hi there, everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg and welcome to "your business." today's story started with an e-mail. we were invited to stuart, florida, to see what life is like there on main street usa. but as it turned out, there's actually two main streets. this is a tale of two main streets that call stuart home. and while the business districts are in different stages of development, the local community is dedicated to seeing them both succeed. >> they may be known as two business districts but i think they're still one. >> phil moore, the owner of the stuart coffee company in stuart, florida, knows his city on the treasure coast is unique. >> years ago i think those districts were a little different. but now, the lines are crossed. >> unlike most places, this community of about 16,000 residents has more than one main street. it actually has two. and they're not even a mile apart. >> when you give people more to come to, it expands that customer base, which is good for all of us. >> both historic downtown stuart, and the east stuart neighborhood are getting plenty of attention. >> you're seeing partnerships, and you're seeing a full calendar of promotional events, along with a real healthy dialogue between merchants in the city about how to create a business friendly environment. >> she manages both the stuart and east stuart main street programs. she says that with its waterfront shops and restaurants, downtown has been a local success story. it's a major draw for locals, and tourists, making it an attractive place to do business. >> you see full occupancy downtown. you see that whenever there is a vacancy it's filled very quickly. you see strong, strong collaboration between our downtown business groups, our main street program, and the city and cra. >> competition from local malls has been an issue. but once customers go downtown, they don't forget it. >> this has a natural feeling of community, an inherent sense of closeness, and familiarity. it's friendly. it's welcoming. we're finding all over the country that people crave that kind of environment. the appreciation for the importance of shopping local roads and people remember that. >> ear in east stuart the story is a bit different. there's talk of the past and hopes of creating a brighter future. >> we had halls, dance halls. we had more clothing stores. we had several restaurants. you name it, it was here. we had an abundance of places to go. >> philip mar very, the owner of harvey plaza is one of the driving forces behind making a positive change in the neighborhood. >> and we want to bring all that back. and showing and educating and teaching our young people this is how community works. people working to the. you have a dream. you can look forward to something. >> east stuart is an area born out of segregation. >> segregation led to this being a closed population with its own businesses, its own entertainment, its own schools, its own residences. and it was completely self-sustaining. >> once it ended, many residents started shopping elsewhere. or just moved away entirely. that led to a steady decline in business. >> today, we've gone from over 70 stores at its heyday to about a dozen. >> one of the biggest challenges today is that the community has an image problem. >> i think it's a perception issue. i think the perception is, you know, east stuart is not safe. east stuart may not be clean. don't invest your dollars there. >> thondra says those impressions couldn't be even further from the truth. >> it's actually very clean, very safe, and i think you've seen here today very welcoming. the city's done a lot of work through the community redevelopment agency to put in place infrastructure with new roadways, parking spaces, lighting, electric, there is internet access throughout the community. a lot of things that businesses are actually looking for are in place here. >> the city's public safety complex is nearby. as our local schools and athletic fields. they've helped generate additional traffic. but attracting customers who don't normally shop there is hard. >> if you're used to getting a cup of coffee near your home you might forget to come and get a cup of coffee near your work. >> the hope is east stuart will find its place in the larger community. >> do we want this to become a center for the arts? do we want to embrace history here? what kind of businesses do we want? do we want more self-sufficient businesses? do we want things that are organized around the services and needs of the periphery? do we want to become more of a destination? >> as philip points out, it may be as easy or as difficult as trying to get some people to think bigger. >> the people who own the property are afraid of making the change. turning loose their property. if they were able to come together and do that and sit down and talk this community will blossom. >> east stuart still faces hurdles. but the community refuses to give up. patty o'connell, who owns home design store gumbo limbo downtown says the businesses are better off working to the. >> we want to bring everyone in to our area. because, it's the city of stuart. i don't think we're at that point yet where we're saying there's too much of anything. >> land has been developed on stuart's colorado avenue in an attempt to link both main streets. new speed limits, traffic patterns, sidewalks and landscaping make the area more inviting. >> we wanted to provide some visual cues that said you're entering a small business district. >> in addition to main street board members working hand in hand, this city has plans to introduce tram service from downtown to east stuart. >> at one time i think it probably felt like all roads went past east stuart. today all roads lead to east stuart. and so it becomes important to fill that last piece of connectivity. >> with opportunities like these, patty says now is the time to work even harder. >> it hasn't had the opportunity to have the kind of redevelopment for all many, many different reasons. that it truly deserves. businesses will come. and they will invest in that community. >> bernie dickens, the owner of designer depot in east stuart, agrees. he says stuart can only get better. >> it's a great. sky's the limit. >> remember, we visited stuart because of an e-mail we received. so if you think we should come to main street in your town, please just write us and tell us why. our e-mail address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. simple changes to your everyday practices can make a big impact on your company's finances. so here now are five areas where you can start reducing your business expenses courtesy of under30ceo.com. one, energy use. turn off computers and machinery when you're done using them and replace incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent lamps. two, furniture and equipment. instead of buying everything new. go to local auction houses and purchase items at liquidation sales. or off of sites like craigslist or ebay. three, advertising. if you're still spending a lot on hard copy advertising, consider internet options that will help keep costs down. launch a company blog. e-mail your newsletter instead of printing it. and look into whether or not pay for click search engine optimization is a better investment. fourth, outsourcing. you can hire freelancers on an as-needed basis for jobs that don't require constant attention. and five, telephone costs. consider changing all your work phones to cell phones. many mobile phone contracts are more cost effective than land lines. also, continually comparison shop to make sure you're getting the best deals. we have all no doubt like i just did, posed for a selfie before, those one-armed photos taken with the clear intention of posting to facebook or instagram. well, what if we could harness the power of the selfie in a new way to better connect with customers. as it turns out user generated content like selfies are a highly effective tool in influencing and converting friends in your social network to purchase a product. how can a selfie fuel sales for your business. kevin bobowski is vice president at offer pop the company helps businesses create social marketing campaigns by curating user generated content. so good to see you. >> thank you. >> i see my friend take a picture drinking something, wearing something and i want to go get it, too. >> exactly. people love it. it's such a hot topic right now the whole selfie topic. marketers are really starting to figure out how to use selfies in their marketing programs. which is really exciting. they're seeing really interesting results. >> you gave us some examples here. tj maxx is getting people to post themselves wearing their clothes. what does that get you? >> a number of things. they have an incredibly loyal brand following. people want to participate with a brand. they want to experience it. with a simple promotion and making it really easy for you to upload photos and using a branded hash tag their biggest fans are usually uploading photos of what they're wearing that they bought from tj maxx and tj maxx is rusing that and displaying that across their website and other digital properties. >> it's basically getting people to post something that their friends will all see. them in this tj maxx clothes. we'll get to it in a second about how they get to do it. there must be some legal issues around this, right? i post something, i'm wearing tj maxx but i'm not necessarily giving permission to the company to use my image. or am i? >> you can. so l'oreal and their be extraordinary hash tag campaign which is a great example. they've done a textbook example of how to get the permissions from their consumers. so they ask their consumers to upload a photo of themselves and then they very quickly ask them to claim that content. is that you, and can we use it for other marketing purposes and marketers and brands are figuring out they can use these pictures on the website, in e-mail marketing campaigns and instore promotions. once you get that claim from the consumer you can use that content elsewhere. and then the last piece l'oreal did which was very effective is actually using -- having their folks that submitted that content just click through a quick terms and conditions say yes, it's mine, it's used for promotional purposes, and that's a great way to make sure that you're compliant. >> incredibly important, though, right for companies to understand. because it's really easy for a company to say send me pictures of yourself doing whatever with my product. but you can't use those. >> that's correct. >> unless you get this permission. >> exactly. >> so two questions then why is how do i get people to actually do this right? >> mm-hmm. >> i want their pictures but how do i get them to actually take them and send them to mow or post them or something. and then, two, how do i actually turn that into sales? >> great, great question. so, two really easy ways to get people to submit content one is simple promotions. we all love promotions. we love 25% off our item in our wish list. you know, gift card as low as -- and people find that to be very effective. and then number two just make it real easy for them to do that by direct upload on our website. a photo and branded hash tags are really important. the l'oreal be extraordinary example are good ways of using branded hash tags because once you use that on twitter or instagram you can pull that content into your gallery or your feed of photos. >> and then how does that translate to sales, or you're not worrying about sales. is this just brand awareness? >> some companies actually do really interesting innovative work and the brand engagement piece. one i love is the ironman triathlon. they ask people training for ironmans, people that are actually completing the race, celebrating post-race, to submit photos of themselves. and if you go to the website and you look at the photos, it's really engaging and it's really authentic marketing. and frankly it's very inspirational. people love it, right? they see these people doing incredible things, going through incredible training programs. and it's really allowing somebody like ironman really elevate their brand and build other connections with consumers. >> got it. so this is just -- it's more about building your brand and building a connection with people then, hey i see that dress i want to buy it right now. >> so we're seeing some very innovative small business companies, and large brands do this, as well. lily pulitzer is a great example. great e commerce retailer. they have another campaign they run called summer in lili. they ask for consumers who are really passionate about the brand to share photos of themselves wearing lilly pulitzer clothing. and they take that content, puts it on their website and find what you're actually wearing -- >> so i can click through and buy it. >> exactly. >> that's really interesting to me especially when you see your friends and you want to get that. kevin this is great i mean if, if, it's cheap, it's free, it's pretty easy marketing and it's, it's incredibly powerful marketing word of mouth so thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us really appreciate it. >> thank you it's great to be here. >> we just talked about how you can use instagram but that is just one of many apps and sites that entrepreneurs are utilizing. our small business viewers have a keen eye for what works. that's why we asked them to share with us their favorite online resources. >> there's actually another service that i really loved when i was first starting out called wix and it's an online website building tool. so it's a great resource for people who don't have any resources for html or website building or don't have any idea how to do any coding it's just a great drag and drop resource to help you build a really great-looking website that's really inexpensive. >> the app that i've been playing around with and love is called ifttt. sounds like gift but without the g. it's if this then that. great app to automate a lot of things you want to do. for instance, one of the easiest ones is build on recipes, and you can deliver the weather to your phone every day, telling you, you've got to experience it. play around with it. there's so many things you could do it's definitely amazing. >> we use an app called pick, play, post. what it does is allows us to make a college of several photos, as well as video. what we found is, in sharing these photos, via social media, it stands out and actually has a much higher rate of people responding to it, because of the video, and because of the multiple pictures to be able to share and sell our story. >> i use follow-up, it's a little known application to start up and basically it allows me to bring my inbox to zero every day. by forwarding e-mails to a specific address. for example, if i want to follow up one particular project tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. i just write saturday 10:00 a.m. at follow-up.cc and then archive that message and it comes back to me at 10:00 a.m. or saturday at 10:00 a.m. >> the program that we use has an app called snap find fusion soft and what i do when i'm at a networking event or i meet someone is i take a picture of their card and it automatically puts it into the system so that i can follow up. so when i met someone and i have a sequence already created it automatically triggers when i apply a certain tag it automatically triggers so that they start to receive the follow-up ee sequences and the messages that i want them to receive. >> what we love to use is free conference call dotcom. it's a terrific app where we're able to get all of our conference calls reported, and then have them dictated to we don't have to kind of reinvent that wheel. >> coming up, our small business experts answer your questions on choosing the right investor. and how women can succeed in an historically male dominated business. and when you open another location near the original one, how do you keep both profitable? the owners of a pet resort business tell us how they did it. if i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing i've learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. you've got to be light on your feet. you've got to change quick. i have one saying that i love, the big don't eat the small. the fast eat the slow. and in a tough time, when the economy is difficult, you can't sit in some office and talk about something you're going to change. you got to change it today. >> the old adage about location being everything has a lot of truth to it. especially when you are a small business and you're deciding to expand. you have a challenge when you're opening a second location close to the one that you're already running. for the owners of a virginia based pet resort the question was, could the community sustain two canine concierge businesses? a twiming pool. luxury suites with tvs. birthday parties. ♪ happy birthday to you >> grooming services galore and multiple walks a day. those are just a few of the amenities that you and your pet will find at the old towne pet resort. leah and her late father based their business model on their passion for pets. >> my father shared his love of dogs with me. and at the time, i didn't have children. i wasn't married. and my dog always needed baby-sitting. and my father said, there's no place good enough for your dog, and for my grand dog, and there have to be other people like you. >> and that's how the real estate development firm turned this doggie breed into an old towne reality. >> we consider dogs and cats our family. >> during their initial conversations mark told his daughter that high end pet caru. old town has been caring for people's pets ever since. now about ten years later the business has two locations. >> we are a privately held company and didn't have to grow to return money to investors. we wanted to do it the rye way. we did it slowly but surely. >> the first was build in springfield, virginia. when it came time to talk expansion, there was concern about them competing against itself with additional concerns about diluting the brand. they looked to put space between facilities. >> the first choice might have been montgomery county, maryland. it's not further, but psychically in another state. >> when that was too difficult, they showed sterling near dulles for the second resort. >> high population and high incomes. we put a lot of homework into it. >> that has been incredibly important to old town success. when you look at a map, you can see the two locations are only about 30 miles apart and that's why old town relied on the research. >> in a region that is rebet by the worst traffic in the country and time is money and everyone seems to be in a rush, 30 miles is a big difference. >> we thought we had enough distance where we wouldn't cannibalize that business. >> that didn't stop the staff. >> we did zip code studies and break down as much information as possible and find out about every customer and why they chose the location and where they live. >> there was overlap among the customer base, but there was no way to tell what they would decide to do. >> we did see maybe 200 to 300 people or maybe more that we thought were in a gray zone that could go either way. >> despite the uncertainty, it became clear that geography would work in their favor, having two facilities close together proved to be beneficial. >> some may live closer to one or work closer to another. when they go on vacation they might take them to one and on the way to work, they would take them to the other. >> the sterling resort would be a good fit, that hasn't always been the case for every location. when it comes to the numbers, oldtown had to take a pass. >> we didn't have the population density. >> that are won't stop them. they are taking their time because they know the importance weighing their ogzs. >> if you are in control of their own business and you are doing it, that's a lesson you learn. i was anxious that we were not opening five a year. we might or we might only open one every five years. time now to answer your business questions. let's get the board of directors in to help us. a founding partner and ceo of the s 3 agency with a special focus on social media. cofounder of indy go-go, one of the largest platforms in the world. so great to see both of you guys. >> great to be here. >> the first question is about a challenge of being a woman-owned business. >> i'm wondering what women can do to thrive in business predominated by men. >> perfect question for the panel. i will start with you. you are a woman-owned business. there more of you guys, it's not the majority. what advice do you have? >> i have a lot of advice. the first is to relax. we all know when we walk into a room and we know we are the only woman in the room. our guard goes up and we want to think about how everyone is looking at us as the only woman. relax and forget about that and don't spend mental cycles about how you are the only woman. whether it's the negotiation or the executive team and decision making process or speaking in front of your team or even at a networking event. the first is to relax. once you are relaxed, own it. your opinion, your assessment of the situation, whatever you are thinking, own it. your perspective matters. one of the things that we see in research is data that shows that companies with diverse perspectives do better. the profitability is better and the reception rate is better. know the fact that you have an opinion that matters. if you are thinking about what everybody thinks, you won't share it. if you own it, it will come through. >> denise, you work with a lot of car companies, also male-dominated. how do you deal with it? >> i never think about it. that's the first response. are you your own hurdle. do you think you deserve or don't deserve business because you are a woman? don't think that way. think of yourself as a business person, not a business woman. if you focus on your business, you will be doing the best business job you can. if you are not worrying about it, other people probably won't either. take advantage of the things we have. there national certifications. you can get your business certified and some businesses cater to diverse owned businesses. >> it hasn't stopped either of you guys. let's move on and find investors. >> what is the best way to determine the best angel investors. i have a couple i am choosing from and i like to feel better equipped with upknowing who to with. >> you have to have a good relationship with these people. >> you do and i look for the value ad. if you have a couple that you are answering, who can do more for you. does one have an expertise where you are weak? that's a good person to have that you can get them to do more things that you don't have to pay extra for. that's a big differentiator. >> this woman is in a good position and has people to choose from. some people are getting whatever they can. how did you make the decisions? >> the number one thing is look for advisers and investors that share your long-term vision. the analogy is that you are the pilot flying the plane and the investors are passengers buying a ticket. you don't want back seat drivers telling you which way to go. you want people who are willing to help. you are in charge and you are driving. if they are trying to steer you in different directions. it will be a disaster. look for people to share your vision. a good way to test that is give them homework. ask them to make an introduction and see if their advice and feedback and help helps you charge towards your long-term vision. >> great idea. great to pick your brain for a little bit. thank you so much for coming on the program. >> thank you for having me. >> thank you. >> we are regularly on social media so here are pieces of wisdom we picked up. marketing rules. use strong direct language and instruct what your prospect or lead should do next. there is this from the president of start up fund. one tweet management advice, praise often. set clear visions. don't micromanage and don't let conflict fester. and this from one of the favorite guests. the only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something. thank you, everyone so much for joining us. hope you learned a thing or 2 to help your small business. to learn more, click on our website. it's open forum at any time com/your business. web exclusive content with more information to help your business grow. you can follow us on twitter@msnbc your biz. coming up next week, when thousands are dollars are stolen by your payroll business, you are in deep trouble. what you can do to prevent this form of theft from happening to you. until then, remember we make your business our business. . this morning we begin with a progress report. president obama declared 2014 to be his year of action. we are in the 6th month, halfway through the month. the past week has been an active week for the president and we thought it was the time to assess where he and his administration are. what has president obama accomplished so far in this his year of action. we will discuss all of this and more with the panel