Fill a big order. Or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. For those who always find new ways to grow their business, American Express open proudly presents your business on msnbc. Hi there, everyone, im j. J. Ramberg. Welcome to your business, the show dedicated to helping your growing business. President trump says helping and supporting women owned Small Businesses is a priority for his administration. The president , along with the Vice President , mike pence, and first daughter, ivanka trump, convened around the white house with a group of Women Business owner who is spoke of successes and challenges they face. The president pledged to help them overcome some of those barriers. Today, we have two of the women that participated. Shirley perry owner of hydrotech and Jessica Johnson cope owner of Johnson Security bureau. With we told you about jessicas journey taking over the familys business a few years ago. Great to see both of you. Hi, j. J. , how are you doing . Good morning, thank you. Thank you for giving us insight on that. Let me start with you on the sight, jessica. What was the tone of the meeting . The tone was exciting. The fact that the administration finds that Women Business owners are a priority and wanted to hear our challenges and talk about our successes. Thats very encouraging and very exciting. What did you want to get out of it . I wanted to understand what the administration has in place and what they think can help small Business Owners because its important to start the dialogue, but you cant have a context unless you have an idea of what Women Business owners are going through. It was a great opportunity to share some of our ideas. Shirley, what did you hope to get out of the meeting . My main concern and thoug was to talk to the small siness administrator, Linda Mcmahon and let her know how it is working for me. Did you give her advance . I said for the community banks, which is my lender, is to ease, make sure restrictions are not too difficult. The more restrictions they place upon the community banks, the more it will harm the Small Business owner. Did you give them any advice . We talked about three specific areas that might be helpful, access to capital, mentorship and s. T. E. A. M. Opportunities and how to develop opportunities for the work force and Leverage Program that is the Small Business administration as well as other Government Agencies have for Small Businesses. Lets talk about what you expect to come from this. Shirley, lets start with you. It is one thing to be on a listening tour. Its another to put it in action. Did you get the sense theres going to be something within this administration to help Small Businesses that is different than what we have seen before . I think, probably, just a greater awareness that we are out there. We are out there doing good work and the women who own them are serious and dedicated to the work we are doing. What do you think . Im very encouraged for two particular reasons. Number one, ivanka trump was also at the table. She said its one of her priorities. I think she is going to work closely with her father to make sure theres a positive impact on Women Business owners. As a wife and mother, i think she can relate. Its not like they are going into this from a position of ignorance. So, thats my first area of opportunity. I think the second is there has to be a way for the different agencies to Work Together and to align the budgetary and the proposal budget goals with what they are saying is going to be available to Small Businesses. There may have to be a reset with the budget proposal, but i think they are going to take some steps to help small Business Owners like myself and shirley. The last business administrator had it as a policy project to promote Women Business owners. Do you feel, shirley, that is going to continue . Oh, yes. Very much sew. Ivanka was very impressive and very in tune with whats going on. Shes very well spoken. I appreciated her being there and her input. You feel the same . I do. I do. I also feel as if, you know, its just a reset. That means theres opportunities across the board. While people are talking about doom and gloom and theres uncertainty. As small Business Owners, we find the opportunity and jump at it. As Women Business owners, we put our communities back to work to create jobs and successes our country needs. I want to ask you each one a question, what is one thing you will be excited about if it comes out of the administration and what is one thing you would be disappointed after the meeting . Excited if theres reform around access to capital. I serve on the board of an organization that provides sba backed loans. We have difficult times getting out money to the Small Business that is need it the most. If i see reform around the Small Business lending, i will be excited about that. Why do you have a hard time . Because of some of the regulations because of how womens Credit Scores tend to be different than mens. As a minority, how our Credit Scores lag behind some people. One size fits all approach doesnt work. Got it. People that can get the money arent always the people that need the money the most. Shirley . I would be disappointed if i didnt see a decrease in taxes. That is one of the major difficulties we face as a Small Business owner. We are subchapter s. Everything flows through to us. Also health care. We need fun health care. Premiums are rising. Its not getting better. I hope we get Health Care Reform and it will be more reasonable cost wise going forward. All right. Thank you both so much for coming and talking to us. I would like to invite both of you back in six or eight months from now and check in with you and see how you think this administration is doing on helping people like you. We welcome that. Thank you, j. J. Thank you. Venture capital money is por treyed as the golden ticket. Con vinls them to invest in you and you have it made. The founders of little passports thought that until they were rejected by every one they talked to. They had to rethink how to get their company off the ground with close to nothing in cash or resources. In the world stella and amy come from, getting Venture Capital money for a new business seemed like t only way to go. Here in the bay area, your ability to raise money from top tier venture funds is a pedigree, a bragging right. Its hard not to get caught up in that. They met at ebay where they were surrounded by venture funded companies. They assumed they would follow the same path. When they went out to raise money for their own company, little passports, they sensed their own story might play out very differently. We must have had at least 50 meetings and kept hearing no for a number of reasons. Some of them were demoralizing. A small percentage of Venture Capital that goes to women led businesses. One hit too close to home. This was in writing, the fact we were women and moms with young children, there was no way this business could get off the ground. To them, that was the strength, exactly the reason they ventured out on their own. We had a hypothesis we werent doing enough as an education or country to raise global citizens. Hoping to spark wonder lust in kids imagination. The two came up with a concept for little passports. It started with a simple suitcase, packed with a passport, maps of the world, stickers and activities set by fictional globe trotting pen pals. A bundle of fun continued to arrive every month with a new country featured in each package. We feel like we invo nated. This is before birch box and before subscriptions and the box craze. With endless rejection and not a drop of money, they could have closed shop quickly, but they took every harsh bit of criticism and pushed forward harder. You have to have belief in yourself. It required a razor sharp approach to Product Development and testing. We started a pro to type and started with families. On the flip side, they believe stand out and memorable packaging was a must. With the help of Angel Investors including linkedin ceo, they received 175,000, which helped them sustain their company and gear up for launch. But the weekend before little passports world edition officially hit the market in 2009, amy was blind sided by a blow that would only be a start in a series of devastating events. I was eight months pregnant with my second child and my marriage ended unexpectedly. My baby came along a couple weeks later. I developed bells palsy on the side of my face. Then my dad got diagnosed with cancer and he died within four months. I lost my house in the divorce. It was like, could anything more possibly go wrong . Stella wasnt spared, either. She delivered her second child and took care of her baby in the nicu. With all this turmoil, they had to persevere and needed a game plan for the financial challenges ahead, rent space or invest in full time employees were two commitments they were set on avoiding. My husband helped code our website and my mom and sister helped us do fulfillment on the dining room table. Eventually they needed more help. Instead of hiring full time employees, they outsourced. For marketing, they relied on mommy newsletters and paid researches. Nothing moved the needing significantly. We couldnt find a way to get it in front of a lot of people. Just when they thought that hockey stick rope was only for a lucky few, everything changed. In 2013, the pair focused on advertising and started to use facebooks marketing tools. The decision was a game changer. Finding facebook as an advertising channel was a Pivotal Moment for us. Facebook ads have a conversion tracking feature. We can identify the dollars we invested to the actual subscriptions we were selling. You can test a facebook ad for a couple hundred dollars. You can tweak the copy and the target audience. Facebooks lookalike tool was invaluable. They create an algorithm that identifies customers and targets them for you. Thats the winning formula. Little passports has grown into four subscription lines, a book and an animated series in the works. Last year, the Company Earned 25 million in revenue. I think that what has created our success is that pushing through the nose. We believe that little passports is a pathway to peace. Kids are having conversations ability the differences amost us, but how thoseifferences are amazing and beautiful. And how the differences are similarities in the end, once you understand them. As many of us know, it is hard enough running one venture, so imagine the difficulty of running multiple and unrelated companies. We decided to take some time exploring what it means to have your time split between organizations. How do we do it effectively . We found out from a Virginia Company that run not one, not two, but five businesses ranging from a recycling company to a bird bookstore. They all were created and developed because of each other. Every business, really, that we have here is very reliant on other businesses. Jeremy hail has been smitten by the entrepreneurial bug. Youll find the proof in this warehouse turned headquarters in virginia. Its where the hales five businesses are roofed, unone roof. Our primary construction business, the cold storage warehouse, the architectural salvage business, nelson storage llc, a restoring business and a bird bookstore. The hale company is the oldest of the five. The storage and recycling companies followed. We started restoring automobiles and industrial stuff and architectural stuff we were collecting. As that developed, we had a byproduct of recyclables. Beauty of books and the warehouse round out the group. We started thinking about the bookstore, which my father owned. Why not move it into the warehouse and utilize the space. Put all our businesses in one location. After that, we started going into renovating and restoring materials we are collecting. To an outsider, five companies in one place may seem like a lot. Jeremy says the set up makes sense. I would say they all Work Together and all feed off each other. Here is just one example. When jeremy goes looking for things like the parts he use zs to make tables, the synergy becomes obvious. The Business Holding the materials is my construction business. I take the trucks from the construction business, purchase materials for the cold storage warehouse, store the material in nelson storage and take the byproducts to nelson recycling. You will find containers on and off the property. Nelson recycling has outside customers as well including the local county. They are unique and separate, they seem like they need their own individual attention. When trying to manage multiple businesses can result in major headaches. Dealing with daily hurdles is inevitable. I try to plan out a time where i have one task for one business that has to get done, start to finish. Once that is done, i can move on to the next. Otherwise, its chaos. The hales market their companies in a variety of ways. There are some similarities, theres no set formula. There cant be. The architectural salvage and antiques are what i advertise and market the most for that and the bookstore. They are our retail operations. Their websites, i think, are the first place people find us. We rely a lot on word of mouth, people that have bought from us before, local architects and designers. The marketing plan helps the brands maintain separate identities. Very few customers visit the hales warehouse. If they do, they dont know the companies are linked. Owning five businesses means five times the bills and five payrolls for the employees. Recycling, one person can run the entire operation. Old cold storage as one employee to do republican novation and work with nelson storage and warehouse management. Jaime runs the bookstore and we have three part time employees. Jaime says the challenges associated with running five businesses arent going to get any easier. If jeremy has anything to do with it, more businesses will soon call the warehouse home. He has the spark that i think isnt going to go anytime soon. Well keep growing. Jeremy says the wheels are already turning and the desire to launch new companies is part of the plan. Six and seven are in the works as we speak. Theres no limit to the amount of businesses well run. The power of the podcast does not seem to be slowing down any in 2017. I, personally, love podcasts. This week, inc. Com shares five podcasts to tune into to spark ideas and turn Business Plans into action. One, brown ambition. This weekly podcast is a conversation on career, business, Building Wealth and living in brown skin. Host manti woodrough and tiffany talk finance and empowerment as women of color. Two, entrepreneur on fire. The host featured over 1,000 successful entrepreneurs sharing their best and worst moments as Business Owners. It was awarded the best of itunes and ideas on how to turn ideas into success. Three, accelerate your business growth. The host gives small Business Owners and inentiring entrepreneurs tips from sales and tech to work life balance. Four, your partner in success radio. Denise brings together a wide range of entrepreneurs to tackle everything from productivity and leadership to marketing and sales. And five, the femtrepreneur show. They provide advice for women fm Sales Management to growing a mailing list. Hello. Im the owner and inventor of hangohmatic. Are you tired of crooked things on your walls . I invented the solution. Hangohmatic is an all in one picture hanging tool that levels, measures and marks the walls. Its perfect the first time when you put your nails up. Take the hangomatic, take off the cover and align the pointers on the back of the item. Look it down. Bring it up to your dry wall. When the bubble is in the center, press on both sides. You end up with two perfectly measured dimple marks. Beautiful thing about hangomatic, its reusable, only 9 inches. You can put it in your kitchen drawer. It goes up to six foot. Its great on side by side hanging. It retails for 14. 99. Proudly made in the usa. How much money are you looking for . 60,000. What are you going to do with it . Make my tooling better to continue to make it in the u. S. Got it. 14. 99 . That sounds pretty good. If you can get that even cheaper, two numbers from you guys. Number one, what do you think of the product. Number two, the pitch . Its been out for two and a half years. How many have you sold . About 120,000 in two years. How many directly and retail. I would say 90 of it is retail. 10 online. We try to drive it to retailers. I like your packaging. It looks very as seen on tv. That was the look we were going for. On the product, i dwagave yo 10. On the pitch a six. I love the product. I have holes behind every picture in my house. From using, i would use it all day long. From a pitch perspective, you didnt tell me anything about the business. You told me purely about the product, nothing about the opportunity, the market. The economics behind what youre looking for and how it would compel me to want to invest. Sara in. For the product, i gave it an 8. That might be because i just tape everything to the walls. I dont have personal experience, but that might be your point that i need it. For the pitch, i gave a 7. I thought you did a great job. You said with the as seen on the tv, heres the product. But dive deeper into the business behind it, how big is the Market Opportunity . Distribution models, that stuff would have been awesome to hear. You did a great job. Its a perfect example of needing perfect pitches for different people. You gave a pitch perhaps for a customer. These are potential investors. Theyre not buying this. Theyre buying you and your company. Right. Great job. Thank you so much. You two, we still need you in the show. Stick around. If any of you would like to come on your business and pitch your company like you saw, the best way to do that is to send us a video of you doing your oneminute elevator pitch. Make it in mp 4 or wmv and send it to us or post it to your youtube page and let us know the link. We look forward to seeing those videos. Coming up, maintaining your credibility with customers, venn or the dors and your entire industry. And boosting your business through internet referrals. 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. As a new business, we need to build credibility with our industry but also to the actual retailer. How do you market to both sides . I wouldnt necessarily worry about marketing to both sides or try to make a decision of who do i market to . At the end of the day you want to market to the end user of your product. Whoever it is thats the end user of your product, if your product is awesome, theyre going to tell everyone else, and all sides will have knowledge and understanding and want for your product. We now have the top two tips you need to know to help your growing business. Scott gurfine and sarah kuntz are here. Back with us. Hi, both of you. Hi. Lets start with scott. One tip . Top tip is figure out if youre running a lifestyle business or a growth business. Theres a huge difference between the two. Lifestyle business relies on the skills of the entrepreneur. It pays the bills. It provides for a nice life. Growth business is a completely different animal. It requires different resources, infrastructure. Thats a business where you can scale the growth of something. It could be a service or a product. For example, our kids brand, so cozy, we can grow the business by increasing distribution. We can grow it by adding more products. We can grow it by putting marketing against it. Thats a business that can grow beyond our capabilities as a single individual. Its important to get very clear on that point, because it will determine everything you need to be successful and help you set your expectations do you mind people think theyre running a growth business, but its a lifestyle business . Frequently. What kind of mistakes do people make . Theyre not properly capitali capitalized. They dont see the opportunity. They are overly ambitious. They put your family in jeopardy. Everything. Sarah . I think its important to turn your customers into advocates. Social media is a great way to do it, but asking for yelp or facebook reviews and giving your customers something as a gift or money off, a discount, an incentive to refer people, if you do that, and that person refers somebody, youll have an endless stream of new customers with less marketing costs. And youre also learning from your existing customers about what they love about your service. Thats what theyre going to refer people. Do you have any tips about doing that . I know companies who have tried to do it, give a referral and you get 5. Sometimes it works amazing. Sometimes it just falls flat. I think you need to think about the product. If its something that people are going to feel a little bit shy, you maybe arent going to refer people to your marriage counselor. Think about where is there leverage and also the reward youre giving then. Theres very few people who would not be happy to refer someone to a marriage counselor, if they got 1,000 off, but not 10 off. Its a living thing. When people are happy with the core business, and you give them the right incentives and test and iterate. Thank you both so much. Thjennifer baker owns sandhis model and talent in north carolina. They provide training along the modelling and voiceover services. It looks like she sent a picture of some of her models. Thank you for sending that in, jennifer. We really love seeing the selfies we get each week. If you have a company and want it profiled on the show, send us a picture to your business at msnbc. Com. Include your name, the name of your business, and use the hash tag your biz selfie. Email us at your business at msnbc. Com. Also our forum, we posted the segments from todays show and a lot more. Dont forget to connect us with on all of our digital and social media platforms as well. We look forward to seeing you next time. Until then im jj. Ill see you next time. 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. Good morning and welcome to politics nation. Another busy week of news behind us, and a packed show for us this morning. Were talking about the latest on the trump russia connections, and well tell bill oreilly what we think about his comments on black peoples hair. Also more unrest in ferguson, missouri, and a fight to keep a law that promotes investigations of unsolved civil
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