Your Stories, Your Words: Investing in a Vision

The idea for “Pak Then Stak,” which drops off and picks up reusable crates for movers, came after I relocated from Northern Virginia to my current home in South Carolina. Moving is exhausting, and I remember thinking, “There must be a way to make this process easier.”

That instinct to solve problems on my own terms isn’t new to me. Like a lot of people who are blind, I ran into real barriers to finding employment right out of college. Being my own boss and walking my own path appealed to me — and it runs in the family, since a lot of my relatives have built their own businesses too.

I had business instincts, but turning an idea into a full-blown company was a different skill set entirely. I was in the middle of setting up an LLC when I got an email from the National Federation of the Blind mailing list about the Forsythe Entrepreneurial Center’s Business Enterprise Competition. I saw it as a way to pressure-test the idea and figure out the actual steps to move forward.

The program pushed me to sharpen how “Pak Then Stak” adds value to the community, dig deeper into marketing and sales strategy, and get a real handle on the financial side of running a business.

I’m reinvesting the prize money straight back into the business — growing our inventory and upgrading our marketing and administrative systems so we can move faster and grow sooner rather than later. When this competition started, “Pak Then Stak” was still mostly a dream. Now I am more confident, and it is going to work.

— Quan Leysath, founder of Pak Then Stak, LLC, and winner of the Forsythe Entrepreneurial Center’s Business Enterprise Competition’s $25,000 grand prize in 2026.