Present your business on msnbc. Hi everyone. Im j. J. Ramburg. If you have a business that addresses the issue that is hard to talk about, it can be really tricky to spread the word. If you work in an industry that is associated with horrible events, for example, crime scene, how can you put a positive spin on what youre doing. We went to tampa to meet one founder who had to figure out a way to market her company that cleans up after some horrific situations. In shows like csi and breaking bad, crime scenes and meth labs are the pivotal setting. In real life though when all the police tape is cleared, theres often chaos and debris left behind that no one wants to clean up. That. Is no one but former Law Enforcement laura spalding. After being on the scene for terrible crime in 2015 she saw an opportunity. It was a double decidehomicide and it was on christmas. I was helping the people that had no means to pay for it but their Homeowners Insurance covered the clean up. After i was done i thought this is it for me. This is somewhat i want to do. Laura started a company that specializes in Crime Scene Clean up. She soon sfoundfound she had little competition. The work wasnt steady at first. Its deathrelated and we added hording in 2006 and meth lab clean up. Those circumstance tashl. She has to hit the street and go door to door. It is an awareness thing. Im going to multiple hotels im going to apartment complexes, Insurance Companies because when they get that call they dont know where to turn. You would initially get the same reactions. Well never need the service. And two weeks later theyre saying i cant believe im calling you but we had a suicide or something of that nature. So you dont think about it when you dont need it but when you need it they knew where to pick up the card. Thats what happened for kohler who met laura through a Mutual Insurance and never thought she would need her services. My son was killed january 4th of this year. He was murdered by a young man that he was ride to work with that morning. The police came and had and when they let me baseball in they told me there would be, you know a lot to clean up and it was bio medical waste it would get better to get someone. A quick call to someone she never imagine she would have to call. The workers took care of the job she was thankful she didnt have to do herself. It is tumultuous when you lose a child, especially like that in your own home. It made things easier. If i had to clean it up, if my son had to clean it up i think it would have made it so much harder harder. I was glad i met laura before. A lot of people dont realize theres somebody that can take care of that. Rather are a realizes thats one fact she needs to change. This is not your typical service. This is not a typical coupon or find a buy one get one free. Obviously thats not going to apply. You have to be strategic about how you advertise. And some of the advertising has been billboards with outlines of dead bodies and that will get your attention and i know theyre going for an awareness type thing. Maybe it worked for them but that type of approach doesnt work for us. Instead discreet professional probrochures that addresses each service individually. Make sure that each Customer Base is catered to separately. I designed the brochure to talk them. The horders dont want to know you do a crime scene and youre associating them with crime scenes because then they feel worse about themselves. The sensitivity to what her customer needs spills over into how her Team Delivers on each and every job. For hording were sensitive about the way we speak to them. We teach the employee that you have to be empathetic. Im going help you started. You have to be sensitive in these type of situations. I spend more time on that because i think not everyone is from the same background. Not everyone grieves the same way or understands the way people grieve. Knowing her employees well ensures even on the job shes not taking care of herself, height level of service her business is known for continues on. I can tell what their strengths and weaknesses are. When i put them on a crew, say, for example, deals with a hording job, i can assign who i want to be the lead and the contact for the customer. Her ability to speak to the needs of her customers, and market what many see as an insavory business tastefully means the future is briegtd for spaulding decon. Shes franchising and has inquiries pouring in. We do the services that no one else wants to think about and provide peace of mind. I think the growth of this business is unbelievable. Its a recessionproof business. The need is never going to go away. The awareness is only growing. Getting past horrible events and lifechanging mistakes can a b a challenge. Thats where entrepreneurism can often be a positive force. Thats exactly what we discovered when we visited a womans from is in oregon. Where learning to own a Small Business is helping inmates turn their lives around. At the coffee creek correction facility in oregon once a week youll hear a conversation like this. Whether youre busy or not. Is she a goods or expense . Expense. Okay. Welcome to life or lifelong information for entrepreneurs. Its a 32session course teaching female inmates a the. My mum security campus how to start and run their own company. In fact the communication involves active listening to understand what others are saying. En though some of these women have been convicted of crimes like attempted murder assault, and manslaughter nobody cares what about the students did to get into prison. The focus is on what these women will do when they get out. Ive always liked to run things. And i would loveable to the owner of a business. You know, rather than the employee. I would love to employ people. This is a student of the life class. Throughout the term, she and her fellow classmates are learning everything you need to know to launch a company from the ground up. We cover the pnl, we cover the balance sheet, we cover soft skills like communication, effect iive listening, working. The class is built around being able to build business. Doug cooper is the director of mercycorps. Northwest in oregon. Shes been with the Program Since it started. People that were incarcerated, obviously, coming into an environment where having a felony conviction is going to make it difficult to find a job. Being able to start your own business or be selfemployed seemed like a viable option. After having a conviction of manslaughter i didnt think anybody would want to hire me. The idea of starting my own business and being able to make a living was appealing to me. So far about 100 inmates have completed the course. 5 to 10 have started the businesses. Michelle will soon join the ranks. Shes just about to start her company. Just about a year and a half after getting out of prison. She came up with the idea while enrolled in the life class. Prison mail is a huge issue, and a lot of people are really disappointed when they adopt get a birthday card. It seemed like it would be a good thing to do if you could mail out cards for people and they wouldnt have to worry about it. After raising 1,000 herself and getting a 3,000 grant she was ready to go. It was pretty exciting to actually, you know, sit down and write something up and figure out what the feasibility and the idea is and really pick it apart. Actually starting a business out of prison isnt the goal. Creating the confidence so someone could start one is. We want them to be more economically secure. By that have that as a means to rebuild their lives and to be successful. The name of the institution is correctional facility. If the implication is that you are learning to do something better, that requires education. Tanya was one of the first students to ever take the classes while serving an eight and a half year sentence. I know when i started the life program, i started to have that glimmer of hope that i dont have to be that person. In in the four years since we reported on mercycorps. The life program has expanded to the Washington Correctional Center for women. The program just graduated the 11th class and doug cooper said the program has reduced the re resit victim rate by more than 30 . I refuse to come in and leave the same way i came in. That was my thing. Because i knew underneath everything else, there was a bigger person than what i portrayed myself to be. I think ive been most impressed by the womens desire to change and start a new life. Subsequently it feels were doing a service by trying to get them this is real. This is real. You know,. Investing in Customer Service can pay off. Fortunately there are plenty of creative ways to delight your users without a big budget. Here are five ways you can wow clients. One, free extras and upgrades. Complimentary perks like express shipping and sample products generally wont hurt your margin but can increase revenue. Two, invite them to hang out. Give your best clients behind the scenes experience to learn who you and your team are. Three, offer a giveaway. Bundle a bunch of your products together and create a sweep stakes your customers can enter. Coupon codes when customers lease expect it. Four, break the rules. When interacting with customers it is easy to read from a script. Five, tell their story. Your customers are real people with powerful stories. Authenticity can go a long way to engaging existing users and previous to buyers. What you need to do to make sure your business is profitable five years from now. And more of our viewers favorite online tools and apps. American express for travel and entertainment worldwide. Just show them this the American Express card. Dont leave home without it and someday, i may even use it on the moon. Its a marvelous thing oh haha so you can replace plane tickets, travelers cheques, a lost card. Really . That worked . American express timeless safety and security are now available on apple pay. The next evolution of membership is here. This weeks your biz selfie is from Michael Connelly of springfield, massachusetts who runs a unique diaper Baby Gift Company called stinky cakes. Stinky or not, we like to see your selfie too. I love this company, by the way. If you would like to see your picture up here on your business. Send us your selfie or use twitter. Do not forget to use the the the the yourbizselfie. It is time to answer some of your business questions. Lets get our board of directors in here to help. Amos is the founder and ceo of and mike is the president and ceo of forbes media. Good to see you. You too. Lets get to the first question. It is about Small Business survival. What is the biggest challenge that most businesses have that prevent them from making it five years from the day they start . Thats a good question, i think. Yeah. You cover a lot of businesses. We do. And you know my background i was in Venture Capital for a long time. To me, there are a lot of things but its all about people. If you make the right choices, if you make the wrong choices about people five years is very difficult. Make the right choices about people even though it is hard takes a little bit longer have to be more selective. I think thats the factor. What is so tricky about the first five years, presumably hopefully youre growing a lot. You need people who are flexible. Right. And thauns the job they have on day one probably isnt going to be the job theyre going to have at year three. Exactly. Very true. I would say rigidness. Being a very rigid in your idea of what your business should be and could be. And under capitalzation. Next up a question about contracts from the owner of a Marketing Company. One of our main challenges is to get people to honor the contracts that they signed. So what we would like to know is how to maintain the relationship with the customer so they can fulfill the contract and actually see the results produced in their life and their business that they actually paid for. You know what is tricky is that people expect immediate results. In marketing and pr sometimes you need to wait. If hes done a six month contract and a month in theyre saying im not seeing anyone and throw it out the window. If i had a chance to talk to them the question i would ask is what is it that is disappointing your client . He might say theyre not getting results quickly enough. I think this is an example of where you just need to spell out what you do how you do it what peoples expectations should be and what time frame. We see this question a lot. We have an entrepreneurship channel on forbes. Com. And these kinds of questions come up particularly around softer businesses where its not black and white. What is going to happen in the near term. Right. I think your point about expectations might be the most important. And communications. Throughout the period of you working with that particular client, you should always be in communication with them talking to them having an open dialogue on what is working, how can we tweak it and change it . Like mike said manage the expectations. It is a six month run. It is something that you have to be in for the long haul. If youre charging 60,000 for the work you have to let them know it. You may not see results but theyll be there. Particularly because youll probably get more customers from satisfied customers. The last thing you want is someone unsatisfied who gave up a few months in and had a experiencebad experience. Exactly. Its not just a bad situation for the customer who is not interested in paying because they didnt they they got a value. It is a bad situation for the Marketing Company because thats word of mouth. Particularly in the marketing world. Exactly. And no one will back out of a contract and run around the world okay. The last email is from karen. Wow. Thats a great question. I dont think you should necessarily have to rebrand. I think you are who you are. Most companies their branding relies on the presence of the ceo of the business and the executive of that business. So regardless if youre moving from regularkairegular. And doesnt seem like its so out of left field. Yeah. Its umbrella. Its not like sudden im a baseball coach. Absolutely right. To move to nutrition and yoga and structure integration and all the things you can do connected with akaichiropractorive them and probably isnt much of a leap. But she should. Specifically start to write about it talk about it. Engage with social media. Try to connect with her clients and their bigger universe of people. Maybe hook in with care givers who come from one of the other tent posts of it will happen itself. You might be overthinking it. Its a builtin market. I feel better already. You can be the first client on this. Thank you for stopping by. Thanks for having us. If any of you have a question for our experts like we had here today, head over to your website. We answer them every single week. Once you get there you will see a button and click on that. The website is openforum. Com yourbusiness. If its easier just send us an email. In todays world there seems to be an app or a website that helps you can everything from falling asleep quicker. But which ones will actually deliver in making your entrepreneurial life easier . We will give you some of the small biz tools our viewers swear by. A big part of our business is shipping products and we use endicia to quickly and efficiency. Efficiency. It imports your orders and shipping information. We have been using it for almost ten years and for us its by far the best situation. I use moldiv. It helps me put together pictures and i use it pretty much every day. One of my favorite apps is to doist. It works on phone, it works on email. Its something that helps keep me on track with my to do list. This is an amazing app and tool for email management. One thing that my clients struggle with most is email. It will automatically sort. It has a label called sane use letters. And then it will have people you email frequently. I save about four hours a week. It keeps you focused on important emails and puts the others in folders. One of the apps i love is podio. It is a project management system. It has the ability to be recon figured and built for your specific purposes. Any work spaces. Rather than what is preboxed. Do you lead your business from the top down. Management systems that used to work in the past dont necessarily work any more. Today effective leadership is being done with more of a side by side leadership. Ken blanchard is here with us and is the author of the new one minute manager. How are you doing today . It must have been quiet interesting for you to go back and revisit this book that was such a success. Lets start with one minute goals. What does that mean . Thats so important for entrepreneurs. If you want your people to do something they have got to be clear oon what you are asking them to do. Its much more collaborative. He sets the goals together. You dont want a lot of goals. You want three to five at most. You want the ones that could be the biggest impact. Then you want to make sure that people are looking at them continually. But the Major Management style, you know in the past was some manager would tell people to do something and then they would disappear until you made a mistake and then there would be sea gull managers come in make a lot of noise, dump on everybody and then fly out. It wasnt very good. You want them to be able to catch themselves doing something right. This is what i have observed didnt seem to be the direction that you were faulking about. How do you think people you employ should be praised . As soon as possible. You dont want to wait for an annual performance review. If you see something going on well, go to them and say gee, let me tell you what i have observed and this is how i feel about it. Congratulations. Keep up the good work. Thats why some people said how can you say this is a one minute manager . It doesnt take very long to recognize somebody and acknowledge them for good performance. How often . You may have somebody who is doing a great job all the time. You dont want to constantly be praising them. It may lose its value. Er r. Youre not doing it as much. You hope to catch them doing something right and cheering themselves on. You dont reprimand, you re redirect. Whats the difference . The reprimand was the form of a punishment. Redirection is really both of you taking a look and saying heres what im seeing. This doesnt come in the drx we want. What you dont want to do is let people get off the wrong way and not do anything. You dont want to do that. You want to be on top of things. It is all about collaboration and getting y