Or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. For those who find new ways to grow their business. American express open proudly presents your business on msnbc. Hi, everyone, im j. J. Ramberg. Welcome to your business, the show dedicated to helping your growing business. If you need a dose of inspiration this morning, listen to this. Down syndrome may have prevented Colette Devito from getting a job, but not starting her own company. Her mission is to start a business and hire people with disabilities like herself. That makes her our Small Business hero. Today, everyone in the cookie business from mrs. Fields to Kathleen King from tates is rooting for colette. Shes a graduate of clemson university, hard working and fiercely independent. But 26yearold Colette Devito couldnt find a job. Every interview she went on, people loved her. They kept her for hours. She came home and said that was a slam dunk, i got the job. To find out it wasnt a good fit or the right culture, was obvious to her what they were saying. The elephant in the room, she has down syndrome. It was frustrating to see, but more frustrating to see her see the reason why. Im in the Job Interview and i didnt get the paying job because of my disability. I know how to people with disabilities. She channelled that crushing rejection and decided to take matters into her own hands. If no one would hire her, she would create her own job starting a business. What was amazing to me about this story is here is a woman with a passion of baking and immediately was able to turn it into a business with the support of her mother, her sister and the community she lived in. The product that launched colletteys cookies is a recipe she was working on and perfecting for years. Its a chocolate chip cinnamon cookie. I dont know what it is, but its perfection. Every single one she makes. My recipe is a secret but i can tell you one of the ingredients is about love. From the heart. Like many entrepreneurs, colette started small, baking batches of cookies at home and selling them to friends and family. It kind of came as colettes main focal point. It made her feel good. Theres no rejection there. Feeling confidence in the quality of her amazing cookie, she approached the golden goose and asked if they would sell her cookies. Shes a customer of ours and a nice girl. We said we would. With a small order from friends and family and shelf space at the golden goose, it was now a real business with payi customers. She was making threer fr dozen a week for the market. We built her a website. She started sharing her website with people. She was doing some mail orders, but not much. Then, everything changed. She hit the local news here in boston. We got thousands and thousands of orders. Everybody that came in here found the shelf empty. We couldnt keep up with the demand. With such a large influx of orders, they offered colette use of their commercial kitchen. Rosemary and blake pitched in and found others to help to push out the orders. She has a couple college kids working for her. She comes in after 3 00 when our employees are gone for the day and there from 3 00 to 11 00 at night making cookies. Practically overnight, she went from a small Cookie Company to a rapidly growing business with thousands of orders, employees to juggle and a large commercial kitchen to navigate. They were able to turn the orders around. They were coming in in tens of thousands. Very much an add daptation they had to make. Their growth showed them people were deeply inspired by colettes story of entrepreneurship and perseverance. Blake said im going to build her a social platform. Im gng to start with the cookie, then up to you. Social media is fciting to me because its global. Everyone is on the same platform. So, the stories that were already being shared locally, i made little pages for her on twitter, instagram, facebook. All the information that was already out there, i put on those pages. Once blake did, it was just everybody kept building on the story. Not only have they shared the story, they keep circling back to see the progression of her growing her company, which is really amazing. Thats when the lightbulb really went off. Colettes success was an opportunity to showcase the capabilities of a person with developmental disabilities. They are seeing all the things she accomplished saying look what colette has done. As a Woman Entrepreneur with down syndrome, colette has a big dream that is very personal. A company is to is to get people with disabilities. Her goal is to grow the company to create thousands of jobs for people like herself with disabilities and her sister, blake, thinks colette is just the person to make that dream a reality. Shes at the perfect pace for an entrepreneur. Shes driven and loves everybody but shes sassy. Shes smart. Shes so smart. There is such a platform now in front of us to rea change the fact that a lot of people w disabilities are not employed or have these entryevel jobs or not being paid. I mean we are now able to step in and really make a difference, which is incredible. Another boston teenager survived surgery for a tumor at the base of her brain and launched a wildly successful ice cream brand finding time to help children with cancer. Nbcs Anne Thompson has the story. Reporter grace connor is an extraordinary 17yearold. Im the ceo, cfo, coo. I pretty much do everything. Reporter everything in her own ice cream company. I put a lot of stuff in. Reporter churned in bostons commonwealth kitchen where start ups launch, her treat born out of a difficult time two years ago. Grace was diagnosed with a tumor at the base of her brain that was operated on. Had it not been treated, she would have died. When she was lying there, she was seeing this business. Reporter after just a year, grace is turning a profit selling nationwide online and in eight boston area Grocery Stores. As many as 1500 pints a week. Is this how you learned to cook . Yeah, definitely from cookbooks, the internet and cooking shows. Reporter shy about telling her story, she shares the ice cream that helped her heal with patients in hospitals. I let the ice cream do the talking. Good medicine, isnt it . Reporter with mom at the wheel for delivery so grace can work, this is a quau si family business. Have you had to fire anybody . My grandfather. You fired your grandfather hes used to being the boss and i have to be the boss in the kitchen. Reporter she plans to go to college after a gapyear. I want to be in Grocery Stores nationwide and take over the ice cream market. Reporter you got the scoop here, first. Anne thompson, nbc news, boston. Oh, yum. The republican led effort to replace the Affordable Care act generated support and concern from many different groups. The American Health care act which the gop hopes will replace obamacare has the president s blessing while they say it could result in millions of people losing coverage. In all the discussion, what hasnt been addressed is the new affect on small and Medium Businesses those with over 50 employees and those with less. We thought we would take time to dig into the numbers. John is the founder and ceo of the Small Business majority and Kevin Kuhlman is director of Government Relations with the National Federation of independent businesses, the nfib where he specializes in health care and insurance issues. Good to see you both. Good to be here. Thanks for having us. I appreciate you taking time so we can dissect this and understand how it affects small and medium sized business owners. To start off, lets go backward. Before obamacare, one of the big issues that people were afraid of is that it would slow down growth, that companies would not hire the 50th employee. Now that we are many years into obamacare and we can look backwards, i would like to get both of your takes on that. Did, indeed, that happen . Did companies not hire the 50th employee because of the mandate to provide them Health Insurance . John, ill start with you . Sure, j. J. We dont have evidence there was a real effect adding the 50 threshold. Most offered coverage before the act was passed. Thats important is under the aca, people were able to start businesses, grow businesses, hi people, even if they didnt offer Group Coverage because they didnt have to worry about health care. That is what is in jeopardy. We are going to get to that point in a second. I want to get to kevins take on this, also. Did you see any evidence of Slower Growth because people didnt want to hire the 50th employee and comply with the mandate . 50 employee figure was certainly an impediment. Remember the mandate was such a problem, it was delayed and revised upward again. This year is the first it was fully enacted. I think the evidence might not be there yet, but could be in the future. What percentage of companies who have 50 employees dont provide Health Insurance . Thats the number that are going to be affected, right . Prior to the aca, it was 4 of companies over 50 employees that didnt offer. As kevin said, it hasnt really taken full effect. We expect that number to close and have a tiny percentage of companies over 50 not offering. If we are not talking about growth, but companies that are in the position of having to provide Health Insurance, its 4 or higher . 4 is probably accurate. Thats 70,000 businesses. Its not only the nonoffering busine, but the businesses that offer, but perhaps that coverage is unaffoable. In addition to that, its all businesses with over 50 employees that deal with it. Thats providing no value to any employer. Can you speak to the compliance issue and how that hurts Small Business owners . Most businesses that are over 50, they have some kind of hr structure. They have been having to provide, having to follow laws that exist federally and in their states. We havent heard there is going to be significant compliance requirements because a small percentage are going to have to offer what they are offering before. Lets talk about something that is new and complicated, trying to figure out the full time equivalents you have, which is different than i have 50 full time employees and have to provide Health Insurance. Can you speak to that, kevin, and how that is hard or not for businesses to comply with . Thats part of the compliance burden i described earlier. Its a good point. You are doing new arithmetic. Never before did anyone devise and calculate full time employees. They had to do it with fewer than 25 employees to see if they could apply for a temporary limited tax credit. The stick is those if 50 or more. Its not easy. Tough do it on a monthly basis. If you outsource it, its compliance. Inhouse, its not easy, either. John, what do you think about that . Is that a big enough burden . You are shaking your head. We are tking a small amount of businesses. The rule has to be set somewhere. Its not that hard to figure out how many employees you have that are working more than 30 hours a week. Again, we havent heard anything from Small Businesses about the problem. What we have heard about is the fact that so many millions and millions of businesses and employees are about to lose coverage they have gotten the last couple years. Unfortunately, we have to stop there. Thank you both for diving into the details. I appreciate you staying focused on how it affects small and Medium Business owners. Thanks again. Thank you. Thanks, j. J. Hi, im from karma organics, this is my wife. I used to get a pedicure done, but i get sick on the smells, so i said, hmm,maybe ill open a salon with no chemicals. Then i started creating my line of nail polish and nail polish remover. Everything is made in america. Its vegan and very safe for pregnant women, people with asthma allergy and little princess. Try one of those for you. This is the one with lavender. We have a line of nail polish, which is very safe for kids and formaldehyde free. No acetone . No acetone. You cannot throw a cotton ball in the garbage can, but this one you can. Take off the traditional nail polish. Great. We are in almost 40 whole ods d 100 salons. We are goi to do almost 250,000. We did 400,000 this year. What is your best seller . Lavender nail polish is number one and selling on amazon. Im going to smell it. How much money are you looking for . 250,000, 15 return. But, its going to be to go after 440 whole foods. Do you wholesale your product . Yes, we do. This is topical. Shes ready to keep asking questions. From this pitch and what you have seen so far, what do you think of the product, 110 and the pitch, 110. You can write your numbers. I love lavender. Compared to nail polish remover, which you feel is truly, i dont know if it is or not, but it smells toxic. It is handmade, hand bottled. All in america, too. Okay, lets start with you. You own a spa. I would say protukt is seven and pitch is eight . Do you want me to tell you why . I do. The product, i didnt try the nail polish, yet. I think it smells lovely. I think the packaging could go to the next level. Okay. I think the pitch was great. I love the fact that you used whats all the rage right now is toxic free, cruelty free. Emphasize what its free of. Thats what the consumer wants to hear. Thats all the rage. Theitch . That was the pitch. Sorry. I was so busy. Okay, christiane . I thought the product was a ten. I know this is a hot button topic for people getting manicures and people getting them. Theres been Health Problems with people working in spas, having to deal with toxic chemicals day in and day out. The pitch, i wish you sold me harder from the beginning. Giving a lot of data up front because i would have been more convinced about the pitch. That said, there is no doubt you peaked her interest. She was about to start asking a lot of questions. I was. Thank you for your advice here. Good luck with everything. Thank you. Congratulations on your success so far. If you would like to come on your business and pitch your product or service, listen up. The best way to do it is send us a video of you doing your oneminute elevator pitch. Make it an mp4 or wmp and post it to youtube and send it to us at your business msnbc. Com. Send us what your product is and the money you are trying to raise. Talk about heading into the shark tank. A Small Business owner with we met in hawaii does that every day. Theres no tank. When she says sharks, shes not talking investors. Shes talking aut the ones with big teeth and fins. Former model and current conservationist, ocean ramsay had the chance to introduce us to her business. Today, she has a thriving business. The idea of getting a shark mig nightmare for most people, but for ocean ramsey, cofounder of hawaiibased one ocean diving, its a dream come true. Ocean is a conservationist focused on sharks. Shes been called the shark whisperer. Shes been called crazy. Just look at this photo. Thats her swimming with a great white. What makes you love this animal that so many other people fear . I get to see them on a daytoday basis. I get to see the reality of them, how incredible they are. Its really inspired me to speak up for them. Reporter a worldclass researcher, ocean and her partner, juan, had created a nonprofit called waterinspired, to study sharks, but they quickly learned that they needed to do more, so they came up with a plan start another company, a forprofit venture which takes people, like me and my fellow adventurers, swimming with the sharks. Notice there are no cages. Unlike most shark swimming tours, with this one, you are up close and personal. Its so crazy, because youre on the boat and you see that kind of iconic picture of the fin going, right . That dorsal fin. And you think, instead of going away from this, im about to dive into this, which goes against everything anyone has ever told me to do. Exactly. Reporter ocean and juan figure that giving people this experience and having them come away with it with all their limbs intact would do more to help sharks than any research they could publis do you guys feel diffently about sharks than you did before you went down there . Yeah. Really . I think so, yeah. You cant go diving with the sharks and not see how amazing they are and not want to do something to help them. I see that change in people every single day, the switch from fear to fascination. But shark attacks are real. And so, ocean spends the entire boat ride out to the site explaining the rules. She says, if you follow her instructions, the sharks will not bother you. Most shark attacks are a case of mistaken identity, where sharks believe you are prey because of how they see you in the water. The ocean is the sharks environment, its their home. So when you enter the ocean, you should factor in and play by the rules. Ocean and juan have been very savvy about the way theyve gotten the word out about the company. Their marketing expenses to date, almost nothing. We dont have a budget for marketing. And i know through another girl in our Conservation Group that social media is an extremely powerful tool. Juan is an awardwinning photographer, so when youre a customer of one ocean diving, you get photos, too. And ocean encourages people to share them. So, do you get the people who come on your trips to utilize their social media . We actually ask them if they post photos or video to write something nice about us. We just ask if you guys wouldnt mind saying something nice about sharks, because they could use all the good press in the media they could possibly good. So, utilizing hashtags and Search Engine optimization. Our card even has suggested hashtags on it. Its how they get most of their business, right now too much business to keep up with. As they grow, they hope to expand their team, but for now, they both feel everything they have to do is worth it just to be out there. I can get up at 5 00 in the morning and go to bed late at night, you know. Its my way of giving back, and i think its successful because we are so passionate about it and were willing to work hard for it, and its our life. I mean, it doesnt feel like work when you love what you do. When we come back, what you need to know if youre thinking about acquiring another business. And why competition is actually good for your company. Will your business be ready when growth presents itself . American express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. Find out how American Express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open. Com. How do you manage acquiring other businesses . What kind of integration challenges have you faced . And knowing what you know now, would you do it again . You know, ive only bought one small company, but ive been in business groups for years and ive watched lots of other businesses buy companies. I would say the first thing to do is make sure this is a company that is smart to buy, because ive looked to buy companies, and when i saw what they were about and their employees and how they manage them, i realized this would be a nightmare to try to integra it with my company because i have high standards and i understood that from the way this person was managing that probably half his people would quit after we took it over. So, i would say the first thing is, do lots of prep work to make sure that this is going to be able to be, you know, integrated. And then, two, if you decide to do it, you need to have a lot of meetings and really flush out what youre all about and how you operate and make sure everyone knows it before they get there, because its easier to do that than fix the problem after theyre coming in. We now have the top 2 tips you need to know to help your business grow. Angela jia kim is founder of savor beauty and savor the success. And serial interpressure Christiane Lemieux of cloth and company are back with us again. Good to be here again. A tip for growing your business. You both started your businesses from another, two, actually. One nonventurefunded, another venturefunded. Whats your tip . My tip is just be nimble, because i think were in a world where everything is changing so quickly, especially in my Consumer Retail world. I think you have to just be ready to move, run, stop, reevaluate, but constantly, because there arent a lot of rules anymore. And the rules that we used to go to, the sort of fundamentals actually dont apply a lot anymore. So, i think be as nimble as you possibly can. So, how do you create a team that you can do this with without them getting whiplash . Well, thats a very good questi. I think that that has to be the sort of as i start to hire for this new venture that im working on, that has to be sort of a conversation we have up front, because i really need athletes on my team this time, people that are willing to take these sprints with me and be nimble in their thought process and be open to all the new ideas that theyre actually going to come at them in this kind of retail cycle. Right. So, its all in the hiring and what you do. Yeah. All right, angela. Dont be afraid of competition. I think competition can be so healthy for you because it really forces you, inspires you to really articulate your unique value proposition. So, example. When i first launched my organic skin care, i was one of the only ones, but now everybody has launched an organic skin care brand, so its not special anymore. And ive taken the competition, and its forced me to really articulate, find, and communicate what our unique proposition is. A lot of it is our brand history, right, and going deep into it. So, weve rebranded, came out as saber beauty meets organic skin care in a new york minute. And that positions us in a very different space. And so, i wouldnt have gone through that exercise had there not been the healthy competition. Also, it helps you grow the market, right . Absolutely. Because now you have a lot of peoples marketing dollars creating market for something new. You just have to make sure you are in position to capture it. Absolutely, yes. All right, great. Thanks both of you. This weeks yourbizselfie comes from Kurt Alexander who owns urban jungle in philadelphia. Its a Garden Center specializing in vertical landscaping. Their mission is to bring nature to an urban environment. It looks like theyre doing some really neat stuff there. Now, why dont you help grow your business by picking up your cell phone and taking a selfie of you and your company . Email it to yourbusiness msnbc. Com or tweet it to msnbcyourbiz. We love, love, love seeing your photos. Dont forget to include your name, the name of your business, and the location, and use yourbizselfie. Thank you all so much for joining us today. We love hearing from you, so if you have any questions or any comments or you just want to get in touch, email us at yourbusiness msnbc. Com. We read every single email we get. You can also go to our website. Its openforum. Com yourbusiness. Weve put up all the segments from todays show, plus a whole lot more. Also, dont forget to connect with us on all of our digital and social media platforms as well. We look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, im jj ramberg, and remember, we make your business our business. Will your business be ready when growth presents itself . American express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. Find out how American Express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open. Com. I also want people to know that obamacare is dead. Its a dead health care plan. Its not even a health care plan, frankly. And i watched the architect of the plan yesterday, i watched the old clip where he said the American People are stupid to have voted for it. I watched bill clinton saying this is the craziest thing ive ever seen. And only because everyone knows its on its last dying feet, the fake news is trying to say good things about it, okay . Fake media. And there is no good news about obamacare. Ob