News and advice for smallbusiness owners. Included profiles of smallbusiness owners, detailing the challenges theyve faced and successes theyve achieved;. They are still an active band and entered into new territory, beer. Learn how they made their way from Oom Bop To Mmm hops. In 1997, Three Brothers in tulsa, oklahoma took the world by storm with the catchy chorus. With the success of oom bop, they became bonified rock stars. Its hard, but fun. Theres so many rewards in it. You can feel the excitement of the accomplishment. We started music as independents and we developed that idea and that identity as we started our own label. Being an entrepreneur. With an Entrepreneurial Mind set, they were not content with
just sticking with music. We have always been intentional. I think we had the dangerous combination of believing the dream, trying and having success doing it. Once you feel that and know thats possible, it opens up this idea that you can build the next thing. For them, the next thing was obvious. With the unified love of craft beer, they have hansons beef. We saw it as such a natural connection to the music world where you have identity, story, passion. Brewers are, surprisingly similar to artists. Zach is on the Creative Design side, ike is the dreamer. Im oftentimes asking people to take more risk, push harder, stay up later. We disagree on stuff constantly. Its like congress, a twothirds majority rule. Its a process they are trying to master. Starting their own thing certainly wasnt the easiest way to go. Theres so many cases where we could have subber stamped the hanson name and crashed in. To some cases, to a fault. Nope, we want it better. We wouldnt want to be part of the story. We would have made a lot of money of hanson pokemon. For them, it was the only thing that felt right. Never do something for the purpose of success. Its, hopefully, the result of something being done skillfully and effectively. That way, when you go out and do it over and over again, its not tiring for you, its something you are vested in and care about. Otherwise, it is going to have mixed results. Everyone, universally identifies with the fear of failure. That willingness to risk is sort of what makes the difference
between getting opportunity and nothing. If you can just get happy with the fear of failure, fighting for it and going, hey, maybe we failed, thats the audacity of dreaming. Because of their fans who love the product, their brand has been a success. So much that they have expanded it to be part of the hot jam, the annual beer and music festival. Well start with taylor. Hanson beer won a gold medal for beer before a grammy. Yes. It brings together the largest collection of Craft Brewers in oklahoma, as well as a large scale concert on tuesdays. You have two communities that are really celebrating their own kind of some community. When you bring them together, it creates something bigger than any one thing on its own. Their goal . Make tulsa a destination spot. We are essentially hosting
the ultimate party. It allows us to shine a light on the future of tulsa. Awesome quality Lifestyle Experience outside a megatown. Its a bridge for all the hansons work. Its about the community, good and local stories. Great breweries doing great work. On the music side, 20 years applying for the same issue. Today, the brothers are focused on all three of their lov loves, the music, festival and beer, using the same north star to guide them on all fronts. From the very beginning, we said to our fans, we dont want to be just a song, we want to be a muse. Whether its beer and a festival or thats a hanson album, we said, if you trust us, we will never give you less than everything weve got. Thankfully, they have said, were in. I think being an artist and entrepreneur is a similar combination of personality traits, a certain level of boldness and creativity and willingness to solve problems, looking for opportunity. Thats something i like and im interested in. I dont think anybody can predict the future, but the best decision in your life is show up every day, give everything you have to what you are going for. Thats all we know how to do. We are doing Something Different for this elevator pitch series. Instead of pitching to investors, we are going to have them pitch to influnlsers. Can they get people to write about them . It Doesnt Matter how great your company is, if nobody knows about it, it is going to fail. The stakes are real and they are big. We are at the she knows offices in new york city, a womens
lifestyle brand that reaches 75 million people. They have a conference called blog her. If the picture gets the heart emoji, they go to blog her and they present in front of 3,000 influencers that could change their company. Lets see how our pitcher does. Hi. How are you . Welcome. Nice to see you. Partake foods is your company. Yes. What do you make . Delicious, nutritious allergy things. I have a food allergic kid. To me, this is a savior. How much have you sold, so far . We havent done any paid marketing. The sales have come from influencers and word of mouth. What would it mean to get to potentially hundreds of
influencers . That would be a game changer. We are working ongoing into wegmans and whole foods. So this would be a game changer. Have you practiced your pitch . Yes. Lets go in. You are going to talk to two people, sam, the president of she knows. She has relationships with lots of influencers and katie, who, through her social media channel, she has a blog, instagram, et cetera. The blog is 12ish style. She reaches a half million people. She is the kind of person who, if she writes about something, people listen. I think you are going to do great. Lets see how you do. Hi. Im samantha. Katie. Im denise, the founder of partake foods. After my daughters first birthday, i found out she has food allergies. I walked through store shelves
feeling frustrated. She is not alone. Two kids in every classroom in america has a lifethreatening food allergy. That is up 50 . So, i took a leap of faith, left my career in cocacola and launched partake foods. They are free offal allergins. We started with cookies, but we want to go to multiple things. It is critical to a small company. Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. I mean that was, you said you didnt practice. That sounded practiced. What did you think . I want to elect her for president. Thats what i think. The cookie is delicious. Did you try them . Yes. Do you have any questions . Is your aim to be all retail . We do some ecommerce, but we would like to grow in natural retailers. I love the story, your moms story, whats what we write about, the emotional connection, the frustrations. For bloggers and influencers and the women we serve, it is on the mark. Its super relevant and solves a problem without making your kid feel weird. Go confer if denise is coming to blog her or not. I have a feeling i know what sam thinks. I have an allergic kid. Your pitch is great. Im not supposed to give advice, but im going to in case you get to go. Go up there and talk with emotion. We know how scary it is to have a kid who might eat something and have a reaction with that. Every day she leaves the house, im worried about what is going to happen. Its nice to have something. I think people who have parents with allergic kids understand. When grow to a Birthday Party, it is a danger zone. Kids look at how cute that is. For you, what is she touching. Exactly. And the feeling of inclusion. We came home from a Birthday Party and the last thing she said, i wish i could have a normal cupcake at the party. As we continue to grow, i want to make other products to hechl kids with allergies to feel normal. If you want people to write about you, get that across. This is real life here. Okay. I think you quit your job and started this tells a lot. Thank you. All right. Ladies in blue come back to say. We love you and everything you do. Will she be going to blog
her . The answer is, no. Just kidding. We love you. I was really surprised. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah you are good actresses. We were trying to do our own standup routine. We are super fans. The story is fantastic. I see the fact that you are sticking with this brand is perfect. Thats the way we will think. Did you get those cookies and the story of j. J. s daughter, similar. Heres the cupcakes for clover. Its emotional. I want to take a box home. I am picturing, a box in every blog her bag. Thank you guys. Thank you for everything. You will be seeing them at blog her. Thank you so much. Srk congratulations, again. We are constantly working, managing, planning, organizing and doing everything in between. Here are top five ways to have more energy to get you through the day. One, focus on the big exercise. These are the Biggest Energy producers. Sleep is the most important, but exercise and diet can also dramatically influence your energy levels. Two, cut back on social media. It can take up a lot of time and product other more stimulating activities. Try eliminating your use and see how it affects how you feel. Three, surround yourself with positive people. People who have an optimistic outlook on life are energizing and cultivate a positive outlook yourself. Optimists are drawn to each other. Four, drink more water and less alcohol. Sometimes even slight dehydration can leave you feeling tired and lethargic. A tall glass of water could revamp your energy levels. Five, take a walk around the
block. Getting fresh air can make a world of difference when youre feeling fatigued. Take five minute s to clear your head and youll feel better. Still to come, how to assemble a Rock Star Sales force for your service business. And what the 2, 4, 8 strategy is for growing your company. 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. I would love to have some insight around how to build out a Sales Process for software as a service business. Heres two things to keep in mind when building a Sales Process around that. One is lead generation. If youre online and selling to software as a service, trust me, your customers will be online as well, which means you want to be driving ads, google ad words, facebook ads, onlines aer have tiesi i advertising is the best way to get leads. Number two, have a good crm system inhouse. Customer management system. The best ones out there integrate to your website as leads come in. People can fill out information on your website and it goes into your crm system. Good crm systems come with templates as well. They can predict and help you with building a Sales Process so you dont have to think about these things through. Just remember, other people have already done this already, you dont have to recreate the wheel. We now have the top two tips you need to know to help you grow your business. Lets introduce our panel and get their advice. Eddie eun, the founder of eddie would grow, a think tank and advisory firm. And hasan duwani, fascinating your company and great to see both of you. Eddie, youre the veteran here, lets start with you. My tip is something called a 2, 4, 8 ratio. Something i learned from two people, a mentor of mine, Senior Partner of mckenzie and my mom who used to play a Math Doubling Game with me. What it is, it is a measure of how healthy is your business versus most people measure how good your business is performing right now. So 2 refers to the number of customers you can comfortably serve, you have the capacity to serve, high quality, without worry about overcommitting and underdelivering. The 4, how many prospects you should have versus the customers you can serve. Usually a function of your closer rate. How many prospects do you convert into customers, 50 , then two should be four, right . And then the 8 is the this is the most important measure, most companies ignore, these are the number of people that are not customers, they dont have a need and not marketing and selling to them, but they are Category Geeks like you, they love not your business, but the category that you represent. So for me, whether it is consulting or if youre selling cupcakes, Doesnt Matter. These are people who want to talk about the category and youre geeking out with them, and with no agenda in mind, usually what happens is those people either convert into leads, that become customers, or they are strong referrals. It is a great way of measuring
your business. Are you saying this should be the ratio. If im serving two customers, then i should have four times that as these Category Geeks. If im serving 8, i should have 4 times that. For a consulting partner, 2, 4, 8 is the right ratio. Depending what you for me it might be 16 customers and 4 times that. It is more the ratios that got it, perfect. Great. Youre up. My tip for you today is intergrate innovation into your business work flow. And the it all starts with changing the way we think about innovation. Changing it from being a competitive advantage into rather than competitive advantage it is a temporary advantage. And it starts by thinking about innovation years ago, cycles used to be years long, so when you have a new product, new invention, you are at a
competitive advantage. Now innovation is the cycle is three to six months. You have to constantly innovate, come up with new ideas in order to sustain that. And the key to all of this is to know who you are, and where you are in the innovation, Product Innovation life cycle. So you can start working on the next product, next feature, next idea and have it ready before your product, your existing set of products become complacent. All right, well, thank you both so much. Good to see you both. Thank you for having us. Because im in media and marketing, i need to know if those Marketing Companies and Media Companies actually have the traffic that they say they do. So similar web. Com has a pretty good benchmark for what kind of websites traffic uyoure lookin at. It is similar to alexa, but i appreciate it much more. An app i recommend is gusto,
it provides you with an hr department. We use that in places to employ our early employees. And we didnt have to hassle with any hr, we can focus on our product. A tool i use a lot, i live in is called intercom, a website that an app installed on our website that lets us do our Customer Support and user on board. I love it because it helps us communicate with our customers on a really intimate level. I spend a lot of time with intercom. I utilize a lot of apps. Some are paid. Quite a few are premium based. One in particular is an app called crystal knows. It is really unique, actually, because it works with linkedin and actually will generate a disc profile of an individual. It allows me to get a dossier of an individual in terms of how do they want to be communicated, meaning is it going to be informationbased only or is it
going to be maybe visual or do i just need to be able to be very, very direct with a very couple of quick Bullet Points to establish some credibility . This weeks your biz selfie comes from allison perry, owner of cute buttons gift and paper boutique in morrisville, north carolina. She sells all sorts of paper goods including stationery, greeting cards, calendars and wedding invitations. Pick up your cell phone, take a selfie of you and your business and send it to yourbusiness msnbc. Com or tweet it to msnbcyourbiz, include your name, the name of the company and its location. Thank you for joining us. We love hearing from you. So if you want to get in touch, just email us at yourbusiness msnbc. Com. We read every email we get. Please go over to our website, it is msnbc. Com yourbusiness. We put up everything from todays show, plus a whole lot more for you. And, of course, we are on digital and social media platforms as well. Also, please remember to check out our podcast, been there, built that. Thats where i get to have a longer conversation with a lot of the guests, very interesting. You can download it for free at tunein or wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, im j. J. Ramberg. Remember, 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
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