Transcripts For MSNBCW Your Business 20140817

Present your business on msnbc. Hi there, everyone. Im j. J. Ramberg. Welcome to your business. Today we begin our ninth season of bringing you the stories, information, and advice to help you run a successful Small Business. This weekend all marks the 45th anniversary of the iconic woodstock Music Festival. An event that defined the 60s and the Counter Culture movement. The woodstock brand of peace, love, and happiness has stood the test of time. Its a brand that has attracted many Small Businesspeople, their customer, and, of course, tourists to this small new york towns main street where flower power is still alive and well. If you go anywhere in america and say the word woodstock, anywhere, somebody will relate to it. Thats ricochet. Hes the owner of this very Small Business here on the main street in woodstock, new york. Woodstock is an idea, a vision, a dream of something different. Its not a physical structure. Its a cosmic idea. With the population of only 6,000 people it may be a tiny town but woodstocks got a huge personality, a personality that many still associate with the woodstock Music Festival of 1969. Its about peace and music and love and the end of the vietnam war. Michael lange should know. He was one of the organizers of that original festival. Hes still a Music Festival produce irand he still lives in woodstock. Do you feel like the spirit of the festival still remains here in town today . Yeah, to a degree. To a degree the spirit came from the town. Woodstock has been a music and Arts Community since way before the 1969 festival. Music recording engineer pete kagan wasnt even born then but he sauce it was more than just the legacy of woodstock that brought him here. One of the cool things about woodstock is its an Artist Community so theres tons of professional artists here who make their home here. Woodstock haub a haven for artists, musicians, and writers for generations. It started more than 100 years ago with the bird cliff art colony which still operates here today. Its also a haven for the spiritual seekers who make their way to nearby retreats like the karma trian shack a tibetan monastery. J. J. Pete kaigan owns the fly max recording studio. Blah blah blah blah which he runs here in the former ballroom of this once glamorous hotel. He says the towns bohemian spirit dating from the roars 20s through the psychedelic 60s is great for business. Its not a real mystique. You know, bob dylan, jimi hendrix, janis joplin. Its a gathering place. And hes not alone. Bring your branches up. And imagine theres a storm. Patricia, an independent yoga instructor, left new york city six years ago to start a new life as part of the woodstock community. What made you move to woodstock . I wanted a more peaceful, tranquil life. And i changed my career, became a yoga teacher. Patricia says she offense uses spaces like this at the miraby book store to meet her clients. Not only does this arrangement keep her rent down, it also increases traffic at the book shop. I love to come this way. Its true. Its owned and operated by husband and wife team jeff and audrey. Like patricia, both quit their jobs and changed careers to come to woodstock. 14 years ago you guys decided to come to woodstock to fbuy a boo store which sounds crazy for ten years ago. Book stores are dying. It sounded crazy to our accountant and our lawyer, too, but we did it anyway. Why . Well we fell in love. We did. We fell in love. I think at some at some point you have to ask yourself what what meaning do you want to give to the world. And i think this store is it. Audrey and jeff have run this meta physical book store for over a decade. So far theyve beat the odds. How have you been able to survive as a book store . I think we have been very supported by a community of people. We are here for them. We provide a sanctuary for them. We provide a place where they can feel safe. Just down the street we found another manhattan refugee, eric home it is land. Eric says he rehoe indicated his tibetan religious art and Clothing Store from grenich fill lanlg here to woodstock as part of his spiritual quest. I used to come up for teachings and began to fall in love with woodstock. His shop has been located here in this lush garden since 1976. Great, thank you, enjoy. Have a good day. Peace, love, and cupcakes. Its the only true place you can name peace, love, and cupcakes is woodstock, new york. Thats it. Its the perfect name. Thats january in addition har dro hargrove. Owner of peace, love, and cup cakeses. Shes bit a business here as Award Winning bakeware. I saw a sign that said best bakery in country. This is a winner. I won 25,000 on the food network for the best cake in the country. Like so many other woodstock entrepreneurs it was the Creative Community that brought her here. I lived in knowledge knowledge all my life. And there wasnt a lot of thinking outside of the box, there werent a lot of artists and musicians, no offense, new jersey, but it wasnt as creative as i am. And so when i got here, it blew me away. What did you do in new york before this . I sang television jingles. I did that for about 12 years. I was very fortunate to do a lot of wellknown television jingles. Like what . Reach out reach out and touch someone i love it. That sounds familiar. Other ones . Ge we bring good things to life these woodstock entrepreneurers seem to be not only surviving but doing quite well. Even if the kind of industries that are failing on other main streets. It seems like you chose a very hard business. Youre competing against big stores with lots of money that are open 24 hours a day. Thats right, uhhuh. Yeah, the farm so i industry right now is really a race to the bottom. Its highly come mott advertised. The big box are giving away products, not even considering our professional services. 4 generics at walmart. Neil owns this store in woodstock and has three others on main streets in three neighboring small towns. We have registered dietitian that gives free lectures once a month. I do things for senior groups in the area. We do lectures that involve like how to prevent falls, how to be safer with your medications. How important is it for you, for your survive value, to be more than just a store, more than just a pharmacy . I think its important for any business thats trying to survive in the crazy economy that we find u. S. Of in to be more than just a retail place where your customers are coming in to you. You really need to go to them and you need to relate to them in waysoff never had to before. And another thing neil has found to keep his local customers loyal, guilt. You have a sign outside that says support big families, not big business. Thats right. Pictures of your triplets. Thats right. Does that inspire people to shop here more . Big time. A lot of people did the about face and came right into the store and said i love the sign and we hook them . This is the raven. Kristina varga is a painter. She sells her works to museums and collectors around the country. Shes also a gallery owner with a razor sharp instinct for what sales. I slap a maked girl on a block of wood and it will sell. It really does. Its an may as iing and fun. Like many entrepreneurs on this main street kristina is making money but i not the money thats drawn her here. A lot of people say, oh, why dont you go back to the city . I just tell them that they have to kind of be here to understand. You really have to come here to get it. Theres a legend that if you sleep in the shadow of the mountain for more than three nights that youre destined to live here. And i did. She, too, is a seeker. Shes part of the vision and the dream that is woodstock. It was fascinating to see how the Small Businesspeople of woodstock embraced and capitalized on that communitys legendary brand. Lets now talk to this weeks grov groo i have board of directors. Lawrence gilbert is an instructor at the Wharton School at the university of pennsylvania and he is also a music producer. And brian halagan is founder and ceo of hub stop, a marketing and Sales Software company and he is also one of the men who taught us all the marketing lessons to be learned from the grateful dead who, of course, performed at the woodstock festival. So great to see boath of you guys. Lawrence, whats so interesting at this is we went in to go do a main street on woodstock but we didnt go in thinking about the woodstock brand. We just wanted to see how Small Businesses were doing on main street. And then we came out of this realizing, just like with a company, the brand is so strong, right, the main street brand is so strong that it attracts people that like that brand. Its like Like Apple Computers would. Remember that this was the Counter Culture at the time. Short songs were in vogue, there would be 20minute improve sayses. If the poster was supposed to give you information easy to read, the posters were almost ill legible in the sock dell lick crying. It created a whole generation of people who thought that way and all of a sudden now yoga is mainstream. A lot of things that started out count ur culture became culture. Skateboarding used to be down at and now its a sport. So i think from a Counter Culture, its really infiltrated into a whole generation of people who have a response when they hear the term woodstock. Brian, we saw in the piece a couple who bought a book store. A guy who started a pharmacy. Now, in most parts of the world, that would be crazy. Book stores arent doing well, pharmacy, youre competing with big corporations with lots of money. But they found a spot where people would actually appreciate this. Is there anything we could learn from that . I think there is. I think theyre doing great. My take away was actually a little bit different than that. I feel like theres a giant opportunity for these folks. The book store, lets the book store. Theyve got a great spot on main street in a market with 6,000 people. Fantastic. Theyre doing great. Theyre fighting the odds. But theyre in the back alley of the giant market with 6 billion people on the internet. If i had a book store in woodstock, it youed to used to best book store on woodstock but now what you want is the best woodstock book store on the face of the planet. I think it gives them an opportunity but to the 6 billion people Walking Around the internet who might be interested in their products. Well, then, thats where the brand comes in again. Right . All of these stores can capitalize on this woodstock brand. And in some ways, they are doing it very haphazardly. This book store happens to be in woodstock and thats why it exists and thats why its doing okay. But to brians point, what could shes stores be doing if they have branded their main street well . I think they can try and focus on getting information to people. I think thats really what its about. And getting them information instead of just selling them. The same focus of taking 80 of your Energy Online and blogs or whatever else to make sure that youre getting information that is useful to that community and not just trying to give them a hard sell. And i think the way they would use the net could work but somehow you have to make sure that thats going to gel with the reputation and the expectations that are there. But i think there is an opportunity for them to go beyond just woodstock the town for sure. Brian and lawrence, thank you very much for your advice on all that. Very helpful. The attendees atwood stock would have had, as they said then, their minds blown if they could have foreseen the technological advances that have been made in the 45 years since the festival. Lets see if your mind is blown by some of the apps and online tooling our Small Business viewers are using to be succe successful today in 2014. An app that we use all the time is called batchgeo. This is great if you have any kind of logistics or scheduling involved in your company where you need to actually take a bunch of addresses and map tell all in a batch process. So you can literally take hundreds of thousands of addresses from a spreadsheet, copy them, paste them, and immediately you see where all of those locations are on a map. An app that i absolutely cannot live without is asana, project management tool for online virtual teams. Allows you to handle all of your virtual contractors and manage your teams tasks virtually from your phone. Another app i really like is my life organized. Its basically a nested tree structure for organizing projects. Again, it syncs to the cloud and your team as well. It will give you progress reports. Its changed our business. The website that we use for productivity is team work product management. It allows our entire team to communicate internally without the owner micromanaging and also helps us communicate clearly with our clients. I love audio acrobat. If youve ever heard of audioacrobat. Com, it is excellent if you want to do a short interview and release it for free. Again, sharing your expertise, its also a great way to get testimonials, let folks call in a telephone number and say, hey, i love this person and this is why. Audio acrobat is ive used it for about seven years. I have hundreds of krordings and its only 20 bucks a month. I love using shoe boxed. Without it, with all the travel that i do and track the mileage and expenses i do, one person can be almost a bookkeeper of themselves. One website i love is wrap leaf. Com. What that allows you to do is take your email purchases and pen data about their age, their income, their interests, what else they might have purchased so you can find other customers and focus your Marketing Efforts on the traffic that is most likely to convert. When we come back, well have some answers to your Small Business questions about growing your social media organically and whether or not a Business School background is really as crucial as having a strong entrepreneurial spirit. And are you trying to get the Big Box Stores to carry your product . Well talk to a successful entrepreneur who will tell you how its done. If i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing ive learned is my philosophy is real simple American Express open forum is an online 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 its open for everyone. Theres not one way to do something. No details too small. American express open forum. This is what membership is. This is what membership does. Nothing matters but the product. If the product is good Everything Else kind of falls into place. You come out with great product, really distinct, really unique, distinguishable among Everything Else there in the marketplace and the buzz and the success of it is a natural consequence of that. Its not about marketing, executi execution, distribution, and in my business, reservations, services, no. Its about distinctive product. Over the years many Small Business owners have asked us what it takes to get major retailer interested in their products. Today our guest has some answers for you. Robin wilson is an eco friendly interior designer and founder of robin wilson home. Great to see you. Great to see you. Congratulations. So your products are in bed, bath, and beyond . Yes, they are. Thats quite a win. They are. What i really tell people is to build a platform first with a niche. I grew up with allergies and asthma and it was a natural to say what do i need to do thats hypoallergenic in my home for my family, for, you know, for my baby. So we actually made that our focus, wellness and hypoallergenic products. You couldnt just come to them and say, hey, i got a great new comforter cover. No. You needed something that was different that they dont have. And also you have to remember, they may have it but your product may be bet sxwler the got it. The key is to remember, when you create that niche, you first must be either an expert, you must have a platform, whether its a media platform, for some people its being an athlete or entertainer, for others its a Knowledge Base that allows credibility in the market. For you it was a brand that you had already built over eight years. Thats right. We started the company in 2000. By 2008 we had licensed our brand to eco Friendly Kitchen cabinetry. By 2009 it was textiles. Thats what we sell at bed, bath, and beyond. The pillow, comforters, the mattress pads. The things when youre sleeping you dont want to be wheezing and sneezing. Youve got to think about price point, too. At some point you may go in to one of these big stores and they want the price to be a lot lower than what you want it to be. Right. Well, often the retailer selects the price point. What you need to have is a partner. We have a licensing partner. You need a licensing partner that understands the business, that can do what they call electronic distribution, that understands how to get something from point a to point b on time so that they dont run out of stock. So your job is to make sure job product is quality, that its durable and more importantly, that your partner can make sure its there when the consumer orders it. So did you have a partner that brokered these deals for you or did you broker them yourselves . We did it together. When i say partner, someone to go to meetings with. At the back end if you dont want to be standing in the warehouse every day shipping things out, that licensing partner can help you a lot. How did you find them. They find you often. A lot of people want to call try sensing companies and say ive got this great im suzie and i have this great line of product idea, the problem is a Million People are pitching. To get into a big boxed retailer you have to first have a platform so that someone says i know her, i know her brand, and that means you must create a pr strategy prior to. So you need to create something so that the licensing partner then comes to you, in your opinion, so you together can go to the store. Thats correct. Why would someone invest all that money in doing samples or prototypes and also why would the big box retailer invest in you you and your ten friends know about this product. You really have to have a marketing strategy, a media strategy and a platform that will allow you to get on the air, that will allow you to get in print so people can say, oh, i know about that brand and theyre credible. And then whats youre going out to pitch the stores, you have to understand whoi they are. Thats right. Understand who their client s who the customer is. Put yourself in their shoes. The wonderful thing about bed bath beyond, the typical client is the Decision Maker in the home, often the woman, 25 to 55yearold demographic. That person is College Educated or an aspirational consumer. They want a quality product they can afford that has a great name and great history. Quality is your point. When it comes down to it, youve got your licensing partner, youve sold to the store. If you dont have a quality product you wont last. The number one thing we have to remember at the end of the day, the consumer dollar will come back to you over and over again if that product is good. Robin, thank you for sharing your story with us. A lot of people would like to be in your shoes right now. Appreciate the chance to pick your brain. Thank you. While you might need sophisticated security measures to keep the more devious hackers at bay, sometimes the easiest things can be the most effective. Here now are five simple fixes that will help keep your company stuff safe, courtesy of inc. Com. Add a code to your phone, not impossible to crack but should be your first line of defense. Two, use the builtin mobile and desk top security. Both google and apple have ways you can remotely lock or wipe a phone. Make sure you activate this option in case your information is ever compromised. Three, use a password with capital letters and symbols. Stay away from common words and repeated patterns. Four, get your i. T. Manager to block certain file attachments on the corporate network. Even zip files are unnecessary in the age of drop box folders and your inbox is more likely to stay virusfree. Five, provide a computer. Put very Sensitive Information on an internal server that can only be access friday the building. Youll have more control on what information enters and leaves. Time now to answer some of your business questions. Lawrence and brian are back with us once again. The first one is about your social media marketing. How would you recommend to get a great following on social media organically . It is the question maybe we get the most here. I dont know. Its in the running at least. So organically, i guess she doesnt want to pay for it. Number one, lawrence, would be figure out which platform, right . Facebook, twitter, instagram. Thats right. You have to focus. There are so many important ones, you have to do two to three, get on there, get croslininged and go from there. Brian, a lot of people ask how do i get a big following . I dont think you necessarily need a big following, right . You just need a loyal following. I think youre right. I think the best way to get a big following is ironically creating content. People who have great blogs with original content and they share that content on facebook and twitter and linkedin and all the social media sites tend to do very well. I look at twitter and the tweets i produce. When i produce an original article and i create a great tweet around it thats memorable, that does very well. When i tweet somebody elses quote that does very well. When i share interesting content, that goes well. I think the thing that works very well on social media is dont be boring. Most people are boring and nervous on social media. Youve got to get some finder in the diet and let it go and be interesting and remarkable. Be worthy of remark, and your good words will spread. Okay. A question. What if you are not interesting, right . J. J. , everybody is interesting. What are you talking about . Lets just say youre a Monkey Wrench manufacturer. I used to be you used to want to be the best Monkey Wrench manufacturer and you would win. Today you want to be the best lefthanded Monkey Wrench manufacturer and have the best blog thats fascinating to lefthanded plumbers. Lets move on to the next question. Im not a numbers person. Its not something that was ever my strength. So i wonder what resources are out there to help the person who is trying to build their business, who doesnt really read the numbers and understand the numbers the way someone who may have gone to Business School does. Thank god shes asking this. I cant tell you guys how many times ive gone into a business and we ask, whats your revenue. No idea, right . What are your expenses . No idea. Its not rocket science. What would you say . Where is a place she can go to start . The first place i think to start is on line. Look up Financial Statements and find out what are the three that quarterly reports are from Public Companies and find those and look around. Also, it comes through people. If you know lawyers, if you know cpas, if you have other people in your Business World that can sit down with you for half an hour im teaching this to 16yearolds to 70yearolds, you can teach the basics of those three statements in an hour. Theyre not going to be able to develop them right away, but they can understand. So instead of trying to swallow everything, start with understanding what the statements are and what their function is and, believe it or not, so many people dont think of this. Go into your bank and make an appointment with someone at the bank and say, im doing this company or im interested in starting a company. I dont know much about finance. Can you help me . The people in the bank are more than happy to help them. My favorite spot on the internet to read about this stuff is a site forentrepreneurs. Com. Its a great site that unpacks the financials of a business and lays it out for mere mortals to understand. I would go there. I wouldnt stress too much about not being a math person. I think theres plenty of successful businesses that have been started by folks who arent math whizzes. I think youll be fine. I can imagine theres anxiety about it, but i think youll be fine in you get the basics down. Thats the thing. So many people are even intimidated to start with that. Lawrence and brian, it was so nice to see both of you. Hope to see you back here again soon. A pleasure. That would be great. If any of you have a question for our experts, we answer them on the show every week. Just send us an email to the address yourbusiness msnbc. Com. We look forward to hearing from you all. Thanks so much for joining us today. But it doesnt end here. For more about the show, head over to our website. Its openforum. Com yourbusiness. Youll find all of todays segments plus webexclusive content with a lot more information to help your business grow. You can also follow us on twitter. Its msnbcyourbiz. Were on facebook and instagram, too. Next week the owner of a Paddle Board Company gets information that could sink his Sales Numbers at the peak of the season. Mr. Mudd, so sorry into form you like a dear john email from china. One of our premier board manufacturers is informing us that a container that should have shipped two or three weeks before that had burned up. Hell share with us lifesaving advice on how he kept his business afloat. Until then, im j. J. Ramberg and remember, we make your business our business. If i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing ive learned is my philosophy is real simple American Express open forum is an online 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 its open for everyone. Theres not one way to do something. No details too small. American express open forum. This is what membership is. This is what membership does. Teargas and violence in the first night of the ferguson curfew. We begin this morning in the immediate wake of an unsettling night in ferguson, missouri where a curfew ordered by the governor went into effect at midnight central time and was lifted just two hours ago. Missouri governor jay nixon announced the cuff few yesterday afternoon. There were loud cries of protests who pleaded with nixon to reconsider. The curfew went into effect a