Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2023 i Entrepreneur Magazine

WHAT DOES productivity mean to you? Like, literally? What does it mean for you to have a productive day? Here’s my answer, which is typical: “Productivity” means I complete a list of tasks. That’s because I organize my day around my to-do list, and I feel productive when I check stuff off. But what if…there’s another way to look at it? “To me, productivity is about energy management—not time management,” says my friend Katherine Morgan Schafler, a psychotherapist and author of the great book The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control. To appreciate that, start by considering the days when you are not productive. Why didn’t you finish more tasks? “It’s not really because we run out of the time to do them,” Katherine says. “We run out of the energy to…

Kristina Saffran nearly died during her freshman year of high school. She had anorexia nervosa, considered one of the most fatal mental health disorders, and was in and out of the hospital as doctors struggled to find a solution. It was a family-based outpatient treatment that finally helped her recover. She was so grateful that, at age 15, she started a nonprofit to make this treatment available to others who couldn’t afford it. But by the time she was 27, she wanted to make a larger impact and started thinking about a telehealth startup specifically for eating disorders, based on the same model of care. When she met with Martin Rosenzweig, chief medical officer for Optum Behavioral Health Solutions, part of UnitedHealth Group, and described her vision for the program,…

HAVE A PROBLEM WE CAN SOLVE FOR YOU? TELL US AT HELPME@ENTREPRENEUR.COM Q Every founder seems to have a personal brand, but it doesn’t appeal to me. Do I really need to do this? —ELOISE, SAN DIEGO BEFORE I ANSWER your question, consider the following scenario: Imagine comparing two people who work for you. One employee does everything that you ask of them. The other does that, too—but they also go above and beyond to identify opportunities outside of the job’s general requirements. Not everything the second employee does is a hit, but a few things are, and those uncharted opportunities add asymmetrical upside to your business. Which employee does more to help your company? The answer is obvious, of course. And it’s worth considering before you write off social…

Walk into any hip startup and what’s the one word you’ll hear echoing across the cubicles and over the Keurig despite best efforts to rein in its use? No, it doesn’t rhyme with luck or hit. This one rhymes with hike and should be wildly familiar to anyone who’s seen the movies Valley Girl or Clueless. Like may sound juvenile, but it has taken over our linguistic nooks and crannies in almost every variety of global English. It appears at the beginning of sentences, in the middle of clauses, and now it even introduces quotes. This expanded use of like is so widespread that news outlets ranging from The Atlantic to Time to Vanity Fair to The New York Times have covered what seems to be its troubling and meteoric…

Alli Webb was still in the trenches at Drybar—the blowout salon company she cofounded with her brother Michael Landau in 2010—when she had her next big idea. It was just an inkling at first. But by the time they sold Drybar’s product line in 2020 for $255 million and the franchise business was acquired by WellBiz Brands in 2021, the inkling had become a full-blown concept: What if they could revolutionize the massage experience the same way they had the blowout? “We knew we were onto something really special again,” Webb says. They called the new concept Squeeze, and it now has 70 franchise locations set to open across the country. This time around, Brittany Driscoll, formerly Drybar’s vice president of marketing, is one of the cofounders. Webb says that…

At some point in their career, every worker has probably thought: I wish I were the boss. In franchising, people often achieve that dream. They might start as a cashier, manager, or in some role at the corporate office, and then rise up to buy a unit of a brand themselves. This is no accident. Franchises are always looking for qualified franchisee candidates who appreciate their brand and are dedicated to its success, and many of them encourage their best employees to pursue that path. It’s part of the DNA of franchising. Some brands even have apprenticeship or financing programs to help their team members achieve the dream of business ownership. So, what’s it like to go from employee to boss? And what’s required to make the leap? On the…

Everything I do today in business can be traced back to lessons I learned when starting my first company at the age of 13. That’s why I still hang on to my first uniform: an oversized yellow Tommy Bahama shirt emblazoned with an orange and black logo for “Winner Computing.” It looks like something a retiree would wear to a bowling alley, which perhaps explains why it was a hit with the customers in my gray-haired South Florida neighborhood. I started Winner Computing during the PC revolution to help my neighbors—mostly people’s parents and grandparents—set up and learn how to use a computer. I quickly had more business than I could handle on my own, so after six months, I started hiring my middle-school friends. But how could we look…

WRONG/“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” “That’s highly misleading. I have always done what I love, and that’s enabled me to build competitive brands and businesses. But it’s hard work. Managing a team or a process or a business does not come easy. I think the nuanced version of this would be, ‘Do what you love and you will be able to take on all the hard work that’s required to build a career or business.’ There is no way around the hard work, even if you love what you do.” —MICHAEL BOSSTICK, founder and CEO, Dear Media WRONG/“Hire a head of X sooner than later.” “Advisors and investors will often tell you to hire a [head of] marketing, engineers, sales, etc. I…

1/Gogh to your happy place. You work too much. I mean, look at you—you’re reading a magazine about work right now! Unplugging can be helpful, which is why you may find Lego Ideas The Starry Night [$170; lego.com] a meditative delight. Reconnect with the Legos you loved as a kid, but now with a grown-up twist. And when you’re done, you can display it behind you for all your stressed-out coworkers to enjoy on Zoom calls (which probably could have been emails). 2/A dock that declutters. Tidy up your desk while reducing neck strain. The 11-port Anker 675 USB-C Docking Station [$250; anker.com] is a 21.26-by-8.66-inch stand that elevates a monitor by about 3.5 inches, with connections built into one leg to handle USB-C, USB-A, SD cards, and an…