Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2017 i Entrepreneur Magazine

Tom Maoli bought his first Lexus dealership in 2011. It wasn’t easy. Lexus usually doesn’t allow people with no experience in the car business to buy in. But he convinced them he could not only learn it fast but do it better. As Maoli stood inside his new shop, he immediately noticed an opportunity to demonstrate what he was talking about. “The first thing that set me off was the way customers were greeted coming in the front door,” Maoli says. “They were greeted and then left alone to wander.” And if a salesperson was busy and didn’t get to a customer quickly enough, that person would just turn around and walk back out. So Maoli did what he’d done many times before. He deployed his secret weapon: a hotel-industry…

1 / You don’t hate them. “I ask myself what I call ‘the airport question.’ I imagine I’m stranded at the airport and my flight is delayed by three hours. If I saw this investor in the airport, would I walk right up to them and say, ‘Great, we get to spend some time together!’ or would I turn away and hope they didn’t notice me? If I can’t emphatically say it’s the former, they aren’t the right fit.” —PATRICK QUINLAN, CEO, Convercent 2 / Their references check out. “I ask potential investors for an introduction to a portfolio company that isn’t a high performer or that has been challenging to support. Every early-stage investor, at some point, struggles with a company, because startups have big ups and downs. Do…

Q We’d like to hire a consulting firm to help our business grow, but we’ve been burned in the past. How do we find a good fit? —BOBBY A., San Diego WHEN I FIRST started my consulting agency, I took on every client who showed interest in our services. We were new, and I truly believed we could add value anywhere. It was a huge mistake. Early on, we were a catchall branding agency, trying to be everything to everyone. We offered public relations and design services, and we specialized in growth—building an audience, creating social marketing, helping sites convert audience members into customers. We had too many clients to juggle and lacked focus. We ended up with some hits, sure, but we had way too many misses. Today, we…

The simple act of cutting a child’s hair is, in fact, anything but simple. At best, the customer is in perpetual motion. At worst: in hysterics. As parents of two, Cookie and Larry Shelton knew this experience all too well. So in 1994, they created Cookie Cutters, a hair salon that serves young clients and delivers a comfortable, stress-free experience for both the little ones and their parents. With eye-catching interiors that feature playful kid-size seats and a seemingly endless supply of bubbles and balloons to distract and delight nervous kiddos, Cookie Cutters grew to 28 locations over two decades. By then, the Sheltons needed a break and sold the business to Neal and Alexis Courtney, two of their most trusted franchisees. But instead of washing their hands of the…

Who Are Our Owners? Wild Birds Unlimited franchise store owners are enthusiastic about the hobby of bird feeding and about helping their community enjoy birds and nature in their own backyards. They’re also passionate about self-employment and building a business enterprise that will be a joy to operate. WBU Owners Love Their Business! Wild Birds Unlimited has been ranked #1 in Owner Satisfaction in the Retail category by Franchise Business Review for the past four years. This is not by chance. Our staff at the WBU Franchise Support Center provides dedicated, personalized coaching to train and equip our owners to execute a system of proven Best Practices. Helping our franchisees reach their business goals is our top priority. What Our Owners Are Saying:  At the start of my day, I…

“IT’S ALWAYS BEEN a dream to own my own business,” says Grant Springer, “but I never really thought it was feasible.” Then, while doing research for his master’s thesis, the 26-year Army veteran discovered CruiseOne—now Dream Vacations/CruiseOne—and realized his dream was actually well within reach. The travel agency franchise offered flexible hours, the ability to work from home, and a low cost of entry. That cost turned out to be even lower for Springer and his wife. They entered the company’s Operation Vetrepreneur contest and ended up being one of five winners to receive a free franchise that year. Since launching Operation Vetrepreneur in 2012, Dream Vacations has more than doubled the percentage of veterans in its system. Veterans who don’t win the contest are still eligible to receive a…

I started my company with a business card. I had just exited my previous company, Genghis Grill, and was looking for my next big idea. I was eating a lot of sandwiches at the time, so I figured I’d start a sandwich company and call it Which Wich, because I had always liked alliterative names, and I love great sandwiches. So I had some business cards made up with a black-and-yellow logo and took them to the National Restaurant Show to hand out. The next thing you know, reporters started calling me. I thought it was a joke—I mean, I hadn’t even made a sandwich yet! But it wasn’t a joke. I wound up on the cover of a major trade magazine. That meant I needed a real company. I…

This issue of Entrepreneur is all about risks, and you’re known for taking many. But I imagine that what seems daring to others is actually, to you, very calculated. We take a lot of calculated risk, but we make sure that no one risk is going to topple everything. Protecting the downside is critical. One of the first big deals I did was buying a secondhand 747 from Boeing. I was going from a record company to the airline business, so the key thing in that deal was that if it didn’t work out, I could hand the 747 back to Boeing after the first year. It wasn’t going to bankrupt our record company or the other things we’d started. So every decade, I have experience based on things that…

BAD NEWS IS HARD. It’s hard to get, and it’s hard to give. Whether we’re giving feedback in a one-on-one, telling a client we missed a deadline, or having to correct someone’s work, we all dread giving and getting bad news. Why? Because humans have what is known as a negativity bias. That means bad news hits us much harder than good news, and stays with us long after. This is the product of evolution. “It is evolutionarily adaptive for bad to be stronger than good,” writes researcher Roy Baumeister. “Survival requires urgent attention to possible bad outcomes but is less urgent with regard to good ones.” In other words, our brains perceive bad news as a threat to survival. It diminishes our sense of security and triggers a fight-or-flight…

DEVIN VERMEULEN / Creative director of enterprise “We wanted to make this HQ an expression of the brand. It was built on getting people to interact as much as possible. There’s no kitchen on the fifth or third floor—it’s on the fourth, which makes everyone go down or up there to get coffee, to get a beer after work. That, combined with the open stairs, makes this feel like one giant floor. We may not know everyone’s name, but at least we see them on a regular basis.” CARLO BAILEY / Design researcher “What we’re doing is unique in terms of research into workplace architecture and how that connects with technology. We have this test bed of thousands of spaces and track everything about how members use the space versus…

Jeff Bezos  Founder and CEO / Amazon Risk / Never stopping, and never being predictable Jeff Bezos started Amazon 23 years ago as an online bookstore. Today it has grown into the largest internet retailer in the world; it’s home to an Oscar-and Emmy-winning production studio; its subscription service, Amazon Prime, reached 80 million members this year (up from 58 million in 2016); and it’s made Bezos one of the richest men on the planet. This success alone—to see opportunities where others haven’t, and move into them faster than others can—would make him a daring entrepreneur. But alongside that, Bezos has proven himself adept at taking on totally unexpected challenges. In June, Bezos snapped up organic-grocery purveyor Whole Foods for $13.4 billion and quickly slashed prices (though the full scale…

The life of a traveling salesman is not a glamorous one. Young Lee knows this all too well. During the years Lee spent roaming the country as a life insurance salesman, he lived on countless fast-food meals in an effort to save both time and money. The greasy grub took a toll, and Lee found himself longing for the tasty, nourishing Korean dishes he grew up eating. So he took matters into his own hands, and in 1995, he created Flame Broiler, a quick-service restaurant offering healthy rice bowls with lots of veggies. He expected the original location in Fullerton, Calif., to be his first and last, but fans wanted in on the action, and Lee decided to franchise the business. Today the chain has nearly 200 locations, and Lee’s…

36-year-old Matt Robertie operates Pillar To Post Home Inspectors® of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Choosing to enter the Army right out of high school, Robertie was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas on September 11, the day of the 2001 terrorist attacks. He was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and spent nine months there in various parts of the country as a gunner on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. On 9/11/17, 16 years to the day when he found himself in Fort Hood preparing to fight for his country, Robertie began a new chapter in his life. Pillar To Post Home Inspectors® has consistently been named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Franchises for Veterans list and has also received Five Star VetFran Program status from the International Franchise Association, one of only 100 franchisors…

Chargeback loves obsessive employees. The Utah-based company investigates and documents credit card disputes—every time someone claims a card was used without their permission—and so its analysts must be persistent and nitpicky, with a sharp eye for detail that not everyone has. That’s why its president, Khalid El-Awady, recently hired a 36-year-old analyst named Carrie Tierney. She breezed through training and handles technical data, computer requirements, and repetitive tasks with ease, in about half the time new analysts usually take. “We’ve been very, very impressed,” says El-Awady. The experience has convinced him to consider more employees with Tierney’s abilities—and, by medical textbook standards, disabilities. Tierney is on the autism spectrum. But her hiring is not unique. She represents a vanguard in the war for talent, in which American companies—mostly large, but…

I can’t say I saw it coming, but I can’t say it was totally unfair, either. I was sitting in a meeting at my previous job as a beauty publicist, and after some exchange, a supervisor turned to me and declared, “Well, maybe this environment is just too entrepreneurial for you.” I have found myself on the receiving end of comments like that a lot over the years. When I first came to this country from the Soviet Union, at age 7, the school I entered wanted to hold me back because I didn’t speak English. I ended up being one of their best students. My guidance counselor in high school told me he thought NYU was a reach. I got in early decision. All of which is to say:…

EACH YEAR, Anytime Fitness contributes $250,000 to the nonprofit Tee It Up for the Troops as part of the franchise’s Operation Heartfirst program. Tee It Up for the Troops then selects a veteran to receive a $125,000 grant and a $125,000 loan to open an Anytime Fitness gym. This year’s recipient is Liz Hunt, who served 15 years in the Air Force, and also previously worked at an Anytime Fitness. Her gym will open early next year in Dothan, Ala.…

HOME FRANCHISE CONCEPTS has held a number of different giveaways since 2006. The latest is the There’s No Place Like Home Veteran Partnership and Giveaway, in which existing franchisees can nominate a veteran to receive a free Budget Blinds, Tailored Living, or Concrete Craft franchise and up to $100,000 in operating capital. Franchisees also fund-raise to provide that extra capital for the three winners (one for each brand), who will be announced on Veterans Day.…