Want to Start a Small Business?

Written by Ashley Luke

Abriana Badalamenti, ’27, begins her Thursday night shift at 3:00 p.m. She mixes a quick batch of protein granola bars and places them into the oven. She fills oversized totes with mixing bowls, whisks, flour, butter, and eggs, and hauls the load to her car. After the bars have finished baking, she heads out to pick up her employees from their homes.

Abriana owns Special Creations Bakery, a small business that teaches baking skills to adults with special needs in the Hillsdale community. Each Thursday night, she and two or three adults with special needs take over Penny’s Cafe in Kirn Residence. Throughout the semester, she has helped reinforce basic math and measuring skills, taught safe food handling, and given her employees a fun opportunity to spend time with their friends.

Giving her employees an activity to do with their friends is a large part of the business. The employees live in the same group home in Hillsdale, but they don’t often find time to hang out together and do things that they enjoy. The job also helps keep the adults in a work environment.

Since they were little, Abriana and her brother, Mickey, who has autism, have loved baking together. When she started college, Abriana realized that several others in the special-needs community shared her and Mickey’s love of baking. She got connected with the members of the group home through her church, and with the help of the Kehoe Fellowship for Entrepreneurial Excellence, Special Creations was born.

Special Creations is just one example of businesses that have started through the Kehoe Fellowship for Entrepreneurial Excellence. The Kehoe Fellowship is a program at Hillsdale College that connects young business owners with mentors and business professionals in various fields. Through biweekly ideation hours, monthly lecture series, and yearly conferences, Kehoe helps students turn their entrepreneurial ideas into three-dimensional, tangible business ventures.

Students of all interests can apply. Some students come with functioning businesses, while others come with ideas ready to be expanded and put into practice. The program meets each student where they are and helps them improve through mentorship and hands-on learning. Applications open for students to apply in the fall of their sophomore year. A large scholarship and a five-semester commitment to the program accompany the fellowship.

As second-semester sophomores, each Kehoe Fellow attends a three-day Launchpad Symposium on Hillsdale’s campus. The Symposium includes lectures from marketing, business, and finance professionals as well as book discussions about managing time and knowing your role in a small business. Each lecture, exercise, and meeting is designed to help the Kehoe Fellows figure out what makes their business different from others, what their core values are, and how they can help those values shine through their product or service.

Through Kehoe, I was able to take my sourdough bakery from an idea to actuality. I began baking just for fun, but now I sell at Hillsdale’s student markets and receive weekly orders from across campus.

Every two weeks, I meet with Career Services’ marketing manager, entrepreneurship coordinator, and the Kehoe Fellowship director, Jen Lutz, to brainstorm improvements and mull over issues I have encountered. Our meetings have become so much more than shop talk. Jen has invested so much in me as a person by learning about my goals and aspirations. When we do turn to the technical side of our meetings, she has a much deeper and stronger foundation for helping me think through the next steps that actually align with me and my vision for my business.

Jen’s persistent encouragement has helped almost every fellow I know move beyond what we ever thought we could accomplish, for which we are incredibly thankful.

While launching our own personal businesses, Kehoe Fellows are also tasked with starting a group business with four other fellows in our cohort. Jen and the other mentors walk the fellows through the process of starting up a company on campus; running, marketing, and financing; and finally closing the business down by the end of the semester. This task was possibly the most exciting and most exhausting process I have worked on with Kehoe.

One group in my cohort started a warm cookie delivery business, while another created an Asian fusion cooking experience. My group started St. Nick’s Shoe Cleaning Service. I never thought I would spend so much time in the kitchen of Simpson Residence polishing and scrubbing shoes. But because of it, I have learned firsthand how to work with people who have very different skills and personalities. I’ve also gained a strange amount of knowledge about sneakers and leather dress shoes.

Kehoe gives you a charcuterie board of odd but incredible experiences that help you grow not only as a young entrepreneur, but also as a person.

Through the Speaker Series, Kehoe Fellows have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with industry professionals and build lasting relationships with them. I remember meeting with one speaker who not only helped me explore the marketing of my product, but also gave me mom-like relationship advice. It is an honor to see how the speakers and mentors in the Kehoe Fellowship are so invested in us as students and are excited to help our businesses grow.

Abriana finishes washing the dishes and stows the last clean bowl in her tote. It’s 9:30 p.m. now, and the soft glow of the lamps in Penny’s is all that illuminates the neat rows of muffins in the glass display case. Last year, she was just a college student with a dream to help young adults with special needs. Now, because of the Kehoe Fellowship, she and her employees have never been more excited to share their mission with campus.

Ashley Luke, '28, plans to study humanities with a special interest in languages and writing. In her spare time, she loves tending to her sourdough starter, perusing art museums, and reading poetry.

Published in May 2026

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