Transcripts For MSNBCW Your Business 20170930

Hi, everyone. Welcome to your business, the show dedicated to helping your growing business. Most people in business are very familiar with disasters, deals that fall through, employees that disappoint and contracts that are broken. These are challenges that go with the territory of running a company. But theres another kind of disaster that thankfully most of us never have to face, fire, flood, earthquakes, what would you do if a real disaster struck . Thats what one new York Furniture maker confronted one cold winter morning. [ sirens ] it was 4 00 a. M. , monday january 30th, 2017. A fouralarm fire struck this commercial warehouse at the corner of lake street in yonkers new york. We get a call at 6 00 a. M. That your buildingss on fire. I was like oh, my god. This is crazy. It took more than 80 firemen from 18 Fire Companies over three hours to bring this blaze under control. I remember feeling like my heart was almost going to stop because for a moment said what do we do. Robert rising are the owners of new york slab. Their furniture factory and salvage lumber company was located in that building. They got an unwelcome Early Morning call. The first thing im thinking is, is it my shop, am i responsible . Click on the news and the top half of the buildings burning. I was frightened that we with might have been the cause of the fire. Watching the fire on tv was devastating but knowing their shop was located on the ground floor, robert and jacqueline could tell one thing right away they were not responsible for it. I seen its the third, fourth floor and the roof and im like, okay, i didnt cause a fire. Nobody was injured but for robert and jacqueline the core of their business was gone before sunrise. We have no investors, weve taken out no loans. Everything that we have has been with our money. We have rated our savings accounts, retirement accounts. It looked like a crime scene. There was water everywhere, stuff was in wreckage. As dreadful as this disaster was, this was not the worse news. That came later when they spoke to their Insurance Company. And they explained to us that a fire doesnt cover us because we had limited liability. We didnt have content and we didnt have work stoppage. Details like limited liability, content and work stoppage coverage may feel like the least enzbajing part of renting a business but at times like this they can make or break you with unwanted surprises. And our Insurance Company said if you had if you had been the cause of the fire you wouldve been able to get coverage, more stuff back im like are you kidding. No. Unfortunately insurance didnt work for us. Typical of many businesses they had the legal minimum limited liability, which only protects them if they cause harm to someone else, without content insurance, they get no money for damage they suffer and without work stoppage, they get no compensation for lost income. They had absolutely no safety net. I had no idea what we could do at that very moment. It was robert who actually started doing stuff. I was on the phone making calls, seeing what i could, seeing what the next move is. Like many Business Owners who face disruptions, these two immediately went to damage control. The thing that we did first was to let people know, listen, this is really devastating, but were not out. This is just a bump that we have to get over and were in business and well continue to do business. And i took that cue and i got on my phone and calling people too to let them know that, you know, it was big, it was devastating but we were around and we were going to get to their work. They had no money coming in, a payroll to meet and no work space. On top of that, they had to tell their clients they wouldnt make their deadlines. Im thinking, okay, how am i going to pull this off . The bills are piling up and im trying to keep my staff working. Their first break aim when robert got permission to move the machinery into a vacant greenhouse near the site where he stores and mills his lumber. Thankfully the greenhouse wasnt cold. Then came another lucky break. A Building Company in the bronxs heard about the fire and calls to see if robert could deliver 60 wooden park benches. He checked out and made sure that everything was still up and running and good and he gave us a check. So that kept us working, kept us going. We were like, okay, we got it, lets go. Lets go. What also kept them going were several secondary Revenue Streams beyond the wood shop. We get trees turned into lumber, we sell ross labs. The thats pretty beautiful. I think maybe you need two boards. Roberts company also salvages antique beams in the new york area. He then sells 130yearold beams unfinished to other builders and back in his shop turns them into high end furniture and antique flooring. Its one thing to make you versatile. It pushes you to places where you may not have known that are workable. Today, hes still not 100 back. Much of his machinery needs repair and his staff has been working overtime to make good on the unfinished orders that were destroyed and never delivered. Fortunately for me weve been busy enough to not really get bogged down with the stress of it all, so were probably at 60 now. Going forward, robert and jacqueline have taken out a full set of insurance policies. No one prepares for a fire, no one plans for a fire, but you should always be prepared because you never know what happens. Selling new products to existing customers is generally easier then getting new customers to buy something, so here are five ways to increase your repeat business. One, get to know your customers. Send them a note on meaningful days like birthdays or the anniversary of their first purchase with you. Also get to know their preferences based on their purchases, so that you can suggest particular products or content to them. Two, be a source of useful information. Use news letters to send your clients relevant articles, how tos and tools to keep them informed about your industry and the ways you can help. Three, brag a little bit. If people love your brand dont keep that to yourself. Consumers flock to popular products. Use that social proof to your advantage. Four, overdeliver. Ship your products out as soon as possible and make Customer Service a priority. Also, a little surprise can go a long way to instilling loyalty. So when you can, throw in a Little Something extra into their order. Five, reward loyalty. Give your best customers special deals, points and discounts on your new products and help them to save on their old favorites. When social Media Marketing started to show serious engagement a lot of people thought that email marketing was on its way out but it wasnt. Email it turns out has some of the highest returns on investments for many companies. Maria sample is the founder of a Prospect Finder that specializes in email marketing. We caught up with her to get ideas on how to make your email work for you. How important is the subject line . Subject line is very important. After the from line who its from, the subject line is the next most important thing. Youve got two seconds to get somebodys attention and actually the first two words will matter most in that subject line and you also cant forget an area known as preheader text which is that if youre looking at your email inbox on your mobile device youll see the from line, the subject line and then the first line of text from that email. So if you can work their name into that preheader text youve got an even greater chance of getting that email opened. Lets talk about tricks of the trade. Is there anything we should think about in the subject line. There used to be like musthave or these sort of big statements that i feel dont work any more. Right, right. So one of the tricks that you might try and use is using a number and then the word you or your and that works that works really well. So five reasons why you need whatever. That still works. People arent on to that yet. Well, it still does to some scents, it does and again, if your email Service Provider allows you to use the person that youre sending it to their name in that subject line, then again anywhere you can personalize it, you, your. So if in the subject line you would put jj, your best tips for great skin, i feel like that makes it seem more spammy but is it proven that people open it more if theres names in the subject. Yeah. This is about permission based marketing. So somebody has opted into the list that means they want to hear from you. So absolutely, youre looking to continue that rapport, cultivate that relationship so in any way that youre able to do that is going to be very helpful. And who should neighboring from . Lets say my companies is flowers. Com, should it come from information at flowers. Com, service flowers. Com. If that is your business and people have built that rapport with you you want to make sure that your name appears in there otherwise just put the company name in there if its a larger company. If its just if the Customer Service team but its still from someone, information, Customer Service. I would put the company name, actually. Got it. Lets talk about building your list. Do you think that you should buy lists from other people . Are you a fan of that . Actually, no. The big thing to keep in mind is this is about permission based marketing and there are laws in place, the can spam act here in the united states, theres a castle is the canadian laws, so you have to Pay Attention to those laws. But you can still buy lists where people have given permission for them to sell their name. You would want to still have a one off communication with them first and give them the opportunity to opt out. Absolutely. But do you think it is worse buying those lists that are legal to buy . I typically will advise my clients to try and build their lists organically so they can do that through their social media following, they can do that by even their email signature line that theyre using for their one off communications, certainly at different types of trade shows, you can build your list that way, speaking, there are lots of ways, text to join, even an opportunity now to allow people to use their cell phones to opt in to your email list. And how big should your list be when you start segmenting . When its small you dont want to waste your time doing too much segmenting, now its time to give different messages to different people . You can start seg meanting from day one, from day one. If you already have any type of crm or just using outlook to house all of your email addresses, however youve got those list segmented there you can export them and import them right into your email provider. Even when people are opting in on your website, you can let them opt in to the list they want to be on. Thank you so much. We all really need to be paying attention to it. Thank you. Thank you. It was just a few years ago that the idea of picking up your phone and pushing a button and then having a car magically appear to take you home seemed like something from the space age. Now, Services Like uber and lyft with its famous pink mustaches have become part of our daily life. But as nbcs willie geist tells us the ambitions for lyft go far behind just sharing rides. Hows it going . How are you, man . [ horns ] look at this traffic. Like most of us john zimmer hates traffic but while most of us just curse and pound the steering wheel, zimmer is doing something to fix the problem, the 32yearold president and cofounder of Ride Sharing Company lyft got hooked on cars as a kid but not just because they looked cool and went fast, zimmer loved what they represented. I think its the idea of freedom and exploration. I just remember being on the zbround playing with cars getting over any obstacle. And is there a direct line then to lyft. I think what i realize is that that freedom wasnt really there and that the cars become more like a 9,000 ball and chain with all the maintenance, the parking so i wanted to go to that original idea that got me so excited about the car but actually delivered the real freedom. John first noticed the number of empty seats the in cars on the highway during his drives home from Cornell University in upstate new york. Ten of us would be going back driving with just one or two people, i started thinking about occupisy. How much are these cars used. 96 of the time the car is parked. In 2008, zimmer left his job just before the company crashed to pursue his vision of ride sharing with partner logan green. Four years later lyft was launched with the signature pink mustache on the front of its cars. Today it operates in 200 cities across the country, provides about 13 million rides per month and is valued at 5. 5 billion. Carpooling to most people with strangers was a nonstarter just a fuel years ago. Everyones doing it now. When did you see attitudes start to change more broadly . We had a tag line your friend with a car and we encouraged people to sit up front because we realized we had to change behavior. Right eye people started getting excited and meeting new people it took off so fast we had to create a wait list. Now 30 of Young Americans use Ride Sharing Services and 15 of adults of all ages do the same. Thats according to the Pugh Research center but even as americans embrace this new frontier of transportation, the taxi commissions entrenched in our city were not as welcoming. Im sure you got some Great Stories of sitting across from a taxi commissioner and him giving you the dressing down, you have no considered what youre getting in to . There was an enforcement leader called the general in california and there was some really stern conversations where he said, look, son, youre going to shut down, arent you . I said back to him, respectfully, what were doing is legal and were going to continue to operate. To which he said what . Look, son, youre going to shut down. Beyond the general, the biggest challenge for lyft is the uber. When people think about your sector of the economy they think about uber first, probably and then they think about lyft. What is the relationship like between uber and lyft . They got started first with the vision of being everyones private driver with black cars and limos. We want to bring down the cost of transportation. We want to bring people together. You know youre doing something right when uber starts paying attention to you. They put up billboards trying to lurer some of your drivers away. What is your reaction to that . Weve been focused on who we are and what we do. The differences speak for themselves in you dont we focus on the people that are involved in our business and the fun that were trying to have in the process. Whose your favorite basketball player . And some high profile stars have joined in on the fun as undercover drivers. I actually met them one time. Its good to see you again. Oh, my god . Odds are you wont get Shaquille Oneal but you may get someone like Robert Henderson the companys most prolific new york driver. Whats a typical day for you like . A typical day anywhere between eight to 12 hours but its the eight to 12 hours thats fun and you just look at the time, and oh, my god, ive been out this long and you laugh about it. But zimmers goals are much bigger than getting us to work or home from a bar. He wants to change the way we live. At what point do you believe all your cars will be selfdriving . I believe in about five years the majority of lyft trips will be in Autonomous Vehicles. Five years what does the experience look like . Just like you purchase a Monthly Subscription from netflix youll purchase a lyft plan. If youre taking a family trip for the weekend youll have a large vehicle maybe with a screen to watch movies. If youre on your personal trip to work you can be productive, maybe take a nap. You do understand this still blows peoples minds. Yeah. The high line say new york public park built on an unused railroad elevated above the streets of manhattan. From these old railroad tracks, zimmer looks down at the roads as the next frontier in obsolete modes of transportation. In ten years i believe that personal car ownership will all but end in major cities. Ten years, thats a quick turn around. You really believe thats going to happen . I do. People are already starting to move away from car ownership, order lyft when they need a ride in their city and Autonomous Vehicles come out and it makes no sense to own a vehicle. And it seems not just a Good Business but a necessity at some point for our culture. We cant fit all the cars we have on these roads. Were at a turning point where more and more people are moving to cities and theres just not enough space. Its absolutely going to happen. It has to happen. And the good news is its going to be better for all of us. New york city 20 years from now, what does it look like . All the parked cars on the side of the road, imagine those all gone, the majority of parking lots and spots gone instead of a parking lot it could be new housing or a park. Imagine more of this and a lot more happy people like were seeing out here. Can you hurry up and make this happen . Were going fast. We have an exciting announcement. We are offering five people the chance to come on the show and give an elevator pitch in front of two buyers from sams club. Theyll be judging the pitches and theyll vote on who will be invite today their headquarters to make a more comprehensive presentation. This is a big opportunity. So send us an email or a video of your pitch or in that email send a link to that email. Our address is your business msnbc. Com. Be sure to include a short summary of look forward to seei pitches. When we come back, how to weigh the benefits and the risks of collaborating. And two very successful founders talk about how to come back from a slowdown in business. Thank you so much. Thank you so were a go . Yes we got a yes what does that mean for purchasing . Purchase. Lets do this. Got it. Book the flights hai si si ya ya ya what does that mean for us . We can get stuff. Whats it mean for shipping . Ship the goods. Youre a go you got the green light. That means go oh, yeah. Start saying yes to your companys best ideas. Were gonna hit our launch date scream thank you goodbye let us help with money and knowhow, so you can get business done. American express open. I got an opportunity to collaborate with a colleague to he grow my business, but i dont know if its the right move or not to collaborate or stay on my own to try to grow it even more. So when youre thinking about bring anything a business partner, theres a couple things i would think about it. Is this going to bring something you dont have in terms of experience. Second, do you need somebody to help you . Do you not have enough time to grow the business and will their resources allow you to grow faster . You want to sit down and have the hard conversation. How much does this person want in the business . How much time can they commit . How do you split things up in terms of salary and ownership. It is is important to have the conversations up front is and sit down can and be honest with each other. If you cant have the hard conversations today it will be much harder to have them when youre in the business trying to figure on out whats going on and facing a challenge. It is a good idea. You have to do your homework up front, sit down, and get real with your partner. Its now time for the brain trust. We get to dig into some of the tough issues you deal with and find out how successful people dealt with them. Founder of the inside and dwell which you sold to way fair. Thank you. I wanted to bring you together. You both experience meet orric rises in your company. Incredible to watch. Then at some point you hit a plateau. And i want to know what that was like and what you did to get yourself through that time, plateau or decline. 2008 hit. 2008 hit. And i think everybody had a plateau or decline. It was a really scary event. Just because i remember standing at a trade show and there were no attendees. And im thinking to myself, oh, my goodness, the whole thing is over. For us what we really did is we retrenched our core values, which were design, beautiful Customer Service, really speaking to our audience. And we sort of did that consistently over and over and over again, kept delivering on the promise. Skpeuplg thats what helped us weather the storm. Was it scary . It was beyond scary. Because it was overnight. It wasnt really overnight but it felt like it was somewhat overnight. For both of you, you just had such success that it find of feels like this is working. Everyone likes it. And i know how to do this. Right. And then you also didnt see a decline overall. In some environments. In north america, the united states, which was your biggest market. Yeah. What did you do at that point . The first thing is remind yourself that all businesses go through this at some point. Yeah. All companies have a rapid growth. They plateau, on or they go backwards. Nike and apples have been through. Resilience is so important. Reminding yourself why you started the business, reminding yourself that the business is more than just putting on events and thinking about whats the values of my company. And then being creative. Being auntal again. Doing things that got you started in the first place. That meant going to new countries, growing our media business. Doing tv shows. And that worked for us. It was a worrying time. I have to ask the same thing. Was it scary for you . Very much so. You start questioning yourself. Did i just get luck . Was i just in the right place at the right time. Right. So you have these people. When you have a company that is just killing it, doing really well, everyone is along for the ride. Everyone. And you just wrote a book. Thats right. In that book you talked about when you saw the first decline, suddenly people internally started to question. Oh, yeah. So this happened to both of you. How do you keep peoples enthusiasm when you were doing so well . You never choose to go through that. But positives come out of on it. Who are in for the right reasons and who only love you if youre money, so to speak. But, no, i think the people that really thrived are for reasons above and beyond being an economic machine. The best companies exist to serve a higher purpose. We are not pretending to cure cancer. But the people who stick around believe in our pheugsz. How did you deal with it. Though people dont believe it, you need bodies in the chairs to do the work. At the end of the day, with the best companies, the most valuable thing you have is the people that work there. Those are the people that have grown the culture and been part of the story. I was really fortunate i think we had developed a sort of kind of collective, caring, Corporate Culture that i lost very few people. They sort of did the transition with us. But i think it was these were things that i was very, very sort of careful about in the beginning, wanting to make sure people felt like they were that the company was there for them as well as them being there for the company. And i think its really important. Otherwise, when times get tough, people will just look for something better. You both weathered the storm very well. Very successful. Its nice to get to hear. Frankly, its really nice to hear there was a moment when you were scared. People look at you both and think success. You sold your company to wayfair. 100 million in revenue. It is difficult for people to understand there were scary moment stphrs and if you create this instagram world where everything is perfect you can find yourself very lonely and alienated. Things are changing quickly. Even just the way we communicate with each other. You have to be on top of it. Having these membershipy crises on the all the anyway. People need to be resilient and micro pivot a lot is important. Thank you both so much. Thank you. This weeks your biz selfie from jim pearce who owns image 360. They provide highquality graphic solutions. He is posing with the beast, a new large flatbed printer. Why dont you pick up your cell phone and take a selfie of you in your business, no professional shots, please. Send it to yourbusines yourbusiness msnbc. Com. Thanks so much for joining us today. Heres something that i learned from todays show. Earlier in the show he we talked about a couple that didnt have the right insurance. When disaster struck, it was a big problem. It is complicated or its boring. But it is our job to understand everything. I dont care if youre running a team or a business. You cannot put things aside and hope it all works out for the best. Thats the stuff that comes back to bite us. Put time aside every week to go deal with those things that you have been ignoring. We would love to hear from you. If you have any questions or comments about todays show, email us at yourbusines yourbusiness msnbc. We posted all the segments from todays show and a whole lot more for you. And you can find even more on all our digital and social media platforms as well. We look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, im jj ramberg. Remember we make your business our business. Thank you so much. Thank you so were a go . Yes we got a yes what does that mean for purchasing . Purchase. Lets do this. Got it. Book the flights hai si si ya ya ya what does that mean for us . We can get stuff. Whats it mean for shipping . Ship the goods. Youre a go you got the green light. That means go oh, yeah. Start saying yes to your companys best ideas. Were gonna hit our launch date scream thank you goodbye let us help with money and knowhow, so you can get business done. American express open. The chair wishes to mark the return to the chamber of our dear friend and colleagues from louisiana, mr. Steve scalise. [ applause ]. The gentleman is recognized for as much time as he may consume. Wow. Thank you, mr. Speaker. Morning glory, america. Im hugh hue et. Steve scalise returning to the house marked by terrible images out of puerto rico and bad news for the