Why A Hit Product Turned Into A Flop
It’s the case of the mysteriously popular growler! The e-commerce company Huckberry sold tons of growlers during the holiday season—but the people who bought the growlers disappeared afterwards. They never came back to buy more products, which was very unusual for Huckberry. What was going on? The answer forced the company to rethink its entire marketing approach. (Here’s a hint: The buyers weren’t who Huckberry expected.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
22 Huhti 201915min
"Kill Your Business With A Better Business"
What do you do when conditions change, and your business starts to fail? You could try to save the business. Or, you could “kill your business with a better business”—essentially take what you’ve learned from the failing business, and create a new one that thrives. That was the strategy employed by Adam Schwartz, who killed his t-shirt business called BustedTees with another one called TeePublic. (And “kill your business with a better business” is a direct quote from him.) On this episode, he walks us through the transition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
15 Huhti 201919min
The Terrible Lesson of Chain Stores
Be honest: What do you do when the world around you changes? Most people probably say they change along with the world... but few actually do. Most people resist. And resistance leads nowhere. That’s the big lesson of the rise of chain stores, a transformational event in American business that pitted entrepreneur against entrepreneur, and ultimately led to some big lessons in what it takes to be competitive. This episode comes to us from Pessimists Archive, another podcast hosted by Problem Solvers host Jason Feifer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
8 Huhti 201941min
Get What You Want By Providing Value, With Mazda's CMO
How do you get what you want—from customers, partners, investors, and more? You don’t just come out and ask for it! Instead, you focus on what THEY want, and how you can deliver it. In this episode, Mazda CMO Dino Bernacchi and host Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) and discuss how this works, and why entrepreneurs and brands must always stay relentlessly focused on value. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 Huhti 201922min
He Waited Too Long To Fire People
It’s a classic managerial mistake: You know an employee isn't working out, and yet you give them more time. You hope—foolishly, of course!—for some magical turnaround. And in the meantime, your company suffers from that employee's bad work. This is what happened to James Heller of the startup Wrapify, but at a bigger scale. He was growing his new advertising company, and hired a sales team he thought would lead to fast growth. Instead, the team stumbled and James moved too slowly to fix the problem. On this episode, we learn what happened when James gave his employees more time... and how he finally learned to take control. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
25 Maalis 201916min
Smarties Embraced Change After 69 Years
You know Smarties. It’s a classic American candy—and so classic, in fact, that its leadership became afraid to make any branding changes. As a result, decades passed and the brand looked increasingly stale. Then a new generation of leaders took over the company and had to wrestle with a big question: What’s worth changing… and what’s worth keeping the same? On this episode of Problem Solvers, Smarties co-president Liz Dee takes us through the change that’s rolling out onto stores now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
18 Maalis 201919min
How to Treat Art Like A Business
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
11 Maalis 201921min
Know When (Or When Not) To Quit
When things are going wrong, how do you know whether or not to keep going? That's the question that faced Kabir Shahani of Amperity, a company that, in its early days, missed a huge deadline and seemed unable to develop the technology it needed to thrive. Important, difficult questions had to be answered. Investors wanted to make sure their money wasn't being squandered. And in the end, Kabir learned an important lesson—both about when to keep going, and how to measure success. Episode sponsored by Shapr - https://bit.ly/2U0InkC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
4 Maalis 201919min
