Jeremy Schneiderman didn’t want to lose momentum. His company, YuJet, launched its battery-powered surfboard just before the pandemic hit. As his team went remote, he wanted a better way for everyone to connect—because grainy, poorly lit video chats

Rebecca Minkoff has impeccable timing, but it sometimes punks her. Back in 2001, she slashed and fabbed-up an “I love New York’’ T-shirt for actress Jenna Elfman, who wore it on The Tonight Show a month after 9/11. It put Minkoff on the map. Then her

Quick-service chicken restaurants have become a booming, hyper-competitive space in recent years. Although Sam Wong spent 10 years of his career at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, he’s now happy to put all his eggs in the Pollo Campero basket. Wong is the

I still remember the first time somebody tasted one of our sauces and said, ‘Ugh, not for me,’” Lisa Tran says. It was 2017, and Tran had just made one of the biggest, most emotionally wrought decisions of her life. She’d created a line of Vietnamese

Pritesh Benjamin may have entered the restaurant business, but he had no interest in working in the kitchen. He was an ER nurse looking for a way to create easy additional income, and he thought he’d found the perfect opportunity by becoming a franch

The minute you start trying too hard, that’s when Gen Z is like, Bye.” That’s the advice of Dahye Jung, a strategy analyst at Sid Lee, the global creative agency that works with businesses like Dos Equis and The North Face. Every day, at least one of

America runs on Dunkin’, as the slogan goes—and Dunkin’ runs on multi-unit franchisees. The company has around 2,300 franchisees within its system, and an estimated 85 percent are multiunit operators. A handful even qualify as “mega” franchisees, wit

John Berkowitz grabbed a surfboard, paddled out into open water, and let loose nearly a year’s worth of anxiety. “I just screamed,” he says. “At the top of my lungs. It was the most incredible PTSD scream I’ve ever done.” Berkowitz had begun 2020 try

Want to do something radical? Order a cocktail from your local bar or restaurant, and then walk out the door with it. Prior to the pandemic, that act was illegal almost everywhere in America. Cocktails had to be consumed on premises. They couldn’t be

At Bearaby, it is totally acceptable to sleep on the job. The weighted-blanket startup—which saw revenue soar to more than $21 million in 2020 as consumers looked for ways to de-stress during the pandemic—is built upon a culture of “sleep wellness.”

WHEN YOU TELL your story, you may be leaving out the best part. I see this happen all the time. Entrepreneurs share their story online or onstage, or tell it to customers, investors, or people like me—and they wonder why it isn’t resonating. The resu

“In the current climate, customers are largely spending their money with brands they know and trust. That is a challenge for a new brand like ours, which launched weeks before the pandemic and hasn’t had the same amount of time to build that trust. T

He knows that, as an entrepreneur, you’re trying to shove as much information into your brain as you can, and to do it as fast as possible. He knows that is frustrating, especially in our current moment of great change, because you can never move as

Successful franchises all look different, but they have one big thing in common: The franchisor and the franchisees must be in sync. Creating (and maintaining) a culture of unity isn’t easy, but it’s the ultimate key to success—and it starts with a c

Phenix Salon Suites didn’t know it had a pandemic-perfect business model. But in 2020, the franchise—which rents private workspaces to individual beauty professionals—quickly realized that it was able to help a challenged industry deliver one-on-one

WING ON WO & CO. began in 1890 as a general store in New York’s Chinatown. Now it’s a porcelain shop run by Mei Lum, 30, the founder’s great-great-granddaughter. She took over in 2016, when her grandmother could no longer run the shop herself—but tha

The box arrived from India and contained my future. Inside was the first prototype of my company’s first product. But to open the box, I used something from my past. It was a knife given to me by my father when he taught me the greatest lesson of my

Amazing Lash Studio exists to make its customers look good. The eyelash-extension franchise serves members at 260 studios across the United States. But from a business standpoint, Amazing Lash also exists to serve its network of staff and franchisees

Urban Air Adventure Park is trying to corner the market on fun. The company launched in 2011 as an indoor trampoline park, but as competition in that space grew, it doubled down on good times and has now evolved into a full-fledged indoor adventure p

HAVE A PROBLEM WE CAN SOLVE FOR YOU? TELL US AT HELPME@ENTREPRENEUR.COM Q I run a small business, but a big company just offered me a great position with more money than I’m making now. What do I do? —ELIZABETH, SEATTLE IT’S IRONIC, isn’t it? Entrepr

How do we take action? We asked ourselves that question all last year, as the pandemic triggered painful layoffs and worldwide protests against racial injustice got us thinking deeper about who we were as a company. As we dug into our own decisions a

Henry Langer is 12. He has turquoise hair, lives in Los Angeles, and has a lot to keep him entertained at home—two pet pigs, two dogs, a cat, a chameleon, and a leopard gecko, all rescues, and he’s gunning for an iguana. But what he doesn’t have acce

Every industry can be disrupted—and Yousuf Ali knows that well. He spent decades as an old-school marketer, until he got outmoded by new digital tools. That’s why, as he sought a career in franchising, he decided to bet on a forward-thinking brand th

In every issue of Entrepreneur, we publish a series we call Office Space. For years, each edition has featured an intriguing company; we’d photograph some of the team in their office and ask about their work culture. For our April/May 2020 issue, we

When Jean Brownhill walked into her Brooklyn home in 2007 and saw a gaping hole in the ceiling, she knew she was dealing with a renovation gone wrong. Brownhill had built a career in architecture and construction—if she struggled to find a reliable g

My husband, glass sculptor and artist Dale Chihuly, has bipolar disorder. He started suffering from periods of depression as a college student in the ’60s, but he wasn’t diagnosed until he reached his early 50s. That was about the time he and I met—I