Present your business on msnbc. Hi there, everyone, im j. J. Ramberg. Welcome to your business. If you can believe it, the Holiday Shopping season is fast approaching. And that has Small Businesses turning up their efforts to get people to shop local. And theyre doing this by getting people to understand what it means to spend a dollar locally. How . By highlighting a product each month and telling everyone to head on over to main street to buy it. Want to know what they started with the first month . Toilet paper. Toilet paper. Its a staple and every household and business. But where you go to stock up. One city in iowas chamber of commerce is hoping the answer is main street. We started with toilet paper because Everybody Needs it. Everybody uses it. Carolyn is the executive director of the Eldridge North Scott chamber of commerce. And with the help of a committee of Small Business owners, she launched a special shop local campaign. Every two months, residents are encouraged to redirect their spending around a specific item or service locally. The First Campaign was an attention grabber. One of our Committee Members said, wipe local. And we went, ew. You know, it really wasnt what we thought. And then we sat on it for a minute and we went, wait. It will gather a lot of attention. People will remember it. Wipe local asked shoppers to make the switch from buying toilet paper at big box stores, to businesses in their community. We have to change their thinking and their buying habits and we think if we just present them the facts, that what just one simple thing will do, and what the impact on our economy will be, because when you spend money locally, its going to stay locally. The numbers tell the story. Kimberlyclark says that the average person uses 105 rolls of toilet paper in a year. If they bought all of their toilet paper in a year that that would be a number of 677,000. The average family spends over 2600 a year on eating out. And if you translate that into how much money they spend eating out thats over 10 million. The campaign definitely got people to take notice. From social media to local media, theyre grabbing peoples attention, even outside their towns. On top of the media coverage, theyre also posting signage in places where people have a moment to do a little thinking. And more eyeballs mean more residents who know what a difference their dollar makes. I was in the rest room and there it was on the back of the door, and then it got me thinking about what do i spend in the Eldridge Community . And should i be spending more . Peggy bowers and Mary Lee Shaffer own two sisters resalen gifts. It says the campaign shows money spent locally is an investment. Its easy to get on the internet and buy things and go to the metropolitan area and buy things. What were hoping to change with the campaign is to make people start thinking more of buying local as an investment in their community instead of thinking of it as them saving money, thinking it as your money is being put to good use. The owner of north scott foods, a local supermarket, says with his business benefits, so does the community. Were in the business that everybody comes to when theres a donation or a fundraiser or the booster clubs, and athletic events, and our sales tax dollars support our school. So, our residents really reward are rewarded for that. The wipe local campaign was a big success. Once the numbers came in, steve found the amount of toilet paper sold at his store in the two months of the campaign was more than 71 higher than what was sold the same two months last year. That is a whole lot of toilet paper and sales. Its got peoples attention. And its a good kickoff to the remainder of what the programs going to be moving forward. The whole goal of this movement is to have results that last longer than simply the campaign. Many residents have changed their habits for good. After seeing the campaign, i got to thinking, you know, why am i going anywhere else for my toilet paper when its so convenient just to buy it here locally, north scott foods is a great place to shop, so i have definitely changed my buying habits. On that particular item. And will be buying that here in the future. But the campaign is not over yet. The next theme is eat local. For bob livingston, owner of the newly opened maloneys pub, being part of this campaign is an opportunity to get potential diners who dont know theyre in the neighborhood seated at their tables. Us only being four months old anything we can do to get our name out there, location out there, is so helpful. The community has embraced us very, very overwhelmingly. Which is so encouraging. Every little bit helps. With so much success with wipe local, this is only the beginning of adjusting the way the Eldridge Community thinks about their setting. One item at a time. Theyve gotten so in the habit of just getting in the car and driving into town and when they can really just stay here and shop and sometimes you just need to remind people of that. And if it moons using some crazy thing to get their attention, then thats what you have to do. Over the past nine years weve been to a lot of cities like eldridge, iowa, that we just showed you, and what we found is that a lot of the stores on main street have been passed down through families, through the generations. If youve ever walked along the new york harbor here in new york city, you will see a fleet of tugboats. But you may not have ever thought about the business behind them. For one family its been an enterprise that has lasted through several generations. Brian mcallisters family name has dotted the new york harbor since 1864. Were the only company that lasted for 150 years in the family. And for that you got to be lucky. That was the year his great grandfather James Mcallister started mcallister towing, helping big ships navigate to shore. Do you think that it is business sense or pure luck that its been in the family that long . There are several things thats had to happen. One, you cant make too much money. If you make too much money, everybody wants to sell it and get rich. If you dont make enough money, they leave. You might say he found a sweet spot for the company. Somewhere between too much success on the one hand, and too much stress on the other. The most efficient boat in the world lines are like a yacht. James mcallister started the company in new yorks south street seaport as a lone immigrant with a single cargo bite or lighter he launched a transport business which grew large enough to support himself and three brothers. By the turn of the century, the next generation expanded the business beyond cargo to passenger ships, tugboats and towing. As the new york port expanded the family diversified into new areas. With different branches going into different maritime businesses. All with the mcallister name. The steam boats, with the paddle wheels, were enormous business. In the great depression, the mcallisters nearly went bust. By 1938, brians great uncle died with just a few boats to his name. He watched everything go to pieces. Two or three people left in the office. The only thing they took home was grocery money. That was it. There was no salaries no more. In his own lifetime Brian Mcallister says hes come close to losing the business several times. The first was when his own father and uncle threatened to sell the company to finance their retirement, rather than pass it on to him. Brians generation eventually convinced them, but it wasnt easy. Theres been a lawsuit every time this company got transferred from the first to the second, second to the third. By the late 1980s, brians son eric faced a different threat. The company was basically bankrupt. In 1981. And i graduated from Grammar School in 1982. And they just barely hung on. He vividly remembers a twin set of crises that nearly cost the fifth generation its legacy. The first was financial. Shortly after that the second crisis was a violent union strike which also came close to destroying the business. Clearly luck has played a role in their survival. But its certainly not everything. What is it about your family thats been able to hold onto this when so many other Family Businesses leave the family after the second, third, fourth generation . I think its that irish mentality of tradition. The passion for tradition. They just they just want to hold onto it. And they just dont need that much money. 53yearold Jeffrey Mcallister is their first cousin and also a member of the fifth generation. A Family Business runs more on passion than Good Business sense. Today, jeffrey is a harbor pilot. He boards the cargo vessels entering new york harbor and commands the fleet of mcallister tugs as they guide these massive ships safely to the docks. At the age of 80, brian is the last living member of the fourth generation. And hes making plans to pass the company on to his sons. Beyond that, however, he says the legacy is not his concern. In your dreams how many more generations keep this company . Once youre dead, okay, i dont dream about what could happen two more generations from now. Thats my sons problem. You could end up wasting hours of your time trying to clear out your inbox each day. But what if there was a way to make sorting through your email just a little bit easier. Check out our website of the week. Inky. Com organizes all your email accounts into one interface. You can create special folders, choose what keyboard short cuts youd like to use and customize the look of the platform so you can quickly identify important email from all that clutter. A good Company Environment goes a long way in influencing overall productivity and team dynamics. Here now are five tips on how to promote a High Performance culture in the office, courtesy of entrepreneur. Com. One, create private offices. This depends on the kind of culture you have. But in some cases when you give your employees their own space, youre translating the message that they are valued. Two, set an open meeting policy. Let workers attend any gathering that doesnt cover sensitive subjects like pay and personnel issues. Transparency between departments helps your team learn from and understand each other. Three, encourage anonymous feedback. Privacy can empower people to address issues they may otherwise feel uncomfortable talking about. But, of course, you have to be careful with this one. Four, communicate a clear mission, vision and goal. Educate your team on your future plans for the company. This will help them understand where they fit and contribute to the greater picture. Five, avoid creating an internal caste system. No one should be receiving special treatment in the office. Your employees will notice and react negative to this. One of the Biggest Challenges that so many entrepreneurs face is scaling up effectively. A lot of founders are really, really good at that startup stage but then they just cant figure out how to make it to the next level. Our next guest says that knowing yourself and staying focussed while managing chaos and risk is essential. Linda rottenberg is the cofounder of endeavor, she is also author of the new bestselling book crazy is a compliment the power of zigging when everyone else zags. So good to see you. Great to be here. This we see all the time because a founder is a different person it takes different skills to start something than to actually grow it. So ive worked with a thousand entrepreneurs and i started writing on a white board all the mistakes they were having at the go big to scaleup phase so one of the chapters in my book is called the white board with all the common mistakes and a playbook for getting around them. I love that. We see this all of the time. Lets go through some of the things to put on the board. Midovate. I think the problem with the elon musks and the Mark Zuckerbergs getting all the attention is people are terrified. They think they can only succeed with huge innovations. We found many are as effective as not. One of my Favorite Companies is w. L. Gore. Every innovation has been the same product tweaked. It started as teflon, went to gore text, ended up being glide dental floss and elixir guitar strings. All mini innovations. Its now one of the Largest Privately Held Companies in the united states. By the way, this is what most companies do, right . Were not all going to be mark zuckerberg. No. And dont psych yourself out. Okay. And this brings up the next point, too, which is pivot. Also another big word. You started out here and now your company is here and its not recognizable. But again, for most companies the pivots are small. Yeah. And you shouldnt have too many. You should be open to some change. Studies have found that if you pivot once or twice youre actually better off in terms of growth potential. But if you overpivot youre going to kill yourself. One of the stories i talk about in the book is legos. Legos goes and does an innovation spree from 7,000 blocks to 13,000. They do innovation suicide and they actually have to bring in a consultant and ceo and go back brick by brick. Pivot a little bit. Dont take every opportunity. The best thing is to sometimes say no. If youre taking every opportunity youre taking time away from making one that youre working on work. Steve jobs when he failously came back to apple slashed almost every product that they were developing and said we can only do four things beautifully. Okay. I love this one. Dream big. You have to be able to dream big. But execute small because youre not going to get from here to here. You need to go like this. Exactly. The number one cause of death of scaleups and startups is premature scaling. Its your own doing. Its not competition or the chaos around you. And its because people bite off more than they can chew. And yes you have to have a big idea to motivate you. It has to be crazy enough that people will give you that compliment. But you have to break it down in manageable sizes. And you know, henry ford didnt build the cars in a day, said any idea can be executed as long as you break it down into small parts. But you also have to do that for your team because you need successes along the way. Yeah. I do that with my kids. We just want mini wins. Not perfection. Exactly. Okay. Finally eat the elephant one bite at a time. This is a line actually from Flight School where they tell you that dont get distracted by the daunting job ahead. And i think we think of entrepreneurship as this scary thing, requiring leaps of faith. When really if you settle down, tamper down your emotions, zig when everyone else is zagging, but then in moments of chaos, grow calm, eat the elephant one bite at a time and thats how you get through anything. I love it. Crazy is a compliment congratulations its a great book with a lot of fun stories that tell really interesting tactical great advice so congratulations. Thank you. So good to see you. Great to be here. When we come back, guy kawasaki joins linda to answer your questions, including how to balance risk taking with being financially conservative. And mike depatie the ceo of Kimpton Hotels talks about building an internal culture that cares. Being prepared for a lot of rejection if youre starting a business. If you know this in advance it can be much easier for you. The golden words are successful people do all the things unsuccessful people dont want to do. Every time youre rejected realize how you could do it better and maybe not get rejected the next time. Its the largest Boutique Hotel chain in the country and it just keeps on growing. Founded in 1981 by the late bill kimpton, Kimpton Hotels and restaurants now boasts 61 locations in 27 cities around the country. While many other companies of the size have gone public, kimpton is still privately owned. Ceo mike depatie joined the company in 2003 and has been leading the brand since 2006. We talked to him about being the most loved, creating the best place to work, and remembering to have fun in this weeks learning from the pros. Our overarching goal is to be the most loved hotel brand by those guests that know us. Now you may have noticed that i didnt say largest. I didnt say, the best known. What i said was the best loved. You think about travel today. Travel is stressful these days. And its not getting any better. So you show up to a kimpton hotel, you walk in, this great design. You notice theres a great restaurant next door and theres this friendly, genuine front desk agent thats worried about caring for you, and what your needs are. That makes a big impression on people. We think its really important for us to have an exceptional product. And that is a product that people like so much, they actually love so much, and by that i mean, what is the experience that our customers are having. Where is that emotional connection that were making with them. Exceptional product is one people talk about. Its having a highly differentiated customer experience. One that is traditional. It is more cookie cutter. Were going to be different. Genuine care is really critical. Our program is called kimpton karma. You do good things for us, we do good things for you. We give back those karma points to you. Things we may do, we may show up to your room and there may be a free drink at the bar or a bottle of wine shows up at your room, or maybe you like teddy bears, and a teddy bear shows up at your room. We try to track what is important to you and we try to do things that surprise and delight you. We think creating a best place to work and having a reputation as the best place to work is really critical to attract the best employees. And part of that is a culture, if you will, where people feel like they can be themselves and deliver their best selves on the job. Part of that is providing opportunities for them to grow professionally but also personally. We help them learn about their own personality or the personality of their coworkers, something we call selfinsight, and it allows them to be more empathetic with guests. Were a company that really supports diversity. We want diversity of people. Because if we have diversity of people, we get diversity of thoughts and then you get innovation and creativity. Its really important to remember to have fun. Most of the people we compete with in our business, they are not that fun. They are more, you know, services by the book, our designs have a whimsical feature. We feature free bikes at all of our hotels so you can travel around the city for free, complementary bikes. We have leopard skin robes in all of the rooms that are fun. New employees have to hula hoop. I had to do it. It seems foolish, not everybody is good at hula hooping, but it says, listen, we dont take ourselves too personally. We dont want you to take yourself too seriously. It is time now to answer some of your business questions. Lets get our board of directors in here to help us out. Linda rottenberg is back again, and joining us is guy kawasaki, he is known for his work at google and apple. So good to see both of you guys. Great to be here. Lets start with the first question, about finding a happy medium when dealing with money. In order to grow my company, how do i balance risk taking with being financially conservative enough to keep us profitable . Great question. These are the companies that you look at. Well, i love that anna mentioned balancing risk taking. Because i think we perceive the risk maximizers that go all in. Really, the best entrepreneurs are risk minimizers and whether thats at the start, sarah is selling fax machines getting spanx off the ground, or whether its Richard Branson who said contain disasters, i think her question shows shes exactly on the right path. You have to dream big but execute small. Its about little steps and its not about going all in or getting yourself so anxious that youre going to bankrupt your family. Shes on the right path. We hear these stories about people taking out all of these loans, from friend and family and risk it all. Do you believe thats not the right path . Im speechless. Im absolutely in agreement with her. What people need to realize is that entrepreneurship is a marathon. Its not a sprint. Some people think you get the money, you launch, you ship, you go public, you cash out, and its this instant burst of activity. And thats a very unusual case. It seldom happens that way. Mostly its a long, long marathon. Its a 26mile thing. Its not a 100yard dash. We saw that happen also in the recession and all of these companies were doing okay that had no cash. Exactly. But heres the thing about money even at the beginning. Everyone thinks it takes a lot and you have to max out your credit cards. Half of the Fastest Growing companies, half started with 500,000 or less. Crowd funding allows it to be even easier. You have to not take huge risks with money. The fact that she talked about balancing risk, thats the key. Thats the art of entrepreneurship. Its the art of the scale up as well as the art of the start up guy. Lets move on to the next question. Okay. A question about being true to your business. How might i scale my business meaningfully but not dilute my brand. All right, guys. It sounds like she has opportunities to go in other directions. How do you decide which opportunities to go with . I am much more of a let 100 flowers blossom theory, where you really dont know where your product or service will take root, so you have to put it out there. After you put it out there, you see where its taking root and you pursue those things. This is along the theory of having a minimal, viable product, this quick get the market kind of theory. I think its a way to minimize risk rather than trying to take this perfect product. You get something out right away. Linda, you could have an opportunity in something that seems completely off brand. Theres a little nugget in your company that someone says, go after this . I think theres two things. I think studies have been done about the right amount to pivot. If you dont pivot at all, youre dead. If you pivot once or twice, you probably have a better chance of not scaling prematurely, of doing better. If you overpivot, thats the biggest killer. Most scaleups die by killing themselves. Its not due to competition. In terms of the brand, one of the stories that i talk about is a story of an american giant. It gets this pr gift from the god when a story goes out that its hoodie is better than any other in the world. It goes viral. Within 36 hours, the shelves are bear, within six months, they cant keep up with demand. It almost kills them. So being careful about your brand and not get ahead of yourself. You dont want to go from 0 to 60 too fast. We heard stories of people saying i was invited to oprah and i had to say no because i couldnt deliver. That would have been bad. So good to see you guys. Thank you both for stopping by. Thank you. Great to be here. Really appreciate it. Byebye. And if you have a question for our experts, we answer them every week here on this show. All you have to do is go to our website. The address is openforum. Com yourbusiness. Hit the link. Its openforum. Com yourbusiness. If its easier, send us an email, the address is yourbusiness msnbc. Com. Now, we like to check out twitter from time to time and here are some of the latest tweets from some great entrepreneurial thinkers. Business guru, Ken Blanchard suggests create a legendary culture in your company by spreading boundless energy, immense goodwill and a burning desire to excel. Mark enriq enriques says its true you saw the sizzle but you still have to deliver a damn good steak. And ceo of virgin, Richard Branson says, why do i invest in startups . Because they are the job creators and innovators of the future. Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the show, go to our website. Its openforum. Com yourbusiness. Youll find all of the segments we showed you here today plus web exclusive content with a lot more information to help your business grow. We are on twitter if you want to follow us. Its msnbcyourbiz. Please dont forget to find us on facebook and on instagram as well. Next week, we learn how one small independent hard cider maker can hold his own and even beat the mass market bottlers at their own game. What we do now, they cant do. Theyll never do this. We have a Sustainable Production advantage that they will never be able to recreate. But you can, and best of all you do not have to be in the cider business to use his advice. Until then, 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. Happy friday. If you watched any of the news today, paid attention to the headlines or anything, you are forgiven if you felt a little nauseated when you realized today that the word of the day in todays news was once again going to be the word czar. This used to be a normal word in regular conversation, regular political analysis. Even talk about policy and getting stuff done. Err even if you were just talking about russian history or whatever, it used to be just he