NICKERIA Smickle built a company, rebuilt communities after a hurricane, and now wants to prove that there’s more than one way to make it.

Ask Smickle for her formula and she won’t give you a business-school answer, instead she says, “faith, hunger, and a touch of delusion”.

It is a deceptively simple recipe for a woman who has spent the last six years proving that the most successful people are often the ones bold enough to begin before anyone else believes in them.