Entrepreneur Magazine October/November 2022

With so much uncertainty these days, it’s important to find peace of mind wherever you can—especially when it comes to your home. A brand like Thermador knows this well, having helped pave the way for today’s kitchen by delivering breakthrough, innovative products to culinary-obsessed and tech-savvy clients since 1916. This can be attributed to its commitment to anticipating consumer needs—a specialty of the organization’s leadership. In a sit-down with Beatriz Sandoval, Head of Thermador Brand, Rebecca Cottrell, Head of Refrigeration, and Janina Forberger, Head of Industrial Design, the Thermador inner-circle shares where they’ve been, where they’re going, and why being an innovator always matters. Thermador has been a leader in the home for generations. What does it mean to contribute to the direction of a brand with that legacy? Sandoval: It comes down…

MY FRIEND IS a photographer, and she was recently hired to shoot one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles. She was working there late one night, and she was hungry. Food was everywhere—well-constructed, beautiful, delicious food that people usually spend hundreds of dollars on, just sitting around untouched. But the chef would not let her eat it. Why? To torture her? No, he said. It’s because he wants her to truly understand his restaurant, and she cannot do that by eating the food alone. Come another night, he said. Bring a friend. Dinner on the house. But tonight, the food is just a prop. Here’s my question to you: Is this guy just cruel, or does he understand something that others don’t? Before you answer that, consider one other story. Entrepreneur hosted a…

When successful entrepreneurs tell their stories, they often speak of perseverance: Things were hard, but they did not give up. It’s an inspiring message, but it can also be misleading. “In order to succeed, you are going to have to stick to hard things,” says Annie Duke, a former professional poker player who teaches decision strategies in the executive education program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “But also, in order to succeed, you’re going to have to quit the things that aren’t worth pursuing.” Quitting has a bad reputation, and Duke is out to clear its name. It’s why she wrote her new book, Quit. “We should think of quitting as a virtue, a characteristic that we want to develop,” she says. That’s especially true for entrepreneurs,…

1/ Think big, and small. “The aviation industry is one of the most challenging sectors to decarbonize. So we created Alaska Star Ventures to invest in emerging technologies that can accelerate our path to net-zero, like advanced air mobility and green energy. But there are smaller ways to improve, too. Replacing single-use plastic bottles with Boxed Water, for example, removes 1.8 million pounds of plastic from our aircraft over the next year.” —DIANA BIRKETT RAKOW, senior vice president of public affairs and sustainability, Alaska Airlines 2/ Map out the journey. “There were many things we were able to change to become more sustainable, like shipping our products in bags made of biodegradable corn. But as a small company, there are still some things out of reach. So we’re signing on with an organization that…

In 2012, Tye Caldwell thought he knew everything about the hair business. He’d started cutting his seven siblings’ hair with his school Fiskars scissors at age 11 and opened his own salon in Plano, Texas, in 2001. That’s even where he met his wife, Courtney, when she came in for a cut. But one day, a phone call briefly stumped him. It was a stylist asking if she could rent a chair in his salon by the day. That was crazy talk; back then, this kind of arrangement was done by signing long leases. But the truth was, Tye had empty chairs. Better to collect dollars than dust, he figured. So he said yes—a decision that inspired Tye and Courtney to launch ShearShare, a platform that now helps 40,000 hair businesses and…

Do you know what your customer wants? Most entrepreneurs would say yes. But I have bad news: Most of them are wrong. When businesses interact with their customers, they’re often just confirming the things they already know (or think they know). It’s like learning a love interest’s favorite color—maybe that’s useful in some way, but it hardly tells you about your true compatibility. When you ask the right customers the right questions, however, you can unlock insights that can transform your business. I see this happen all the time. I’m in the “customer insights” business, meaning that I identify a company’s best customers, methodically survey them, and then gather insights that the company missed. These insights then drive new marketing campaigns, new product ideas, and new million-dollar ideas—and here’s the craziest part: All…