Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2020 i Entrepreneur Magazine

CATHIE URUSHIBATA/Art director “I lead the creative team, and people think we just do menus or signage, but it’s more than that with Shake Shack because we’re seen as a lifestyle brand. We’ll work on any creative, from T-shirt swag and promo giveaways to social media graphics and billboard signs. I never thought I’d be working on an IPO, creating branding for the certificate for our stock. But those are the types of opportunities here.” ANOOP PILLARISETTI/Director of tech products “Everything is growing so fast around here. The common space really lends itself to hanging out and working together. Every now and then, a tray of Shack-Burgers will show up and we’ll all convene around them. That’s a huge part of the environment.” MEGAN SCHERER/Senior supply chain manager “For the…

Fiona McDougall never thought she’d hire an apprentice. The practice was common in her native Australia, but as a principal at the marketing company OneWorld Communications in San Francisco, she had no time. Plus, here in the U.S., the concept of it seemed like it was for…electricians? Plumbers? Certainly not her. But in 2017, she was invited to an unusual roundtable series with other local businesspeople. It was organized by the city of San Francisco to help them develop an apprenticeship program—which is to say, paying a potential employee to work part-time while also providing on-the-job training and education. McDougall came away thinking it could work for her. “Small businesses have limited resources,” she says. “You wear many hats, and we expect people to be specialized but nimble and resourceful.”…

Anthony Sullivan is usually on TV pitching OxiClean, the line of cleaning products he’s become famous for. (His marketing company produces its commercials, which he also stars in.) But now he’s also pitching his own CBD brand, and he wants people to know he’s all in. “It would have been easy for me to just white-label some CBD,” he says, “but I didn’t feel that was enough.” He discovered the space because of his 9-year-old daughter, Devon, who has a rare genetic disorder and uses CBD to manage her symptoms. Then he teamed up with a friend, Dave Christian, to buy a 116-acre organic hemp farm in Vermont and hired a film crew to chronicle their struggles as novice farmers. The final result: Their brand, MontKush, is available as of…

One morning last August, Jonathan Doneson woke up with a cough that shot straight through his rib cage. “It was like I’d taken a really big bong hit,” says the 53-year-old, who runs a women’s apparel company with his wife. But Doneson didn’t have a bong. He had a marijuana vape pen. Since recreational weed is still illegal in New York, where Doneson lives, he bought his cartridges through a friend and other means. Some came in a professional-looking package labeled Kingpen, a respected cannabis brand; some didn’t. Doneson didn’t really care. What happened next will sound familiar to anyone who followed the news in 2019. Doneson’s health deteriorated, and doctors struggled to crack the case—until he mentioned that he used a vape pen. “People have died from this,” one…

Stitch Fix has changed the way consumers shop. The online styling brand launched in 2011, winning over female customers with personalized selections of clothing sent directly to their door. (No more mall visits!) The brand then expanded to men’s and kids’ clothing and, since going public in 2017, has seen annual revenue approach $2 billion. Meanwhile, founder and CEO Katrina Lake has gone through her own evolution. She’s thinking about growth differently—less about speed, more about long-term sustainability—and has learned the importance of keeping her staff updated on all news, even the bad kind. She’s aware that as a young female CEO, all eyes are on her, but she’s learned to pay it forward to other young founders and embrace her role in the shifting landscape of startup culture. Because…

On October 25, 2018, some 120 concerned citizens in Brookline, Mass., took to the streets, waving placards and chanting slogans, to protest a development they believed would imperil the local children and businesses: a retail cannabis shop. The protesters soon organized themselves into Save St. Mary’s Neighborhood, a powerful coalition that collected more than 1,200 letters opposing the proposed store. They argued that the dispensary would bring in too much traffic, clogging streets and changing the character of the neighborhood. They argued that it would be a bad influence in a family-minded area, with at least 13 nearby youth-oriented institutions. They argued that the store would be, by their analyses, in slight violation of several zoning ordinances. They even argued that retail cannabis is so new, opening up a shop…

1/Ask All Your Questions From Jamie Izaks, president and cofounder, All Points Public Relations When vetting a PR firm, whether you’re a franchisor or a franchisee, you want to find the best value. Where’s the intersection of quality and cost? To do that, you need to ask a lot of questions. What types of brands do you serve? Who are your longest-term clients? How do you keep them moving forward? Get specific. If you’re a franchisee, ask for franchisee case studies that show how the PR firm helped drive business. If you’re a franchisor, request an example that outlines how much one company paid and what it received in business growth, media impressions, ad equivalency, site visitors, or social media engagement. It’s also important to understand a firm’s role in…

Growth is the purpose of franchising. So while it’s only one of many factors that we look at in our comprehensive yearly Franchise 500 ranking, it’s certainly worth putting a magnifying glass to this one important measure of franchise success. That’s why every year we put together this list of franchises that have expanded rapidly in North America. The companies on this list are ranked based on their net franchise unit growth in the U.S. and Canada between July 2018 and July 2019, with ties broken based on percentage growth. Altogether, these 150 companies added a total of 9,537 new franchise units in North America during that time period. They’re an eclectic mix of concepts, from traditional services to newer trends. But looking at them as a whole provides some…

1/Focus on the “yes.” “When we started our business, we discussed our strengths and interests and decided that if we couldn’t resolve an issue, I would have 51 percent ownership over the finances and my cofounder, Christiana [Coop], would have 51 percent ownership over design. But we also agreed to discuss our differences in opinion, and for more than 11 years, we haven’t had to play our ‘ownership card.’ Our default is that if we both can’t get to yes on something, we pass.” —AIMEE LAGOS, cofounder, Hygge & West 2/Turn to your team. “We’ve built a highly experienced executive team—VP of operations, VP of construction, VP of finance—to help us settle disagreements and differences. They’re our tiebreaker. This allows us to spend less time bickering and more time on…

Q I have a legacy product that my customers love. How do I keep its promotion fresh in order to drum up new excitement and new customers? —BRAD, GAINESVILLE, FLA. BUSINESSES CAN learn a lot about marketing relevancy from Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’ve worked closely with the bodybuilder turned actor turned governor for nearly 10 years, and I’m continually amazed by the way that, at 72 years old, he can charm a room of aging gym buffs—then post a video on TikTok and have 20 million teenagers laughing. It’s a master class in satisfying the old and intriguing the new. To replicate it, any entrepreneur must understand when to create excitement and when to double down on the familiar. We’re conditioned to believe that new things generate the most interest, excitement,…

Why Canna River is Growing On Their Terms Since launching in October 2019, Canna River has expanded quickly. The CBD brand started with a collection of broad spectrum tinctures made with organic MCT oil and CBD sourced from USAgrown hemp. They had one goal: Offer premium, high potency tinctures at the lowest prices possible. In just a few short months, their brand has expanded to include topicals, premium flower, full spectrum tinctures, and more. “Wellness isn’t just one thing, is it? A holistic approach to feeling good means looking at the whole person, inside and out,” said Canna River Co-Founder Grant Boatman. “Some people think you should do one or two products well before expanding. In this case, we felt it made sense to offer new products as soon as…

When Minhthe Nguyen started working at Tesla in 2012, he was overseeing a team of 20 at the Fremont, Calif., factory, which was producing a single car each week. Less than three years later, his team had grown beyond 400 people, and they were producing 1,200 cars a week. Having witnessed and contributed to that kind of rapid growth, Nguyen felt empowered to take a leap he’d long dreamed about: owning a business. Coming from the corporate world, he found the structure and support of franchising appealing, and when he learned about uBreakiFix—an electronics-repair franchise with 548 locations across North America—it seemed like the perfect fit for his skills and passions. Today, with his business partner and fellow Tesla vet Emmanuel Marti, Nguyen operates five locations across California. Their sales…

I spent a big portion of my 20s underwater—but not in the emotional sense. Back in the early ’90s, I was a submarine officer, serving at the end of the Cold War. I was 24 when I reported for duty on the USS Chicago, a fast-attack nuclear submarine. I was put in charge of 13 men, and despite my extensive training, nothing could have fully prepared me for the intensity of my role. A month into a mission, the ship’s turbine generators started giving us trouble, and it was my responsibility to get them fixed. The ship’s engineer—who was my boss—proposed a solution, but the chief petty officer wanted a different resolution. Wanting to impress my supervisor and resolve the situation quickly, I ordered the chief petty officer to fix…