This Entrepreneur Said Yes Too Many Times. Then He Learned to Say No

This is an episode of our podcast, Problem Solvers. Each week, an entrepreneur reveals how they overcame an unexpected problem in their business -- and were happier and more successful as a result. The show is hosted by Entrepreneur's editor in chief, Jason Feifer. Listen below, or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Crown & Caliber

Entrepreneurs love to say yes. We're vision people. We're enthusiastic. We see opportunity everywhere, and we want to seize it. Yes, yes, yes!

But sometimes, yes isn't actually such a good thing. Just take it from Hamilton Powell, who founded a online ecommerce site for secondhand watches called Crown & Caliber.

"As an inexperienced CEO, I was chasing a lot of different opportunities," he says. "Anything that was shiny, I was kind of going after."

Related: Why This Entrepreneur Broke Up With His Biggest Client

Soon his employees were calling him the "Good Idea Fairy." He was working 100-hour weeks, barely had time to see his family, was feeling lonely and stressing out his employees.

Powell knew he needed to make a change. He needed to fix how he was running the company. And above all, that meant one thing: "Essentially killing the Good Idea Fairy," he says.

That's why Powell hired a former military man as his COO, who came in with a challenging and firm philosophy: To grow the company, he'd first need to break it.

Two years later, Crown & Caliber is a very different company. It recently completed its 15,000th transaction, expects to double business in 2018 and end up with about $45 million in revenue. And how did it happen? How was the company broken for the better? In this episode of Problem Solvers, we explore how everything started with one fatal blow: They killed the Good Idea Fairy.

Anyone who's ever had to sign and mail a paper document has wondered: There's got to be a better way to do this. And there is! SignEasy is a easy-to-use, simple and legal way to digitally sign documents. You can sign them yourself, from anywhere and on any device, or send documents to customers, partners, or colleagues for signing, and even track the progress of documents and get notified when a document is signed. And if someone's late in signing, you can send them a reminder. With SignEasy, there's no reason to deal with documents you have to print and sign and put in a mailbox. SignEasy is faster, easier, and safer. To get started for free go to getsigneasy.com/podcast.

ProsperWorks knows what everyone in sales knows: CRMs are really tedious. "Somewhere along the way," its website says, "CRM got really hard to use." And that's why ProsperWorks has built a CRM that's the opposite. By integrating with tools you're already using and eliminating repetitive tasks with automation, ProsperWorks is beautiful, easy to use and drives productivity to help you and your team sell more, faster. Try ProsperWorks for free by using our link.