Problem Solvers

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 radically...

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, la...

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...

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...

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 cam...

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 els...

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...

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. Th...

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 expansi...

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 a h...

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...

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 many...

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 co...

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.

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...

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.

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 busin...

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 compe...

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...

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 followe...

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 th...

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...

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 dis...

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.

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.