it was a sleepy little town, then the factories closed. so how can they once again become a thriving community? we travel to brundidge, alabama. next on "your business."

hi there, everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg, and welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to giving you tips and advice to help your small business grow. for most of us, when we talk about main street, we think of it as the heart and soul of small town america. this symbol of what makes america american. and those main street businesses from the hardware store to the barber shop or the local bank, these are what we think of when we think of small business. so, how is main street america doing in the face of our country's economic ups and downs? we decided to travel the country to find out. our next stop? brundidge, alabama.

♪ sweet home alabama >> i'm in brundidge, alabama. population about 2,000. i'm halfway between montgomery, alabama, and pensacola, florida. 60 years ago, main street was hopping. this was the place people came to shop, convene and hang out. look around now and it's not exactly the same. there are a lot of vacancies here. what happened? the same thing that happened to a lot of towns in america. factories shut down. people lost jobs and then big box stores moved in. brundidge isn't a ghost town and it doesn't intend to be. we want to know, what are those business people doing to keep their small businesses alive? and what is the town doing to make sure that brundidge's main street doesn't disappear? hi. i'm chairman of the board at first national bank of brundidge, alabama, founded in

1904 by my great grandfather. i'm also the mayor of brundidge. >> for a small business person here in brundidge, to survive, what do they have to do? what are they doing that's working? >> i think the stores that have survived, probably the number one thing is service. >> hi. i'm anthony foster, the owner of foster's barber shop. i've been here on main street about three years. >> what are you doing right that some other people didn't do? >> well, i don't know what they didn't do, but what i'm doing is trying to provide that service that they come for, trying to keep the relationship with our customers. >> my name is bill grafton, i own grafton's home furniture. i got rid of my dumpster, my fax line. you just try to cut your overhead and that's the only way you're going to survive.

>> my name is ok mcdowell, known as the sign man. about 24 years now. but overhead really jumped, electricity and everything, it's tough. i don't have any air conditioning, just antique air conditioners, better known as a fan. you keep the overhead down, you got a chance. >> i'm the owner of motry service center, brundidge, alabama, main street. >> do you own the building or have to pay rent? >> we own the building. >> that must be helpful for you. >> oh, we would have to go out of business if we didn't own the building. >> located here for six years. utilities here in the summertime, in the wintertime is goes up from 300 to $1,000 a month. you can't afford overhead with the extended hours with the customers we have coming in. >> how about you? you own a small bank. small community banks have had

some trouble in recent years. but you guys are still around. what have you done? >> well, what we did is we didn't try to chase the almighty dollar. we tried to keep doing what we were good at. and the type of lending we were familiar with. we've weathered the storm. you just don't make the margins you used to make. >> the margins are very thin, very thin. i've got to do it in order to get people to travel that far to buy furniture. this little town can't support, you know -- support them. >> are you feeling optimistic about this company, your ability to shift and keep it alive? >> you have to. survival of the fittest. if we don't adapt and change, we ain't going to survive. >> what's next? does brundidge have to brand itself something to get people off the highway? >> yes. that's something that the brundidge business association are working on as we speak. studio 116.

>> these are all local artists you're exhibiting? >> i'm chris rich. >> and i'm sarah disbukes. we are owners of studio 116 which has been open about a year. >> it's a gallery of local artists and musicians. we have artists from northwest florida and all of alabama. >> it's interesting, because this is not like anything else on main street here. studio 116, you walk in here and it feels like you're in a different town. >> well, we're very happy about that. as we both traveled a lot and we -- you know, are kind of drawn to artists and live music, we wanted to see that in our hometown. they were looking at this space as an artist cooperative and we partnered together. >> you have a really unique real estate deal that makes this happen, right? >> right. >> what is it?

>> we basically cover his insurance and his taxes and as we become more successful, then we renegotiate to help out mr. hollis even more. >> arts community. >> arts and studio 116. ♪ sweet home alabama meeting everyone in brundidge was incredibly fun and interesting and we are continuing with this main street series. if you think we should visit main street in your town, please write us and tell us why. we would love to hear from you. e-mail address is your business@msnbc.com. if you're in the need of the perfect location for your new start-up or expansion project, check out our website of the week. zoom prospector.com helps small businesses identify possible places to set up shop based on a range of community and property characteristics. after answering some questions about your market, type of business and real estate needs, the free site will provide a

list of places that fit your criteria. you can also use zoom prospector to locate your target demographic and look for places that way. >> key met rirics can help you courtesy of mashable.com. >> one, high time spent per page can indicate a particular page as confusing to navigate. if users are spending minutes on a page without a video, article or indirect element on it, you likely have a problem. two, retweets translate into information on active engagement with your brand's content. be sure to track them. three, it's no longer sufficient simply to track your overall follower. ma defriend your brand and make sure you understand why. total exits, you need to revise

that part of your site. add a clearer call to action or suggest a related page to visit. and, five, human response lag. track how long it takes your team to respond to contact inquiries and then shorten it. linkedin is a great way to market your business and yourself. it gives you visibility, credibility and approachability. but you need to do more than just take two seconds to fill in your profile. admittedly, that's what i did. i put just a sentence or two to fill out each section. when our next guest took a look at my profile she said i was missing a big opportunity. i invited her on the show to teach me and you how to create a linkedin profile that works for your company. the owner and contact creator at your professional writer, which helps executives and entrepreneurs communicate what sets them apart in the market. and you write a lot of people's

linkedin profiles. >> i do. >> we spent a lot of time on the phone together. before we go into the mechanics, why do you need a linkedin profile? >> today the reality is that people expect you to be on linkedin. and when they search for you, limpingedin is ranked very high in searches. your linkedin profile will be one of the first things they see. >> you had john davidco. he has a photo there. >> excellent photo. for many people i recommend have a professional head shot. for john's business, this just wouldn't make sense. he has an auto repair shop and his photo is friendly, approachable and has his company logo on his shirt. >> you have a place to give a summary. >> one of the most overlooked aspects of the linkedin profile and absolutely one of the most

valuable. if john had his summary, it would show up right before his current job. and the summary gives you 2,000 characters to say what you want about you, your business and link your target audience directly to you. if you have great quotes from people who are happy, include those. you can talk a little bit about -- depending on what your business, you might want to get into why you're doing what you're doing. many people are coming for your service but they're also coming for who you are. this is your opportunity to speak to your target market in the way that you want to. >> okay. moving on to some more stuff that he's doing well, his experience. you like how he has written his experience? >> it's brilliant. in five succinct sentences, john has said so much. i'm the president of auto repair. we know who he is, his

credibility. my father and i started our automotive repair business in 1975. history. it's a family business. then he says we've grown to be the most successful on the main line. so we know he is successful and he has told you where they are. we know his geographic community. the last two sentences i just love. my daughter started with us two years ago. she is the future of our business. >> it's approachable. >> absolutely. >> and you say that linkedin is about approachability. he's talking about i. he is telling his story. doing it succinctly. >> beautifully. >> giving you a reason to connect with the company. when we go to his skills and expertise, he has a lot of people talking about his skills and expertise. >> absolutely. and this is something that you need to fill in your profile. the skills that john has chosen to use are things that he selected. linkedin gives you the opportunity to include 50 skills and then people can go in and

click on and endorse you for those skills. >> okay. i think the takeaway from this, there are so many other places to fill out here. the takeout is take some time, talk in first person. be approachable and fill out every single part of the profile. >> exactly. >> don't skip anything? >> exactly. >> thanks so much, susan. check my linkedin profile next week. when we come back, questions on funding a family business. and building a team you can trust. >> plus, when her retail cookie business wasn't making enough dough, she took it wholesale. find out how doing that brought her some sweet profits. ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker every day. ♪ ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker and i'm working every day. ♪ ♪ i'm a hard, hard worker and i'm saving all my pay. ♪

small businesses get up earlier and stay later. and to help all that hard work pay off, membership brings out millions of us on small business saturday and every day to make shopping small huge. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. sometimes in order to succeed, you have to re-evaluate your business model. that was exactly the case for one woman whose retail cookie company needed some more dough. she cut her staff and reduced the number of sweet treats available to order, but her strategy for survival included one key ingredient. shifting the majority of her business from retail to wholesale.

judith moore launched the charleston cookie company in 2003 with one idea in mind. >> i thought i was running a cookie company. then i discovered we were running a gift company and the gifts happen to be cookies, really good cookies. >> it was brn out of moore's search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. when she didn't find one, she decided to make her own. initially, the business thrived, especially on the retail side. thanks to the company's website, moore's cookies and brownies have even made their way around the globe. of course, that was then. now the retail business is down and moore is trying her hand with a new group of customers. >> what we're doing now is really emphasizing the wholesale aspect of our business until the retail recovers. >> for years, charleston cookie has sold wholesale to sanctuary hotel and dean and deluca.

it has now expanded to cisco and the piggly wiggly grocery store. as the economy worsened, the number of products was cut as a moore evaluated every job, including her own. >> and so management had to jump in and do everything. and that's when i went back to working in the oven again. >> she says it's no easy task. in fact, it can be a pretty slow process. while retail orders come in at any time, it can take months to agree on a wholesale deal. the wholesale shift has been a welcomed change for the charleston cookie company's executive pastry chef. the move means a little more mixing and baking, but the woman known as judy pop says this decision was key to survival. >> as anybody knows a bakery, wholesaling keeps it going. i was really excited when we got wholesaling. so i was more probably ecstatic

than anybody. >> she believes wholesaling does wonders for promoting charleston cookie's all-important brand. >> retail is retail. those are customers walking in. those are from the internet, word by mouth, pabut wholesalin you're going throughout the businesses of charleston or even outside of charleston. >> a more efficient keeps in check. keeping any leftover dough to a minimum. wholesale does differ from the retail, but every batch is made from the same recipe. charleston cookies which is. one thing is for certain, moore's original idea of running a 100% retail operation is no longer an economic reality. >> it may be the balance that we will have, whether i like it or not. obviously, the gifting business

is more high profit than the wholesale but the wholesale brings in enormous volume. it is possible that the volume for wholesale may even increase to 70/30 retail and depending on how much volume that is, then that will be just fine with me. >> it's time now to answer some of your business questions. sarah robinson is the ceo of the sarah robinson company, business coach, strategist and speaker who helps small business owners set their companies apart. she is also the author of the book "fierce loyalty: unlocking the dna of" great to see both of you guys. >> great to be with you. >> the first question is about owning a family business and getting funding. >> as a family-owned business, how difficult is it to get

funding from general resources such as sba, venture capitalists or crowd funding? >> we had someone on recently who said that he never funds relatives. so what is your take? is that common or no? does it matter? >> i think it's wise not to fund relatives, because all kinds of bad problems could happen. but i think that all of those ways of getting funding are difficult. sba loan is difficult. a traditional funding is difficult. crowd sourcing is difficult. the trick is to figure out which one is the best fit for your kind of company, start there and then if that doesn't work out, move to the next one and move to the next one. >> do you think most investors or most banks care if you're relatives or not? >> i think they do. family-owned businesses have their own set --

entrepreneurship in general is fraught with risk. family-owned businesses have a lot more risk generally associated with them. how long has this business been around? what kind of business is it? as an sba loan sba loan, basica you have collateral, i don't think that would matter so much as a family-owned business. crowd funding, vcs, that's going to be really, really tough unless you you have something kind of real unique and dynamic to -- that you're trying to get money for, the kind of business you have. >> what do you need to do if you are spouses, siblings, mother, son, whatever you are, in order to alleviate anybody's fears. >> you have to have a really good backup plan. in terms of what's going to happen. anybody coming in to invest in you, spree, is that the name of the company that was husband and wife founded and everything was wonderful and then an ugly divorce and the whole company fell apart.

and so it's about -- nothing was in writing ahead of time. >> maybe just address it and alleviate fears right off the bat. go to the last question. it's about growing your business and expanding the number of employees. >> as the small business begins to expand beyond your personal capacity, how do you build the right team to make sure that becomes an entity that can run without you over time. >> particularly, how do you figure out how to hire that first employee? >> well, my guess is that she is either the visionary, the person who really sees the big picture of where her company's going, or she's the doer. she's probably a combination of both because you sort of have to be. i would figure out if i were her which one she is most dominant. the one who has the big picture, is she the one that goes out and does stuff. and then the next person needs to be that other person. if she's the visionary, find the one that's going to get stuff

done. if she's the operator, find the big picture. >> how do you set that plan for who you're going to hire, at what pace, at what stage? >> i think we have talked about this earlier. hiring slow, firing fast. don't rush into anything. it's not a bad idea to hire a head hunter or employment agency. you might spend money up front but you'll make sure the talent is culled out. you have to figure out, what are you lacking in? is it sales? before you make that hire, if it is sales, do you need a dedicated salesperson? can you use a manufacturer's rep. you need to go over what you're lacking before you commit to actually hiring people. that brings whole other costs, managers, benefits, managers aren't ready to deal with. >> great to see both of you guys. thank you for your advice today.

if any of you out there have a question for our experts, go to the website. the address is openforum.com/yourbusiness. hit the ask the show link to submit a question to our panel. that website is openforum.com/yourbusiness or e-mail us your questions or comments. the address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. we like to check out twitter so here are some of the latest tweets. trade organization tweets, if you have thousands of people on a mailing list it doesn't matter if they're the wrong people. our friend says, make a list of liabilities. know the numbers. and nancy with good advice for everyone. tough times don't last. tough people do. when you're the co-owner of a business, one of the major

concerns is what happens if one of the partners dies or moves on or retires or becomes mentally or physically incapacitated. to avoid the risk of running into problems if any of these issues happens later, it makes perfect sense to set up ground rules now. here to explain what every entrepreneur should know is jim duggins. it's great to see you. >> great to be here. >> let's go through some of these factors. the first one is, what triggers the buy/sell agreement. >> well, you know, interesting with the buy/sell agreement, it's one of the most overlooked documents upon formation. and you have to give consideration to these triggers down the road. unfortunately, i think people tend to think of only two. that is typically death and disability, as you mentioned in the lead-in. i think that's because there's

perhaps the most feared of the triggers. more importantly, more likely, partners will go through divorce. they'll go through bankruptcy. they may want to retire early. you may want to terminate them or need to terminate them. there can be any variety of events that will take place for which you need to consider what the -- what the event and outcome will be. and the best time to do it is now, as you said. >> and so what's interesting is you may love your partner, but you may hate their spouse. if something happens to your partner, the oshship, half of the ownership of your company may automatically go to their spouse. the idea behind this is, you are given the ability to buy that back from the spouse. so one thing that will come up is how much do i owe you, right? now you're the spouse, how much do i owe you? you should talk about how you're going to value the company later on today. >> correct. you're right, i have yet to find a client who was hoping to be in business with their partner/spouse in the event of divorce. the valuation becomes critical. once you figured out your

triggers, you're trying to establish a market for your shares. there are a number of valuation techniques that one can use. first, we have a very simple one, which is simply on a subjective basis, agreeing to a value or stating a value. secondly, more objective, you can use a formula. an industry formula you use or customized formula you and your partner agree to. >> the point is -- >> it's better to agree to those formulas early on rather than later. >> you don't know what side you'll end up on, you don't know if you'll be the buyer or seller. >> that leverage changes dramatically. you can use a third-party appraiser and you can rely on insurance proceeds to peg those values at the time or any combination of the four. >> there may be different -- you decided on a formula but there may be different payment terms. you might say, i don't actually

have to pay you everything right now. we can do it over six months, six years, et cetera. come up with some terms. >> yeah, correct. and i think it's interesting, the value certainly is important as a starting point, but what i term, you know, accommodating a good departure versus a bad tee par tour, you can tweak those payment terms to further enhance or decrease that payment. so, if i have a good departure, for example, let's say i have my 30-year partner who's retiring and has helped build the company up and i want to have a multiple of the value in a shorter term buyout with a lot of cash up front, that may be different than my short-term partner who i just found out was stealing from the business or got divorced and i'm trying to buy them out at a discount. i may want to stretch that period out as long as i can for the lowest interest rate possible. >> one of the things you can do is buy insurance for this particular case. >> yeah. insurance is a critical

component of buy/sell planning and why death and disability are so commonly addressed. often the only two issues addressed is because there is insurance out there. what insurance does, is provides that liquidity everyone is looking for. you have an obligation to buy and an obligation to sell. where is the money coming from? it's not always easy to rely on the creditworthiness of the company. you have an option to get insurance and we use it frequently. the difficulty with disability is that it can be cost prohibitive at times. for all the other triggers, you really have no choice but to rely on the creditworthiness of the company. >> i urge everyone to consider a buy/sell agreement. thank you a lot. >> i agree. thank you. to learn more about today's show, click on our website. it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of today's segments and web exclusive content with more information to help your business grow. you can follow us on twitter @msnbcyourbiz. become a fan of the show on

facebook. next week she thought she was doing everything right to grow her custom designed carpet company. >> i have the production. i have the talent. i feel i have the personality to connect with people. i have the media. so, why isn't everyone flocking? >> what she was missing was a serious growth plan. find out what she needed to do to turn her business around. till then, i'm j.j. ramberg. remember, we make your business our business. is like hammering. riding against the wind. uphill. every day. we make money on saddles and tubes. but not on bikes. my margins are thinner than these tires. anything that gives me some breathing room

makes a difference. membership helps make the most of your cashflow. i'm nelson gutierrez of strictly bicycles and my money works as hard as i do. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. president obama barn storms the country to talk about jobs but will republicans let him do anything? there was a common lament about president obama is that he was stuck in the past, pivoting to jobs and offering the same old economic policies you've been peddling for years. for one thing, it probably makes sense to advocate for the same policies if they haven't been implemented, especially if the economy is in glaringly in need of a boost but more than that, president obama is