marketing money, social media, health care. those are all hot topics at the small business summit. we will talk to participants and attendees. plus a look at one of the oldest family-run businesses. it is all coming up next on "your business."

hi, there. i'm j.j. ramberg. welcome to "your business." we give you tips and advice to help your business grow. what better place to do that than the 2012 new york times small business summit. small business owners and business journalists have gathered to talk about business and funding and marketing social media.ç >> the majority of small businesses shutdown before being around for five years. only one-third make it to ten years. what are the odds of a company being around for 150 years through five generations of the same family?

you will love meeting the mcalisters. a new york family that knows how to beat the odds. >> okay, jeff, haul the line in. line's there and ellen's getting in position. >> brian mcalister's family name had dotted the new york harbor since 1864. >> before that, you have to be lucky. >> that was the year his great grandfather, james mcallister helped business along the shore. >> has it been pure luck it has been in the family that long? >> there are several things that

have to happen. one, you cannot make too much money. if you make too much money, everybody wants to sell it and get rich. if you don't make enough, they leave. >> you may say he found a sweet spot for the company. too much success onç the one hd and too much stress on the other. >> the most efficient boat in the world and the lines are like a knot. >> james mcallister started it with a single cargo boat. he launched a transport business to help himself and three brothers. >> we have the mcallister towing. >> the next generation expanded it behind cargo to passenger ships and tugboats and towing. as the new york port expanded, the family diversified with different businesses all with the mcallister name.

>> when my great grandfather died, he left one of these boats to one of his brothers. my grandfather, who was his son and four boys, they got this. the steam boats with the paddle wheels were enormous business. mcallisters nearly went bust. >> the only thing they took home was grocery money. no salaries. this very, very successful business went to near zero. >> in his own lifetime, brian mcallister almost lost the business several çtimes. when his father went to sell rather than pass it on to him. back then, young brian

complained bitterly. >> telling him he can't do this to me. he can't sell this business. >> brian's generation eventually convinced them, but it wasn't easy. >> there has been a lawsuit every time this company got transferred from the first to the second and second to the third. >> by the late 1980s, brian's son eric faced a different threat. >> the company was basically bankrupt in 1981. i graduated from grammar school in 1982. they barely hung on. >> he remembers a twin set of crises that cost them. the first was financial. then the violent union strike which came close to destroying the business. >> sitting here at my desk. in comes walking is the president of the union. he said, brian, in a couple of weeks, i think you understand your union contract is up. i said, look, al, if you go on

strike, keep on walking because that's the end of your union and us. i'm bringing in replacements and they are heavily armed. if you want to come aboard with your thugs and the clubs and the guns, you better know that every single one of our tugboats has an arsenal and we are ready to take you on. i have no choice. >> clearly luck has played a role in survival. it is certainly notç everythin >> what is it about your family that has been able to hold on to this when so many other family businesses leave the family after the second or third or fourth generation? >> i think it is the irish mentality of tradition. the passion for tradition. they just want to hold on to it. they just don't need that much. >> 53-year-old jeffery

mcallister is a harbor pilot. he enters the vessels and commands the fleet as they guide the ships safely to the docks. >> that's what we are going to do. >> we left the tugboat bridge and went back to the company headquarters to ask eric about the company's success. >> one of the things we observed about why this company has survived is there have been pieces that you can break off. if you own a bit of your supply chain and a relative interested in the vertical, you can break that piece off and keep the lineage going. we had those pieces over the years. >> at the age of 80, brian is last living member of the fourth generation. he has plans to pass the company on to his sons. beyond that, however, he says the legacy is not his concern. >> in your dreams, how many more generations keep this company?

>> hey, once you're dead, okay? iç don't dream about what coul happen two generations from now. that's my son's problem. earlier today at the new york times small business summit, i hosted a panel called "where's the money." we talked about how you find funding and what you say when you talk to somebody who has money and they are interested to give you. i have panelists of that. brian cohen. you have many people who see you. and brad harrison. also investing in early-stage companies. thanks for joining us. >> thank you, j.j. >> we talked to a lot of people who were in different stages of company. some looking for start ups and some more mature. what is something -- when somebody comes to you and asks

for money, what do you always look for? >> i would say a deep insight into how the customer will benefit from the idea or process or service they are providing. how well do they know their customer? have they spent enough time with them? >> somebody came on the show and said you should describe not the benefit your company is doing, but the pain it is solving. does that make sense to you? >> absolutely. the opportunity comes from people creating products and services that solve a problem. in today's day and age where it is more digital and more interconnected, there is more opportunity to figure out how to use the data toç solve problem that have been plaguing us for lots of years. >> how much is to do with the idea versus the person? >> you know my philosophy. i'm 110% on the people. you know within the first couple of minutes if that person exhibits the values that you

will look for in somebody you will work with for a long time. >> i say 75% of the time, the company is not doing what we invested in them a year later. they listened to the needs of the customer. they did the fine tuning. we look for the leader. they are the ones doing the itterating. >> i'm a person and i have a fantastic idea. i'm going to talk to you. what can i do to show i'm a smart person and iterate. >> make sure you know what we invest in and what other companies we invest in. the beauty about being an entrepreneur is the resource of the internet and the information available to you. i look for somebody who is prepared and knows a bit about me and what i have done and what i look for. >> you know, i'm so driven by the relationship to the customer

always. they get some deeper insight that they learned something. have they adapted their business to some unique capability that no one else has recognized? i'm not sure i believe in the issue of pain. the best companies are the ones that look at the challenging problem and figure out how to solveç it. it doesn't have to be painful. they have an easier way to adapt to offer a customer better, cheaper or faster solution. >> we used to talk a lot. when i was in business school, we wrote so many business plans and they were this thick. today, are people handing you business plans? >> they still do because they are coming out of business school and they are told to. we get a lot of them, but we don't read them. we look at them after the possibility of investing to see the concept of the idea. we look at the decks they create. those may be 12 to 15 pages and that's it. >> i'm the same way. we focus on the power point and what it says in there.

i think what's important about the business plan is not actually what's in it, but going through the business planning process so you identified your competitors and market and product and your revenue. all of the critical things. a business plan is a structure to help you think through all of the things. >> in some ways, it is for the entrepreneur. >> correct. >> you get e-mails. you get approached all the time. you have money. people are approaching you. if i were to send you an e-mail, what is the thing i can say in the subject line to get you to say this is worth reading on? >> i figured out how to fix a problem that exists. i figured out how to execute on that problem in the easiest way. i think it is a big problem. it got my attention. >> i think it is having some sort of number or something that shows someç tangible traction whatever they are proposing.

>> my best investments so far are companies that had no traction. finding pinterest, they had no traction. >> thank you for coming on the program. >> thank you. >> thanks, j.j. we spoken a lot on the show about how to create a brand. but then once you create it, how do you gain traction with the brand? it is a topic here at the small business summit. we have a panel to talk about it here. adam rich is the co- founder of thrill list. then maria ross. great to see both of you. >> thanks for having us. >> when you started thrill list, which is a well known popular grand. how much did you think about brand? >> you know, i think without even really knowing to call it brand, it was something we were really very focused on out of the gates. i started it not as an

entrepreneur, but the audience. it was a product i wanted. it targeted city information for the post-college guy. i was living in new york and feeling the lack of things that were evaluated that were my interests. a lot of what i took that position to be ended up becoming our brand. >> that seems almost easy. the brand is you. your desires and likes and your interests. if you have a company, maria, that is not so reflective of yourself, how do you think about what the brand0su1 be? >> it is right to do it that way. you have to think about first and foremost your customer. who is your ideal customer? what do they want and care about and what do they desire? always being empathetic and put yourself in their shoes and offer the benefit they need. >> as you have grown, have you

changed the brand at all? >> we have changed it a bit. we had exciting evolutionary moves. our tack has been different. we stayed laser focused on our audience and on the lifestyle that we were always serving. we found new ways to access and support it. we found a men's shopping club because we found our readers were lost on the internet trying to find places to buy clothing as they had been lost trying to find information about the city before we started our editorial. it was that initial promise to help whittle things down and see something they care about. we launched a local experiences platform because we saw all of the deal sites cropping up. we realized our audience did not care about $15 of domino's pizza for $8. they wanted to deal with other things.

they wanted experiences more than deals or discounts. >> this makes me think, maria, if you start something pretty focused, you start a companyç d you launch that and you have a brand around this thing and you extend to offer other services and other products, how does that work? it seems to have worked with you. do many people then have to kind of jigger their brand? >> i work with a lot of clients that do that. you can come at it from two ways. they are serving the same target audience and offering the products and services, sometimes you may continue to offer a value, but targeting a different audience. you have to evolve your brand and messaging and identity to speak to that audience and communicate that to a new group of people. it depends on a new audience or giving away new products and services. >> i think as a small business person diving into the discussion of brand is

petrifying. you may have something that is working, but when you change it, you are being very deliberate and saying, okay, what am i changing this to and i hope it works better than i have right now. >> sure. >> how do you decide it will work better? >> maria and i were talking about this before we came up here. there are a milliondeizi exerci. you can do focus groups and data and market information. at a certain point, there are so many variables. it is petrifying. you need to commit to try something and recognize there is a chance it may not work and be ready to pivot and shift and continue refining. there are so many things to consider, that youç are at a certain point that you go with your gut and give it a shot. >> especially if you are an existing business, talk to your customers and use them as a resource. your best customers. what do you like about us?

why do you keep coming back? you can talk to those that are not as satisfied and say what did we not provide for you and what else can we provide a value? that is important if you he valve the brand. >> thank you so much. i said we have an office across the hall from you. i have seen you go from this much space to this much space. thank you for your advice. enjoy the rest of your day here. >> thanks, a lot. when we come back, some movers and shakers here at the summit answer questions posed by attendees. and the sweet sound of success, the president of steinway pianos shares his wisdom in "learning from the pros."

not many musical instrument manufacturers have become household names, but surely you heard of steinway and sons pianos. we sat down with the president of the company to steinway and sons builds a piano to a standard and not to a price, that's a very unusual approach to marketing these days of products. everything is centered around the particular quality of the piano. i could talk about other piano companies that deviated and had a great brand and then deviated from that course and then the quality kind of went down and then, unfortunately, it wasn't a very good scenario for their demiseç or where they ended upn

the market. for us, we build this instrument always to improve it, to make it better, but not to build it to a price point. being a new york-based company has been a blessing for us because this is a very large labor market, very large immigrant market. year after year, generation after generation when people would come to new york they would have the ability to work with their hands and because steinway is based here, they allowed us access to all these individuals and they brought with them good wood working skills. a culture of excellence for everyone who builds our piano whether they're sweeping the floor, they need to understand the relevance of what the steinway piano means within society. the steinway artist program, the

over 1,600 art aests that play the steinway piano exclusively, they send a report card every year, if you will. these individuals can play any piano that they wish to play, we don't pay them to play our piano, but they choose it because they believe it to be the best for their art a, for their craft. by listening to this influenceual group of artists and institutions, we try to improve our pianos every year that we build them. a crucial ingredient to the quality level of the steinway piano.ç steinway, whether it was 100 years ago or today is linked to the fabric of societies around the world. i am often just heartened when i travel around the world and to find out that the steinway brand means the same thing in new york as it means in beijing, or they said it means in kazakhstan, it

means a stamp of excellence. we've really stuck to what we do. how many companies who started back 159 years ago building a particular product are still building that same product today? that, in my word, speaks volumes. throughout the day here at the summit, we've been collecting questions from the atte attendees and the questions they have about running their business and we have our pan aal here. reba is one of our regular panelists and founder and ceo of grow business media and the leading financial website for women. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you for having us. >> the first question comes from annette. >> a dynamite branding story but the company does not have strong enough distribution, do you resist the temptation to go out with your story of a first and

only? >> when you start a company, you're excited to get it out there, if people can't buy your product or service, do you wait until you have distribution?

branding, also important, time to focus on the branding strategy. i would focus first on distribution and then hone in on branding. >> let's move on to the next question. social media and marketing. >> if you think there's such thing as too much involvement in social media without annoying your customers. >> is there a point where -- >> there is. you have to be really careful because there are so many networks out there and, today, i think the problem is a lot of peop people o people -- >> how do youç gauge if you're doing too little or too much? >> i would add you can't sell on twitter. people go to twitter to consume content to learn. it shouldn't be a, hey, we're in the press today, here's what

we're doing. here's discounts. it really needs to be the important content. things that they want to learn about and read about and we're a personal finance side and we're making sure our customers on twitters are up to speed and how it can affect them or discounts they should know about. >> how do you decide when to do it? >> they recommend you tweet anywhere from, call 15 to 20 times a day starting 7:00 in the morning and ending 9:00 at night. >> question about working with corporate clients. >> how do i get departments of these consumer goods companies to allow us the issue of press release saying we're getting new business from them? >> if you're working with a corporate client, it might be a big deal for you, a smaller deal for them. so, how do you get them excited about releasing something? >> i learned something which is totally the opposite. instead of getting the big companies to issue a press release i think, you know, particularly given what is

happic in new startps and media, the media is interested in what the media is doing. media would stop stressing out about getting them to release something and focus on your own pr strategy. >> so, here's the other side of that question then, which is how do you get them to approve it fast enough?ç >> that takes time and i think if you, when we work with big companies months in advance so that we have the time so i'm not up until the hour trying to get them to approve something. we would get ait pruvd weeks before. >> we always learn targeting is high up in the organization. in this case, i would target as low down in that department as someone who either has the right to say yes or the path to the person who will. if you engage with them, make them feel important and make them feel invested in the whole operation, they will run that mile for you, get that approval and you're not going to bother people who don't really care.

high up, they don't care. >> alexa and reba, thank you for answering all these questions. enjoy the rest of the day at the summit. >> thank you so much. after a conference like this, you're sure to come home with a pile of business cards. to make sure they don't get lost in the shuffle, check out our website of the week. contactme.com helps busy entrepreneurs consolidate and manage and save valuable time. you can add personal notes to every entry so you never forget where you met them and what you talked about. send daily task reminders so you won't forget those meetings you set up with your new contacts. to learn more about today's show, just click on our website, openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of today's business plus web exclusive content to help your business grow. you canç also follow us on twitter. don't forget to become a fan of the show on facebook. we love getting your feedback.

until then, i'm j.j. ramberg. remember, we make your business our business.