Transcripts For MSNBCW Your Business 20130901

Hi there, everyone. Im j. J. Ramberg. Welcome to your business, the show dedicated to giving you tips and advice to helping your Small Business grow. If youve never seen a 3d printer before, ill tell you, the first time you do, youre going to have one of those moments of, wow, that is cool. But the cool factor goes way beyond just how neat it is. The possibilities 3d printing opens up for Small Businesses are limitless. To get you up to spaed on the basics of 3d printing, what it could mean for the future of manufacturing and how several entrepreneurs are using the new technology. If you havent heard of 3d printing, then listen up. Its going to change everything. How we design, create, learn, teach, make and manufacture things. Some are even calling it the next industrial revolution. Now the First Industrial revolution was all about large machines in factories and you go to factories to work. Now you put the factory on your desk stop and its yours. Its a personal factory just for you. You could become an entrepreneur. You could express your ideas physically. And if they catch on in the world, youve got a business. President obama even mentioned the technology in his 2013 state of the Union Address as part of a hopeful vision of america, having a competitive advantage in manufacturing again. Once shuttered warehouse is now a state of the art lab where new workers are mastering 3d printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything. For the savvy entrepreneur, 3d printing produces a huge shift in the way things are created, democratizing and speeding up the process. Its an opportunity to manufacturing, give an entrepreneur access to the Manufacturing Technologies that were only reserved for established companies. An opportunity to reimagine every activity around us. We visited the first inside printing conference and expo at the Jacob Javitz Center in new york city to get a firsthand look at this emerging technology. A bracelet that has moving parts once it comes out. Thats all one piece. Here is how it works. It draws a picture in plastic. The way it does that is it pulls plastic in from a spool and squirts it through a little nozzle. It draws, lifts up and draws another picture in plastic on top of that and layer by layer, it builds up the model. A hacker, teacher, tinkerer and thinker. He and a group of gearhead friends got together and created a 3d printer a few years ago. He we got our prototype to work, we quit our jobs. And our goal was to change the game and bring 3d printing to people so they could put them on their desktop and actually innovate personally, interact with the machine. Just like the replicator in star trek, make r bot is turning people with little to no experience into entrepreneurs. Coming up with an idea that makes the square a device to allow credit cards work better. Between the square and your ipad and keeps it from turning around. I had a proper prototype made and showed it around. Big hit. People need it. People want it. So next question is, where do i have this made . I go to china. I look at injection molding. I found that the best Case Scenario was 4,000 to 6,000 to have molds made and they wanted to charge me 35 cents a piece. Take a couple of months to get up and running. Instead, he got a maker bot. He makes them not to prototype but actually manufactures them on his desk at home. Puts them in bags and staples them and people order them on his website and he ships them out. I got a tool instead of a dye. That tool makes all sorts of things now. Before six month ago, i never had a machine, never touched 3d printing. I now have these tools and i have four new patents for totally unrelated Industries Just because i have this machine. On the other side of the spectrum is the professional 3d printers, which have the ability to print in more than 30 materials, including metal, ceramic, sandstone and nylon. These highend machines are being made accessible to entrepreneurs at new Online Marketplaces like shape ways, which has been pegged the factory of the future. This is an actual production batch of probably about 70 of our customers products that are being built in this particular production run. Its a 3d marketplace which allows users to upload their designs and order a print of the item they select. We visited they had several of their large printers working around the clock while they continue to build out their space for the addition of 50 new printers to meet the growing demand for their service. We have 10,000 entrepreneurs on our website who sell their products through shape way. They can really start their own Small Business because we take away so many of the treasure holds to start a business. You dont have to worry about production. You dont have to worry about logistics. You dont have to worry about customer service. The only thing you have to do well as an entrepreneur is think of and design great products. A shop on shape ways called dilly design with a range of products like jewelry, clocks, bowls and banks. If youre coming to a store on shape way and pick, for example, a bracelet, you can order it in multiple colors and materials. Shape ways will make it and ship it to your house directly. The most important thing about it is you have no investment in stock or inventory. Its a perfect way to innovate with no risk. Is there anything 3d printing cant do . Only time will tell. The inherent benefit of 3d printing is the complexity is free of charge. What that does for creators and innovators and artists is give them complete freedom of creation without the costs, without the inventory, and the ability to create shapes that we havent even imagined. Putting it all together, its a formula for a great deal of entrepreneurship and excitement. It is truly astounding to see what one can do with these 3d printers. There are so many opportunities for entrepreneurs to incorporate them into their business plan. Terry wollers is a leading authority on Rapid Product Development and 3d printing. Great to see you, terry. Tell me a little bit about the economics of it. To buy a maker bot or put something on shape ways versus going and manufacturing it yourself the traditional way. It depends on the type of product, volumes, size, complexity. If its relatively low volumes and very complex, then thats when theres a good match. And also relatively small. They toent do well with big parts because it takes so much longer. You can do big parts by getting the expensive machines and assembling, but prototyping across the board, especially for scale models. But when you go into production with these types of machines you have to carefully evaluate the type of product, volumes. How much does a maker bot cost . It depends. In the range of 1500 to up to 3,000. Theres more than 100 different brands of that more hobbyist grade type machine all the way down to as low as 200 up to around 3,000, 4,000. Then you get into the professional fwrad that are 5,000 and up and even over 1. 5 million. Do you know what i think is neat for entrepreneurs . I had a friend who had an idea for a toy. He was looking in how to manufacture it overseas. Instead he thought let me put the design on shapeways and sell it that way. He is not printing it, but designing it and other people are paying for the printing. That Business Model is brilliant. Shape ways and other companies, pinoco, a new zealand company. Others will develop. Who knows, maybe amazon or some other company will get into this as well. That takes the risk. Then you have professional grade industrial machines with professionals in the background producing these for you. You provide the designs, you can be a shop owner and they take care of the rest. In your mind, how are things going to progress in the future . We are at the very beginning of this right now. Is this going to take over manufacturing . For certain types of products and parts, yes, it will displace some of the old ways of doing things. If youre manufacturing stadium seats or trash cans, those will be done the oldfashioned way for a very long time. Its such a neat way to prototype and depending on how you want to zpridistribute your model, sell your designs as well. Thank you so much, terry. We appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much. Travel can be a complete hassle. But, like with so many things, there are gadgets out there that can help you out. Here now are five Business Travel tools every entrepreneur should not leave home without, courtesy of entrepreneur magazine. One, the power bag instant messenger features a Rechargeable Battery to fuel up your electronics on the go, usb ports and an ac port for plugging into the wall. Two, the liberate is a mobile hot spot available through at t. It will help you 4 g connections up to ten device via wifi. Neat receipt sincere a usb powered device that scans, stores and automatically categorizes everything from fullsized documents to credit card receipts. Four, trakdot inside your bag and it will tell you whether your belongings made it to your destination city. The Battery Powered tracking device alerts you of your luggages location via text, app or email. Five, spare one plus is a cheap emergency call option if youre ever in a bind. The phone can handle ten hours of conversation on one aa battery. The issue of the Internet Sales tax has divided the Small Business community in a profound way. Marketplace fairness act was passed by the senate, requiring online retailers who make over 1 million in revenue to collect sales tax from consumers in sta states where there is a sales tax even when there is no retail store in the state. Thats whats different about this. Online businesses oppose it, saying the cost of complying will cost them dearly. Ceo of Online Stores, inc. Jonah is an owner of a store in maplewood, new jersey, and is in favor of this. This has been an interesting debate. Its crossed the aisle. Among Small Business owners, theres a big divide as well. So give me, in a sense or two, why you are in favorite of it. We just want to level the Playing Field between the online retailers and brick and mortar retailers. We felt for years its given an unfair advantage to the online merchants. In particular, its been unfortunate in the consequences to small towns. We live in a small town and we found that its become harder and harder to run a Retail Business in a small town. Is that because people are getting a tax break because they buy online or because its more convenient to buy online . Its fine to buy online but its given the online retailers a huge advantage and given them, in their case a 7 price advantage. People come into their store, look at things, take pictures and go buy online. Where theyre not paying tacks . Exactly. You take the other side of this issue. This legislation imposes a huge compliance burden on tens of thousands of Companies Across the United States that will have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to implement software. It has a degree of unfairness that the companies below 1 million will still be exempt. Still an element of unfairness. The legislation has been written really without any regard to the people that are actually going to be involved in implementing this as written by the states. And influence from very large retailers. I want to ask you a question about compliance. Indeed, there is a big compliance issue, right . There are thousands of tax municipalities. Its not only state taxes, but its local taxes as well that someone is going to have to keep track of. But i feel like in this world, people are entrepreneurial. Software is relatively cheap. So, will there not be someone who dos the back end amazon, ebay, pay pal, who will keep all that information for you and actually for the Small Business it wont be as big of a burden . Or will it . Well, some of the software will actually be free. That doesnt mean that it costs us nothing to implement it. Even if the software is free and we are very suspicious of stateprovided free software. Theyre not renowned for providing highquality software. It will cost us potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to integrate 20 or more diven Software Packages with our shopping carts. We use ebay platform, amazon platform. We have back end systems. Dont you think theyll integrate it themselves or no . No, we have to do the integration and then we have to test it on multiple different browsers, operating systems, phones, tablets. Right. And, look, as a Small Business any bit of compliance is a lot, frankly. We estimate that our compliance cost will be over 300,000 in the first two years. For your company itself . Yes. That involves the configuration of the software and the testing of the software. That involves classifying into multiple, different sales tax jurisdictions. Youre a Small Business person and youre in the book store business. Right. You know what its like to deal with hard times. Knowing what you know, saying the Online Stores have an unfair advantage, but having some empathy for this sure. Do you still feel like, you know, we need to pass this because it is unfair . Absolutely. And its critical for states and municipalities to get revenues from the large online sellers, retailers. One of the things that there has been confusion about, i think, is this Million Dollar figure. People think its 1 million in sales. Its 1 million of remote sales. 1 million of online sales outside of the state in which you operate. It really does not impact small online retailers. We do a bit of online sales ourselves and it wont impact us at all. In terms of the compliance cost, kevin stated a very large number but he has a fairly large, you know fortunately for him he has built up a fantastic, large business. It will be interesting to see, you know, it pass in the senate. The house, it will have a very tough battle. Thank you both for shedding some light on this. Its a somewhat confusing we just touched it, but its a confusing issue with a lot of people, lot of opinions. Absolutely. Always great to be with a terrific author. Thanks, j. J. Thank you. When we come back, four things you must do when interviewing job candidates. Memorial day is coming up and teens are looking for summer jobs. What you dont know about how to manage them could hurt your Small Business. Building animatronics is all about getting things to work together. The timing, the actions, the reactions. Everything has to synch up. My expenses are no different. Receipt match from American Express synchronizes your business expenses. Just shoot your Business Card receipts and theyre automatically matched up with the charges on your online statement. Im john kaplan and im a member of a synchronized world. This is what membership is. This is what membership does. Interviewing is an art. And its hard. How can you really get to know if someone is the right fit for your company by just asking them a few questions . In my company, we have a rule that we always interview everyone three times in three different locations because you can learn something completely different, sitting across the desk from someone than you can by grabbing a coffee with them at a cafe. Katherine minchu is the founder and ceo of the muse. You think its easy, right . Its the hardest thing to do. All the attention is on the job seeker, but its important as an interviewer, youre representing your company. You want to understand more about this person to make a decision whether theyre the right fit for your team. You say first set the stage. Absolutely. As the interviewer, you need to understand, what are you hoping to get out of this interview . What skills are you looking for . Whats absolutely required versus whats a nice to have, and what are you comfortable with someone learning on the job . When you get ready to walk into the interview, you want a sense for what questions youre going to start out with. You want to silence your phone. Thats a great way to give a bad impression to a job seeker if youre suddenly very distracted. When you talk about you narrowed in, i need this person to have this kind of personality, these kind of skills, be able to learn this kind of thing. You say look for a narrative. What do you mean by that . Asking questions that start with why or what did you learn from, those questions can really dive into the job seekers motivations, their passion, their Decision Making. Many candidates sometimes they have their rehearsed answers. If you can look for the narrative of why they made certain decisions. Why did you decide to move industries . What made you take this promotion . What did you learn from that experience . A great candidate will use that to show you what they care about, how they think, very thoughtful answers. Some red flags might be very vague answers, can point to a lack of critical Decision Making skillors self awareness. I like that. Big sort of openended questions . It creates more personality as well. You give someone a chance to say i was looking for this and i was excited about this other thing and i think its much it really takes it to a level beyond what did you do at your last job and why were you successful. Right. And be specific. Specific about the questions or specific about what youre trying to draw out . Be very specific about what youre trying to draw out. You cant go into every single thing in their resume in detail. It can be very helpful to focus in on a project, experience and ask questions that get to the meat of the issue. How would this project have been different if you hadnt been involved . Or what would your coworkers say about your work on this project . People often job seekers are smart. They think about the questions youre most likely to ask. And theyll practice the answers. If you really get specific with one situation, maybe two, and dive in and ask those nitty gritty questions, you can really get a sense as to what did they contribute . What was their role . As an individual, what did they bring to the table . And what will they bring to the table as your employee . Thats tricky, right, getting past the answers that they already rehearsed. I work too hard. Whats your biggest weakness, the dreaded question. One of our most i get too passionate. Dont hog the interview . As an interviewer, you want to be the ambassador for your company, tell them why its a great place to work. Classic interviewing mistake is talking about yourself and your company and not listening to hear what the interviewee has to say. While its obviously a very competitive economy, it is important to think that, you know, you need to interview this person, learn as much about them. Making sure you give them the floor, that youre not hogging the microphone, so to speak. Thank you for your time. Its so great to be here. Thank you very much. Some of you may be interviewing candidates for summer jobs right now. Many of them may be teenagers. Teen workers are often the lowest paid and most inexperienced people on your staff. Yet your companys success may rely heavily on them. Managing this generation calls for some new approaches. Take a look at what we discovered about motivating teens. Summer means fun summer means fun back in my day, i would have been to work on time, been in uniform. If he sounds old school to you, thats because he is. And if i didnt, i would have been fired. Back in my day. I remember as a young kid having that automatic respect for a supervisor. Jeff whiting is old school, too, kens 30yearold nephew. I would strive and work hard to not only meet but to exceed their expectations. And today, you dont see that. Ken and jeff are third and fourth generation Family Partners at whitings foods, which has been running food concessions at this famous california seaside Amusement Park since 1953. I am a tremendous advocate that todays teens are as able as ever, but theyre far less prepared. Employers also are far less prepared to deal with the age group. The whitings say this management problem isnt limited to santa cruz. Based on their teen workforce consulting business called waves for success, they see a National Trend stretching from the california beaches to the jersey shore. Employers like jeff and ken say this difference in attitude is a big problem for Small Businesses like theirs, which depend on parttime teenage workers. They are the ones that determine whether one of our customers, one of our guests is going to make a purchase, spend more or come back again. They impact that. They impact our bottom line. Down the boardwalk from the whitings, joe marini the third, owner of marinis by the sea say pretty much the same thing. As any parent would know, theyre teenagers. They come with their whole set of teenage issues. Manage through the eyes of todays teens rather than through the eyes of when they were a teenager. Teenage dream its a challenge that both ken and jeff have met by making changes in their own Management Team style. Realizes what used to work in the past isnt working anymore. What is it that i need to do to make it work . It can be done takes a different mindset. If you want to gain more from the people who affect your business and affect your performance as an employer, as a manager, then you need to make sure that youre guarding your attitude. Next thing, whitings scrapped all of the written handouts and put their training material online. You need to make sure, one, that youre using all the digital things, that youre texting information, that your schedules are on the internet and online, that youve got a Facebook Page and you have an employee website thats open 24 7. We just have to change the way that we package information and how we deliver it. Thats when the whitings moved their scheduling online as well. The teens loved it. It cut their management costs in half. I used to have one of our fulltime managers in the summer took two full days to do next weeks schedule. Now theyre down to less than a day. It puts the responsibility of the schedule in the employees hands. If they cannot make it to work, they have the ability to post their shift on a trade board. When ken and jeff told joe about it, he quickly adopted it for his candy shop. And theres no more questioning of, oh, i didnt get the message because ive got it. You got the email. You got the text. Its on your phone. I get a feedback of when they looked at it. So i know theyve looked at it. Another sign of the times came when the whitings realized that their employees didnt care about the expensive end of the summer thank you party. We canceled that program in its entirety, took that budget and moved it into an instant gratification program. Teenage employees doesnt look much further past friday night. Telling them to stick around for two, three months down the road, then theyll get rewarded doesnt work. The key they use is a scratchoff card they hand out when a manager sees an employee going the extra mile. Its a scratcher. Star card. And this is what we use for instant gratification, as i go through my stores, if i catch somebody doing something right, theres no need to make them wait. You can scratch it off and get 20. It keeps people going. They work for the star cards. This kid, jasper, he got like 300 from star cards last summer. Easy is not the right word. Theyre fun. Theres energy there that you dont get with other employees. Are you a freelancer who could use some help calculating how to price your work . Check out our app of the week. The my price app figures out the amount you should reasonably charge customers for your professional services. After inputting factors like your educational background, experience and location of your client, the app will give you an ideal ballpark figure to charge. My price will also suggest the best price to charge to your client. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you wanted to watch parts of the show again, go to our website. Its openforum. Com yourbusiness. Youll find all of todays segments, plus web exclusive content with more information to help your business grow. Next time, teens arent just looking for jobs. Some are starting their own Small Businesses, like the three teenagers who took a look at the rental car industry and thought this sure seems ant equated. One parking lot full of cars that nobody wants and another parking lot that everybody is renting from. Revolutionizing the way we rent cars. Im j. J. Ramberg. Until next time, remember, we make your business our business. Building animatronics is all about getting things to work together. The timing, the actions, the reactions. Everything has to synch up. My expenses are no different. Receipt match from American Express synchronizes your business expenses. Just shoot your Business Card receipts and theyre automatically matched up with the charges on your online statement. Im john kaplan and im a member of a synchronized world. This is what membership is. This is what membership does. Be careful what you wish for is the old saying. When it comes to the United States congress, a different version may apply. Be careful what you posture for. For the past week, it has looked for all the world like president obama was on an irreversible path to launching a unilateral, congressional free strike on syria. It sounded that way when obama began speaking in the rose garden yesterday. In a world with many dangers, this