How to Start a Business
Call the Customers Who Left
When a business starts to slide, the instinct is to look forward. New offer, new marketing, new website, new niche. What almost nobody does is look back at the people who already told them something was wrong, by leaving. Former clients and lapsed customers are the...
Instagram Was What Was Left After They Cut Everything Else
In 2009, Kevin Systrom started building an app called Burbn. It was a location check-in app, the kind that was fashionable at the time, and it did a lot. You could check in at places, make plans with friends, earn points for going out and post photos. In March 2010 he...
Kraft Started With $65, a Rented Wagon and Cheese That Kept Going Bad
In 1903, James L. Kraft was a partner in a small cheese company in Buffalo, New York. While he was away on a business trip to Chicago, his partners dissolved the partnership without him. He was stuck in a strange city with no business and, by most accounts, $65 to his...
A Number You Can’t Act On Today Is Entertainment
Check your business numbers on a schedule, not on impulse, and only check the ones that would change what you do this week. Count how many times a day you look at a number about your business. Sales so far this month. Site visits. Follower count. Open rate on the last...
Give the Old Business a Deadline
Most turnaround stories skip the hardest part. They tell you what the company pivoted from and what it pivoted to, and they leave out the months in between when the old business was still paying the bills, the new one wasn't paying anything, and the founder was...
Avon Started as a Book Salesman’s Free Gift
In the 1880s, David McConnell sold books door to door in upstate New York. It was hard work with a low hit rate, and he needed something to get past the front door. So he started offering a small vial of perfume, which he made himself, as a thank-you to any woman who...
3M Was a Mining Company With Nothing to Mine
In 1902, five businessmen in Two Harbors, Minnesota, put their money into a mining operation. The plan was straightforward: dig up corundum, the hard mineral used in grinding wheels, and sell it to manufacturers. They called the company Minnesota Mining and...
The Five-Minute Testimonial
Ask for the testimonial in the same message where the client says they're happy, ask three specific questions instead of "would you write something," and offer to draft it from their answers. Every small business has a folder of glowing emails from clients and a...
The Podcasting Platform That Became Twitter
Long before Twitter existed, its founders were running a different company entirely — a podcasting platform called Odeo, built on the bet that podcasting was about to become mainstream. The bet had reasonably good timing until it didn't. Shortly after Odeo launched,...
How to Tell If You’re About to Quit Too Early
Not every struggling business is one pivot away from a turnaround story. Plenty of businesses fail because the underlying idea genuinely doesn't work, and continuing to push isn't wisdom — it's just delay. The harder question, and the one worth asking honestly, is how...
Entrepreneur Magazine
- 3 Ways Founders Can Protect Margins When Growth Slows September 30, 2026Reduce the cost and complexity of scaling with these three strategies.
- Here’s What It Takes to Become an Industry Leader — and Stay There September 30, 2026Are you ready to reach the top of the mountain in your industry?
- How Businesses Can Reduce Operational Downtime Without Sacrificing Safety or Quality September 30, 2026Here's why rushing to recover lost time backfires — and what to do instead.