Present your business on msnbc. Hi everyone. Im j. J. Ramberg and welcome to your business. The show dedicated to helping your Small Business grow. If you have a business that artdss an issue thats hard to talk about, it can be tricky to spread the word. If you work in a industry associated with horrible events for example, a crime scene, how do you put a positive spin on it . We went to tampa to talk to an inventor who finds a way to market her company, which cleans up after some horrific situations. In shows like c. S. I. And breaking bad crime screens pivotal settings. In real life theres often chaos and debris left behind that no one wants to clean up. Except for former Law Enforcement officer laura spalding. She saw an opportunity. It was a double homicide. It was on christmas. I was helping these people that really had no means to pay for it. But, their home jnowners shurnd covered the clean up. After that i said this is it for me. This is what i want to do. Reporter so she started spaulding recon. After setting up camp in tampa, florida, she soon found she had little competition. But the work wasnt steady at first. The cleanups are sporadic. Its not something you can open a brick and mortar put up a forsale sign and then people walk in. We added hoarding. The tricky nature of business means laura cant spend her days waiting for the phone to ring. Its an wareness thing. Im going to hoe teshlgs apartment complexes, insurance companies. When they get that call they dont know where to turn. You get the same reactions, we dont need this service. Then two weeks later, theyre calling you. I cant believe im calling you. When you need it they knew where to pick up the card. Reporter thats what happened to gay kohler. Tragedy struck. My son was killed january 4th of this year. He was murdered by a young man that he was going to give a ride to work that morning. And, the police came and, um had my house for most of the day that day. And when they let me back in they told me that there would be you know a lot to clean up and that it was because it was biomedical waste, it would be better to get somebody. Reporter a quick call made to a number she never imagined she would have to dial and lauras team was on the scene. The workers took care of a job that gay was thankful she didnt have to do herself. Its very tumultuous to lose a son, a child, especially like that in your own home. It made things easier. If i had to clean it up my son had to clean it up it would have made it so much harder. I was glad i met laura before Something Like that happened. Reporter and to grow her business, laura knows thats one fact she needs to change. Not all publicity is good. This is not your typical service. Not a typical coupon or find a buy one get one free. That wont apply. You have to be very strategic about how you advertise. Some of the advertising has been billboards with outlines of dead bodies and, you know that will definitely get your attention. I know theyre going for an awareness type of thing. Maybe it worked for them. That type of approach doesnt work for us. Reporter instead, discreet professional bro churs that address each service individually make sure east Customer Base is treated separately. I designed the bro churs. I dont want a one size fits all bro chur. The hoarders dont want to know that you do a crime scene. They associate themselves to the crime scene. And then they feel worse. Reporter that spills over into hour he Team Delivers on each and every job. For hoarding were sensitive about the way we speak to them. We teach the employee that you have to be empathetic. Im going to help you today. Were going get started. Were going bag up a couple of bags. You have to be sensitive in these situations. I spend more time on that because i think not everyone is from the same background. Not everyone grieves the same way. Reporter knowing her employees well means the high level of service her business is known for continues on even if shes not taking care of the job herself. I can tell their strengths and weaknesses. If i put them on a crew i can assign who i want to be the lead and the contact for the customer. Reporter her ability to speak to the needs of her customers and market what many see as an unsavory business tastefully means the future is bright for spaulding decon. Not only in florida but nationwide. Shes franchising. She has inquiries pouring in. We do the services that no one else wants to think about. We provide peace of mind and restoration of property. I think the growth of this business is unbelievable. Its a recessionproof business. The need is never going to go away. The awareness is only growing. Getting past horrible events and lifechanging mistakes can be a monumental challenge. Thats when sbrerp neuroism can be a positive force. Thats what we discovered when we visited a womens prison in organize porpg where learning to own a Small Business is helping inmates to turn their lives around. At the coffee creek correctional facility in wilsonville, oregon once a week youll hear a conversation like this. If you have a receptionist there, is she an expense . An expense. Reporter this is a 32session course teaching female inmates at this minimum security campus how to start and run their own companies. Effective communication involves active listening to understand what others are saying feeling, and needing. Reporter some of these women have been convicted of crimes like attempted murder assault, and manslaughter, nobody cares what the people did to get into prison. The focus is what theyll do when they get out. I have always liked to run things. I would like to be the owner of a business rather than the employee. Reporter Shalonda Ford is a student of the life class. Throughout the term she and fell lee classmates are learning everything you need to know to launch a company from the ground up. We cover the p and l, the balance sheet. We cover soft skills like communication. Effective listening. Effective speaking. We cover marketing. The class is built around being able to write a business plan. Reporter doug cooper is the assistant director of mercycorps. Hes been with the Program Since it started. People are going come out and having a felony conviction will make it hard to find living wage jobs. To be able to start a business or be selfemployed seemed like a viable option. I didnt think anybody would want to hire me. So the idea of starting my own business and being my own boss and still being able to make a living was very appealing to me. Reporter so far, about 100 inmates have completed the course. And 5 to 10 of them have started businesses. Michelle will soon join those ranks. Shes just about to start her company. Forget me not cards and prints. Just about a year and half out of getting out of prison. She came up with the idea while enflold the life class. In prison mail is a huge issue. A lot of people are disappointed when they dont get a birthday card. It seemed like it could be a good thing to do. If you could mail out cards for people and not have to worry about it. Reporter she was ready to go. It was pretty exciting to actually, um you know sit down and write something up. And and figure out what the feasibility of the idea is and really pick it apart. Reporter but actually starting a business right out of prison isnt the goal. Creating the confidence so someone could start one is. We want them to be more economically secure. By that have that as a means to rebuild their lives. Be successful. Never come back. The name of the institution is correctional facility. If the implication is that youre learning to do something better. That requires education. Reporter tanya was one of the first students to ever take the classes while serving an 8 1 2year sentence. I know when i started the life program, i started to have that little glimmer of hope. That i dont have to be that person with the mark. Reporter in the four years since we reported on mercycorps the life program has expanded to gig harbor. The program just graduated its 11th class. Douk cooper says the program has reduced the recidivism rate of its students by more than 40 . I refuse to come in and leave the same way i came in. That was my thing. I knew underneath everything else, there was a bigger person than what i portrayed myself to be. I think i have been most impressed by the womens desire to change and to start a new life. And consequently it feels like were doing a real service by trying to give them a way for that to happen. This is real. This is real. You know, i feel like i cant be stopped. Investing in Customer Service can really pay off. Fortunately, there are plenty of createive ways to delight your users without a big budget. Here are five ways to regularly wow clients. One, free extras and upgrades. Complimentary perks like express shipping and sample products generally wont hurt your margins but can increase revenue. Two, invite them to hang out. Give your best clients a behindthescenes experience to learn what you and your team really are. Three, offer a giveraway. Bund al bunch of your products together and create a sweepstakes they can enter. Coupon codes often work wonders. Four break the rules opinion when interacting with customers, its easy to read from a script. Make exsengss when customers have uncommon issues and ask you for help. And fiver, telg their story. Your customers are real people with powerful stories. Authenticity can go a long way. Still to come what you need to do to make sure your business is still profitable five years from now. And more of our viewers favorite Small Business online tools and apps. American express for travel and entertainment worldwide. Just show them this the American Express card. Dont leave home without it and someday, i may even use it on the moon. Its a marvelous thing oh haha so you can replace plane tickets, travelers cheques, a lost card. Really . That worked . American express timeless safety and security are now available on apple pay. The next evolution of membership is here. This weeks your business selfie is from Michael Connelly from sprindfield, massachusetts. Who runs a unique Diaper Company called stinky kax. I love this company, by the way. Its a good gift. If you would like to see your picture up here on your business, send a selfie of you and your business to your business. Tweet to msnbcyourbiz. Time to answer some of your business questions. Lets get our board of drerkts in here to hemp us out. Amos windbush iii is a ceo of a universal transfer company. Mike perless is ceo of forbes media. Lets get to the first question. What is the biggest challenge that most businesses have that prevent them from making it five years from the dhat they start . A good question i think. You cover a lot of businesses. We do. And, as you know from my background, i was also in Venture Capital for a long time before i joined forbes. To me its all about people. If you make the wrong choices about people early in your trajectory, getting to five years is difficult. Making the right choices, though its hard maybe takes a little longer. Have to be more selective. That is the important factor. The first five years, whats so tricky hopefully, youre growing a lot. You need people who are really flexible. They somewherehave to understand that the job they have at day one is probably not the job theyll have at year three. Very true. I would say rigidness. Being very rigid in your idea of what your business should be could be or how you perceive it to be tomorrow. And undercapitalization. Some of the biggest and toughest issues that reaching that fiftyh year. Next up, a question about contracts. So one of our mane challenges is to get people to honor the contracts that they signed. So what we would like to know is how to maintain the relationship with the customer so they can fulfill the contract and actually see the results produce in their life and their business that they actually paid for. Whats tricky about this is that people expect immediate results. Marketing and pr sometimes you need to wait. If hes done lets say, a sixmonth contract and a month in theyre saying i dont see anyone. Where are my customers, theyre going to throw it out the window. What can you do . If i had a chance to talk to him, the question i would ask is, what is it thats disappointing your client . And he might say, that theyre not getting results quickly enough. This is an example of where you really just need to spell out what you do. How you do it. What peoples expectations should be over what time frame. We see this question a lot. We have an entrepreneurship channel on forbes. Com. These kinds of questions come up particularly around softer businesses where its not black and white. Whats going to happen in the near term. I think your point about expectations might be the most important one. And communication. Throughout the period of you working with that particular client, you should always be in communication with them talking to them having an open dialogue on whats work whats not, how can we tweak it. Sn how can we change it . I think you look at that type of business, its a sixmonth run. Its something you have to be in it for the long haul. If youre charging 60 k for that work, you have to let them know you may not see results in the first couple of months but it will be there. The last thing you want is somebody who is unsatisfied. Exactly. Thats not just a its not just a bad situation for the customer who is not interested in paying because they didnt think they got value. Its a bad situation for the Marketing Company because thats bad word of mouth. Particularly in the marketing world. Right, exactly. No one is going to back out of a contract and run around the world telling everybody that they really loved the company. Theyre great. Hire them. Lets get to the last email. Its from karen. She writes ive been a chiropractor for 23 years and ill well branded. Im changing dreks and going into Holistic Wellness care. How do i rebrand . Wow. Thats a great question. I dont think you should necessarily have to rebrand. I think you are who you are. Most companies, their branding relies on the presence of the ceo and executive of the business. If youre moveing from a regular kirchiropractic business and into a holistic business you are who you are. The core of your business should transcend marketing or pr. It doesnt seal like its so out of left field, right . Its all within the same general umbrella. Its not like now im suddenly a baseball coach. Right . I think thats right pop to move to nutrition and yoga and structural integration, all the things you can do connect todd Chiropractic Services are important. I suspect she talks with all of her clients about what she believes in and what will be best for them. It probably isnt very much of a leap. She should specifically start to write about it talk about it engage with social media. Right. Try to connect with her clients and their bigger universe of people. Maybe hook in with caregivers who come from one of the other tent posts of holistic caregiving. And and i thought about, start with your existing clinlts. You dont have do rebrand yourself if suddenly you start offering this service to people youre already working with. It will happen itself. She might be overthinking it. Its a builtin market. It sounds like a good idea to me. I feel better already. You can go see her. Both of you, thank you so much for your advice and for stopping by. Thanks. Thank you. If any of you have a question for our experts, head to our website. The address is openforum. Com yourbusiness. Youll see a button that says ask the shows. Again, the website is openforum. Com yourbusiness. Or send us an email. In todays world, there seems to be an app or a website that claims to help you with everything. From falling asleep quicker to improving your payroll procedures. Which once will actually deliver in making your entrepreneurial life easier. We give you some of the tools our viewers swear by. As online sellers, a big part of our business is shipping products. And we use endicia to quickly and efficiently ship products. Its a desk top or webbased system, however you choose to use it. It processes and prints your shipping labels. Weve have been using it for almost ten years. For us by far the best solution. I use an app. Moldiv. It helps me focus. I use it every day pretty much. One of my favorite apps to use is todoist. It works on the phone, email. Its something that helps absolutely keep me on track with my to do list. Samebox is an amazing app and Resource Management tool. It automatically sorts. It has a label called same news letters. It puts all the news letters in the same file. Theres a sane later. People you email frequently it puts in your inbox. I saver about four hours a week from checking email when i use it. It seeps you focused. It puts the other emails in folders you can check later. One of the apps i absolutely love is podio. Its a project Management System. It has the ability to be reconfigured and built for your specific purposes. I have different work spaces. Different work spaces for projects. For internal applications such as my finances my sales. Within each work space, there are customizable apps. I can build a project Management System that works for me and the way i want it to work. Rather than just how its preboxed. Do you leave your business from the top down with the old command and control system . Management systems that used to work in the past dont necessarily work anymore. Our guest says today, effective leadership is done with more of a side by side example. Ken blanchard is here opinion hes the coauthor of the new oneminuteman aj oneminute manager. How are you. Good. It mousse have been interesting to go back and revit the book. Lets start with oneminute goals. What is that . Thats so important. If youre you want your people to do something, they have to be clear on what youre asking them to do. Today, with oneminuteman aernlg rather then a him setting the goals for everybody, its much more collaborative. He sits with them they set to goals together so everybody agrees upon it. They know what direction theyre supposed to go. Once goals are set. And you dont want a lot of goals, you want three to five at most the once that can be the biggest impact, then you want to make sure people are look at them continually. The Major Management style in the past was some manager would tell people to do something and they would disappear until you made a mistake. Then they would be seagull managers, fly in make a lot of noise, dump on everybody, and fly out. You cant micromanage everybody. You want them to be able to catch themselves doing something right. Thats different in the tone. And then in they make a mistake, rather than punishing them the oneminute redirect says as you said this is what ive observed. Doesnt seem to be the direction we were talking about. Do you agree . And how can we get back on line . How do you think employees should be praised . Well as soon as possible. You know, you dont want to wait for an annual performance review. If you see something going on well go to them and say, gee, let me tell you what i have observed. This is how i feel about it. Congratulations. Keep up the good work. Thats why some people say, how can you say this is a oneminuteman ajer. It doesnt take very long to acknowledge. How often . How often should you acknowledge someone for good performance . You may have someone doing great job all of the time. You dont want to constantly be praising them. It may lose its value. Yeah absolutely. Thats why i said you praise them a lot, maybe in the beginning when theyre learning a new task or theyre inexperienced. Once they become experienced, you know youre not doing it as much. Youre hoping theyre going to be catching themselves doing something right and cheering themselves on. Youre always there to enkouj them if they need it. You dont want them to be depending on you patting them on the back all the time. That could be overkill. We talked a bit about this already. You dont reprimand. You kreredirect. What is the difference . The reprimand was almost like a form of a punishment. The whole idea of the redirection is really both of you taking a look. You say, gee, heres what im seeing. This doesnt seem as i said in the direction we want. How do we get back in line . What you dont want to do is let people get off the wrong way and not do anything. You know say, well ill get them when we do the annual review. You dont want to do that. You want to be on top of things. So people can continue the go in the direction you want. So much of what youre talking about is about collaboration and getting your employees as engaged as possible. Absolutely. The greatest entrepreneurs realize their number one customer is their people. If they take care of their people empower their people you know those theyre going to go out of their way to take care of your number two most important customer, the people that use your products and services. Then theyll be excited about you and become part of your sales force. That takes care of the ownership and the profit and all those kinds of things. Thats the direction. Ken, congratulations on taking a new look on this old very successful book. We appreciate you stopping by. Thank you. We appreciate your energy and what youre doing. Entrepreneurship is the back boen bone of the country today. To learn more click on our website. Its openforum. Com yourbusiness. Youll find todays segments. You can follow us on twitter. msnbcyourbiz. Were on facebook and instagram as well. Next week while some Business Owners hope for less regular likes. Greg is lobbying for more. I have taken action in washington. Weve been meeting with senators introducing them to beauty counter. A company pro commerce and pro regulation. How this woman is on a journey to change the rules arnold how Beauty Products are made. Until then remember we make your business our business. Im j. J. Ramberg. American express for travel and entertainment worldwide. Just show them this the American Express card. Dont leave home without it and someday, i may even use it on the moon. Its a marvelous thing oh haha so you can replace plane tickets, travelers cheques, a lost card. Really . That worked . American express timeless safety and security are now available on apple pay. The next evolution of membership is here. A frog in my throat im sorry but a little more suspense in the show than usual. My voice might give out at any moment in which case then what will happen . You have to stick around to see, right . Voice notwithstanding we have a big show tonight. Interesting news out of the escaped convict story in upstate new york. Latebreaking news on that tonight. Weve got scary Sea Creatures news coming up. Thats exciting. Also the latest in the big hullabaloo in congress this democrat on democrat fight which is interesting and really unresolved. So theres a lot coming up particularly for a friday night. We begin here in poland. Capital is warsaw lovely this time of year. If you want to have a very, very fancy meal like you want to have the most