Are you uncomfortable talking to strangers? It’s time to get comfortable! Talking to strangers has many personal and professional benefits — and it’s something you can learn to do better. Joe Keohane, author of the book “The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting In A Suspicious World”, explains how.
This episode is sponsored by AT&T Business. To learn more about how AT&T Business can help keep your business going, visit att.com/solvers.
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You can learn a lot from a simple margarita… because when you take one home from a restaurant in America, you’re participating in a change that was hundreds of years in the making. In this episode, we dig deep into how cocktails-to-go became suddenly legal (and why they were once illegal in the first place). It’s a surprisingly complex story that reveals our weird history with alcohol, and how the smallest shifts can lead to unexpectedly massive changes, and how entrepreneurs can take advantage. This episode is from my other podcast, Build For Tomorrow.
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One Hundred Percent with Marcus Lemonis is a little bit of a masterclass, a cocktail party and a Sunday drive all wrapped up into 30 minutes with an audience invited to listen in.
Marcus values family, community, character and ethics and helps small business owners who need his guidance and investment. His process is very personal and provides valuable insight through his ability to identify both problems and solutions. For years he has transformed the trajectory of businesses and the lives of its founders. Listeners will get to enjoy fun and unfiltered conversations centered around mentoring entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs that Marcus invites onto the show are creating products or services that will impact the world for the better.
In each episode, listeners will meet the most exciting generation of business owners, including Charles Barkley, Kathy Ireland, Al Roker and Nicole Miller, and all the innovative ventures coming to and disrupting the market. Marcus talks to CEOs, entrepreneurs, inventors and all kinds of new leaders in the only way he knows how, it gets personal. They also talk about something successful people rarely reveal, what they need to take their success to the next level. Marcus and the guest explore that question in an effort to solve that puzzle..
Listen Here: http://wondery.fm/100PercentSolver
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People.ai CMO Justin Shriber, host of the “Legends of Sales and Marketing” podcast, walks us through the top three marketing mistakes he sees entrepreneurs make — and explains how to fix them.
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Amy Morin, author of the book “13 Things That Strong Kids Do”, explains how to create the entrepreneurial spark — and how, in the entrepreneurial quest, adults and kids all grapple with the same big issues.
Set Your Children Up for Success with Entrepreneur Kids: All About Money. 
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The hardest question in entrepreneurship might be this: “When?” Square cofounder (and author of the book Innovation Stack) Jim McKelvey has thought deeply about this question, and has a helpful way of thinking about timing… both in business, and in life.
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Everyone hates networking, but everyone knows that they need to build their network. What to do? Jon Levy, author of the new book “You’re Invited”, explains how to build meaningful connections in a totally different way.
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How do you poke fun at something in a way that excites everyone and upsets no one? It’s a skill that actor Ryan Reynolds has mastered—as his marketing company, Maximum Effort, churns out one viral hit after another. In this conversation with Entrepreneur editor in chief Jason Feifer, he shares how he does it.
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The pandemic taught us an important lesson: The things we once thought were impossible might actually be our greatest opportunities.
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Chip Gaines (of Fixer Upper) loves people who say yes. “People who say yes to life, yes to hard work, and yes to risk, but who aren’t yes-people,” he writes in his new memoir, called No Pain, No Gaines. In this conversation, we talk about the power of building a network, imposter syndrome, getting through hard times, and so, so much more!
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Entrepreneurs know that it’s important to build a community—but how do you really do it? In this episode, Smart Passive Income community experience director Jay Clouse explains how he developed a premium community from a small slice of the site’s overall user base. Jay is also the host of the podcast Creative Elements.
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Most people say “I can’t do that.” Entrepreneurs say, “Let’s figure out what I CAN do.” How do you develop that kind of mindset? I talk with educator Charlene Walters, author of the new book “Launch Your Inner Entrepreneur: 10 Mindset Shifts for Women to Take Action, Unleash Creativity and Achieve Financial Success”.
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The pandemic offered us a gift: It forced us to blow past the boundaries we’d set up for ourselves. Now let’s keep doing it. How? I share my own thoughts, then talk with Mario Armstrong, host of the Never Settle Show and the Wake Up and Level Up podcast.
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People in 1921 made big, bold predictions for what would happen in 2021… and many of them were surprisingly accurate. We explore what they said, what it all means, and how it can inspire us to build even greater things tomorrow.
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In Wondery’s newest series, Business Movers, host Lindsay Graham dives deep into the inner workings of some of the most successful companies of all time. From the origin stories of their famed leaders to the million dollar idea that catapulted them to success, how exactly did these companies grow from an idea and a dream to multi- billion dollar corporations? Hear the landmark decisions, the scandals, and the stunning triumphs that made them who they are. First up: Walt Disney. Listen at http://wondery.fm/solvers_movers
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How can you provide a great digital product or service, while still providing the human contact that consumers want? The mortgage company Own Up originally got that balance wrong… and fixing it transformed their business.
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These stressed-out parents discovered new ways to expand their businesses. Business consultant Terry Rice explains how.
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This was a hard year, but also a good year. Why? Because we were forced to make change. Here are the lessons we should take into 2021.
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It may not be what you think! In this episode, Jason Feifer explains why “quality isn’t enough.”
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How do you create passionate customers? Little Spoon’s Lisa Barnett has an answer: Treat your brand like it’s a mission—identifying an enemy, releasing a manifesto, and offering many ways to onboard your audience. In this episode, she explains how to do it all.
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Baked goods company Foodstirs had big plans for 2020, but had to reinvent everything when the pandemic came. This is a story about the importance of knowing your mission, and how it can keep you focused even when times get tough.
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Ever feel like you’re up against the impossible? Hint Water’s Kara Goldin did. In this conversation about her new book “Undaunted,” she describes how she got through her doubts (hint: focus on customers!), how she’s expanded her company’s mission and wrestled with the challenges of lobbying in Washington, and how anyone can empower themselves to be a leader.
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How do you pull off the biggest business deal of your life… while a pandemic changes all the rules? That’s what John Berkowitz of OJO Labs pulled off, raising $68.1 million in the process. And here’s the craziest part: The pandemic may have been the thing that made it all possible.
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Gary Vaynerchuk just entered the consulting industry. Why? In this conversation, Gary tells Entrepreneur editor in chief Jason Feifer about how the new business solves a problem inside his company VaynerMedia, how he developed the products, and what big brands do wrong as they try reaching younger consumers.
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Your relationships can transform your business — so how do you build them right? In this episode, painter Meg O’Hara explains how Covid completely destroyed her business… and pushed her to rethink her relationships with her clients. Now she’s reinvented herself, and her business is stronger than ever.
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As companies across industries talk about broadening their workforces, they’re running into a cold reality: If you just say you want to hire different people, you’ll reach candidates who don’t feel welcomed by the opportunity. This is the story of how the global IT firm Infosys rethought its hiring process, and began attracting a new kind of tech employee.
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Fireflies.ai automatically takes and organizes notes during meetings, and has become super popular in the past few months. But its 26-year-old founders never used the term “remote work” when they were building it, because they never thought that’s how it would be used. Here’s how their unusual partnership, and their bet on a once-futuristic technology, led to the right idea at the right time… without them even knowing.
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We’ve gone from panic, to adaptation, to new normal, to… something else? Here are three ways to think about what comes next, and how to make sure you’re as relevant as ever.
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Madison Semarjian’s fashion app Mada was totally unique and making waves… until a massively funded competitor came along. Here’s how Madison, fresh out of college, pivoted to protect her space.
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Sometimes an idea isn’t bad… it’s just that the timing is bad. So what do you do? In this episode, host Jason Feifer tells two stories from his own life about finding the right time for once-wrong ideas, and how you can make the most of yours.
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Retail is not as simple as getting products into stores, as Tiffany Krumins learned the hard way. Here are her tough lessons, which she learned after scoring big on the first-ever episode of Shark Tank.
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The most important question an entrepreneur can ask today: “If I were starting my business today, what business would I build?” We discuss this (and how to reinvent yourself too!) with Matt Higgins, a recurring shark on Shark Tank and CEO of the investment firm RSE Ventures.
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How do you innovate, and how do you do it in a time of crisis? A conversation with Matt Ridley, author of the book “How Innovation Works”.
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Entrepreneurs can get through anything. Why? Because they’ve already been prepared for the worst. Hear host Jason Feifer’s thoughts, and then a conversation with “The Soul of an Entrepreneur” author David Sax.
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Many entrepreneurs have pivoted online, offering new digital services in order to keep their business afloat. Now they’re wondering: Is this really sustainable? Small-business expert Amanda Brinkman offers a surprising answer: Not only is it sustainable — it might be better for your business! In this episode, we listen in on a coaching session she gives Leigh Ann Cannady, owner of a performing arts center in Georgia.
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Stories of entrepreneurs who are making fast, important changes during this crisis. Featuring: Eric Morton of American Bench Craft, Lisa Janvrin of YouthfulNest, Brian Chen of ROOM, Todd Bellomy of Farthest Star Sake, and Kirsten Lambert of Beantown Bedding
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Our ambitions drive us, but they can also consume us. How do we make the most of them, without losing ourselves? We explore with Katie Sturino, founder of Megababe.
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Leaders are made in a time of crisis—not just because they can step up to fix things, but because they’re willing to look at their own flaws and become a better leader. That’s the story of Eric Edelson of Fireclay Tile, who had to fix his company… and himself. This is a bonus episode of Problem Solvers, brought to you by Asana.
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The Rock and business partner Dany Garcia have a rule: “We aren’t attached to process. We’re only attached to outcome.”
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Eric Yaverbaum, chairman of Ericho Communications, has been sick in bed with COVID-19 for 11 days. But he’s been able to lead his company with optimism, transparency, and blunt reality.
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How can entrepreneurs adapt to coronavirus, and set themselves up for a stronger future? In this episode, hear directly from five of them—as they share their thoughts about how to pivot, produce new products, and plan for the future. Featuring: Meghan Asha, Cynthia Williams-Bey, Joseph Sommer, Monica Kang, and Natasha Miller
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How do you say the most in the fewest amount of words? Expert pitchman Anthony Sullivan, known for being the face of OxiClean as well as his new CBD brand MontKush, explains how.
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How can something so basic—so obvious!—be a competitive advantage? Here’s why: Because too many people forget to build trust. I explain, and then discuss it with a guy who won my trust. It’s Jay Sofer of Lockbusters, a locksmith whose approach to customer service is worth learning from.
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Talkspace is a platform where therapists and patients can talk, and its first launch was a total failure. But then its founders noticed something strange: Users were sending lots of very, very personal emails to its customer service team. Why? The answer totally transformed the business.
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Mark Lawrence co-founded SpotHero in Chicago, and investors told him he needed to expand across America fast. He wanted to take a different approach… even though he wasn’t entirely sure it was the right one. Here’s how Mark formulated a plan, stuck to it, and proved himself right.
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When the home security company SimpliSafe launched, it marketed itself entirely towards renters. After all, they were an underserved marketplace—no other home security system was made for people who rent apartments. But SimpliSafe wasn’t growing as fast as its founders expected, so it dug into its customer data and discovered something surprising: Half its customers were home-owners, the people it explicitly wasn’t trying to reach. Now it had a big decision to make: Does SimpliSafe keep going with renters, or change everything (including its product!) to court this new marketplace of customers?
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To start the year 2020 right, take some lessons from the business world of Mark Wahlberg—who diligently, thoughtfully built himself into the most disciplined man in Hollywood.
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Do you sometimes feel like a loser? So does legendary fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg—and she admits it here! In this episode, Diane shares a healthy perspective on life… and how the most important thing is owning what you do.
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Change can be scary, and entrepreneurs are at the forefront of that conflict. We invent things. We create change. But of course, that change can be scary… for other people, or for ourselves. What then? On this episode, we dive deep into what transformative change looks like—by examining the surprising, weird, often alarming history of the elevator. (Episode comes to us via the podcast Pessimists Archive, which is another show hosted by Problem Solvers host Jason Feifer.)
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Neal Goyal ran a ponzi scheme, defrauded investors out of roughly $9 million, and spent years in prison for his crime. Today he’s out, and we have a frank conversation about what leads someone to make the kind of decisions he made, and the amount of soul searching and self-repair required to come back from it.
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This is a story about change—and whether it’s something to resist, or an opportunity to take. And it all started when the founder of Edible Arrangements discovered that the word “edibles” had become associated with marijuana. It scared him. He tried to fight it. And then… something else happened.
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Why are we not more comfortable selling ourselves? In this episode, host Jason Feifer reveals a common mistake he sees people make when pitching their work. Then, he turns to Jason Harris—CEO of the ad agency Mekanism, and author of the book “The Soulful Art of Persuasion”—for a plan on how to do better.
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How do you build an exciting career? Does networking matter? Does it matter what you study? In this episode, the interviewing tables are turned: College student Danielle Kraidin asks me her most pressing career questions.
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Most people work with family or friends, but is that wise? And what do you do when things go wrong? Celebrated fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff has plenty of insight on this, because she works with plenty of friends—and her CEO is her brother! In this episode, she explains how she balances it all.
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When you change your company name, can you change the way you relate to customers? That’s what Neighborly (formerly Dwyer Group) is currently finding out. In this, the second in our two-part series about name changes, we learn how the country’s largest home-services franchise company is redefining how it relates to customers… all because it changed its name.
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Does a corporate name really matter? Yes, says Guru Gowrappan. And he should know. On this episode, we learn why Yahoo and AOL was merged into a company called Oath, why Guru changed the name to Verizon Media, and how renaming the company changed the entire company’s culture—leading to more sales, more collaboration, and a lot less drama.
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Entrepreneurs should be life-long learners. They should constantly develop new skills, even if they don’t know the ROI on those skills. And that’s why James Altucher—the former hedge fund manager who’s built and sold many companies—dedicated himself to mastering stand-up comedy. In this conversation, he explains why he kept pushing himself to try something difficult and often embarrassing, and how stand-up has helped him in the most unexpected ways.
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What do you do for a second act, when your first act literally changed an industry? That was the question facing makeup powerhouse Bobbi Brown, whose simple line of lipsticks blossomed into the billion-dollar company Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. She left it in 2016 with no plans for what to do next; all she knew was that she was done with corporate life. But she’s since found an answer—expanding into new territories with multiple new brands. But the second act isn’t really so different from the first act, she says: At its heart, everything an entrepreneur does is just about doing.
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Change will come to every business, but there’s an irony to it: The best time to embrace change is when you see it coming from far away — when you still have time to plan, and when you aren’t hurting. On this episode, I make my case for making change, and then talk actor Justin Klosky, who switched careers and became a professional organizer.
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Influencers can be a valuable marketing tool: Get your product into their hands, and they might send waves of new fans your way. But how do you actually do that? We talk to Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of a wearable fitness device called Whoop, whose product was almost immediately embraced by the world’s top athletes.
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Can you give your customers too much choice? Vanessa Van Edwards learned that the answer is yes. She used to sell lots of different courses online, but eventually decided to throw them all away. The result was crazy: Profits spiked! If you’re looking to sell online courses—or really, to sell *anything* online—this is the episode to listen to.
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In this episode, leadership expert Scott Miller lays out a radical argument: Some people are just excellent individual performers — and there’s no shame in staying that way. But if you ARE going to become a leader, then it’s time to think differently about everything.
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SwagUp COO Artem Mashkov had a problem: His employees were miserable and making mistakes. But instead of blaming them, he looked internally—and discovered a hiring system that was recruiting the entirely wrong kind of employee. Then he made some big changes in how SwagUp hires… leading to sometimes strange interviews, where he challenges candidates to think creatively and tries to scare them out of the job.
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When a company is in trouble and needs someone to make change, they call Matt Hulett. He’s now the president of Rosetta Stone, and is in the process of rethinking the company’s entire product offering. How does a guy like this operate? In this episode, Matt shares the three-step approach he takes to turning a company around. 
 
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Right now, as you listen to this show, someone out there might be thinking about hiring or partnering with you—but they can’t, because you haven’t put enough of yourself out there. On this episode, we discuss fear and self-promotion with Kassi Underwood, an author and coach who focuses on overcoming fear.
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OMG we’ve made 100 episodes of Problem Solvers! If you’re interested in podcasting, this is the episode for you: Host Jason Feifer is going to explain how he conceived of the show, how he makes it each week on a shoestring budget, and how any entrepreneur can jump into the podcasting game.
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Barefoot Wine is one of the largest wine brands in the world. But it was nearly destroyed in the very beginning, when it was forced to stop all sales for a month. Its founders panicked… and then used that suspension to create the greatest sales opportunity a young brand like theirs could ever hope for. This is the story of how Barefoot Wine grew by repeatedly turning errors into advantages.
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We’ve all done it: We see someone score amazing attention, or win some award, or snag the perfect client, and we wonder, How’d they pull that off? It can seem random. What do they have that we don’t? How did luck happen to break their way? I used to wonder this all the time. But now, after meeting so many entrepreneurs who have triumphed in so many ways, I see a pattern in their success. Here it is: They make it as easy as possible to be rewarded.
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Cameo is an app that connects celebrities with fans for a very specific purpose: Fans can pay for the celebrity to film a personalized video for them—wishing them a happy birthday, for example. Growth was steady, but then potential disaster struck: A group of white supremacists tricked one of Cameo’s most famous celebrities into filming a video with coded hate speech. Cameo knew it needed to fix this problem quickly, before other celebrities started to distrust the platform. Here’s how Cameo sprung into action.
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Harry Overly got an unexpected call one day from Sun-Maid, the raisin company with the famous red box featuring a grapescarrying girl. It needed a new CEO—was he interested? “What is the appetite for risk?” he asked in response. Because Overly, a food industry veteran, knew the job wouldn’t be easy. Sun-Maid was in trouble: Raisin sales were down, and its brand voice had gone silent. What to do? In this episode, Harry explains the plan he’s enacting to turn around one of America’s most recognizable brands.
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Nobody can see the pathway ahead of them. We’re all blind. But the people who succeed are the ones willing to walk in the dark anyway. On this episode, host Jason Feifer shares his six-step plan for success (step one: start moving!), and then talks with Gregg Clunis, host of the podcast Tiny Steps, Big Leaps, about how to find the motivation and will to take those steps.
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Namogoo is an Israeli company that solves a problem most companies don’t know exist. That became quite a sales challenge: Its founders needed to get clients’ attention, and then convince them to pay attention to a problem they’d been completely overlooking. Here’s how they did it.
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It’s the case of the mysteriously popular growler! The e-commerce company Huckberry sold tons of growlers during the holiday season—but the people who bought the growlers disappeared afterwards. They never came back to buy more products, which was very unusual for Huckberry. What was going on? The answer forced the company to rethink its entire marketing approach. (Here’s a hint: The buyers weren’t who Huckberry expected.)
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What do you do when conditions change, and your business starts to fail? You could try to save the business. Or, you could “kill your business with a better business”—essentially take what you’ve learned from the failing business, and create a new one that thrives. That was the strategy employed by Adam Schwartz, who killed his t-shirt business called BustedTees with another one called TeePublic. (And “kill your business with a better business” is a direct quote from him.) On this episode, he walks us through the transition.
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Be honest: What do you do when the world around you changes? Most people probably say they change along with the world… but few actually do. Most people resist. And resistance leads nowhere. That’s the big lesson of the rise of chain stores, a transformational event in American business that pitted entrepreneur against entrepreneur, and ultimately led to some big lessons in what it takes to be competitive. This episode comes to us from Pessimists Archive, another podcast hosted by Problem Solvers host Jason Feifer.
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How do you get what you want—from customers, partners, investors, and more? You don’t just come out and ask for it! Instead, you focus on what THEY want, and how you can deliver it. In this episode, Mazda CMO Dino Bernacchi and host Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) and discuss how this works, and why entrepreneurs and brands must always stay relentlessly focused on value.
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It’s a classic managerial mistake: You know an employee isn’t working out, and yet you give them more time. You hope—foolishly, of course!—for some magical turnaround. And in the meantime, your company suffers from that employee’s bad work. This is what happened to James Heller of the startup Wrapify, but at a bigger scale. He was growing his new advertising company, and hired a sales team he thought would lead to fast growth. Instead, the team stumbled and James moved too slowly to fix the problem. On this episode, we learn what happened when James gave his employees more time… and how he finally learned to take control.
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You know Smarties. It’s a classic American candy—and so classic, in fact, that its leadership became afraid to make any branding changes. As a result, decades passed and the brand looked increasingly stale. Then a new generation of leaders took over the company and had to wrestle with a big question: What’s worth changing… and what’s worth keeping the same? On this episode of Problem Solvers, Smarties co-president Liz Dee takes us through the change that’s rolling out onto stores now.
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When things are going wrong, how do you know whether or not to keep going? That’s the question that faced Kabir Shahani of Amperity, a company that, in its early days, missed a huge deadline and seemed unable to develop the technology it needed to thrive. Important, difficult questions had to be answered. Investors wanted to make sure their money wasn’t being squandered. And in the end, Kabir learned an important lesson—both about when to keep going, and how to measure success.
Episode sponsored by Shapr – https://bit.ly/2U0InkC
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What’s the secret to having a great work partnership… with someone you’re also personally close to? That’s what we aimed to learn in this special conversation, in which we put two Entrepreneur readers on the phone with our March issue cover stars, the Property Brothers. We asked Drew and Jonathan Scott (better known as HGTV’s Property Brothers) to counsel the husband-and-wife duo of Dean Praetorius and Kiki Von Glinow, founders of Toast Media Group. Kiki and Dean are actively learning to refine their working relationship, and the Scotts had a lot of wisdom to offer. Check it out, and then read more about the brothers in our March, 2019 issue!
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Employers often discourage their team members from having side hustles. That’s an insane policy, guaranteed to drive your most ambitious and creative people out of your company. Here’s a better idea: Think of flexibility as a retention strategy. On this episode of Problem Solvers, we make the business case for embracing your side-hustling employees, and then talk to Jack Taylor PR founder Jon Bier—an employer who has completely changed his view on this subject.
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Numbers can be deceptive: Just because you have more customers, locations, or dollars coming in, that doesn’t necessarily mean your brand is growing strong and stable. That’s what Jill Salzman discovered with her company The Founding Moms, a collective of meet-ups and resources for mom entrepreneurs. At first, she wanted to be in every city as fast as possible. So she expanded rapidly — and although her membership numbers were going up, her brand was falling apart. This is the story of how she stepped back and fixed it.
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It’s become a truism of startup life: To grow a company, first go out and get investors. But is that true? Does every company need investment? Not really. That’s what Eric and Sasha of the men’s retailer Buck Mason discovered, after they went out to raise cash and were rejected by every investor they met. It forced them to step back and rethink who they are as a company, and how they can thrive. Their conclusion: They needed to grow smarter, not faster. And now they’re doing just that.
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How do you find your first customers? It’s a question first-time founders are often flummoxed by. But Keith Krach has developed a tried-and-true strategy—starting during his days at Ariba (which sold for billions), and extending into his current time as chairman of Docusign. In this special live edition of Problem Solvers, taped at Entrepreneur Live in Los Angeles, Keith explains how to turn a company’s first customers into valuable ambassadors. (This episode originally aired 2/26/18. At the end, we catch up with Keith for an update in 2019.)
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How do you turn a great idea into a great business? It’s an infinitely complex question. You have to build an infrastructure around that idea — one that amplifies it and makes it compelling enough for someone to pay for. On this episode, we learn how Brian Kelly did just that. He turned a grueling side hustle into The Points Guy, which is now arguably the most well-recognized and influential site in the credit card world. It time, grit, and a lot of failure — but that’s the real a recipe for success. (This episode is a replay, and originally aired 8/28/17. An update from 2019 is included at the end.)
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What’s it like when your company goes viral? Take it from Kristen Tomlan, the founder and CEO of a viral cookie dough company called DŌ: “It’s terrifying.” And exhausting. And it exacerbated every weakness in her business, including staffing, supply and production. We learn how she fixed it, and harnessed the kind of huge opportunity that may have sunk others.
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There are a lot of Uber-like startups out there—companies that connect customers with some set of service providers, such as cleaners, lawn care pros, or, in the case of Storyhunter, companies looking for video freelancers. But these companies all face the same danger: They’re at risk of disintermediation, or being cut out of the deal. (After all, if you’re a consumer and find a great cleaner through a startup, why keep using the startup? Why not work with the cleaner directly?) This is the problem Storyhunter faced, and solved. Its solution: Understand its users, and then become incredibly valuable to them in every way possible. (Original air date: 7/31/17)
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IAC CEO Joey Levin told Problem Solvers host Jason Feifer that everyone — everyone, at every level! — feels like they’re making things up as they go. On this episode, Jason dives deeper into that idea. At times when you feel intimidated, or worry you’re not up to the task, or feel at a loss for the right answer, let this be your guide: It’s knowing that in actuality, nobody inherently belongs. Nobody is ready from the start. Nobody has the answer already prepared. And nobody sees you as an impostor any more than they see themselves that way.
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Lauren Berger was like many solopreneurs: She’d built a one-person business called Intern Queen, and it made her a good amount of money. But it wasn’t scaleable. She could only do so much. In this episode, we learn how Lauren ultimately transformed her one-woman shop into a company that can scale… and in the process, discovered a new line of work that now makes up 90% of her revenue.
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In 2015, Carrie Sheffield founded a live-streaming news service called BOLD. Two years later, a pair of gigantic public media companies announced that they, too, would be launching a live-streaming news service called BOLD. In this episode, we follow what happened next… and turn to an IP lawyer to help us make sense of it all.
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When the home security company SimpliSafe launched, it marketed itself entirely towards renters. After all, they were an underserved marketplace—no other home security system was made for people who rent apartments. But SimpliSafe wasn’t growing as fast as its founders expected, so it dug into its customer data and discovered something surprising: Half its customers were home-owners, the people it explicitly wasn’t trying to reach. Now it had a big decision to make: Does SimpliSafe keep going with renters, or change everything (including its product!) to court this new marketplace of customers?
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Andy Monfried’s company Lotame was thriving, but he saw trouble on the horizon: His industry was changing. Lotame was a major player in the complicated world of digital advertising, and although there was plenty of growth still to be had and plenty of money still to be made, Andy knew that his company’s long-term future was going to be rocky. So he made a difficult, gut-wrenching decision. Rather than wait for the decline to come, he was going to shut down a major portion of his company now—sacrificing $30 million in revenue!—and rebuild it as a different company whose future looked brighter. This is the story of how he took such a big risk, and why it paid off.
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Every entrepreneur struggles to manage their time, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) knows that challenge especially well. He previously commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and now oversees a 90-person consultancy called the McChrystal Group. How does a guy this busy keep on schedule? In this episode, we learn how McChrystal uses a calendar with the level of rigor only a former military general would think of.
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When Joshua Tetrick founded his plant-based food company JUST, his goal was to disrupt the entire food industry—and to do that, he decided, he’d hire industry outsiders. He didn’t want people with lots of food-industry experience, who’d just carry all the marketplace’s old assumptions with them! But then his company began having massive problems, and losing massive amounts of money. And Joshua came to a realization: He was totally wrong about who to hire.
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In this special episode, host Jason Feifer gets personal. Whenever he tells people that he wrote a novel (Mr. Nice Guy) with his wife, their reaction is always the same: “You’re still married!?” To celebrate the release of the book, Jason and his wife Jennifer Miller talk about how they built a healthy working relationship while also strengthening their marriage, and what it takes for everyone else to do the same.
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When Ari and Gavi started Indiewalls, a company that wanted to manage sales of art on cafe walls, they hadn’t fully thought through just how difficult it would be. But that turned out to be for the better: Because they were willing to dive into this crazy industry, they were able to meet people who wanted art, understand the marketplace, and then transform into an entirely different company. This is the story of how they began with an idea that didn’t work, and pivoted into one that does.
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Millions of people know Nicole Arbour as a comedian, actor, model, YouTube celebrity, and Instagram influencer—but until recently, she was afraid to reveal another side to her: Years ago, a car accident had left her with chronic, debilitating pain. She worried that if people knew, they wouldn’t want to work with her. Or, she feared, she’d become defined by her disability. But now she’s talking. This is the story of how Nicole learned to cope with the pain, surround herself with positivity, launch a new career, and be funnier and more popular than ever.
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Sometimes, the simplest ideas turn out to be the hardest. That was the case at Dunkin’ Donuts, where the company wanted to eliminate its Styrofoam cups and replace them with something more environmentally friendly. They thought it would be easy — but the change took 10 years, countless prototyes, meetings with competitors, and a deep study of how people hold cups. This is the inside story of that quest, and how Dunkin’ finally got it right.
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Here at Entrepreneur magazine, we hear a lot of stories about how entrepreneurs founded their companies. Many tend to follow a similar format. Someone has an idea. They take a bold risk to make it a reality, often sacrificing a fair amount of time, money, and relationships in the process. They become incredibly resourceful. They outsmart their competition. And at some point… they lie. It’s so common to hear about an entrepreneur’s lie — to win over a first client, say, or to bring in resources when they’re needed the most — that we forget to pause and ask: Where’s the line? On this episode, we consider the question with the cofounder of Stonyfield Yogurt, who saved his company in its early days with a particularly clever and daring bend of the truth.
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When Matt Bodnar became CEO of Fresh Technologies, he took over a failing company and saved it from disaster. That felt great. Then he hit a wall: He couldn’t seem to get this company to grow, or to fix its internal culture. He began suffering from self-doubt. He’d always wanted to be a CEO, and he initially seemed good at it, but now here he was… failing! After a lot of soul-searching, Matt came to an important realization: He needed to identify what he was good at, and then use those strengths. And that meant no longer being a CEO. In this episode, we explore how Matt came to that conclusion — and why it supercharged his career.
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Just Between Friends is a nationwide franchise that runs consignment events. About a decade ago, it experienced a crazy jolt: It sold more franchise units than it ever had… and that fast growth nearly bankrupted the company. Why? Because here’s the difficult truth about growing a business: Not all growth is equal. Sometimes, growth in one part of your business can harm another part of your business. So to fix the problem, Just Between Friends had to hit pause and consider some very important questions: What’s the right way to grow? And what does it really take to get there?
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Mike McDerment saw the future, and it wasn’t bright. His accounting and invoicing company, Freshbooks, was doing well with customers — but behind the scenes, its software code was a mess and it wasn’t able to innovate as quickly as it needed to. But fixing this problem was tricky. If he ordered his team to hit pause and fix the code, years could go by and Freshbooks would lose ground to its competitors. And if his team did manage to create a better Freshbooks in the process, customers might be annoyed by the sudden change. So his solution was radical: He launched a competitor to his own company.
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Raquel Tavares, founder and CEO of a ghee company called Fourth & Heart, had just finished raising a round of funding — and then her team looked at the company’s numbers and realized they were almost out of money. How did this happen? The answer is simple: The company wasn’t properly tracking its inventory and cost of raw materials, and now it was in a terrible bind. What does an entrepreneur do in a situation like this? Raquel is here with an incredible answer: Not only can you survive a problem like this, but you can even thrive because of it. But you’ve got to be nimble, humble, willing to make a lot of changes, and able to stomach a lot of hard conversations.
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It’s perhaps the most terrifying situation an entrepreneur can face: Suddenly, the bank account is nearly empty. You can’t pay your staff. You can barely keep the lights on. What now? This is what Saima Khan faced with her high-end cooking company Hampstead Kitchen. She charges a small fortune to cook intimate dinners for industry titans, celebrities, and even world leaders—but then a change in the tax law nearly wiped her out, and forced her to reconsider exactly what kind of business she was running.
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Entrepreneurs must embrace change, or risk becoming outdated. In this episode, we offer a cautionary tale from history: What happened when entrepreneurs of the late 1800s tried to resist a newfangled invention called the bicycle? This episode is a special rebroadcast of a podcast called Pessimists Archive, also hosted by Entrepreneur magazine editor in chief Jason Feifer. For more like it, search Pessimists Archive on any podcast platform or visit www.pessimists.co.
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Everyone who’s experienced setbacks, rejection, and frustration will ask themselves the same inevitable question: “What if the naysayers are right?” Mike Rothman did that. As he built his company Fatherly — a media site for dads, which is a market everyone told him was nonexistent — he was told “no” over and over again. But instead of quitting, he made strategic decisions that enabled him to discover the truth: His idea really was a good one. And soon, the people saying no started to say yes.
Sponsor: Hover – visit hover.com/problemsolver for 10% off your first purchase.
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Califia Farms makes a popular line of plant-based milks, yogurts, and coffees—but they became too popular, too quick. In 2017, demand began significantly outstripping supply, and so the company had to do something it hated to do, but that was critical for its long-term health: It had to start telling retailers “no,” while it fixed its entire production system.
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Orchard Mile, an online shopping site, had a promising platform and a talented team. But they had two very different ideas about what the company should prioritize. How CEO Jennie Baik made tough decisions to bring them together.
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It’s a question almost every entrepreneur will at some point face: How do you keep a company stable while you’re pulled into a personal crisis? For Chris Carter, founder of Approyo, that question came shortly after his startup launched — when his daughter developed epilepsy. After working himself to exhaustion, Chris stepped back and retooled how his company operated and how he was treating himself. The result was a stronger company, a healthier founder, and a better balance for everyone.
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If you want to learn how to succeed without traditional advertising, ask someone in the “adult” industry. Why? Because most advertising channels—including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and more—are closed to them. That’s what Polly Rodriguez learned when she founded Unbound, a company that makes and sells adult products. Most platforms won’t take her money, so she had to get creative… and build her own community.
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How do you give new life to an old company? Bring new vision to a place that lost its own? And how do you bring your team — and your new audience! — along for the change? Those are the challenges Neil Vogel faced when taking over the old internet giant About.com and transforming it into a thriving company called Dotdash.
Sponsor: Hover – visit hover.com/problemsolver for 10% off your first purchase.
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Selling perfume online seems impossible. After all, people need to be able to smell it, right? And when former Ralph Lauren executive Eric Korman launched his online perfume company PHLUR, he ran smack dab into that problem. Industry peers thought he was crazy. He hung in and devised a solution: an ingenious a mix of smart e-commerce strategy, science, photography, psychology, music, and storytelling. And with that, he made the impossible possible.
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People may like to shop for cars online, but they still want to test drive them in real life before buying. So when the online car sales company Shift launched, it created a system its founders were sure would win customers over: They hired “car enthusiasts” — guys just really passionate about cars — to drive a car to a customer so they could test drive it together. The car enthusiasts were a hit; people loved them, and praised them online. But Shift wasn’t celebrating: As it turns out, the car enthusiast program was so expensive to run that the company wasn’t actually making money. And that meant Shift needed to do something that felt crazy: blow up the feature everyone loved.
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A company’s name is one of (if not the) biggest early decisions a company founder will make — and they often get it wrong. Google was first called BackRub, Best Buy was Sound of Music, eBay was AuctionWeb, and Policygenius was KnowItOwl. In this episode, Policygenius’s founder walks us through the rigorous process she went through to scrap a confusing name and create one that led to success.
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Sean Dowdell loved tattoos, but he hated tattoo parlors. They were dirty, uninviting, downmarket, unprofessional and often sexist. So when he set aside his music career to start his own tattoo parlor, he needed to find a way to make a traditionally lowbrow product appeal to a high-end, but still edgy, audience. A decade later, he’s now opening glitzy tattoo shops all over the world. Here’s how he pulled it off.
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What happens when your customers are willing to use your product, but they’re not willing to pay for it? Answer: Your business model may be wrong. That’s what Ilir Sela learned after launching Slice, a company that helps local pizzerias sell online. He found plenty of early customers, but they weren’t paying their invoices. As he dug deeper, he realized the problem wasn’t them — it was him. And he began the long process of figuring out what (and how) people were willing to pay.
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Patrick Llewellyn discovered that his design company, 99designs, was only fulfilling some of his customers’ needs. He wanted to fill more, so he created a spinoff brand called Swiftly. But in doing so, he created a major problem for himself: He was stretching his resources too thin, and confusing customers about which brand they should use. In the end, he discovered the Curse of the Problem Solvers: Sometimes, you have to let some problems go unsolved.
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When Daniel McCarthy cofounded the music licensing company Musicbed, he had a big idea: “I don’t want customers to just think about Musicbed when they think about music licensing. I want them to think about Musicbed when they’re trying to get inspired.” Accomplishing that would require a lot of experimentation, spending money with no sure ROI, and launching (and closing) a magazine. In this episode, we map how Musicbed became more than just the sum of its product.
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Every entrepreneur’s journey starts with a big problem. That first hurdle—and hopefully, that first solution. Small and sometimes simple as it may be, this first moment contains so much ingenuity and inspiration, and captures just how resourceful entrepreneurs must be to continue along their path. Today, we’re telling three mini-stories of first-time challenges: how the creator of the Butterie butter dish cracked its market research problem, how GrowSumo found the right customers (and avoided the wrong ones), and how American Rhino created an apparel brand within weeks.
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