Here to help. Thats why we are proud to present your business on msnbc. Hi there, everyone. Im j. J. Ramberg, and welcome to your business. Getting buzz for your new product or service can be a struggle for a startup. But that was not the case for one brooklynbased woman entrepreneur. Her artist designed line of temporary tattoos have become a hit not just with kids, but people of all ages. And the competition, of course, has been quick to get in on the craze. And that has made it imimportant for her to not let the hype distract her from being laser focused on her brand. Tina roth eisenburg is on a mission. I was fed up with the ugly temporary tattoos my daughter would bring home. She wasnt annoyed with the idea of the tattoos. She loved those. But as a Graphic Designer and the woman behind the popular design blog swiss miss, she just couldnt stand how they looked. Complete insult to my aesthetics. So she took matters into her own hand and like any good entrepreneur started a company that solved a problem. She called it tattly. What were trying to do is just elevate what temporary tattoos can be. So were kind of changing what how theyre perceived. Because there are beautifully designed and theyre done by professional artists. Tinas got a team of artists around the world who create the designs and then get a cut of the sales. And the designs run the gamut. Which are some of your favorites here on this wall . Some of the favorites here are the heart by anna. And i love the bear which is by our employee nick miller. I think the pizza. The pizza is so funny. Tattly has a laser sharp focus on one product, and one product only. Tattoos. Do you get a lot of requests to expand into other products . Yes, we actually do. A lot of people still me tina you should sell stickers and do wall decals and pillows and posters and im like no. Because i really believe in focusing on the one product, or one line of products, and just making those right. And being known to be the best in that category. And thats what im striving for with tattly. Why do you choose that path versus being known to be the best design of this kind of thing, right . Because stickers, tattoos, they sort of fit in the same genre. Yeah, but then im watering down what the brand tattly is. Tattly, theres the word tattoo in there and it should stay like that. Otherwise im going to be stickly. Sticker. She says this extreme focus is part of the reason the company has taken off. Shes true to the brand, and the mission. And that resonates with customers. Shes not spent a dime on marketing. The companys grown entirely by word of mouth. And its created a tattoo frenzy. Tattlies have shown up in fashion blogs, in celebrity instagram photos and on the shelves at Popular Stores like urban outfitters. The word just really spread. We never really had to do a lot of reachout, which is amazing and quite humbling. As to be expected, as her company grew, the competition noticed. Theres a lot of other companies that all of a sudden popped up doing exactlied same thing all around the world. I mean just something i just realized when you have a good idea other people will follow. And so we have literally created a industry of, you know, companies around the world licensing art from illustrators and designers and artists, and selling them as temporary tattoos. Tinas confident, though, she says her job is to simply stay one foot ahead of anyone else out there. And again, its her focus on elevating design, and her authentic mission, that allows her to do so. As an example, shes got corporations across the globe asking her to make them tattoos. But she doesnt say yes to just everyone. The money isnt worth it unless it fits her brand. We kind of have this informal rule that we dont just do your logo. Because thats a really easy way for us to just kind of say, come on, lets think beyond that. Lets try and elevate that concept of what someone what your fans are going to wear on their bodies. They dont really want to wear your corporate logo. They want to wear something that is going to suggest your brand. And start a conversation. I dont need to take every business out there. I want to take business that is true to what we are. Staying true isnt always easy, though. Tattly faced a difficult challenge on that front recently. One of the tenets of the company, something important to tina is that all production is domestic. You say you make everything in the usa. But you had an issue with the gold tattoos. A few months after we offered to produce some of the gold tattly we unfortunately learned we were miss led by our vendor. That theyre, in fact, not made in the u. S. Which was i had to take a deep breath. Because i built a company on made in the u. S. You know, on this idea. We had to we had a long discussion whether we wanted to continue or not. And while were still selling them now, even though they are made in china, we say on the back, theyre currently made in china but were moving production to the u. S. We have plans of, and we found a vendor that will start selling them early next year. What youre describing i see a lot of companies do, which is were open. Hey, we make mistakes, things happen. But we try and fix them, and were very open about them. I started this company because i wanted to fix the world of temporary tattoos. And im not just going to get distracted. And i will focus on it, and i will i dont want to stop until people call temporary tattoos tattly. Over the past nine seasons weve reported on a lot of Small Businesses that have disrupted industries in a significant way. One of them is paperless post which shook up the traditional stationery business. Started by a brother and sister team their Online Innovation was an inviting change for consumers. If youre like most americans, your life has gone electronic. You shop, bank, pay your bills, and send emails all online. And even though there are plenty of ways to send digital invitations, when it came time to send one for his 21st birthday party, James Hirschfeld was shocked he couldnt find a classy digital invitation anywhere on the web. I was kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place because i didnt have a budget to send paper invitations. But i also found that the existing products for sending invitations online were not as customizable and not as beautiful as what i would have wanted. James, a sophomore in college, saw an opportunity. The idea was simple. Create a company that could effectively translate the look and feel of a tangible highend paper invitation to the digital realm. The first person he shared his concept with was his sister alexa. He kept talking about the tooth of the paper. I didnt know paper had teeth. That idea of starting out with something that had all the visual qualities of something in the offline world that people understand. And the most having it be the most beautiful version of that online. Like hyperreal. Hyperluxurious. I understand it because he kept talking about it. Thats all he was saying. Alexa loved the concept. So in 2007, while james was still a student at harvard, they pulled money from their own savings to start paperless post. It took us about a year and a half to get to a place where we could allow outside users to come on and use the site. The idea quickly took off. Gaining traction and new customers every time someone received a paperless post invitation. Jonah perrettety, founder of buzz feed and cofounder of the Huffington Post was so impressed when he first received a paperless post invite that he eventually became an adviser and mentor to the pair. What the company has found is that people are receivers first and then they get a few and say, i keep getting these beautiful invitations and its usually from a friend of mine who is a high status friend or person that i respect. Maybe i should go and use this service. And then they come and use the service, and then it spreads that way. More affordable than paper stationery, environmentally friendly, and fast, paperless post quickly attracted high profile users and institutions. Like prince charles, condoleezza rice, the museum of modern art, and the white house. With 50 million invitations sent, and a service that is very lowcost, everyone is taking notice. Theres a lot of examples of Big Companies trying to copy what the nimble, innovative startups are doing. And they have a lot of trouble, actually. More than youd expect. And so i think in a way, it validates the market, and i think what youll see is paperless post continuing to innovate, because theyre not copying, theyre inventing this stuff. And when youre the one whos inventing it, you understand the ideas in a deeper way. This holiday season, if your free time isnt overloaded with sending out those lastminute greeting cards and wrapping gifts, why not get in some helpful reading . Here now are five of the best Small Business books of 2014, courtesy of yfsmagazine. Com. One, girl boss. Filled with behind the scenes stories from the quick rise in the fashion world youll learn success is all about trusting your instincts and following your gut. Two Business Model generation is for people looking to update outdated Business Models. Get some powerful strategic ideas and tools that are easy to implement for your Small Business. Three, do it marketing provides some helpful ways you can demystify your marketing strategy, so you can reach new customers and clients. Four, good to great profiles a set of elite companies that have managed to achieve enduring success and have sustained stellar results for at least 15 years. And five, hooked, how to build habit forming products. A fourstep process embedded into the products of many Successful Companies to steadily encourage customer behavior. A lot of Small Business owners i talk to say that they are stuck at a certain level. They cant seem to grow anymore. They work as hard as possible, theyve gotten by for years, and they dont know why their growth has stopped. Well our next guest says that there are a lot of strategies that owners should focus on in order to build a business that can scale. Jeff hoffman is a cofounder of priceline and a former ceo in the priceline group. Hes a successful entrepreneur and motivational speaker and he is coauthor of the new book scale, seven proven principles to grow your business, and get your life back. Its so great to see you. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for having me. And you put this together because you watched, youve helped ray lot of companies scale, companies that were stuck at a certain point. Absolutely. My coauthor david and i both work with Small Businesses, and we hear the same thing every day, people say, same two things, one, im stuck. I cant grow the business. Im working more hours than ive ever worked so why is my business not growing even faster with the time i put in. And the other thing they say is that the reece of their life is deteriorating because theyre working so much. So lets go through just a couple of the principles in your book and one is about creating systems. When youre small you dont need systems. Right . Everythings just getting done. As you grow, you need processes. Thats exactly right. And the problem is, because when youre small youre just doing stuff. Every day you just go to work and do what has to be done, it doesnt occur to most Business Owners whats happening is theyre designing the business around themselves. Its owner reliant. I do what i have to do every day. Youre never going to grow because nobody else can help you do that because nobody knows what it is you do but you. The other thing around creating systems. Then if you lose an employee someone can easily come in and take their place. That is exactly right. What we talk about is the best practices part of systems. Meaning ill hear a Small Business owner now theyve got a couple people. Sally is amazing at sales. Jims not doing so well. What you want to do is clone whatever it is that sallys doing that works so that the next jim can say show me how to do this right. Thats what a system is about. Right . Being able to pass the best practices, and document it so anybody in your company can perform at the level of your best. You know notice the word of caution that ive learned about creating systems is you create them, and then they get more complicated. And then they get more complicated. So you always need to be going back to the people who are actually involved in them. And say, how can we simplify this. Thats an excellent point because the other mistake a lot of Small Business owners make, they say okay, fine, ill create the systems, ill document the stuff and they never go back to it. The key is absolutely continuous improvement. We do it quarterly. You revisit those on a regular basis where you go back and say what has changed in the world around us, whats changed with our customers and how do we need to update all those systems . It is absolutely a continuous process. Okay. And then you talk about internal controls. So you can actually see if the right things are getting done. Yes, and you know, i was thinking about this on the way here, to talk to you today, and the best analogy probably for controls, because this is where people get it wrong, they want Business Owners want control. Thats different than putting controls, and ill tell you the analogy. The analogy is a Police Officer sitting at a corner in a speed trap thats a control. Anybody that speeds will get caught speeding and punished for it. But controls are putting a speedometer in front of every employee of your company in their car so they know how fast theyre going, and they can prevent themselves from ever getting in trouble in the first place. So is this putting metrics around things . What do you mean exactly . Its a mix. When we talk about controls, we talk about sort of three levels of it. And this is what the book scale is all about it teaches you how to build these three things but the first level is just visual controls dash boards like a speedometer something every employee can look at and say how am i doing . Am i doing what the Business Needs me to do . Not everybody has dash boards and they should. So thats visual controls. Then we talk about procedural controls which is explaining to people how to run the business for example heres an easy one people get. Is the same person that deposits money in the Checking Account is not the one that perhaps that has the passwords to the accounts. Theyre procedural controls you do. Then there are embedded controls. Where you build systems, that are monitoring, thats what you were talking about, the metrics part are embedded controls, systems that are constantly measuring the performance of your employees and your business and reporting it. All right. Well congratulations on the book. Its incredibly helpful step by step on how to do these things. So thank you for coming by and stopping to talk to us. Thank you very much. When we come back, we answer your questions on how to get a Service Contract with a big organization, and how to balance two different customer bases. And, its tea for three as todays elevator pitcher brews up for his organic tea company. 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. Get as much feedback as possible on your idea before you jump into it. A lot of people are very protective of their ideas. They dont want to share their ideas with anyone. Theyre afraid think be stolen or a competitor will hear about it. Ideas are cheap. Its the execution that matters. I met todays elevator pitcher just a couple of days ago on, of all places, the escalator at saks fifth avenue which is right across from us here at 30 rock. And this is a good lesson for all of you out there. He said to me in passing, i love your show. And so i asked him what he did and he told me he was an entrepreneur who had a new tea company. So i invited him to come on the show and be an elevator pitcher. So for any of you out there who are shy, the lesson is, dont be. You never know what can happen. So now, hes here and lets see what our panel will think of his idea. Marketing guru David Meerman scott is the author of the new book the new rules of sales and service and scott newman is the founder of convenient site serve. How are you . Good. How are you . Good. Thank you. My name is sean shafik im cofounder of tko hibiscus. Were the only brand producing fresh brewed organic teas for its great taste and Numerous Health benefits. We launched at the end of september 2013. Were in 400 Stores Including whole foods and the fresh market. The idea came a few years ago. I was working in investment banking. I had an annual physical and was diagnosed with prehypertension. I did some research trying to find a natural way to solve the problem. Found hibiscus tea can help maintain healthy blood pressure. I started drinking hibiscus tea daily. It helped me out so i decided to start a company around that. When i saw that there were no other bottled hibiscus tea brands in the market. To dat weve raised 250,000 from friends and family to launch the company and are currently in the market trying to raise up to 1 million to help us with general working capital purposes, production scaleup, technology initiatives, and general sales, and sales and marketing as well. You can find out more at tkhibiscus. Com. Thank you. Congratulations. Were very happy to see you here today. Okay, guys youre tasting it. I know scott you drink a lot of tea so youre going to be a good judge of the product. I love my tea. David . Scott . On a one to ten, not the product. I saw you guys smile. So i think you like the product. How was the pitch . All right. Okay. David, you wrote first. One to ten. How did he do. He did an eight. Why . I really liked the fact that you were able to be enthusiastic about your product. You know, that when i look at a pitch, thats most important thing for me is how is the enthusiasm. Does he believe in the product himself . And i had this sense that you did. I would like to have seen you talk a little bit about what you wanted to do with the money first. Just set me up. So i thought okay hes looking for quarter of a Million Dollars to grow. And then tell me a little bit about the product. But thats just a personal style for me. All right, scott. You talk to so many Small Businesses. I do. And i also gave an eight. So the thing that i loved about it was this came from a personal passion and a personal experience. And when you start a company theres going to be highs. Theres going to be lows, and if its something that springs from something personal for you, thats going to carry you through the low times. So that i loved. In terms of the pitch itself, what i would love to hear is some stat or something about the competition. That makes me grab on to how achievable it is that youll succeed. Like j. J. Said i drink lots of tea. I drink honest tea and ts tea. I dont know if theyre competitors, but if they are, it would be nice to know get this little tiny sliver of what they have and youll get a great return. All right. Thank you, guys for that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Congratulations on your successful part. And if any of you out there have a product or a service and you want feedback from our panel on your chances of getting investors you do not have to run into me on an escalator. All you have to do is send us an email. The address is yourbusiness msnbc. Com. In that email please include a short summary of what your company does, how much money youre trying to raise, and then what youre going to do with that money. You never know, somebody out there watching the show may be interested in helping you. It is time to answer some of your business questions. David and scott are with us again to help us out. The first one is having a diversified client base. Ive been working for quite a few years now and also managed the smaller size women and im having a really hard time balancing the two groups. So my question is do i focus on one group and cancel out the other or do i simultaneously and how do i do that . Im glad you got the question, right . Its a Perfect Question to be asking right now. What do you think . I think i would look at it from the perspective of what i call buyer personas which is the idea of how do the people that shes targeting, the plussize women, and the other women, look at themselves . And if theyre very different, shes got two different markets. In this case she either needs to choose or she needs to work on both. If she does, she probably needs two marketing strategies, maybe even two websites or two brands. Thats hard when just starting off to have these two different strategies. My inclination is to tell her to kill one off what do you think . I think its a great question. Every good entrepreneur faces this. If youre good, you have a lot of opportunities coming your way. Sometimes the hardest thing is to choose whatnot to do. For me, i always advise the entrepreneurs i work with, when Something Like this comes up, step back first and ask yourself what do we want to be when we grow up . Where do we want to be five, ten years from now . If ten years from now she wants to have a product line that appeals to everybody, maybe that drives you in one direction. If shes saying, no we want to be focused and dominate this one niche, it might be the time to say no to an opportunity. When youre smart and have limited resources, you have to think about where youre putting them. You dont want to divide them up necessarily. Do one thing really well then a bunch of things. When picking, see which one is more successful. Thats kind of easy but dig into the numbers. Bertha writes how do you pursue Service Contracts with Large Organizations . What methods seem to work best . How do you get someone to pick up the phone or open the door when youre knocking . A lot of Things Service organizations dont do well, they dont focus on speed. When you have a Service Contract, you want someone to be there when something goes wrong. The best selling strategy is in my mind that you do your selling quickly. If you are focusing on twitter, if somebody is on your site, you know theyre on your site, you can then interact with them right away. Speed, speed, speed. Then youre showing your potential customers that when something goes wrong, you will be there. You will honor that Service Contract. Got it. How do you get them to talk to you in the first place . Its hard when youre selling into Large Organizations. One of the things that entrepreneurs often dont understand is that unlike them, when youre selling to a large company, there might be five levels of approval. One of the most important things Everybody Needs to keep in mind, first t will take a while. These are not quick decisions. You need to know who the decisionmaker is the best thing you can do early on is figure out who that decisionmaker is and find someone who works with them or four them that you can make your champion. If their selling you, if theyre going to their boss, we need this, thats your best sales job. Its an art to get to the point where youre not selling them but youre selling why you should work with them. If any of you have a question for our experts, go over to our website. We answer them every week on the show. The address is openforum. Co openforum. Com yourbusiness. In 1970, clay matel started out as a Sales Manager for a regional pet food company. 29 years later he sold that company, iams, to Procter Gamble for 2. 3 billion. Today he helps Business Owners learn to become better managers. He sat down with us to share some good tips. I built my First Manufacturing plant in 1977. We had no one in the company who knew how to run a plant. So i went out and hired a guy that ran the best and most efficient pet food plant in the company. Having a person like that that can grow as fast or faster than the company is growing is invaluable. You need to hire for the future, not showed but the future. The other thing ill say, i had an annual salary in those days of 12,000 a year. Of yelp. I paid him 14,000. Its not the punch that you saw coming. Its the one that knocks you out. Its the one you didnt see. Lets take the american Automobile Industry in the 80s. We saw the japanese products coming. We saw the demand for those cars. The big three sat there and continued to build those huge cars with the big fins. They had 12, 14 miles to the gallon. You have to have instincts, a sense of feel for your market and your business. I always said if i owned a popcorn stand on the corner of third and main street in dayton, ohio, i would have an outside board. I truly believe in an outside board. The results are incredible. Again, i use the example, in 1986 i put my first outside board together with the help of a consultant. That was one of my first questions who buys your food . We found out after doing a survey that 70 of our customers were women. The other thing we learned is that women love colors. So we had a rainbow of colors within our product line. And that was very appealing to women because they could go into the store and they could select the product based on the color. That was just one example of an outside board making a contribution. Helping you think outside the box. We tend to get in our own cocoons, the outside boards for as you to get outside that cocoon, look back in. Thats what you want. Thats what you need. Thank you so much for joining us today. To learn more about the show, just click on our website, its openforum yourbusiness. Youll find all of todays segments, plus some webexclusive content with a lot more information to help your business grow. You can also follow us on twitter. Its msnbcyourbiz and we are on facebook. We are on instagram, too. Next week, christmas may only be one day on the calendar, but imagine marketing the most wonderful time of the year 365 days a year. Were in the memory business. Were selling heirlooms. The people that come in here are always dealing with memories. Theyll look at something and talk about grandmas tree. Well find out the secret to getting customers to think about decking the halls and trimming the tree online and offline 24 7. Until then, im j. J. Ramberg. 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. On december 11th, 1991, Columbia University hosted a talk about free speech, and that would not usually be a big deal, except for this particular talk, it hosted this talk from someone who