Entrepreneur Magazine January/February 2022

WHEN YOU narrow your path, you limit your chances of finding what will make you happiest. That’s something I’ve learned personally—and witnessed happening to others—throughout my career. As we begin a new year and set new goals, it’s a lesson worth reflecting on. We must make room for the unexpected. We must set goals but be completely comfortable abandoning them. We must accept that the greatest opportunities may be the ones we weren’t looking for, and maybe didn’t even know existed. I’ll give you an example: This is the story of “Tom,” a real friend whose name I’m changing. Tom always wanted to work at one specific company. He set this goal at the beginning of his career because that company was full of widely recognized talented people, and it produced products he thought…

I’m a little numb at this point,” Michelle Pfeiffer said, “and not sleeping a lot.” That was back in 2019, when the world-famous actress was on the cover of this magazine and about to launch her first company. She was an accidental entrepreneur: After becoming a parent, she started worrying about the safety of the products her kids used, and that led her to wonder about the products she used. She asked fine fragrance companies to reveal their ingredients publicly; when they said no, she spent 20 years figuring out how to build a company that would. The result was Henry Rose, a fine fragrance brand that’s transparent about its ingredients, and the only one to have those ingredients certified by two leading environmental groups. Back then, Pfeiffer applied that same…

1/When ‘no’ is the status quo. “In sex and relationships, no means no—always. But in business, when faced with a ‘no,’ we apply our company value to the problem: ‘Challenge the status quo with love.’ There is likely a logical reason for the rejection or refusal, so I open a dialogue. It’s important to understand the barriers. With each situation, I gather as much information as I can, weigh the pros and cons, and decide whether to persist. Progress is about compassion and balance.” —SOUMYADIP RAKSHIT, cofounder and CEO, MysteryVibe 2/When ‘no’ is a gift. “The first ‘no’ is good enough for me! Persistence is a ridiculously overrated attribute in American culture—probably more harmful than virtuous overall. It’s much more rewarding to spend my time getting someone from slightly excited to ridiculously excited than…

FOR MORE HOW-TO STORIES OF WOMEN IN BUSINESS, VISIT ENTREPRENEUR.COM/WOMEN Cardi B fans everywhere know these lyrics: Got a bag and fixed my teeth, hope you hoes know it ain’t cheap. They’re from “Bodak Yellow,” the rapper’s breakout song. But they’re also validation for Cardi’s dentist, Catrise Austin, whose entrepreneurial ingenuity led her to fix those teeth. Years ago, as a way to differentiate herself, Austin had the potentially absurd idea of becoming a “dentist to the stars.” Then she actually did it, with a client list that also includes DJ Khaled, Busta Rhymes, Common, Toni Braxton, and A$AP Rocky. But. . . how? Not every entrepreneur wants to (or should) chase celebrities. But every entrepreneur does need to land desirable customers. That’s why Austin’s story is instructive—because, at the heart of it,…

How fast should you grow? From the dawn of the dot-com boom in 1995, all the way up through 2020, Silicon Valley had an answer that inspired many others: hyper growth. That’s what made headlines, hypnotized investors, and drove a winner-take-all mentality. You want to be Uber, not Lyft; Google, not Bing. Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn, wrote a popular book titled, Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies. But over the years, it’s become clear that “blitzscaling” can lead to irresponsible behaviors. A lot of founders believe they should scale first and then worry about fixing damage they cause. But by then, their business model is baked and it’s too hard to change. All they can do is tinker at the fringes and hope they don’t wind up…

Pat Kinsel was almost living in a convenient, digital future. It was 2013. He was selling his social search company to Twitter and managed to e-sign every document from the back of a taxicab in South Korea while traveling for business. Then he returned home to Boston and discovered that one document needed notarizing, which he had to do in person. “I waited in line for nearly an hour, and they forgot to sign it,” Kinsel says. Right then, he decided his next startup would enable online notarization. The only problem was that 49 states (except Virginia) considered that illegal. Kinsel built the product anyway. “Illegal” is usually the cue for ditching your idea. Changing laws requires bulldozing through layers of bureaucracy, state by state and lawmaker by lawmaker. But for entrepreneurs…