S1 Ep73: Scaling One Person Into A Company
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.
20m Dec 17, 2018
20m
S1 Ep72: The Downside of Having A Huge Corporate Client
It can feel awesome to land a huge, company-changing client... until the day that client takes off, leaving you with a giant revenue hole. That's what happened to Thistle, a cold-pressed juice company that struggled to regain its footing after losing its biggest customer. The shock forced its founders to rethink the very foundation of the business—and eventually, to build a company that would n...
22m Dec 10, 2018
22m
Fixing eBay's Culture
When Maynard Webb became COO of eBay, he had a huge problem on his hands: The company had just acquired PayPal, and he had to not just fix what had become a dysfunctional culture at eBay, but now had to also integrate another company and create a shared mission for everyone. His first attempt to fix this totally failed. That's when Maynard learned the true secret of creating a great company cul...
22m Dec 03, 2018
22m
S1 Ep70: A Cautionary Tale About Trademarks
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.
24m Nov 26, 2018
24m
S1 Ep69: SimpliSafe Was Targeting The Wrong Customer
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...
22m Nov 19, 2018
22m
S1 Ep68: How Home Depot's CEO Managed A Massive Data Breach
In 2014, Home Depot was hacked—and 56 million credit cards were compromised. It was one of the largest data breaches to befall a major corporation. Then-CEO Frank Blake wanted to preserve Home Depot's relationship with its customers, so he came up with a plan: Unlike other companies in this situation, who hid the breaches from their customers for months or even years, he was going to be radical...
22m Nov 12, 2018
22m
S1 Ep67: Why Meeting Customers In Person Changes Everything
What happens when you release a new product, and none of your customers seem to care? That's what happened to David Politis. He started BetterCloud in 2011, and its simple product was a big hit. But David thought he could go bigger, creating a product that would help companies was a wide variety of their cloud computing needs. So he poured a lot of money and time into building this new product,...
23m Nov 05, 2018
23m
S1 Ep66: He Killed Off A $30 Million Business—And Thrived!
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. Rath...
19m Oct 29, 2018
19m
S1 Ep65: How Gen. Stanley McChrystal Protects His Time
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 gene...
19m Oct 22, 2018
19m
S1 Ep64: He Hired The Wrong People. Now What?
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 ...
17m Oct 15, 2018
17m
S1 Ep63: The Secret to Working With Family or Friends
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 ...
31m Oct 08, 2018
31m
S1 Ep62: Start A Company, Figure Out The Business Model Later?
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. Th...
19m Oct 01, 2018
19m
S1 Ep61: How Comedian Nicole Arbour Thrived Despite Chronic Pain
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....
24m Sep 24, 2018
24m
S1 Ep60: The Difference Between "Any Sales" And "The Right Sales"
When Jean Thompson stepped in to save Seattle Chocolate Company, she slammed the gas on a rapid expansion -- selling into stores nationwide, and locking in enormous private-label businesses. It seemed like the solution... until her company was rocked by financial instability, and she discovered that not all sales are good sales. In this episode, we understand what was wrong with Thompson's expa...
21m Sep 17, 2018
21m
S1 Ep59: How Malcolm Gladwell Solves Problems
When you think of Malcolm Gladwell, you surely think of something: an author, a journalist, a podcaster, a speaker. But Gladwell doesn't. "Self-conceptions are dangerously limiting," he says. If he defines himself as any one thing, he believes, he'll shut out opportunities he didn't even know existed. In this conversation with Gladwell, he explains how he approaches problem solving -- by being ...
23m Sep 10, 2018
23m
S1 Ep58: Why It Took Dunkin' Donuts 10 Years to Build the Perfect New Cup
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 t...
19m Sep 03, 2018
19m
S1 Ep57: The New Product Doesn't Work. Do We Scrap It?
If you've watched a commercial or movie recently, you've likely seen Score a Score's work: It connects the biggest studios with musicians to compose original music. But for many years, its founder refused to think of his company as a music company. He wanted it to be known a tech company -- and this led him to build a very tech-focused product for his clients, with lots of whiz-bang. He spent m...
17m Aug 27, 2018
17m
S1 Ep56: Should Entrepreneurs Lie? (And How A Lie Saved Stonyfield Farm)
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...
26m Aug 20, 2018
26m
S1 Ep52: Metta World Peace: Combating Hate with Peace
Metta World Peace, former NBA star turned entrepreneur, sits down with David Meltzer to share his thoughts on empowering the next generation to come together and rebuild, as well as how to deal with the negative perceptions of others.
20m Aug 07, 2018
20m
S1 Ep55: How Tony Hawk Learned To Protect His Brand
If you know one skateboarder, it's Tony Hawk. That's not by accident: Tony Hawk is a branding genius. But he didn't start out that way. He began with a lot of branding slips and falls. In this episode, Tony explains how he learned to protect his brand—and how every entrepreneur can too.
17m Aug 06, 2018
17m
S1 Ep54: Why This CEO Fired Himself
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 ca...
17m Aug 06, 2018
17m
S1 Ep53: Her Company Was Growing, So Why Was It Failing?
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 bu...
22m Jul 30, 2018
22m
S1 Ep52: Why Freshbooks Launched A Competitor To Itself
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 co...
20m Jul 23, 2018
20m
S1 Ep51: She Raised Millions From Investors... Then Almost Lost It All
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 ...
14m Jul 16, 2018
14m
S1 Ep50: How MailChimp's CEO Became the Leader His Company Needed
As a company grows, its needs change -- and that means a leader must change as well. This is commonly accepted wisdom about leadership, but it's easier said than done. MailChimp's founder discovered that when his once-scrappy company reached about 300 employees, and, in an achingly awkward staff meeting, he discovered that he hadn't transformed into the leader those 300 people needed. What foll...
21m Jul 09, 2018
21m
S1 Ep49: How to Survive When the Money Runs Out
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...
17m Jul 02, 2018
17m
S1 Ep48: What Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From The Bicycle
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, sear...
36m Jun 25, 2018
36m
S1 Ep47: Nobody Believed In His Vision. But He Knew Better.
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 ...
20m Jun 18, 2018
20m
S1 Ep46: Califia Farms Had To Start Saying, "We're Out Of Product"
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.
17m Jun 11, 2018
17m
S1 Ep45: When Your Staff Can't Agree On a Vision for the Company
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.
19m Jun 04, 2018
19m
S1 Ep44: Keep The Company Running During A Personal Crisis
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 hi...
16m May 28, 2018
16m
S1 Ep43: Build An Audience Without Advertising
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 bu...
18m May 21, 2018
18m
S1 Ep42: Saving A Damaged Brand (Remember About.com?)
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.
20m May 14, 2018
20m
S1 Ep41: Selling The Product That Everyone Said Was Impossible
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 storyt...
16m May 07, 2018
16m
S1 Ep40: People Love Your Idea, But It Doesn't Make Money. Now What?
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...
19m Apr 30, 2018
19m
How to Name Your Company — Or Fix A Bad Name
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.
20m Apr 23, 2018
20m
He Took A Lowbrow Product, And Made It Luxury
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 ...
16m Apr 16, 2018
16m
The Business Model Doesn't Work—So Change It!
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. An...
18m Apr 09, 2018
18m
The Curse of the Problem Solver: You Can't Solve It All
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 Sol...
20m Apr 02, 2018
20m
How A Company Becomes A Thought Leader
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 epi...
19m Mar 26, 2018
19m
They Were Acquired... And Then The Buyer Went Bust
The apparel startup Richer Poorer thought it had found the perfect deal: A fast-growing e-commerce brand wanted to buy it, offering an influx of cash and resources while leaving the founders in control. But after the deal went through, a nightmare scenario folded: The new parent company started to collapse. In this episode, we learn how Richer Poorer's founders put the wheels in motion to get o...
17m Mar 19, 2018
17m
How Three Entrepreneurs Started On The Fast Track
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 ...
18m Mar 12, 2018
18m
The Entrepreneur’s Identity Crisis: “Am I My Company?”
Glenn Kelman thought of himself as a software guy. Then he became CEO of a real estate company called Redfin, but insisted on seeing it as a software company. Confusion reigned. Cultures clashed. For Glenn, it would come to highlight an often-unspoken business challenge: Entrepreneurship means exploring unknown paths, sometimes leading entrepreneurs to a very different place from where they sta...
19m Mar 05, 2018
19m
How Do You Find Your First Customers?
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 ...
21m Feb 26, 2018
21m
Tripping.com's Problem: Their Popular Service Wasn't Making Money
Jen O'Neal and Jeff Manheimer launched a social network called Tripping.com, which quickly became a frustrating puzzle: It was very popular, but impossible to monetize. What does an entrepreneur do when they've hit upon something people love, but that they won't pay for? In this episode, we learn what the duo did next—abandoning part of their vision, but building a booming business in the process.
17m Feb 19, 2018
17m
The Danger of Profitability: It Masks Deeper Problems
From the outside, Cogent Entertainment Marketing looked like a success: It got early into the influencer marketing game, quickly signing big clients and making good money. And because profits were high, founder Mark Zablow was afraid to make any changes—even as major leadership problems in his company began wreaking havoc. In this episode, we explore how Mark finally fixed his culture (while st...
22m Feb 12, 2018
22m
Ask This to Build Better Connections at Networking Events
What happens when you’re trying to sell to consumers, but your best customers are actually other businesses? Furniture-maker Poppin’s answer: It radically transformed itself to meet this new customer. That meant changing its brand voice, marketing, products, and supply chain. In this episode, we explore how and why it made the switch—and became the go-to furniture maker for Facebook, Snapchat, ...
18m Feb 05, 2018
18m
How Transparent is Too Transparent?
Beck Besecker believes in transparency. So much so, that he calls Marxent, “aggressively transparent.” That means everyone can talk to everyone else. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has access to management. Most important, everyone is trusted. There’s an assumption that the employees of Marxent are professional, responsible, mature adults, and thus they’re completely capable of taking bad news ...
14m Jan 29, 2018
14m
How A Young, New, Female Boss Took Over Her Male-Dominated Company
Chrissy Monaco was basically raised at Monaco Ford, her dad’s car dealership. Then in January of 2017, she took over as co-owner and new boss—now in charge of men she’d known all her life, some of whom weren’t immediately comfortable with it. She knew her task: New leaders have limited time to set a company’s culture and get people on board with their vision, before doing so becomes far harder....
17m Jan 22, 2018
17m
He Said Yes Too Many Times, Then Learned to Say No
Entrepreneurs love to say yes—to new ideas, to new opportunities, and to new markets. But yes can be dangerous: The wrong yes will compound itself, stretching a company thin and clouding its sense of purpose. Hamilton Powell learned this the hard way: As he built his watch company Crown & Caliber, he said yes so often that he was soon working 100-hour weeks and burning out his employees. Then h...
25m Jan 15, 2018
25m