Transcripts For MSNBCW Your Business 20141122

Msnbc. Hi there, everyone. Im j. J. Ramberg and welcome to your business. The Holiday Shopping season is already picking up steam. And independent businesses are hoping that their efforts to get customers to shop local will pay off. As we know, Small Business saturday is now one of the most important days of the year for Small Business owners on main streets around the country. And while its only one day, some communities are taking a page from this shop small playbook year round. In one town customers are supporting friends and neighborhoods by celebrating every saturday as a day to live local. Saturday isnt just any day of the week here in Mountain Brook, alabama. Everybodys embraced it. S communitys embraced it. It is something that everybody feels strongly about. Around these parts, its better known as live local saturdays. You can live it, and you can show it, and we try to do a little bit of both. Its the allimportant day of the week when residents are encouraged to shop, dine, play, and love locally. I live in this community and when i hear live love local it makes me think, i want my dollars to go into my community. Lynn ritchie, who has owned ammano for 17 years says the campaign couldnt have come at a better time. The need has increased due to the amount and greater options for people to shop on the internet, increased in mall traffic, and it really just has become harder to be a local shop. There were just fewer options in this community than there are now. The Mountain Brook chamber of commerce is the force behind live local saturdays. And because it reminds why its important to protect our communities. Executive director suz suzan doidge says the initiative reinforces the importance of supporting your families, friends and neighbors. Everybody in Mountain Brook is passionate about this community, and theyve always been that way, and so when the chamber started thinking about what can we do as a chamber of commerce to get everybody on board to spend their money in our community, keep our tax dollars here. Carol griffin whos owned continental bakery for three decades says susan is right, theres always been a push to support Small Businesses. But the Live Local Campaign has finally given this feeling an identity. We really had a sense of place and a sense of warmth, and i think it just helped the community to name it. And to sort of live into it. And to be proud of it, as we began to really claim it, it just it multiplies it exponentially. Julie howell, owner of lambs ears, cant remember a shop local push this significant. It was just an eye opener from a merchant standpoint of lets get on board with this. Lets try to educate our people. Its hard to miss the excitement of live local, because you see it everywhere you go. There are stickers, banners, and tshirts that are worn by Business Owners and employees. These are a product that the chamber came up with, and theyve kind of just taken off. Shoppers will also notice locally made products, which get special recognition. We ask all of the businesses in Mountain Brook to come up with a list of items that they were already selling that were made locally, and so then we branded them so people knew when i buy that, those pair of earrings, they werent made in new york, theyre being made here in alabama. Julie carries the work of about three dozen area artisans at her store alone. All of our customers love a story. They love to know about the artist. They love to know kind of where they came from, what was their inspiration. And we have that for them. Theres even a local currency known as village gold which is use for the cost of things like cobranded advertising for all businesses. This can be used only at Chamber Member businesses, it will embrace a fuel system, coaches, mothers day gifts, and last month alone we sold over 10,000. This movement has helped unite a community that doesnt have a traditional main street. Theres no central area in Mountain Brook. There are three villages. English village, mountain village, and in each of these villages have their own personality and crest line is more family friendly, English Village is a little more artsy, theyve got calories and dining establishments. Mountain village is much more of an antiques and jewelry. The Business Owners in these shopping districts have embraced the campaign. Which has allowed the entrepreneurs to function as a more cohesive unit. Its almost like a mission. And then suddenly, youre in the company of likeminded people, sharing an enthusiasm basically. So i feel like were a lot closer. Susan says shes been looking at the numbers, and theres plenty of proof that sales have gone up since live local came to life. We get tax revenue for the villages since we kicked this campaign off, weve seen that rise. And that means the Live Local Program is here to stay. The movement is just growing, and the possibilities are endless. When you do have a united front, and people are thinking outside the box, and they are looking at ways that they can promote their business and maybe their neighbors business, its going to be a great thing for everybody involved. Julie believes other communities can learn a thing or two from Mountain Brook. She says branding the Live Local Campaign is a concept that can work anywhere. Its the education. I think that is a perfect way to put it. To give it a name, so then you can talk to them about what it is. And carol says, shes thrilled to operate in a place where everyone appreciates the importance, and the value of shopping small. The citys committed to retaining a sense of place, and a sense of history and community here. And to get the political and financial will to do Something Like that, it takes commitment, and belief in a higher sort of principle. Social media has become an obsessive way to influence your seo. And pinterest especially has a lot of qualities that make its ability to up your search results undeniable. Here now are five ways you can get a higher on the Search Engine listing using pinterest courtesy of ink. Com. One, name your images. Save them with dedescriptive tags before uploading so that Search Engines can lead people to your photos, and ultimately your business. Two, map your pins. Pinterest recently partnered with foursquare and added mapping capabilities to pins. This is a great opportunity to highlight your location and expand your local reach. Three, share your boards. When boards are shared and have multiple content sources the value and trust that Search Engines have for the boards increased rapidly. Meaning more visibility. Four, choose your best boards. Keep them in the first four spots on your profile page, since these are the only ones visible on a smartphone. And five, keep your information short and sweet. Only the first 75 to 100 characters of your pin description are viewable in mobile, so prioritize your text. If you have ever been confused by who said what during a conference call, check out our app of the week. Voxeet is a free conferencing app that gives you visual clues to exactly who is speaking and when. If you need to talk to only one participant, the whisper feature allows you to speak with the person quietly while still listening to the conference call. The app can accommodate up to eight participants at a time. Its generally pretty clear when you need to fire someone on your marketing team, or someone in sales. But for many of you, what happens in the i. T. Department happens in a dark hole, that you just dont understand when theyre speaking a language that you just dont get. So, how do you know if your i. T. Team is doing their job well . Our next guest has some tips for us. Kevin surace is ceo at appvance a company that drives scalability and perform maance apps and websites. Great to see you. Okay, so our talking about productivity, all kinds of thing. Productivity slows down, you know somethings going wrong in the i. T. Department. But what if they come back to you and say, oh, its because of something in the code, theres something wrong in the code there, so we had to slow down. You just dont know what theyre talking about. You may not know what theyre talking about but for sure every company is a tech company today. If you think even a Restaurant Business is now internet reservations, were going to digital ordering either at the counter or at the table, youll eventually have a robot deliver the food to you. Every business is a Technology Business today. So i. T. Is supposed to improve the productivity of all of your employees. If its not improving the productivity of all of our employees that you see every day, forget it. Let alone the productivity within i. T. Whether its outsourced or whatever its doing. So yes you want them productive and yes theyre going to come back to you for these features, but what you hear a lot of, especially in Small Businesses, is that, wow, you know, my i. T. Department, they refused to work on this thing and they wont fix this mac and they dont know how to do this. They are a Service Organization to the rest of the organization. To make the rest of the organization more productive. Got it. The most valuable thing you have in your organization is your people. And theyre made more valuable with i. T. , rather than less valuable. I see. So the product they are putting out are not helping the rest of the company, somethings wrong . Time to fire them and get someone who will. The same thing. This is an easy one. If security is neglected but oftentimes you dont know that security is neglected until something happens. The best story of the last year or sad one is you may say target breach, Everybody Knows what happened there. It happened at the pos terminals, the terminals in the stores, actually not on the internet. The ceo quickly fired the head of i. T. And the board quickly fired the ceo right behind him, just to make an example that, in fact, at the csuite you had better know enough about i. T. And enough about security and raise security throughout the entire organization. Can they answer your questions . Can they answer your questions . Youre asking something, are they quick with a response . How are you going to deliver security to this organization . How are you going to make sure the data is secure . How are you going to make sure when someone leaves the organization they didnt take data with them. How are you going to track data leaving onto a usb card and run off . How are we going to know that . They go, i dont know, i dont do that. Can you find me someone who can, because security is critical, and and, and it can hurt the brand. Were talking about also Response Time. Response time is slow. What if i love that. Were too busy. Were working on this other thing for you. I cant get to this yet. I love the category Response Time because theres two kinds of responses. One is, is i. T. Responsive to the needs of the organization. And the other is a little bit newer but very, very important. Which is, how fast do my web properties, and my App Properties respond okay. To the users. Both are important. Now today that second one is becoming more important. Whether youre a Small Business or Large Business or anything else to the rest of the world, your web and App Properties represent your business. They are your brand. To a Younger Generation theyre more important than whatever it is you make. Theyre going to go to your site, look at a menu, theyre going to do something else, theyre going to play a game there, so the bar has been raised and then finally you just say Cloud Computing is not in place so much is moving to the cloud and they should be able to respond to this but i just want to ask you one last question which is okay say you have to fire your person and say it is somebody out of house how do you find a new one it was so hard to find the first guy . It shouldnt be hard to find the first guy theres a lot of people out there and theres a lot of firms out there that will help you. But clearly one of the things you want to do when you talk about Cloud Computing is take anything you were hosting in house and get it out to the cloud. Cloud is down 90 in the last four or five years. Ibm, rackspace, amazon, everybodys got offerings. There should not be a cloud thats full of i. T. Equipment anymore. You dont buy i. T. Equipment. Someone else runs that for you. Your i. T. Person manages it out there but that infrastructure is no longer what you do. Put all your infrastructure even Tech Companies ge Just Announced that 90 of their applications corporatewide are going to the cloud. Thank you so much for giving us this insight. Arguably one of the most wellknown bottles of hot sauce around the world is tabasco. Its a staple on every kitchen and restaurant table. What you may not know, though, is that the Company Behind the condiment, the Mcilhenny Company is family owned and was founded in 1868 right here in the united states. We sat down with tony simmons, the seventh mcilhenny to serve as ceo in avery island, louisiana, where the Company Still operates to this day. He talks about how providing uncompromised quality and promoting from within has helped tabasco become a household name. Every morning im on avery island, they will set up the barrels of tabasco pepper mash that we are going to use to make tabasco. I check that pepper mash myself, as president and ceo of this company before they start to make the product. Our commitment to the quality of our product, i think, is the biggest strength we have. Our consumers know theyre going to get complete commitment from this family, and from this company, to make a product. It will not be compromised. Every bottle of tabasco in the world, every consumer everywhere in the world when they pick that bottle up knows exactly what its going to taste like. We use an internal posting process for promotion. We put a committee to the to interview the people who have posted for the job. The three people who have to work him vote first. If theyre unanimous, theyve selected the new person to get the job. So they know that one, if they work for us, theyre going to have the first opportunities to have advancement in the company before we go outside the company to look for people. And two, that our Promotion System is transparent, and open, and that the people who actually are going to be working with this person can around in many cases, do, pick the person who is going to get the job. That encourages longevity. Its very difficult to get people to tell you what they really think as opposed to what they think you want to hear. And so, i work hard that trying to make sure my senior people give me an honest opinion. Theyre not any use to me if they only tell me what i want to hear. We use abundant structure that puts a significant amount of pay at risk for the senior people. When we sit together in an officers meeting with the eight people that run this company, a person cant say well this is my department, you know, its not really your business. Because, another Vice President will say, your business is my business, because my bonus is based on how youre doing, as well as how im doing. So were going to talk about that. And it encourages open conversation. It lets us get to the root of problems. When we come back, the danger of sharing your ideas, and how much workspace your employees actually need. And want some candy from canada or snacks from sweden . Todays elevator pitchers hope our panel is hungry for food from around the world. This business meansiness, so everything in thathe community. Its how i care for my family. What you spend in the Community Stays in the community. Were all independent folks. But, you know, one store on a block cant make it without other stores. You cant swim alone. Has to really watch their costs. Ive always watched costs here from the time ive been a kid, i was 15, 18 years old. I kind of did everything years ago, but now we have plant managers and production managers, and theyre forever wanting more and more employees. I told them you cant get too many more employees. Yet you have to run efficiently, and do with what you have. Subscriptions to monthly gift box businesses like birch box are really big right now. Our elevator pitchers want to ride this wave with their company that sends food from around the world. Lets see if our panel is hungry for this idea. Larry broughton is the ceo of Broughton Hotels and kalika yap is founder and ceo of the Digital Marketing agency citrus studios. My name is kat. Im cofounder and coceo of tri the world. Im david foult. Try the world is revolutionizing the way people shop for food online. Subscribers receive a gourmet box from a different country every two months, starting at 33 per box. And keep buying individual products on try the worlds eshop. David and i met at Columbia University and share a passion for travel and food. Today we have thousands of happy customers who enjoy receiving and discovering new products from around the world. We first raised around 700,000 from Angel Investors to grow the subscription box business. And today were raising 1. 2 million to grow the eshop. And to become the leader in the online gourmet market which is one of the Fastest Growing cat categories in ecommerce. We, of course, are inviting everybody to be part of our journey. All right you guys. I am a i love these kind of businesses. I think theyre so much fun. Lets see what your panel thinks. Not of the idea again but of the pitch. And while theyre putting their numbers down you just show me a couple of the things that are in here . Yes, absolutely. So this is the paris box and it includes products from all over france. So for example the fleur de sel. This is great on meat and fish dishes. Its a beautiful box also. I love this. How its all put together. Larry, one to ten, how did they do on the pitch . I give you an 8. Heres the thing. I think you guys are very conversational which is awesome. I hate the elevator pitches that are so programmed. You cant wait for this get over. What i would like to see or hear is what are you going to do with the 1. 2 million and what is the investor going to get for that. Thats key. I know you dont want to hear this, but i think this is an awesome product, and you have a great face for this as well. Its food meeting travel. I love it. You founded three businesses. How did they do . Five businesses, i missed two of them. I gave you eight as well. I also echo larrys sentiments. I want to know what the 1. 2 million is going go to as well. I done a Digital Marketing agency, i know what things cost and if things are specific, i would probably have resonated with your presentation a little bit more. Is it going to social Media Marketing . What are you going to do with it . Will it go to ppc . All the those things i would have loved to hear from your speech. Thank you guys so much. Good luck with everything. Its a beautiful product. I wish you the best of luck. Congratulations on that. Stick around because i need you back on the desk later on. If any of you have a product or service and you want feedback from the elevator pitch panel on your chance of getting interested investors, just send us an email. The address is yourbusiness msnbc. Com. Please include a summary of what your company does, how much money you are trying to raise and what you intend to do with the money. We look forward to reading your pitches and look forward to seeing you here on the show. Its time to answer some of your business questions. Larry and kalika are back with us. The first is about buying other companies. I would like to grow my company through acquisitions. What is the best way to do that when i dont have a strong Balance Sheet . You both nod your head. The question of the ages. Is there a way . There is, but lets be honest. Its a long hard way if you dont have a strong Balance Sheet. I suggest looking at alliances with people who have done it before. You will have to give up a lot more in the beginning than if you got a long track record and a big bank account, but if you dont have a strong Balance Sheet, you will have to give away a long part of the shore. Someone will have to be signing on the loans. Find a partner with a strong Balance Sheet and work into it. What do you think . I agree. I think the main focus should be to work on your Balance Sheet first. If you do, you may want to try Equity Financing and that assumes if you have a great profit and loss statement, youre doing better revenues than your competitor. People believe in you and they want it. This is an email from stephanie. She writes, i have a very good Small Business idea. I was told to be careful who i share it with what are the steps i should take . Who can i trust with this idea . We used to get this question all the time and i havent in a few years. I love to get your opinion. People have wide opinions. Various opinions. It depends what stage you are at. Are you at the napkin stage while still formulating the idea. If so, i would do some Online Research and see if the product is patentability. I checked the government website. Did you tell anybody . My husband. But thats it. In that early stage at what point do you feel you can share it . When i already had my idea formulated already a little bit more and i knew there was a minimum viable product. So just the idea, you didnt have a product, the company was not formed and you tested it and it will work. Thats okay to do and as you share your inside, a lot of times you get a lot of negativity. If i listened to all the trusted advisers, i probably wouldnt have world wide patents i have today. What about people who are scared of stealing ideas. I take a different approach on this. I believe we have to be careful of blabbing it to the world but how do you know you have a great idea unless you tell people you have a great idea. I had a client that wanted me to sign a confidentiality agreement but when we went to the Patent Office and looked, there were eight other patents and products she thought was the first to market. Its not. Heres the thing. Most people have great ideas and they are afraid to share them. 99. 9 of the people who have that idea are never going to do anything with it, they will never take it to market and launch it because they dont have the guts to do it. This minimum viable product is so powerful. We have to focus on this. Protect yourself though. Maybe what im getting is share it and you need feedback, just be careful who you share it with. She had a great point. Have a board of advisers and bounce it off of them first. These ought to be people in the industry and have been down this path. Its not everybody at a dinner party, hey, i have this great new idea. No. The last question is what is the right amount of work space for your staff . The average work space for an employee is 250 square feet. With the changing dynamics in the workplace, how dig should that space be, and should we have private offices or open work spaces . Is there a perfect amount . My office is completely open space. While they have their own desk space, they can take their lap tap go to the patio go to Conference Rooms. They can even work at home if they want to. I believe they have to have have the freedom to do the best work for them. How close are the desks to each other . Is it one long desk . Spread out . Theyre spread out. Then we have vaulted ceilings. Its really nice. We used to work in a place where the ceilings were low, the energy was bad. I think its important to make im in creative businesses, so you have to be in a place where you have lots of windows and lots of light. It depends on the organization. The type of company youre in. If you are in a Creative Space and a creative industry, absolutely. Collaboration is key. The more you can take down the walls the better. If you look at organizations like zappos, where tony shea, the ceo, he doesnt even have an office. Hes out in the bullpen with everyone else. If youre in legal or law, you need a little bit of privacy. Even if you have walls and the door behind it, we must find ways that people can collaborate. Collaboration is the key to success nowadays. But i think shes not talking about how much can you give them but how little can you give them. I think you have to figure outdo people get along . I think did you have your job sharing with people, you can be as close. By the way, how loud is it . My gosh, ive been in organizations where its pandemonium. I cant do it personally, but other people can. I think if youre going to have one of these open plan offices, you need phone booths, Conference Rooms where people can take calls. People forget how important acoustics are in the office. Thank you so much for everything today. It was nice to hear your advice. Good to see you both. Thank you, everyone so much for joining us today. If you like the show and want its open forum. Com your business. You will find all of todays segments and extras we put together. You can follow us on twitter. Its msnbc your biz and we are on facebook and instagram too. Coming up next week, its become one of the most important days for sales for Small Business. We help you get ready for Small Business saturday. Our show will come to you from main street in millford, connecticut where Community Businesses are using social media to draw in not just local residents but customers from around the region. Well show you how businesses from coast to coast are using promotions and discounts and clever campaigns to get shoppers to support main streets during this busy period. Kevin bacon talks about his efforts to get customers to shop local by patronizing Small Businesses giving back to charity. Until then, im j. J. Ramberg. Remember, we make your business our business. This business meansiness, so everything in thathe community. Its how i care for my family. What you spend in the Community Stays in the community. Were all independent folks. But, you know, one store on a block cant make it without other stores. You cant swim alone. These are pictures of president obama on air force one to start implementing to new immigration policies he announced in his speech last night. Just after 2012, he announced the terms in which he thought republicans and democrats in the house and senate could agree on comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation. A bill along those lines did pass the senate about six months after the speech, but House Republicans refused to ever vote on it, and that refusal