2008 Economic Impact Awards Top Honors
Entrepreneur of the Year: Shawn Askinosie
By Tresa McBee, Springfield Business Journal
PUBLISHED: July 21, 2008 [not sure if that’s a typo on the article?]

It started with the cupcakes.

Chocolate desserts came next. Then the idea for a chocolate factory, but not before the cupcakes were perfected.

“For a while, I was very obsessed with cupcakes,” says Shawn Askinosie, founder of Askinosie Chocolate at 514 E. Commercial St.

Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He’s the same Askinosie who had a high-profile career as a criminal defense attorney before leaving the profession at the height of his earning potential to make premium dark chocolate. Although Askinosie and Stacie Bilyeu merged practices in 2006, he doesn’t practice law anymore.

That might seem strange for someone who loved the law for 20 years. But he defended people accused of serious felonies, and after two back-to-back, first-degree murder cases that catapulted Askinosie into the limelight that included national press coverage, he reassessed. “With each client, a little piece of you goes with them, and you think, ‘Well, how much longer can you do this?’” Askinosie says.

You can read the whole article here.

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Sidenote: Shawn Askinosie also sponsored Cupcake Hero in May. You can click here and here to read more!