Entrepreneur Magazine April/May 2021

HERE’S A GREAT PARADOX OF entrepreneurship: We barely have enough time to finish our own work—but to truly succeed, completing our own work isn’t enough. We must do other people’s work, too! It’s exhausting, isn’t it? But let’s not forget how necessary it is. I’ll give you an example. I recently received an email with a great subject line: “From one podcaster to another.” I’m a podcaster! I like podcasters! So I opened it immediately. The sender explained that he wants to be a guest on my show and then offered a broad, bulletpoint collection of information about himself—companies he’s been involved in, “fun facts” about himself, general topics to discuss, and more. Why was he telling me all this? Some info seemed possibly relevant to my podcast, but most of it wasn’t. (Turns…

For chocolate lovers, the name Max Brenner conjures the image of a bald man. But few may know who that bald man is—or how much this brand hurt and taught him. Here’s the short of it: Max Brenner is a restaurant and retail shop with 50-plus locations worldwide that sells delights like a fondue tower or a chocolate pizza. Its tagline is “Chocolate by the bald man,” and its logo is an illustration of…a bald man. Is it Max Brenner? Not quite. The founder is a bald Israeli man named Oded Brenner (Max was his original business partner), who created his first shop in the small town of Ra’anana 25 years ago, and eventually sold it to the Israeli food conglomerate Strauss Group. But when Brenner started a separate café…

1/ Start small. “We first ask any potential vendor about their sustainability practices to make sure our values are aligned. If they are, we experiment with small-batch orders to ensure that any wrinkles can get ironed out early on without affecting the supply chain and customer experience too much. Clear communication of our expectations from those earliest days is an important part of creating lasting relationships.” —JUSTINA BLAKENEY, founder, Jungalow 2/ Build foundations. “I take a long-term approach to all partnerships. For example, I’ve been talking to one technology platform for two years, and we finally closed a deal. I’ve established a trusting relationship with them over the years, and when it made sense for us to invest in that kind of support, I knew they were the right partner. On the flip side,…

When Jean Brownhill walked into her Brooklyn home in 2007 and saw a gaping hole in the ceiling, she knew she was dealing with a renovation gone wrong. Brownhill had built a career in architecture and construction—if she struggled to find a reliable general contractor, other homeowners must really struggle. To seize the opportunity, she launched Sweeten in 2011. It’s an online marketplace that matches homeowners with vetted general contractors and helps manage the relationship and the project. Consumers get transparency; reliable contractors get more business. Since launching, Sweeten has raised $20 million, completed thousands of renovations across the country, and has $1.5 billion worth of projects in its pipeline. But to succeed, Brownhill knew she’d need to do more than just create a smart service. She’d need to build…

Henry Ford. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Disruptive entrepreneurs may upend industries in different ways, but they have one thing in common: They don’t think like the people they disrupt. They look at the world differently—and, in my experience, more emotively, too. They appear contrarian, which makes sense. To create something new, an entrepreneur must see things as they should be, rather than simply as they are. What can we learn from them that we can repeat ourselves? That’s tricky. When a disruptor’s story is told, it often focuses on what they did, rather than how they thought through it. But a disruptor’s mindset changes along with their businesses! To truly know their mindset, you must observe them in their element—while they are in the middle of disrupting. I’ve been fortunate to do…

In every issue of Entrepreneur, we publish a series we call Office Space. For years, each edition has featured an intriguing company; we’d photograph some of the team in their office and ask about their work culture. For our April/May 2020 issue, we spotlighted the wedding-planning company Zola—which had just moved to its new HQ after a staffing boom and had expanded features to help couples create the weddings of their dreams. But in between our taking the photo and actually printing the magazine, the pandemic arrived and disrupted everything…especially wedding celebrations. Zola adjusted quickly. For panicked couples and vendors, it expanded customer support to help reschedule and rebook plans. For its staff, it carefully adapted its culture to a remote-work world. Exactly one year later, we checked back in—finding a…