That Will Never Work

Many great entrepreneurial ideas were spawned in response to the pandemic.  For this week’s guest Kyle it all began with him wondering how he could recreate the in-person feeling of reading bedtime stories to his child in Canada when he was stuck in Texas while the borders were shut.  He also worried about how he could stop kids like his from falling behind.  His solution is the Edsoma app. 

So far every...

Many people dream about their passion project becoming a full time gig but Allison is one of those rare people who made it a reality.  Her love for honey bees became the Siller Pollinator Company and the initial momentum was gratifying.  But growth has stalled and this has her at a juncture… Can Marc help her find her scalability sweet-spot?

Listen in for actionable tips on finding your focus and getting your busi...

Have you ever wondered what people do with the advice that Marc gives them on the show?

Well, David Silberman, co-founder of PingPod, is here to tell you just that.

The first time he and Marc talked, David was trying to strategize the growth of his ping pong venue business and one of the hot topics was whether to buy or lease locations. 

Now that the company has been in business for a while, find out how things have evol...

How earth friendly are the so-called “earth friendly” products?  In the opinion of this week’s guest Justine Potashnik - not very.

But she believes she has the answer in her Advanced Soapberry Formula, derived from Himalayan tree nuts.

A product like this has a higher cost to create than its competitors, which has her at a juncture - should the company take a lower margin to get onto shelves faster or focus on being pre...

Belissimo Hats has achieved something rare in today’s market – the company has an enthusiastic celebrity following without ever having to pay a dime in influencer marketing money.   They can count mega stars like Jamie Foxx and Snoop Dogg among the fans who just love to post about wearing their product. 

But the problem is co-founders, brothers Levi and Yossi Chayo, are still trying to do it all themselves. &...

Faith has a patent pending product and she thinks it’s time to take it out to investors.  Trouble is, as an Entrepreneurship & Marketing Junior her live pitching experience for The Shaving Step was limited to student pitch contests.   So what does that mean now that she wants to get real world investment?  

Listen in for a masterclass from Marc on how to get yourself ready to take your product out to...

Natasha’s dream wedding went up in flames just before the big day.  As she picked up the pieces of the breakdown of her nine year relationship, she had a realization: she was in way more need of all those items from her gift registry now than she had ever been when she and her fiancé were still together.   As she moved back into her parents’ basement she had a lightbulb moment - there was a whole potential indust...

Have you ever wondered what people do with the advice Marc gives them?  This week’s guest Paul Fontanelli was in the planning stages of his Bolder Adventure Park when he appeared as one of the first guests on the show.  His business is an ambitious indoor venue out of Grand Prairie, Texas, which seeks to bring together everything from rock climbing to ice-skating under one massive roof.  

He had question...

Sometimes entrepreneurs get so caught up in making their idea perfect, they forget to collide it with reality. Is that what’s happening to this week’s guest Reilly? 

His site Fleur.ai seeks to disrupt and democratize the art world. But it’s been tough. It’s an idea he and his co-founders passionately believe the world needs but it’s also a pitch that Marc’s heard a few times before.

So what makes Fleur di...

Ben is stuck.  He’s the founder of outdoor pop-up concept WEDriveIns, which repurposes disused urban parking lots as drive-in movie theaters. City officials have been gratifyingly swift to support the project which provides Covid safe entertainment and brings customers to shopping areas.  It all looks so promising… So why can’t Ben scale?

Well, he needs the permission of the movie studios to use the technology to ...

Matt has an intriguing question - can a founder work just six months of the year and still have a successful business? Frightmare - his UK based scare attraction - turns a great profit every year.   But while the event itself is seasonal, he’s realized that to be a success the business needs backroom staff year round.  But he’d rather spend the off season in his camper, driving between the ski resorts of Europe. ...

Krystina decided to take the leap and try to make her home- bakery business her full time gig just before the pandemic hit. 

While most people would have hit pause, she instead reimagined her offering and The Messy Cookie home kit was born.  Big names like Wayfair and Ebay jumped on board for her delicious virtual team-building escape.  But while she’s been able to get in the virtual door once, she’s st...

Some industries don’t want to be disrupted, but that doesn’t mean you should step back from the fight!  This week’s guest Alex Koefman knows he has a solution that surgeons like him all over the world need – but he needs to form partnerships with medical device companies in order for his SurgeryTV app to be successful.   The trouble is, they just aren’t biting.

The current system of creating an archive of videos i...

When bars and pubs across the world closed during the pandemic, so did their game nights… For this week’s guest Mark Walsh it was a heart-stopping moment as British pub quizzes were his business.

 He immediately set to work reimagining this unique style of trivia entertainment for remote times by creating his Kwizzbit app.   

 The growth has been so fast that his lean team has been working to redevel...

There are few industries more resistant to disruption than education… But despite the odds, this week’s guest Benny Boas seems to be making some headway.   

He’s the founder of Upright Education, a bootcamp-style program aimed at helping adult learners rapidly re-skill in tech. The course is intended to be white-labeled at colleges. But while the program runs at a fast pace, the company’s growth isn’t… The ma...

City red tape seems so baked into American life, that it stopped being a problem people even bothered trying to solve. But when Covid hit, it forced the opportunity for change. Businesses – especially restaurants - faced fast changing regulations and had to be able to get the new permits they needed to operate at speed, or face going under. No business, means no city tax and the city itself facing a funding shortfall.

This ...

Where to put the mountains of trash humans create is a problem that only seems to keep growing. Recycling is one part of solving the problem… the other is having consumer products last longer so we don’t create as much garbage to begin with.  That’s the thinking of this week’s guest Chris Burrage, founder of San Francisco based Proclamation Goods.  

With some savvy social media, the company’s core product – a...

Stephanie’s cracked the hardest part – her Austin, TX, designer boutiques have seen record growth this past year despite the pandemic.  She knows for a fact she’s taking sales away from the big hitters like Nordstroms, Revolve and Amazon - her customers just prefer the personal touch she brings to the sales experience. 

But now that she’s setting her sights on expanding into other cities she’s got a hurdle to over...

In the summer of 1998, Reed and I flew up to Seattle to meet with Jeff Bezos to discuss nothing other than potentially selling Netflix to Amazon. It was a decision that would have serious implications. Listen to me tell the whole story in this free chapter from the audiobook of the international bestseller: That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea, now available in Paperback!

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