Innholdsfortegnelse for June/August 2020 i Entrepreneur Magazine

MUSTAFA NUUR WAS born in Somalia but fled after terrorists killed his entrepreneurial father. He eventually settled in Lancaster, Pa., where he launched a startup called Bridge. It hosts cross-cultural experiences—dinners, gatherings, and so on—so that immigrants, refugees, and locals can better understand each other. “There’s nothing that can replace sitting across from someone who’s different from you and hearing their story,” he tells me. But something would have to replace it, of course. When COVID-19 swept through America, sitting across from someone wasn’t an option. Nuur was scared. Then he had an idea. The immigrants and refugees he works with could become essential workers, helping homebound residents. For example, he has a Syrian refugee family who, just days before the lockdown, hosted a dinner in their home. One attendee…

Every office has its politics. But bringing your office into your home, as many of us have in quarantine, escalates the usual state of affairs. I share a 500-square-foot apartment with my fiancé, Chad, and I’ve found coworking and coexisting to be a bit of a minefield. We’re allies, but inanimate enemies lie in wait: an ill-placed coffee mug, a computer cord stretched across the floor like a booby trap. The explosions have an existential ring to them: “But why, why??!” So when I discover that Marie Kondo will be paying us a Zoom visit to discuss her new book, Joy at Work—published in early April, just as the pandemic took off—I am eager to experience her much-celebrated, life-changing magic. At the appointed time, Kondo “arrives,” accompanied by her English-speaking…

SUDHEESH NAIR KNOWS what bad communication looks like. During the 2001 and 2008 economic downturns, he was working at companies where the leadership team made decisions behind closed doors and simply conveyed instructions to team members afterward. “There was no context for employees,” says Nair, now the CEO of ThoughtSpot, an analytics and data company. “When you give people responsibility without context or authority, it’s a recipe for disaster.” That’s why, throughout the COVID-19 crisis, Nair is taking a different approach to leading his 500 global employees. “We’re going for radical transparency and candor,” he says. Here’s how he’s creating a better conversation. 1/ Be an accessible leader. Before the company started working from home, Nair would often take breaks at the Sunnyvale HQ’s coffee shop, and his casual conversations…

Pitching investors was difficult before—and now? “Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride,” warns a report from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). It predicts that for the next several quarters, VC firms will struggle to raise their own funds, which means less cash to deploy to entrepreneurs. But Anna Whiteman is more optimistic. She’s VP at Coefficient Capital, a firm that focuses on digitally powered consumer brands (Hydrant, NomNom, Just Spices). Even if the road is bumpy, she says, it’s heading into exciting territory. But to start, entrepreneurs will need to think differently about growth. You read that NVCA report. How do you think COVID-19 will affect investors in general? I really don’t think it should cause too seismic a shift in the amount of capital…

BLACK SWAN EVENTS, such as global recessions and pandemics, change the trajectory of governments, economies, and businesses—altering the course of history, often for the better. The Black Death in the 1300s contributed to the dissolution of the feudal system in Europe and put us on the road to a modern employment contract. A mere three centuries later, a deep economic recession—thanks to the Hundred Years’War between England and France—helped kick-start a major innovation drive that radically improved agricultural productivity. Fast-forward and the SARS pandemic of 2002–2004 catalyzed the meteoric growth of a then-small e-commerce company called Alibaba, helping establish it at the forefront of retail in Asia. The financial crisis of 2008 also produced its own happy side effects. Airbnb and Uber shot up in popularity across the West as…

How can I rebuild my business as fast as possible? It’s the one question all founders and CEOs are considering right now. And it’s the wrong one. Instead, we should all be asking, “If I were starting my business today from scratch, what business would I build?” It’s natural to want to fight the carnage, to take up the clarion call of resistance and defiantly get your business reopened as soon as possible. But what if the coronavirus didn’t just close your doors? What if it actually opened an aperture to an alternative universe, one where your business moves faster than ever? Now is the time all leaders should resist the reflex to preserve the status quo. There’s no going back, because every business was built for the time before…

JENNIFER PERKINS, franchisee/ Main Squeeze Juice Co. TAKING CARE OF THE TEAM JENNIFER PERKINS OWNS two Main Squeeze Juice Co. locations just outside New Orleans with her brother, Andrew Blackwell. When his wife gave birth to twins mid-March, Andrew joined his family in quarantine—and Jennifer found herself navigating a pandemic without her business partner. “It’s been really hard,” she says. “Not to mention I haven’t gotten to meet my nieces! But safety is what’s important, more than anything.” That’s true of their businesses, too. Their juice and smoothie shops have required a dramatic increase in safety precautions, and while foot traffic has dwindled, drive-through purchases have quadrupled. Inside, Perkins is working overtime to keep her staff healthy and comfortable. “A lot of our younger staff’s parents wanted them to quarantine…

LET’S SAY YOU GO onto Grubhub, see that there’s a new franchise in town called The Captain’s Boil, and order a shrimp basket for delivery. Score! But here’s what you don’t see: Your lunch was actually made inside a Ruby Tuesday. This is the magic of Franklin Junction, which bills itself as a mixture of Airbnb and Match.com—but for restaurants. The platform finds kitchens with extra capacity and matches them with brands that want to expand into new locations. It was conceived by Aziz Hashim, founder and managing partner of NRD Capital, which owns more than 700 franchise units in North America. He launched it in January and originally intended it for his own stores (including The Captain’s Boil and Ruby Tuesday). But once COVID-19 hit, he opened it up…

CHRISTINA STEMBEL, founder/ Farmgirl Flowers OLD IDEA: Carefully curated products NEW IDEA: More options at lower cost WHEN THE PANDEMIC forced Christina Stembel to change her business, she was horrified. Then she was relieved. And now she has a stronger business as a result. Stembel is the founder of Farmgirl Flowers, a San Francisco–based floral arrangements company. She started it in 2010, when she saw a way to stand out in a crowded market. The internet is full of floral companies, but most of them outsource fulfillment, surrendering control of the quality and design of their bouquets as a way to boost margins. Stembel did the opposite. Her arrangements had a point of view, she offered a small variety of them, and everything would be created in-house—ensuring high quality. Flower…

RHONE WAS hurting. The company sells men’s activewear, and when the pandemic began, it had to shut down four stores and manage many wholesale losses. Its cofounders took large pay cuts, and employees’salaries were reduced 10 percent. Then, despite Rhone needing to conserve cash, its cofounders decided to give steep discounts to customers—and donate 2 percent of net sales to a nonprofit that helps frontline medical workers. “Some could say, ‘We should be protecting ourselves first,’” says Rhone cofounder and CEO Nate Checketts. “But brands need to think about people before they just think about making money.” And in an unexpected way, efforts like this are good for business. Rhone tracks employee sentiment across time and saw that after the company announced its charitable giving, satisfaction rates were way up.…

EMILY L’AMI LAUNCHED her brand’s website the old-fashioned way: She paid an agency $10,000 to make it. But the result was underwhelming—and that was a problem. Her company, a therapeutic-perfume startup called Bodha, was taking off. She needed an upgrade. So even though she’s not technically inclined, L’Ami tried to build a site herself using Squarespace. “I gave myself two days,” she says. “I decided, I’m going to stick with it and figure it out.” The result: Bodha.com is a stunner—original photos, integrations with social media, contact forms, and the all-important shopping cart. Now it draws about 12,000 page views per month and is a significant driver of sales to her business. Success stories like these are now common for website builders like Squarespace, Wix, and GoDaddy. Years ago, they…

IN LATE MARCH, Eric Yaverbaum was out for a run when his body shut down. “It just hit me,” he says. “My breathing got very labored. I got a cough, extreme fatigue, body aches like I’d never felt in my life.” He went to the hospital, where a test confirmed his condition: He had COVID-19. Doctors sent him home to quarantine himself. Yaverbaum is the chairman of Ericho Communications in New York City, and he now faced a challenging question: How does he lead his company while fighting a terrifying illness? To answer that, he drew from his experience in crisis communications. He wanted to be transparent, open, and trusting of his team. We spoke in April, after he’d been in bed for 11 days. (He’s since recovered.) What have…

EMMA ROONEY, sales coordinator “Structure has been key to keeping productivity up. Getting dressed in the morning and staying out of my bedroom during the day has been helpful, and creating a schedule for my day and a cutoff time in the evening is a necessary boundary. Plus, I’m constantly motivated by the work my colleagues are doing. I’ve been practicing mindful gratitude—I’m thankful to have a job to wake up to during these unimaginably tough times.” JAECHELLE JOHNSON, engineering technician “We’ve been having more frequent full-company check-ins, to just see each other’s faces. I think we’re using Slack 10 times more than we ever did when we were physically together. And we’ve started having video chats outside of work hours—to have virtual drinks together and decompress.” ALEXANDRA FINE, cofounder…

1/ Raise funds. Thynk Global is a new Miami coworking space. Cofounders Maghan Morin and Jeanine Suah (from left) hosted a virtual “cowork danceathon”; funds raised would provide free coworking space around Miami for local entrepreneurs displaced by COVID-19. 2/ Change lives with cash. Larry Connor, CEO of the real estate company The Connor Group, made $1.6 million in the stock market during the pandemic’s early days. He gave it all to employees in the form of bonuses, then pledged an extra $1.5 million as a small-business-loan program. 3/ Support communities. When racism began being directed to the Asian community, Meena Harris’Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign sold shirts that say phenomenally asian. Celebrities wore them, sales spiked, and net proceeds went to the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. 4/ Form…

Serve customers first. Charge them later. Ariela Safira had big plans for April 7. That was when she’d open the doors to Real, her women-focused mental health studio in Manhattan. But by the big day, lockdowns had begun. Still, Safira saw an opportunity ahead of her. “We were two days into quarantine, and my team and I got on a video call to think of a new way to provide care,” Safira says. “Because right now, people need mental healthcare.” Over eight days, they built a digital platform to serve New Yorkers, and launched it on March 27. The price: free through May. That way, they could reach as many women as possible and start a relationship that could develop down the line. “This platform and this crisis are bringing…

SQUARESPACE Price/ $18 a month for business plan Best feature/ Integrating Instagram content onto your actual site Our review/ Design templates are better than average. Our test site has a spacious, friendly look with plenty of white space. GODADDY WEBSITES + MARKETING Price/ Starts at $10 a month Best feature/ Inserting SEO terms on your home page and in blog posts Our review/ The tools are all intuitive and powerful. One ding: You can’t assign blog posts to a specific author. WIX EDITOR X Price/ TBD Best feature/ Responsive design improves the site on any screen Our review/ The interface is easy and well-designed, but some of the advanced features for responsive design might require some training.…

Cheryl Leung knows what the future looks like—and it’s looking pretty good. Leung is the founder of Sau Lee, a fashion brand based in Hong Kong, the city where she grew up. It’s also a city that felt the effects of the coronavirus crisis well ahead of the United States and, in turn, got a head start on its recovery. “We have seen Hong Kong kind of come back to life,” Leung said in early May, just after the city had started reopening businesses, restaurants, and gyms. “Businesses are starting to get more crowded, and you can feel a sense of positivity when you go out. People are still quite careful, but there’s a more vibrant energy going around.” Her hopefulness comes after a brutal few months that upended what…

ROB PRICE, CEO/ School of Rock CREATING SUPPORT THROUGH COMMUNITY “OUR BUSINESS COULD NOT be better designed to not withstand a pandemic,” says Rob Price, the CEO of School of Rock. The music-education franchise teaches 40,000 students at 267 locations around the globe; its performance-based curriculum creates ensembles of kids who rehearse together for months before putting on one rocking show. “It requires that camaraderie,” Price says. So as the pandemic spread, Price sprang into action. He activated his team to create a digital offering that maintained the community aspect of School of Rock’s lessons, and within a week, they had a remote solution in place. It quickly became clear that the company would be able to retain most of its clients through the crisis—and Price started thinking about other…