Entrepreneur

EVERY FEW MONTHS, my wife and I have the same battle with our son. There are tears. There’s despair. But recently, in the midst of one such skirmish, something occurred to me: Entrepreneurs often have this same battle… only, we have it with ourselves

“Having a vision is the why behind the mission. Our mission is to empower confident reproductive and vaginal health decisions at home. Why? Because we want to be the place women turn during their most vulnerable health moments. That vision hasn’t cha

Naveen Jain had a crazy idea: Could he prevent and reverse chronic diseases? Why was this crazy? To start, Jain is not a doctor. He’s an accomplished technologist whose first company, InfoSpace, became one of North America’s largest tech companies in

Can I make smarter decisions? Lead more effectively? Be more innovative? Entrepreneurs struggle to find clarity on big questions like these—because, as you know, they’re busy charging through unmapped territory and figuring things out on the run. You

I’m not used to failing—but a few years ago in Miami, I was gripping my blanket in a hotel, staring at the ceiling, and wondering if a major decision I’d made was blowing up in my face. Until then, I was used to hitting A-plus. I’d gotten an MBA from

Jason Wright made a new kind of snack chip, and he knew it was good. When people tried it, they bought it. He even launched inside Whole Foods—a dream for many food brands. So after it launched, why were sales dead? To save his business, Wright neede

Your smartphone takes perfectly good video, but the Sony ZV-1F Vlog Camera [$500; electronics.sony.com] is the kind of upgrade that creators crave. It has a 3-inch, swing-out LCD that rotates to give you the selfie perspective. Inside, the 4K camera

Q HERE’S A QUESTION to answer your question: Do you have to pull back your marketing? I’VE BEEN through downturns as an employee and as a founder, and have learned an important lesson: Just because everyone cuts their budget in the same place doesn’t

→ No. 1 New York Times bestselling author. Oprah-endorsed thought leader. Self-described “Spirit Junkie.” Gabby Bernstein is a guru girl to millennials everywhere. Thirsty for her tell-it-like-it-is authenticity, they flock to her books (nine and cou

As anyone with a personal website knows, the hardest part to write is the “About” page. It quickly becomes a head-scratcher. Write about…me? Everything about me? The most interesting things about me? No, you eventually realize: This page is not reall

Cold, hard, metal. Omair Tariq tries to make sense of the object against his temple, where—seconds earlier—he felt nothing but a cool breeze through the open window of his rented black Honda Civic. He’s stopped at a red light in Karachi, Pakistan. Hi

There’s a franchise for almost every budget. Some brands can be started for only $10,000, for example, while others cost $100,000 or even $1,000,000 (and every number in between, and beyond). But Entrepreneur’s research identified a curious trend: Fr

Across the entire franchise industry, the total number of units grew 13.7% in the past five years. However, as Entrepreneur’s data reveals, that growth was not distributed equally. Some categories experienced stronger growth, including tech businesse

Tens of thousands of new franchise units are opened every year—so where are they going? Increasingly, it’s beyond U.S. borders. Entrepreneur’s data showed growth and momentum in franchises that opened in Canada and other international locations. Conv

When a franchisee buys into a system, they must pay two main types of fees. The franchise fee is the upfront cost of buying in. Then they also pay a royalty fee, or a percentage of revenue. Entrepreneur’s data finds that the size of these fees is in

Shea Coleman is no stranger to new situations. She joined the military out of high school and was regularly outnumbered by men on her teams. That included her stint doing airfield security during the Obama administration, protecting high-level offcia

How can a brand expand? Phillip Chang has wrestled with this question many times—like in 2004, when his bubble tea franchise, Boba Loca, hit a wall. “I couldn’t solve the problem by just adding another drink,” he says. “I wanted something more, somet

Nir Katularu is a grown man with a successful business—but he has, in his words, a “babysitter.” And he loves it. Katularu is one of the top-performing franchisees at Painting with a Twist, a paint-and-sip franchise with over 200 locations nationwide

Can you explain Stratus’ franchising model? We’re a three-tiered business model. So you’ve got us at the corporate level, and then we award a master franchise over a state or geographic territory, and then the master goes out and awards unit franchis

What does Kung Fu Tea look for in its franchisees? We’re not exclusively looking for people with franchise history or business history. What we are looking for is adaptability. The industry is always changing, so having store owners who understand th

So do you really just do gutters? Pretty much, yeah. Gutter cleaning, gutter maintenance, gutter repair, gutter guards. The riches are in the niches, as we like to joke. So all of our advertising, all of our marketing, everything is 100% geared towar

What makes Blingle! stand out from other franchises? What we’ve found is that buying a Blingle! franchise is a logical business decision, because the business makes money, but there’s an emotional component, too. You’re making holiday dreams come tru

In the early days of my first startup, PlanGrid, our cofounder Antoine Hersen—who was only 29 at the time—died of cancer. We lived and worked from a house in Sunnyvale together, and he programmed until his last days. Before he passed, Antoine gave me