Problem Solvers

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.

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’...

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....

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 c...

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.

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 thou...

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 thou...

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 lear...

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 Praetoriu...

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...

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 altho...

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. T...

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 com...

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...

What’s it like when your company goes viral? Take it from Kristen Tomlin, 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.

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 thro...

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. N...

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.

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 cultur...

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.

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...