How Success Happens

Robert Tuchman sits down with Sweetgreen Co-Founder & Chief Concept Officer Nicolas Jammet to discuss how the restaurant chain is facing the challenges of Covid. Nicolas also discusses the incredible growth of the company as America's leading healthy fast casual chain as well as Sweetgreen's focus on maintaining its authenticity and transparency as it expands.

Howard Mittman is the CEO of Bleacher Report the premiere digital destination for millennial and Gen Z sports fans. While many sports media companies have been hurting without live sports, Bleacher Report has been able to not only survive but thrive. In May, the broadcaster topped more than 1 billion video views for the third consecutive month across its social media channels. Mittman has helped BR disrupt and revolutionize content experiences for sports fans around the globe in good times and bad.

Suri Kasirer is a born New Yorker and advocate. She founded Kasirer in 1997 out of a studio apartment on the Upper West Side—and a lifelong commitment to championing people, progress and policy in the city. Suri and her team have established an unparalleled record of success in New York City a place that some might say can be difficult to get things done.

Josh Luber founded StockX with fellow entrepreneur and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert after they both literally came up with the same idea separately. Amazingly enough they found each other and they decided to go at it together building StockX into a billion dollar "Stock Market" for sneakers. Josh shows us how following your passion while never giving up can eventually lead to incredible success.

Marc Forgione is a Celebrity Chef, Iron Chef, and a man who launched a restaurant in downtown New York City six months prior to the Great Financial Crisis. Marc never wavered and eventually his restaurant thrived. Today he is navigating an even more difficult time for restaurants during the world's current pandemic. It's an awful time for restaurant owners and so many small businesses in our country. Listening to Marc you will see why he offers a ray of hope for so many owners of small businesses right now.

James Daunt is the CEO of Barnes & Noble, who was brought in to lead the company last August to help with what was already a challenging situation for the bookseller even before the Coronavirus pandemic hit. Prior to coming on board at Barnes & Noble, Daunt had turned around Waterstones one of the largest bookselling chains in all of Europe. Today, he faces incredible challenges but like any great entrepreneur he is pushing ahead and continuing to focus on his plan through the current crisis.

Stoney Clover Lane was founded by sisters Kendall and Libby Glazer from their Rochester, New York bedroom when they were just 17 and 15 respectively. Ten years later their candy-colored classics and personalized patches have become well-known for bringing some much-needed personality to the highly uniform category of travel accessories has reimagined everyday organization through their line of travel accessories designed to spark self-expression.

Steve Martocci is the founder of music tech platform Splice. Martocci first started in the tech business by co-founding the group-messaging service GroupMe, which sold to Skype in August 2011 for $85 million, when he was just 27. In 2013 he co-founded Splice, a technology platform for music creators that streamlines the process of creating and sharing music. Then in 2014 he co-founded Blade, a private plane service. In total, Martocci’s startups have raised over $100 million.

The Swiss financier, Thomas Flohr, started his private jet charter company in 2004, just a few years after 9/11 sent aircraft sales spiraling. It wasn’t the last time world events or market downturns would affect Flohr’s business. The 2008 financial crisis came with plenty of challenges, but as Flohr told me he managed to turn those obstacles into fuel for Vista Jet. And today in these times of a new global crisis around the COVID-19 Flohr still continues to move his company forward.

In 2002, Brent and his brother Brad launched Exclusive Resorts, and quickly became pioneers in the destination club industry. Then, in 2011 the Handler brothers launched Inspirato, a luxury travel club with an impressive roster of exclusive experiences and bespoke travel itineraries. Now Inspirato offers a ground-breaking subscription model, which lets members pay a flat monthly rate for unlimited bookings at Inspirato’s exclusive luxury properties around the world.

They say every “overnight success” takes 10 years, and that’s something reality TV tycoon Brent Montgomery knows all too well. In 2014, Brent sold an 80% stake of his production group Leftfield Entertainment for $360 million—the most lucrative nonfiction television deal ever made in North America. But if you rewind ten years, you’d find Brent producing wedding videos in New York City. He was working 80-100 hour work weeks with minimal pay, hustling to land a ticket into the entertainment business.

A movie is a piece of entertainment. But a movie is also a business. There are budgets, payroll, marketing—you name it. Michelle Ganeless, the former President of Comedy Central, Alysia Reiner, an actress famous for her role on Orange is the New Black, and her husband, the accomplished actor David Alan Basche talk about how making their movie, EGG, was very much like building a business.

Melissa Ben-Ishay is the founder of Baked by Melissa. When she was let go from her job, she had no idea what to do. But her brother suggested she start baking. Melissa wasn’t sure if her love for baking as a real business opportunity or just a distraction. But he encouraged her to nurture her creative instincts, and boy did it pay off. Those little colorful cupcakes ended up in the hands of some influential people, and now Baked by Melissa is arguably the most successful cupcake company in the world.

Daniella Yacobovsky the co founder of BaubleBar the go-to online retailer for on-trend jewelry seemed to understand early on that failures she had in her business were just part of the necessary process needed to eventually find success. She built BaubleBar into a major fashion accessories business by failing her way to success. Figuring out the right answers by making the wrong decisions. Even today when she launches new jewelry products its a continual process of testing, failing, learning and growing.

Leah Cohen started in the restaurant business way before the #metoo movement. Many people might know her from her wildly successful New York City restaurant Pig and Cow. Or her brand new restaurant Piggyback. Others possibly know her from her appearance on Season 5 of Top Chef. But most don't realize her success didn't happen overnight. She put in a lot of years working for a variety of chefs and restauranteurs before taking her own leap into entrepreneurship.

Melody Mcloskey founded StyleSeat - the premiere marketplace for beauty and barbering services. It has generated more than $6.5 billion in revenue for its small business customers and powered more than 120 million appointments in 16,000-plus cities across the U.S. But Melody actually sat on this idea for two years. She was passionate about it, but she was afraid of taking the leap. She had so many personal doubts, fears and insecurities holding her back. So, what did it take for Melody to finally dive in and just go for it?

Alan Fuerstman started his career in the hotel industry as a doorman at a Marriott in New Jersey. He then worked his way up to captain of the bell stand, and then onto major hotels across the country, then helping Steve Wynn at the Bellagio. He then came up with an idea for a new type of hotel. It would be an ultra-luxury property that allowed people to be causal, not stuffy like the other luxury hotels of the time. He called it Montage, and built it in Laguna Beach California. And he was right. It set the standard for a new type of luxury property, and is now one of the most well-known ultra-luxury brands in the industry, with multiple properties around the world.

There are over one billion people globally living with disabilities, but up until a few years ago no one in the fashion industry was making clothes for them. That was until Mindy Scheier started Runway of Dreams, a nonprofit that partnered with Tommy Hilfiger to create an adaptable clothing line. More recently, Mindy launched Gamut, a business that helps people with disabilities to find work in the adaptive economy.

Marc Merrill is the Co-Founder of Riot Games. Riot created League of Legends, one of the most popular video games of all time. League of Legends World Championship rivals the Super Bowl viewership — with close to 100 million last year. The company even brought in $1.5 billion in revenue this past year. But when Marc started the company, there were times they barely had funds left to pay employees. They had disastrous technical failures at their live events, and nearly went out of business many times.

There is a reason we choose to pay $5 for a cup of coffee. The customers aren't paying for the coffee, they are paying for the experience of being at Starbucks. Danny Meyer the famed restauranteur was doing this before the term "experience economy" was even coined back in the 1990's. He opened his first restaurant in New York City called Union Square Cafe back in 1985 and one thing he has always done better than anyone else in the business is offer an incredible experience.

Starting a business at any time can be scary but how about dropping out of school to start a business during the greatest recession in the history of the world? To make a move like that can be downright frightening. Alexa Von Tobel literally left Harvard Business School before graduating to pursue her mission to educate everyday Americans on how to manage their own finances.

Jarrod Moses went from being a college intern at Grey Advertising to becoming its youngest president ever. He was a 30-year-old boss of a major publicly traded company, and regularly faced age discrimination because of it. But it didn’t stop him. He went on to found the United Entertainment Group—a joint venture with Hollywood powerhouse Untied Talent Agency, that would produce branded entertainment for General Mills, AT&T, Starbucks, and more of the world’s largest brands.

Jake Schwartz started a company called General Assembly that just sold to the big human resource company Adecco Group for a reported 413 million dollars. After graduating from Yale and thinking he learned all he needed to to succeed in business, Schwartz got smacked in the face with reality. He realized education and the way people were learning was changing. GA started with relevant classes that people were willing to pay for because they were making investments in themselves.

Lesley Eccles is the co-founder and former head of marketing of FanDuel, the billion-dollar fantasy sports company. She started it with her husband Nigel in a tiny office in Scotland, and it went on to help change the law about sports betting across America. But despite the company’s success, Lesley and Nigel didn’t get to enjoy the spoils. Their relationship with their investors fell apart, and they left the business in 2017 having made almost no money on the deal and retaining no interest in the business.

Randi Zuckerberg was one of the first employees at Facebook. She contributed on many fronts in those early days of Facebook, and was responsible for creating the Facebook Live tool that today is used by billions of people. But something nagged at her. She would often look around while on meetings and realize she was the only woman there. And she felt called to fix that—not just in Silicon Valley, but everywhere.

Stacy Madison is the Founder of Stacy’s Pita Chips. In this episode we learn all about the story of how this company rose to the top. After its massive success, Stacy sold her pita chip company to Pepsi. Stacy went on to launch her own Juice Bar where the homemade energy bars were such a hit that they have become her latest venture. BeBOLD bars contain a few high end, simple ingredients where nothing is processed: just mixed, pressed, and packed.