- May 23, 2025
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A middle school principal with a heart for interior design. A construction worker and financially-struggling young father searching for a better opportunity and life’s purpose. And a hotel events saleswoman with a knack for recognizing, and seizing trends.
That’s not a casting call for the next hit Netflix or Hulu drama.
Instead, those are snapshots — of Kristy Craig Anderson, Henry Detwiler and Kim Githler — of three of the six 2025 Business Observer Top Entrepreneurs. Three other winners, Beck Besecker, Anthony Solomon and Elizabeth Dosoretz, also come armed with compelling backstories.
Together, the companies these six winners oversee have well into the hundreds of millions in annual revenue, and thousands of employees. The industries cover grocery, real estate, technology, health care and education.
One theme from all the winners: finding and capitalizing on a niche. Then growing that niche. Consider Dosoretz, CEO and founder of Fort Myers-based Elite DNA Behavioral Health. A licensed clinical social worker, Dosoretz saw the gap in mental health services firsthand, when she was struggling after the birth of one of her three children. “I knew there was a tremendous opportunity, because the more I questioned what was happening in the field, the more of an understanding I had that comprehensive care wasn’t the rule, it was more of the exception,” she says.
She started small, treating patients solo in one office in Fort Myers in 2013. Today Elite DNA has 35 offices across Florida, with an eye on expanding out of the state.
Githler, in investor education, also found a niche, running events and shows for a variety of investors as early as 1981 — long before E-trade, Robinhood and other entities upended the way people invest in the stock market. Like Dosoretz, Githler and her team at Sarasota-based MoneyShow have grown the business by continuing to find and serve what clients need. “What we do at our show [is] reveal interesting tidbits,” says Githler. “It’s really about the people you can educate and raise the bar for. I bring them the best education possible. Knowledge is power.”
Another theme of these six Top Entrepreneurs? Grit — and building something for the goal of being better than you were yesterday.
Detwiler talks about that with Detwiler’s Farm Market, which has grown from a 10 by 20 egg-grading tent to a farm stand to now six stores in two counties with a popular following. He says he started humbly, and wants that to be a core value for the business long after he’s gone.
“I don't want to become indifferent. And I don't want to be the company that becomes just about making money. We didn't start it that way, and I hope we never make that our driving force, even though we have to make a living,” Detwiler says. “I want to be a little bit more like a company that keeps giving back to the community and to the consumers, the customers, and keep being fair for everyone instead of just fair for me.”
Besecker, too, says the chase for greatness, not merely the big sale or next office or quarterly sales goal, is a constant motivation. “To build anything of value, where you're solving a real problem and getting it to scale, it takes 10 years to really get it there,” Besecker says. “Most businesses take time, and the amount of grit required. Grit is this idea of being able to see something in the future, long term, and just stay on that path every day, be consistent every day, working toward that path. It's years of that kind of behavior, and years of having a short memory and overcoming mistakes.”
