Transcripts For MSNBCW Your Business 20130907

Revitalizing the economy and American Express open is here to help. Thats why we are proud to present your business on msnbc. Hi there, everyone, im j. J. Ramberg, and welcome to your business, the show dedicated to giving you tips and advice to help 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. Heres a quick primer to get you to speed on the basics of 3d printing, what it could mean for the future of manufacturing and how several entrepreneurs are already using the technology. If you havent heard of 3d printing, 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 youd go to factories to work. Now you put the factory on your desk top and its yours, its a personal factory just for you. You can become an entrepreneur. You can 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 state of the art lab where workers are mastering the 3d printing. For the savvy entrepreneur, 3d printing presents a huge shift in the way things are created. Its an opportunity to give entrepreneurs access to the same technologies that historically were only reserved for big pocketed companies. Its become a real catalyst for entrepreneurs and startups and an opportunity to imagine every activity around us. We visited the first inside printing conference and expo in new york city to get a firsthand look at this emerging technology. This is a pitted bracelet with moving parts. Its all printed in one piece. If youve never seen a 3d printer, heres how it works. It draws a picture in plastic. And the way it does that, it pulls plastic in from a spool and squirts it through a nozzle. It draws another picture in plastic on top of that picture and layer by layer it builds up the model. Hes a hacker, teacher, tinkerer and thinker. He and a group of gear head friends got together and cobbled together a 3d printer a couple of years ago and now his brooklyn based company is at the hub of the 3d maker revolution. We got our prototype to work, we quit our jobs and started makerbot. To actually innovate personally. Interact with the machine. And just like the replicator in star trek, makerbots replicator 2 is turning people with little or no design experience into entrepreneurs. Chris came up with an idea that makes the square, a device that allows you to accept credit cards work better. We made this contraption to goes between the square and your ipad and keeps it from turning around. I showed it around. It was a 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 the best Case Scenario is about 4,000 to 6,000 to have molds made and charging him 30 cents apiece. He couldve gone the traditional route making tooling, take a couple months up and running. But instead, he got a makerbot. He manufactures them on his desk at home and 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, and that tool makes all sorts of things. Ive never had a machine, never touched 3d printing. I now have these tools and 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 metals, ceramic, sandstone and nylon. These highend machines are being made accessible to entrepreneurs at new places like shapeways. This is an actual production batch of probably about 70 of our customers products that are being built in this particular production run. Shapeways is a 3d marketplace which allows users to upload their designs and order a print of the item they select. When we visited, they had several of their large 3d 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 already have 10,000 entrepreneurs on our website who sell their products through shapeways. We take away so many of the thresholds to start a business. You dont have to worry about production, you dont have to worry about logistics, customer service. The only thing you have to do well as an entrepreneur is think of and design the great products. He has a shop on shapeways called dilly design with a range of products like jewelry, clocks, bowls and banks. If youre coming to a store in shapeway. You can order it in multiple colors and multiple materials. Shapeways will make it and ship it to your house directly. The most important thing about on demand 3d printing, you have no investment in stock and inventory. Its a perfect way to invest with no risk. Is there anything 3d printing cant do . Only time will tell. The inherent benefit of 3d printing is its free of charge. Gives them complete freedom of creation without the tooling cost, without the inventory, and the ability to create shapes we havent imagined. We put it all together, its a formula for a great deal of entrepreneurial excitement. It is truly astounding to see what one can do with these 3d printers, and there are so many opportunities for entrepreneurs to incorporate them into their business plan. Terry wohlers is a leading authority on Rapid Product Development and 3d printing. Great to see you, terry. Tell me about the economics of it. So to buy a makerbot or put something on shapeways instead of manufacturing it the traditional way. Well, it depends on the type of product, the volume, size, complexity. Typically, if its a relatively low volumes and very complex, then thats when theres a good match. And also relatively small. They dont do well with big parts because they take so much longer. You can do big parts by getting the expensive machines and assembling. It really is on a case by case basis. Prototype across the board but when you go into production with these types of machines, you have to carefully evaluate the types of parts and volumes and materials, as well. How much does a makerbot cost about . Its in the range depends, they have more than one version. In the range of 15 up to around 3,000. Theres many different. More than 100 different brands of that type machine, all the way down to as low as 200 up to around 3,000, 4,000. Then you get into the professional grade 5,000 and up. You know what else i think is really need for entrepreneurs. I have a friend who had an idea for a toy and he was looking into how to manufacture it overseas. And, instead, he thought let me put the design on shapeways and sell it that way. Hes actually not printing it but hes designing it and other people paying for the printing. You know, that Business Model is brilliant. I think shapeways and other companies and others will develop and who knows, maybe amazon or some other company will get into this, as well. But that takes the risk and then you have professional grade industrial machines with professionals in the background producing these for you. You supply 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 in parts, yes, it will displace some of the old ways of doing things. But if youre manufacturing stadium seats or trash cans, those will be done the oldfashioned way for a long time. Its such a neat way to prototype and depending on how you want to distribute your model, maybe 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 other things, there are gadgets out there that can help you out. Here now are five Business Travel tools. One, the power bag instant messenger features a Rechargeable Battery to fuel up your electronics on the go, usb ports and an ac plug for plugging into the wall. Two, the libberate is a mobile hot spot. It will help you organize 4g connections for up to 10 connections all at once via wifi. Three, neatreceipts is a device that scans and stores and automatically categorizes everything from fullsized documents to credit card receipts. Four, place trackdot inside your checked bag and itll tell you whether your belongings made it to your destination city. Using cell technology, the Battery Powered tracking device alerts you of your luggages location via text, app or by email. Five, spareone plus is a cheap emergency call option if youre ever in a bind. The issue of the Internet Sales tax has divided the Small Business community in a profound way. The marketplace fairness act was passed by the senate. It requires online retailers which make over 1 million in revenue to collect sales tax from customers in states that have a sales tax where the retailer has no physical presence. Thats whats different about this. It now goes to the house. The law was intended to level the Playing Field. But online Small Businesses oppose it saying the cost of complying will cost them dearly. Kevin hickey is ceo of Online Stores inc. And a Founding Member of e main Street Alliance which opposes the act. Great to see both of you guys. Great to see you. This has been an interesting debate because people on both sides of the aisle, you know, its across the aisle. And among Small Business owners, theres a big divide, as well. So give me in a sentence or two why you are in favor of it. Well, we really just wanted to level the Playing Field between the online retailers and bricks and mortar retailers. We felt for years its given an unfair advantage to the online merchants. And in particular, its been unfortunate in the consequences to small towns. We live in a small town and found its become harder and harder to run a Retail Business and a small town. Is that because people are getting a tax break when 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 giving them, in our case a 7 price advantage. So people come into our store and look at things and take pictures and go when theyre not paying taxes. Exactly. And you take the other side of this issue. Why are you against it . Well, 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 and comply with the legislation. It has a degree of unfairness that the companies below 1 million will be exempt. So still going to be 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 is written by the states and influence from very large retailers who are no friends to the small retailers. I want to ask you a question about compliance. I think there are thousands of tax municipalities, its not only state taxes, but local taxes, as well, that someone is going to have to keep track of. But i feel like in this world, people are entrepreneurial, softwares relatively cheap. And so will there not be someone who does the back end . Amazon, ebay, whoever it is, paypal who will keep 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 the state provided free software, theyre not renowned for providing highquality software. Its going to cost us potentially hundreds of thousands to integrate 20 or more Software Packages with our shopping carts and we have multiple different shopping carts, we use the ebay platform, the amazon platform, we have back end systems. Thats what i mean, dont you think theyll integrate it themselves or no . No, we have to do the integration and we have to test it, multiple different browsers, operating systems, phones and tablets. Right. And look as a Small Business, i mean 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 of 40,000 products. Let me ask you this then. Youre a Small Business person and in the bookstore business, you know what its like to deal with hard times. So knowing what you know, saying, you know, the Online Stores have an unfair advantage, but having some empathy. 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. And one of the things theres been some confusion about i think is this 1 million figure. A lot of people think its 1 million in sales. That means 1 million of online sales outside of the state in which you operate. So it really does not impact small online retailers. We do a little bit of online sales ourselves and it wont impact us at all. And in terms of the compliance costs, kevin stated a very large number, but hes got a fairly large, you know, fortunately for him hes built up a fantastic, Large Business and i think thats why the number was as high as he mentioned. All right. Well, itll be interesting to see, you know, it pass in the senate, but the house its going to have a very, very tough battle. So thank you, both, for shedding some light on this. Its somewhat confusing. We just touched it, but its a confusing issue with a lot of opinions. 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. And memorial day is coming up and teens are looking for summer jobs. But 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. Catherine is an expert at how to conduct the perfect interview. Shes the founder and ceo of the muse, a job discovery tool. Great to see you. Its great to be here. You think interviewing is so easy. Someone comes in, you see if you like them. Its the hardest thing to do. And all of the attention is on the job seeker, what should they do. But its important as an interviewer, youre representing your company and you want to understand more about this person. You say you have to first set the stage. Absolutely. The first thing is setting the stage. As the interviewer, you need to understand what are you hoping to get out of this interview . What skills are you looking for in this position . Whats absolutely required versus nice to have and what are you comfortable with someone learning on the job . And when you get ready to walk into the interview, you want to have a sense for what questions youre going to start out with. You want to silence your phone. Thats a good way to give a bad impression to a job seeker if youre very, very distracted. You know, youve narrowed in, i need this person to have this kind of personality, these kind of skills, learn this kind of thing. But 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 dive into the job seekers motivations. 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 skills or selfawareness. These big openended questions. You give someone a chance to say i was looking for this and i was excited about, you know, this other thing. And its much, really takes it to a level beyond what did you do at your last job and why were you successful . And be specific about the questions or what youre trying to draw out . What youre trying to draw out. You cant go into every single thing in their resume in detail, but it can be very helpful to focus in on a project, an experience and ask questions that get to the meat of the issue. You know, how would this project have been different if you hadnt been involved . Or what would your coworkers say about your work on this project . Because people often job seekers are smart. They think about the questions youre most likely to ask and theyll practice the answers. If you get specific with one situation, maybe two and dive in and ask those nittygritty questions, you can get a sense for 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 an employee at your company . Thats tricky. Getting past the answers theyve already rehearsed. Exactly. I worked too hard, you know. Its the dreaded question. One of our most popular articles. Too passionate about my job, thats my weakness. Never stop working. And dont hog the interview. As an interviewer, you want to be the ambassador to your company. A classic interviewing mistake is hogging the interview, talking about yourself and your company and not listening to hear what the interviewee has to say. You know, while its obviously a very, you know, very competitive economy, it is important to think that, you know, you need to interview this person and learn as much about them. Making sure you give them the floor and not hogging the microphone so to speak. Thanks a lot for your time. Great to be here. Thanks so much. Some of you may be interviewing candidates for summer jobs right now and many of them may be teenagers. Teen workers are often the lowest paid and most inexperienced people on your staff. But yet, your companys success may rely heavily on them. Managing this generation calls for new approaches. Back in my day, id been to work on time, been in uniform. If 56yearold ken sounds old school to you thats because he is. 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, hes kens 30yearold nephew. I would strive to work hard and not only meet but 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. And 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 Team 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 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, the owner of marinies by the sea says pretty much the same thing. 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. Its a challenge that both ken and jeff have met by making changes in their own Management Team style. Realize what used to work in the past isnt working anymore. What is it 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 or as a manager, then you need to make sure youre guarding your attitude. The whitings scrapped all the written handouts and put their training material online. You need to make sure, one, youre using all the digital things, that youre texting information, your schedules are on the internet and online, youve got a Facebook Page and employee website thats open 24 7. We have to change the way we package information and how we deliver it. Thats when the whitings moved their scheduling online, as well. The teens loved it and cut their management costs in half. I used to have one of our fulltime managers in the summer, took him two full days to do the next weeks schedule, now theyre down to less than a day. It puts the responsibility of the schedule in the employees hands. And 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, youve got the email, the text, its on your phone. I get a feedback of when they looked at it. Another sign of the times came when the whitings realized their employees didnt care about the expensive end of the summer thank you party. We canceled that program in the entirety, took that budget and moved it into an instant gratification program. What we learned is teenage employees dont look much further past friday night. So telling them to stick around for two, three months down the road then theyll get rewarded doesnt work. And the key they use is a scratch off card they hand out when a manager sees an employee going an extra mile. Its called a star card. And what we use for instant gratification. 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 card. This kid jasper got 300 from star cards last year. Theyre fun to be around, theres an excitement, energy you dont get with other employees. Are you a freelancer that could use help pricing your work . Check out our app of the week. The myprice app figures out the amount you should charge customers for your professional services after inputting factors like your educational background, your experience and the location of your client, the app will give you an ideal ballpark figure. Also the best charging arrangement for your client whether that be an hourly rate or per project fee. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you want 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 antiquated. At the airport you had one parking lot with thousands of cars, people are paying to have them sit there and do nothing and another parking lot with thousands of cars people are renting. How flight car is taking cues from the share economy and revolutionizing the way we think about renting cars. Until then, im j. J. Ramberg and, remember, we make your business our business. Has its ups and downs. Seasonal. Doesnt begin to describe it. My cashflow can literally change with the weather. Anything that gives me some breathing room makes a big difference. The plum card from American Express gives your business flexibility. Get 1. 5 discount for paying early, or up to 60 days to pay without interest, or both each month. Im Nelson Gutierrez and im a member of the smarter money. This is what membership is. This is what membership does. Thanks to you for tuning in. Tonights lead, making the chase. On the last day the president announced hell deliver and address on syria this tuesday. I will make the best case that i can to the American People as well as to the International Community for taking necessary and appropriate action. And i intend to address the American People from the white e