The appetite for fire runs hot in nearly every season at Southern Hearth and Patio, with blazing demand for fireplaces as temperatures drop in the fall, and a sizzling market for outdoor kitchens every spring and summer.

Roenesha Anderson, 30, grew up inside a vortex of family turbulence. At one point, both of her parents were incarcerated, she says, and she was eventually adopted by an aunt.

Dancer-turned-nutritionist Maite Bou has a thriving business teaching healthy-living concepts to Chattanooga-area clients — mostly mothers and/or busy career-women.

Those looking for favorable tax laws and flexible options for creating and operating trusts have historically gone to states such as South Dakota, Delaware or Nevada. But with new trustee laws and the phase-out of the so-called Hall income tax on unearned income, Tennessee has emerged as one of the top states for trust formation and services.

Furniture maker La-Z-Boy debuted a new $18 million innovation center in Dayton, Tennessee, in September, making the state-of-the-art facility the research and development hub for the Michigan-based company.

It's doubtful that a man wearing a bee mask and carrying an ax as he approached the door at Rone Regency Jewelers knew owner Bobby Mason had been hunting since he was five.

The workplace can make people feel a full range of emotions — sometimes more intensely and frequently than one experiences at home.

Mention "town and gown" partnerships to University of Tennessee at Chattanooga business professor Dr. Thomas Lyons, and he lights up.

While studying law in the San Francisco area more than a decade ago, Kevin Christopher assisted investor R. Paul Herman write his book on the HIP (Human Impact + Profit) Investor. The 2010 book , which is now included in 27 university finance courses, showed that investments across all asset classes can solve human, social and environmental problems — and can be more profitable.

Growing up in Dallas, Erika Grau originally thought she wanted to be a broadcast journalist so she studied at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.

International Equipment Company (IEC) has done business in Chattanooga for 60 years, but its never sold a piece of heavy equipment.

According to Google, an entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates a business, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so. I would say that it's much more than that. Statistically speaking, entrepreneurship is also about taking a risk with your relationships and possibly even your marriage.

When Bob Corker left the U.S. Senate in January to return to private life in his hometown of Chattanooga, three of his top aides also returned to Tennessee to use their Washington, D.C., experience, knowledge and connections to launch a new lobbying, communications and consulting firm known as Bridge Public Affairs.

Growing up, Janie Parks Varnell said she could hardly go anywhere in Chattanooga without someone recognizing her as the daughter of Steve Parks, a former Chattanooga Police Department police Chief, and Diane Parks, the director of Leadership Chattanooga.

When it comes to the practice of employment law, Chattanooga attorney Maury Nicely says he strives is to keep his clients out of trouble on the front end.

What has happened to the likes of Atticus Finch? What are lawyers becoming without his focus on what is right and just. And what is the method becoming by which we achieve justice — the jury trial. Is it what it should be? Or is it fading and becoming something different from what mankind has fought to preserve. Have we slipped into a world dominated by rules of procedure and mountains of documents that have caused us to lose sight of what is important — the economical resolution of disputes in a fair way to achieve a just result?

J.P. Cisco saw first hand the back pain suffered by his disabled uncle — and the relief he found from CBD oil derived from cannabis plants as an alternative to more addictive opioids and other pain relief medicines. So when Sanofi announced plans last year to cut some of the operations at Chattem where Cisco worked as a production manager, the 28-year-old Hixson native decided to try to start his own business in Tennessee's newly legalized industrial hemp market.

For nearly a decade, Community National Bank had not grown its assets much above the $200 million level, even during one of the longest economic expansions.

Growing up, Gabrielle Blades "was always the artsy kid," she says.

Albert Woodard thought he was being insulted when he was first called an entrepreneur.

Editor's note: Times Free Press writers Mark Kennedy (60) and Meghan Mangrum (27) are representative of the generational divide in many modern workplaces. Here, they weigh in on the boomer-millennial culture clash.

As the baby boomer population continues to age and stay in their homes longer and longer, one Chattanooga-area couple plans to be there for the routine home maintenance that can sometimes become a nuisance, or just plain dangerous, for the elderly.

Plenty has been written about American workers' failure to plan adequately for retirement. Their employers seem to be doing an even worse job.