Entrepreneur

How
Emily Weiss
Built Beauty Giant
Glossıer
by Bucking Her
Entire Industry
P.36
Krispy Kreme
Bounces Back
P.70
HelloFresh
Plays Dirty
P.30
Ken Burns
Unlocks
Creativity
P.13
Young
M ll ona res
A New Breed of CEOs are
Raising Millions, Selling Millions,
and Questioning Everything
P.35
September 2017
Entrepreneur.com
What’s Your
Stress Sweet
Spot?
P.16

September 2017
FEATURES
35
The Power
of Youth
To young entrepreneurs,
“business as usual” can be a
call to upend entire industries.
And according to Kairos Society
founder ANKUR JAIN, they’re
uniquely positioned to do it.
On the following pages,
learn how new CEOs are
rewriting the rules for recruiting
(The Muse, p. 44), tech
engineering (#BuiltByGirls,
p. 52), interior design (Dani
Arps, p. 60), and even the
government (FiscalNote, p. 62).
36
High Gloss
Emily Weiss was a blogger
with a radical idea: She could
build a revolutionary beauty
company based entirely on
what its users want. The result
is Glossier. And it’s booming.
by ALYSSA GIACOBBE
46
Game of
Drones
Tech comes easy to George
Matus, which is how he’s built
the fastest, and potentially
most innovative, drone on the
market. But as a 19-year-old,
managing a company is
proving to be a bit harder.
by JESSE HYDE
54
Far-Out
Opportunity
Two friends became stranded
for a month in rural Mongolia
and stumbled upon a market
for high-end cashmere just
waiting to be disrupted. First
step: Bribe the local mayor.
by ADAM LAUKHUF
ON THE COVER AND THIS PAGE
Photograph by NIGEL PARRY
Hair by CECILIA ROMERO for EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS
Makeup by ALIANA LOPEZ
Cover design by TOM O’QUINN
← COSMETICS’
NEW QUEEN
Glossier founder
Emily Weiss.
P.36
2 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

You could retire
after selling
your business.
But you won’t.
We know, because we know you well.
Knowing our clients well gives us the insight to help with their wealth—
and their lives. Before, during and after the sale of a business, we help
navigate all aspects of the transition and shift the focus to what comes
next. Find out how strong relationships lead to 95% client satisfaction.
844-294-8549 | bnymellonwealth.com | @BNYMellonWealth
Source: 2016 Client Satisfaction Survey. BNY Mellon Wealth Management conducts business through various operating subsidiaries of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation.
©2017 The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. All rights reserved.

September 2017
↓ BUSINESS CLASS
Students at Philadelphia’s
Institute for Hip Hop
Entrepreneurship.
P.18
EDITOR’S
NOTE
10
Ask Dumb Questions
The answers may reveal
outdated assumptions and
uncover new opportunities.
by JASON FEIFER
↑ A FINE MESS
HelloFresh’s perfectly
imperfect dish.
P.30
BUSINESS
UNUSUAL
13 Ken Burns Is All Over It
How the legendary documentary
filmmaker manages teams
and multiple projects over years.
by DAN BOVA
16 Stress That Works
Everyone works best under
a different level of pressure.
What’s yours?
by VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
18 What Entrepreneurs
Can Learn from Hip-Hop
As this new program proves,
business doesn’t have to
be taught in business school.
by MAX MARIN
20 Ignore the
Customer You Want
Why Shyp spent years targeting
consumers, even though its ideal
customers were small businesses.
by STEPHANIE SCHOMER
22 Mistaken Identity
A luxe water bottle flopped, so
its creators rethought how it was
marketed—and whom it was for.
The results changed everything.
by CLINT CARTER
24 Inside Casper
The mattress company’s New
York HQ features napping alcoves
and encourages midday snoozes.
by KRISTIN HUNT
26 Damage Control
Six entrepreneurs share how
they respond to customers’
negative social media posts
and create a win for everyone.
28 Leave It All Behind
He built a $7 million company, but
he wasn’t happy. So he walked
away, spent a year traveling with
his family, and came back with the
wisdom he needed to start anew.
by ADAM DAILEY
30 Make It Look Real
HelloFresh wanted its food
to look beautiful. But it learned
that slightly sloppy presentations
drive more sales.
by JASON FEIFER
32 Quantity or Quality?
A new entrepreneur faces
the age-old question. But the
answer isn’t as simple
as picking one or the other.
by ADAM BORNSTEIN
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF HELLOFRESH; PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF INSTITUTE OF HIP-HOP
4 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

Your Business
Becomes Our
Business. TM
That’s why we make
more eCommerce
deliveries to homes
than anyone
in the country.
Learn more at usps.com/deliveriesmatter
Trademarks are used with permission. Appearance does not constitute
a USPS endorsement. United States Postal Service. All Rights Reserved.
The Eagle Logo is among the many trademarks of the U.S. Postal Service.®

September 2017
← HILLENMEYER BROS.
Seth (left) and Chase
grew the family business
with franchises.
P. 65
FRANCHISE
65 Franchisee
A 175-year-old family business
diversifies through franchising.
by NINA ZIPKIN
68 Franchisor
How a Smoothie King franchisee
bought the whole company.
by LYDIA BELANGER
70 The Big Fix
What everybody can learn from
the saga of Krispy Kreme.
by JON MARCUS
79 Franchising’s Most
Powerful Brands
For the first time ever, we rank
the top 200 franchises based
on the strength of their brand.
by TRACY STAPP HEROLD
CLOSER
104 What Inspires Me
A love of old-school baseball
uniforms kickstarts an unusual
and long-lasting business.
by JERRY COHEN
→ ENTREPRENEUR LIVE
Be inspired by the best. Join us on November 9 for a day of
motivation and practical advice from top entrepreneurs, and
take your business to the next level.
TO LEARN MORE, VISIT: ENTM.AG/ENTREPRENEURLIVE
6 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017
Photograph / DAVID YELLIN

Dell recommends Windows 10 Pro.
RAKIA REYNOLDS
OWNER, SKAI BLUE MEDIA
MARIO DELAPEÑA
SMALL BUSINESS ADVISOR
MORE THAN A PC.
YOUR SMALL BUSINESS PARTNER.
Dell’s highly-trained Small Business Technology Advisors provide personalized
solutions and service for business owners like Rakia Reynolds of Skai Blue Media.
CALL TODAY
877-BUY-DELL
TAILORED SOLUTIONS
US-BASED
HIGHLY TRAINED
Intel Inside ® . Powerful
Productivity Outside.
XPS 13 2-IN-1
With Intel ® Core i5 processor.
Starting at $999 99
Offers subject to change. Taxes, shipping, and other fees apply. Dell reserves the right to cancel orders arising from pricing or other errors. Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are
trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Dell, EMC, and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. © 2017 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. 215261

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jason Feifer
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Paul Scirecalabrisotto
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Joe Keohane
PHOTO DIRECTOR Judith Puckett-Rinella
EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Grant Davis
SENIOR EDITOR Stephanie Schomer
SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR Tracy Stapp Herold
COPY CHIEF Stephanie Makrias
RESEARCH Carol Greenhouse, John Henry Walther
DESIGN
PRODUCTION MANAGER Monica Im
CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR Tom O’Quinn
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Adam Bornstein,
Clint Carter, Mimi Faucett, Alyssa Giacobbe,
Kristin Hunt, Jesse Hyde, Adam Laukhuf, Jon Marcus,
Max Marin, Nancy Miller, Vanessa Van Edwards
ENTREPRENEUR.COM
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Dan Bova
MANAGING EDITOR Linda Lacina
ENTREPRENEUR NETWORK EDITOR Conrad Martin
NEWS DIRECTOR Stephen Bronner
SPECIAL PROJECTS DIRECTOR Andrea Huspeni
INSIGHTS EDITOR Liz Webber
CONTRIBUTORS EDITOR Peter Page
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Lydia Belanger,
Matthew McCreary, Joan Oleck
STAFF WRITER Nina Zipkin
SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR Andrea Hardalo
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Rose Leadem
AD OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Michael Frazier
ONLINE AD TRAFFICKER Michelle Rosol
DIGITAL SALES MANAGER Jillian Swisher
DIRECTOR, SITE OPERATIONS Jake Hudson
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
Shannon Humphries
ART DIRECTOR, DIGITAL PROPERTIES
Chasen Seymore
DIGITAL MEDIA DESIGNERS
Kevin Chapman, Monica Dipres
ENGINEER Angel Cool
FRONTEND ENGINEER John Himmelman
SENIOR UX/UI DESIGNER Anthony Delserro
DATA ANALYST Jing Li
SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER Christian Zamorano
PROJECT MANAGER, DIGITAL PROPERTIES
Jim Rupe
BUSINESS
CEO Ryan Shea
PRESIDENT Bill Shaw
COO Curtis Taylor
PUBLISHER Justin Koenigsberger
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/MARKETING
Lucy Gekchyan
NATIVE CONTENT DIRECTOR
Jason Fell
INTEGRATED MARKETING MANAGER
Wendy Narez
MARKETING
CHIEF INSIGHTS OFFICER,
MARKETING AND RESEARCH
Lisa Murray
VP, INNOVATION
Deepa Shah
SENIOR PRODUCT
MARKETING MANAGER
Gildardo Jimenez
COMMUNITY MARKETING
COORDINATOR
Ralph Li
ENTREPRENEUR PRESS
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Jennifer Dorsey
SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR
Vanessa Campos
MARKETING SPECIALIST
Danielle Brown
CUSTOMER SERVICE
entrepreneur.com/customerservice
SUBSCRIPTIONS
subscribe@entrepreneur.com
REPRINTS PARS International Corp.,
(212) 221-9595, EntrepreneurReprints.com
ADVERTISING AND EDITORIAL
Entrepreneur Media Inc.,
18061 Fitch, Irvine, CA 92614,
(949) 261-2325, fax: (949) 752-1180
ENTREPRENEUR.COM
Printed in the USA GST File #r129677027
ENTREPRENEUR MEDIA NATIONAL
ADVERTISING SALES OFFICES
NEW YORK CITY (212) 563-8080
REGIONAL SALES MANAGER
James Clauss
EASTERN ONLINE SALES MANAGER
Brian Speranzini
CHICAGO (773) 490-2821
MIDWEST DIRECTOR OF ONLINE SALES
Jamie Jerome
DETROIT (248) 890-8888
MIDWEST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
Lori K. Flynn
ATLANTA (770) 209-9858
SOUTHERN ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
Kelly Hediger
LOS ANGELES (310) 460-6900
WEST COAST SALES MANAGER
Richard L. Taw
FRANCHISE AND BUSINESS
OPPORTUNITIES
ADVERTISING SALES
VP, FRANCHISE Paul Fishback
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Brent Davis, Simran Toor
(949) 261-2325, fax: (949) 752-1180
CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING
RPI Classifieds
(727) 507-7505, fax: (727) 507-7506
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES ADVERTISING
Direct Action Media,
Tom Emerson (800) 938-4660
ADVERTISING PRODUCTION MANAGER
Mona Rifkin
EXECUTIVE STAFF
CHAIRMAN Peter J. Shea
SENIOR VP/CFO Joseph Goodman
CORPORATE COUNSEL Ronald L. Young
VP, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Charles Muselli
STAFF ACCOUNTANT Jane Otsubo
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE MANAGER
Lynn Van Winkle
FACILITY ADMINISTRATOR
Rudy Gusyen
Vol. 45, No. 7. Entrepreneur (ISSN 0163-3341) is published monthly (except for combined issues in Jan./Feb. and Jul./Aug.) by Entrepreneur Media Inc., 18061 Fitch, Irvine, CA 92614. Periodical postage paid at Irvine, CA, and at
additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to En tre pre neur, P.O. Box 6136, Harlan, IA, 51593-1636. One-year subscription rates in U.S.: $19.97; in Canada: $39.97; all other countries: $49.97; payable in
U.S. funds only. For customer service go to entrepreneur.com/customerservice or mail subscription orders and changes to Entrepreneur, Subscription Department, P.O. Box 6136, Harlan, IA, 51593-1636. For change of address,
please give both old and new addresses and include most recent mailing label. Entrepreneur considers its sources reliable and verifies as much data as possible, although reporting inaccuracies can occur; con se quent ly, readers
using this information do so at their own risk. Each business opportunity and/or investment inherently contains certain risks, and it is suggested that the prospective investors consult their attorneys and/or financial professionals.
Entrepreneur is sold with the un der stand ing that the publisher is not rendering legal services or financial advice. Although persons and companies men tioned herein are believed to be reputable, neither Entrepreneur Media Inc.
nor any of its employees accept any responsibility whatsoever for their activities. Advertising Sales (949) 261-2325. Entrepreneur is printed in the USA and all rights are reserved. ©2017 by Entrepreneur Media Inc. No part of this
magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher. Unsolicited manuscripts and photographs will be returned only if ac com pa nied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
All letters sent to Entrepreneur will be treated as un con di tion al ly assigned for publication, copyright purposes and use in any publication or brochure, and are subject to Entrepreneur’s unrestricted right to edit and comment.
8 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

No matter what kind of business you run,
we’ve got you
covered!
featuring
over 30
coverage options!
General
Liability
Workers’ comp
Commercial
auto Auto
protect your business with proGressive today!
Visit ProgressiveCommercial.com.
Progressive Casualty Ins. Co. & affi liates. Business insurance may be placed through Progressive Specialty Insurance Agency, Inc. with select insurers, which are not affi liated with Progressive,
are solely responsible for servicing and claims, and pay the agency commission for policies sold. Prices, coverages, privacy policies and commission rates vary among these insurers.

Ask That Dumb Question
Take it from a journalist: You can learn a lot when you shelve your ego.
M
My days as a rookie reporter were full of panic. I was
interviewing people who worked in complex
places—city government, local industry, hospital
administration. I wanted them to trust me; I
wanted them to think, This kid understands
what I’m saying, and will accurately report it.
But of course, I didn’t understand them. I didn’t
even understand their language. A local mayor
would say “RFP,” and I’d nod and make a note to google the letters
when I got back to my desk. If I asked what it meant, I figured,
the mayor would consider me a clown.
One day, however, an older reporter gave me some liberating
advice. “Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions,” he said. “A
source would prefer explaining something to you than having
you report it wrong.” He was right. Oftentimes, the question even
charmed people, and then they’d tell me something surprising
and perfect for my story.
This all came to mind recently while talking to Ankur Jain, the
maddeningly smart 27-year-old founder of the Kairos Society.
It’s an organization that incubates and invests in young founders,
and I’d asked him to write the opening essay for this, our special
“power of youth” issue, by explaining young people’s entrepreneurial
advantage. The short version of his argument (which is on page
35) is: Young people approach industries fresh, unencumbered by
the assumptions of older workers. Every industry is bogged down
in its version of “that’s the way it’s always been done.” But young
people are free of that. They ask basic questions—the dumb questions!—and
then come to totally fresh conclusions.
Ankur’s theory makes great sense, though I think he omits one
key detail. Why do young people ask the dumb questions? Yes,
part of it is their inexperience. But it’s also because they want
to learn, to understand, and to prove themselves—and at their
age, they’re not afraid to show it. They’re focused less on holding
down a job and more about figuring out how they fit into the
world. And figuring that out is at the heart of entrepreneurship.
So why should young people have a monopoly on this sort of
behavior? Sure, older entrepreneurs have more to lose. They may
be too concerned with maintaining their position. They may
have larger egos to bruise. But they stand to lose a lot more by
refusing to ask the dumb questions, and not examining the conventional
wisdom, and ignoring the chronic problems. Our peers
may be afraid to ask dumb questions, but that just creates an
advantage for those who will.
If we shelve our pride and walk into new situations admitting
what we don’t know, we’ll discover something remarkable:
Nobody looks down upon us. People are helpful. And sometimes,
their answers are so illuminating that we’ll feel inspired.
In this job, I’m constantly asking dumb questions. I do it
internally, asking colleagues in other departments why certain
things happen. When I find a “that’s the way it’s always been
done” answer, I know I’ve found something worth changing. And
today, 15 years after my first reporter gig, I’m also still doing it to
sources. Now I’ll even joke about it. “Treat me like a 5-year-old,”
I’ll say. It’s not that I like flaunting my ignorance—it’s just that
when I fully embrace it, people’s guards go down. They want to
help. They tell me something I don’t know. They do it patiently
and insightfully. And that’s when I can see opportunity.
Jason Feifer
jfeifer@entrepreneur.com
@heyfeifer
GROOMER, CASEY GEREN
10 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017
Photograph / NIGEL PARRY

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TIM LLEWELLYN
The Good General
With his latest opus due out this month and a half-dozen more films on the way,
the director and historian Ken Burns has learned a lot about
how to manage big teams through even bigger projects. by DAN BOVA
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 13

Q&A
→ SLOW AND STEADY
Ken Burns has spent more
than 10 years working on
The Vietnam War.
Award-winning filmmaker
Ken Burns is responsible for
such genre-defining and genredefying
documentary series
as The Civil War, Baseball, and
Jazz, to name a few. As he
and collaborator Lynn Novick
prepare to debut their new
10-part documentary film series The
Vietnam War on September 17 on PBS stations
nationwide, we spoke with the tireless
documentarian about leadership, productivity,
managing gigantic projects, and how
to achieve immortality through storytelling.
So you just finished this
incredible documentary about
Vietnam. Are you already
thinking of the next three
documentaries down the road?
Sorry to say, in a kind of admission
of foolishness, I’m thinking
usually about 13 or 14 films
ahead. I’m now working on six
or seven at the same time,
which is insane. A lot of that has
to do with the economies of
scale that these labor-intensive
historical projects require.
The Vietnam War was more than
10 years in the making.
How do you choose
your subjects?
It is not based on any market
research; it’s a gut feeling. It’s
the chemistry that happens
between friends. You’ve got a lot
of ideas—60, 70 film ideas—but
then every once in a while, one
drops from your head to your
heart and you go, “Gotta do that
one.” You sort of add that to the
queue, and then it just becomes
a matter of finding the bandwidth
and figuring out who the
collaborators are.
Your projects are massive
undertakings. How do you keep
your focus?
I feel comfortable. A lot of that
has to do with [the patronage of]
public television, and a lot has
to do with my stubbornness. So
many people ask me, “Ten years?
Don’t you get bored?” But for me,
each day it gets better and better.
Plus I don’t live in Los Angeles
or New York City. I live in a tiny
village in New Hampshire, which
permits us to do the deep dives,
to do the necessary research, and
14 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

keep the sanity in the course of a
10-plus-year project.
Can you give people a picture
of the Ken Burns industrial
complex? How do these films
come together?
The film credits show several
hundred people, whom we’re very
grateful for. But every one of the
films is really handmade. Even the
big series you can reduce to about
a dozen or so people. That’s why
it’s hugely important to get your
collaborators right, to get people
you trust. To learn how to delegate,
to trust them. It’s great because
most of my editors, for example,
came as interns and worked their
way to apprentices, then became
assistants, and then after 10 or
15 years, full-fledged editors. A lot
of it is good generalship. A lot of
it is extraordinarily careful time
management. But the biggest
thing is choosing the right people.
Can you talk about giving
criticism—especially when
you have such a tightly
knit team? Sometimes in
a leadership position you have
to, for lack of a better term,
bust some balls.
Everybody screws up, including
me. I have a certain confidence
that even in the darkest days,
I seem to know what to do next.
And I do, and I say that. But
that’s not to say that the next
day it isn’t terrible. And I’m the
first person to admit that. If
you create that environment,
then there’s not a question of
needing to bust any balls. It’s
a question of process. We’re all
going to try something. We can
have disagreements that can
be passionate, but they’re not
loud and vociferous; they’re not
personal and angry. There’s a
generous spirit of collaboration.
We’ll finish an episode and turn
to the interns and ask, “What do
you think?” And then we’ll ask
the senior editors, “What do you
think?” Then the coproducers,
“What do you think?” And
visitors, “What do you think?"
I know I have the right to make
the final decision, and I will
make that if we’re in doubt. But I
would rather reach a consensus
before we have to drop that shoe.
Do you have any personal
rules for separating your work
from your personal life?
I don’t see the blending. I have
a lot of colleagues who work all
the time, into the night, and on
the weekends, but we don’t do
that. We’re like: “Come in, and if
you can do your work and then
go home and see your family, go
and do that.” There’s a real work
ethic, but there’s not set hours.
We never end up firing anyone.
People just say, “This isn’t right
for me,” and we’ll just say under
our breath, “Yep, that wasn’t
the right fit.” But it takes almost
no time for people to realize
that. Even among the interns
who come from various colleges
across the country, who work for
minimum wage, it becomes clear
who’s going to make it and who’s
not going to make it. And that’s
OK. A lot of people are drawn to
film for its apparent glamour and
don’t realize it’s really hard work.
What are some things you think
are necessary to get you from
initial idea to finished project?
You have to know who you
are. There’s a kind of ultimate
Socratic thing: Who am I?
What am I interested in? What’s
my strength? Is this what I’m
supposed to be doing? Do I have
something to say? These are
huge, existential questions, but
they do have practical day-today
manifestations. I feel very
lucky that at age 12 I knew I
wanted to be a filmmaker, by
19 I knew I wanted to be a documentarian,
and by the time I
graduated I knew it was history.
And once you know what you
want, getting it requires
perseverance. I’m sure there
are a lot of more talented
filmmakers than me, with
really great ideas, who just
haven’t followed through. All
the choices we make, it’s got to
be, as Emerson said in his essay
on self-reliance, “whatever inly
rejoices.” A lot of people think
they’re supposed to be a doctor
or a lawyer as their parents told
them to be, and it doesn’t work
for them. But if you do what
inly rejoices, it’s going to be OK.
As a historian, how
have you seen the spirit of
entrepreneurship
evolve over the years?
I think entrepreneurship
is at the heart of who we are
in terms of the American
promise and the American
dream. You have to go back
to the fundamentals—for the
first time in human history,
we decided to trust the people
to govern themselves. That
releases all kinds of creative
energies. I remember interviewing
a writer and historian
for my baseball series. He
said that when Americans
are studied 1,000 years from
now, we’ll be known for three
things: the Constitution,
baseball, and jazz music. And
what all three things have
in common is that they’re
improvisatory. The U.S.
Constitution is the shortest
constitution on Earth. It’s four
pieces of parchment that’s
able to provide us with this
improvisatory space. And
baseball has infinite, chess-like
combinations. And of course,
the heart of the music that’s
recognized as an art form is
all about improvisation, not
playing the notes on the page.
And so entrepreneurship is
a manifestation of that.
Last question: How do
you start your day?
I have no problem starting my
day. Coffee is not in my diet.
It’s the other way around.
I have to figure out how to
turn off the machine at the end
of my day. That’s my biggest
GETTING [WHAT YOU WANT] REQUIRES
PERSEVERANCE. I’M SURE THERE ARE A LOT OF
MORE TALENTED FILMMAKERS THAN ME...
WHO JUST HAVEN’T FOLLOWED THROUGH.”
problem. There are lots of
things to do and not enough
time to do them. There’s an
interesting truth to the human
condition, that none of us are
getting out of this alive. None
of us. So you could reasonably
assume that the human race
would just curl up in the fetal
position and suck our thumbs
all day. But we don’t. We create
symphonies, we raise children,
we build cathedrals, we
develop apps, we do all sorts
of things that belie that. The
thing we do most of all is tell
stories to each other. And in
the telling of stories, in the
making of things, we create a
kind of immortality.
For an extended video of
Burns’ interview,
visit entm.ag/kenburns.
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 15

Science of Success
Find Your
‘‘Stress
Sweet Spot’’
by VANESSA VAN EDWARDS
WHEN YOU HEAR the term peak performer,
what do you think of? Odds are it’s someone
who routinely operates under intense stress,
getting the job done regardless of the difficulties.
We think of athletes, lawyers, astronauts.
But in their groundbreaking recent book The Leading Brain,
researchers Friederike Fabritius and Hans W. Hagemann offer
a more nuanced take on what it means to be a peak performer.
To Fabritius and Hagemann, peak performance doesn’t necessarily
mean thriving amid intense stress. Instead, it means finding
your sweet spot—the amount of stress (or using their term,
“arousal”) that allows you to function at your highest level.
If you’re the kind of person who flourishes when a colleague
calls in sick and you have to take their place at a presentation,
and you produce your best work under the pressure of tight
deadlines, then your optimal arousal level is high. If you prefer
to work in a highly controlled environment and are overwhelmed
by last-minute changes and intense pressure, then
your optimal arousal level is low. Why do people’s reactions
to stress vary so wildly? It goes down to the chemical level:
Scientists have identified three neurotransmitters that play
key roles in our performance and arousal levels. But contrary
to widely held belief, just because someone can’t take extreme
pressure doesn’t mean they’re not capable of performing at
a very high level. It simply means they need to find a stable,
calm situation that will allow them to do their best.
So rather than try to fight against your biological makeup,
you should be aware of your stress sweet spot—and if you
aren’t in it already, find a way to create it. Maybe that means
making changes at work, or collaborating with colleagues to
raise or lower your pressure. Or, intriguingly, Fabritius and
Hagemann found that exercise can help. If you’re a lowstress
worker, do relaxing exercises such as walking and yoga
to keep your stress level low. If you’re a high-stress worker,
you can boost your neurotransmitter levels by engaging in
high-intensity workouts, competitive sports, and other activities
that get your heart pumping.
But the sweet spot isn’t just about you. If you’re a manager
or a boss, knowing your team members’ sweet spots is key to
maximizing everyone’s productivity. Take note of how each of
your colleagues tackles their to-do list; watch their reaction
to an urgent client need or a schedule change. If you’re feeling
especially transparent, you can give them a copy of this article
to discuss during one-on-ones.
Armed with knowledge of their sweet spots, you can adjust
your work environment and delegate tasks based on what
conditions will make each person the most productive. For
example, when a project seems like it’s falling apart and the
deadline is around the corner, turn to your high-arousal colleagues
to save the day. Or when you have a tedious, longterm
project that needs to be completed with precision, give it
to someone with a low-arousal sweet spot; they’ll appreciate
the stability it offers.
You can also tailor your communication style to match your
team’s ideal stress levels. When giving messages to low-stress
individuals, particularly about stressful news, give them lots
of details about the situation and their next steps to help them
feel in control. And when sharing similar news with higharousal
individuals, emphasize the excitement and urgency
of the message—because that will ignite their fire and raise
their neurotransmitter levels.
The stress sweet spot should come as good news to everyone,
because it means that stress isn’t an inherently good or
bad thing. It just means that we all need to know how we
work best with it. That way, nobody’s wasting time stressing
about the wrong thing.
Vanessa Van Edwards is the founder of Science of People.
16 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017
Illustration / CHRISTIAN GRALINGEN

START PUTTING
THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS
BACK INTO YOUR BUSINESS.
UNLIMITED 2 % CASH BACK ON ALL YOUR BUSINESS PURCHASING
With the Spark ® Cash Card, every expense could be an opportunity to boost
your bottom line and put thousands back into your business. Earn cash back on
equipment, inventory, advertising and everything in between.
CapitalOne.com/SmallBusiness
Credit approval required. Offered by Capital One Bank (USA), N.A. © 2016 Capital One

The Big Idea
← HEAD OF THE CLASS
Sudan Green explains his
ideas to his fellow students.
Hustle and Grow
What can budding entrepreneurs learn from hip-hop?
As a new Philadelphia program has shown students: quite a lot. by MAX MARIN
In a modish coworking space
overlooking downtown Philadelphia,
Imowo “Veli”
Udo-Uton has six minutes
to persuade six investors to
finance his startup.
He has an event production
company he wants to take to the
next level, and, clad in a baseball
cap and black-framed glasses,
he outlines his plan—his ticket
sale models, room occupancy
caps, and the first few big venues
he can get with more capital.
He tries to keep it animated and
conversational. But midway
through, he falters.
“I feel like I’m talking
too much,” he says. “I’m not
presenting.”
“Don’t do a corporate pitch,”
says one person. “That’s not you,
man. Be you.”
“Keep going, Veli,” says
another.
The cellphone timer chirps,
and the pitch is over. The audience
claps. Veli looks relieved.
This isn’t an actual pitch.
The “investors” are Veli’s fellow
students, and the venue is the
Institute for Hip Hop Entrepreneurship,
an experimental,
nine-month, tuition-free program
that uses lessons from
music industry moguls to teach
young people how to run their
own businesses, and then awards
the strongest pitches shares of
$30,000 in seed money.
Why hip-hop? “Hip-hop oftentimes
doesn’t get its due when it
comes to innovation,” says Tayyib
Smith, a former music industry
executive who cofounded
the program with his business
partner, Meegan Denenberg.
For more than 40 years, the art
form served as a springboard to
stardom and to self-made careers
for people of color working in
music, fashion, food, marketing,
nonprofits, technology, and more.
That makes it a valuable lens
through which to view entrepreneurship,
particularly in our
current economy: the world has
realized the power of entrepreneurship,
but the subject is still
usually taught in a staid way that
can be distancing to members of
low-income, marginalized groups.
Smith and Denenberg run a
Philly-based marketing agency
called Little Giant Creative,
and they thought that if they
could combine lessons from the
hip-hop industry with more
traditional business education,
they could help propel an underserved
population. (They’re not
the only ones to think of this; for
years, the U.S. State Department
has funded a similarly minded
international program called
Next Level.) The idea eventually
caught the eyes of funders; in
early 2016, the Knight Cities
Challenge gave a $308,640 grant
to Little Giant Creative to bring
the Institute to life. It opened
its doors for its inaugural ninemonth
class in November.
Chosen from more than 300
applicants, the 24 students
selected are all people of color,
ranging in age from 19 to 35.
While they are given nuts-andbolts
lessons on building a business
from a wide range of guest
lecturers—from entrepreneurs
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF INSTITUTE FOR HIP HOP ENTREPRENEURSHIP
18 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

→ DRAMA SCHOOL
Ciara Murphy of New York’s
famed Public Theater
stops by for a guest lecture.
and investors to restaurateurs
and CEOs, many of whom visit
the institute pro bono—hip-hop
remains the lifeblood of the
program. Neil Levine of Penalty
Entertainment, who helped
secure Jay-Z’s first big distribution
deal, came into one session.
Ruffhouse Records cofounder
Joe “the Butcher” Nicolo, who
has brokered millions of record
sales, gave the class his personal
email address. “People have
been unbelievably welcoming to
these students,” Denenberg says.
During a lecture in June,
the group gets into a spirited
discussion about personality
management, led by Gianni
Lee, a West Philly native who’s
blown up internationally as a
fashion designer, DJ, and visual
artist. Lee assures the class that
there’s a market for personalities
of every shade—not just for artists,
but for personality-driven
brands—and that they shouldn’t
compromise their individuality.
Authenticity sells, after all, and
especially to a younger audience.
But there are limits, he warns.
Rapper Azealia Banks, queen
of the petty public feud, comes
up as a perfect example of someone
taking things to the extreme.
“How do you know when you’ve
gone too far with your image?”
one student asks. “Is it when
everyone is telling you to stop?”
“Probably,” Lee says, to
laughter.
On another weekend, students
visit New York to learn
about guerrilla marketing from
Sam Ewen, founder of the
branding company Interference
and an early progenitor
of the grassroots campaigns
that defined 1990s rap culture.
Ewen’s philosophy is that the
old-school, hand-to-hand spirit
can still be tapped today—but
now, it must be done in a way
that bridges the digital and real
worlds. Putting theory into practice,
students devise a marketing
plan for temporary tattoos. (The
students came up with a plan
to use babies as models, taking
inspiration from the striking
album art from Lil Wayne’s
2008 album, Tha Carter III.)
The exercise reaffirms the message
that when the right image
is distributed to the right people,
fans will do your work for you—
spreading it around in person,
and posting it online.
Later, Shae Williams, a marketing
guru who has worked
for everyone from Kanye West
to Microsoft, walks students
through a presentation on managing
clients. Hungry young
entrepreneurs are tempted to
offer the world, he says, especially
when chasing their first
big client. But that can lead to
trouble. If a client has $10,000
“HIP-HOP OFTENTIMES DOESN’T GET ITS DUE
WHEN IT COMES TO INNOVATION,” SAYS TAYYIB
SMITH. BUT THE ART FORM IS A PERFECT LENS
THROUGH WHICH TO VIEW ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
and wants you to book Jay-Z,
he says, say no and walk away.
Don’t overpromise. Underpromise,
and then overdeliver. When
your first customers trust you,
bigger jobs will follow.
Giving back is a regular
theme, and a resonant one,
given many of the students’
backgrounds. Teachers cite
examples like J. Cole, who
turned his childhood home into
a haven for single mothers, in
an effort to encourage students
to build philanthropy into their
business models. “We have a
social responsibility to the communities
we want to get money
from,” Williams says.
In early July, with the program’s
nine months up, the
students make their final pitches
to a panel of veteran entrepreneurs
(at a local music venue,
naturally). The judges award
three of the 24 students with
$10,000 each in startup cash.
One winner is Tony Chennault,
for his film production outfit
that tells uplifting stories about
urban communities. “After going
through this,” Chennault says,
“[my company] is gonna be a
force to be reckoned with. It’s
gonna shift culture.”
With the seed money dispersed,
the initial grant has been
exhausted, and Denenberg and
Smith are hashing out how to
keep the program going tuitionfree,
either through more grants,
corporate sponsors, or even
expansion to other markets.
But whatever happens, the
duo feel like they’ve made their
case: Entrepreneurship can and
should be taught in many ways,
because every community has
ambitions worth harnessing.
“You arrived here as brilliant
people,” Smith tells the class
at graduation. “You leave
here as brilliant people with
crafted hustle.”
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 19

Strategies
The Right Wrong Customer
Shyp’s CEO knew his product was perfect for small-business owners.
So for two years, he ignored them. by STEPHANIE E SCHOMER
Kevin Gibbon had a serious side hustle in college:
eBay Powerseller. “I’d buy products and sell them
for profit—jewelry, clothing, sports equipment,”
he says. But as business took off, he was stuck fulfilling
orders in his parents’ garage for hours.
“Nearly 50 percent of my time was spent packaging
and shipping. Remove that and I would have
been a lot more successful.”
Nine years later, in 2013, Gibbon created Shyp, an ondemand
service that picks up, packs, and mails anything on a
customer’s behalf. No more post offices, ever. From his own
experience, he knew this could be a transformative resource
for small-business owners. In fact, he expected businesspeople
to make up the bulk of his customers. But when he
launched Shyp, he did something that seems counterintuitive:
He ignored that audience entirely. Instead, in the way
he both built and marketed Shyp, he targeted consumers—
just regular, everyday people mailing stuff.
Why? Because sometimes, the perfect customer for tomorrow
isn’t the right customer for today.
“Starting with consumers not only allowed us to build a lot
of operational systems but also gave people a chance to check
out that early product,” he says. Consider it: Shyp began as a
small company working with little volume. It couldn’t immediately
handle 500 packages from a business; it needed to
start with Aunt Sue in Ohio mailing presents to her niece in
Michigan. Also, because Shyp wasn’t big enough to negotiate
low rates with mail carriers, its costs weren’t yet competitive—meaning
small businesses likely wouldn’t be impressed
anyway. But consumers who wanted to save time on one-off
shipments? They’d pay more.
“Turn that one-hour task into minutes, and people will tell
their friends about it,” Gibbon predicted. He was right. Word
of mouth drove steady 10 to 30 percent month-over-month
growth for the first two years. That helped him strengthen all
the parts of his business at a reasonable pace—learning how
to handle more and more shipments and work with bulk
orders of materials, and continually lowering the cost, all
while not burning through cash.
Eventually, Gibbon noticed an increase in users who sent
20-plus packages at a time—a sign that these weren’t just
birthday gifts. They were businesses, jumping in before Shyp
was ready for them. “Our product was accessible only via
mobile,” he says. “Typing in even 10 addresses on your phone?
That probably took 20 minutes.” So he started talking to this
new wave of users, and in 2015, as consumer growth started
to level off, Gibbon decided it was time to make the longawaited
shift. “We knew exactly what we needed to build,
because the business customers had already told us exactly
what they needed.”
Shyp built a web-based platform that would integrate with
e-commerce services like Shopify. And thanks to the lessons
learned serving consumers, its team now knew how to simplify
pickups to get couriers in and out in minutes. Damage
rates were down to .17 percent, well below the industry average
of 1 to 2 percent. And because Shyp had the time to build
relationships with national and regional carriers, it could
offer fast, cheap shipping rates. “We could help our customers
compete with the Amazons of the world,” Gibbon says.
When the new platform launched at the end of 2016,
response was swift. “Nearly 60 percent of our shipments are
now from business owners, and by the end of the year, businesses
will account for 90 percent of our volume,” Gibbon
says, adding that revenue is on track to triple in 2017. Finally,
he was ready to serve the customer he wanted all along.
20 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017 Illustration / BENEDETTO CRISTOFANI

Welcome to a world
where extraordinary
logistical feats are,
well, quite ordinary.
Welcome to Simplistics.
Forget the notion that logistics has to be complicated and scary.
Those who are truly skilled and driven can make difficult tasks look
easy. ArcBest SM has decades of logistics expertise, backed by the
capacity resources of industry leaders like ABF Freight ® and Panther
Premium Logistics ® . It means we can handle the most complex
jobs seamlessly and simply. Or at least make it feel that way to our
customers. Welcome to Simplistics . Welcome to ArcBest SM .
arcb.com/simplistics
©2017 ArcBest Corporation ® . All rights reserved. All service marks featured in this
advertisement are the property of ArcBest Corporation ® and its subsidiaries.

Mistakes
↓ Grayl’s new bottle
and marketing.
You Can’t
Serve
Everyone
By trying to create a luxe water bottle for
the masses, Grayl built a product
no audience wanted. So the brand hit reset.
by CLINT CARTER
R
Travis Merrigan and Nancie Weston had a simple,
elegant idea. They wanted to make a bottle that
cleans water. Fill it from a dubious source—a stagnant
creek or a rusty spigot in a foreign country—
and then use it like a French press, pushing down
on a plunger-like filter to screen out harmful compounds.
In 2013, after two years of development
and a successful $15,000 Indiegogo campaign,
they made it. It was called the Water Filtration Cup, sold
under the brand name Grayl.
Their sales strategy was ambitious; they wanted Grayl to be
useful to everyone. They gave it a sleek, stainless steel design
to broadcast its durability and high-end elegance. Then they
offered three cleaning cartridges, which were called Tap, Trail,
and Travel. Tap made water taste better, and the other two
made it safe. Tap and Trail were filters that removed bacteria
and protozoa, while Travel was a purifier that also cleared out
viruses. The bottle cost $80 and included the Travel filter; the
other two cartridges were sold separately.
Confused? So was, well, everyone.
At trade shows, even Merrigan struggled to describe his
product to buyers. “I’d spend two and a half minutes just
explaining Tap, Trail, Travel,” he says. “Odds
are you still don’t understand, and I haven’t
shown you what sets us apart.” Two years in,
Grayl had managed to land 104 retail partners,
many of them wellness stores and gift
shops. A few outdoor brands like REI were
moving inventory, but the feedback was
lackluster. Retailers complained that the
generic packaging lacked a story, customers
complained that the bottle was too heavy
for backpacking, and the three-cartridge
system was still confusing. As one product
tester put it in an email to Merrigan,“Why
would you buy the second-best cartridge?”
Merrigan pushed back. You just don’t get
it, he’d tell retailers and customers. But as
sales slowed, he reevaluated. “That was the
wrong response,” he says now. “The hardest
↑ The original design
in stainless steel.
thing is to hear hard truths. It took some humility.”
If the company wanted to grow, its founders realized, it was
going to have to start from scratch. So the team began with a
question: Whom is the product for? “We just didn’t understand
who our core users were,” Merrigan says. “We thought,
Everybody drinks water, and everybody wants it to be clean,
therefore, we can sell to everybody.” In 2016, a fresh Kickstarter
campaign introduced a new model designed for outdoor
adventurers and emergency preppers. Instead of steel, it
was made from lightweight BPA-free plastic, and instead of
three cartridges, it came only with Grayl’s top purifier. The
changes improved margins so much that the company
dropped the retail price to $59.50.
Still, the founders were on edge. “We needed that Kickstarter
campaign to work, or we may not have been a company
anymore,” Merrigan says. Within its first day, the new
bottle exceeded its $25,000 crowdfunding goal. By the time
the campaign came to a close, Grayl had
raised nearly a quarter- million dollars—
more than 14 times what it’d earned through
its first crowdfunding attempt.
The company ended its relationship with
some of its retail partners and turned its
attention to its new target market. With this
laser focus, it soon tripled its reach. Today
Grayl is sold in more than 350 storefronts,
including REI, Canada’s MEC, and Australia’s
Mountain Design. Last year saw tripledigit
sales growth, which Grayl expects to
replicate in 2017. “We walk into stores now
and buyers high-five us,” Merrigan says.
“We’re not the biggest water-filtration company
in the business, but our competitors are
very interested in what we’re doing. And they
should be. We’re coming for them.”
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF GRAYL
22 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

Getting faster
Internet, phone
and TV from
one place.
My law firm
can’t object
to that.
A full range of services,
all from one provider.
Whether it’s helping your
business run more smoothly
or delivering a better client
experience, our Internet, WiFi,
phone, and TV can raise the
bar for any business.
Visit comcastbusiness.com
or call 1-800-501-6000.
Restrictions apply. Not available in all areas. Call for details. © Comcast 2017. All rights reserved.

Office Space
EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT/ Dainielle Thompson
“The open office environment makes you easily approachable
in your own space. You hear how one team’s working on
this, another team’s working on that. It motivates you to stay
focused because you realize you’re part of a bigger picture.”
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS TECHNOLOGY/
Eli Bosworth
“People do nap occasionally in the office. At certain
businesses, if you were taking a nap, the boss
would be like, ‘Who’s that person and why aren’t
they working harder?’ But we encourage everyone
to do a good job and set our time efficiently. It’s
mature to understand that people need a break.”
CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER/ Taryn Jones Laeben
“We do Lunch-and-Learn sessions to talk about new
things we’re building, or new products we’re bringing
to market. When we launched our mattress pad,
which is totally waterproof, the product team had
everybody in the office pour water on it to see how the
water pearls on the top.”
Inside Casper
Interviews by KRISTIN HUNT
IN MOST WORKPLACES, taking a nap in a common area would get you fired. But not at Casper. In the
mail-order mattress brand’s New York headquarters, its premier product is front and center in cozy
pods that employees use for everything from taking a quick snooze to holding an impromptu brainstorm.
(They’re the lit spaces in the middle of this photo.) But the nooks aren’t the only thing that makes
Casper’s workplace unique. The open floor plan includes the Commons, a sprawling space where
employees gather for informal meetings or lunch. The kitchen is always stocked with cold-brew coffee,
fig bars, and beer. And the beloved rooftop offers city views and a place to clear your head—or rest it.
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS/
Gina Shaffer
“I come from a more corporate
background, so
coming to a place that’s
more collaborative and less
rigid? That was clutch for
me. From the first time I met
with the founders, they had
a really clear vision of what
they wanted to achieve, and
I have found that’s not the
case at other companies.”
24 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017
Photograph / ADAM FRIEDBERG

COFOUNDER AND COO/
Neil Parikh
“Our brand values zing,
and our office is definitely
full of that. If you look at the
names of our conference
rooms, they’re all named
after different breakfast
foods or coffees.”
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGER/ Anita Parikh
“The roof is my favorite. The fact that I can have
a very serious conversation with a manager while
sitting in a hammock, drinking a sparkling water,
in a sweatshirt? It’s insane.”
HR COORDINATOR/ Trina Fanfant
“The space says a lot about how everyone
works together. The customer experience
team is in the middle of the office,
right next to finance, which you don’t
see in a lot of companies. It shows how
Casper really values its customers.”
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 25

Six Ways
Damage Control
When you mess up, your customers let you know—and thanks to social media, they let
everyone know. So we asked: How do you respond to negative reviews online?
ADMIT YOUR
MISTAKES/
“Valentine’s Day is the
Super Bowl for a
flower company, and
this year, we messed
up spectacularly. Our
small office couldn’t
handle the spike in
volume, and we were
unable to fulfill a
number of orders.
Negative reviews
popped up immediately.
I posted an
apology on Facebook
to address what
happened publicly.
Customers appreciated
the transparency,
and many pledged
to return.”
—AJAY KORI,
cofounder,
UrbanStems
FIND A FIX/
“We have a dedicated
team called SWAT
(‘service with accessorizing
talent’) that
constantly reviews
feedback online.
Once, a customer
was upset because
earrings she needed
to wear as a bridesmaid
had sold out. A
SWAT stylist tracked
down a sample pair
in our photo studio
and rushed the package
to her. The customer
was so thrilled
with the extra care,
she wrote a glowing
review on Facebook.”
—DANIELLA
YACOBOVSKY,
cofounder,
BaubleBar
SOCIALIZE
YOUR SOLUTION/
“Dormify customers
are 18 to 24—quick to
take to social media.
We recently found a
customer complaining
on Twitter about a
broken zipper on a
duvet cover. She
never reached out to
us, but we sent her a
new cover, and I
tested the zipper
personally. Being 25
myself, I Insta-storied
the zipper testing and
duvet handoff to the
messenger, explaining
to followers the
great lengths we’ll go
to for our customers.”
—AMANDA
ZUCKERMAN,
cofounder, Dormify
TAKE THE BLAME/
“We’re a marketplace
for pizza
ordering. Early on, if
a customer complained
about food,
we’d direct them to
the restaurant—we
thought we only had
to own the ordering
component. But we
have to own the full
experience. Now we
handle issues personally
with the
customer and the
pizzeria. People
don’t adjust their
comments online,
but we respond
directly on those
platforms, so others
see we took action.”
—ILIR SELA,
founder and
CEO, Slice
LOOK FOR
CONNECTIONS/
“Years ago, a negative
thread about Kammok
surfaced on Twitter. I
reached out to the
customer on Twitter,
but it didn’t dissuade
him. After some quick
research, I realized we
had a mutual friend
and was able to acquire
the customer’s phone
number. I explained our
100 percent satisfaction
guarantee on all our
camping products—
which he didn’t know
about. I promised to
make it right, we had
a laugh, and I asked
him to curb his public
comment.”
—GREG MCEVILLY,
founder, Kammok
MAKE IT
PERSONAL/
“We reply publicly
and personally, and
behind the scenes,
we’re even more
active to right the
wrong. Recently, we
were shorted a suit
from a supplier, and
the item had been
purchased by a
groom—who was
understandably
angry. In addition to
responding to him
and getting him a
replacement, we sent
him a handwritten
note along with a
bottle of whiskey.”
—RICHARD
GREINER,
cofounder,
Huckberry
26 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017 Illustration / MATTHEW CHASE

1,261 novelty gift items.
83 credit card transactions daily.
3 sliding ladders to reach the top shelves.
1 fully stocked gift shop.
BETTER UNDERSTOOD
BETTER PROTECTED ª
Tailored coverage as
unique as your business.
As the #1 preferred business insurer,* we listen
carefully to your needs and help ensure you’re covered for them. Talk to
your independent agent or visit libertymutualgroup.com/betterprotected.
Business Owner’s Policy I Commercial Auto I General Liability I Property I Workers Compensation
*Based on 2016 survey of business insurance buyers on preference of national carriers sold via independent agents.
© 2017 Liberty Mutual Insurance. Insurance underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., Boston, MA, or its affiliates or subsidiaries.

Personal
The Cure for Burnout
When my once-beloved business became the bane of my existence, I got out—
out of the game, and out of the country. by ADAM A DAILEY
In 2013, I had what
could only be called
a dream job. I was
the founder and
CEO of a $7 million
company. It was a
sports-travel firm
called Ludus Sports
that organized hospitality
packages to the world’s
largest sporting events and
counted Olympic athletes
and Fortune 500 companies
as clients. To the outside,
I looked like a success.
But in truth, I struggled.
One year prior, during the
London 2012 Olympics, we
made some missteps that
led to losing $1 million in a
matter of days. It dealt me
a serious case of self-doubt
that I hadn’t recovered
from. I lost my entrepreneurial
mojo and was
afraid of taking risks. I’d
been building this thing for
10 years, and the thought
of doing it for another 10
terrified me. So I sold my
company and stayed on as
president.
But one day soon after,
en route to an industry
conference, I was overcome
with anxiety. I worried
about who I might run
into, who I might have to
talk to. I didn’t know what
to do, what to say. That’s
when I finally accepted that
I needed a break. I needed
to clear my head, refocus,
and reignite my passion
for work—which meant I
needed a full escape. So I
convinced my wife of something
crazy: Our family,
which included four kids
under the age of 7, should
spend the next year traveling
the world. Even crazier,
she agreed.
I left the business in the
hands of my team (who
thought I was nuts), found
a renter for our home, and
hit the road. I was well
aware of the risks, mainly
that there might not be
a business to come back
to. (Spoiler alert: There
wasn’t.) But the way I saw
it, this trip would give me
a chance to sharpen my
saw without the worries of
keeping a business afloat.
As a traveler, I would
be hustling for deals,
researching transportation,
booking excursions, and
extracting insights from
new people and places.
As it turned out, the
lessons along the way
translated quickly back
into my life as an entrepreneur.
First, I learned I
needed to loosen up. I was
an efficient, detail-oriented
planner in all corners of
my life, but this expedition
taught me to embrace flexibility.
To cut costs, we’d
book accommodations just
days before arrival and
schedule flights based on
price rather than preferred
schedule. Did it add stress?
Of course! But dealing
with a few unknowns to
save money was worth
it. Now, as I’ve resettled
into my everyday life, I
find myself approaching
conversations with vendors
and customers with more
flexibility. It’s led to a
healthier bottom line, as
well as healthier, longerlasting
relationships.
I also got comfortable
with being uncomfortable.
Travel is fundamentally
unpleasant—try sitting in
a quiet Parisian restaurant
with a cranky 2-year-old,
or being told in Italian
that your parenting sucks.
(Grazie!) But humiliation
is temporary. If you’re not
pushing the envelope—in
life, in business—you’re
not going to win. Accepting
that has given me a
thicker skin, and these
days, there’s not much that
can knock me off-kilter.
When we returned to
the States in 2015, I knew I
wanted to put my entrepreneur
hat back on. This
time, armed with a flexible
mindset and inoculated
against discomfort and
uncertainty, I decided to
explore multiple opportunities
rather than focus
on one operation. I set up
meeting after meeting and
started building new projects.
Today I split my time
between a vacation-rental
business and two consulting
companies. It took
months to get each project
moving, and finding the
balance between keeping
a tight schedule and
maintaining flexibility was
its own challenge—but I’ve
found my rhythm.
My yearlong experiment
may have been crazy, and
yes, I was fortunate to be
able to afford the break. But
the most important thing
I learned was universal:
Acknowledging burnout is
infinitely better than living
with it. And it’s always possible—preferable,
even—to
walk away and come back
to something better.
28 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017 Illustration / VIKTOR KOEN

7,125 patrons each month.
85 premium chef’s knives.
8 active burners to monitor.
1 bustling dinner service.
BETTER UNDERSTOOD
BETTER PROTECTED ª
Tailored coverage as
unique as your business.
As the #1 preferred business insurer,* we listen
carefully to your needs and help ensure you’re covered for them. Talk to
your independent agent or visit libertymutualgroup.com/betterprotected.
Business Owner’s Policy I Commercial Auto I General Liability I Property I Workers Compensation
*Based on 2016 survey of business insurance buyers on preference of national carriers sold via independent agents.
© 2017 Liberty Mutual Insurance. Insurance underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., Boston, MA, or its affiliates or subsidiaries.

Design
↑ ↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
How HelloFresh presented
fajitas in 2015.
← ←←↑ ←←←←←←←← ↑↑↑
HelloFresh’s 2017 fajita:
lively and a little sloppy.
Imperfect Is Perfect
HelloFresh thought people wanted beautiful food. They didn’t.
by J↑S↑← ↑ F←IF←R
F ← In a photo studio in Manhattan
this summer, a
prop stylist carefully
places toys on a platform.
It’s meant to be a
playful scene, part of a shoot
of family-friendly meals for
the meal-delivery startup
HelloFresh. But the company’s
associate graphic
designer, May Parsey,
notices a problem. “Is there
a way to flip some of them
upside down?” she says, and
points to a collection of toys.
There’s a little plastic flamingo,
a miniature tuba,
and some playing cards, all
facing up in a neat arrangement.
“Because if a child
were playing with these
things, some of them would
end up upside down.”
It isn’t the only thing
Parsey is here to tussle.
When the food is plated
and put next to the toys,
she’ll find ways to mess
that up, too. That’s because
HelloFresh has come to an
important realization that
all companies must in some
way embrace: There can
be a big gap between how a
company talks to its customers
and how customers want
to be talked to. HelloFresh
was once on the wrong side
of that—portraying meals
that didn’t reflect its customers’
reality. “It’s easier
to make food look as nice as
possible,” Parsey says, as two
cooks prepare today’s meals
nearby, “but then we have to
remember that Barbara in
Kansas has five kids, and she
isn’t wiping down the plate
before serving.”
HelloFresh is part of a
cluster of startups, including
Blue Apron and Plated, that
send ready-to-make meals
to customers’ doors—all
ingredients proportioned
out, with instructions. For
years, HelloFresh promoted
these dishes with restaurantquality
images. When a user
would search meals online,
they’d find a menu of meticulously
crafted photos.
Then the food arrives with
recipe cards, also bearing
those photos.
The company began in
Europe and expanded into
the U.S. in 2016, and the
team here, like everywhere,
experiments with how to
connect with its local market.
The U.S. team began
playing with the photo
compositions—putting
some of the food slightly out
of place, including a hand
in the shot, and so on. Then
they’d run different versions
online to see which one did
better. The results were consistent:
Sales went up when
the photos were messier.
What’s going on? For one,
the meals look more realistic.
People can imagine themselves
actually cooking something
imperfect. But Edward
Boyes, HelloFresh U.S.’s CEO,
says it goes deeper than that.
“The photo we’ve provided
sets the expectation of how
the finished dish should come
out,” he says. “If there’s a mismatch,
we find that the home
chef feels they’ve somehow
failed to create the perfect
meal for their family.”
So late last year, HelloFresh
changed its U.S. photography.
From now on, meals would
look approachable, not artful.
Boyes won’t share data but
says the change has increased
customer retention as well as
boosted weekly orders. Now
the company’s international
markets are following, mussing
up their food as well.
Boyes’ team will keep
experimenting, and not just
with photography. The key,
he says, is to assess everything
with an open mind. “While
we have our hypotheses about
what might work well,”
he says, “it’s important for
us to focus on having several
options, because often the
conclusion might be something
unexpected.” After
all, a company can’t really
know what a consumer
wants—until it asks them.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF HELLOFRESH
30 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

What’s Your Problem?
HAVE A PROBLEM WE CAN SOLVE FOR YOU?
TELL US AT HELPME@ENTREPRENEUR.COM.
Quantity Versus Quality
To grow sustainably, is it better to take on projects that are
frequent and reliable, or sparse but lucrative? by ADAM BORNSTEIN
I own a film and production
company, and I shot 100 videos
last year—70 weddings and
30 corporate, totaling $330,000
in revenue. The corporate
videos are more profitable, but weddings
are always happening. I don’t want to turn
off a constant source of revenue, but should
I spend more time pursuing corporate
events to grow my business? —TREVOR R.
WELCOME, TREVOR, to the
entrepreneur’s struggle! You
build a great product or
service, make good money,
and the next thing you know,
you feel like you have to
change your model. It’s the
age-old question of scale:
What’s the best way for your
business to grow, and does
that mean making less
revenue now in order to have
more sustainable growth for
years to come?
With the bulk of your time
being spent on wedding
videos, you probably feel
stuck in the slow lane,
watching better profits pass
you by. But remember that
scale is not just about
margins. Numbers can be
deceiving, and you control
what you charge for your
services. While your
corporate videos are more
profitable right now, going
all-in might not be the
long-term answer.
To figure out the best route
for your business, start with a
clear vision of your ideal final
destination. How much
money—and profit—do you
want to make per year? It
might sound like a frivolous
question (who doesn’t always
want to make more?), but it
will allow you to reverseengineer
your business
model and help determine a
practical answer.
Let’s say you want
$1 million in gross revenue
per year. At this time, it
sounds like you charge about
$5,500 per corporate video
and about $2,400 per
wedding video. That means
you’d need to sell either
182 corporate videos or
417 wedding videos. (That’s a
lot of videos!) Use those
numbers to guide your
vision. Next, consider scale,
which depends on a number
of growth factors. First,
creating value: Make sure
you’re charging the appropriate
amount for your services
in order to reach your goals.
Second, anticipating growth:
Where is the greatest
opportunity, not just at the
moment, but in the future?
And third, limiting expenses:
How can you keep costs
down so spending doesn’t
outpace revenue?
Answering honestly will
help you create several
business models. For you,
Trevor, those models are
(a) weddings and corporate,
(b) weddings only, or (c)
corporate only. As a case
study, let’s consider “weddings
only.” Last year, you
worked 70 nuptials. Before
you consider hitting pause on
that side of your business,
revisit those growth factors to
figure out if you can make it
more profitable. Should you
charge more for each video?
How many clients did you
turn down last year? Could
you have taken them on if
you had extra help? Weigh
the costs, and consider
adding another videographer
to the staff. If that seems
financially impossible, look
for ways to at least maintain
your current output while
trimming production costs.
For a small business,
profitability is a mad science
of focus, projections, and
getting out of your own way.
What makes the most money
on a per-item basis is not
necessarily what will make
you the most profit in the
long run. Consider Amazon:
It created scale by focusing
on smaller margins. It’s a
helpful reminder that there
are different ways to
succeed. Understand what
you can charge, how you
should save, and who is
most likely to buy from you
in the future. By simplifying
the complicated challenge,
you can jump on the fast
track to growth.
Adam Bornstein is the
founder of Pen Name
Consulting, a marketing and
branding agency.
32 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017
Illustration / OLIVER MUNDAY

JH#BH>#8DB
8U
| INTEL ® CORE i7 7700HQ PROCESSOR | WINDOWS 10 PRO / WINDOWS 10 HOME |
| NVIDIA ® GEFORCE ® GTX 1060 | VR READY |
| DDR4 | NVME SSD | THUNDERBOLT 3 |
A ú ú
Available now at:

THE
POWER OF
YOUTH
Every year, we publish an issue about young entrepreneurs transforming their industries.
Why is it so important? We asked 27-year-old Ankur Jain, founder and chairman of the Kairos Society,
an organization that fosters and invests in young entrepreneurs, to make the case.
PHOTOGRAPH BY AMANDA FRIEDMAN/TRUNK ARCHIVE
NOT EVERYONE is meant to be an entrepreneur.
But for those who are, trying while you’re young is
ideal. Your opportunity cost is lowest! Many people
I know say, “Well, I’ll work two years in banking
or consulting and then look at entrepreneurship.”
The reality is, soon they’re getting married or having a family, and
the chances of them leaving a steady salary to take this risk disappear.
And if they make the leap, young entrepreneurs are especially
well-positioned to succeed. In every other industry, age equals success:
The more experience you have, the more senior you are. Entrepreneurship
is the one place where some of the youngest people are
at the top of the food chain. Why? Because young entrepreneurs’
inexperience is their greatest asset. They can come into an industry
and ask questions about things that, for everyone else, have become
unquestioned assumptions. Then, unburdened by old ways of thinking,
they can challenge those assumptions to come up with entirely
new ways of looking at a problem. It reminds me of one of my favorite
quotes: “A lot of people think innovation is thinking outside the box,
when in reality innovation comes from thinking about a problem
from a different box.” Newness is valuable.
So here’s the big question: Where should young entrepreneurs
focus? Many make the mistake of copying existing winners—“I’m
building the Uber for X, Y, or Z.” In doing so, they’re paying attention
to one winner and failing to see that a lot of its success had to do with
timing, luck, and a few creative things along the way. People love to
say why Snapchat won, for example, but they don’t talk about the
15 companies that launched an almost identical product at the same
time that didn’t take off. Following this model is like playing casino
capitalism. You’re just making a bet.
Instead, young entrepreneurs should go into markets where their
fresh perspective is a systemic advantage. These are existing industries
with real problems, where there currently isn’t a dominant
disruptor—like healthcare, transportation, government services, or
even insurance, where lasting companies are just waiting to be built.
Yes, these traditional sectors are complex, steeped with decades
of legacy infrastructure. It’s hard to even know where to begin. But
that’s why we need to make those opportunities more visible to young
people. Young founders I’ve spoken to get really excited when they
hear these problems, and they come up with ideas. Conversations like
these are a place to begin—and to inspire us all.
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 35

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→
→ → → →
THE
PEOPLE’S
GLOSS
How did a blogger named Emily Weiss build Glossier, a beauty brand
so instantly beloved that its waiting list grew 10,000 people deep?
By doing what her competitors wouldn’t: She listened. To everyone. by ALYSSA S A GIACOBBE
B ON A THURSDAY AFTERNOON
in late spring, 32-yearold
Glossier founder and CEO Emily Weiss rides
the elevator to the penthouse level of her company’s
downtown Manhattan headquarters. She’s a thoroughly
millennial girlboss in jeans, sneakers, and a royal blue
sweatshirt with weiss embroidered in small white script.
Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and for the founder of
a beauty products company, she wears notably little makeup—
just some mascara and possibly a swipe of Glossier Lip Gloss,
a recent product release touted online as having a “fuzzy doefoot
applicator.”
A former teen model, Weiss is beautiful but not intimidating,
either by nature or by design (probably a little of both). After all,
her company’s popularity is directly related to her ability to cultivate
a feeling of friendship with and among her customers. Just
enough relatability is key.
In the elevator, a short woman in her 50s turns to chat her up.
“Do you work here?” she asks.
Photographs / NIGEL PARRY
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 37

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
“I do!” exclaims Weiss.
“People really love it, I hear,” says the woman. “It’s my first visit.
I work around the corner. I’m Elizabeth.”
On 6, the doors open to reveal Elizabeth’s destination. It’s the
Glossier showroom, the brand’s only existing retail space, at least
for now. It opened full-time in December of last year—a floorthrough,
gut-renovated homage to millennial pink: pink-andwhite
packaged products arranged on pink lacquered displays,
pale-pink-subway-tiled walls, staff dressed in pink mechanics’
jumpsuits, fresh-cut pink and white flowers, and flattering lighting.
It’s 5 p.m., and the space is buzzing with a few dozen devoted
Glossier fans of varying ages, ethnicities, and genders. We’re told
that Hilary Duff, the actress, has just left. “People really do come
here to hang out,” says Brittney Ricca, Glossier’s manager of communications.
She means it. Last summer, someone had a pizza
delivered here.
If it weren’t already obvious, Glossier inspires a kind of
devotion and intrigue unmatched in the traditionally fickle
beauty space. In less than three years, and with just 24 products
that range in price from $12 to $35, the startup has become
one of the industry’s biggest disruptors. Weiss won’t share figures
but says that revenues are up 600 percent year over year
and the brand has tripled its active customer count over the past
12 months. Its flagship now does more sales per square foot
than the average Apple Store, with lines out the door and a very
impressive 65 percent conversion rate. And last November, Weiss
announced on Glossier’s blog that the company had raised $24 million
in Series B funding, representing a total $34.4 million in venture
capital to date, which will
go toward opening additional
retail locations, shipping internationally,
and expanding product
categories. In July, the company
announced it would begin
The Beauty
shipping to France, the U.K.,
Industry is
and Canada, with more countries
to come. And soon it will
all about
move its headquarters to a new, telling women
26,000-square-foot space at the
flashy One SoHo Square in New
they’re not
York (where MAC Cosmetics, an
good enough.
Estée Lauder company, also has
Weiss had
an office) and add 282 new jobs
to its current team of 85, funded
a better idea.
in part by a $3 million tax credit
from the state of New York.
The day before, Glossier had released its latest hotly anticipated
product: Invisible Shield, introduced to the Glossier community
as “a sunscreen that doesn’t suck.” It was inspired by persistent
customer calls for a sunblock that wasn’t sticky, greasy, white, or
tinted, and didn’t smell like sunblock. It took two years to create.
And it’s selling fast. In the past 24 hours, Weiss says, she’s gotten
“so many DMs from people on Instagram writing to say, ‘Thank
you so much for listening; we’ve been waiting for this moment.’”
Weiss writes every one of them back. Because she, too, has
been waiting for this moment, ever since she had an insight
years ago that has since bloomed into a corporate philosophy,
and a runaway success. The beauty product industry has thrived
on making women feel bad and selling them overpriced products
that don’t deliver, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Weiss
had a different idea, one as simple as it is revolutionary: Make
them feel good.
WEISS GREW UP in Wilton, Conn., the older of two children.
Her mother stayed home to raise her and her brother; her father
worked in sales for Pitney Bowes. “He was very much the American
dream—didn’t graduate college, printed his own business
cards, worked his way up from door-to-door salesman,” she says.
“I learned the value of hard work from them.”
As a teenager, she dabbled in local modeling, did her friends’
makeup for prom, and studied fashion and magazines. At 15, she
began babysitting for a neighbor who worked for Ralph Lauren,
then tested out her budding hustling skills. “I said, ‘I love your
kids,’” she recalls, “‘but is it too bold for me to say I’d really like
to intern where you work?’” It was not. After spending two summers
interning at Ralph Lauren, she enrolled at NYU in 2003.
Someone at Ralph Lauren introduced her to Amy Astley, then
the editor in chief of Teen Vogue, and Weiss spent her sophomore
through senior years cramming her classes into two days so she
could spend the other three interning at the magazine.
Teen Vogue became her first taste of fame. Fans of the MTV
reality show The Hills might recall the time when “costars” Lauren
Conrad and Whitney Port, ostensibly interns in the magazine’s
West Coast office, were pitted against “intern Emily.” While reality
shows aren’t the best representation of reality, Weiss’ scripted
persona had plenty of truth. She was cast as a type-A New Yorker
foil to Conrad and Port’s laid-back Valley girls, a preternaturally
poised undergrad who knew how to use the word chinoiserie. And
famously (at least among Hills fans), she triumphed: In one episode,
Weiss was invited to stay for a fancy dinner that all three
interns had helped set up, while Conrad and Port were banished
to go eat in their cars.
Weiss graduated in 2007 with a degree in studio art, then kept
rising in media. She was a fashion assistant at W, then an on-set
styling assistant for Vogue, where she routinely pumped the biggest
talents in fashion for information. (“I was able to ask these
women, What’s that lipstick; what’s the hair?”) She also learned
that while most women thought a lot about their own beauty regimens,
they rarely talked about them.
Weiss suspected this stemmed from an uncomfortable fact:
The beauty industry is all but built on telling women, even subtly,
that they aren’t good enough. Talking openly about using beauty
products, therefore, can read as tacit admission of inadequacy,
insecurity, vanity, or frivolity. “I found that whenever I used to ask
women about their approach to beauty, they would sort of shrink
and be like, ‘Oh, me? Like, I’m really low-maintenance. I don’t do
anything,’” says Weiss. “And then you press: But surely you moisturize.
And as you peel back that social conditioning around the
idea that admitting you have a beauty routine must mean you’re
frivolous or maybe shouldn’t be taken too seriously, you start to
realize almost every woman has something to say—‘Actually, I’ve
been using this same mascara for 10 years, and it’s the most amazing
product. Let me tell you about it.’”
Weiss wanted to debunk this stigma and erase this shame. To do
it, she decided, she’d call upon her magazine training and create a
blog. (This, after all, was the era in which blogs were transforming
38 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

HAIR, CECILIA ROMERO FOR EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS; MAKEUP, ALIANA LOPEZ
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 39

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
nobodies into style stars.) She sketched out a logo—a blot of nail
polish—came up with a few regular features, and spent $700 on
a camera and a website built by a friend of a friend. She called it
Into the Gloss.
Into the Gloss launched in September 2010 with a post about
fashion publicist Nicky Deam and a banner ad from beauty giant
Lancôme. The cosmetics brand had explored partnerships with
bloggers but struggled to find one that matched its taste level. Then
Weiss spent a week pestering its then-PR director, Kerry Diamond,
for a meeting. When Weiss finally got in the door, “she opened up
her laptop and, like, unicorns and rainbows and sunshine shot out
of it—just, like, wow,” says Diamond. The writing was cultivated
but conversational, light but not silly; the graphic design, sophisticated
and inviting; and the photography, beautiful. “It was everything
we wanted but didn’t know we needed,” says Diamond. The
brand signed on to advertise.
Weiss kept her day job and ran her site every morning between
4 and 8. Her audience grew swiftly—a combination of Weiss’
appeal and the fact that she produced genuinely compelling content
that was often far more revealing and smart and personal
than your average beauty coverage. Columns like “The Top Shelf,”
which she often conducted while sitting on the subject’s bathroom
floor, featured insider-y interviews in which supermodels,
magazine editors, and beauty and fashion execs revealed their
daily routines, preferred products, and, in a plot twist, quite
candid struggles with insecurities (supermodel Karlie Kloss on
acne, J. Crew’s then–creative director, Jenna Lyons, on aging and
ice cream). Beauty at Into the Gloss became not something that
divided women but something that united them, offering a sort of
catharsis, companionship, and assurance.
After a year of this, Weiss had amassed 10 million page views
a month, several successful corporate partnerships, and a small
staff. She quit her job at Vogue to focus on the site full-time. But
she sensed there was a wider audience to reach. Into the Gloss
had succeeded in democratizing beauty, in a way, but it was still
undeniably prestige. The women profiled weren’t always relatable,
zits or no; the products they suggested weren’t always readily
available or affordable. “That wasn’t helping the mission,”
Weiss recalls, “which was really about creating your own idea of
who you want to be and using beauty as just one way to do that.”
Which led to her next question: What would help the mission?
IN 2013, Weiss started approaching venture capitalists with a
vague idea about products, or maybe an Into the Gloss–curated
e-commerce platform. She told them that for three years, she’d
been spending her days in conversations with women who had lots
to say about what the big beauty brands weren’t doing for them.
Beauty consumers, she said, were overwhelmed by offerings, and
brands weren’t helping themselves—“launching the craziest things
that aren’t user-friendly, or don’t really work, or don’t help you
replace anything,” says Weiss. The cabinets under women’s sinks,
her own included, were full of ziplock bags of stuff they never used.
Weiss wanted women to have products that would never let
them down or see the inside of a ziplock bag. She was more interested
in something being good than being new. But she struggled
with what to do next. For one, she didn’t have a clear business
plan. For another, she was schlepping all over New York talking to
“mostly dads” who couldn’t appreciate the problem, or her simple
solution. She didn’t have, as she says, “some huge technological
advancement or patent that differentiates my beauty product
from another person’s beauty product.” She didn’t even have a
product, really. She had a mentality.
Still, she kept at it. After 10 or so rejections, a meeting at Thrive
Capital—which liked what she had to say but told her to come
back once she had a product—led Weiss to venture capitalist
Kirsten Green, the founder of San Francisco–based Forerunner
Ventures. Green needed no convincing. She agreed that there was
plenty of room in the $428 billion beauty industry for improvement.
“Emily knew nothing
about supply chain or customer
experience or building a team,”
she says. “There were no products,
no business plan. But
Glossier
when I saw what she could do
fans live on
on her own with no resources,
how compelling she was, I
social media,
knew I wanted to be in business
which means,
with this person.”
Green helped Weiss raise
with the right
$2 million in seed funding,
tools, Weiss
which she used to assemble a
small team, including creative
can use it
director Helen Steed, a beauty
as an R&D lab.
industry vet who’d helped build
Bumble & Bumble, and COO
Henry Davis, who came from
the London office of venture capital firm Index Ventures. Davis
was brought on specifically to help turn Weiss’ almost unending
list of creative ideas into actionable items. “One of Emily’s
greatest strengths was in recognizing the need for a business
partner and charging her staff with the right responsibilities,”
says Green. “So many entrepreneurs view their companies as
their babies. They micromanage, and they stall.”
With Davis’ help, Weiss settled on launching a product line.
She believed she could make a better beauty product, with the
feedback of her readers. “You don’t need most beauty products,”
she says. “They’re an emotional purchase. That’s why the conversations
are really important. What choice do you have but to ask
your customer what they want?” She partnered with a Californiabased
chemist to create an initial line of high-quality basics—
essentials that were easy to use and affordable, and encompassed
all she’d learned from her readers. For example, a moisturizer that
wouldn’t cause breakouts, didn’t interfere with makeup, wasn’t
superexpensive, and smelled nice: literally what she’d heard
women asking for time and time again.
Then there was price. The beauty industry runs on prestige
pricing and equates high cost with high quality. That left a space
open for Glossier to make a statement with low pricing. “A dirty
little secret of the beauty industry is that Chanel No. 5 costs, like,
$150, but to actually make the Chanel No. 5 costs, like, nothing,”
Weiss says. “Making a bougie, expensive beauty brand wasn’t
helping the mission, or very fun for me. We can all be united
by that $12 coconut balm. You don’t need to charge an arm and
a leg.” The packaging was also designed to inspire conversation.
Glossier’s bottles would be Instagram-worthy, with a lot of
white space, and each purchase came with a sheet of emoji-like
40 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

It can take up to 1,000 years for Mother Nature to make one inch of topsoil.
Researchers are evolving digital tools that can help farmers measure,
track and protect this vital resource 24/7. Learn how big ideas help us have
a smaller impact at ModernAg.org

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
stickers— leading consumers to personalize their bottles and
then share them on social media.
In October 2014, Weiss unveiled the brand’s first four products
on her blog, along with a note saying it “is the beginning, I hope,
of a new way of looking at beauty.” When Glossier’s site went live
at 6 a.m., she and her small team gathered around a single laptop,
bleary-eyed from having not gone to sleep, and crossed their fingers.
They’d offered a first-day promotion in which New Yorkers
who ordered before 2 p.m. could select same-day delivery. The
response was overwhelming. “There were, like, 12 people working
here,” says Weiss. “We were Uber-rushing our first-day deliveries
to customers in New York using, like, 30 burner phones. Everyone
was doing something that was not their job.” Weiss did a few
deliveries herself, which Glossier filmed and put on Instagram. It
was chaos. Beautiful chaos.
SIX WEEKS AFTER
its launch, the company announced $8.4 million
in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital. Weiss used the
money to invest in technology and data analytics that would study
Instagram and other social platforms, measuring not just how
well certain Glossier posts performed but how well each product
performed: Were people sharing them as product shots, or selfies,
or not at all? Which user-generated posts sparked the most
engagement, and how much more engaged could they be?
For an entrepreneur who had recently struggled to impress
investors without a new technology, Weiss was hitting upon
something at once obvious and revolutionary. Her customers
lived on social, and her products are visual by design, which
meant that, with the right tools
in place, sites like Instagram
could become Glossier’s R&D
lab and marketing platform. So
first, she ensured that customers
would feel heard on Instagram—
“Girls take
having her marketing, editorial,
selfies with
and customer service teams take
turns responding to all com-
glossier’s ads.
ments publicly or by direct message.
(This still happens today.)
Can you
imagine that
And then, critically, the company
began using Instagram to build happening with,
mini focus groups and quickly
like, ford?”
create products based on what
they learn. One post in February
Weiss says.
2016, for example, asked followers
what they wanted most in a
heavy-duty moisturizer. More than 1,000 people responded; the
company took that feedback and used it to build a product called
Priming Moisturizer Rich, which it released in January.
This has become the way Glossier now talks with its consumer.
It asks, it listens, and it churns out a new product every
six to eight weeks—“enough time to get it, use it, shoot it, talk
about it, and then you have another one,” Weiss says. And this
approach has led to furious brand loyalty. Weiss says that 70
percent of online sales and traffic comes through peer-to-peer
referrals, a number that’s remained constant. Now Glossier is
constantly experimenting with how to harness the power of
that community to even greater strength. Earlier this year, for
example, it launched a program in which more than 420 of its
most active and influential community members sell products
to their friends and followers; in turn, they receive a cut of the
profits, as well as rewards that include sneak previews of products
and trips to New York to visit Glossier and have dinner with
Weiss. By summer, the program had helped generate 7 percent
of the brand’s annual revenue.
Recently, Glossier also began to dabble in out-of-home
advertising, with campaigns on the High Line in New York City
and on Los Angeles construction barriers. This, too, has gone
viral. “Girls take pictures of themselves with the ads and tag
us,” says Weiss. “Can you imagine that happening with, like,
Ford Motors?”
Weiss did make one big error in how she built her community,
though. At first, she underestimated just how engaged it really
was. By late 2015, Glossier had amassed several waiting lists for
its products—some that made news for reaching 10,000 people
long. The problem came to a head in July 2016, when the brand
sold a year’s worth of inventory in a single month. “We weren’t
paying for marketing—it was all social-driven, and as a new
company, you can guess, but you have no idea what to prepare
for,” she says. Later last year, she hired a director of supply chain
management from Apple. And with the high number of orders,
she was able to fix part of the problem: Her manufacturers were
suddenly happy to move a lot faster than before. “At the time, we
were begging vendors to run 10,000 pieces of something.” Weiss
smiles. “Once we could say we wanted to order 150,000, they
were much more accommodating.”
A STORY: One day in late 2014, Emily Weiss was riding the subway
when a woman introduced herself. “She came up to me and
said, ‘I just love Glossier,’” says Weiss. Weiss asked what the
woman did for work. “She said, ‘I just graduated college, and I
don’t have a job.’” As it happened, Weiss was in the market for
an assistant. “Come in and interview,” she said. The woman did,
and she got the job.
After a year, the woman asked to work in product development.
“She’s 22 and never worked in product development,” says
Weiss. “But off she went to product development and helped
develop four of our best-selling products, including one called
Cloud Paint.”
Cloud Paint, a cream blush, launched in March. To market it,
Weiss hired 10 makeup artists to use the blush on celebrity clients
attending the Oscars and post the results on social media. Regrams
throughout the Glossier community resulted in 1,700 user-generated
images over seven days; by week four, there were 6,368 images
of Cloud Paint on Instagram. “And I was so excited to be able to
email my former assistant—she got married and moved to Sweden,
doesn’t even work here anymore—and tell her, ‘People love Cloud
Paint, those colors are really good, and you did a great job.’ And, you
know, that was luck. Just a girl I met one day on the train.”
But then that’s the nature of building an inclusive company.
When you listen to everyone, you’ll find they all have something
valuable to say.
Alyssa Giacobbe is a Boston-based writer and editor whose
work has appeared in Architectural Digest, Women's Health,
Condé Nast Traveler, Details, and New York.
42 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

PURE MOMENTUM
With help from technology accelerators around the state that provide support to start-ups and entrepreneurs,
54 companies received more than $222 million from Michigan venture capital firms in 2016. And since Michigan
has the highest research spending-to-venture capital investment ratio in the country, PlanetM is the ideal place
to pursue ideas in mobility. To learn more, go to michiganbusiness.org/planetm

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
Putting the
↓ PEOPLE PERSON
Kathryn Minshew
knows what
young talent
wants.
“Human ”
Back into
Human
Resources
Brands have a hard time recruiting
and retaining the elusive millennial employee.
Kathryn Minshew, CEO of The Muse, has a
solution: Tell them everything. by NANCY N A N C Y MILLERM I L L E R
I
n 2009, Kathryn Minshew was sure of one thing. She did not
want to work as a consultant at McKinsey anymore. But the
next step was less certain. After typing “business strategy
director” into a major job-hunting search engine, she stared in
disbelief at more than 5,000 returns.
Worse, each listing was woefully incomplete. Not one job listing
even hinted at what it would actually be like to work at a company
on a day-to-day basis. Minshew, who was 23 at the time, knew this
was no way to attract young talent. How was a millennial, still
new to the job market, supposed to know the magic search terms
to surface her dream job? “There wasn’t a product solving the
most persistent pain points for people who either weren’t sure
what they wanted to do or who cared about culture,” Minshew
says. “None of that was addressed.”
In 2011, Minshew cofounded The Muse, a recruiting site that connects
millennials with job opportunities via a search experience that
focuses on corporate culture. The secret weapon? Content. Fortune
1000 companies and startups alike pay The Muse to bring a video
crew to their offices to capture the vibe and talk frankly with execs,
who dish on culture and daily
routines. Necessary details—job
title, salary, skill requirements—
are still present, but the rich content
answers the questions job
seekers really want to know, from
how much the company values
transparency to whether it
1/ Offer Offffff development
ffffffffffffffffffffff
opportunities.
ffffffffffffuffiffiffs.
favors office diplomacy or bare-
A global survey of millennials found
knuckled criticism. “We wanted
that 38 percent of them want to quit.
to make navigating your career Why? Many don’t feel invested in.
more personal, visual, and human,” Sponsor development opportunities,
says Minshew, now 31.
and shout them loud and clear.
How to hire millennials
To date, The Muse has raised $28.7 million in funding, a particular
point of pride for the young CEO, who had to pitch her idea 148
times before anyone invested. But now, with some 50 million users,
more than 30 contributors to its career advice blog, and 75-plus
coaches helping new professionals figure out what they want to be
when they grow up, The Muse has granted Minshew what she’s
working to give each member of her community: career fulfillment.
Minshew’s top three rules.
2/ Always Affways be bff recruiting.
ffffcffuiffiffg.
Top talent isn’t necessarily waiting
until they need a job to look for one.
They’re paying attention now. Be
proactive, put content everywhere—
on social platforms and through
events—and offer thought leadership.
3/ Be Bff authentic.
auffhffffffic.
Millennials crave work that
aligns with their values and
personal brands, and they
are unusually skilled at
detecting B.S.
PHOTOGRAPH BY INA MARIA
44 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→
→ → → →
FLYING
HIGH
The iPhone of drones is being built by a teenager. His name is George Matus.
His company is Teal. And with the millions he’s raised, his flagship product might also
become one of the most game-changing drones in the air. by JESSE S E HYDE
HIS DRONE, he believes, will be revolutionary. It will
come equipped with artificial intelligence so it can
recognize faces and objects and pick them out in a
crowd; it will help police departments find lost children,
ranchers monitor their herds, cities inspect buildings. If all
goes according to plan, it will do for drones what the iPhone did
for phones. It will make them useful, helpful. It will change the
way we live. And it will be very, very fast.
Yet, until a year ago, whenever its creator, George Matus, went
to see a venture capitalist to ask for money to bring it to market,
his father had to drive him. That’s because Matus didn’t have a
driver’s license. He wore braces, lived at home, and was still in
high school. Unique were the challenges facing young George
Matus. That was then. On a morning this past June, he sits behind
the wheel of a Mercedes SUV, navigating traffic in the leafy suburbs
of Salt Lake City, where he lives. He is 19, rail-thin, quick to
laugh, and unfailingly polite and optimistic, as he describes his
vision for his drone. At a red light, he hits the brakes just a tad too
hard, and the SUV lurches to a halt. He smiles sheepishly, as if to
say, Oops; still getting the hang of this.
That isn’t the only thing he’s getting the hang of. Matus is
the founder and CEO of his own drone company, Teal, which
has raised $2.8 million in seed money and attracted the support
of some of the biggest venture capitalists in the tech
world. He’s looking to raise another $15 to $20 million next
year. He’s managing a staff of people decades older than he is.
He is also under pressure. A lot of pressure. Which is why it’s good
that we’re headed to a park to play with his company’s first product,
the Teal Sport.
“This is how I relax,” he says.
The Sport is just the initial step toward realizing Matus’ vision
for what a drone can do; still, it represents a technological leap
Photographs / MICHAEL FRIBERG
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 47

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
forward. Retailing from $499 to $799, it is the fastest production
drone on the market, topping off at 80 mph, and it can respond
to voice commands through Siri. When it debuted in June, it sold
out almost immediately.
Matus parks his SUV, gets out, and walks over to a strip of sidewalk
abutting a large park. He straps on a pair of futuristic goggles
equipped with something called FPV, for “first-person view,” which
allows him to fly the drone as if he’s sitting in the cockpit. He then
unsnaps a carrying case about the size of a suitcase and removes the
drone, which is small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.
“Meet Teal,” he says.
With that, Matus hits a button on a handheld remote control
and the drone shoots up hundreds of feet into the overcast sky,
with the whoosh of a little rocket. As the craft traces loops in the
air, a serene smile spreads across his face.
“I’ve always loved the feeling of flight, to be untethered, to
feel limitless,” he says. As he flies, he reflects on the chaos of
building a company over the past few years, what the experience
taught him about who he is. He pauses for a moment and
watches his drone soaring above him. “Unflappable,” he says,
finally. “Maybe that’s how I’d describe myself.”
WHEN MATUS WAS A KID—really a kid—he dreamed of flying.
His parents met on a plane from Prague to New York. His mom
was a flight attendant; his dad, a recent business school graduate.
After they married and had George, they flew to Slovakia each
summer to visit George’s maternal grandparents. Because his
mother worked for the airline, Matus was often granted access
to the cockpit, where he’d pepper
the pilots with questions.
Matus had another passion:
making money. When he was
little, following the lead of countless
other entrepreneurs, he
“I wanted to say
started a lemonade stand. It went
no,” recalls an
well, but he foresaw a problem.
Lemonade was seasonal. That early investor.
made him wonder what drink he
“But when he
could sell in the winter. Seeing
an opportunity that no one else started talking,
was exploiting, Matus started a
I forgot I was
hot chocolate stand.
talking to
One day, a customer told
Matus he wanted to buy out all
a 17-year-old.”
his inventory for $60. Matus
agreed. He loaded his stand
into the back of the customer’s pickup, and they drove to the
man’s office and served what was left of the hot chocolate to all
his employees. Luckily, the buyer turned out to be a friend of his
father’s, but Matus didn’t know that at the time, and his parents
were alarmed that their 10-year-old would go somewhere with a
stranger. They grounded him for two months.
When Matus was 10, his family moved from San Diego to a
suburb of Salt Lake City. Their home sat next to a large park, and
Matus, still obsessed with flying, persuaded his parents to let him
save up for a remote-controlled airplane. He got it, and gave it to
his dad to try. His dad crashed it. Matus cried, saved up to buy
spare parts, and fixed it. Something sparked. He started tinkering
with other planes and helicopters. Before long, Matus was making
them do things they weren’t designed to do. He made a video of
one helicopter he’d modified to fly upside down and posted it on
YouTube. The helicopter manufacturer both asked him to take it
down and offered him a job as a test pilot. Matus accepted, and
every week or so, the company sent him new prototypes to test.
Matus got in deeper. He turned his bedroom into a lab and
eventually migrated to the basement, commandeering a Ping-
Pong table. He built a helicopter that could fly for two hours and
a drone that could go more than 100 miles per hour. At the age
of 14, he won a world-champion drone race against engineers
from Germany, Japan, and Russia. “I was totally obsessed,” Matus
recalls. “Like, every two minutes, I’d be thinking about drones,
from the second I got up.” His father, George Matus, Sr. recalls,
“He’d be down in the basement soldering until 2 a.m. We saw
smoke coming up the stairs; there were funny smells. We’d hear
the drill going. It was like Tony Stark from Iron Man, down in the
basement, tinkering away.”
At 16, Matus started going to hackathons, where coders and
software engineers gather to compete, building new products
and apps. Matus won a few of them. At one, set at Stanford,
he spoke about the limitless potential he saw for drones—how they
can go way beyond just taking photos and video. Matus wanted
to explode people’s narrow perceptions of drones. That caught
the attention of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, whose foundation
pays young people to forgo college and pursue “radical innovation
that will benefit society.” Thiel gave Matus $100,000 to launch
a company of his own. Matus named the company Teal, partly
for the teal duck, one of the fastest birds on Earth. He envisioned
a drone that would be faster, easy to adapt and upgrade, and outfitted
with a supercomputer that would eventually be equipped with
artificial intelligence to give it a boundless range of capabilities.
As Matus worked on his design, the headmaster of the private
school he was attending put him in touch with an investor
named Mark Harris, who was on the school’s board. They met,
and Harris eventually agreed to put in $150,000. Later, Matus
was called in for a meeting by a Salt Lake City VC firm called
Pelion, which specializes in tech startups. “This kid came in, and
I had planned to say no,” says Pelion’s Ben Lambert. “I wanted
to say no. But when he started talking, I forgot I was talking
to a 17-year-old. We realized his vision was much bigger than
what drones were.”
Pelion offered Matus a term sheet a few days before his 18th
birthday. It would put in a hefty chunk of what ended up being a
$2.8 million round if Matus could raise the rest within a couple
months. With his father’s help and intros from Pelion and people
at the Thiel Fellowship, Matus met with more VCs in Salt Lake
City and started cold-calling VC firms in Silicon Valley. “A lot of
people were skeptical at first,” he says. “They’d see my dad driving
me there, waiting for me in the parking lot. I’ve got braces and I’m
asking for millions of dollars.”
It wasn’t easy—at one point the deal nearly fell apart—but
Matus eventually cobbled together the financing to trigger the
$1 million investment from Pelion. Because of Matus’ age and
inexperience, Pelion put in what he refers to as “a few checks
and balances.” He had to work out of Pelion’s offices, couldn’t
spend more than $25,000 without the board’s approval. What's
more, the hectic fundraising push strained friendships and
48 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
burned some bridges, Matus admits, without getting into details.
“Last year there were lots of ups and downs,” he says. “One day
everything is fantastic, and the next day you’re gonna fail. But I
don’t think it took away my optimism.”
WHEN I MEET MATUS AGAIN, it’s another warm June morning in
Murray, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. He still lives at home,
but he no longer has to work out of Pelion. He’s seated in his
corner office behind a table full of drone prototypes, dressed, as
usual, in a T-shirt and shorts. Like Matus, the space is quirky,
humble, and unassuming. He’s decorated the doors with the
symbol of the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One, and throughout
the office, there are Star Wars memorabilia and toys in random
spots—an X-wing fighter in a drawer stuffed with small
plastic propellers, a BB-8 still in its case beside a box of drones
ready to ship.
Today, Teal has 20 employees, including a former test pilot
from Australia who cold-called Matus from Silicon Valley to
see if he could join the startup. Matus oversees all areas of the
company, but he’s also learned to delegate more and more to
his employees, including on the tech side. “Starting off I had no
experience, or little experience, with building anything or working
on the business side of things, and I was almost 100 percent
focused on product,” he says, “so it’s obviously been a learning
curve the past couple of years.”
Matus says it’s also been an adjustment leading a team of
staffers a decade or two older than he is. “It’s, uh, interesting,” he
says as he roots through a drawer stuffed with drone parts. Choosing
his words carefully, he looks
up and smiles. “People can be
difficult.” He says he’s learned
to take advice from people with
more experience, to step back
and defer when necessary, even
“It's, uh,
as founder and CEO. “For being
interesting,”
as smart as he is,” says Lambert,
“he’s one of the most humble
Matus says of
people I know. He doesn’t think
managing
he knows everything. He’s like
a sponge.”
people decades
Matus says he’s been surprised
older than he is.
by how much he’s enjoyed the
“People can
business side of running a company—meeting
with investors,
be difficult.”
haggling over prices with suppliers,
and negotiating with distributors.
But he really lights up when he starts talking about his
drone. “The core is still the flying aspect and the joy of flight,
which is still the root of it,” he says. “It still feels like a hobby.”
IF ALL GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN, later this year, the company will
release a drone that will bring Matus closer than ever to realizing
his vision. He’s calling it “the flagship.” It will cost $1,299. Like the
Teal Sport, the flagship will be geared toward consumers “as a platform
for learning how to fly, gaming, racing, companionship, education,
taking photos and videos,” Matus says. But that’s just the
start. The unit will also be equipped with a software development
kit that will enable anyone to develop apps for it, and a powerful
computer that will allow autonomous flight and deep learning. The
goal is to give it the ability to recognize images and voices, meaning
that if you’re a parent and you tell it to go check on the kids at the
park, it will be able to go find them and transmit video back to you.
Teal will also offer an upgrade that will allow the drone to avoid
obstacles such as trees and buildings of its own accord (sparing it
from the fate that befell Matus’ first remote-controlled plane).
In the future, the company plans to build out more commercial
applications and partner with companies and municipalities
that can use the drone for supervising building projects, searchand-rescue
operations, even emergency services. (This isn’t as
far-fetched as it may seem. In a recent test, Swedish researchers
deployed drones equipped with defibrillators from fire
stations and found they arrived, on average, 17 minutes faster
than ambulances.)
Naturally, the specter of an extremely fast flying machine that
can spot a face in a crowd and follow around its owner has raised
safety and privacy concerns. Those have led to proposed legislation
that would give the federal government power to track, hack,
and destroy any drone.
But Matus isn’t worried about looming regulation. If anything,
he thinks it will help restrict drones in a positive way, to normalize
them and make them less recreational and more useful, more
helpful. “Drones will be as ubiquitous as smartphones,” he says
with a giddy grin. Whatever happens next for Teal—an IPO, an
acquisition, a bust, whatever—that spirit of inquiry, exploration,
and optimism will guide George Matus.
“For me it’s more about the ability to be able to stay on the
bleeding edge of something. Elon Musk says he just likes to
think about the future and not be sad. That’s the way I like to
approach it, too. We’ve got the chance to make a slightly better
future. That’s what keeps me motivated.”
Jesse Hyde is a writer based in Salt Lake City. He has written
for Rolling Stone, GQ, Slate, The Atlantic, and BuzzFeed.
50 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

A Look Ahead From
The Wall Street Journal
From the dawn of the cyborg era to the final
frontier of law—explore the rich possibilities
of a future you never imagined in this special
digital series from WSJ.
Read now at WSJ.COM/FOE
© 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
↓ GIRL POWER
Nisha Dua
in New York.
Investing
In WomeN
Nisha Dua knows that female-led companies
are a smart bet. To keep the pipeline packed, she’s
starting with the source, teaching teenage girls
to embrace technology—and bet on themselves.
by STEPHANIE E SCHOMER
Nisha
N
Dua is a true
girl’s girl. When the
former lawyer and
Bain consultant joined AOL
in 2013 to embrace her love
of media and technology,
she quickly found herself
leading a charge to support
young women who were
also interested in the space.
Now the 34-year-old is
cofounder and partner at the
AOL-backed BBG Ventures,
which invests in female-led
companies and has bankrolled
some of today’s buzziest
brands. Why? Because
it’s good business.
Have you always been
interested in promoting
equality for women
in business?
I come from a long line of
overachievers, from an academic
Indian immigrant
family in Australia. Performance
was expected. I
never grew up feeling that
I couldn’t succeed because
I was a woman. But when I
was working as a lawyer,
I saw that there was a difference
in how men and
women are perceived.
You joined AOL Brand
Group as chief of staff
for Susan Lyne, who was
CEO at the time. Shortly
after, you launched the
company’s #BuiltByGirls
initiative, which aims to
get high school girls
interested in technology.
How did it come about?
I took over Cambio, AOL’s
website for millennials. It
was very gossipy. We partnered
with Girls Who Code
to rebuild it into a website
“for girls, built by girls.”
We enlisted five of their
17-year-olds as interns, and
when they started with us,
they wanted to blog about
the Kardashians. But they
left being obsessed with
data analytics. Girls have
been told they can only be
one thing, but you can like
the Kardashians and a
bunch of other stuff as well.
So that shaped
#BuiltByGirls’ mission?
Right. The way I would best
explain our work now is, all
these young girls use Snapchat,
but they don’t realize
that there’s a job for them at
Snapchat. That’s the circle
we’re working to connect.
How?
This year we launched
Wave, a mobile program in
which we match high
school girls with young
professionals at companies
like Giphy, Spotify, and
Refinery29. Each girl gets
three advisers and meets
with them once a month for
three months. The concept
of mentorship is outdated—
it’s no longer enough to have
one person shepherd you
through your career. You
need a community. So a
16-year-old girl meets these
three people, and if each of
those three people makes
two other introductions,
she’s got a network of nine
people—at 16! That’s a path
to your first internship.
In addition to #BuiltByGirls,
you also cofounded
a venture capital firm that
invests in female-led tech
startups. Why are women
still overlooked?
When we launched, one
male VC said to us, “There
just aren’t that many female
founders.” But the opposite
is true—most VCs just don’t
see those founders. Women
aren’t in their network, or
VCs don’t understand their
ideas. But female founders
drive 63 percent better ROI
than male-only led companies.
It’s a no-brainer.
What are some recent
success stories?
We have 40 companies in
our portfolio—Zola, The
Wing, Glamsquad—with
more than $1 billion in
enterprise value. Some people
would say, well, all of
these are “women’s” ideas,
right? But I would just call
them businesses for a really
big section of consumers!
When Susan and I launched
the fund, it was never with
a do-good intention. We
knew we could drive a
great return.
There’s nice synergy
between your projects.
At BBG Ventures, we’re
investing in today’s female
founders; at #BuiltByGirls,
we’re building the next generation
of those founders.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF NISHA DUA
52 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

There’s no limit to
what you can achieve
with the right tools.
Double your results with our exclusive set of productivity notebooks:
The Productivity Planner and Productive Meetings notebook. Based on MIT
professor Robert Pozen’s methodologies and strategies, they will help you
take a systematic approach to achieving maximum daily efficiency. Conquer
your daily goals with the Planner, while the Meetings notebook will make you
more effective at work. Exclusively made for The Journal Collection.
Explore now at THEJOURNALCOLLECTION.COM
© 2017 Dow Jones & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. 6DJ5696 The Journal Collection is operated independently of The Wall Street Journal news department.

↓ HIGH FIBER
Diederik Rijsemus (left)
and Matt Scanlan,
with a recent purchase
of cashmere wool.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF NAADAM CASHMERE

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→
→ → → →
A
WORLD–CL ASS
YARN
In 2012, two tourists, Matt Scanlan and Diederik Rijsemus, got stranded in the
Mongolian desert. When they left a month later, they had a wild story, lifelong friends, and the seed of an
idea that in a few short years would turn the cashmere business upside down. by ADAM LAUKHUF
ON A CLEAR DAY IN JUNE 2015,
Matt Scanlan loaded
$2.5 million in Mongolian tögrögs into 32 plastic
bags, stuffed them into the back of a Toyota Land
Cruiser, and lit out into the desert.
Scanlan, the then-26-year-old cofounder and CEO of Naadam
Cashmere, was headed to Bayankhongor province, one of the most
remote regions in the world, located deep in the Outer Mongolian
Gobi desert. Each year around the same time, the nomadic goatherds
in the area gather in a local village to sell their yield, which
consists of some of the finest cashmere there is.
Leaving from the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, Scanlan
spent the next two days off-roading across unforgiving desert terrain
with the bags of money piled so high in the back, the driver
could hardly see out the rear window.
When he arrived, it was with a bold, risky plan, years in the making.
When he left, he and his colleagues had 100 tons of cashmere,
packed into a dozen tractor trailers, and the firm foundations of a
socially conscious, sustainably sourced, ingeniously constructed
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 55

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
clothing business that’s now on track to gross $22 million in its
second full year.
And like many great entrepreneurial adventures, it all started
with a phone call, a dive bar, a good friend, and some dumb luck.
SCANLAN WAS A FEW YEARS OUT OF NYU in 2012 when he quit
his job as a qualitative analyst at a small venture capital firm in
Manhattan. “It was way over my head,” he says. “Compared to a
real analyst, I was an idiot. I was faking it. So I left, not really sure
what I wanted to do. And that’s when Diederik called.”
Diederik Rijsemus, a Dutch friend, was heading to Mongolia
with a backpack. They first met during Scanlan’s brief tenure at
Dickinson College before, as Scanlan puts it, “they politely asked
me to leave the institution and not come back.” (Ditto a certain
elite boarding school: “I was always mischievous as a kid and more
interested in knowing what the rules were so I knew how to break
them,” he says—a mentality that would come in handy later.) By the
end of the week, the two were sharing a bunk at a $20-per-night
hostel in Ulaanbaatar. Soon after, they were out at a bar and hit it
off with some locals named Ishee and Bodio, who extended an invitation
to join them on a trip to the countryside the next morning.
“We assumed that meant, like, going out to Connecticut for
the weekend,” Scanlan says, laughing. “We didn’t bring clothes or
food. We thought we’d be back that night.” Instead, they drove
off-road for 20 hours straight until the truck broke down in the
middle of the night. “After a few hours, a couple guys with motorcycles
rode by and picked us up, and we drove for what felt like
another three hours.”
The journey finally ended
deep in the Outer Mongolian
Gobi, with nothing around for
miles but a yurt belonging to
a herder named Dash and his
family, who came out to greet the
naadam quickly
visitors with a bottle of goat’smilk
vodka. “We spent the night
realized that the
hanging out with these guys and
best way to
had an amazing time. They were help herders was
rowdy and so much fun,” says
Scanlan. “When we woke up in
to completely
the morning, we asked the two rethink the way
gentlemen who drove us out
business
there how we’d be getting home.
They told us they were planning was being done.
to stay for a month.”
Scanlan and Rijsemus gradually
came to accept the situation. They slept on the floor, living off
meat from the tiny stove in Dash’s yurt, and learned how to ride
motorcycles in the desert, milk and herd goats, and perform a few
Mongolian wrestling moves. “By the last quarter of the trip, we
had all become good friends,” says Scanlan. “We started asking
a lot of questions about how they lived. And we came away with
some really hard facts.”
Chief among them: While Mongolian goatherds produce some
of the world’s most sought-after cashmere, it’s exceedingly tough
out there. The million or so nomadic herders—who make up a
third of Mongolia’s population—must survive long, punishing
winters with temperatures of minus-40 degrees, relentless winds,
and massive snowfalls, with only the food they’d stored up over
the summer. That harsh climate is actually part of what allows
goats to grow their high-quality undercoats—the longer and thinner
the fibers, the more money they fetch at market. But as global
temperatures rise, the quality of yields appears to be diminishing.
Meanwhile, the worldwide demand for Mongolian cashmere has
been skyrocketing. That would seem like a good thing, but in reality
it’s created a host of new problems. From 1993 to 2009, Mongolia’s
livestock numbers, which includes cashmere goats, grew from 23
million to 44 million, leading to the degradation of the native grasslands
on which the animals feed and trapping the herders in what
many fear is a vicious cycle. Bigger herds lead to undernourished
goats, which yield coarser, less desirable hairs, which bring lower
prices, which force producers to breed even bigger herds to make
up for it, which increases the pressure on the grasslands.
Even more threatening is a mysterious, periodic weather
phenomenon known as a dzud, which causes severe summer
droughts followed by even harsher winters. When one struck in
2010, nine million animals died, and a dzud last year took out a
million more, wreaking havoc on a population that already lives
on the edge.
“We saw how hard it was for this family and how much they
cared about their animals,” says Scanlan. “And so by the time we
left, we felt like we needed to find a way to give back for this
experience—a month of them feeding us and clothing us and not
asking for anything.”
So Scanlan and Rijsemus decided to repay the favor. First, they
went around and raised money from family and friends to fund
veterinary programs for the herders. Then, to see if they could
support the cause but also build a business for themselves, they
launched a Kickstarter in 2013 with an initial goal of $20,000,
selling Mongolian-made cashmere sweaters with a piece of the
proceeds going to efforts to aid the herders. They called the project
Naadam, meaning “games,” a traditional festival in Mongolia.
It wound up generating more than $100,000.
“We didn’t know what we were doing at that point,” remembers
Scanlan. “We took all these orders and then we were like, ‘Oh,
shit; we have to make some sweaters.’” They sourced the sweaters
from a manufacturer in Mongolia and eventually sent a thousand
orders out from Scanlan’s apartment in the West Village, where
Rijsemus had been living on the couch. “The boxes were stacked
to the ceiling, and we were sleeping on the floor for a week filling
orders,” says Scanlan.
They barely broke even, which meant there wasn’t much to
send to Mongolia. But the experience showed them that people
seemed to care about the plight of herders and wanted ethically
sourced cashmere. The problem was, as Scanlan puts it, “we had
only 50 percent of the puzzle.” For the other 50 percent, they’d
have to head back to the desert.
SCANLAN AND RIJSEMUS RETURNED
to Mongolia the next summer
to check on the progress of their nonprofit work. The news
was not good. “We met with more families, talked to more people.
They were saying, ‘Thanks, but actually it’s not changing anything.
There’s no real impact.’”
It was the time of year when local traders begin arriving in the
region to purchase huge loads of cashmere. And Scanlan noticed
that the traders were engaging in what amounts to price fixing:
56 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

↓ ↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
Scanlan and Rijsemus, sourcing cashmere.
deciding as a group beforehand not to pay herders more than, say,
$20 a kilo for their yield. The traders would then sell that same
kilo to a broker for $50. The broker handled the exporting and
shipping and unloaded it to a mill for $70.
“So it’s worth $70, but the herder gets $20. The more we
understood the supply chain, the more we thought, This is bullshit,”
Scanlan says. “The herder doesn’t have the information
to negotiate, or any leverage whatsoever. They have to sell their
material. It’s been happening like this for a thousand years. That
was the other 50 percent of the puzzle.”
Scanlan and Rijsemus saw a way to help the herders and also
create a viable business. By cutting out the middleman and going
directly to the herders for raw fibers, Naadam could produce its
own sweaters at dramatically lower costs. Instead of $20 per kilo,
they’d offer herders $32 or $35, which would have a far greater
impact on their quality of life than any veterinary program could
on its own. At that price, Naadam would have its pick of the
highest- quality material. And if Naadam controlled the processing,
shipping, and manufacturing, it could remove several more
layers of markup and deliver a superior product at a better price
than any competitor could—boosting the herders’ bottom line
while actually turning a profit for themselves. They’d then sink a
portion of those returns back into nonprofit efforts like veterinary
services and grassland management.
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 57

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
“I thought that if we could actually pull it off, why wouldn’t
someone want to buy the end result—a lower-priced, higher-value
brand that helps people and doesn’t screw everybody along the
way?” Scanlan recalls.
They spent most of the next year scraping together capital and
figuring out logistics. “We had to put up some serious collateral and
take really high interest rates,” Scanlan says. “It was hard money to
raise.” They managed to secure a $2.5 million loan, and they lined
up a designer to come aboard as a cofounder in the event the scheme
worked. Scanlan would be the face of the company. Rijsemus, who
Scanlan describes as “the other half of my brain,” would be COO.
Scanlan had the $2.5 million wired to Mongolia and returned
to the desert in 2015. The first order of business was to put some
of that cash into an envelope and slip it to the mayor who runs
the cashmere auction. “We rigged the auction in favor of the
herders,” says Scanlan. “He was traditionally getting paid off to
do the opposite.”
When the meeting opened, the traders were sitting at tables
in the front of the hall, and the herders were standing in back.
“Our guy gets up, and he’s telling them what’s happening, and
all of a sudden every single trader in the place turns around and
stares at me. I have my sunglasses on, trying to hide in back,
and they’re all looking at me like, What the hell?” says Scanlan.
The mayor got up to confirm the price: The herders were about
to get a major raise. “We go to our spot, and all the herders start
coming to us, lining up with their bags of cashmere, and we have
a scale and are sorting on the spot. And we do this process from 6
a.m. to 12 a.m. every day for three weeks until we’re out of money.
Herders from all over the region
started flooding in.”
The material was cleaned and
shipped to mills in Inner Mongolia
and Italy to be spun into
yarn. Back in New York, Scanlan
The founders
and Rijsemus got to work put-
bribed the
ting together a clothing line, an
effort spearheaded by their new
mayor in charge
designer and partner, Hadas Saar, of the cashmere
the former head of global knitwear
at the apparel conglomerate
auction and
Li & Fung. “Early on, we thought
rigged it
we could just go to J. Crew and
in favor of the
buy a sweater we liked and send it
over to a manufacturer and have
herders.
someone copy it,” says Scanlan.
“But it’s hard to make a sweater.”
Saar also covered for Scanlan’s most glaring weakness as the
head of a fast-rising clothing company. “I don’t really like clothing,”
he admits. “I haven’t bought a new piece of clothing in probably
two or three years. Most of mine has holes. I would wear the
same thing every day if I could. So the design and the fashion stuff
I leave to Hadas.”
WITHIN JUST A FEW SHORT MONTHS,
Naadam was able to raise
another $6.5 million and build out a website. It launched in September
2015 with an inventory of classic sweaters, hoodies, scarves,
hats, and gloves that sell for a fraction of the cost of comparable garments
from luxury labels like Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli.
Naadam took in $1.3 million in its first four months and $7.5
million the following year, becoming profitable in just its second
full year. For 2017, Scanlan projects revenues to hit $22 million—
and grow to $35 to $50 million by 2019.
While roughly 40 percent of revenue comes from Naadam’s
direct-to-consumer digital platforms—which offer higher margins—the
company has been careful to spread its risk across
multiple channels. It created a fashion-forward wholesale line,
Studio by Naadam, which it sells to major department stores like
Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Barneys, Bloomingdale’s, and Selfridges.
But it also produces pieces for those same companies to
sell under their house brands. That way the cash flow from the
latter pays for the production of the former, meaning Naadam
isn’t out a pile of money at the start of every season.
In the past year Naadam also quietly launched an off-price
label called Project, which it sells through discount retailers like
T.J. Maxx, Nordstrom Rack, and Saks Off 5th. “They’re huge
orders of 50,000 or 60,000 pieces at a time,” Scanlan says. That,
too, “spits off cash to fund the rest of the business.”
Meanwhile, Naadam’s nonprofit arm, now run by old friends
Ishee and Bodio, is flourishing. Among its many efforts, the
→ PROFIT SHARE
Naadam helps
struggling
goatherds.
company manages the Gobi Revival Fund, which inoculated more
than 250,000 goats in the past two years. And this summer, it
invested $25,000 to build 20 miles of fencing for 100 families as
part of a grasslands-management project.
It’s a lot to hold together—growing a successful company with
so many moving parts—but Scanlan has come this far, learning
as he goes.
“All we have to do is not fuck it up, honestly,” he says with a
laugh. “We’re still figuring it out on a daily basis. But we’re getting
a lot better at it.”
Adam Laukhuf is a New York City–based writer and editor.
58 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

NICOLE LAPIN
Nicole Lapin | TV Personality & Author
Gerard Adams | Millennial Mentor
Jennifer Hacker | Brand & Content Strategist
Brittney Castro | Financial Expert
Patrick Bet-David | Author & Entrepreneur
Peter Voogd | Best-Selling Author
Kelsey Humphreys | Host & Producer of The Pursuit
Bryan Elliott | Columnist & Filmmaker
NETW RK
A premium video network providing
entertainment, education and inspiration for
everyday entrepreneurs and leaders. Tune-in and
discover the new voices of entrepreneurship.
WATCH W N W: R entm.ag/videonetwork

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
Helping
↓ ROOM TO GROW
Dani Arps, and
a recent project in
New York (left).
Startups
Grow Up
New York–based interior designer Dani Arps is giving
startup offices a chic, adult makeover. And there are no
Ping-Pong tables in sight. by MIMI M I FAUCETT
T
Do
D
not ask Dani Arps for beer kegs, ball pits, or beanbag chairs—
the interior designer won’t give them to you. As frat-minded
features have become ubiquitous in startup offices, often in
an attempt to communicate youthful energy, Arps has made a name
for herself by doing the complete opposite: forcing entrepreneurs
to act like adults.
“An office can be fun without being infantile,” the 33-year-old
says. Since launching her eponymous firm in New York in 2014,
Arps has designed workspaces for such brands as General
Assembly, Venmo, Contently, and SeatGeek, and has become an
expert at convincing 20-somethings that an office can foster creativity
without looking like a dorm room. Her portfolio contains
visually quiet workspaces with neutral tones rather than branddriven
patterns. She nods to clients’ personalities with restraint,
like in a recent project where artisan-made caricatures of employees
line the lunchroom wall. Her preferred ergonomic modular
furniture (most of which she designs herself) can easily transition
from meeting to meeting.
The Arps philosophy is simple: A space has to function well before
anything else. And she isn’t fond
of the all-too-common openoffice
plan. “Employees have different
acoustical and visual
needs,” she says. Last year, when
SeatGeek expanded its New York
City office, her solution was to
divide the cavernous space by a
row of conference rooms, sequestering
coders from a necessarily
chatty sales team. The fact that
companies are so willing to
wholly reconfigure their workplaces
is catnip to Arps, who dabbled
in residential design early in
her career. “The startup culture is
incredibly creative,” she says. “My
clients are busy, trusting, and
open to new and quirky ideas.”
Those clients are growing. In
just three years, Arps’ projects
Age-Appropriate Design
have jumped from an average of 3,000 square feet to 30,000.
Many of those big jobs have been commissioned by returning customers
who, upon finding their own success, lean on Arps to help
transition to larger spaces. And Arps, for her part, is continuing to
grow her own business, launching a collection of modular office
furniture later this year.
“Office design helps create office culture—something that’s
important for the success of any company,” she says. “To be part of
that success, even in a small way, is incredibly exciting.”
Arps’ three rules for offices.
1/ Choose materials wisely.
EXAMPLE
SLICE, Manhattan
“How can a material be functional
and not just visually pleasing? Here,
employees have a place to make
calls in an open setting, and the brick
enforces acoustical soundness.”
2/ Elevate the essentials.
EXAMPLE
ELIGIBLE, Brooklyn
“A sleek, double-height nap nook
allows for rest and privacy during
long workdays. We upholstered it
with high-quality cushions and
fabric. Comfort is key.”
3/ Always multitask.
EXAMPLE
UNCHARTED PLAY, Harlem
“This is one of the chicest
spaces I designed. It's a
destination for board meetings,
and a testing area for [energygenerating
toy] products.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARIEL TYLER (ARPS PORTRAIT); PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF DANI ARPS
60 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

What drives you is what drives us.
Your passion fuels your success. And we’re as dedicated to you as you are to your business.
MassMutual will listen to your needs, seek solutions to your financial challenges and help you plan
for what’s ahead.
Jim Keane
Financial & Insurance Services
Capstone Partners Financial and Insurance Services
4695 MacArthur Court, Suite 1000
Newport Beach, CA 92660
949-225-9352
BUSINESS SUCCESSION PLANNING + KEY EMPLOYEE RETENTION AND EXECUTIVE BENEFITS PRODUCTS
RETIREMENT/401(K) PLAN SERVICES
Insurance representative of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual), Springfield, MA 01111-00001, and its affiliated US
insurance companies. MassMutual Financial Group is a marketing name for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company (MassMutual)
and its affiliated companies and sales representatives. CRN201809-186028

→ → →→→ → → → →→→→→ → → → → → →→ → → →→→→→→ → → →
↓ THE EXPLAINER
Tim Hwang, 25,
at work in D.C..
Õi GÕvÕÕnÕÕnÕ.
IÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕ
It’s slow, confusing, and, well, old. But Tim Hwang,
armed with nothing but big data and some
millennial elbow grease, is out to make government—
and our entire economy—more efficient.
by STEPHANIE E SCHOMER
B
y age 19, Tim
Hwang had worked
as a field organizer
for Barack Obama’s 2008
campaign and served as an
elected official on Maryland’s
Montgomery County
Board of Education. Now
he’s 25 and the cofounder
and CEO of FiscalNote, a
Washington, D.C.–based
tech startup that’s trying to
do the impossible: Make
sense of the government.
What attracted you to
politics?
When I was young, politics
seemed like a really big
opportunity to take a small
amount of your time and
aggregate it into a larger
impact. Whether it’s local
politics or a presidential
campaign, it makes you
feel like you’re part of a
movement.
So how’d you end up founding
a tech company instead
of running for office?
The headlines after the
2012 campaign were all
government shutdown,
debt-ceiling crisis. I
thought, What is the end
goal of a political career?
Say you’re concerned about
healthcare—you spend 30
years fighting for it, maybe
something gets passed, but
then it could get repealed
four years later. Or you
build a mobile app that
connects rural patients
with urban doctors and
provide access to healthcare
for millions within two
years. Technology is the
way to make change.
You launched FiscalNote in
2013 and set out to solve a
very different problem.
Government doesn’t know
what government is doing.
If the president wants to
change minimum wage, he
doesn’t know what the
Department of Labor is
doing, much less what the
state legislatures and city
councils are doing. And if
the government doesn’t
know, how does the private
sector know? They don’t.
Whether you’re a bank or a
health insurance company
or an energy company, what
you do is highly dependent
on the government.
What’s your solution?
We aggregate legislation,
regulations, and government
filings from thousands
of federal, state, and
local agencies. We use artificial
intelligence to structure
it and normalize it,
and then we deliver personalized
data feeds to
companies to predict or
show how government may
be impacting their businesses.
We provide a collaborative
capability for legal
teams, government affairs
teams, and lobbyists to
work together on issues that
affect their companies. So
far we have 200 enterpriselevel
customers.
How is the current
political climate impacting
your work?
There’s a heightened interest.
Most executives are at a
loss when it comes to managing
government risk. It’s
not just the U.S.—Brexit,
rising nationalism, whatever,
it’s all contributing to a
sense of urgency when it
comes to political intelligence.
Which is why we’re
expanding into every country
we can.
You started this company
when you were 21. Was it
tough figuring out life as a
young CEO?
Politics gave me a good
training ground. The campaign
world is fast, and
you’re building something
from nothing. On the flip
side, I had served on a government
seat in Maryland
[the state reserves one
county position on the
Board of Education for a
student] helping manage a
$2.3 billion operating budget
and wrangling unions,
teachers, and administrators.
It was a crash course.
You’re just 25. Is FiscalNote
a long-term plan for you?
We recently had our fouryear
anniversary. It’s like
we’re coming up on our second
term. We’re going to
start expanding into data
sets outside of just core government
data—so beyond
regulations you have the
impact of those regulations,
like utilities rates, or pharmaceutical
pricing. It’s a very
meaty problem. It’s enough
for me to chew on, at least
for the foreseeable future.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF FISCAL NOTE
62 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE
MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN OTHERS?
PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN
SUCCESS AND FAILURE
STEPS TO A NEW HABIT
QUESTIONS TO KEEP
YOURSELF FOCUSED
HABITS FOR RAPID
ADVANCEMENT
THE PERSONAL
PRODUCTIVITY FORMULA
BRIAN TRACY answers that question as he shares the secrets
to success in Million Dollar Habits.
AVAILABLE AT
ª
entm.ag/milliondollarhabits

MAKE
YOUR KIDS
EVEN
SMARTER!
OPEN A KUMON CENTER
IN YOUR AREA
If there’s not a Kumon Center in your local area, then your kids — and all the kids near you — are missing the
opportunity to gain the academic advantage delivered by the Kumon Method. In fact, many Kumon parents
became Kumon franchisees after seeing firsthand how Kumon advanced their kids’ learning in math and reading.
Talk with us today about opening a Kumon Center for your community and start making your kids,
and all kids, even smarter.
Ranked #1 In Category
For 16 Years
Best Of The Best
For 16 Years
A Top Global Franchise
For 14 Years
KumonFranchise.com/entrepreneur
Franchise@Kumon.com
844.392.8755
©2017 Kumon North America, Inc. All rights reserved. This is not an offer to sell a franchise which can only be made after you have received a Franchise Disclosure
Document and in compliance with the disclosure rules of the Federal Trade Commission and the applicable laws of your state. To request our Franchise Disclosure
Document visit KumonFranchise.com.

Franchisee
← Seth (left) and Chase
Hillenmeyer outside an
old warehouse once used
by a family business.
THREE BRANDS IN ONE
Why a thriving family business decided to expand—by buying into two franchise systems.
by NINA N ZIPKIN
I Photographs / DAVID YELLEN
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 65

Franchisee
→ The co-owners
at one of their Weed Man
franchise locations.
How do you manage
time between all these
businesses?
CHASE: For a few years, we
struggled to balance the
Hillenmeyer brand and the
franchises. We didn’t spend
a lot of time or resources on
finding that balance; we just
kind of did it. But now I’m a
firm believer in having one
of the owners dedicated to
driving things at the franchises,
which is why Seth is
there day to day.
SETH: I spend 100 percent of
my time on the franchises—
about 20 percent goes to
Mosquito Authority, and
the rest is given to our Weed
Man locations. They’re the
largest parts of our business
and require the most
attention.
Last year , Stephen Hillenmeyer Landscape Services of Lexington, Ky.,
celebrated a milestone that not a lot of businesses get the chance to brag
about: its 175th anniversary. But it wasn’t long ago that all that history was
boxing the family-owned brand in. The Hillenmeyers wanted to expand—
offering not just landscaping but a full range of lawn-care services.
However, efforts to offer new services only confused customers, who were
too used to thinking of the company as solely a landscaping business.
The solution: Starting in 2003, the family operated its old business while
also buying into franchises. It has opened up three Weed Man locations (to provide
lawn upkeep) and one Mosquito Authority (to help keep pesky bugs away).
Now sixth-generation co-owners Seth Hillenmeyer and his brother, Chase, are
juggling it all, making sure the landscaping and franchise operations
receive equal attention, and capitalizing on the benefits that come with both.
What did you see in franchising
that you couldn’t get from your
already successful business?
CHASE HILLENMEYER: The
branding and marketing potential.
We had tried to get into the
lawn-care market and people
just didn’t associate the Hillenmeyer
brand with lawn care.
We needed to differentiate and
bring some brand awareness and
recognition, and that’s what the
franchise names gave us.
Have there been other benefits
to franchise ownership, aside
from name recognition?
SETH HILLENMEYER: Weed
Man does such a good job with
processes and business plans.
That was one of the foundational
pieces for us. It helps us plan
the entire year, from how many
pieces of paper we’re going to use
to how many pounds of fertilizer
we’re going to spread. It’s the
road map we live by.
CHASE: Weed Man also has a
great sub-franchisor system.
There are about 12 sub-franchisors
throughout the U.S., and
they’re responsible for developing
the brand in the area. They
serve as a resource for franchisees
within the territory to discuss
best strategies. The amount
of support and guidance we
get from our sub-franchisor
is invaluable. It’s like having a
consultant on speed dial.
CHASE: There’s a lot of
moving parts, and you really
have to be on top of it. When
we have been really involved
as owners, that’s when we’ve
seen the best results.
Have there been any
unexpected challenges in
juggling three brands?
SETH: Instilling our culture
on a day-to-day basis at
the franchise locations has
been a big challenge that we
didn’t anticipate. We kind of
took it for granted—being
part of a family business,
we inherently understand
our culture. But it was a
big paradigm shift for us
to realize how involved we
need to be at our franchises,
to talk about our mission,
our vision, and our core values.
It’s not something you
ever fully accomplish, but
it’s something we’re focused
on now, and something we
want to be sure is communicated
to all our employees
across all of our brands.
66 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

Franchisor
A SMOOTH
RIDE UP
What’s it like to go from being
a single franchisee to the leader
of an entire brand? Just ask the
king of Smoothie King, Wan Kim.
by LYDIA BELANGER
E For most college students, healthy eating
goes out the window the minute freshman
orientation gets under way. Wan Kim was no
exception. He came to the U.S. from South
Korea to study and became quickly alarmed
at how many calories he was taking in. So Kim
started replacing greasy meals with nutrient-rich
drinks from Smoothie King and developed a
love of the brand’s health-focused product. After
graduation, Kim returned to South Korea and
took his newfound passion with him. In 2003, he
opened that country’s first-ever Smoothie King, a full 30 years after the brand launched in the U.S.
Then he kept opening them. By 2010, he owned more than 100 locations—but he still wanted more.
So he approached founder and then-CEO Steve Kuhnau and made an offer to buy the company.
They sealed the deal in 2012. Kim took over with a focus on rapid growth, and he hasn’t let up: This
year, Smoothie King plans to open an additional 125 locations and bring its global storefront tally to 950.
How did you first approach
Kuhnau about buying his brand?
I wasn’t rude, but I told him,
“I really love your mission, and
I strongly believe that I’m the
one who can carry it through
and make it bigger for you.” He
saw what I had accomplished in
Korea. A lot of franchisees, when
they first open their businesses,
want to change the brand, sell
something new, really update the
menu. I was very good at understanding
and selling the brand’s
health-driven mission, even
though I was in Korea. I think
Steve really respected that.
What was the toughest
part of transitioning
from franchisee to owner?
Making sure execution at every
location follows our vision.
We want to be an integral
part of every customer’s healthand-fitness
plans and goals.
It’s critical, and very difficult.
People’s nutritional needs and
wants are different today than
they were 20 years ago. We
have to deliver what our guests
are really looking for, even if
the process is hard. Recently,
we updated one of our product
recipes to make it healthier—
low-calorie, low-sugar. Some of
our team and our franchisees
were afraid because the taste
changed a little, and some
customers did react negatively
at first. Change is always hard,
but when you really believe in
the mission, you know what’s
the right thing to do.
How have you maintained
the brand’s founding
values while pushing the
company forward?
We have kept a lot of loyal,
longtime employees on
our team. In order for us
to deliver consistency, we
need team members who
care about the brand. We’re
44 years old. Some people
started as part-timers at
Smoothie King locations
when they were kids, and
now they work in training,
R&D, or operations.
The smoothie market
keeps getting more
crowded. How do you
stay competitive?
Juicing companies and
other smoothie concepts will
come out with a new, exotic
fruit smoothie, but we no
longer want to compete
with just fruit smoothies.
That’s not our mission. Our
founder invented all his
smoothies with a purpose in
mind, and that’s what we’re
really communicating to
stand out. Today, if you look
at our menu, we’ve identified
four big purposes and
categories: Fitness, Slim,
Wellness, and Take a Break.
Some people want to get
leaner, some want to lose
weight, some want to maintain
their weight. We are
coming up with the products
that can help them all meet
their nutritional goals.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SMOOTHIE KING
68 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

JOIN AMERICA’S #1 WOOD REFINISHING FRANCHISE!
Be a leader in the $300 billion home improvement industry with the biggest name
in cabinet and hardwood floor refinishing. N-Hance Wood Refinishing offers you
exclusive territories, national marketing, and a proven system of success.
Low Start-up Costs
In-house Financing
Scalable Business
For more information visit nhancefranchise.com
or call 866-734-8352

Lessons
What
to Do
When
a
Franchise
Falls
Flat
If you know the risks of this
industry, you’re a lot better
equipped to reap its rewards.
by JON MARCUS
70 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

Illustrations / JOEY GUIDONE

Lessons
Ah, that smell!
Tmemsmellmmfmfemmmemlmmmmmmjmsm-mmm-mf-mme-fmyemmmmmmmmmmsm
mmvememmmmmmmsmmmmymmlmze.mTmemsmellmsmmmmmmmmmmmmemmlmmesm
mfmsmmmle-mmmmemmmevmmeesmmzmmbme-lmkemmmmmmmemmmmlesmlemm
fmmmmmymmmmmmmmmmemmmlymmmmemmmeymmememmllmmemmmmmbmym
mmem—bemmeemmmmmmmmmmmmmmm4maamammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmem—bemmeemmmmmmmmmmmmmmm4maammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmemmmll.mEvemmmmemmmmemmmsmmelmmmmms:mKrispy Kreme.
That’s how the iconic company started, in Winston-Salem, N.C.,
in the 1930s. How it nearly ended, decades later, is a case study in
how franchises can stumble. First there was the sale, in the 1970s,
to an international conglomerate so big it peddled everything from
luggage to bras to window treatments. For the new parent company,
a doughnut chain was a handy way to unload products made by its
other myriad divisions, including soup and ice cream—which it
actually sold at Krispy Kreme outlets. To cut costs, it even committed
the sacrilege of changing the doughnut recipe.
Saviors emerged in 1982, when outraged franchisees banded
together to buy back the company. But 18 years later, when the new
owners took it public, the brand got sidelined again while scrambling
to satisfy Wall Street’s demand for higher earnings, fast. It
responded to this pressure by abandoning its famous neon-clad
promise of “Hot doughnuts now,” making some of its signature
product in central kitchens and trucking it to stores, and by selling
cold doughnuts—cold Krispy Kreme doughnuts!—everywhere from
7-Elevens to gas stations to supermarkets, effectively competing
against its own franchisees.
Meanwhile, the head office kept the balance sheet looking as hot
as the doughnuts had once been. This was done in part by requiring
franchisees to buy equipment and the doughnut mix from corporate’s
own manufacturing and distribution division—which came to
account for nearly a third of the company’s revenues by 2003, all on
the backs of franchisees—and by adding hundreds of new locations
(including many in New England, which were routed by a local religion
known as Dunkin’ Donuts). So while revenues were reported to
be rising, same-store sales remained ominously flat.
The holes in this strategy became apparent as franchisees filed for
bankruptcy protection, stores were shuttered, and Krispy Kreme’s
stock price plummeted from a high of nearly $50 in 2003 to $6 only
two years later.
And yet…Krispy Kreme is still among us. Better than that, the
company is again flourishing, nabbing an impressive 18 spot on
Entrepreneur’s 2017 Franchise 500 list. The story of how Krispy
Kreme and other companies got from peak to valley to peak again is
more than the tale of firms that faltered, recovered, and thrived.
It’s an object lesson in how companies of all sorts can avoid hitting
the skids, how prospective franchisees can avoid companies
that are heading for trouble, and most important, how with the
right leadership and timing, even the most damaged brands can
be revived and made stronger and more profitable.
72 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

Lessons
LESSON 1/Get Your Hands Dirty
Julie Hall remembers the day she had to work the fry-o-lator at
McDonald’s. She hadn’t signed up for the job; she was a public
relations pro with past experience representing Dunkin’ Donuts,
Baskin-Robbins, Au Bon Pain, and others. But when her company
took on the Golden Arches as a client, Hall and all her colleagues
were required to work in a store for a week. I went to college for this?
she recalls thinking as she made yet another batch of fries. But looking
back on it now, she says, “It was the best experience I could have
had, because I understood the challenges the people in the store
had. It was brilliant.”
Ask any franchising expert for advice, and they’ll tell you this:
If you’re a franchisor, hire people with experience and make sure
they get down into the trenches every now and again; if you’re a
franchisee, buy into systems run by leaders who truly understand
their franchisees’ challenges. These are pieces of advice that seem so
obvious, they’re hardly worth mentioning. But they are worth mentioning,
and here’s why: Despite what the International Franchising
Association estimates is its $1.6 trillion annual economic impact in
the United States, “nobody teaches” franchising in business school,
says Joe Mathews, CEO of the consultancy Franchise Performance
Group. “It’s not on anybody’s radar screen.”
That’s not entirely true. There are franchising schools, and an
industry of consultants for hire to help companies at critical times.
But compare that to the reams of academic studies and serious
researchers who study the minutiae of other industries and
produce well-educated graduates who are practically bred for
success atop certain kinds of companies and you see just how
underreported franchising is. One of the most comprehensive
studies of the industry, by a professor at the Weatherhead School
of Management at Case Western Reserve University, looked at 157
franchise businesses in 27 industries over 12 years—and it dates
back to the 1990s.
This means that few future business leaders are schooled in mastering
the franchise model. Instead, franchises are often led by people
who were successful in other realms—like those who debuted
the concepts in the first place. “What you see is someone who comes
up with a great idea for a restaurant. They’re hearing more about
franchises, so they say, ‘This idea is great. I can make money by having
other people do the same thing and pay me royalties,’” says Scott
Ratchick, a lawyer in Atlanta who represents franchisees. “Well,
they know how to run their restaurant. But they have no earthly
idea how to run a franchise operation.”
And sometimes franchises are managed by people who were successful
in completely unrelated industries, which doesn’t necessarily
translate to being savvy about the business they’re in now. Especially
if they don’t make a point of getting into the trenches like Hall did.
A succession of chief financial officers who paraded through Krispy
Kreme headquarters, for instance, included one who had worked for
a kitchenware retailer and another who was an investment banker.
The private equity firm that bought the now-defunct Hollywood Tans
installed the former head of a tutoring service as CEO. “I know franchise
companies that are being run by attorneys,” says Don Welsh, a
Sonic Drive-In franchisee in Philadelphia who is also a consultant to
franchise companies and partner of Franchise Performance Group.
“They don’t know anything about the core business.”
Franchising certainly isn’t void of smart leaders. It has plenty. But
all these people tend to have something in common: They’ve experienced
franchising from many angles—working as everything from
fry cooks to senior executives—and have developed a personal understanding
of exactly what’s required to be successful. That’s why it’s so
critical for prospective franchisees to study up on the backgrounds of
the people in charge—to ensure not only that they are credible businesspeople
but that they empathize with the challenges of franchising,
understand the business on a molecular level, and know how to
provide a level of support their franchisees require.
Leadership can come in other forms, too. Increasingly, successful
franchisees have been taking matters into their own hands by organizing
themselves into franchisee associations. They protect their
interests by, among other things, sharing best practices and helping
one another deal with emerging issues corporate may not have a
good handle on. If business schools aren’t going to study franchising,
the thinking goes, franchising will study and educate itself. Strong
top-down leadership is critical, but “one of your best tools is a strong
franchisee association,” says Ratchick, the lawyer in Atlanta.
LESSON 2/Evolve, But Wisely
Krispy Kreme may have undergone a series of damaging changes,
straying from its strengths, but some franchises make the opposite,
yet equally damaging, mistake: They stay the same for far too long.
Sbarro, for example, went through two bankruptcies in three years
and has long failed to update its menu or decor, or to move beyond
its principal locations in shopping malls, where traffic has been
dropping. RadioShack was similarly stagnant, and in 2015 it filed
for its first of two bankruptcies. In the late ’90s, Hardee’s adopted
a try-anything approach, larding its menus with everything from
cheap burgers to fried chicken to hot dogs, surrendering any sort of
brand identity, before shifting to focus on big burgers and finding
lasting success.
How could once-dominant brands fail to change with the times?
“What I think a lot of brands don’t understand is how to balance
heritage with innovation,” says Hall. Squaring what people love
about your brand and what you need to do to stay relevant is not
easy, she admits. The largest franchises, after all, are beloved for
YOU NEED TO HAVE AN INNOVATION TEAM THAT IS REALLY
EMPOWERED TO TRY NEW THINGS,” JULIE HALL SAYS.
THE SMARTEST BRANDS ARE ALWAYS EVOLVING, EXPERIMENTING
WITH WAYS TO KEEP PEOPLE’S ATTENTION AND STAY RELEVANT.
74 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

WHAT TO EXPECT AT SPRINGBOARD?
MORE LEAPS
AND BOUNDS!
SEPTEMBER
25-27, 2017
THE WESTIN
PHILADELPHIA
Looking to get your franchise to the next level, fast? Then you
need to join fellow franchise founders and senior executives for
Springboard’s 3-day conference.
You’ll learn from some of the best in the franchise business
as they share how to avoid the pitfalls that plague all emerging
brands. And learn how to overcome foreseeable obstacles
and make the most of fleeting opportunities.
HOSTED BY
Come join over 300 franchise executives as we take part in general
sessions and intensive breakout programs covering more than 20
diverse subjects relevant to emerging and re-emerging brands.
Come see why past participants call Springboard “The best event
in the franchise industry.”
Learn more and register at
franchisespringboard.com // 215.825.3100

Lessons
their familiarity. They’ve built something steady, reliable, and timetested
that fans can count on no matter where they are.
The smartest brands are always evolving, experimenting with
ways to keep people’s attention and stay relevant. “You need to have
an innovation team that is really empowered to try new things,” Hall
says. Taco Bell, for example, has a food development lab that routinely
cranks out crazy ideas—some of which, like the Doritos Locos
Tacos, become international phenomena. Other brands rely on their
franchisees to help guide innovation, like Domino’s, which has unit
owners weigh in on new pizza recipes. This helps corporate keep up
with changing customer preferences.
Domino’s, in fact, is right up there with Krispy Kreme among
turnaround successes—all thanks to a willingness to change wisely.
In 2009, when consumers ranked its pizza dead last among national
chains, tied with Chuck E. Cheese’s, the brand responded with a stunningly
self-deprecating ad campaign, in which Domino’s gave voice
to its angry customers. (“Worst excuse for pizza I ever had,” one said,
in a review read aloud by a company exec.) That was followed by new
recipes, expanded menus, a new name (the “Pizza” was dropped as the
company added sandwiches and pasta), a new logo, and a heavy use of
social media for promotion. Sales soared.
But even though Domino’s seemed to be reinventing itself, its core
value proposition remained untouched—quick food, cheap, and with
a bit of an irreverent attitude. That’s always the key to a successful
evolution: adding and improving, not replacing your core.
Today the same tension is playing out with Sonic Drive-In. The
franchise made its name as “America’s drive-in,” trading on nostalgia
for an old mode of food service. That’s worked well; Sonic has 3,526
units in 45 states, each ringing up an average of $1.28 million in sales.
But one nagging thing has long inhibited growth: the weather. The
drive-in concept loses its appeal when the weather turns cold. So for
the past few years, the company has been experimenting with the previously
unthinkable idea of indoor seating.
Is that a change to its core, or is its core really the food and atmosphere?
Opinions vary. “They’re diluting the drive-in idea, which was
their biggest strength, and that’s a mistake 99 percent of franchisors
make,” says Welsh of Franchise Performance Group. Then again, in
Chesapeake, Va., after one Sonic opened a dining room this year, the
owner gushed about it to his local newspaper. Sales were up, he said.
His customers had been asking for it for years.
This tension, no doubt, is why Sonic is rolling out its experiment
slowly; so it can learn, but safely.
LESSON 3/Partner Smart
So, yes, sometimes a brand can go off the rails after a long period of
success by hiring the wrong people or messing with the core product.
There are other times, however, when a franchisee or franchisor
never got the chance to succeed at all. That’s because a more elemental
mistake had been made: starting with the wrong partner.

The first place this plays out is with financing. Franchisors may
need more money to scale up, and franchisees may need it to open
new locations. But some investors—particularly private equity
firms and some equity investors—may expect immediate results.
“That’s antithetical to what a franchisee wants to do, which is look
to the long term,” says Robert Purvin, of the American Association
of Franchisees and Dealers. “An operator has a 10-, 15-, 20-year horizon,
based on the usual terms of a franchise agreement,” says Joyce
Mazero, co-chair of the global supply network group at the law firm
of Gardere Wynne Sewell in Dallas, and an editorial adviser to the
book Franchising for Dummies. “And the investor has a five-year
horizon.” Public companies can come under similar pressure from
shareholders.
Haste like this can lead to bad decisions, such as expanding too
quickly or oversaturating a market. Franchisors, forced to raise
quick cash, may be tempted to get it through unfriendly deals with
their franchisees—such as leasing or selling them overpriced equipment
and ingredients.
Experts say the key is to seek out capital partners who have
patient and realistic plans over achievable timelines—value investors
and mutual fund managers, for example, who are happy to wait
for their returns to play out. Not only are they out there; mutual
fund managers with the most patient investment strategies actually
tend to outperform their benchmarks, according to research at Rutgers
and the University of Notre Dame.
HOT DOUGHNUTS/Now and Forever
Krispy Kreme hatched a turnaround plan in 2005, under a revamped
board of directors and a new CEO, Stephen Cooper (who had previously
led embattled Enron out of bankruptcy). The company began raising
cash to repay its creditors, stabilizing the business and keeping it going.
In May of last year came word that the chain would be acquired for
$1.35 billion, or $21 per share, by JAB Holding Company, the Luxembourg
firm that owns Keurig, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Caribou Coffee, and
Peet’s Coffee & Tea. In other words: a company that knows food service.
The deal was completed in July 2016, making Krispy Kreme a private
company again, built for the long haul.
After its long and tortured journey, its peaks and its valleys, Krispy
Kreme is growing again—but wiser and more judiciously this time, careful
to not repeat the mistakes of the past. Which isn’t to say things are boring.
Indeed, there may be still some fun ahead. Among other places, the
reinvigorated company is eyeing seven new locations in New England.
That was the site of its ugly defeat at the hands of Dunkin’ Donuts, back
in Krispy Kreme’s days of heedless expansion. These places still run on
Dunkin’—that brand is based in the Boston suburbs and is beloved across
the region—but with the right strategy in place, the addictive smell of
Krispy Kreme could signal heated competition soon enough.
Jon Marcus has written for Time, The Atlantic, the Washington Post,
the Boston Globe, and others. He lives in Boston.
OVER 30 + RESTAURANTS
AWARDED IN THE first 3 months
Opportunity
POKÉFranchise
We would love to have you become a part of our tremendous
growth, and join our “Family” of LemonShark Poké Franchisees
310.294.2151
franchises@lemonsharkpoke.com
Learn more about how you
can join the fastest growing
poké franchise in the nation!
lemonsharkpoke.com/franchise

The List
WHO’S MOST
POWERFUL?
THE STRONGEST BRANDS IN FRANCHISING FOR 2017, RANKED.
by TRACY STAPP HEROLD
THERE ARE MANY WAYS to measure the strength of a franchise.
How many units does it have? What are its financials?
Its growth? How well does it support its franchisees? But this
month, for the first time ever, Entrepreneur is zeroing in on a
factor that's challenging to measure, easily overlooked, and yet
critical to the health of any business: branding.
We wanted to know: Which franchises have done the best
job of building themselves up as beloved, recognizable,
robust brands? We did this by analyzing factors
such as social media followers, system size, number
of years in business, number of years franchising,
and overall reputation—and looking at how they all
combine to form lasting relationships with fans.
Our list shows that great brands are a paradox.
Longevity and consistency matter, but only if a brand also constantly
evolves. A prime example is KFC, which tops our list. On
the following pages, you can see how its recent “Re-Colonelization”
efforts have paid off, and learn how other top franchise brands stay
fresh while maintaining their already strong foundations.
Please keep in mind that this list is not intended as a recommendation
of any particular company. A vibrant brand is just one
of many elements to consider when buying a franchise;
it’s critical that you do due diligence
before investing in any opportunity. Read
the company’s legal documents, consult
with an attorney and an accountant,
and talk to as many existing and former
franchisees as you can.
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF KFC
September 2017 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / 79

The List
1
KFC
Chicken
STARTUP COST
$1.5M–$2.6M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
14,631/5,321
2
DUNKIN’
DONUTS
Coffee, doughnuts,
baked goods
STARTUP COST
$228.6K–$1.7M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
11,941/0
3
MCDONALD’S
Burgers, chicken,
salads, beverages
STARTUP COST
$1M–$2.2M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
31,230/5,669
4
SUBWAY
Subs, salads
STARTUP COST
$116.6K–$263.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
44,830/0
5
BASKIN-
ROBBINS
Ice cream,
frozen yogurt,
frozen beverages
STARTUP COST
$94.4K–$402.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
7,722/6
6
7-ELEVEN
Convenience stores
STARTUP COST
$37.2K–$1.6M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
59,067/505
7
TACO BELL
Mexican food
STARTUP COST
$1.2M–$2.6M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
5,559/909
KFC
HOW DID KFC land at number one? It all started in 2015, when parent company Yum! Brands invested $185 million in
a brand turnaround. Much of that has focused on bringing Colonel Sanders back, with love-them-or-hate-them commercials
featuring a rotating roster of celebrity colonel impersonators, a restaurant redesign that features pictures of
“the original celebrity chef,” and a bizarre but attention-grabbing, Sanders-centered romance novel released this past
Valentine’s Day. The company has also boosted quality behind the scenes, committing to more than 100,000 hours of
team member training, updated and recalibrated cooking equipment, and a return to the way the food was prepared
by its founder. All this “Re-Colonelization” has paid off, with 11 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth.
8
DAIRY QUEEN
Ice cream, burgers,
chicken
STARTUP COST
$361.5K–$1.8M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
6,839/2
9
PAPA JOHN’S
INTERNATIONAL
Pizza
STARTUP COST
$130.1K–$844.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
4,353/744
10
GNC
FRANCHISING
Vitamins and nutrition
products
STARTUP COST
$192.1K–$354.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
3,238/3,506
11
H&R BLOCK
Tax preparation,
electronic filing
STARTUP COST
$31.5K–$149.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
4,208/6,614
12
SONIC DRIVE-IN
RESTAURANTS
Burgers, hot dogs,
chicken sandwiches,
breakfast, ice cream,
beverages
STARTUP COST
$1M–$1.8M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
3,130/396
13
KUMON MATH &
READING CENTERS
Supplemental
education
STARTUP COST
$69.4K–$140.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
25,811/30
14
SNAP-ON TOOLS
Professional tools and
equipment
STARTUP COST
$169.5K–$350.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
4,692/162
15
PIZZA HUT
Pizza, pasta, wings
STARTUP COST
$297K–$2.1M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
15,439/686
16
JIMMY JOHN’S
GOURMET
SANDWICHES
Sandwiches
STARTUP COST
$325.5K–$555K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,574/62
17
ACE
HARDWARE
Hardware and
home-improvement
stores
STARTUP COST
$272.5K–$1.6M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
4,912/98
80 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

“TO BE GOOD
AND CARE. IF YOU CARE
AT YOUR JOB, YOU HAVE TO GIVE EFFORT
YOU’RE GONNA BE FINE.”
Hank ~ Jimmy John’s Manager ~ Broomfield, CO
@hsieck3_ncbc
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT JIMMYJOHNS.COM
OR CALL 800-546-6904
©2017 JIMMY JOHNÕS FRANCHISE, LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The List
SUBWAY
THE NEW LOGO Subway (#4) rolled out last year is just the beginning for the brand. It’s testing
a “Fresh Forward” restaurant design at nine locations in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. that
includes brighter and more modern decor, a curated music program, and fresh-veggie displays.
The modernization will extend to digital ordering kiosks and menu boards, plus a new
app launched last May that offers mobile ordering and payment options.
18
JAZZERCISE
Group fitness classes,
conventions, apparel,
and accessories
STARTUP COST
$3.5K–$12.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
8,880/0
19
ARBY’S
RESTAURANT
GROUP
Sandwiches, fries,
salads, shakes
STARTUP COST
$271.95K–$1.8M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,308/1,038
20
RE/MAX
Real estate
STARTUP COST
$37.5K–$224K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
7,217/0
21
CIRCLE K
Convenience stores
STARTUP COST
$211.5K–$1.6M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,967/4,722
22
COVERALL
Commercial cleaning
STARTUP COST
$16.8K–$49.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
8,871/0
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SUBWAY
JOIN THE #1 REVENUE-PRODUCING
TUTORING FRANCHISE
Over 40 Years Leadership in the Tutoring
and Test Prep Industry
Family Owned and Operated
300 Locations Nationwide
No Previous Education Experience Required
Initial Investment Starts Around $100K
Easy In-House Financing Available
World-Class Training and Coaching
Superior Technology and Support
Financial & Personal Rewards Helping
Children Succeed!
Our mission is ÒTo give every student the best education possible.Ó
CONTACT US TODAY
1.800.653.8400 Franchise@HLCmail.com
HuntingtonFranchise.com

23
JAN-PRO
FRANCHISING
INTERNATIONAL
Commercial cleaning
STARTUP COST
$3.99K–$51.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
8,224/0
24
THE UPS STORE
Postal, business,
printing, and
communications
services
STARTUP COST
$177.96K–$402.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
4,973/0
25
IHG (INTER-
CONTINENTAL
HOTELS GROUP)
Hotels
STARTUP COST
$7.5M–$98.5M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
5,063/7
26
SERVICEMASTER
CLEAN
Commercial/
residential
cleaning, disaster
restoration
STARTUP COST
$56.2K–$265.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
5,007/10
27
GREAT CLIPS
Hair salons
STARTUP COST
$132.3K–$253.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
3,868/0
28
RENT-A-CENTER
Rent-to-own
furniture, electronics,
computers, appliances
STARTUP COST
$355.4K–$582.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
154/2,755
29
ANYTIME
FITNESS
Fitness centers
STARTUP COST
$80K–$490.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
3,549/38
30
LIBERTY TAX
SERVICE
Tax preparation,
electronic filing
STARTUP COST
$58.7K–$71.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
3,753/351
31
PLANET FITNESS
Fitness clubs
STARTUP COST
$853.4K–$3.7M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,066/58
32
KRISPY KREME
DOUGHNUTS
Doughnuts, coffee
STARTUP COST
$275K–$1.9M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,059/113
33
CHEM-DRY
CARPET &
UPHOLSTERY
CLEANING
Carpet and upholstery
cleaning, tile and stone
care, granite renewal
STARTUP COST
$56.5K–$161.96K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
3,474/0
34
JACK IN THE BOX
Burgers
STARTUP COST
$1.3M–$2.4M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,818/436
35
VANGUARD
CLEANING
SYSTEMS
Commercial cleaning
STARTUP COST
$10.9K–$39.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
3,167/0
36
CRUISE
PLANNERS
Travel agencies
STARTUP COST
$2.1K–$22.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,432/1
37
AARON’S
Furniture, electronics,
computer, and appliance
leasing and sales
STARTUP COST
$283.3K–$852.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
722/1,221

The List
38
SUPER 8
Hotels
STARTUP COST
$209.6K–$4.4M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,839/0
39
MAC TOOLS
Automotive tools and
equipment
STARTUP COST
$103.2K–$255.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
883/37
40
SUPERCUTS
Hair salons
STARTUP COST
$144.4K–$293.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,593/1,191
41
CLEANNET USA
Commercial cleaning
STARTUP COST
$17.98K–$46.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,549/10
42
SNAP FITNESS
24-hour fitness
centers
STARTUP COST
$148.2K–$458.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,370/56
43
HARDEE’S
Burgers, chicken,
biscuits
STARTUP COST
$1.4M–$1.9M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,030/116
44
COLD STONE
CREAMERY
Ice cream, sorbet
STARTUP COST
$52.2K–$467.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,253/10
45
BEN & JERRY’S
Ice cream, frozen
yogurt, sorbet,
smoothies
STARTUP COST
$156.4K–$486K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
564/18
46
STRATUS
BUILDING
SOLUTIONS
Commercial cleaning
STARTUP COST
$3.5K–$64.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,508/0
47
DENNY’S
Family restaurants
STARTUP COST
$632.5K–$2.5M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,558/172
48
JAZZERCISE
HAMPTON BY
HILTON
Midprice hotels
STARTUP COST
$4.2M–$14.9M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,148/1
49
AUNTIE ANNE’S
HAND-ROLLED
SOFT PRETZELS
Soft pretzels
STARTUP COST
$199.5K–$380.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,734/15
50
CHURCH’S
CHICKEN
Chicken
STARTUP COST
$413.3K–$1.3M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,348/247
51
EDIBLE
ARRANGEMENTS
INTERNATIONAL
Sculpted fresh-fruit
bouquets
STARTUP COST
$195.5K–$327.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,243/6
52
MATCO TOOLS
Mechanics’ tools and
equipment
STARTUP COST
$89.2K–$267.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,670/1
53
CHESTER’S
Chicken
STARTUP COST
$8.6K–$296.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,084/0
54
NOVUS GLASS
Auto glass repair and
replacement
STARTUP COST
$49.97K–$268.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,953/41
“IT WAS TIME TO let people know that Jazzercise (#18) isn’t a thing of the past,” says Kelly Sweeney, the company’s chief
sales and marketing officer, about the rebrand that’s been ongoing since 2015. Their redesigned website proclaims:
“You won’t see a single leotard or legwarmer—we promise. What you will see is sweat, swagger, and high-intensity
endorphin-packed workouts that leave the ’80s behind.”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JAZZERCISE INC.
84 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

Own your own
sandwich shop.
Franchise opportunities are now
available locally and worldwide.
If you enjoy working with people, leading your own team, learning new
skills and are ready for an exciting new challenge, contact us today!
The Subway¨ franchise fee is $15,000 which is included in the total
investment. The total investment can range from $147,050 to
$320,700+ (See Franchise Disclosure Document for further details.)
Restaurant owners should have half of the total investment in cash
and finance the other half. Please visit subway.com or call Ralph Piselli,
Franchise Sales Manager: 800.888.4848 x 1312 .
SUBWAY ® is a Registered Trademark of Subway IP Inc. © 2017 Subway IP Inc.

The List
55
MIDAS
INTERNATIONAL
Auto repair and
maintenance
STARTUP COST
$184.1K–$433.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,221/13
56
JIFFY LUBE
INTERNATIONAL
Oil changes,
light repairs
STARTUP COST
$219K–$400K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
2,081/0
57
PAPA MURPHY’S
Take-and-bake pizza
STARTUP COST
$274.6K–$499.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,402/161
58
CINNABON
Cinnamon rolls,
baked goods, coffee
STARTUP COST
$181.1K–$325.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,349/2
59
SPORT CLIPS
Men’s sportsthemed
hair salons
STARTUP COST
$189.3K–$354.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,621/43
60
MASSAGE ENVY
Therapeutic
massage and
spa services
STARTUP COST
$434.8K–$1M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,150/0
61
CARL’S JR.
RESTAURANTS
Burgers
STARTUP COST
$1.4M–$1.95M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,423/122
62
FIREHOUSE
SUBS
Subs
STARTUP COST
$124.7K–$1.3M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,022/32
63
WINGSTOP
RESTAURANTS
Chicken wings
STARTUP COST
$303.2K–$922.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
929/20
64
DIPPIN’ DOTS
FRANCHISING
Specialty ice cream,
frozen yogurt, ices,
sorbet
STARTUP COST
$112.2K–$376.95K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
134/1
65
MOTEL 6
Economy hotels
STARTUP COST
$2.6M–$3.8M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
823/459
66
DAYS INN
Hotels
STARTUP COST
$194.4K–$7.8M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,786/0
67
HILTON HOTELS
AND RESORTS
Upscale hotels and
resorts
STARTUP COST
$55.99M–$97.1M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
462/109
68
KONA ICE
Shaved-ice trucks
STARTUP COST
$120.2K–$143K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
888/20
69
MERRY MAIDS
Residential cleaning
STARTUP COST
$56.5K–$180.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,672/14
70
SERVPRO
Insurance/disaster
restoration and
cleaning
STARTUP COST
$156.1K–$209.95K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,715/0
71
MIRACLE-EAR
Hearing instruments
STARTUP COST
$119K–$287.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,331/32
72
WATERMILL
EXPRESS
FRANCHISING
Water and ice vending
machines
STARTUP COST
$456.7K–$581.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
305/996
73
ANAGO
CLEANING
SYSTEMS
Commercial cleaning
STARTUP COST
$10.5K–$65.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,458/0
74
CULVER'S
RESTAURANT
Frozen custard,
specialty burgers
STARTUP COST
$1.8M–$4.2M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
620/8
75
JERSEY
MIKE’S SUBS
Subs
STARTUP COST
$193.2K–$660.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,201/56
76
BRICKS 4 KIDZ
Lego-engineering
classes, camps, parties
STARTUP COST
$34.5K–$52.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
659/2
77
HOOTERS
RESTAURANT
Casual restaurants
STARTUP COST
$906.5K–$3.2M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
224/193
78
YOGEN FRUZ
Frozen yogurt,
soft-serve ice cream
STARTUP COST
$123.2K–$459.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,226/6

79
MERLE NORMAN
COSMETICS
Cosmetics and skincare
products
STARTUP COST
$60.8K–$191.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,230/2
80
BERLITZ
LANGUAGE
CENTERS
Language, intercultural,
and business training
STARTUP COST
$164K–$307K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
120/304
81
EYE LEVEL
LEARNING
CENTERS
Supplemental education
STARTUP COST
$76.1K–$140.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
613/746
82
HOME INSTEAD
SENIOR CARE
Nonmedical senior care
STARTUP COST
$109.3K–$117.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,072/5
83
THE MAIDS
Residential cleaning
STARTUP COST
$76.1K–$164.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,223/111
84
ORANGETHEORY
FITNESS
Group personal training
STARTUP COST
$424.5K–$980.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
668/16
85
SMOOTHIE KING
Smoothies, health
products
STARTUP COST
$188.2K–$414.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
831/26
86
AMPM
Convenience stores and
gas stations
STARTUP COST
$400.5K–$7.8M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
966/17
87
BUDGET BLINDS
Window coverings,
window film, rugs,
accessories
STARTUP COST
$105.1K–$225.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,089/0
88
DREAM
VACATIONS
Travel agencies
STARTUP COST
$3.2K–$21.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,109/0
89
CARTRIDGE
WORLD
Printers, cartridges,
and printer services
STARTUP COST
$70.3K–$153.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
955/0
90
HEAVEN’S
BEST CARPET
& UPHOLSTERY
CLEANING
Carpet and upholstery
cleaning
STARTUP COST
$55K–$84K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,171/0
PERSONAL GROWTH.
FOR THEM AND YOU.
· Average revenue of over $1,400,000*
· Vast educational child care demand
· Financial independence and true
work/life balance
· Option to own or lease facility
14 YEARS IN A ROW
Learn what separates us from every other franchise opportunity.
(800) 554-3343 | KAFranchising.com
* As reported by 102 mature academies in Item 19 of the current Kiddie Academy Domestic Franchising FDD.
This advertisement is not an offering. An offering can only be made by a prospectus first filed according to
state law and which complies with the FTC rule.

The List
DREAM VACATIONS
SOMETIMES A REBRAND calls for a totally new name. Recognizing that many of their franchisees were selling
more than just cruises, the team at CruiseOne launched sister brand Dream Vacations (#88) in 2016, giving
franchisees a choice of which brand to use. More than 99 percent of new franchisees are choosing the Dream
Vacations name, and more than 65 percent of all franchisees are now operating under the name—and experiencing
an average 17 percent sales increase because of it.
91
MATHNASIUM
LEARNING
CENTERS
Math tutoring
STARTUP COST
$102.8K–$143.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
782/11
92
MOE’S
SOUTHWEST
GRILL
Southwestern food
STARTUP COST
$368.8K–$915.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
661/5
93
RAMADA
WORLDWIDE
Hotels
STARTUP COST
$191.99K–$12.9M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
842/0
94
RED ROOF
FRANCHISING
Economy hotels
STARTUP COST
$3.5M–$4.97M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
347/127
95
PURE BARRE
Barre fitness
classes and apparel
STARTUP COST
$154.5K–$282K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
442/13
96
UBREAKIFIX
Electronics repairs
STARTUP COST
$63.6K–$185.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
301/21
97
FANTASTIC
SAMS HAIR
SALONS
Hair salons
STARTUP COST
$145.4K–$317K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
1,062/3
98
ORION FOOD
SYSTEMS
Fast-food systems for
nontraditional markets
STARTUP COST
$58.5K–$134K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
900/0
99
RITA’S
ITALIAN ICE
Italian ice,
frozen custard
STARTUP COST
$150.5K–$440.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
625/0
100
CELLAIRIS
FRANCHISE
Cellphone and
wireless-device
accessories and
repairs
STARTUP COST
$52.4K–$330K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
567/3
101
SWEETFROG
PREMIUM
FROZEN YOGURT
Self-serve
frozen yogurt
STARTUP COST
$232K–$453K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
199/71
102
CHECKERS
AND RALLY’S
RESTAURANTS
Burgers, fries
STARTUP COST
$96.4K–$1.5M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
564/284
103
DICKEY’S
BARBECUE PIT
Barbecue
STARTUP COST
$280.8K–$481.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
563/7
104
WSI DIGITAL
MARKETING
Digital marketing
STARTUP COST
$64.4K–$94.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
848/2
105
COMFORT
KEEPERS
Home care
STARTUP COST
$86.3K–$136.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
736/31
106
COFFEE NEWS
Weekly newspapers
distributed at
restaurants
STARTUP COST
$9.8K–$10.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
834/5
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF DREAM VACATIONS
88 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

The List
107
MEINEKE CAR
CARE CENTERS
Auto repair and
maintenance
STARTUP COST
$123.1K–$572.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
957/0
108
ACTIONCOACH
Business coaching
STARTUP COST
$47.96K–$466.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
772/2
109
TRAVEL
LEADERS
Travel agencies
STARTUP COST
$2.3K–$16.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
353/14
110
MINUTEMAN
PRESS
INTERNATIONAL
Printing, graphics,
and mailing centers
STARTUP COST
$62.2K–$161.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
956/0
111
CICI’S PIZZA
All-you-can-eat
pizza buffets
STARTUP COST
$217.5K–$828.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
403/41
112
KELLER
WILLIAMS
REALTY
Real estate
STARTUP COST
$183.9K–$336.99K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
820/0
113
DEL TACO
Mexican/American food
STARTUP COST
$960.7K–$1.9M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
246/298
114
BUILDINGSTARS
INTERNATIONAL
Commercial cleaning
STARTUP COST
$2.2K–$53.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
682/0
115
9ROUND
Kickboxing circuittraining
programs
STARTUP COST
$75.2K–$116.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
510/6
116
BOJANGLES’
FAMOUS
CHICKEN 'N
BISCUITS
Chicken, biscuits
STARTUP COST
$1.4M–$2.2M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
407/309
117
HAPPY TAX
FRANCHISING
Tax preparation
STARTUP COST
$23.4K–$31.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
85/1
118
UNITED REAL
ESTATE GROUP
Real estate
STARTUP COST
$16.7K–$360.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
435/5
FANTASTIC SAMS HAIR SALONS
119
DALE CARNEGIE
TRAINING
Workplace training and
development
STARTUP COST
$19.7K–$174.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
228/2
120
MARCO’S PIZZA
Pizza, subs, wings,
cheese bread
STARTUP COST
$222.8K–$663.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
824/0
121
HOMEVESTORS
OF AMERICA
Home buying, repair,
and selling
STARTUP COST
$44K–$347.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
829/0
122
GYU-KAKU
JAPANESE BBQ
RESTAURANT
Japanese barbecue
restaurants
STARTUP COST
$789.8K–$2.1M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
678/19
LAUNCHED LAST YEAR, Fantastic Sams’ (#97) “New Image Salon” features a sleeker, more modern look in black,
white, and red, with elements like a color bar at the center of the shop and a product wall at the front, designed
to maximize upselling opportunities. About 50 salons have the new look, including many existing locations that
took advantage of a limited-time incentive program, dubbed “Project Updo,” to renew their agreements at a
discount if they remodeled.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF FANTASTIC SAMS FRANCHISE CORP.
90 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO:
Open a restaurant
NOVEMBER 2 - 4
LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER
No matter what you want to do, Franchise Expo West can help you get
there. Attend seminars, learn about franchising and interact with over 200
FRANCHISE BRANDS from over 75 INDUSTRIES - all under one roof.
REGISTER TODAY FOR FREE! USE PROMO CODE BURGER
FranchiseExpoWest.com
#ExpoWest2017
SPONSORED BY

The List
123
CARVEL
Ice cream,
ice cream cakes
STARTUP COST
$250.3K–$383.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
417/0
124
PEARLE VISION
Eye care and eyewear
STARTUP COST
$410.2K–$622.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
421/110
125
SAFESPLASH
SWIM SCHOOL
Child and adult
swimming lessons,
parties, summer camps
126
QDOBA
MEXICAN
EATS
Mexican food
STARTUP COST
$851.6K–$1.1M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
330/359
127
GOLD’S GYM
Health and fitness
centers
STARTUP COST
$2.2M–$5M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
573/150
128
HOWARD
JOHNSON
Hotels
STARTUP COST
$162.3K–$8.7M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
377/0
129
MRINETWORK
Executive and
professional staffing
STARTUP COST
$66.6K–$99.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
555/0
130
HILTON
GARDEN INN
Upscale midprice
hotels
131
KAMPGROUNDS
OF AMERICA
Campgrounds
and RV parks
STARTUP COST
$225.95K–$4.5M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
459/28
132
EXPENSE
REDUCTION
ANALYSTS
Business
financial consulting
STARTUP COST
$66K–$85.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
682/6
133
GOLDEN
CORRAL
RESTAURANTS
Family steakhouses,
buffets, and bakeries
STARTUP COST
$1.97M–$5.97M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
395/83
134
GYMBOREE
PLAY & MUSIC
Parent/child play and
learning programs
STARTUP COST
$120.9K–$279.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
732/6
135
SIGNAL 88
SECURITY
Private security guard
and patrol services
STARTUP COST
$73K–$268.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
124/2
136
EXPRESS
EMPLOYMENT
PROFESSIONALS
Staffing, HR solutions
STARTUP COST
$130K–$206K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
772/0
STARTUP COST
$44K–$1.3M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
97/24
STARTUP COST
$11.7M–$22.3M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
691/2
WE’VE GOT
YOUR BACK
Checkers & Rally’s has got your back when it
comes to bold and flavorful food, amazing value
for our guests, and a price-engineered menu that
continues to deliver profits to our franchisees
■ Six Consecutive Years of Same-Store Sales Growth 1
■ 62.2% Return On Investment 1
■ NEW Modular Freestanding Restaurant Building Cost $269,900 2
■ 50% Off Royalties For New Restaurant Openings Up To 18 Months 3
Over 30 years of experience, 850+ restaurants, and top-tier availability in all major US markets
Visit owncheckersfranchise.com/ENT or Call 888-913-9135 Today!
© 2017 Checkers Drive-In Restaurants, Inc. 4300 W. Cypress St., Suite 600, Tampa, FL 33607.
1. Per Checkers & Rally’s 2017 Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) Item 19. Same-store sales results are measured by combining 2017 FDD and 2016 FDD data. 2. Per Item 7 Checkers & Rally’s 2017 FDD. 3. Per Item 6 Checkers &
Rally’s 2017 FDD. Written substantiation will be provided on request. This advertisement is not intended as an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy, a franchise. It is for information purposes only. The franchisor, Checkers
Drive-In Restaurants, Inc. is located at 4300 West Cypress Street, Suite 600, Tampa, Florida 33607, and is registered as file number F-4351 in the state of Minnesota. In New York, an offering can only be made by a prospectus filed
first with the Department of Law, and such filing does not constitute approval by that Department. 20170853

137
AAMCO
TRANSMISSIONS
AND TOTAL
CAR CARE
Transmission repair
and car care
STARTUP COST
$227.4K–$333K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
651/0
138
CAPTAIN D’S
Seafood
STARTUP COST
$781K–$1.1M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
227/289
139
BATTERIES
PLUS BULBS
Batteries, light bulbs,
related products
STARTUP COST
$186.7K–$370.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
662/50
140
SIGNARAMA
Signs
STARTUP COST
$94.3K–$272.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
741/0
DALE CARNEGIE TRAINING
DALE CARNEGIE TRAINING (#119) kicked off its brand reboot this year with a new logo featuring
a DC monogram that resembles a butterfly—a symbol of transformation, which will be a central
theme in marketing the service. As for its own transformation, the company is taking its time.
Right now online visitors can use either the new website or stick with the old one.
Now may be
the perfect time
to invest in
real estate.
PROVEN SYSTEM TO BUY & SELL HOUSES
Be your own boss with continuous mentoring and franchise support.
FINANCING FOR QUALIFYING ACQUISITION & REPAIRS
We make it easy to keep your business running smoothly.
ONGOING SUPPORT
Learn business strategies from the franchise system that has
purchased over 75,000 homes.
HVA MAPS
Take the guesswork out of estimating repairs with a
sophisticated software system that helps you steer clear from
making costly mistakes.
You are in the right location at the right
time to be a HomeVestors ® franchisee,
what are you waiting for?
©
HomeVestorsFranchise.com | 800-237-3522
*Each franchise office is independently owned and operated.

The List
141
POSTNET
NEIGHBORHOOD
BUSINESS
CENTERS
Packing, shipping,
printing, signs,
marketing solutions
STARTUP COST
$169.8K–$212.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
671/0
142
DOUBLETREE
BY HILTON
Upscale hotels
and resorts
STARTUP COST
$35.5M–$62.4M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
455/11
143
DURACLEAN
Carpet and upholstery
cleaning, disaster
restoration, mold
remediation
STARTUP COST
$64.6K–$115.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
274/9
144
HUNGRY
HOWIE’S
PIZZA & SUBS
Pizza, subs, calzones,
bread, wings, salads
STARTUP COST
$251.4K–$495.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
518/30
145
HOME HELPERS
Medical/nonmedical
personal care;
monitoring products
and services
STARTUP COST
$70.9K–$117.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
636/0
146
YOGURTLAND
FRANCHISING
Self-serve
frozen yogurt
STARTUP COST
$309.8K–$702.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
313/13
147
RED MANGO
CAFE & JUICE
BAR
Frozen yogurt,
smoothies, juices,
wraps
STARTUP COST
$193.5K–$466K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
315/0
148
PROFORMA
Printing and
promotional products
STARTUP COST
$4.7K–$39.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
675/0
149
WEICHERT
REAL ESTATE
AFFILIATES
Real estate
STARTUP COST
$50K–$364.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
309/138
150
LINE-X
Spray-on truckbed
liners, truck
accessories,
protective coatings
STARTUP COST
$118K–$279.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
552/2
TROPICAL SMOOTHIE CAFE
LAST YEAR Tropical Smoothie Cafe (#162) introduced an updated restaurant design to better
fit the brand’s current culture. The new stores showcase a coastal theme and an
open-concept kitchen and smoothie bar. Meanwhile, the company’s logo redesign has a
more modern look and identity—it emphasizes the word cafe over smoothie to remind
guests that it’s a destination for healthful food, not just drinks.
151
RIGHT AT HOME
Home care,
medical staffing
STARTUP COST
$78.3K–$137.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
532/0
152
TRAVELODGE
Hotels
STARTUP COST
$162.2K–$7.3M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
404/0
153
PITA PIT
Pita sandwiches
STARTUP COST
$211.4K–$366.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
589/22
154
HONEYBAKED
HAM
Specialty foods,
catering, cafés
STARTUP COST
$299.2K–$468.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
206/197
155
CHARLEYS
PHILLY STEAKS
Philly cheesesteaks,
fries, lemonade
STARTUP COST
$162.9K–$475.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
517/55
156
FYZICAL
THERAPY &
BALANCE
CENTERS
Physical therapy,
balance and vestibular
therapy, preventative
wellness services
STARTUP COST
$82.3K–$380K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
201/17
157
MARTINIZING
DRY CLEANING
Dry-cleaning and
laundry services
STARTUP COST
$125.8K–$693.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
376/0
158
SYLVAN
LEARNING
Supplemental and
enrichment education
STARTUP COST
$70.98K–$159.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
608/12
159
ROOTER-MAN
Plumbing, drain, and
sewer cleaning
STARTUP COST
$46.8K–$137.6K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
609/3
160
TUTOR DOCTOR
Tutoring
STARTUP COST
$68.5K–$130.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
507/4
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF TROPICAL SMOOTHIE CAFE
94 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

Craft Your Own Success
’E’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’
Etsy® is home to more than
1.7 million sellers, features
more than 40 million items for
sale, and attracts more than
27 million active buyers
In the third quarter of 2016,
the company’s total revenue
was $87.6 million—up 33.3
percent over the same three
month period in 2015
More than 50% of
sellers who launch their own
shop have never sold their
goods before, either online
or in the real world
About 70% of sellers
operate their businesses on
a part-time basis
The other 30% operate on
a full-time basis and have
become extremely successful
FIND’T’E’B’’INE’’
T’AT’’’RIG’T’F’R’’’’
Start Your Own Etsy® Business is an easy-to-understand,
comprehensive blueprint that takes you through setting up,
branding, marketing, and managing your store. If you’re ready
to share your passion with millions around the world this guide
is for you.
AVAI’AB’E’AT’A’’’FINE’B’’K’AND’EB’’K’RETAI’ER’

The List
161
VISITING
ANGELS
Nonmedical home care
STARTUP COST
$77.99K–$102.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
558/0
162
TROPICAL
SMOOTHIE CAFE
Smoothies, salads,
wraps, sandwiches,
flatbreads
STARTUP COST
$222.7K–$525.4K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
600/1
163
MOLLY MAID
Residential cleaning
STARTUP COST
$89.2K–$137.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
647/0
164
MCALISTER’S
DELI
Sandwiches, salads,
baked potatoes
STARTUP COST
$579K–$1.5M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
344/32
165
WIENERSCHNITZEL
Hot dogs, ice cream
STARTUP COST
$303.6K–$1.3M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
322/0
166
INTERIM
HEALTHCARE
Medical home care,
medical staffing
STARTUP COST
$123.5K–$196.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
557/0
167
WHICH WICH
SUPERIOR
SANDWICHES
Sandwiches
STARTUP COST
$199.5K–$488.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
399/3
168
COST CUTTERS
FAMILY HAIR
CARE
Family hair salons
STARTUP COST
$139.6K–$287.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
391/260
169
SIEMPRETAX+
Tax preparation
STARTUP COST
$43.7K–$71.9K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
81/26
170
MAID RIGHT
FRANCHISING
Residential cleaning
STARTUP COST
$4.7K–$48.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
153/1
171
PALM BEACH
TAN
Tanning
STARTUP COST
$503.1K–$811.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
234/183
172
SHIPLEY
DO-NUTS
Doughnuts, kolaches,
pastries
STARTUP COST
$353.5K–$500K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
296/14
173
FASTSIGNS
INTERNATIONAL
Signs, graphics
STARTUP COST
$182.3K–$267.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
618/0
174
LAWN DOCTOR
Lawn, tree, and
shrub care; mosquito
and tick control
STARTUP COST
$81.5K–$100.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
530/0
175
JEI LEARNING
CENTERS
Individualized supplemental
education
STARTUP COST
$63K–$105K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
312/246

176
PLATO’S
CLOSET
Teen- and youngadult-clothing
resale stores
STARTUP COST
$238.1K–$398.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
464/0
177
REALTY
EXECUTIVES
INTL. SVCS.
Real estate
STARTUP COST
$20.4K–$119K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
499/0
178
YESCO
Sign and lighting
service and
maintenance
STARTUP COST
$65K–$352.2K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
47/47
179
THE
INTERFACE
FINANCIAL
GROUP -
IFG 50/50
Invoice discounting
STARTUP COST
$86.8K–$137.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
68/0
180.
LEADERSHIP
MANAGEMENT
Leadership and
organization training
and development
STARTUP COST
$20K–$27.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
463/0
181
GREAT
AMERICAN
COOKIES
Cookies
STARTUP COST
$202.9K–$362.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
360/0
182
POP-A-LOCK
FRANCHISE
SYSTEM
Mobile locksmith and
security services
STARTUP COST
$99.7K–$134.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
561/3
183
ZIEBART
Auto appearance and
protection services
STARTUP COST
$227K–$450K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
363/12
184
N-HANCE
Wood-floor and cabinet
refinishing
STARTUP COST
$44K–$88K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
475/0
185
BOSTON’S
RESTAURANT &
SPORTS BAR
Restaurants and sports
bars
STARTUP COST
$1.1M–$2.9M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
416/2
186
MAACO
FRANCHISING
Auto painting and
collision repair
STARTUP COST
$375.1K–$487.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
470/0
This is home.
It’s a place called satisfaction.
Pillar To Post offers the opportunity for you to create a business, a career,
and the the life you want for yourself and your family. Joining a business
where helping yourself and other people realize their dreams is one of the
best decisions you’ll ever make.
franchise@pillartopost.com
877-963-3129
pillartopostfranchise.com

ADVERTISEMENT
OPPORTUNITY
One of these opportunities could mark the turning point to owning a business of your own, realizing
your personal dreams and securing true financial independence. So go ahead, make your first move
by considering all that they have to offer in this Opportunity Spotlight. Then make your first call.
Lil Obits Code Change 2017.indd 7/14/17 11:38 AM PAGE 1
Take Control Of
Your Financial
Future!
Be Your Own Boss!
Own a Lil' Orbits mini-donut operation. It's fun,
flexible and profitable. We love it! You will too.
Make the money you want, when you want.
LÕlÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕÕ
Department 1648 9999
8900 109th Avenue, Ste 100
Champlin, MN 55316
If you write to us, please
include your phone number!
Lil Orbits
ent_0117_5982
Guarantee your job security and stop worrying!
Besides the 80% profit margin, the best part is
selling our delicious snack food to happy customers.
Turn-key programs make it easy to get started.
Call toll free for complete information.
Made in
Ask about the Lil' Orbits FREE INFO KIT
the USA
and lifetime warranty.
1-800-228-8305
(Ext. 9999) 1648)
Fax: 763-559-7545
You can't be
laid-off or fired!
www.lilorbits.com
E-mail: contact@lilorbits.com
The Maid’s
ent_0917_6377
Fantastic Sams
new to come
OppFinder-LowCost
ent_0917_6364
TO ADVERTISE IN THIS SECTION, PLEASE CALL 800-864-6864.

The List
187
TAPSNAP
Digital photo booths
STARTUP COST
$48.4K–$123.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
158/0
188
STANLEY STEEMER
CARPET CLEANER
Carpet and upholstery
cleaning
STARTUP COST
$103.7K–$250.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
209/64
189
BIG O TIRES
Tires, tire services, auto
products
STARTUP COST
$259.2K–$1.2M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
387/2
190
COUNTRY INNS
& SUITES
BY CARLSON
Hotels
STARTUP COST
$6.5M–$7.7M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
475/7
191
PILLAR TO
POST HOME
INSPECTORS
Home inspections
STARTUP COST
$33.9K–$42.3K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
550/0
192
FRESH HEALTHY
VENDING
Snack and beverage
vending machines
STARTUP COST
$122.5K–$205.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
244/0
193
BLIMPIE SUBS
& SALADS
Subs, salads
STARTUP COST
$74.97K–$401.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
360/4
194
SPHERION
STAFFING
Staffing, recruiting
STARTUP COST
$100.4K–$167.8K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
184/0
195
HEALTHSOURCE
CHIROPRACTIC
& PROGRESSIVE
REHAB
Chiropractic, rehab,
nutrition, and wellness
services
STARTUP COST
$58K–$249.1K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
327/0
196
MOSQUITO JOE
Outdoor pest control
STARTUP COST
$69.6K–$122.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
167/2
197
JET’S PIZZA
Pizza, subs, wings,
salads
STARTUP COST
$450K–$630.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
354/34
198
ICEBORN
Ice and water vending
machines
STARTUP COST
$27.1K–$213.5K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
54/111
199
BAYMONT
INN & SUITES
Hotels
STARTUP COST
$185.6K–$6.4M
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
425/0
200
MY GYM
CHILDREN’S
FITNESS CENTER
Early-learning/fitness
programs
STARTUP COST
$36.8K–$249.7K
TOTAL UNITS
FRANCHISED / CO.-OWNED
485/0
REPRINTS
For Article Reprints, Permissions and
Content Licensing Contact our Partner:
PARS International Corp.
EntrepreneurReprints.com | (212) 221-9595

STARTING A
BUSINESS PLANNING LEADERSHIP
You’ve got the idea and
the passion; now learn what
you need to know to hit the
ground running
Preparation is key to your
success—uncover valuable
tools to establish and grow
your business
Your success is driven by your
ability to lead—discover strategies
and techniques to improve your
leadership skills
Franchise Your Business
Main Street Entrepreneur
Start Your Own Business
The Marketing Plan Handbook
The Tax & Legal Playbook
Write Your Business Plan
Real Leaders Don’t Follow
Fueled By Failure
Think Big Act Bigger
shelve under
Whether establishing your operations or spreading the word, no matter what stage

SALES &
MARKETING
ONLINE
MARKETING
SOCIAL
MEDIA
Communicating with potential
clients and customers is a must—
learn how to position yourself,
attract new customers and keep
them coming back
Reach millions—discover how to
gain visibility and close deals in the
world’s largest marketplace
Interact with clients and
customers to keep them coming
back—learn how to take your
customer relationships to a whole
new, more profi table level
Ultimate Guide to Local Business
Marketing
No B.S. Maximum Referrals And
Customer Retention
80/20 Sales And Marketing
Ultimate Guide To Pay-Per-Click
Advertising
Ultimate Guide To Google AdWords
Success Secrets Of The Online
Marketing Superstars
Ultimate Guide To Facebook Advertising
Tweet Naked
No B.S. Social Media Marketing
entrepreneur.
of your business you’re in, we’ve got the resources to help you succeed.
Visit entm.ag/books

UNLOCK INNOVATION
FRANTECH: FRANCHISE INNOVATION CONFERENCE
OCTOBER 19-20, 2017 // SAN DIEGO, CA
Join your peers in the franchise development, operations and marketing
industries at FranTech, IFA’s Franchise Innovation Conference. This event
will focus on how innovations in technology are making an impact on the
future of franchising, and how you can implement these new methods
successfully to your franchise system. Register today!
FRANCHISE.ORG/FRANTECH
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
MITCH JOEL Best-Selling Author & Digital Marketing Expert
Learn how to adapt and succeed in the new digital, hyper-connected business
world with Mitch Joel. Also known as “The Rockstar of Digital Marketing,” Joel’s
insights on the future of technology will provide you with innovative solutions to
expand your business to the next level. Don’t miss out!
ADVERTISEMENT
Free Information From Advertisers
Visit entrepreneur.com/freeinfo now to receive more information from the franchise and business opportunities
advertisers in this month’s Entrepreneur®. Simply take a minute to quickly enter your selections online to learn more
about any of these opportunities!
1. Checkers & Rally’s
2. Coffee News
3. Cruise Planners
4. Dream Vacations
5. Expense Reduction Analysts
6. Express Employment Professionals
7. Fantastic Sams
8. HomeVestors of America
9. Huntington Learning Centers
10. IceBorn
11. Jimmy Johns Sandwich’s
12. Kiddie Academy
13. Kumon North America
14. LemonShark Poke
15. Lil’Orbits
16. Mathnasium Learning Centers
17. Merchant Lynx Services
18. N-Hance
19. Pillar To Post
20. PuroClean
21. Snap On Tools
22. Subway
23. The Maids International
Go to entrepreneur.com/freeinfo now to make your selection and get more information fast!
Or, you can also fill out this form, circle your selections above, and then fax or mail back your request.
Please check appropriate boxes:
1. Are you considering starting/buying an additional business? 1/ Yes 2/ No
2. If “yes,” when are you planning to start/buy an additional business?
3/ In the next 6 months 4/ 7 to 12 months 5/ 13 to 24 months
6/ More than 24 months 7/ Not sure
3. How much do you plan to invest in the purchase of your business?
8/ Less than $50,000 9/ $50,000-$99,999 10/ $100,000-$499,999 11/ $500,000+
Please print clearly:
Name_____________________________________________ Title______________________________________________
Company____________________________________________________________________________________________
Address_________________________________ City______________________________ State______ ZIP____________
Phone (_____)__________________________________________ Fax (_____)____________________________________
e-mail ______________________________________________________________________________________________
Fax to (888) 847-6035 or mail to Entrepreneur ® , P.O. Box 413050, Naples, FL 34101-3050
Expires 01/31/2018

Classified
advertising
PRESS RELEASE WRITING and targeted newswire
distribution since 1983, with free SEO and Social Media
Marketing. Member BBB. www.Send2Press.com
ADVERTISE IN OVER 21,000 newspapers with one call!
(407) 909-1644. www.NationwideAdvertising.com
Business Financing
GUARANTEED $50,000 TO $250,000
In business credit. Without a personal guarantee.
Get your free E-book here at
www.thebusinesscreditbuilders.com
Business OppOrtunities
HOMEBASED TRAVEL BUSINESS - Excellent
income, affordable opportunity. Includes travel website.
www.TheTicketCounter.com
CASH TO YOUR DOOR. $500+ per day! 1-(800) 931-
7137. www.dailycashabundance.com
UNLIMITED EARNING POTENTIAL: Healthy Chocolate,
improves health; Love Life. (800) 430-0136.
$1,243.75 WEEKLY MAILING an amazing postcard from
home! For free report call recorded message 1-(401)
427-2164.
AMAZING INCOME FROM HOME. Call (863) 808-1118.
Then visit: www.dailyfastcash.com
ANYONE NEEDING MONEY FAST call now! 1-(800)
311-6094. No denials. Guaranteed!
ARIZONA
Phoenix
602.603.1722
800.603.3900
Fax: 602.603.1721
LLC $ 79 95
COMPLETE
INCLUDES: State Filing Fees, LLC Seal and Book,
Certificate of Organization, Company Minutes,
LLC Regulations, LLC Ownership Register, LLC
Membership Certificate, LLC Banking Resolution,
Preliminary Name Search
FORM YOUR CORPORATION OR LLC OVER THE
PHONE, ONLINE OR AT OUR OFFICE... ITÕS EASY!
www.amerilawyer ® .com
www.amerilawyer ® .com/Mobile
Spiegel & Utrera, P.A. LAWYERS
130 North Central Ave., Suite 303, Phoenix, AZ 85004
$28,000 IN DAYS NOT WEEKS. Not MLM. No selling.
(800) 506-1695.
WANT TO PURCHASE MINERALS and other oil/gas
interests. Send details to: P.O. Box 13557, Denver, CO
80201.
GET REWARDED FOR BEING responsible, make $100
or more in 10 minutes over and over again, if you have
always paid your credit cards on time. (708) 717-2398.
www.cash4yourgoodcredit.com
$10,000 IS WAITING FOR YOU! Get details at
www.mailingflyersforpay.com
FREE OPPORTUNITY! $14,000 Monthly Easy as 1, 2, 3.
www.Earn14kMonthly.com 1-(860) 248-4000.
HAVE YOUR OWN BRAND NAME Electronics Business!
www.mdsusa.biz (800) 421-5185.
GLOBAL BITCOIN COMPANY EXPLODES! Leaders
wanted! www.cryptocointradingfirm.com Josh (206)
250-6625.
WE PROVIDE CONSUMER AND BUSINESS
Sales leads at the lowest cost per lead anywhere.
YourLeadBroker.com
INTERNET GOLD!
Recorded Message 1-(641) 715-3367 PIN 164185#
https://bitcoinfundingteam.com/ref/Suddenwealth
BIG PROFITS, SMALL INVESTMENT, entrepreneurs
dream business. Learn: www.CrackRepairStartup.com
WE PROVIDE CONSUMER and business sales leads at
the lowest cost per lead anywhere. YourLeadBroker.com
$380,000 IN 45 DAYS. Simple system. No experience
needed. (615) 587-2516.
EARN $333,600 ANNUALLY with income properties.
Stay at home. Pay no taxes, best self-help real estate
book “The Real Estate Fisherman”. Free details: KJay
Publishing, PO Box 491779, Redding, CA 96049-1779A.
© L. Spiegel
Business OppOrtunities
FEATURED ON FOX NEWS
Brand new wristband technology that has over 19
applications. michael.helo.life/cp10
WANT TO EARN BITCOINS FOR FREE! Totally
awesome! http://9nl.org/en6c
EARN $3,000+ PER TRANSACTION
Work with an industry leader and earn great full or parttime
income. No previous experience required, excellent
training provided. www.charterbizopp.com (888)
539-3707.
RETIRE IN 7 MONTHS! Free video reveals how to
turn your annual income into a monthly income.
www.RetireIn7Months.com
REAL BUSINESS CREDIT based on your EIN not your
SSN. www.ecsbusinessgroup.com (816) 535-2180.
WE PROVIDE CONSUMER and business sales leads at
the lowest cost per lead anywhere. YourLeadBroker.com
WEBSITES OR CFO SERVICES for start-ups. Business
plans for loans/equity, financial & accounting experts,
QuickBooks. jon@arimabiz.com (818) 259-7887. www.
ArimaBiz.com
EARN UNLIMITED $3,500 finder’s fees. Details:
www.bankez.net
MAKE MONEY POSTING ADS on Craigslist. Free
eBook. TheSellersBible.com
ORGANIC PREMIUM COFFEE BUSINESS. Startup
under $150. Ubean.info (844) 698-2326.
$6K PER WEEK! $400,000 MONTHLY! Works fast.
TooDamnEasy.com ID#MR70623, 24 hour recording
1-(800) 230-6866, Extension 1000.
M&A PROFESSIONALS
Entrepreneurs interested in $400,000+/year contact:
denny@chapman-usa.com www.chapman-usa.com
MONEY TO YOUR DOOR. $500 per day. Call Richard
(562) 810-1462.
MAIL BOX INCOME! $75 commissions paid daily.
www.MailBoxIncome.net Code: WNAC 24-hour recording
1-(800) 679-8087.
EASY FRANCHISE PROFITS without franchise fees!
http://a735.bigmoneyleverage.com 1-(412) 734-5844.
STRATEGIES OF THE WEALTHY REVEALED. Visit:
whatisincomeshifting.com Join James Holmes:
www.Yourabundance.myecon.net/join-now
BUYER’S LIST WILL EXPLODE your profits!
www.primechoicelists.com Dept 21088.
MASTER DISTRIBUTOR WANTED! Launching
nutritional MLM. Team builder needed. (866) 991-0106.
$2,400 IN 24 HOURS! Free information! Free recorded
message 1-(801) 853-8533.
#1 RESIDUAL INCOME from home #5736 Beverly L.
http://9nl.org/g92c
OWN A REAL RESIDUAL INCOME business with low
churn. www.wholesaleconference.com/ri.html (805)
845-8906.
HELP 68 MILLION HOUSEHOLDS with Much Needed
Service. Call (314) 590-3388. Brand new offering.
All states.
START YOUR OWN BUSINESS Absolutely Free! Call
1-(860) 882-1113. www.Watch4MinuteVideo.com
NEW OPPORTUNITY BUSINESS CATALOG! Fax name/
address (971) 244-9244 or email sales@ChaService.com
MAKE $2,000 AND UP several times weekly! 1-(800)
516-8767. IncomeMaximus.com
UNHEARD OF: Join – Get your money back – First
Person you bring in then continuous income forever.
Visit www.EasyMoneyToYou.com
Business services
REAL BUSINESS CREDIT based on your EIN not your
SSN. www.ecsbusinessgroup.com (816) 535-2180.
WE PROVIDE CONSUMER and business sales leads at
the lowest cost per lead anywhere. YourLeadBroker.com
WEBSITES OR CFO SERVICES for start-ups. Business
plans for loans/equity, financial & accounting experts,
QuickBooks. jon@arimabiz.com (818) 259-7887. www.
ArimaBiz.com
Businesses FOr saLe
PROFITABLE BUSINESSES for sale by Owner. All types,
sizes, terms, locations. www.bizsale.com 1-(800) 617-
4204.
AMATEUR CAR ROAD RACING business. Unique,
proven concept. Safe, lower cost, and more fair than any
other road racing. Adaptable format. Licensable worldwide.
Seeking investors, sponsors, or a buyer. Email:
KernFischer@gmail.com Phone: (417) 739-1448.
capitaL avaiLaBLe
SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS earning $200,000.
www.veryfastbusinessloans.com
educatiOn/instructiOn
MASTER OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEGREE AACSB
Accredited and 100% Online. Coursework focused
on your business, taught by real entrepreneurs. Visit
meblog.wcu.edu
FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING TEXT. Simplified for
business owner. Chapter 1 and 2 free. 1-(408) 245-0211.
FrancHises
FRANCHISE YOUR BUSINESS
30 years experience. National Franchise Associates, Inc.
(706) 356-5637.
AREA DEVELOPER-MASTER EXECUTIVE SALES FRANCHISE
Low Cost Start Up
Recurring Royalty Revenues
B-2-B Industry Size of $100 Billion
www.jantizeareadeveloper.com
704-503-7141
888-540-0001
WWW.ROOTERMANFRANCHISE.COM Low cost
franchise package: $3,975. High return! (800) 700-8062.
inventiOns
SELLING ALL RIGHTS TO the board game SCORE 123.
Triple levels of play - each level builds on the previous
level. Small, portable, 2-8 players, age 8-80+. Easy for
the young to learn - challenging for adults - hard to win.
KernFischer@gmail.com (417) 739-1448.
MOneyMaking OppOrtunities
$800 WEEKLY POTENTIAL! Process HUD/FHA refunds
from home. Free information available. Call (860) 357-
1599.
WE PROVIDE CONSUMER and business sales leads at
the lowest cost per lead anywhere. YourLeadBroker.com
TRENDS CAN MAKE YOU RICH! Shoot for the moon
and we’ll give you the stars! TheStarBiz.com
CASH LEVERAGING WORKS! Real. Quick.
Simple. Generate $1,000’s cash daily. 1-(800) 220-0665.
www.mycontinuouscash.com
ENTREPRENEURS! Business Platform for your business.
http://opportunitynews.spruz.com
BANK $500 - $1,000 PAYMENTS simple automated
system. www.TheSimpleBusiness.info
OF interest tO aLL
NEW IDENTITY. CREDIT. FREE MONEY. 500 sources.
Free catalog. 1-(800) 338-8484. www.EdenPress.com
XXX / EntrEprEnEur.com / September 2017
September 2017 / EntrEprEnEur.com / 103

Moving forward by looking back
IWords by Jerry Cohen, founder of EBBETS FIELD FLANNELS
Iloved baseball uniforms as a kid growing up in Brooklyn. I’d this random stuff around. I picked up one box and opened it. It contained
the actual, original cardboard templates for the Red Sox
spend hours looking at old photos of Jackie Robinson and
Babe Ruth, always in those classic flannel uniforms. That numbers. And they had the handwritten notes from the original
foldy, slightly baggy look they had—that was really what spoke supplier, a guy named Tim McAuliffe, on them. It must have dated
to me about baseball. I was fascinated by them.
from the ’60s. I asked if I could have it, and they said, “Sure.” They
Fast-forward to the ’70s and ’80s, when the worst of the didn’t care. They had no appreciation of the heritage of it.
garish, double-knit uniforms were really prevalent. I always Since then, my company has grown. We sell all over the world,
thought it was sad that Hank Aaron beat Babe Ruth’s
and we’ve worked with everyone from Ralph Lauren to J. Crew. And
home-run record in 1974 while wearing that awful Braves uniform, all this time, that box has been sitting on my desk like a talisman, a
instead of the classic one he’d worn for years. He looked like he was physical, visceral, intimate connection to the old uniform makers.
wearing a softball uniform. I was really offended by it.
But here’s the best part. For the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Red
So in the late ’80s, I quit my career as a musician to start a Sox “Impossible Dream Team,” the Sox actually called me to make
company dedicated to replicating the classic uniforms, made with the uniforms for all the surviving veterans. That meant I was able to
the classic materials, using the original manufacturing processes. get that box off my desk, which had probably the same exact
We sold my wife’s car for $500 and set up shop in our apartment. template used in 1967 to make Carl Yastrzemski’s uniform, and
I called the company Ebbets Field Flannels, after the former home make Carl Yastrzemski’s uniform, again. And this year, the Sox
of my father’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers.
called me to do the uniforms for the 50th. It’s a real honor.
This was before the internet, so research was hard work. I pored Building Ebbets Field Flannels was never about money for me.
over old trade manuals and traveled the country rooting through I wanted to touch people. I was an evangelist for the timeless
the archives of the old factories and fabric suppliers that used to baseball uniform style, and why it was better, and what was
make the uniforms. I remember offering to take bolts of fabric off beautiful about it. And that Sox home uniform is a perfect example.
their hands because they didn’t know what to do with it anymore. Every player who went through that organization from 1930 to
“You want this old wool?” they’d say. “I can’t use it.” Damn right I do! today is associated with that design, from Ted Williams to David
One day in the early ’90s, I was visiting the factory in New Ortiz. I love that. It really captures why I started this company all
England that used to make the Red Sox uniforms. And they had all those years ago. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
Tell us about a story, person, object, or something else that pushes you forward, and we may include it in a future issue. And we may make you
photograph or illustrate it, too. Email INSPIRE@ENTREPRENEUR.COM with the subject line “WHAT INSPIRES ME.”
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF JERRY COHEN
104 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2017

RETENT ON
Offer the right benefits. Keep the best employees.
At Afl ac, we know the best businesses understand the importance of keeping
top talent. When our products are offered as part of a total benefi ts package,
employees can get help with costs not covered by major medical insurance — with
cash benefits paid directly to them.* And with One Day Pay, SM we make it a priority to
pay claims as fast as possible.** In 2016, Aflac paid 1.8 million One Day Pay SM claims.
All so employees and businesses can stay focused on success. See what Aflac
can do for your business at aflac.com/retaintoptalent
*Afl ac pays policyholders directly, unless otherwise assigned. **One Day Pay SM available for most properly documented, individual claims submitted online through Afl ac SmartClaim® by 3 p.m. ET.
Afl ac SmartClaim® is available on most Accident, Cancer, Hospital, Specifi ed Health, and Intensive Care policies. Afl ac processes most other claims in about four days. Processing time is
based on business days after all required documentation needed to render a decision is received and no further validation and/or research is required. Individual Company Statistic, 2017.
Individual coverage is underwritten by American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus. In New York, individual coverage is underwritten by American Family Life Assurance
Company of New York. Worldwide Headquarters | 1932 Wynnton Road I Columbus, GA 31999.
Z170343 EXP 3/18

Helping your business
go farther. Literally.
IMPRESSIVE FUEL EFFICIENCY│INNOVATIVE SAFETY FEATURES
Almost anything is possible with Prius Prime. Its fuel-efficient design and EPA-estimated 133 MPGe 1
help lower your cost of ownership, while Toyota Safety Sense P (TSS-P) 2 helps drivers stay safe on
the road to success. Prius Prime is everything you need for your fleet. Learn more at fleet.toyota.com.
Prototype shown with options. Production model may vary. 1. 2017 Prius Prime EPA-estimated combined MPGe. Actual MPGe will vary depending upon driving conditions, how you drive and
maintain your vehicle, and other factors. Battery capacity will decrease with time and use. For more information, see www.fueleconomy.gov. 2. Drivers are responsible for their own safe driving.
Always pay attention to your surroundings and drive safely. Depending on the conditions of roads, weather and the vehicle, the system(s) may not work as intended. See Owner’s Manual for
additional limitations and details. ©2017 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.