similar straits, she founded Easy As Pie, a Hyattsville, Maryland–based company that offers custom meal plans, individual cooking lessons, pantry walkthroughs and grocery assessments to help women achieve optimal nutrition and lead an overall healthier lifestyle.

Robey, 22, is now a senior at Howard University in Washington, D.C.; she graduates next May with a degree in computer science and business administration. (For her senior project, she’s developing an Easy As Pie mobile app for Android.) She’s also very much the public face of her business—not only because of her personal story, but also because she is the business right now. Three friends assist her with cooking meals and transportation logistics for client visits; looking ahead, she’d like to bring on a nutritionist to “gain some additional guiding principles,” as she puts it.

Those goals received a boost earlier this year, when Robey was selected to be part of the funding-and-mentoring program of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs—the nonprofit foundation that offers $10,000 in startup grants and eight weeks of intensive business mentoring—after a virtuoso performance during a business-pitch event on Howard’s campus.

The funding she’s receiving from 100UE will help Robey bolster Easy As Pie’s digital presence; in addition to the app she’s developing, the company’s website is set to launch within weeks. Her ultimate goal isn’t just a successful company—it’s to help countless women like her who struggle with their health and appearance and need some professional assistance to turn things around. “I know what it feels like to give up on yourself, and I’m proof it’s possible to get past those difficult times,” Robey says. “I changed my life, and I want to help others do the same.”

For more on Carmen and Easy as Pie, visit 100UrbanEntrepreneurs.org

Fit to Print: Entrepreneur Brittany K. Earls (Image: Courtesy of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs)

Some say print media is as dead as disco; but don’t tell that to Brittany K. Earls. Taking her best shot at magazine mogulhood at a time when many publications are slashing staff or shutting down, Earls, now 25, launched Genesis in October 2009—and has never looked back.

Well, for the most part, anyway. “I have second thoughts every day!” she says. But so far, her plan appears to be working. Genesis celebrates driven achievers across all walks of life — entrepreneurship, the arts, philanthropy. Its slogan is “Be the First” (get it?), and many of its profile subjects are young, admirable self-starters who bear a certain professional resemblance, it’s hard not to notice, to Earls herself.

A native of Gainesville, Georgia, and a graduate of Georgia State University, Earls relocated to New York — “always my dream city to move to,” she says — on New Year’s Day 2010, just months after her debut issue hit newsstands. “Twenty-four of our 30 advertisers were NYC-based,” she explains. “I quickly took the hint.”

Today, Genesis has offices in Manhattan and Atlanta, and boasts a circulation of 100,000 digital readers and — no small triumph in 2011 — 40,000 readers of the print edition. In recognition of both her achievements and her promise, the nonprofit foundation 100 Urban Entrepreneurs recently brought Earls into its funding-and-mentoring program, offering her $10,000 in financing and eight weeks of intensive business mentoring.

As Genesis’s editor-in-chief, Earls oversees a team of eight, and her ultimate goal is nothing less than a profitable media property that will last decades. “My staff and I understand that if we take care of Genesis now,” she says, “it will be a major source of income for us for years.”

Hubristic, especially in an industry that’s currently enduring difficulties? Maybe, but Earls is nothing if not confident — a quality she lauds in others as well. “I admire anyone who has been able to create greatness from scratch,” she says. And she might even put them on Genesis’s cover as well.

For more on Brittany K. Earls and Genesis, go to 100UrbanEntrepreneurs.org

So it’s appropriate that the couple — now the parents of two sons of their own — would start a kid-centric business: the felicitously named Stinky Cakes, a diaper and baby-goods company they founded in 2009 (shortly after the birth of their second son) and run out of their home in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The name comes from the “cake” diaper towers that are the Connollys’ signature product. New parents need diapers more than anything else, the couple reasoned, yet friends, relatives and baby-shower attendees are often loath to show up with a plain old uncreative box of Pampers. “There’s a stigma for some folks when it comes to giving diapers,” Mychal, now 29, says. “We wanted to make diaper giving fun.” Stinky Cakes offers numerous diaper packages: animal, sports and princess themes, corporate gifts, twin-specific items and more, all of it fully customizable. Plaudits have poured in: Adrienne is one of StartupNation’s “200 Leading Moms in Business,” while Mychal is one of BusinessWest magazine’s 40 top regional entrepreneurs under age 40.

Their business fortunes have waxed and waned amid the struggling economy, but the Connollys’ ardor for children is as strong as their desire to turn Stinky Cakes into a lasting business success. “That stems from the values our parents instilled in us,” Mychal says. “It’s one of the things we’ve always had in common—wanting to help kids. There are so many kids out there who just need a little guidance.” And, for the youngest among them, a Stinky Cake or two.

For more on Mychal and Adrienne Connolly’s booming baby business, check out 100UrbanEntrepreneurs.org.