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"your business" is sponsored by american business express. don't do business without it. hi there, everyone. i'm jj ramberg. and welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to helping your growing company. we all know how excruciating it can be to find the right person for an open position. but one entrepreneur decided to do something about that. we sat down with zip recruiter ceo and co-founder ian seagle in santa monica, california, to talk about why they kept the company's success a big secret for the first four years and how artificial intelligence will change how you find and hire talent. ♪ ian seagle spent his career working at start-ups. and no matter what company he was at, there was one job he always hated, recruiting new employees. >> i was taking the same job and putting it in all the different places, and it was tiring because of how much time. >> he felt like the process wasn't as easy as it should be. >> i had to do the process of posting the job. and i actually had printed out a stack of resumés this high. i was staring at it and said, that's it, i'm going to do it. >> by it he meant start his own company. so he called three friends and from his kitchen table, the four founders created zip recruiter. they launched it with $50 worth of google apps. >> we posted on mumt pull -- a poll and people responded. the company grew quickly, completely boot-stopped and profitable right away, it was an overnight success story. one they took great pains to keep secret. >> in technology businesses, in particular, there is this behavior of fast following. so we have practiced what we call security through -- >> did you feel like you were holding back growth, though? >> our channel was never to accelerate growth but sort of like riding a bucking bronco. >> but they are playing in some space. and in order to keep it up, they needed outside. >> everyone started to scratch their heads to say, wait a minute, maybe we should sort to kill this company. and then i was facing competition on a level i never experienced. in 2016, they raised $60 million giving them the footing to play with the big boys. are you nervous about the competition? >> there's nothing i can do about the competition. my solution is to work on things i can control. >> ian can control the progress of his own business and has learned the only way to do that is to be very clear about what his company does. >> every company only says one thing. and the thing zip recruiter s l sells the most when they veer off track. >> i think the most painful product we have turned off was something called ziprecruiter hr. >> the idea was to digitize the o on-board idea. everyone was excited except the customers. >> after a year and all sorts of indicators it was working, i had to make the difficult decision to follow it off and to keep it simil similar. >> it showed them they had momentarily lost sight of their true north. >> when we pursued ziphr, we got away from one thing that we said never again we would get off. working on adjacent -- >> now the company has a new feature and it gets turned off, no exceptions. >> things that work work right away. the notion that you have mvp'd something, then you find your way to success. i have not seen it in my career, and i would like to put out a press release saying once again, we have turned new features off instead of new features launched. >> that said, they are launching new features all the time and trying to stay ahead of the cur curve. how do they match the candidates to the right job? the answer according to him lies in machine learning. >> at this point, we have literally invested tens of millions of dollars. we have an rnd center in israel with 47 engineers in it because we couldn't find enough engineers with experience in the united states. competition does get so many to work for our company. >> today the company has more than a thousand employees and offers around-the-world. while he still is as obsessed in the ear in -- when you look around and say, tomorrow is okay. maybe the next year is okay and that's when it gets really fun. you have achieved the escape to philosophy and can really enjoy running the business. we met some exuberant entrepreneurs over the years, but great witstock really stands out. the story of this company is unbelievable. it is filled with drama and excess, great success and great failure. and then rebirth. not to mention, family infighting and overcoming a devastating disaster. ♪ that crazy guy up there on the forklift is greg whitstock, the fonder and ceo of aquascape. and this enormous place which embodies everything whitstock is all about is called aqualand. >> all right, let's open up the gates. wahoo! >> today is the biggest sale of the year for the st. charles business that got its start 25 years ago. it's the kickoff to a new season of water gardening and pond building. an industry built and poplarized in large part by whitstock himself. but just a few years ago, the fate of aquascape was in question. the business suffered a body blow that could have easily been tend. >> diversity can pull a family together or a family apart, it can pull a team together or apart. and it pulled us together. >> greg east adventures in pond building started at 12 years old when he built his first pond in the backyard with his dad. >> that first pond turned green and the turtles migrated away. that was my advocacy with water features because every summer i would rip it out and build it back up with my own filter systems. >> over the next seven years, whitstock perfectened the craft innovating along the way and figuring out how to make the maintenance of a pond relatively simple. >> i thought, there has to be a business here. so i came one the concept of building people's ponds in the backyard like i did for myself. >> greg, then a student at ohio university, went into business that summer. >> as a 21-year-old kid, i built five ponds and had $22,000 in sales and $11 in profit. the business took off from there. the second season i was in business, i had done 12 ponds, 5 my first, 12 my second and in august 1992, my life changed when the "chicago tribune" ran a story on my called yon golden ponds and my business went through the roof. so the fun summertime gig became my career. before i had even graduated college. >> in the early crazy days when the company had just gotten started, craig's dad gary, an engineer, was a big supporter and helped his son with the business. >> i'm an entrepreneur. it was oil and water, i was the gas pedal and he was the brake. >> the strike between the father and son has escalated. >> i have lost a lot of friendships. my best friend mom high school embezzled from me. and my own father had a different philosophy. when it is family and you're that close to someone. it gets tough. >> it was a conflict that couldn't be resolved. and the two parted ways to years of estrangement. >> he set off and said he was going to show me the way it was done. >> the challenge from his father made greg work harder. >> that was a big challenge for me, not to prove to just himself but myself that i can do it, and we did. >> when building a pond was the type that was built with those who have easy access to loans. there's a 250,000 square-foot headquarters. and then 2008 came along and changed everything. the company lost $12 million in just one year. and they were forced to layoff half the employees. this is whitstock's right hand person. she witnessed the incredible growth, including whitstock's friendly reunification with his dad. >> 2006 was the first year in this build iing, 2007 we saw th wheels shaking and in 2008 we banded together and held on and made some really, really hard decisions. >> then in february of 2011, as aquascape was limping along trying to survive another day, the unthinkable happened. >> when the economy was at its worst, i had my entire building collapse, thank goodness, on a sunday. i saw the entire span on the ground and fell to my knees. >> with the busy summer season just a few weeks away, he went from having a business through the roof to a business collapsing under the weight of the recession and then to a business with a collapsed roof. >> the building was condemned. we were basically out of business. >> and the channel of rebuilding aquascape became a rallying cry for whitstock and his employees. this picture taken a few days after the building collapse says it all. and now aquascape is leaner, meaner business ready for everything. >> not only did we rebuild the company but rebuilt the company. even though our sales weren't where they were, coming out of 2011, we rebuilt this building. this is a stronger company. and i'm not sure we would do th that. i'm here in new orleans at the collision conference, which is about 25,000 people here to talk about technology. what is new and what should we be talking about with investing. you have created the anxiety index that predicts how investors will behave, right? the anxiety index predicts what? >> the anxiety index helps predict how the market is at a particular time. 30 million people go to our website every single month and are looking up the terms like bankruptcy or short-selling. if hundreds of thousands of people are suddenly looking up the negative, anxiety-provoking terms like bankruptcy or correction, then chances are there's something that is there. in august 24, 2015, was a day known as a big flash crash. the market was down a thousand points prior to opening. suddenly, our head of market runs into the office and says, david, you won't believe it, but the short-selling tutorial is going through the roof right now and tons of people want to learn how to short sale. that's really interesting that they want to see shortsale. then we could predict what is happening in the market rather than lag in the market. so we created the anxiety market to look at the 13 terms that people are looking at. and if tons of people are scared and looking up this first, it will cause reaction. >> a small to medium-sized business, what do i take from your anxiety? it could be a good time to start pitching people, right? because they want to get out of the markets. or a bad time because they are so nervous about their money. >> right. so i actually teach columb airks -- columbia. when there's a lot of money in the market, if already high levels of anxiety out there, that's not the best time to be looking to, you know, get funding and get new investors. so by looking at the anxiety index, you have a better understanding of should i be going out there and not raising him. no mo no. >> hey, if you understand the psychology of what is out there, if you can pitch against that, right? so hey, here's a safe place to put your money. >> that's actually a great point. if you -- if you can look at a time when people are really scared, and you can then use that to your advantage and change your pitch to make sure the pitch is then focused on, how do you minimize risk? how do you make sure that what you're doing is a much safer investment that can help you to cater your pitch around focusing on what the risk is and how to mitigate the risks and a big growth story. so it makes sense as well. >> and does this anxiety index change every day? how often do you look at it? >> the anxiety index changes every day. it's reached a high of 1385 in the liebermann collapse. >> as one would expect. >> yep, we all remember that point. a then 1995, the market was humming over the last couple of years, but it is extremely important as an entrepreneur and someone funding a start-up to get an understanding of the larger macro environment and to make sure your pitch is a good system with that. >> i think you're right. a lot of times we look at our own start-up world and kind of forget about what is happening. >> the blinders are off and working 24 hours a day. it's hard to have time to have casual conversations and easy to think your start-up is the center of the world when you are only a little bit of the world. and understand the larger world around you will help to make your start-up a heck of a lot bigger start-up. >> thank you for sharing all this. >> great meeting you. take care. and i'm here with this week's elevator pitcher ed roth who is here to tell us about your company, stencil one. i just want to hold one up so people can see it. these are so cool. >> thank you. >> you are the designer. and you run the company -- >> yes. >> so you have done a lot of customers, but how much have you done to pitching to investors? >> not much. i'm ready for it now. >> are you prepared for it? >> i think so. >> did you get advice on how to pitch to them? >> oh, yeah. >> okay, let's see how you do. you're pitching to two people, and one of them, becca brown, the co-founder and ceo of sole mates. and her company has done so well that she's here. they should have some great advice. >> all right, perfect. >> let's see how you do. >> thanks. hi, my name is ed roth, and my company is stencil1. a company that i founded in 2004. i saw a need in the marketplace for more refreshing modern designs. i'll give you these. centu stenc stencil1 has been praised by martha stewart and "the new york times." all these range from $5.99 to $99. a little about my background, i had a crafty mom, a from 500 to $1,000. i turned my hobby of stenciling into a business and name brand. with the investment i will put it into product development as well as more money to improve our margins. this is a $4 billion industry, so who is ready to join the movement and take a piece of the pie? >> you did such a good job, actually. you got so much in there. i'm going to give you two these. i can take your stencils from you if you like. i need two numbers 1 through 10. what do you think of the product and what do you think of the pitch? i actually think you had some coaching in there, because -- >> practice, practice. >> and watchi and watching your past ones. >> good. i hope you learned something in there. you have the market, what you'll do with the money. it's totally irrelevant what i think, it matters what these guys think. >> great job, ed. it's so nice to meet you. i gave your product a 9 and your pitch an 8. the product is so amazing. it's so cool to see the samples. there is definitely a need there. i love the designs and the customizeability. i would want to know what you're looking for in exchange for the million dollars just to make it a little tighter pitch. >> first of all, nice to meet you as well. great job. i gave a 9 to the product as well. i think you can clearly see there is a demand for the product. you can also see a path to getting the product market fit where the customers become your biggest advocate and sales force. one point i would say if you articulated that strategy exactly how you would do that in the next six to nine months, that would probably get a 10. on the pitch, 8 as well. i would have loved to see more on the financials, the economics, the gross margins, and as you scale, does that impact your gross margins because you're going to have to go through different factories, different production channels, and does that impact your gross margin. just understanding that from you would have made more impact to give that you million dollars. >> very good. stenc stencil1. you didn't say where you could buy them. >> target. >> congratulations, you did a great job. thank you guys for all your advice. very helpful. when we come back, how to manage a millennial work force. and we'll talk about the importance of personalizing the customer experience. the line between work and life hasn't just blurred. it's gone. that's why you need someone behind you. not just a card. an entire support system. whether visiting the airport lounge to catch up on what's really important. or even using those hard-earned points to squeeze in a little family time. no one has your back like american express. so no matter where you're going... we're right there with you. the powerful backing of american express. don't do business without it. don't live life without it. we have this e-mail from grisela. she writes, how do we adapt our work forces to the growing millennial work force? >> to appeal positive mito mill the work force, you have to think like a millennial. they are craving collaboration and integration and really feel like an entrepreneur in the workplace. we want to feel like our voice is is heard. we want to collaborate. we want to step outside the box and get creative. so if you want to appeal to the millenni millennial, think about flex working and don't think they're going to plateau at a certain point, because ultimately that could lead to job hopping. we now have the top two tips you need to know to help grow your business. rebecca brown and d.h. bay are back. you've grown your company to 3 million people worldwide in just four years? >> yes. >> incredible. you have a lot to tell us. choose one thing we can learn from that you did right or did wrong. >> one thing we've learned is you have to go to market very quickly and integrate after. if you've taken a data-driven approach, you learn a lot from your customers and you learn from your mistakes. ultimately those mistakes help you build a product that have market fit. the second advice that we've learned from building a consumer finance business. we're at money line trying to build the bank of the future. we're trying to build amazon prime for finance. and in doing that, customer sustainability and customer valley is incredibly important. if you think about running a business, you have to have advocates. if you don't have advocates of your business, you're just spending ton of money on marketing. >> you mean advocates of customers. >> right. the ones who tell their mom, their sister to download the money line app. >> and rebecca, i think you have an army of advocates and you have this neat product that saves the heel of your shoe. what's one thing that you've learned since we last saw you? >> one of the tips i have is to seek out and even create what i call native networks. native networks are those that are more organic and a little more focused. a lot of times they're localized. the term "network" i think is a little overused and in my experience part of large networks and they don't add a day-to-day value that a small network can. how do you find these? look for small networks in your regional locality. you can leverage the chamber of commerce which would be a great source. the second source is facebook which has a lot to offer. we're part of a shark tank alumni facebook group. it's private and closed and it's other businesses going through a sort of progression phase that we are. >> and there are others that you can join. >> you can join those, but the nice thing about facebook, even nextdoor can be a resource, but there are barriers. on facebook they're free. they also tend to be private, by invitation only. the other tip i have to finding those are alumni organizations are great, but they can be very vast. look for the entrepreneur's a m alumni subchapter. it can be a lyft serve or a facebook. it's a little more day to day and more reactive. >> i met a woman who grew her business in los angeles, but i asked her -- we were talking about female entrepreneurs in l.a., and she said, no. i said, oh, let me connect you with some friends, you guys can go to dinner and they will create, in essence, their own network. i think it's a great idea. good to see both of you. thank you very much for stopping by. congratulations to both of of you. >> i appreciate it. this week's yourbizselfie comes from chloe clark who owns simply sage dog treats in norcross, georgia. she makes them in flavors like blueberry, mint and sweet potato for all your four-legged friends. that sounds good if you're a dog. why don't you take a selfie of you and your business. include of name of your business and its location. [email protected]. don't forget to include the name of your business and your location. thanks for joining us today. we love hearing from you so you can get in touch with us by e mailing [email protected]. msnbc/your business. we're on social media and hope you find us there. then don't forget about our podcast. you can find it on tune in or wherever you get your podcasts. i'm jj ramberg, and remember, we make your business our business. it's pretty amazing out there. the world is full of more possibilities than ever before. and american express has your back every step of the way- whether it's the comfort of knowing help is just a call away with global assist. or getting financing to fund your business. no one has your back like american express. so where ever you go. we're right there with you. the powerful backing of american express. don't do business without it. don't live life without it. good morning and welcome to "politics nation." i was traveling this week very heavily, starting tuesday with a press conference in washington where i joined civil rights leaders in calling on this administration to stop separating migrant children from their families at the u.s.-mexico border. i then went to texas on thursday as part of heading an interfaith group to vis