News and advice for smallbusiness owners. Included profiles of smallbusiness owners, detailing the challenges theyve faced and successes theyve achieved;. Jacket when you actually dont, but other times the lies can result in Something Big and harmful to your company. Many of us have faced someone across the Negotiating Table who were not totally sure is telling the truth. If thats the case, what do you do . How do you strike a deal effectively if you dont trust the person on the other side. I sat down with Harvard Business School Professor leslie john who gave me some ideas. Is it easy to spot a liar . No, it is not easy to spot a liar. Theres all these tales that i wrote about, if they blink a lot, if they look down. Theres lots of other reasons why people may look i a way, maybe theyre shy, maybe they lack confidence. We want to believe we can detect lies. The bottom line is we just cant. So going into a negotiation and trusting your gut or your own abilities to say oh, im going to know if theyre lying or not, that is not a strategy. No. Its not going to work . No. All right. For fun, we taped a bunch of people lying and not lying and i wanted to see if we could guess. Spot a liar. I cant help it. Okay. He is oh you were right. I was that just proves the point. Im not taking credit for it. It proves your point. We want to believe we can detect lies and if that was a negotiation ive ruined it because i dont trust him and im not going to do a deal with him. I know all of these people and you dont know any of them. All these people work in my office and yet im not doing any better than you are. Yeah. The fact is people are going to lie. There are some people youll be negotiating with them and theyre going to lie and if i cannot rely on seeing how their facial expression changes or how they have a weird tick, what do i do . Because were not good at detecting, we want to try to head it off at the pass and prevent our counterparts from lying to us. So how do we do that . Well, theres lots of strategies we can deploy. One is theres a lot you can
do with respect to your questioning strategy. So you want to make it hard for them to lie to you. Imagine that youre talking to a supplier and youre worried that that supplier is running late, that theyre not going to deliver on time. So you want to know if theyre going to if their work is on time. And if i say will your work be on time of course theyre going to say yes. Yeah, so you could ask it and this is subtle, right, you could say, youre running late, right . Thats a little bit harder to lie to. Right and if i say to them youre running late, right . Theyll have to say no, im not running late. Which feels feels like it has much greater weight. Exactly. It feels more like a lie. It feels more like a lie. And its so subtle. Right . Okay. Then lets talk about dodging. So dodging is when people answer essentially not the question you asked but the question they wish you had asked them. Politicians are famous for this. Right . I was thinking politicians. Right. When were on the Receiving End of a dodge, if i asked you a question and you played politician and didnt actually answer and said whatever you wanted to say, im not that good at detecting that you didnt answer my question. And so if i say to you, you know, whats your rate of Customer Acquisition and you say the first time our customers come to our site they love what we do and the first purchase they always make is the soap and weve gotten such good feedback on the soap and suddenly were talking about the soap. Youve never answered my question. But i love your company and i want to work with you because right. Right. Wow. And so then the natural question is, what do we do . How do we protect ourselves against dodging . One is very simple. Write the questions down that youre going to ask and im a
big fan of checklists. Check off whether that person actually answered the question. Another thing that can be helpful is to take advantage of information leakage. How we sometimes just will make fleeting comments and they actually reveal stuff about what we know. So how do you get people to then, you know, go beyond not lying but actually tell you the truth that theyre hiding from you . So in a negotiation, what you could do is you can present a counterpart with two different offers that you are indifferent between. So you dont offer a, offer b, youre equally happy if thats the one you agree upon. Which of those offers would you prefer and what your preference is also tells me about you know, what you care about more versus less. So if i said to someone for instance you can get this job done on time and ill pay you 150 or you can take 3 months
more and ill pay you 100 . And they pick the latter, then i know they value time more than money. Exactly. Which is something they may not want to tell me in the negotiation because thats sort of the secret they have in their back pocket. Exactly. Exactly. Getting the word out about your product or service is hard. Its really hard as we all know. So for this Elevator Pitch Series we wanted to do something different. We wanted to have our pitchers get to show their product or service to influencers, people who can help them spread the word. So were in the offices of she knows media. A womens Lifestyle Brand which reaches 75 Million People a month and they have a conference this summer called blog her. If our pitcher gets the heart emoji which youll see in a second from our panelists theyll get to go to blog her and present their product or service in front of 3,000 people who could write about them and that could totally change the trajectory of their business. Lits see how our pitcher does. Brittany, hi. Hi. Welcome. Thank you. The company, happily ever borrowed. Happily ever borrowed which is Bridal Accessories for rent. We rent Bridal Accessories, everything except the dress. Its such a smart idea. Thank you. A lot of people hear about stuff for weddings through friends. Exactly. We find that most of our brides find out about us through Word Of Mouth from their friends. I always hear people tell me i wish i knew about you before my wedding so the ability to reach all these people before their wedding and let them know they have the option to rent makes them feel super important. Are you nervous . A little bit. Youre going to be talking to two people. The first is president of she knows and she basically runs blog her, all the inflourensers that are there are there because of her. And the second one is an influencer herself across her social media channels. She reaches about half a Million People. Her blog is 12ish style so shes the one that makes products like yours. Amazing. Lets see how you do. Hi, my name is brittany and im the founder of happily ever borrowed. Hi. Hi. Happily ever borrowed is the premier boutique that rents b i Bridal Accessories. Everything but the dress. Its also to reduce the waste in the wedding industry. So we partnered with top designers to bring top product at a low, low price. We rent for 8 to 90 off the price. And brides can have trials and try them in advance of their wedding day. And so having the opportunity to pitch at the she knows Blogger Conference would be absolutely amaszing for us because we would love to be in front of these amazing female influencers and really be able to help even more
brides find their something borrowed. Amazing. Love it. Nice job. Do you have any questions for brittany . You did a good job there. My only question is how many competitors are there in the market . Theres actually very few. We obviously know rent the runway but theyre focused on dressing the everyday woman and wedding guests so theres nothing thats really brei tall specif bridal specific. Were the only company that does this with bridal product. I decide online and does it arrive we have four eight day rentals so it arrives to you, usually people rent it for a thursday, it arrives on a saturday. Arrives on thursday for their wedding on saturday. For people that want it a little bit long they do the 8day rental. And we have this trial box. You can rent a couple of pieces. I was going to ask. Okay. Im going to let you two confer for a second to decide if brittany will be coming to blog her or not. I love this idea so much, because look, im probably never going to wear this thing again. Right and Something Like this would normally cost around 700 and we would rent it for about 50. What if were not totally in agreement. We have to be in total agreement. Right . Sorry, ladies. Total agreement. So the moment of truth. Will brittany be going to blog her or not . No. Brittany, i think what youre doing is smart and i love the idea. I think the barrier for entry is too low for duplicates and that theres something a little bit more innovative needs to be introduced. Is there anything she could do differently in talking about it that could get people to write about her. I need to know why theyre different. L although there may be only one company to do this i need
something really specific, really special that you know. I know the four and eightday rentals, i understand the try on box but i want something differentiating. And i think the way we get to write about this, which is still going to come back, im sure, with an it ration that we are all about is the personal who uses it. The people who use it, thats the story that you want out there. Thats how we write about things. Its a sustainability focused celebrity who decides that the waste and the runway trades that already happen is the right way to go. So its somebody very high end who can afford it themselves who chooses not to and thats when it takes off. Can i chime in also . I dont usually chime in on these but youre pitching to people to write about you, so talking about what blog her would mean to you is almost irrelevant to them and to use that time to say heres why you this is why you should love this thing to make you want
to write about me. Right. So like did any of you get married . How much money did you spend on this . What a waste. Again. And i want you to talk about Stefz Stefani in North Carolina who saved 2,200 by borrowing accessories. Then we want you to succeed. Okay. Well, thank you guys both. Thank you. Im at the Collision Conference in new orleans where 25,000 people have descended upon this Conference Center to talk about whats new in tech. Whats innovative, whats coming next and im here with george to talk about robots. He is the Chief Product Officer and cofounder of the company kindred. Its so great to see you. Great to see you. You are doing some really neat stuff with the robots and retail. Back of house, warehouse retail. Talk to me about what your company does. We are creating Artificial Intelligence that helps robots learn. Robots do a lot of repetitive
stuff in factories but once you get out of the factory, you to a warehouse where things are ing chaing all t changing all the time. Were helping say im in a warehouse, what does your robot do . Say im in a warehouse what does your ro wot do . You have individual or thors from this big batch of stuff that shows up. People sit there all day, and our robots do that part of the task and the workers then go do the packing or the auditing or the, you know the testing and that kind of stuff. That is a big help for the warehouse staff, and yet the great fear for so many people out there sfor many people is being replaced by a robot. It is something that youre
nervous about . Are you nervous that youre going to be creating machines that take over human jobs . Now the more time that we spend developing it the more we realize how complex and intelligent and complex humans are. We let the robots do the mundane things they dont like to do, and we let people do Creative Work and judgment tasks in a warehouse. Everyone wants to create a wonderful experience for the customer. So we focus on things that people dont want to do. And you equivalent it to a forklift. When forklifts people first came out, people were worried about job loss. When people wanted to be a forklift driver, they got to get paid more, and the robot does the heavy work of lifting 40 and 50 pounds multiple times a day. Robots are doing the heavy lifting and the humans doing the helping, training, teaching, judging. And they interact with humans, right . They have their own human help center, right . Ro bobots are not as smart ae think they are. Very often they fail. When they fail they call home, they call the help center and say hey, i need help, so our remote pilots will take control of the robots and let it continue its work. And that way all of our customers, small, mid, and large size customers they have a robot that does the job and we help the robot learn, and that robot
just keeps getting smarter. Does this mean that some wont have the same efficiencies in their warehouses. We dont sell them, we release them as a service. For the same cost as a human worker you can lease one of our robots and use it for as much as you need to. That way anyone has access to the technology. It was so nice to talk to you, youre doing really neat stuff, congratulations on everything so far. Still to come, how to come up with a budget and stick to it. Plus why you need to own your mistakes so you can fix them. The line between work and life hasnt just blurred. Its gone. Thats why you need someone behind you. Not just a card. An entire support system. Whether visiting the Airport Lounge to catch up on whats really important. Or even using those hardearned points to squeeze in a Little Family time. No one has your back like American Express. So no matter where youre going. Were right there with you. The powerful backing of American Express. Dont do business without it. Dont live life without it. In the first couple years we would take money when we could and only spent money when we had to. It seems like we need a budget but we dont have when. How, when do we get a budget, and how do i nut accountability
around the suspebudget. First, it always takes longer and costs more as a Smart Up Company than anyone ever imagines and you have to start with a budget to put a pin in the ground to know if youre making your numbers or not. Cfo, controllers, they are people entrepreneurs any are extra weight overhead, but one ceo that made a ton of money for us said when i pitched him to hire a cfo it was the best hire he ever made. And we have the top two tips you need to know to grow your business. We have the founder of babble and good life clothing. Tell me one tip you learned along the way. I would say own your failure
and learn from it. Sounds trivial, but its one of the hardest things to do because entrepreneurs are geared towards believing what they go is do is right. At babble, it kind of saved us. We gave into the fact that we have to get people on board that understand Language Learning better than we do. We understand the app part. Did it took you longer than it should to own that failure and change. Yeah, how do you know . You know it in your gut, you know it is happening, but it takes a long time to pull the switch. You have worked with big brands in the Fashion Industry and you left to start your own
company that is doing quite well, in Department Stores nationwide and your own site. How are you running your company differently . I realized you can be more productive in the modern corporate world if you have not necessarily less people, but concentrate on a transparent atmosphere in the workplace. Everyone is involved in Different Things not having everyone in individual silos. I think the best thing to two is have employees with their hands in all Different Things. I think the i could start a company because i had by hands in multiple departments at bigger companies. Congratulations to both of
you on your success. Earlier in the show we met a woman who kept her jewelry business going while she has a scary situation at home with her son. Kristine sanders owns Green Treele Grooming in naples, florida. After a year of being open, she was diagnosed with cancer. Now she is over 300 clients and she says life is good. Send a selfie of yourself and your business to msnbc. Com. Include the name, the location, and use the yourbizselfie. If you want to get in touch, send an email to yourbusiness msnbc. Com. We have a lot more for you on our website, and you can connect with us on digital and social media. Check out our podcast been there, done that. We look forward to seeing you next time. We make your business our business. Its Pretty Amazing out there. The world is full of more possibilities than ever before. And American Express has your back every step of the way whether its the comfort of knowing help is just a call away with global assist. Or getting financing to fund your business
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