Problem Solvers

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...

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.

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.

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 A...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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 ne...

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.

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.

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. Thanks to our sponsors: Blip Billboards: Sign up for a...

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. Thanks to our sponsors: Netsuite: Download your free guide "7 Key Strategies to Grow Your Profits" netsuite.com/problemsolvers Bli...