Tri-C’s Center for Entrepreneurs helps small businesses bloom

When the final buzzer sounded in game 7 of the 2016 NBA championship series, the entire city of Cleveland erupted in celebration. The Cleveland Cavaliers had beaten the Golden State Warriors to clinch their first championship in franchise history.

Jacob Mostoller was at a watch party that night, but as his friends kicked the party up to the next gear, Mostoller ducked out to head home.

“I had this idea of a 3D-printed championship ring for the Cavs mascot,” he said. “There are companies that make championship rings for mascots, but they are sewn fabric. I wanted one that looked like a real ring. That was the original bread and butter.”

Three days later, the city hosted a parade to celebrate the Cavs championship, and 1.3 million people attended.

"Those first rings were at the parade and got lots of attention, which is what first put me on the map in the sports marketing community," Mostoller said.

Mostoller tells this story as he walks through his workspace, which spans two large shipping and loading docks in Beachwood. At Engineered 2 Entertain, there are 3D printers that range from tabletop models to printers the size of a large tent. Engineers, designers and artists are busy at work.

“Now we have scaled up. We’ve worked with 94 pro teams,” Mostoller said.

Engineered 2 Entertain fabricates props for professional sports teams. Mostoller and his crew recently completed a 1:75-scale model of the Browns’ new Huntington Bank Field that includes 7,253 resin-printed seats and a working video screen to replicate the Jumbotron.

“Our reputation is getting grander and grander. We’re being asked to do things that are massive,” Mostoller said.

Engineered 2 Entertain is the kind of small-business success story you’d expect to find on reality TV. Mostoller and his team make cool stuff — stuff that creates good visuals — and the growth curve looks like a “J.” But to build a business, you need more than a great idea, and that’s where Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C^®) comes in.

The Bottom Line

About three years ago, the College created the Center for Entrepreneurs at its Corporate College^® division.

“The goal was to help people in the community who had an idea about a business or who had started a side hustle that they wanted to see become a full-fledged business. That’s the bottom line,” said Ronna McNair, the Center’s executive director.

“We’ve actually carved out a niche for ourselves in that we work with early-stage entrepreneurs,” McNair said. “For some entrepreneurial programs, you have to have $20,000 in annual revenue — or even more — to get started. We try to remove those barriers.”

"The goal was to help people in the community who had an idea about a business or who had started a side hustle that they wanted to see become a full-fledged business. That’s the bottom line."

The Center plays a unique role within the College’s ecosystem. It’s a resource for Tri-C graduates as well as for entrepreneurs who have never taken a class. The doors are open to everyone, from the graduate of Tri-C’s Recording Arts and Technology program who wants to start her own studio to the baker who has noticed his fellow church members just love his cakes. They both get the institutional weight of the College’s brand and reputation behind them.

The surface goal is simple: help entrepreneurs succeed — but when entrepreneurs can turn their ideas into action, a cascade happens. The economy and social fabric of Northeast Ohio bloom. A flourishing business generates revenue, jobs and, not least of all, a livelihood for the entrepreneur.

The Raw Ingredients

Many parts go into the making of a successful entrepreneur. Some things can’t be taught: tenacity, passion, purpose and the kind of temperament that sees obstacles as opportunities.

Then, there are the things that must be learned.

Mostoller had a great idea and the requisite grit, but Engineered 2 Entertain was basically a phone number and an Instagram account before he took the Center’s Discovery Track, an entrepreneurship program for refining and launching business ideas.

“A few projects fell in my lap, and I started to see that this could be the best way to provide for my family,” he said. In February 2025, he decided to put all his focus on the business.

“I hadn’t fully thought out what owning and operating a business meant. The Discovery Track is perfect for getting that foundation built,” Mostoller said.

The Discovery Track helps budding entrepreneurs identify how their idea solves a problem or meets a need, define and analyze a target market, define a business structure, file paperwork, manage money and establish a brand. 

“I had never thought about who our ‘core customer’ was. What is our value proposition?” Mostoller said. “As soon as I finished the courses, I was like, ‘This is what our website looks like, this is what our brand guidelines are, this is what our models are going to be, this is our identity.’”

He also gained critical insights into structuring the financial side of the business.

“To run a business, you have to have this thing that you are good at, but then you have to check off all of these other boxes,” he said. “I am a sports guy, and I make things, but there is this whole administrative side to running a business.”

Right on Track

The Discovery Track that Mostoller took is 32 hours of coursework over four weeks. It is a place to develop an idea, to turn a concept into a concrete plan and launch a business. The Center’s Foundation Track is a complement to and continuation of the Discovery Track. It’s 48 hours of coursework over six weeks that focuses on stabilizing and growing a business. A third track focuses on nonprofit management, mission development, legal compliance, strategic planning, fundraising, financial management, community engagement and impact measurement.

Harry Jones III had worked for 20 years in security and law enforcement before successfully launching his own private security company, Jones Protective Services. The company had been up and running for six years with four full-time employees when he decided it was time to take it to the next level. A Google search led him to the Center for Entrepreneurs.

“I felt like it would sharpen my skills as a business owner. There were some foundational things that I needed to learn, like accounting, marketing — things like that. It was an opportunity to build a stronger foundation for the business,” Jones said.

Jones enrolled in the Foundation Track, and its impact was immediate.

“I was able to create a more structured environment for the business,” he said. “I learned a lot of key things: marketing, being more out there on social media, promoting the business. They helped me see things totally differently, more as an entrepreneur.”

The Heart of the Matter

Chemarra Bryant is CEO of Seaside Support Services for Professionals. Her business offers nature-centered wellness programs for leaders, professional helpers and pregnant and postpartum women.

“I am a for-profit with a nonprofit heart,” Bryant said.

Bryant founded her business in 2019, and a year later, Covid shut down the world. She regrouped and decided to lay a better groundwork before diving back in. Workshops and webinars, however, left her disheartened.

“It wasn’t helping me build,” she said. “I felt discouraged. The Center for Entrepreneurs gave me hope.”

She completed both tracks and began taking clients in 2025.

A Class Act

The Center’s classes are offered in the evenings and are taught in person by actual entrepreneurs. The instructors are not there to give pep talks. They teach the nuts and bolts that give a business the structure to succeed.

In-person classes provide networking opportunities with instructors and fellow entrepreneurs. The program also includes online check-ins and workshops.

Bryant described the course structure and material as “thoughtful.”

“Cheryl Perez, an instructor for the Discovery Track, taught me about the ‘Idea Parking Lot,’” Bryant said. “I am flooded with ideas on a daily basis, which can be overwhelming, so it was a relief to know I could ‘park’ the ideas and retrieve them when needed. It freed me up to work on the foundation of my business and take actionable steps in the areas where attention was most needed.”

“It’s such a natural environment,” Jones said. “Everybody feeds off each other. There are ideas put out there. We hear about real-life experiences from the instructors. Everybody shares their experiences, and it opens your eyes.

“The program resets your thoughts on how to run a business, how to be an entrepreneur, and even though it’s very diverse, all of us have similar goals: to be the leader of a business and to make that business grow. We are all in that together.”

A Different Breed

There’s more to the Center than just coursework.

“We find that entrepreneurs are a bit of a different breed,” McNair said. “If they come through our program, they’re excited. They have this idea and they want to bring it to fruition. We are there to help them.”

The Center helps connect entrepreneurs with funding through grants from local businesses and foundations that trust the Tri-C brand and want to give back to the community. Jones received a $2,000 grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation through the Center.

Bryant has secured two grants with assistance from the Center. With the most recent, she bought a Cricut, a smart cutting machine, for her business. Bryant said securing grants was about more than money, though.

“If you are a for-profit startup, it all boils down to loans, which I couldn’t do. I felt like there had to be another way. You spend all your time trying to find money. You lose the focus of why you’re doing what you’re doing,” she said.

The Center’s Pitch Competition is its take on Shark Tank, where entrepreneurs compete for cash awards. Mostoller himself was a pitch winner and used the money to buy an industrial-sized 3D printer, which created new capacity for Engineered 2 Entertain.

The Center hosts a speaker series that features successful entrepreneurs as guests. Speaking of Entrepreneurship is an award-winning podcast that’s a spinoff of the speaker series. The Center also launched its Podcast Studio and courses that allow entrepreneurs and community members to build their brands and audiences through podcasting.

The Center for Entrepreneurs also has scholarships available.

“We’ve been able to work with foundations and corporations locally that believe in what we are doing,” McNair said. That means most entrepreneurs can complete tracks at no cost when scholarships are available.

More than 350 entrepreneurs have gone through the program. The Center boasts a 90% course completion rate. Of its participants, 80% have been women, and 90% have been people of color. More than 1,000 entrepreneurs have participated in the Huntington Entrepreneur in Residence program or attended the speaker series and workshops.

No Small Business

At three years old, the Center for Entrepreneurs is still growing, and McNair envisions new programs that involve mentorship and long-term support for businesses.

“The Center itself is run like a business. We are able to pivot, and we listen to our customers,” she said.

As the Center matures, its impact on the small business community will expand. It will be measured in facts and figures like annual revenues and the number of people employed by its alumni businesses. These are the white-paper points about the Center for Entrepreneurs.

But underneath all of that, there is something else taking place, something harder to quantify, something on the level of the individual. The Center for Entrepreneurs teaches people to believe in themselves.

Bryant, a woman of faith and a licensed counselor, was able to combine her years of working in end-of-life and prenatal care with a mission to help underserved communities through nature-based wellness programs. She combined those elements into a business that’s her own. 

“The work I do allows me to be my authentic self.”

Mostoller spent years trying to find his niche. He worked in marketing for the Lake County Captains. He worked at GNC. With his bachelor’s in engineering and two toddlers at home, he figured he’d eventually wind up at a 9-to-5 job at Boeing.

He didn’t find any of these options particularly exciting. But when he talks about Engineered 2 Entertain, he is animated. As he talks about how “cool” this project was and the special touches he added to it, you can see on his face that he feels it. He can’t wait to see what the next job will be.

“That February, I put in my two weeks’ notice,” Mostoller said. “I realized that I had my own full-time job.”

September 29, 2026

Jarrod Zickefoose, 216-987-4750 or jarrod.zickefoose@tri-c.edu