Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2018 i Entrepreneur Magazine

In seven years of running a startup, I experienced just about every emotion entrepreneurship has to offer: the adrenaline of launch; the calm energy of focused flow; the brittle, jittery high of riding a 2 a.m. work jag; the terror of feeling the mask slip, of telling an upbeat story to customers as panic churns in your guts; the grief of failure—and the relief of failure, too; the ghostly lost-limb feeling that asks, Who am I if I’m not running this business? However, my mental health résumé is a lot longer than my entrepreneurial one. I’ve been dancing a medicated tango with depression and anxiety since childhood. I’ve racked up just enough time in the other wing of the hospital to be a bad life insurance prospect. I don’t have…

1/ With a promise. “After the economic meltdown of 2008, we couldn’t afford to keep everyone on staff. Picking who stays and who goes is one of the most difficult decisions you have to make as CEO. I delivered the news with honesty and empathy at an all-hands meeting. We gave some severance, referral to an employment service, and a personal reference. We also gave the option to rejoin our team once things were back on track, and some did! It was a homecoming of sorts, a healing moment.” —ORI EISEN, founder and CEO, Trusona 2/ With support. “In 2016, our office manager passed away. She was only 26. We called a mandatory meeting, let everyone know, and brought in grief counselors. The hardest part was controlling my own emotions…

Most people hate the gym. (Go ahead, admit it.) But Anytime Fitness, which recently opened its 4,000th location worldwide, seems to attract a particular kind of devotee: Thousands of members have tattooed the company logo onto their bodies. Cofounder and CEO Chuck Runyon isn’t surprised by that; he knows a 24-hour gym like his can transform lives. That’s the foundation of his entire business; he started it 16 years ago, after his brother died from heart disease. Runyon had been working at a local fitness club and saw a greater opportunity to help people get healthy. Today, Anytime Fitness has more than $1 billion in revenue, close to four million members worldwide, and a bold international expansion strategy. This year, Runyon will open 400 new locations, the majority of which…

Subway® Executive Chef Chris Martone knows that the simple key to success is making a great customized sandwich for each guest that visits. Recently, the brand introduced three crave-worthy, protein-packed Signature Wraps in bold, flavorful choices: Chipotle Southwest Steak and Cheese; Turkey, Bacon and Guacamole; and the Savory Rotisserie-Style Chicken Caesar. These Signature Wraps, made on either a Tomato Basil Wrap or a Spinach wrap, are double the meat of an average 6-inch sub. “As part of my job, I have introduced some great sandwiches, salads and wraps, as well as creative toppings and sauces, using unique and exciting flavor profiles,” said Chef Martone. “The real pleasure in sandwich making comes in providing enough quality ingredients to help customers find the sandwich that is perfect for them.” And, in keeping…

THE 200 COMPANIES on this list represent more than 414,000 total units open around the world. More than 10 percent of those locations belong to just one company: Subway. Though it remains the world’s largest restaurant brand by a wide margin, the sandwich giant recently announced that it will continue to reduce its North American footprint. At the same time, though, it said that global expansion will continue, with plans for 1,000 more international shops to open this year.…

PETLAND IS PROVING that the love of pets is universal. The brand, now more than 50 years old, was founded and is still based in the small town of Chillicothe, Ohio, but has locations as far-flung as Brazil, South Africa, and China. Petland’s corporate team find many of their international franchisees by attending Interzoo, the world’s largest pet trade show, held every other year in Nuremberg, Germany. But just like their U.S.– based counterparts, new international franchisees must make their way to Chillicothe for up to five weeks of training.…

When my father was in his late teens, working as a ski-lift operator in Switzerland, he met a man named Andreas Geissberger. Andreas had skied for the Swiss team and led climbs in the Alps and the Himalayas. He’d lived an amazing life. And he had this canvas climbing jacket that he’d worn everywhere. One day, my dad said, “I really like your jacket.” And Andreas, being the true mountain man that he was, just gave it to him. For the next 30 years, my father wore that jacket everywhere—he skied in it, rode along the Colorado River on a Triumph Bonneville motorcycle, sailed the south coast of Britain, climbed mountains. Whether in the city or the wilderness, he wore it. My father eventually settled down and took a finance…

T.I. is hiring. On July 19, the Grammy-winning rapper behind gargantuan hits like “Live Your Life” and “Whatever You Like” is launching a BET reality show, The Grand Hustle, to find the next executive for his company. It’s the latest in his effort to expand the Atlanta-based business he started in 2003, which is also called Grand Hustle. Along with being a co-owner of the streaming music service Tidal, T.I.’s company is cultivating the next generation of young artists, producing TV and film, and investing in everything from technology to fashion to real estate. All the while, T.I. (real name Tip Harris), who at the very peak of his rap career a decade ago had frequent and well-publicized troubles with the law, is coming into his own as a philanthropist,…

Things were not going well for Chanje. The L.A.–based electric truck startup was rife with drama. Key positions were going unfilled, and the company was struggling to work with engineering partners in Hong Kong. All this forced founder Bryan Hansel, who already had one problematic startup behind him, to face a painful truth. “I had a personal coach, and he said, ‘Every CEO gets the exact company they deserve,’ ” Hansel recalls. The trouble, they decided, was Hansel’s management style, which he describes as “Superman.” “If something bad happened, I showed up in front of the room with all the answers,” he says. This was not exactly empowering to his employees, who admired his energy but never had the chance to own a process, or a win. It suppressed any…

On Valentine’s Day in 2015, Natasha Ruckel and her husband, Fred, were sitting in their living room in Gilboa, N.Y. Natasha was improvising on the piano, and Fred was listening while messing around with the couple’s cat, Yoda. Fred noticed a ripple in the living room rug, forming a half circle on one side. Again and again he tossed toys into the ripple and a delighted Yoda darted in and out. Natasha looked up from her playing. “That’s when we came up with the idea for the Ripple Rug,” she says. The Ruckels, who had spent around 25 years earning their living in marketing and advertising for brands from PepsiCo to ESPN to Hasbro, were already in the midst of creating their first venture: an app that provided a way…

When Saskatoon native Bradly George purchased an existing Pillar To Post Home Inspectors® franchise in 2010, he had thought long and hard about this new career. “The existing business was doing fine,” says George. “But the owner was ready for a change since he had already been operating for 15 years, and I was looking for one too.” “I had worked in various home building trades,” George continues, “and I enjoyed mostly all of them. I became a very busy sub-contractor in a variety of tasks from plumbing to carpentry. I worked mainly for general contractors building homes and apartments. When it was time to take all my skills and find a permanent career where I could use them,” said George, “I heard about Pillar To Post Home Inspectors® .…

Franchising in more than one country comes with its own unique set of challenges, from finding and supporting franchisees from a distance to making a brand work in different cultures, languages, and economies. But more and more companies seem willing to tackle those challenges—and those that are doing it best can be found here, on Entrepreneur’s annual list of the top global franchises. To create this ranking, we started with our Franchise 500® formula and tweaked it to give extra weight to international size and growth. Other areas considered by the formula, which examines more than 150 data points in all, include costs and fees, franchisee support, brand strength, and financial strength and stability. Only companies that indicated that they are seeking new franchisees outside the U.S., and that had…

EXPENSE REDUCTION ANALYSTS, which does business consulting, has almost four times as many franchises open internationally than domestically. Part of the key to its successful growth worldwide is that franchisees collaborate rather than compete with each other. In fact, most projects delivered to clients involve two or three franchisees working together. Franchisees are also encouraged to recommend potential new franchisees, and are rewarded with luxury vacations if their recommended candidates join the system.…

VIRGIN VOYAGES WANTS TO make cruising cool. The new Richard Branson venture is aimed at travelers ages 18 and older—“sailors,” as the company calls them—who would normally never set foot on a cruise ship. As Virgin Voyages builds its hip new ships, complete with a lounge called The Athletic Club that will be home to the largest daybed at sea, it’s also building a brand-new culture at its headquarters in Plantation, Fla. The office, designed by IA Interior Architects, draws on Virgin tradition—lots of purple and red accents, especially in the enormous glass “red room” where employees gather for company-wide meetings. Neon signs and a bathtub full of (plastic) flamingos keep the nautical-inspired space fresh and fun, and when the first ship sets sail in 2020, this crew will be…

On its face, choosing a credit card payment processor is a simple matter of numbers. What percentage of each transaction does the processor take? What are the fees involved? But for a growing business, choosing the right payment processor can be more of an art than a science. The factors that matter most are a little harder to quantify: customer service, tech support, and a smooth interface between the processor and the point-of-sale (POS) system that handles your transactions. That’s especially true for franchise systems. In addition to payment processing, franchises may also need their vendor to help generate sophisticated reports or manage loyalty programs, which need to function smoothly across multiple locations. “Processing rates and fees are all kind of similar, especially for large franchises that negotiate at scale,”…

Carly Chalker and her family have experienced ups and downs over the last decade. But with every life experience comes lessons learned and opportunities to grow. Carly and her husband, Jonathan, have been the backbone of their PuroClean business since it was opened. Carly previously worked for an insurance company while Jonathan came from a construction background. They started a family toward the end of the 2000s, but around the time their third child was born, the economic recession of 2008 hit. They started a construction business that paid the bills but did not give them the sense of fulfillment they had before. “We knew that there had to be something else we could do to put more meaning behind ourselves and our jobs,” Carly said. In the fall of…

MCDONALD’S RANKS number one on both our Franchise 500 and our Top Global Franchises lists this year—and it’s number one in the hearts (and feeds) of social media users as well. The Golden Arches has more followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (77.4 million, 3.6 million, and 3.2 million, respectively) than any other company on our list. And those are just the company’s main accounts. Accounts for specific coun- tries, like McDonald’s Philippines (@mcdo_ph) and McDonald’s Argentina (@mcdonalds_ar), have followers in the hundreds of thousands.…

KUMON WAS FOUNDED 60 years ago in Japan by high school math teacher Toru Kumon. The franchise first expanded beyond Japan in 1974, with the opening of a center in Larchmont, N.Y., to serve Japanese expatriates. It proved so successful not just with them but with others in the community that it sparked a massive global expansion. Today the company has learning centers in 50 countries, helping more than four million children around the world.…