Problem Solvers

Tami Halton Pardee started out working in Hollywood—an industry known for crushing hours and sociopathic behavior. Then she left to work in real estate in Los Angeles—another industry known for crushing hours and sociopathic behavior. But instead of going with the flow, she decided she’d work differently, structuring her company to allow her employees a better work-life balance, and being kind to her clients. As she tells us, competitors looked at her like she was crazy, but her business exploded.

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Every entrepreneur wants a loyal fanbase, a group of repeat customers who will evangelize their favorite brand. But superfans come with challenges: They love a company exactly the way it is, and they do not want it to change. That was a problem for Tough Mudder, whose obstacle course races were attracting primarily young, fit men. To grow as a business, it would need to attract different kinds of people too -- but without alienating those core fans. On this episode, we explore how Tough Mudder did it.

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In its first four years, Tyson Lawrence’s logistics company reached $5 million in sales. “Everything I touched turned to gold,” he says. But then the golden touch disappeared, and his growth stalled. Why? When he looked into it, he discovered a disaster in the making: His biggest client, a national retailer that helped his company grow so fast, had become its biggest problem. And to help his company start growing again, he’d need to make some gut-wrenching decisions.

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Sam Sisakhti had a great idea for a company, and early on it seemed like others agreed. He got funded on his very first pitch. But when that funding fell apart, and Sam embarked on a punishing year and a half of brutal rejections, he learned invaluable lessons about himself, his business, and the nature of entrepreneurship, and he turned his failure into a big success.

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For many entrepreneurs, the stretch between Halloween and New Year’s is when teams get stressed, systems get strained, and even the smallest inefficiencies amplify into crises. But if a company builds itself well enough to survive into January, it’ll be in great fighting shape for the rest of the year. That’s what happened to popular New York-based cupcake company Baked By Melissa, whose disastrous 2009 holiday led it to rethink fulfillment year-round—and win the holidays every year since.

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Here’s a thought that’s going to make you crazy: Somewhere in your business, in a place you’ve completely overlooked, there’s a major opportunity you’re passing up. On this episode, we explore how it happened to Quizlet CEO Matthew Glotzbach. His company makes a hugely popular study platform for students, and yet for a while, Glotzbach was ignoring an opportunity to triple his advertising revenue. Listen to his story, and learn how to find the opportunities hiding right under your nose.

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A successful Kickstarter campaign is exciting, but it can also be a curse. New entrepreneurs routinely miscalculate how much money they need to fulfill orders, and get drowned in unexpected costs. How can someone survive that? We follow the story of Ryan Lupberger, founder of an eco-friendly laundry detergent called Cleancult, who could have gone broke after his Kickstarter success -- but then made some major changes to his business (and his life!) in order to survive, and now thrive.

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Here’s the most exciting question to ask today: “Why is this thing sold this way?” The answer will reveal all sorts of business opportunities, and startups who asked this question have gone on to disrupt everything from razors to the mattress industry. But the path to success isn’t simple; a startup must literally reinvent an industry. How? In this episode, we follow the path of Burrow, a company reimagining how furniture is sold -- but to succeed, it first had to create a new way of making furniture.

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You want customers to love your product, of course. But what happens when they don’t? The simple answer: You have to make a change -- and it won’t be easy. Today we follow the story of Grayl, a company that created a groundbreaking bottle that filters water. When it first hit the market, sales sagged and customers were confused. So Grayl spent three years better understanding its ideal customer and refashioning its product. Now sales are spiking, and Grayl knows a lot about how to take customer feedback.

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