Bart Knellinger, 32

After graduating from Palm Harbor University High School, Bart Knellinger knew he wanted to start a business. So instead of going to college, he moved to Chicago and sold pizza coupons and oil changes door to door. From there, he found a full-time gig at Idearc Media to sell advertising packages to businesses and became the top sales rep in his first year.

But it bothered Knellinger that he didn’t have much access to help his clients with business strategy because his company wasn’t tracking ad campaign effectiveness. That’s when he decided to shadow his dad, a Palm Harbor dentist, to learn what his practice was doing for advertising. He quickly learned that, for dentists, running a practice is an afterthought. Knellinger persuaded his dad to start focusing on explaining the value of his more expensive dental services and to run education-based marketing campaigns about things such as gum disease. The practice grew from $800,000 in revenue to $3 million in two years.