Quint Studer came up with the idea for EntreCon last year as a way for local entrepreneurs and business professionals to come together, network and learn from each other.

The conference featured a range of speakers who shared the lessons they learned in launching and growing startups as well as ways to raise capital. More than 200 people attended the two-day event and gave it a 9.7 rating on a 1-to-10 scale.

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EntreCon was so successful that Studer, the founder of the Studer Community Institute, decided to bring back the conference for a second year. It runs from Thursday, Nov. 3, through Friday, Nov. 4, at Pensacola Little Theatre in downtown Pensacola.

“This year, we’re seeing a lot more interest in the conference and are expecting more than 400 people to attend,” said Nicole Webb, the Institute’s director of marketing and partnerships and coordinator of EntreCon. “Last year we focused on the lifecycle of the entrepreneur. This year’s focus is on ways to create a culture so that everyone in the organization feels and acts like an owner.”

With more than 50 speakers and panelists, the conference will feature a wide range of entrepreneurs and business professionals who have started companies big and small.

John Allison, co-founder of Home BancShares, which is the holding company of Centennial Bank

One of the keynote speakers who made it big is John Allison, co-founder of Home BancShares, which is the holding company of Centennial Bank. Allison’s path to entrepreneurship began after he and his brother had to dig a ditch for which they were paid $250. That’s when Allison decided manual labor wasn’t for him and that he was getting into the mobile home business like his father.

By the time Allison was 22, he not only owned a mobile home business, but also had bought a 23 percent stake in a mobile-home manufacturer. In the early 1980s, he bought his first bank in Conway, Ark., which he later sold.

In 1998, he co-founded Home BancShares and the following year established First State Bank in Conway. Home BancShares is now the holding company for Centennial Bank, which has more than 140 branches throughout the South with assets of nearly $10 billion.

Allison, who retired as CEO of the company, says he’s never seen himself as a banker, but as a businessman who runs a bank.

“There is nothing magic about me,” he said in an interview in the American Banker magazine. “There's nothing I do different than anybody else. I just love people."

On the mom-and-pop side of entrepreneurship, Tommy Van Horn will be at EntreCon to talk about how he turned his weekend hobby of beekeeping into a thriving small business.

After a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that raised nearly $30,000, East Hill Honey has expanded from a booth at the farmers market to having its products sold in nearly 40 outlets and used by more than a dozen local restaurants.

Van Horn and his wife, Emily, started the company when they had just two beehives in the backyard of their East Hill home. Today, Tommy and four full-time beekeepers maintain more than 500 beehives in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties and have two contractors who oversee another 1,500 beehives from Okaloosa County to Apalachicola.

Van Horn had no idea the company he and his wife created in 2011 would grow from two beehives to 2,000.

“I thought it was going to be a little side thing where I would sell honey at the farmers market on weekends,” said Van Horn. “But I learned that I just loved everything about beekeeping and the whole entrepreneurial aspect of creating and running a business. And what I really enjoy is that no day is the same, and I found I thrive in that kind of environment.”

Van Horn will be part of a panel on the opening day of EntreCon that will focus on how to take a big idea and turn it into a successful business. The panel also includes William McClelland, owner of McClelland Tennis Academy, and Hurst Butts, who runs VolumeOne Salon. A complete list of speakers and a link to registration is available here.

“As Quint says, if you come to the conference and you don’t feel as if you got your money’s worth, we will refund your money,” said Webb. “That’s how confident we are that this is going to be great event.”