We call them the annual “best of the best”—the franchises that rank not only in our increasingly competitive Franchise 500 list but also at the top of their respective industry categories. This year’s crop of companies really proved themselves, manag

YOU’RE THINKING the right way about your business—not only about the importance of ideas from your team but the role you need to play to encourage them. When I first started hiring people, an entrepreneur I knew gave me terrible advice: He said that

Sean Manning kept following the money. At first he was just a successful accountant, and his clients kept saying they needed help with payroll services. That’s why, in 2008, he launched a company called Payroll Vault to help small-business owners man

“IN MY GLAMOROUS LIFE of being a mogul today,” Bethenny Frankel says, “I cleaned up dog poop and steamed lotion off the carpet.” We are talking at 6 p.m. on a Thursday. It’s been quite a day. The dog poop was the dog’s fault. The lotion was Frankel’s

PREPARES FOR PANDEMIC PUPS “FOR A DOG, the pandemic has been the best thing,” says Neil Gill, president and CEO of Dogtopia. After all, when offices first shuttered and employees shifted to spending their days at home, pups enjoyed spending ample tim

“We first ask any potential vendor about their sustainability practices to make sure our values are aligned. If they are, we experiment with small-batch orders to ensure that any wrinkles can get ironed out early on without affecting the supply chain

Henry Ford. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. Disruptive entrepreneurs may upend industries in different ways, but they have one thing in common: They don’t think like the people they disrupt. They look at the world differently—and, in my experience, more emoti

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

For chocolate lovers, the name Max Brenner conjures the image of a bald man. But few may know who that bald man is—or how much this brand hurt and taught him. Here’s the short of it: Max Brenner is a restaurant and retail shop with 50-plus locations

Yasmeen Tadia once used an upside-down box as a makeshift standing desk. But as her company grew—her gourmet cotton candy business, Make Your Life Sweeter, now serves the likes of Facebook, Lyft, and Marc Jacobs—she felt it was time to upgrade her wo

HERE’S A GREAT PARADOX OF entrepreneurship: We barely have enough time to finish our own work—but to truly succeed, completing our own work isn’t enough. We must do other people’s work, too! It’s exhausting, isn’t it? But let’s not forget how necessa

He’d said that yesterday, too. Time was running out. The year was 2013, and I’d just launched my workwear and apron startup, Hedley & Bennett. Today our aprons are standard in kitchens; we’re used in more than 6,000 restaurants across the U.S., and w

Kim Gubera may seem like an unlikely CEO for Pirtek. The industrial-services franchise performs hydraulic and industrial hose repair. But Gubera doesn’t have an engineering background. She was trained as an accountant, and she joined the company in 2

That’s what Elon Musk tweeted on January 31. Hours later, his event reportedly broke records for Clubhouse attendance. Then Mark Zuckerberg showed up on Clubhouse later that week. Then Serena Williams, Joe Rogan, Bill Gates, and Dwayne “the Rock” Joh

Moderating on Clubhouse is so complex, it’s often too much for one person to handle. In addition to selecting speakers from the audience, a good moderator must also actively conduct the conversation—which gets complicated in rooms that may have a doz

Starting and growing a new franchise system is challenging during even the best of times—let alone in the middle of a pandemic. And yet, for many newer franchisors, the year 2020 was a trial by fire that made them stronger. In fact, being newer to fr

When someone enters my company’s El Paso, Texas, headquarters, they’re certain to see a bright-red pair of Nike Air Jordan 11 shoes. I have them displayed in my office. And if they look closely, they’ll notice the shoes are signed. “Is that Michael J

I often say that starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and building an airplane on the way down. It’s a vivid metaphor that contains a lot of truths. First, you’ll need courage and optimism. You have to believe you can pull it off. Next, you

Meetings had to happen in the same room. Relationships were built on specific experiences. Work demanded certain specifications. Then a global pandemic proved us wrong. I first realized this in COVID-19’s early days. I have two young boys, and they d

Fifteen years ago, Tom Epstein launched Franchise Payments Network for one simple reason: He didn’t see any vendors catering to the franchising industry. “Franchises are all about creating consistency for the customer, but we didn’t see anyone offeri

The scene opens in hell. We see flames. We hear screams. Then the camera closes in on Satan himself—big horns, giant pectorals, bright red skin—as he slumps over on his throne. His phone buzzes. He glances at the screen. “You’re a match!” it says. Sa

I always assumed I’d work in academia, but then I took a ballet course in my 30s. I did it on a whim while getting my Ph.D. in English, thinking it might be fun. Instead, it was transformative. It empowered me to identify as an artist and to redirect