Problem Solvers

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 started. The result can challenge not just their business philosophies but their very sense of identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 still making a profit). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, Google, Warby Parker, and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 and rolling with it. But what happens when the news is really bad? Can employees still be trusted to handle it? Besecker found out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. In this episode, Chrissy takes us through her first, critical year—and the tough decisions it required. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 he hired a COO who trained as a drill sergeant—and everything changed. Here’s how Hamilton learned to say no. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tami Halton Pardee started out working in Hollywood—an industry known for crushing hours and sociopathic behavior. Then she left to work in real estate in Los Angeles—another industry known for crushing hours and sociopathic behavior. But instead of going with the flow, she decided she’d work differently, structuring her company to allow her employees a better work-life balance, and being kind to her clients. As she tells us, competitors looked at her like she was crazy, but her business exploded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every entrepreneur wants a loyal fanbase, a group of repeat customers who will evangelize their favorite brand. But superfans come with challenges: They love a company exactly the way it is, and they do not want it to change. That was a problem for Tough Mudder, whose obstacle course races were attracting primarily young, fit men. To grow as a business, it would need to attract different kinds of people too -- but without alienating those core fans. On this episode, we explore how Tough Mudder did it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In its first four years, Tyson Lawrence’s logistics company reached $5 million in sales. “Everything I touched turned to gold,” he says. But then the golden touch disappeared, and his growth stalled. Why? When he looked into it, he discovered a disaster in the making: His biggest client, a national retailer that helped his company grow so fast, had become its biggest problem. And to help his company start growing again, he’d need to make some gut-wrenching decisions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sam Sisakhti had a great idea for a company, and early on it seemed like others agreed. He got funded on his very first pitch. But when that funding fell apart, and Sam embarked on a punishing year and a half of brutal rejections, he learned invaluable lessons about himself, his business, and the nature of entrepreneurship, and he turned his failure into a big success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices