Or expand your office. For those who constantly find new ways to grow on every step of the journey, American Express open proudly presents your business on msnbc. Hi, everyone, im jj ramberg and welcome to your business. The show dedicated to helping your Small Business grow. Heres the problem with running a Small Business. Nobody pays your paycheck except for you. And that means if there is no money left over after youve paid for your inventory and paid your employees and your rent and all your other expenses, you personally get nothing. Now, that can be a sign your business is in trouble or just that you need to look at your company differently. Thats why this week were kicking off the new year with a special your business makeover which we did for a retail boutique and Ecommerce Store in houston whose hardworking owner sent out a frantic call for help. This must be it. I guess so. Dirt road divas, southern chic boutique. Love it. Dawn and paco are about to shake things up here at dirt road divas southern chic boutique. Jodi robinson is the owner of this cowgirl store. Shoppers are shopping, bills are getting paid but the end of the month, guess what jodi has left to pay herself . Nothing. And thats just plain bad business. So dawn, owner of powerful accounting and pack coe, founder of enviresell are going to dig in and give jodi a business makeover. Dawns job, dive into jodis financials and fix whats broken. Meanwhile, pack coe is going to help increase sales. At the end of this makeover, theyre going to get jodi paid. The team started by getting a tour. This is a shoe nook we had built out, perfect for ladies for them to look at themselves in the mirror, try on shoes. Were western. Western themed without being like a western store. Sure. We do a lot for rodeos. We have the fringe purses. This is almost too small. It didnt take long for pack coe start seeing things to improve. Youve done a wonderful job of buying but theres almost too much stuff up there. Really . Part of what it is is having five great things is better than having 25 fabulous things. Basically pack coes telling her that showing your customers too many products overloads them and surprising as it seems, giving that many choices sells less, not more. What you want to display is what pack coe calls a tickle, something that piques their interest. That starts with whats in the window. You have to look at from your customers point of view. Often we think of windows as if somebody is viewing them like this. Right . Right. Rather than viewing it from an angle. If i were to do a gentle adjustment here, i would adjust those mannequins both so that they in effect, both of them, were facing me as im walking in the door, shift it just a little bit. So that the actual focus of the window is this way rather than this way. Okay. Make sense . It does. Then that tickle should continue as the customer walks through the door. In jodis case, the store is cluttered with so many colorful decorations that some of the best merchandise is hidden. I dont see a price tag on this or this. That, according to pack coe is simply a missed opportunity. I am also concerned about what i see in that corner. What do you see . What im seeing in that corner is a gas tank. Im seeing drd and i want to see not this, i want to see the product. At this point what i want is to put the tickle of handbags and shoes. I can put something up there that says shoes but if i actually had a boot and a bag up there, it might even signal what im going to find in that corner better and to help make you some money. Right. And make you feel even better about the business than you feel now. Meanwhile, while pack coe continued checking out the store, dawn started diving into those financials and what she finds is that the systems are a mess. This isnt uncommon at all for someone in jodis position but it is definitely keeping her back. When we came in, of course i have no quickbooks background, no business degree or anything like that. We just kind of had to learn it by reading, you know, the manual. You know quickbooks. You know how that goes. You didnt go into business to go quickbooks, so theres that. Its detailed, very good but its confusing. Sure. It turns out jodis got several systems, each tracking different parts of her business. Things like inventory, sales and payroll are not integrated, this means jodi cant see all of her financials in one place at the same time. She has no idea, not because shes not a smart person, she doesnt know because the numbers arent there for her because she hadnt had the systems in place to be able to look at them and make an educated decision. She has an Inventory System thats talking to her website, wonderful. That Inventory System and website are not talking to her accounting. Thats one of the things were going to work through today, making sure your systems are integrated. All you can do right now is go online and look at your bank account balance. Jodi will be able to analyze her numbers with consolidated systems and get a deep understanding of where all the money is going and when. With that information, she can start to make educated decisions about how to run her company. The key for this is that shes not looking at her numbers to see what shes spending money on. How much of that inventory is dead inventory . Really taking a look and saying lets get rid of this and lets get in here what is selling. Without cash flow shell never be able to pay herself. Dawn and ed start to consolidate all those reports. But before they even look at the details, dawn has another simple question. We need to know the terms of your vendors, when are you having to pay those vendors . Is money coming in and when is it coming in . And when do you absolutely that last day you have to pay it . No terms. We pay for everything up front. Okay. We have a pay up front, due on receipt inventory that you are personally carrying. Thats right. Theres no way she can pay herself if shes fronting the money for inventory. If she has high inventory, lets use a number, 75,000. She has 75,000 of inventory, shes tied up 75,000 of her cash. Hanging on hangers in there. And thats not working for her until she sells it. Bingo. Dawn has already found a source of funds for jodi to start paying herself. But dawns suggestions go hand in hand with what pack coe is working on. Lets shut this chapter for now. Perfect. And lets bring in pack coe. Great. Our secret sauce. He needs to help make changes in how quickly shes turning over inventory. For pack coe, some of that has to do with upselling. Once ive got them in the door and looking at stuff, how can i take and sell them not an item but a so im not selling them a top but im selling a top, a bottom, a bralet, im selling some other piece of accessory to go along with it. How do you get people to think whole outfit instead of one item . I want to show you something really simple here. Yes. Part of what i want to do is connect this to this. Any time i have an up and down rack, i want to think about how can i connect whats here and whats here . I just want to take this little zone and talk about what might work better. Okay. Part of what the problem is here, this is a lovely garment. Right. And its one of the more expensive ones inside the store. Yes. You might even also want to have the underwear that goes with it. Wearing this blouse and making it look good isnt just about wearing this blouse. Its what i wear underneath it that makes me look good in this blouse. Right. And i think this is one of the issues about a store like this. Is that more than a nordstroms, more than a target, more than a whatever, you can do the consultive sale. Part of whats fun for you, take that customer who would normally spend 79, walking out the door with 200 worth of stuff. If they are happy walking out the door and their friends tell them they look good, theyll come back. I think so, too. Lets go to the dressing room. Okay. This is one of the most important parts of an apparel store. Inside the dressing room, part of the problem is, it competes with the tryon process. Right. And i think if this were a more neutral color it would work a little better. This might be the place also to Start Talking about social media. So what would you suggest . I might say this is a great place for a selfie or, you know, send us pictures of us wearing your clothes and we will post them on our social media site. Good idea. And it is so effective, particularly for a business like yours. The next day, pack coe suggested connecting the boots with an entire outfit as a way of boosting sales. What were going to try and do is bring a mannequin here and see if we can do a shoe, leggings, boot focal point. Okay. And our purpose here is to be able to sell the idea, not the item. So in moving forward here, one of the themes about getting dirt divas to do better is to get to sell the idea. This plus this plus this plus this, actually means a happier customer walks out the door. Its cool that you have all the pieces here. Lets just pull them together. All right . Okay. Lets go. Hey, looks pretty good, doesnt it . I do. It ties it all together. After two days of digging through the numbers and rearranging things in the store, everyone was a bit warn out. But jodi was thrilled with the lessons she learned. With dawn i learned that the technology that is available now, that all the pieces can pull together and its simple. Doesnt have to be so confusing. With pack coe, its the customers perception of when they come in from what they smell, what they see, to which hand they grab something with, having gift Items Available for them. All those things together make for profits. I feel hopeful and i think that its going to lead to a paycheck. All right, lady. Rock on. Hopefully with the advice from pack coe and dawn jodi will finally start to bring home a paycheck. Well check back with her later this year to see how things are going. What do the experts think 2016 will hold for Small Businesses . Business news daily. Com lists five key trends to stay on top of this year. One, heightened cyber security. Experts say well see an increase in Cyber Attacks targeting Small Businesses in 2016, so make sure your company isnt vulnerable to predators. Two, focus on the mobile experience. More people are making buying decisions using their mobile devices. So youll need to adapt or youll be left behind. Three, collaboration and social responsibility will be even bigger in 2016. Being a part of something greater than yourself will ensure that everyone, regardless of status in your company, has a sense of ownership in the brand. Four, value personal relationships. Digital marketing clutter makes standing out from the crowd difficult. So the Small Businesses that remember traditional Marketing Methods like facetoface relationships and word of mouth will ultimately succeed. And five, be aware of online ad blocking software. 93 of mobile ads are blocked on fire fox and chrome. Big established brands often have lots of things many Small Businesses dont. Things like large budgets and name recognition and lots of customers. But as a Small Business, what you can do is leverage all of that if youre able to enter into a partnership with these brands in some way. Denise albert and Melissa Gerstein are the founders of the moms. They have established relationships with Companies Like stouffers and samsung. Now you have brands coming to you saying we want to partner with you. You have something we want. We want to be a part of this. Congratulations to both of you. Thank you. Lets talk about it. Lots of us have gone into meetings and come out with nos. We dont take no. We dont take no. I cant see that from both of you. Lets go through step by step some of the advice you have. The first point you talk about is making the pitch about them, not you. Thats right. So a lot of times i think brands, like our brand, you want to tell them everything about what youre doing and give them that massive elevator pitch. But the most important thing is to understand who youre pitching. Youve got to do your home work. Need to understand who theyre marketing to, what their current goals are, what their initiatives are, what their philanthropies are. Its very important after you have the conversation, listen, listen, listen. Youre constantly thinking im going to give them this pitch. Youre anxious and excited. You have to take a step back and listen to them and their goals. You want to live their brand for a little as your brand so you can really make them shine and learn new things about themselves. A lot of meetings we go in and say, what kinds of things are you trying to solve . Even before you pitch. Youre in a pitch meeting. Give them 10, 20, as much as theyll talk, time for them to chan talk and change your pitch along the way if you have to it. It might change and you have to be flexible. You talk about knowing who you are. Uhhuh. You have to know who you are and what youre good at. Were lucky. We call each other work wives. We have a really amazing partnership. And melissa was talking about the brands. Thats what shes really good at. Im really good at other things, not that im not good at that but know who you are. We know who we are. We are the moms. There is really to our knowledge nobody doing what were doing. Were on so many Different Levels doing so many Different Things on a small scale. Were working with brands. We have different media platforms. Its easy to explain. Right . You are a thing. Youre not going into a brand and explaining something complicated. Right. This is what we are. Its simple. We can bring you to life within the mom commune. Thats what we do. We are moms and we are part of the mom parenting community. We reach moms in a lot of different ways. Heres what we can do. We have the ability to be creative. The more flexible you can be, you want to be able to change it on fly, the more flexible you can be, the better your chances are because you can offer different opportunities according to what they are looking for. Also the more you cant understand. You have this is who i am, its very clear whether im someone who goes after moms or doing something else. It is clear. You dont want to be all over the map. We market tople months. A lot of people say we want to reach women who are fresh out of college. Not what we do. We market to moms. Thats your point of knowing what your demo is. Yes. When you pitch these brands, you can see this is who you can reach, period. Period. Thats right. The thing you must know is your demo. Is it millennial moms, what ages, where are these moms shopping . What are they buying . You can engage them on social. We engage them with live town hall events. We see what theyre buying, what they like and dont like. That will tailor our pitch. Good to see you both. Thank you. When we come back, one viewer tweeted us to ask how much reserve capital do you need for a startup . We give them the answer. In todays elevator pitchers need funding for the glutenfree frozen food line. Well see if the panel has an appetite for their product pitch. Will your business be ready when growth presents itself . Our new cocktail bitters were doing well, but after one tradeshow, we took off. All i could think about was our deadlines racing towards us. A loan would take too long. We needed money, now. My amex card helped me buy the ingredients to fill the orders. Opportunities dont wait around, so you have to be ready for them. Find out how American Express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open. Com. A viewer tweets us, how much reserve capital would you recommend be available for a startup i. T. Recruiting firm . The money is the tool by which youre going to fuel your business six months out. Thats my recognition of the value of being a strategydriven i. T. Recruiting firm. Youre thinking about where your business is going to be, not where it is at that point in time. Being in a position to have a large enough amount of money to pay your team, your staff, your support for marketing, whatever it is thats required, you really need to have the cash flow to sustain the company out for six months of support. Depending upon how much youre interested in growing, maybe the opportunities are clear and definitive, you certainly are going to have more money available. You want to keep moving forward as a company. Particularly in a space like i. T. Where there seems to be no limit to the kinds of people, particularly in the software arena, that need to be hired for a lot of these companies. It is very competitive. If youre a competitive firm, you should run your business six months out. You should have enough money to build it at the same time so we add another cash reserve. If you love asian cuisine but cant handle the gluten, youll like todays elevator pitch they came up with a line of feel good foods. Monica metais managing principle of seventh capital and amos winbush iii is founder and ceo of woes. Im ceo of feel good foods. Im vanessa phillips, the ceo of feel good foods, a brooklyn based Company Launched in 2007. Together, we started the first and only gluten free dumpling and egg roll company. We offered convenient, chef inspired meal options. Were in 3,000 stores nationwide. With my culinary and science background i was able to make uniquely delicious food. In the last three years weve grown triple digits each year. 500,000 will give you a 3. 3 equity stake in our company which will be used to hire more personnel, sales and marketing as well as future product launches. For both of you, good job. Both of you, looks like that was well rehearsed, the two of you. Maybe you live together. Two numbers, the first one, 1 through 10. What do you think of the product . And the second one, what do you think of the pitch . Personally while youre writing, go ahead and give your scores, 1 through 10 for me, the product which i snuck and tasted before, brilliant. Its so good. Thank you. Congratulations to both of you on that. Monica, lets start with you. Product i would give it a 20 if i could. Im not missing the gluten. It was phenomenal. Im going to buy this for sure for my own family. The pitch an 8. It was very clear. It was very the need, how you got here, how you explained it was all very, very clear. I think maybe the valuation seems rich for me but otherwise phenomenal product. Good job. Amos. The product is a 10, really, really good. The casing is super light, which is good for me. The pitch, 9. 5. Ive seen a lot of pitches. I can say it was really dense and packed. Kind of work on that. Valuation im having an issue w