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hi there everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg and welcome to your business. every week we gather talking to talk entrepreneurship to give you tips, advice to help your small business grow. for more than 100 years, the trooper family has run an amusement company on the boardwalk of ocean city, maryland. i went down to find out the trick to surviving through so many generations and to running a decidedly old school business in today's modern world. for brooks and christopher and aunt stephanie, taking over

the rides on the boardwalk in ocean city, maryland was as much destiny as choice. >> it's what we do. we don't really know any different. >> my grandfather called, wanted me to be involved with the family business. >> it is probably my heart and soul. >> the company was founded by daniel tripper who visited from baltimore and then never left. >> many things here on the property, movie theaters, amusements, mini golf, tank battle. >> it has games, restaurants, and other attractions. as the ocean city boardwalk grew over the last century, so did the company. from here, all the way to the end, this is all tripper. >> yes. all the way to the end, to the water. >> its chair map is brooks, the fifth generation to take the reigns. the great, great grandson of the founder. >> you're 33 years old. so you are one of the youngest. >> yes. >> of the tripper dynasty here.

and yet you're the one in charge. how did that happen? you're the chairman. >> i communicate very well. there's a lot of drama. >> from the perspective of any thrill seeker looking to hop on the freakout or someone looking to win a big stuffed animal, it all looks easy. fun and games really. but to brooks and his family, running this business is anything but. the family drama is just the start. >> there's probably approximately 25 stock owners. those stock owners have children and spouses and things. so there's quite a few people that have some sort of ownership. >> ownership and different ideas of how things should be run. >> i've got a lot of extended family that have a lot of desires. they want to get a return on their investment, which is certainly understandable. everyone does. and so being the actual poor family that runs it, i feel my grandmother left us with that

responsibility. not only do we need to provide an amusement park, but we need to provide a return for our shareholders. >> a return that is increasingly tough to provide. the cost of maintaining the rides has increased. price, well, they can't go up too much. >> we can't past like most businesses can pass their expenses on to the consumer. it's very hard here because a parent can only afford so much for a child to ride a ride for three minutes. >> it used to be 10 cent skee ball. the public almost died when i had to switch it to a quarter. >> this place has history. because of that, it's hard to change almost anything. it took brooks and christopher an entire year to start to get them accepting credit cards. >> with 100 years, it doesn't matter if a new policy came out. >> one thing we always talk about small businesses, they're nimble.

they can make decisions, act on them quickly. in this small business, you don't have that. >> no. we've been here so long. there's so many chiefs. not many indians. to make a decision you need to make sure you speak to everybody. >> in a business that has so much nostalgia attached to it, it's not only the ideas of the shareholders but also the customers who have been coming for generations. >> when we take a ride out because it is past its time or it's no longer profitable, we hit complaints. where are the little boats? my kids love those boats. >> he said his company is decidedly old school pretty much by definition. but they're committed to keeping it alive and are working to make the changes needed to have an old school amusement business. >> the biggest is what prizes the kids want.

now we have video games with ipads and i touches. >> i can win an ipad from playing skee ball? >> yeah. >> that is different from when i was a kid. the tri mpers are dedicated to keep this true to the park they all grew up with. >> i find it interesting you have been running this game since you were 8 years old, yet i'm beating you. >> you haven't beat me yet. you keep asking me these questions and distracting me. >> there will be on the round of tri mpars running this. >> the amusement park, the restaurants. is it ever tempting to sell it? >> i would never trade out our heritage in this boardwalk. it means too much. i would want to be here every day anyway. i wouldn't want it to be

somebody else's. >> not even for a big payout? >> not even for a big payout. i'm here for the long haul. >> row toe rooter and its famous jingle has been a household name since 1935. it was built around the invention of the roto rooter machine. the company has grown into the largest provider of plumbing repair and sewer cleaning services in the u.s. how they survived and have grown the business for more than 75 years? ♪ >> there's only two modes, growing or dying. growing is easy to see. sales are up. profits are up. i think oftentimes when

companies begin to what i call the slow death march, there's too much rationalization. it was just a blip on the screen. just a couple of bad years. roto-rooter is a bad example of something that was conceived in 1935 and is still going in 2013. most brands don't last that long. where do brands get themselves in trouble? they go past prime, there's not much market share or growth left. instead of reinventing themselves, they say let's work harder next year. let's trim some costs. unless you find a way to reinvent yourself, unless you find new services or products, you're on a slow death march and you're in denial. you have employees counting on you not to do that. if you're past prime, own up to it and start making the right decisions. either you grow or you start dying. you've hit on a good idea.

and everybody in the company gets in line. and the energy level is off the charts. the guys slow down. if we roll something out too quickly, then the collateral damage could kill the concept. so i think you have to slow down enough and have the discipline and say if this is a good concept, if no one else is doing it, we've probably got a little time to tweak and figure out what's working and what's night. and if we're entering a new business that others are already in, get it right. if you outrun your headlights, it's dark out there. you might get off the road. or worse. it's important i think to understand the difference between leveraging your business and reinventing your business. leverage is simply how do i grow sales a little bit more with the product service package that i

have today, how do i control expenses maybe a little better than i have historically. but leverage just gives you a little more upside. reinvention is exponential. that's where the big money is. that's also where big losses could occur. i think there's no formula for this, but i think everyone has to do that gut check and say do i have some level of risk tolerance and am i willing to try to take a portion of my profitability and leverage it into new products and service that i'm presently not in. the time to reinvent is had it's going great, when you're growing, when you're winning, when you have the energy. and the hardest time because your employees don't want to jump on board. employees are saying, lighten up, boss. everything is going great. you have to be the person month sees the trends developing before anyone else does. it's harder when you're doing

well to get the support of your organization. but if they trust you have your interests and the company's interests at heart, you must direct the resource, to do it while you can afford to do it. when it comes to hiring, gone are the days of focusing only on resumes. today smart businesses are using twitter to recruit as well as learning about candidates. how tweets can successfully lead to your next hire. he is the president and ceo of lasalle network, a chicago-based professional staffing. twitter can be used for so many things. it's interesting. you're going to talk about how it is both for recruiting people but also doing a little research. let's dig into this. if you want to use twitter, first you have to build a following. >> it's all about how many followers you have. then when you post something on somebody else's twitter feed and how you can go viral with that.

so you have to be more than just 15, 20 followers. it can't be something you use for your friends on a social basis or reuniting with college folks. if you really want to use twitter effectively from a professional business standpoint you've got to get a lot of followers. >> are you supposed to be having a special twitter handle for recruiting, or just use your company's? >> well, that's the age-old problem we have going back to a few years ago with face book and people getting job offers rescinded because of crazy pictures. what we try to advise our clients on is especially on the corporate side for hiring managers, human resources, leaders within a company that want to attract people, use it just professionally. you can do personal posts but make sure they're not too far out in left field. on the flip side, realized people are looking at you from all angles and you need to keep it fairly tight.

>> be consistent and direct. you mean with your mentaling about the jobs? >> if you're going to be concise about what your company is doing, use hashtags and reference back to something. you never know. for a lot of people are afraid of twitter because it is still new. a lot of people i talk to at all levels of the spectrum who don't understand if i put a hashtag in, what does that mean? how does it trace back to me. >> i'm a coffee shop and i'm looking to hire. j.j.'s coffee shop. >> hashtag summer employment. hashtag graduating from university of illinois, rutgers. who knows. whoever your demographics are. >> and know who to follow. if you are using twitter to hire people, what kinds of people do you want to follow? >> i think it depends on the

business and where you want to go to get people. at the end of the day you want your post to be retweeted. at some points you can think about it too much and get too analytical as to who you are following. you want to be followed by a lot of people and have them retweet your posts. it is like that old commercial where it goes from four, eight, 16, 32, 64 and it multiplies. >> for instance, you're looking to hire someone in the financial world, you might want somebody who has a lot of followers in that world? >> absolutely. but it also might be somebody to follow you, j.j., if there's a lot of people in the business community follow your posts and i write something and you retweet that, it's going to hit people in a different way. while you're in the business community obviously you're not directly in financial services. >> okay. and pulling, don't push out. what does that mean? >> you don't want to be selective with what you are doing. twitter is one avenue to find other people and also to find job. you want to bring as many people in your world and then have to

screen out. when you get too selective and you only want to follow people working at investment banks or private equity firms or coffee shops, you're only going after college grads. you're limiting yourself. you have to realize it is a numbers game. >> tom, thank you. i know hiring, i talk to small business owners across the board. the top three things they say they have trouble with is hiring. appreciate you coming on and giving me another tool. >> it's not as bad as it looks. >> straight ahead, more advice to help your small business growing. and building a sales force and keeping them motivated. >> shawn kenny loved legos. he turned his hobby into a booming business. if i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be

one thing i've learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. shawn kenny loved to play with lego blocks. he would spend time making sculptures and other creations out of them. what used to be a hobby is now a booming business. his work has been bought by major corporations, exhibited around the world. and his lamps can be bought on sites like fab.com.

here's how shawn turned his play into profits. you could say shawn kenny has a unique business. >> i did a project for the philadelphia zoo. we built 30 life-size animals set up around the zoo. the polar bear took 1,100 hours and over 95,000 pieces. >> he's a le going certified professional. that's right. he actually has an official certification to play with lego blocks. >> the wall is 300,000 pieces, though it's only a small portion of the 1.5 million i have in the study crow. >> just across the east river from manhattan, sean has built a thriving company out of a childhood passion. while satisfying his hobby outside the office. >> i would take pictures of my creations and put them online.

there's a lot of people that play with legos as a hobby as an adult. >> and this one helped him build a reputation. and the right people started to take notice. >> one day i got an e-mail from lego company. they said, hey, we're come canning to new york city. we'll be doing this big gallery show, media event. we would like you to come along and bring this model and that thing. >> he founded sean kenney designed and worked with lego to formalize their relationship. >> it eventually became a lego certified professionalist. >> the connection was a great way for him to get his work in front of people. and also legitimize an unusual business. >> by being able to say, this is a legitimate business, i have an operation, a facility, a staff. this is a real thing. >> despite doing almost no

traditional marketing, he has landed commissions for google and mazda, individual clients, and a variety of other quirky jobs. >> i was contacted by the staff of "30 rock" because tina fey had written into the show a lego train as part of an executive conference. then they realized they needed one for a prop. a gallery was putting together an exhibit all about william shatner. i call this plastic shatner. >> they have combined to give his business a great deal of flexibility. >> operating like an independent artist, you never know who is going to come and ask you to do things. i've developed static revenue streams for things such as my books so i know i can structure the rest of my business around other things. >> looking back, sean doesn't point to a single tipping point

but a steady buildup, similar to the way his creations come together. >> a lot of businesses are grow, grow, grow. is last quarter better than the quarter before that? i'm happy knowing if i can run my business, be successful, make enough money to raise a family and live in this expensive city that i live in, i'm going to be really happy. >> it's time now to answer some of your business questions. let's turn to your board of directors for their expertise. founder and ceo of retrofitness. and a second company called let's yo yogurt. and an advisory firm that helps executives how well their sales forces are performing. the first question, great to see both of you guys, is about selling your brand. >> i would be curious how to build an enterprise sales force internally and externally.

>> greg, this is sort of made for you. >> working backwards from that i would understand how to serve the customer at those critical moments to determine what type of salesperson i need, determine whether or not the contact needs to be virtual or face-to-face contact, determine a workload capacity, how often do i need to call on that person, how many s i need, determine the type of tools i would need to provide the salesperson to meet those particular customer needs. >> it is hard. i've hired sales people before, and i do not have a background in sales, and i'll be honest, i did not a great job hiring the person and not giving them the tools they needed to be successful. and so it's hard to find people who are as passionate as you are about what you do. so, eric, how do you get the right fit?

>> i think that's going to be critical. what you're talking about sales, sales is always the product, it is the person. someone is not buying the product, they're buying you. you're hiring a salesperson, you're interviewing in my assessment for the personality, the qualities and skills and their enthusiasm toward your product. when they're presented to one of your customers, potential customers, they're going to be buying that person's personality and how they present your product. >> how do you find that person? >> it is a needle in a hay stack. we talk about mining for diamonds all the time. you sift through a lot of coal to get to the diamond, no doubt about it. in our system, with retro fitness and let's yo and selling franchises as opposed to selling gym memberships, we're looking for a person. it is that personality, that enthusiasm. they have to have a lot of passion and got to have that ability to want to work and put their enthusiasm around the clock into your business. >> right. i'm glad someone asked this question. i'm going to california next week to do a story on this thing, how to build a sales force. let's move on to the next

question, expanding your network. >> what is the best way to cold reach out to potential clients, that through contacts you may not have and find people at companies you would want to reach out to? >> this is hard, right, cold calls are some of the hardest things to do. is there a good way to get in there when you don't already have a pre-existing relationship or friend to friend. >> what people do to me, today's new version of cold calling is linkedin. people look to present their product to me. it is difficult to get me on the phone in my office, there is 92 people, plus my assistant and then me. you go to linkedin, you get me direct. i'm screening that. i think now it is being creative with how you get to the decisionmaker. >> okay. let's move on to the next one. a question about keeping your all important sales staff motivated. >> i would ask for tips on their strategies where they have grown from a smart startup, like five

people, to a large company with a sales cycle. >> the way to get a sales rep engaged is a technique called sales game fiction. make a game out of it. if you know it will take six to 12 months, there are signs along that can be small victories. keep them interested by game phiing it. >> that's a good idea. >> our sales guys are -- it is also, you know, you have a timing effect. maybe one is coming in and closing from six months ago. until you get to the point where they have the built up pipeline, keeping them motivated is all about them understanding what the end goal is, what the end result is. there is, like greg said, along the way there is some merits along the way, we got a financial packet in, this is great, what is the next step? we got to come up for discovery day, learn and meet the team, let's get them to discovery day. once those things happen there are positive things along the way that you can reward and not -- maybe not a financial

compensation, but, like greg was saying, some kind of merit badge or encouragement tool or we got this far, you know, let's go celebrate over x, y, z. >> how do you figure out the right balance between commission and salary? >> well, depends on the economics of your sale, of course. if you're selling a big ticket item with high gross margin, you can afford a salary and hang in there during that long sale s cycle. if it is a smal dollar amount, gross margin might be tighter and you want to keep your costs variable and go with commissions. >> a lot of sales people, they're selling a lot of products. how do you keep them excited about your product? >> in our environment, again, it is -- i have a salesman that sits across from me and says pay me a commission, not a salary. that's a go getter.

it is the enthusiasm. your carrot has to be the biggest carrot hanging out there. if they're going to be using some kind of independent contracting sales tools, we have everything internal in our sales organizations, but we do know there are some companies that use floating devices out there. i'm not a big fan of those. i like my team to be internal. if you're out there, you better have the biggest carrot out there. >> thank you so much. i think hiring a sales team is so incredibly important and really tricky. and trekkie motivated. if you have a question for our experts, go to openforum.com/yourbusiness. that is openforum.com/yourbusiness. or if you'd rather, e-mail us your questions or comments. that address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. in today's technology driven

mobile world, snagging more customers doesn't have to be tedious or expensive. here are five simple ways to find more online leads and customers courtesy of wfs magazine. one, webinars. they're a great low risk, low cost way to share valuable information with potential customers and build your e-mail subscriber database quickly. two, pay for click ads. as customers use different search engines, these advertisements can help you strategically bring your target audience to your website. three, contact marketing. info graphics, how to guides and blogs are ways you can post useful material on social media platforms and customer forums. this helps more customers learn about you and helps build back links to bring even more traffic to your site. four, mobile optization. it is estimated nearly 35% of all web traffic comes from a mobile device. so make sure you have an accessible, mobile friendly version of your company website.

and, five, public relations. newsworthy pr announcements can help with generating media coverage and keeping your company's website ranking higher within the search engines. looking to get your business information and offerings in front of more customers? well, then check out our website of the week. locu.com provides an easy to use online dashboard to manage your price list and services all from one place. you can automatically update your listings on multiple websites like yelp and trip adviser and yellow pages. it allows you to promote and share any changes to your listings on social media sites like four square and trip adviser. thanks so much for joining me today. i hope you learned a thing or two. find all of today's segments online as well. just go to openforum.com/yourbusiness. we also put up some web exclusive content with more information to help your business grow. we're on twitter as well.

it is @msnbcyourbiz. next time, americans and their concerns about safety with the prep movement. >> our demographic is people who want to be able to be comfortable and survive if there is an emergency. >> how fear of the unknown and the need to get control is driving the profits of small businesses catering to survivalists. until then, i'm j.j. ramberg. remember. we make your business, our business. if i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing i've learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner.

we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. year in voting rights and what it means for the big election next year. happy sunday morning, everyone. if you celebrate christmas, there are now only three more days to go. and those of us who do mark the holiday find ourselves wondering what is actually real this weekend, and what is actually coal. we heard the term voter fraud a lot in 2013. it is the supposedly huge problem that has been used to justify all of those voter i.d. laws and other voter restrictions passed in state after state. there are new definitive numbers at