Oneonone interview witith big names from the b business wod. In the past we have featured exclusive interviews with the likes of bill marriott and the cofounder of twitter. This week, while Rebecca Cooper is off, we hand over the michael the microphone to one of jupiters. He sat down in front of the business crowd with the entrepneur and former secretary of commerce as well as trade in virginia. Hitting ther about bamboo ceiling and balancing success and yourur fily as well , innnovative techniques china producing paper that just might surprise you. A lot of people said, i could not get my raise, my promotion. I hit the glass ceiling, the bamboo c ceiling, whatever ceiling. I have the opportunity, lets go do it. Of course, that is a great option. Entrepreneurship is a great option that hit ceilings that they want to overcome. It is a great option especially for minorities, a lot of women that hit the glass ceiling. We see a lot more people going into that. If you are comfortable, yeah, you have to convince more people like your spouse that you are not crazy. I am going to give up the day job your parents, whatever and i am going to take this huge risk and doing this great endeavor. But those people have passion and they really want to do it. Once an entrepreneur has a business doing a business going and they go along, they ask, when should i sell . You should sell at the right time. [laughter] it turns out the year i sold was 2005. Very unfortunate that 9 11 happened, but for governor government contractors, this very deep tragedy but for government contracrs, we experienced sort of a renaissance in the evaluations of our Companies Back then you cannot always sell at the peak of value, but we came very close, so it was the right time. The larger companies, their valuations went up because people saw defense spending, Government Spending wow, there is some money there. I said this to my wife a long time ago and she says it back to me now. You do not identify yourself by what you do, you should be yourself. You should not be your company, so engrossed in the company that you cannot think of your family, cannot think of your spouse, your other loved ones or your community. You cannot just you so targeted for business and making money. Of timeu spend a lot now working on the National Transactions in your life. How do you compare emerging economies like china to the United States . Are there lessons we should learn of the chinese that maybe are not shared by the American Business culture . Yes. The main thing with china is tend to views ourselves in a bubble. There is a lot of opportunities in china right now if you know how to play your cards. Very hard to do business in china if you are in the United States. On the other hand, the lesson is doot ignore the rest of the world. There is a lot of iormation there is a lot of innovation in china. Ththey have Research Parks bettr than our Research Parks. They are cing out with things like consent, alibaba, jack ma. Ell jack they are coming up with their own innovation and we should not be blind to that. We should not fear them, but folks that i have seen go on both sides, nothing to fear. Oh, we are definitely afraid. Somewhere in the middle, we has to learn about innovation. We have a lot to learn with innovation, but with , it is a,003 people bigger percentage than we think. There are a lot of opportunities, especially to bridge the two continents. There are opportunities certainly there. A lot of innovation going on. A big part of the country, china, is still may be in the early or mid20th century. But you would be surprised how much of china is way beyond where we are right n with their innovationnd their Research Parks and things going on there. And for the virginia and d. C. Region, i think china is a particularly great opportunity. Talk a little bit about the paper projoject. It is a paper mill if it were just any paper mill, i would not be excited. They are going to bring over technology in paper. The chinese invented paper 5000 years ago, whatever. They want to reinvent it. The reinvention is that this will not use tree fiber for the paper. It will use agricultural waste. So basically it is sustainable. We will not be cutting down trees. It will be totally using what the farmers are growing right now, and the paper that will come out is actually free of a lot of the pollutants and toxins that you think about when you have to die paper and things like that. Morally so people normally do not think of in terms of innovations, but this is something they ha been doing a long time and it is coming for the United States. I think it will benefit both countries. Some good advice there. How one Small Company is turning a profit by making mealtime simpler and healthier. One day my son came to me and said, dad, lets go shoot some hoops. I couldnt play with him. I didnt have the energy, i was just so overweight. It just made me feel like i was nothing. And then my sister introduced me to herbalife. I started drinking the protein shakes, she helped me plan out a re balanced diet. Ive lost 44 pounds. And now when my son asks me to shoot some hoops, i wear him out find out more at iamherbalife. Com welcome back. Our Small Business spotlight focuses on mealtime. For ma families, dinnertime is a lastminute effort t to move healthy food on e table. But when n you get home from wok and have not even started to think about what to feed the fami, that is when the scramble gets underway enter a local woman helping milies and turni a profit with the help of a few moms who use our service. We get a small gloves of how her business works. One of the things i like about it is that whehen i get he ii already know exactly what am going to do for that i hear all the time from 100 is lifechanging. Not thinklt part is this for you, she is herself. A sau. Theyey really have a good system down. Planning is the secret behind the Small Business. Goldfarb found a market t for being a mirror. She designed a website that restrictionsary for a family, time restraints, and shopping habits. It started with me realizing that planning a few meals in advance was the key to my own sanity and became the key to making dinners happen. Once i realized that and i started to talk to other moms that i knew about what was going on, they were having the same stress i was. I started informally sharing my weekly plans with people. They were so excited about the concept that i realized instead of doing another cookbook, why dont i give people plans for the week . Rona. Name is i just got finished picking up my baby from daycare. I send people a weekly plan with recipes and a grocery list so that they can shop and get everything they need for a whole week of healthy meals. You get the cooking . Yes. That is making me hungry. With more than 6000 paying customers, the plan is to expand and help out not only in the kitchen but in the grocery store. Right now i am waking i am woworking fulltime on the business because i have big plans. Whose turn is it to set the table tonight . Yours, ok. Then click a button and order groceries and have them delivered. Emails are healthier than i used to make and they are a springboard to find other recipes out there. When you have an idea and you started business, you never start you never stop creating. If you are listening to your customers and your community, their needs are changing over time, so you need to be able to give them what they are looking what they are looking for next. When we come back, the roroundtable disiscussion. All those office bldings and in Northern Virginia. Plus, president obama tries to rally support to fight back, everybody. Lots of business headlines this week. Vacancy rates in Northern Virginia office buildings. President obama trying to rallyy International Partners to fight isil or isis, and so much more. Joinining me to unravel the ws headliness is the weekss headadlines is per morici, and jonathan aberman, head of amplifier ventures. Thank you for being with us. I want to start, jonathan, briefly about the problems it is having. You called in you called it seethrough buildings. It is going through an enormous changbecaususe of the way the government acquires technology. You areeeing a big problem in the real eate market developing. ,eople at work on this issue with government contract leaders others,eaniels and there will be a long list to solve the problem. The vacancy rate in rosslyn, in Northern Virginia it is very straightforward. The government is changing how it is acquiring technology, from services to focus on product. That result in a high vacancy rate. Thais very true, but there are also changes in the way people work. And a sll office space. And also, what people like in ildings changes. Pele went from rioshack to circuit city to best. And look at the skyline for example. Northern virginia, just a year ago, i did a story about the tallest building in the d. C. Metro area. They decided they were going to build this building without getting any tenants this is the oneyear anniversary of the building, and it is still empty. Right, because the market is changing. But shouldnt they have known this . No. D do not beat too hard on th. First, for a 20 yard andear cycle, weor a 20year have beeeen able to grow and expand the way w we did busines. The world has changed in a significant way. Nobody couldld have predicted sequestration, for example. Starts ay who business, build a building, goes financing, has to absolutely believe in what he is doing without any problems down the road. Takinghances is just more obvious. Or they are recess with the banks money. That is how we roll. The International Headline of the week president obama was back at the u. N. A struck me that this was president who won the nobel peace prize, and this does not sound like a peatime president. This was a wartime speech. He cannot be. The kind of violence that we are confronted with with isis, it has to be built with force it has to be met with force. We say congratulations, welcome to the party when we are on the right. The sais did not want to get on board. But i think he has done a masterful job at putting together this coalition. Does he have success . Our opinions are e sort of different here. I said it last month. I amam highly concerned that we are dropping bombs without a clear endgame. Syria is a mess. Moreis a lile bit straightforwd right now. Will it hold up in the longterm . I am not sure. I isiscannot defeat without boots on the ground. They will be able to assimilate in the neighborhoods and cities and disperse until obama goes away. You cannot dry up funding because it goes in so many places. You will not get rid of ththem. I am not sure that that convertion is good. The president has been told that by his generals d he simply does not want to listen. Talk about cognitive dissonance. This is like a seminar, this guy, when itit comes to that. It was kind of strange bedfellows, to be able to see on president in essence irans side. We are creatingn opportunity for them. I said this last month, fundamamentally it is part of te civil war that has gone on for a long timime in the middle east. All right. Lets talk about something that will be an exercise in futility, the way i think about it. When we talk about Climate Change, there is a lot to talk about with Climate Change. Throughout new york and the u. N. , and for two days, to t to say we are going to make a lot of promises. Nooubt we will have success with this, you would think. First oall, lets acknowledge that Climate Change is a reaeal thing. I talked about this and peter is on record. Thessue right now is what are people going to do about it . The challenge is to doomething about it reqres big actions and actioions of the government all the y from the free market to do it. That is what the challenge is. Notably absent from these discusussions s is the u. N. With china, india, and russia. Three ofof the five biggest polllluters in the world. The others are the u. S. And japan. Did you know that china pollutes as much as another japan every three months and e United States every two years . Saying, are the president of the unid states and has china followed any of of ouour nobleny exampleses in the last 20 years . I cannot thihink of this is an exercise in tility. The last time we hadad one of hi conference in denmark, who had all of these promises and programs and nothing happened. The United States, while it has not signed the agreement, pretty well lived up to them, the senate does not pass them. E have donene a dramatic job mr. Obama deserves some good marks for that. L lets ststay in europe witr focus overseas. I just got back from you are one of f the press people on sunday morning if you are traveli overseas ishe european economy imy you say we are on the brink of a recsion again. Economy is not growing because germany will not reform i economy. Mugging spain, greece, with this money system of theirs. The economy has stopped. It is keynesian economics in reverse. Credit has run out. Remember what maggie said about socialism. Sooner or later you run out of funding. By the way, their economies better. The german said, no no, and we drove them into the russis arms. All right, in a oneword answer, are they in n a recessin now or next quarter . They are not there yet. They are on the brink. I am a venture capitalist. I am a vegetarian. All right, thank you for joini us, everybody. Let us know what you thought of the show today, and what did you think about smSmall Business spotlight . We showed how a local woman turned a profit after one mononh in business and sti going strong 11 years late what about t the vacant buildins in Northern Virginia . Like us on facacebook, follow us on twitter. Watch on wjla. A. Com. I am in for Rebecca Cooper. One day my son came to me and said, dad, lets go shoot some hoops. I couldnt play with him. I didnt have the energy, i was just so overweight. Itust made me feel like i was nothing. And then my sister introduced me to herbalife. I started drinking the protein shakes, she helped me plan out a more balanced diet. Ive lost 44 pounds. And now when my son asksme , i wear him out find out more at iamherbalife. Com this week. To behink we are going seeing a shift in the administrations focus. The cio heads to usaid. We discuss his legacy. The pentagon wants to bring in companies that typically dont contract with the government. Better buying power. The focus on tec will the pentagon plan maintain americas military might . No longer is it just enough to protect. It is much more than a buzzword. It remakes the Government Technology marketplace. Government matters starts right now. Channelabc 7 and news 8, this is government matters. To our viewers around the world on the american forces