Entrepreneur Magazine June 2022

ARE YOU facing a moment, or the moment? It’s a critical distinction we often lose sight of. When we’re facing a big decision, grappling with a change, or wondering whether to seize or pass on a new opportunity, we tend to raise the stakes on ourselves. We treat our decision as critical—as make-or-break, do-ordie. It’s the last train leaving the station! The game-winning shot in your hands! Everything seems to hang in the balance. My advice: Take a breath. Calm your emotions. Then ask yourself my simple but profound question—are you facing a moment, or the moment? I’ll give you an example. My friend Jenny Illes Wood is high up at Google, and she has built a popular program there called Own Your Career. She gives workshops on how Googlers can increase their influence,…

When Aman Bhutani became CEO of GoDaddy in 2019, he saw a problem: The company had a good culture of experimentation, where individual departments were running many experiments, but it didn’t have a good system of experimentation. As a result, the team’s experiments weren’t driving as much innovation as they could. “Experimentation is about mindset,” Bhutani says. “It’s not something that people who are not aware of can suddenly discover. You have to coach people through it.” So that’s what he set about doing—drawing from his experience as senior vice president at JPMorgan Chase and then as president of Brand Expedia Group, which has an experiment-driven culture. As a result, since Bhutani took over, GoDaddy has released a slew of new products—including improvements to the results when customers search for…

1/Open up to connect deeply. “When I was diagnosed with testicular cancer at 32, I took just one day off work for the surgery—one of my biggest regrets. But something changed when I came out the other side. For the first time in my life, I could open up about my inner demons. In time, empathy took root where resentment had festered, and I had the urge to go below the surface in conversations. I wanted to soothe others struggling to hide their pain. It made me a better leader.”—MATT HIGGINS, cofounder and CEO, RSE Ventures 2/Make time off a company activity. “A couple months into the pandemic, we closed our biggest funding round and acquisition to date. You could tell people were running incredibly hot, and after the deal closed, we shut…

Models, DJs, teenagers dancing to millions of views—this is what many people envision when they think of “influencers.” But every profession, no matter how niche, has its unique roster of social media stars. They’re people who caught fire by cleverly capturing their world and then leveraging that attention to build communities, side hustles or businesses of their own. So how can you, say, go from being “an accountant on TikTok” to being “the accountant on TikTok”? Five niche influencers explain. ALEX NINO/@alexnino_ on TikTok is a long-haul driver of an 18-wheeler truck, whose social media posts have earned him additional income through brand deals. How he broke through/ “This one time I was sleeping in downtown Oakland in my truck, and someone tried opening my door. It can get pretty sketchy out there.…

Beatriz Sandoval / Head of Marketing for Thermador Creating and executing the brand vision for the iconic Thermador home appliance brand, Beatriz Sandoval is always pushing the boundaries for the innovative solutions of the future. “Our customers want the latest technology and a fully connected suite of appliances that allows them the ultimate control—and Thermador is proud to deliver these solutions.” How is Thermador innovating the luxury kitchen appliance space? The Thermador heritage is based on a history of industry firsts. We invented the first wall oven and cooktop in 1947. Being an innovative brand is in our DNA. It is our responsibility to deliver breakthrough products for our tech-savvy clients, and smart appliance connectivity is the latest way we have been able to achieve that. “IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO DELIVER BREAKTHROUGH PRODUCTS…

Michael Tierney was roasting s’mores when his milliondollar idea struck. “The cold piece of chocolate was just sliding around the graham cracker like a hockey puck on ice,” he says. Annoyed, he shoved the chocolate directly into a marshmallow, where it melted harmoniously over the heat. Bingo. Why hasn’t someone commer cialized this? he wondered. The answer would turn out to be far more complex than he had imagined. At the time, Tierney was still in college at The Culinary Institute of America. He went on to work the kitchens of top-tier restaurants like Eleven Madison Park, but he couldn’t shake his s’mores idea. “It was bugging me,” he says, “every day.” So three years later, he pursued it—and now, after a decadelong, winding path, his Stuffed Puffs are on pace to…