Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2018 i Entrepreneur Magazine

AS WE ENTER into a new year, I’ve thought a lot about something a woman asked me at the end of 2017. I was a guest on the Never Settle Show, a live-streaming talk show, and she sat in the front row of the audience and stood up to speak. She’s experienced a lot of setbacks, she said. A lot of obstacles. Her life often feels stagnant. How, she wondered, can she move forward? And I told her this: Nobody sees your past except you. Consider this magazine you hold in your hands. You don’t see the five articles that fell apart. Or the two successive freelance editors we’d hired to help who then backed out and left us scrambling. Or the story we rewrote so many times, we thought…

Q As an entrepreneur, is it important to write a book and become an influencer in order to take my business to the next level? —PETE, AUSTRALIA PETE, let me clear the air and admit a few biases: I’ve written five books, including a New York Times best-seller. I’ve ghostwritten three other best-sellers, and my consulting company has marketed two books that both hit number one on the New York Times list. Books are my business, so I see how it’d be easy to expect me to recommend that route. But most of the time, I suggest that an entrepreneur not write a book. Which isn’t to say I don’t understand the appeal. I do. Plenty of successful leaders have written them, from Richard Branson to Sheryl Sandberg, and many…

John Foley can’t find his desk. The cofounder and CEO of Peloton is showing me around the Manhattan headquarters of his company—which streams boutique-style cycling classes to high-tech, at-home exercise bikes—and explains that the open floor plan was recently rearranged. It’s something they do every six months to keep the space feeling fresh and get different departments talking, he says. It’s a practice he loves, and he stands by it. Though it can be disorienting. “Oh, here it is!” He practically giggles. It turns out his desk is now next to Hisao Kushi’s, one of his cofounders. As our tour continues through the offices, Foley is warm and affable with the ever-increasing number of staffers. The company moved here a little more than a year ago and took up two…

IT’S A WEEKDAY morning and Howard Mierau’s 2-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter is paddling in a heated pool at the Goldfish Swim School franchise in Needham, Mass. The blond-haired, blue-eyed toddler, clad in a baby-blue swimsuit, spends two or more mornings a week here learning water safety and swimming techniques, while her grandfather watches from the tiki-themed viewing area. And when they’re not at Goldfish, they’re at another franchise, Gymboree Play & Music. This all looks quite different from when Mierau raised his own daughter decades ago. Back then, his wife stayed home while he worked as a computer programmer. But that daughter grew up, got married, and had a child of her own—and because she and her husband work full-time and wanted to make sure their daughter is fully occupied and looked…

WANT ADVICE ABOUT FRANCHISING? Talk to someone in the business. Or better yet, talk to people in the business…whose side business is talking to other people in the business! Franchise podcasters have a particularly valuable perspective: They bring their own experiences to the mic and then learn through regular conversations with the best minds in franchising. That’s why we asked three of the industry’s chat masters for the most salient lesson they’ve learned over the years. LESSON 1 Consider the Market, Not Just the Concept TOM SCARDA, host of The Franchise Academy Show, got lucky early. He entered franchising in 2000 when he bought a Maui Wowi franchise in New York City; five years later, he sold it for enough money to semi-retire at 41. “But I learned nothing from…

Year began/franchising since This shows how long a company has been in business and how long it has been franchising. Both are good to know when you’re trying to decide whether you should go with an established system or a newer concept. Available U.S. regions and Seeking int’l.? Check out these columns if you want to know whether a franchise system is expanding in your area and whether a company requires franchisees to buy master licenses or multiple units. No. of franchises/Company-owned Find a franchise company’s size and how quickly it’s growing. Here we list the numbers of franchises and company-owned units open and operating worldwide as of July 31, 2015, 2016, and 2017. Startup costs/Franchise fee Look here for the total investment to open a franchise (without financing). This…

Athletes make for potent entrepreneurs: Their careers taught them the importance of strong leadership, a sense of mission, and, well, success’s rich rewards. Now they’re drawing their own post-player game plans. “Enterprising athletes are building a brand and giving back to communities—all of which are vitally important to long-term success,” says Dave Meltzer, CEO of Sports 1 Marketing and host of The Playbook podcast. So who’s on top? We weighed tangibles like money earned with game-changing contracts and endorsement deals, as well as intangibles like personal brand building, appetite for risk, and the flat-out coolness of their business pursuits. See our list online, and be inspired by these leadership lessons. Derek Jeter’s Motivational Tips The Yankee great, Miami Marlins CEO, and Players’ Tribune founder tells us what pushes him. 1/…

IT’S a bright morning in October, and Barbara Corcoran is sitting in her street-level headquarters, a converted doctor’s office on upper Park Avenue in New York City, trying to convince Jen and Jeff Martin to wear popcorn bags on their heads. The Martins, a brother-and-sister team, are the founders of Pipsnacks, one of the fastest-growing companies in Corcoran’s portfolio. Their original product is the mini-popcorn snack Pipcorncrunchy, largely hull-less, and sold in seven flavors, including the much-beloved truffle. The Martins launched the company six years ago and had their big breakthrough in 2014, when they appeared before Corcoran and the other sharks on the ABC prime-time reality series Shark Tank, nabbing a $200,000 investment from her in exchange for 10 percent of the company. Since then, growth has exploded. Pipcorn…

Koel Thomae thought retail was simple: When a major chain wants to carry your product, you say yes. So that’s what she did in 2011, when a New York City retailer courted her Colorado-based yogurt brand, Noosa. “We felt it was a great opportunity,” she says, “and just blindly went into this without any critical eye on how complex it could be.” Never mind that Noosa, an Australian-style creamy and sweet yogurt, had been founded only a year earlier and, despite a solid start, was still a largely local brand. Or that Thomae, a former supply chain manager at a beverage company, had never launched a business before. This, she figured, was her ticket to the big time. Ten months later, Noosa had lost $100,000. “That was a massive hit…

Sam Sisakhti had an idea for an e-commerce company called UsTrendy. It would sell clothing made by talented, unknown fashion designers from around the world—acting as a marketplace for great styles that could be found nowhere else. It didn’t matter that he had no experience in fashion or building a brand. It didn’t matter that he had just quit his first job out of college after only four days. What mattered was that he believed that this idea could be huge. And to get it there, he figured, he needed to raise money. A lot of money. Initially, it seemed easy. On their very first pitch, Sisakhti and his associate landed a $500,000 offer. “Crazy,” he says. But there was a catch: The VC required them to move to Silicon…

How to MOTIVATE A TEAM According to the coach of the 2017 Little League National Champions “Young kids are looking for direction. Adults may think they know everything. But both groups have at least this in common: When they see that a leader is being serious with them and is looking out for their best interests, and that following what the leader says brings about success, they’re going to follow. I make sure players understand that success starts with them taking care of their own obligations. Don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. Take care of yours, and when everyone’s doing that, the team is taken care of, too. Then everyone sees how it pays off. They’ll see that the hard workers are successful. They’ll be ready to work…

1 McDONALD’S Founded / 1955 Worldwide units / 37,011 U.S. units / 14,079 Cost to open a store / $1 million–$2.21 million WHEN STEVE EASTERBROOK took over as president and CEO of McDonald’s in spring 2015, the world’s most recognizable fast-food chain was in the midst of an identity crisis. Chipotle Mexican Grill and its fast-casual brethren were being hailed as the cooler, healthier dining option, with hormone-free meals and stores that resembled lounges and cafés more than utilitarian pit stops. In Asia, it faced a food-safety crisis after OSI, a supplier that had worked with McDonald’s since the days of founder Ray Kroc, was found to have repackaged old meat for sale. And months before Easterbrook’s first day on the job, McDonald’s posted its first annual drop in same-store…

WHEN POKÉWORKS opened in midtown Manhattan in December 2015, its cofounder Kevin Hsu wondered if he had made a huge mistake. “The first evening, no one stepped foot inside, apart from two drunk college kids asking if we sold shark,” remembers the 36-year-old entrepreneur. The answer was no. His fast-casual eatery served the traditional Hawaiian bowl of marinated raw fish. “I thought maybe we were trying to introduce a food that the masses were just not ready for. No one had a clue what poke was or how to say it.” (“Poke” rhymes with “OK,” for the record.) But business picked up once nearby office workers learned they could get a large bowl of lavishly seasoned ahi tuna for $13.50—less than the price of two sushi rolls in other restaurants…

Welcome to Entrepreneur’s 39th annual Franchise 500®. That’s right, we’ve been putting together the world’s first, best, and most comprehensive franchise ranking for almost four decades. And this year’s turned out to be one of our most competitive ever. In fact, for the first time in 25 years, more than 1,000 companies applied to be a part of the list. That means if you’re interested in buying a franchise, you’ve got more options than ever, from the established industries still dominating the top of the rankings, like restaurants, hair care, and real estate, to emerging trends quickly climbing their way up, like smartphone repairs, trampoline parks, and paint-and-sip studios. So how do we determine which companies come out on top? Using our proprietary ranking formula, which is always evolving to…

My grandfather was an entrepreneur. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, and he made his own money—starting, believe it or not, a cigarette lighter company in the ’60s. He was a cool guy—someone who lived a glamorous lifestyle (or at least what the Rochester, N.Y.–raised, 13-year-old version of me thought was glamorous). He was my hero. He had this watch, an Omega Speedmaster, that I loved. It had a chronograph and what’s known as a triple date complication: the day of the week, the month, and the date. And it didn’t look like the usual watch. It was blue and white and gray. Anytime I went down to visit him, I’d ask him about it. He’d even let me wear it from time to time. When my grandparents sold…