Problem Solvers

Talkspace is a platform where therapists and patients can talk, and its first launch was a total failure. But then its founders noticed something strange: Users were sending lots of very, very personal emails to its customer service team. Why? The answer totally transformed the business.

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Mark Lawrence co-founded SpotHero in Chicago, and investors told him he needed to expand across America fast. He wanted to take a different approach... even though he wasn't entirely sure it was the right one. Here's how Mark formulated a plan, stuck to it, and proved himself right.

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Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the home security company SimpliSafe launched, it marketed itself entirely towards renters. After all, they were an underserved marketplace—no other home security system was made for people who rent apartments. But SimpliSafe wasn't growing as fast as its founders expected, so it dug into its customer data and discovered something surprising: Half its customers were home-owners, the people it explicitly wasn't trying to reach. Now it had a big decision to make: Does SimpliSafe keep going with renters, or change everything (including its product!) to court this new marketplace of customers?

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To start the year 2020 right, take some lessons from the business world of Mark Wahlberg—who diligently, thoughtfully built himself into the most disciplined man in Hollywood.

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Do you sometimes feel like a loser? So does legendary fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg—and she admits it here! In this episode, Diane shares a healthy perspective on life... and how the most important thing is owning what you do.

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Change can be scary, and entrepreneurs are at the forefront of that conflict. We invent things. We create change. But of course, that change can be scary… for other people, or for ourselves. What then? On this episode, we dive deep into what transformative change looks like—by examining the surprising, weird, often alarming history of the elevator. (Episode comes to us via the podcast Pessimists Archive, which is another show hosted by Problem Solvers host Jason Feifer.)

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Neal Goyal ran a ponzi scheme, defrauded investors out of roughly $9 million, and spent years in prison for his crime. Today he’s out, and we have a frank conversation about what leads someone to make the kind of decisions he made, and the amount of soul searching and self-repair required to come back from it.

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This is a story about change—and whether it’s something to resist, or an opportunity to take. And it all started when the founder of Edible Arrangements discovered that the word “edibles” had become associated with marijuana. It scared him. He tried to fight it. And then… something else happened.

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