it's a sleepy little southern town that thrived for decades, then the factories closed. so how are small businesses working to overcome hard times? and once again become a thriving business community. we travel to main street brundidge, alabama, coming up next. small businesses are revitalizing the economy and american express open is here to help.

that's why we're proud to present "your business" on msnbc. hi there, everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg and welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to giving you tips and advice for helping your small business grow. for most of us, when we talk about main street, wie think of it as the heart and soul. and those main street businesses from the hardware store to the barbershop 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 about half way between montgomery, alabama, and pensacola, florida. 60 years ago, main street here on brundidge 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. so what happened? well, 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. but brundigde isn't a ghost town and doesn't intend to be. there are a lot of stores surviving here. so we wanted 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 of the first national bank of

brundidge, alabama. we were founded in 1904 by my great grandfather. i'm also the mayor of brundidge. >> for a small business person 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, i'm the owner of foster's barbershop, i've been on main street for 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 try to provide that service that they come for. try to keep a relationship with our customers. >> my name's bill grafton, i've been on main street for seven years. i figured out i couldn't afford a new truck. got rid of my dumpster, got rid of my fax line. you try to cut your overhead and that's the only way you're going

to survive. >> i'm known as the sign man. i'm just off main street on the back street about 24 years now. but now overhead will eat you up. electricity and everything, it's tough. i don't have any air-conditioning just antique air conditioners, which is better known as a fan. you keep overhead down, you've got a chance. >> we've been here since 1971, we fix a lot of cars. >> do you own the building or pay rent? >> we own the building. >> that must be very helpful for you? >> we'd have to go out of business if we didn't own the building. >> i own the sit and sip cafe, we've been located here for six years. the utilities here in the summertime. the light bill goes from the winter up to $3,000 a month. you can't afford the overhead with the customers we have coming in. >> what about you? you own a small bank.

small community banks have had trouble in recent years. you guys are still around. >> yeah, what we did was we didn't try to chase the almighty dollar. we tried to keep doing what we were good at. and the tight lending we were familiar with. so we weathered the storm. you don't make the margin you used to make. >> the margins are very thin. very thin. but 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. >> are you feeling optimistic about this company, your ability to shift and keep it alive? >> we have to. survival of the fittest. if we don't adapt and change, we ain't going to survive. >> so what's next? does brundidge have to brand itself? >> i think that's something that brundidge business association's working on as we speak.

>> these are all local artists you're exhibiting. >> i'm chris rich. >> and we are co-directors of studio 116 which has been open here on main street for about one year. >> what is studio 116? >> studio 116 is 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 feels like you're in a different town. >> well, we're very happy about that. it's -- as we both traveled a lot and we, you know, are kind of drawn to our districts and live music, we kind of wanted to see that in our hometown. when we met jimmy hollis, he was looking at the space as an artist cooperative. and we partnered together. >> you have a 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. >> you'll be in the arts community. >> well, we thought about arts, do real well with studio 16. maybe that's where i need to be. >> meeting everyone in brundidge was incredibly fun and interesting and we are continuing with this main street series. so if you think we should visit main street in your town, please write us and tell us why. we'd love to hear from you. the e-mail address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. if you're in the need of the perfect location for your new start-up or expansion project, you might want to check out our website of the week. 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 metrics can help you gauge the health and reach of your brand. here now are five digital metrics you should be watching courtesy of mashable.com. one, high time spent per page can indicate a particular page that's confusing to navigate. if users are spending minutes on a page without a video article or other indirect development on it, you likely have a problem. two, retweets, favorites, comments and shares 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 and fan counts. track the movement of users who unfollow or de-friend your brand and make sure you understand why. four, if any page accounts for 5% or more of your 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 contacting queries 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. so i invited her on the show to teach me and you how to create a linkedin profile that works for your company. susan is an accomplished trial lawyer who is now the owner and content creator at your professional writer which helps

set them apart from the market and you write a lot of linkedin profiles. >> i do. >> and you helped me with mine. before we go into the mechanics, why do you need a linkedin profile? >> because today the reality is that people expect you to be on linkedin. and when they search for you, linkedin is ranked very high in searches. so they search for you and your linkedin profile is one of the first things they see. >> you had john davico. he's got a photo there. >> right. he's an excellent photo. for many people, i recommend go have a professional head shot. but for john's business, that just wouldn't make sense. he has an auto repair shop and his photo is friendly, approachable and he's got his company logo on his shirt. it's perfect. >> something he is missing is you have a place to give a summary. >> yes. this is one of the most overlooked aspects of the linked in profile and absolutely one of

the most valuable. if john had his summary, it would show up right before his current job. and the summery gives 2,000 characters to say what you want about you, your business and to bring your target answer directly to you. >> you'd want to talk about your business if you have some great quotes from people who are happy, include those. you can also talk a little bit about depending on what your business is, you might want to get a little bit into why you're doing what you're doing. many people care about you. they're coming for your service, but also coming for who you are. and 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's written his experience. >> it's brilliant. in five sentences, he's said so much about his business. he says i'm the president.

we know he's the president, his credibility. my father and i started our auto repair business back in 1975. >> what does that tell you? >> they've got history. >> it's a family business. >> then he says we've grown to be the most successful on the main line. we know he's successful and we know where they are. the geographic community. and the last two sentences i love. my daughter started with us two years ago, she is the future of our business. >> it's approachable and you say linkedin is about approachability. he's telling his story. and he's giving you a reason to connect with the company. and then 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 he selected. linkedin gives you the opportunity to include 50 skills

and people can go in and click on and endorse you for those skills. >> okay. so i think my take away from this. there are so many other places to fill out here, but the takeout is take some time, talk in the first person, be approachable, right, and fill out every single part of the profile. >> exactly. >> don't skip anything. >> thanks so much, susan, i really appreciate it. check my linkedin profile next week. >> will do. 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. how doing that brought her some sweet profits. 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. sometimes, in order to succeed, you have to reevaluate 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 just running a cookie company. and then i discovered we were running a gift company and the gifts happened to be cookies, really good cookies. >> the charleston, south carolina, business was born 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 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 south carolina's sanctuary hotel and

gourmet food store, that list has since expanded to include food distributors. the drive to skew wholesale is just part of the plan. as the economy worsened, the number of products was cut and more 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 the oven. >> she says landing a wholesale client is 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 welcome change for judy, 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. >> if anybody knows a bakery, wholesaling keeps it going. i was excited when we got

wholesaling. so i was more probably ecstatic than anybody. >> judy pop recognizes the importance of the retail business but believes wholesaling does wonders for promoting charleston cookie's all important brand. >> retail's retail. those are customers coming in. word by mouth, but wholesaling going throughout the businesses of charleston or even outside of charleston. >> a more efficient baking operation helped keep supply and demand in check. a cookie depositor keeps any leftover dough to a minimum. every batch is made from the exact same recipe. moore remains focused on both aspects of charleston cookie's business. one thing is for certain, though, moore's original idea of running a 100% retail operation is no longer an economic reality. >> it may be the balance we will have whether i like it or not.

obviously the gifting business is more high profit than the wholesale. but the wholesale brings enormous volume. i can see it's possible for the volume of wholesale may increase to 70/30 retail and depending on how much volume that is, that'll 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. she's a business coach, a strategist and a speaker who helps small business owners set their companies apart. sarah's also the author of the book "fierce loyalty," unlocking the dna of wildly successful communities. and the ceo of grow biz media, a company specializing in covering small business and entrepreneurs. >> the first question is 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? >> the reason i'm so interested in this question is because we had someone on recently who was an angel investor who said that he never funds relatives. so what is your take? is that common? 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, they're difficult. an 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, do the next one and move to the next one. >> do you think that most investors or most banks care if you're relatives or not? >> yeah. i think they do. family-owned businesses have

their own set. entrepreneurship in general was fraught with risk and family-owned businesses have a lot more risks generally associated with them. you know, how long has this business been around? what kind of business in it? as an sba loan, basically, if 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 have something kind of really unique and dynamic to -- that you're trying to get money for. the kind of business you have. >> so what do you need to do then if you are spouses, siblings, mother, son, whatever you are in order to alleviate anybody's fears? >> well, you have to have a really good backup plan. i mean, in terms of what's going to happen, anybody coming in to investing is a -- the company that was husband and wife founded and everything was really wonderful and then there was a really ugly divorce and

the whole company fell apart. and so it's about -- because nothing was in writing ahead of time. so even if you -- >> maybe just address it. address it and alleviate fears right off the bat. let's go to the last question. it's about growing your business and expanding the number of employees. >> the small business begins to expand beyond your personal capacity, thousand 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, you know, really sees the big picture of where her company's going or the doer. she's probably a combination of both because you have to be. i would figure out were i her which one she is most dominant. is she the one that has the big picture, 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 one with the big picture. >> and how do you set that plan for who you're going to hire, at what pace, at what stage? >> well, i think you and i have talked about this before, j.j., it's about hiring slow and firing fast. don't rush into anything. it's not a bad idea to hire a head hunter or an employment agency. you may be spending some money up front, but you're going to make sure that talent is called out and you're going to get somebody you really need. and you have to figure. what do you -- what are you lacking in? is it sales? and before you make that hire, if it is sales, do you need a dedicated salesperson? could you use a manufacturer's rep? you want to go over where you're lacking and what you're going to bring in before you commit to actually hiring people. because that brings a whole set of other costs. benefits, managing people, that a lot of entrepreneurs are not prepared to deal with. >> all right. great to see both of you guys. thank you so much for all of

your advice today. and if any of you out there have a question for our experts, you know what to do, go to the website. the address is openforum.com/yourbusiness. once you get there, hit the ask the show link to submit a question for our panel. again, that website is openforum.com/yourbusiness. or you can e-mail us your questions or comments, the address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. we like to check out twitter from time to time to see what's trending about small business. so here are some of the latest tweets. trade organization indy business network tweets if you have thousands of people on a mailing list, it doesn't matter if they're the wrong people. our friend marley majors says make a list of liabilities, line of credit, credit card, vendor debt, know the numbers. and your business guest panelist north americ nancy loveland.

tough people don 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 about buy and sell agreements, a chicago-based business and tax estate and wealth planning law firm. it's great to see you, jim. >> great to be here, j.j., thanks. >> let's go through some of these factors. the first one is what triggers the buy/sell agreement. >> well, you know, interesting with a buy/sell agreement as you mentioned, it's one of the most overlooked documents upon formation and you have to give consideration to these triggers down the road. and unfortunately, i think people tend to think of only two. and that is typically death and disability as you mentioned in the lead-in. i think that's because they're perhaps the most feared of the

triggers. and more importantly and 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 the outcome will be. and the best time to do it is now as you said. >> so, what's interesting, you may love your partner but you may hate their spouse. if something happens to your partner, the ownership, half of the ownership of your company may automatically go to their spouse. and 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? you should talk about how you're going to value the company later on today. >> correct and you're right, i have yet to find a client who is hoping to be in business with their partner's spouse in the event of divorce. so the valuation becomes

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

have to pay your spouse, let's say, i don't have to pay you everything right now. we can do it over six months, six years, come up with some terms, correct? >> correct. and the value is important as a starting point. but it's what i term accommodating a good departure versus a bad departure. you can really tweak those payment terms to further enhance or decrease the payment. if i have a good departure, for example, let's say i have my 30-year partner who is 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 out front may be different than my short-term partner who i found out was stealing from the business or just got divorced and i'm trying to buy them out at a discount and i may want to stretch that period out as long as i can for the lowest interest rate possible. >> so 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, again, why death and disability are so commonly addressed and often times the only two issues addressed is because there's insurance out there. and what insurance does, it provides that liquidity that everyone's looking for. you have an obligation to buy and an obligation to sell. where's the money coming from? it's not always easy to rely on the credit worthiness of the company. you have an option to get insurance and we use it frequently. >> all right. >> the difficulty with disability is it can be cost prohibitive at times and for all the other triggers, you really have no choice but to rely on the credit worthiness of the company. >> i urge everyone out there to think about a buy/sell agreement. thanks a lot. >> 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, plus web exclusive content with more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter. and please don't forget to become a fan of the show on

facebook. next week, malaney barrett thought she was doing everything right to grow her custom design 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, and remember, we make your business our business. ♪ 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. the steps of the u.s. capitol in washington. everybody body out. you don't have to go home but you've got to get the heck out of here. there was a mass exodus as the house of representatives officially adjourned for their august recess this afternoon. like teenagers on the last day of school, members of congress just bolted for the exits today once with the final bell rang. bye-bye. see you in a month. washington is now heading off for its summer vacation. their august recess. what do you do when you're heading off for vacation? well, don't you tend to