Stop Being Interchangeable

How do you find your first customers? It’s a question first-time founders are often flummoxed by. But Keith Krach has developed a tried-and-true strategy—starting during his days at Ariba (which sold for billions), and extending into his current time as chairman of Docusign. In this special live edition of Problem Solvers, taped at Entrepreneur Live in 2018, Keith explains how to turn a company’s first customers into valuable ambassadors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a noisy world. If you want to succeed, you must learn to stand out — or to become, as Jason calls it, "singular." In this episode, he offers a formula for increasing your value: Instead of relying on your expertise or quality of products alone, you must combine that expertise with a well-communicated unique perspective. Here’s how to become the only person people think of when they need what you do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the 450th episode. Okay, it's actually the 451st. But close enough. Every 50 episodes, Jason steps back and reflects on the show: how it's changed, why it's changed, and what he's learned from making it. And this time, he shares the formula for why it’s changed over the years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danielle Sepsy started developing her secret scone recipe at 13. That recipe built The Hungry Gnome. But to grow, she had to share it with her team, and eventually with the world in her new book, The Scone Queen Bakes. So how do you scale a secret without losing your edge? Danielle figured it out. And this week, she's telling us how. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if the secret to winning in business isn't competing better? What if it's competing less? That's the idea behind category creation. And this week, Jason is speaking with Kevin Maney, co-author of The Category Creation Formula, to break down exactly how it works. Kevin lays out a simple but powerful formula for creating and owning your category. Drawing on real-world examples ranging from the minivan to White Claw, Maney shares his strategies for success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone says to “build your personal brand,” but how do you actually do that on LinkedIn? In this episode, Jason talks with Laura Lorenzetti, Senior Director and Executive Editor at LinkedIn News, about what really works and what doesn’t. They walk through how to create content that sparks conversation and build a repeatable strategy for growing your personal brand. Along the way, they bust some common LinkedIn myths, and Laura shares when the perfect time to post on LinkedIn really is. Whether you're growing a business or a career, this is how to make LinkedIn work for you. This is a new edit of an older episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Jason is sharing something different and special. His wife, Jennifer Miller, has a new podcast — a true-crime story about mistaken identity, impossible choices, and one man who goes to prison for his twin brother's crime. It's called Blood Will Tell. Here, you'll find the first episode. You can find the rest by subscribing to Blood Will Tell wherever you listen to Problem Solvers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Melissa Bernstein co-founded Melissa & Doug and built it into a billion-dollar children's toy company. Along the way, she learned a lot about entrepreneurship, which she shares in her new book The Heart of Entrepreneurship. Today, for the first time publicly, she shares the three-part strategy she used to fight back and what happened the moment new ownership stopped following it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every entrepreneur has been told to push through, stay the course, and that grit is everything. But advice like that leaves out that some of the smartest, most successful people in business got there by quitting at exactly the right moment. So how do you know when that moment is? Dr. Anthony Klotz, organizational psychologist and author of Jolted, has spent years studying exactly this question. He joins the show to share his framework for figuring out whether you should stay and fight harder, or finally walk away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kevin Smith went from making art to being the art and learned the hard way that when you become the product, there's no off switch. In this episode, Smith breaks down how he's stayed relevant for 30 years by treating fans like the bosses they actually are. Plus: Jason shares how he once convinced his college to spend their full year's speaker budget just to get Kevin Smith on campus and what happened when they talked afterward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices