an iconic boardwalk amusement park in ocean city, maryland. across the country, many of these have shut down. how has this one survived for more than a century? we'll tell you coming up next on "your business." ♪ >> announcer: small businesses are revitalizing the economy and american express open is proud

to present "your business" on msnbc. ♪ hi everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg. welcome to your business, where every week we gather together to talk entrepreneurship and give you tips, advice and a little inspiration to help your small business grow. for more than 100 years, this family has run an amusement park on the boardwalk of ocean city, maryla maryland. i spent a day with them to find out the trick of running a decidedly old school business in today's modern world. >> for brooks and christopher trim per and their aunt stephanie, take over the rides on the boardwalk in ocean city,

maryland, was as much destiny as choice. >> it's what we do. i mean, we don't really know any different. >> may grandpa called and wanted my to be involved with the family business snooimts my heart and soul. >> it was founded in 1890 by daniel. he visited ocean city from baltimore and never left. >> we've had many things on the property from movie theaters to dance halls, amusements, arcades, mini golf. >> today it includes an amusement park, 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 is all trim per? >> yes, all the way to the inland. brooks trim per is the chairman. the great, great grandson of of the founder. >> you're 33 years old. you are one of the youngest. >> yes. >> of the trim per dynasty here.

yet you're in charge, you're the chairman. how did that happen? >> i communicate very well. in the family business, there's a lot of drama and politics. >> from the perspective of any thrill seeker looking to hop on to the freak out or someone looking to win a stuffed animal at the horse race, 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 stockholders and those stockholders have children and spouses and things. there's quite a few people that have some sort of ownership of this place. >> ownership and different ideas of how things should be run. >> i've got a lot of extended family that have a lot of needs and desires. they want return on their investment which is certainly understandable. everyone does. so being the actual core family that runs it, i feel that my grandfather left us with that responsibility that not only do we need to provide an amusement

park for the people of ocean city but provide a return for our shareholders. >> a return increasingly tough to provide. taxes have gone up, the cost of maintaining the rides has increased and prices, well, they can't go up too much. >> we can't pass 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 ten cent skee ball and the public almost died when i had to switch it to a quarter. >> this place has history. baugs of that, it's hard to change almost anything. it took brooks and christopher an entire year to get their grandfather granville to accept credit cards. >> there's a lot of people stuck in their ways. you know, with 100 years, it doesn't matter if a new policy comes out, well, this is how we did it for 88 years. >> one thing we talk about small businesses is they're nimble. they can make decisions and act on them quickly.

in this small business, you don't have that. >> no. we've been here so long and there's so many stockholders, so many chiefs, not many indians. you need to make sure you speak to everybody. >> in a business with so much nostalgia attached to it, it's not only the shareholders they're beholden to but also the customers coming for generations. >> when we take a ride out because it's past its time or we can't get parts for it, the customers say where are the boats? we love the boats. >> he says his company is decidedly old school pretty much by definition. but they're committed to keeping it alive and so are working with the board to make the changes need today make an old school business survive in this modern world. a clear example is the arcade. marty's playland. >> the biggest change is what the prizes the kids want. so now we've got video games with ipads and itouches.

>> i can win that in there from playing skee ball. >> that is different from when i was a kid. >> while the prizes may change and the rides may get a little scarier to attract the teenagers, they're dedicated to keeping this amusement park true to the park they all grew up with. >> i find it interesting that you have been playing this and running this game since you were eight years old yet i'm beating you. >> you haven't beaten me yet. you keep asking me questions to distract me. >> if they have it their way, they'll be another round running it in the next generation. >> it's worth a lot of money, the playland, the amusement park, the restaurants. is tfr tempting to sell it? >> i can't say that people haven't thought about it. i would never trade out our heritage and this boardwalk. 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?

>> i'm here for the long haul. not even for a big payout. ♪ roto-rooter and the famous jingle have been a household jingle since 1935. it was built around the roto-rooter machine, the first electric sewer cleaning device. from the humble beginnings, they've grown into the largest provider of plumbing repair and sewer cleaning service this is the u.s. how they survived and grown the business for more than 75 years? call roto-rooter. that's the name. and put those troubles down the drain. roto-root roto-rooter. 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. there's too much it was just a blip on the screen. it's just a couple of bad years. roto-rooter is a rare example that something was conceived in 1935 and it's still going strong in 2013. most brands don't last that long. so where do brands get themselves in trouble? well, they go past prime. there's not much market share or growth left. and instead of reinventing themselves, they say let's work harder next year. let's trim some cost. but unless you find a way to reinvent yourself and find new services or products, you're on a slow death march and in denial. you have employees countyer counting on you not to do that. if you're past prime, own up to it. start making the right decisions. because you either grow or you start dying. >> you've hit on a good idea and everybody in the company gets in

line and wants to do it. the energy level is off the charts. we got to slow down because if we outrun our headlights, 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 to say if this is a good concept, if no one else is doing it, we've probably got a little time to tweak what's working and what's not. and if we're entering a new business that others are already in, what's the rush? get it right. because 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, though, is exponential. that's where the big money is. but that's also where the big losses could occur. there's no formula for this but 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 that into new businesses, products, services that i'm presently not in. the time to reinvent is when it's going great when you're growing. when you're winning. when you have the energy. it's the hardest time to reinvent because your employees don't want to jump on board. employees are saying lighten up boss. everything is great. you have to be the person who sees the trends developing before anyone else does. it's harder when you're doing well to get the support of the organization. but if they trust that you have

their interests and the company's interests at heart, you must get the resources to do it while you can afford to do it. when it comes to hiring, gone are the days of focusing only on resumes. smart businesses are use social media like twitter to recruit and learn more about candidates. tom gim believe is here to show us how tweets successfully lead to your next hire. he's the president and ceo of a network, chicago-based professional staffing and recruiting firm. >> good to see you too, jj. twitter can be used for so many things. it's interesting, you're going to talk about how it's both for recruiting people and doing research on them. let's dig right into this. if you want to use twitter, first you have to build a following. >> you have to. i think it's all about how many followers you have and when you post something on somebody else's twitter feed and how you can go viral with that. you have to be more than just

10, 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 have a special twitter handle for recruiting or do you just use your company's? >> i think that's the age old problem with social media going back to the few years ago with facebook and people who were getting job offers rescinded because of crazy pictures. >> right. >> you have to decide what you want your twitter handle to be used for. what we try to advise our clients on, especially on the corporate side for hiring managers, human resources, leaders within a company that want to attract people, use it professionally. you can do personal posts but make sure they're not too far out in left field. on the flip side, if you're a candidate and looking for a job, realize that people are looking at you from all different angles in the social media world and keep it fairly tight. >> be consistent and direct. you mean with messagesing with

the jobs? >> across all things. if you're going to be concise and direct about what your company is doing, you want to use hash tags number one and reference back to something. you never know -- for a lot of people are afraid of twitter because it is still new. there's a lot of people i talk to at all levels of the spectrum who don't understand, okay, if i put a hash tag in, what does that mean? how does that trace back to me? >> what kind hash tag. say i'm a coffee shop looking to hire jj's coffee, looking to hire a barista, #job open. >> #back to work mom, #summer employment. >> got it. >> #graduating from university of illinois rutgers, who knows. wherever your demographics are. >> know who to follow. if you are using twitter to hire people, what kinds of people do you want to follow? >> well, i think it really depends on the business and where you want too go to get people. at the end of the day, you want to have your post be retweeted.

sometimes you can think about it too much and get too analytical as to who you're following. what you really want to do is be followed by a lot of people and have them retweet your posts so it gets out to their network. it is like the old commercial where it keeps -- goes from four to eight to 16 to 32 to 64 and it multiplies. >> for instance, you're looking to hire someone in the financial world, you might want somebody who has got 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 following your posts and i write something and you retweet that, then it hits people in a different way and while you're in the business community, obviously, you're not directly in financial services. >> right. pull in, dew point push out, what does that mean in. >> you don't want to be selective with what you're doing. twitter is one avenue for people to find other people and also to find jobs. you want to bring as many people as you can into your world and have to screen out. so when you get too selective

and only want to follow people working at banks or private equity firms, you're limiting or coffee shops, you're only going after college grads, you're limiting yourself. you got to realize, it is a numbers game. >> tom, thank you. i know hiring. i talk to small business owners across the board. one of the top three things they say they're having trouble with is hiring in spite of the unemployment numbers. >> it isn't as bad out there as it looks. it's a good market. we have more information and advice to help your small business grow. we'll answer some of your questions about building a sales force and keeping them motivated. shawn loved legos. he turned his hobby into what's become a booming business. there are cameras,, police, guards...ds us.

but who looks after us online, where we spend more than 200 billion dollars a year. american express can help protect you. with intelligent security that learns your spending patterns, and can alert you instantly to an unusual charge. so you can be a member of a more secure world. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. shawn kenny loved to play with lego blocks. he would make sculptures and other creations out of them. what used to be a hobby for him is now a booming business. his work has been bought by major corporations, it's been exhibited around the world and items like his lego lamps can be bought on sites like fab.com. here's how he turned his play

into profits. >> you could say shawn has a unique business. >> i did a project for the philadelphia zoo and we built 30 life size animals set up all around the zoo. the polar bear took 1100 hours to build. it had over 95,000 pieces in it. >> he's a lego certified professional. that's right. he actually has an official certification to play with lego blocks. >> the wall you're looking at right now is probably about 300,000 pieces, although it's only a small portion of the 1.5 million in the studio. >> just across the east river from manhattan, shawn has built a thriving company out of a childhood passion. this wasn't his first profession. for years, he had worked in technology in the financial sector while satisfying his hobby outside the office. >> i would take pictures of might have creations and put them online. there's a lot of people out there that play with lego toys as an adult as a hobby.

i was one of many of them. >> elaborate designs such as greenwich village helped him build a reputation. the right people took notice. >> one day i got an e-mail from the lego company. they said we're coming to new york city, going to do a gallery show and media event. bring this model and that thing and the other thing you made. >> he founded shawn kenney designs. he worked with lego to formalize their relationship. >> let's come up with a way to support what i do. it eventually became what's now called the lego certified professionals. >> he operates independently of lego but partners with the company to work on displays and special events. the connection was a great way for him to get his work in front much people. and also legitimize an unusual business. >> by being able to say no, this is a legitimate business, i have an operation here, i have a facility, i have staff, this is a real thing. >> despite doing almost no traditional marketing, he's

landed commissions for corporate giants like google and mazda. individual clients and a variety of other quirky jobs. >> i was contacted by the staff at 30 rock because tina fey had written in an episode of her show where they had to assemble a lego train as part of a training seminar or something like that at an executive conference. >> it goes on top. it's a smokestack. >> whoo! >> they realized they needed one for a prop. they called me. >> there was a gallery putting together an exhibit about william shatner. hence, i call this plastic shatner. >> these projects combined to give miss business a great deal of flexibility. >> operating like an independent artist, you never necessarily know ho is going to ask you to do things. i've developed sort of static revenue streams for things such as my books so that i know i can sort of structure the rest of my business around other things. >> looking back, shawn doesn't point to a single tipping point. but rather, a steady buildup similar to the way one of his creations comes together.

>> a lot of businesses are all about grow, grow, grow. is the last quarter better than the quarter before that. i'm really happy knowing if i can run my business, be successful, make enough money to raise a family and live in this expensive city i live in, i'm going to be really happy. it's time to answer some of your business questions. let's turn to our board of director for expertise. eric is the founder and ceo of retrofit necessary. he's launched a second company, let's i don't yogurt. and greg alexander is the ceo of sales benchmark index. it helps executives how well their sales forces are performing. great to see both of you guys. the first question is about selling your brand. >> i would be curious for any recommendations on how to build an enterprise sales force both internally and externally. >> greg, this is sort of made

for you. how do you build your sales force? >> i would start with understanding how the customer makes a purchase decision, what the critical touch points are along the way. literally at the deal level and the account level. working backwards from that, i would understand how to serve the customer at those critical moments, determine what type of salesperson that i need. determine whether or not the contact needs to be virtual contact or face to face contact. determine a workload capacity. how often do i need to call on that person which would help determine how many salespeople i need. determine the type of tools that i would need to provide the salesperson to meet those particular customers needs. >> it's hard. because i have hired salespeople before and daye not have a background in sales. i'll be honest, i did not a great job hiring the person and then not giving them the tools they needed to be successful. >> sure. >> it's hard to find people who are passionate as you are about what you do. eric, how do you get the right fit? >> i think that's going to be

critic critical. when you're talking about sales, sales isn't always the product. it's the person. someone is not buying the product. they're buying you. when you're hiring a salesperson, you're interviewing in my assessment for the person amount. for the quality and skills and the enthusiasm. when you're looking at potential customers, they'll be buying that person's personality and how they present your product. >> how do you find that person? >> it's a needle in a haystack. we talk about mining for diamonds all the time. you got to sift through the coal to get to the diamonds. in our system with retrofitness and talking about selling franchises as opposed to gym memberships, we're always looking for a person. it's that personality, that enthusiasm. they've got to have a lot of passion and that ability to want to work and put their enthusiasm round the clock into your business. >> right. i'm glad someone asked this question. i'm going out to california next week to do a story on this very thing, about how to build a sales force. >> let's move on to the next question. this is about expanding your

network. >> what is the best way to cold reach out to potential clients that, through contacts that you may not have and find people at companies that you would want to reach out to? >> yeah. this is hard, right? cold calls are some of the hardest things to do. eric, is there a good way to get in there when you don't have a preexisting relationship or a friend of a friend? >> i'll tell what you people do to me now. linkedin, i get hit up all the time. people looking to present their product to me. it's difficult to get me in my office. there's 92 people, my assistant and me. if you go to linkedin, i'm screening that. i think now it's being creative with how you get to the decision-maker. >> let's move on to the next one. this is a question about keeping your all important sales staff motivated. >> i would ask for tips on their strategies where they've grown from a small startup like five

people to a large company. >> the way to keep a sales rep engaged is sales game i have indication. make a game out of it. if you know it takes six to 12 months to close a deal, there's steps that can be small victories. assign points to them, give people badges, maybe a silver rep, a bronze rep as you move along the way. >> that's a good idea. >> our sales guys, it's also you have a timing effect. maybe one is coming in and closing from six months ago. but until you get to the point where they have that built-up pipeline, keeping them motivated is all about them understanding what the end goal is, what the end result is. like greg just said, along the way, there's merits along the way. we got a financial packet in. this is great, what's the next step. we've got to come in for a discovery day so they can meet the team. once those things happen, there are positive things along the way to reward. maybe not financial compensation

but some kind of merit badge or an encouragement tool or hey, we got this far, let's celebrate over x, y, z. >> greg, how do you figure out the right balance between commission and salary? >> well, depends on the economics much your sale, of course. if you're selling a big ticket item with a high gross margin, you can afford a salary and hang in there during that long sales cycle. but if you're a transactional sale, a small dollar amount, the gross margin might be tighter. you want to keep costs variable and go with more margins. >> say you're giving higher commissions, a lot of the salespeople, they're selling a lot of products. how do you keep them excited about your product? >> in our environment, it is -- i love a salesperson that sits across from me and says pay me commission not a salary. i know that's a go getter, you got to love that guy or gal. it's the enthusiasm. your carrot has to be the biggest carrot hanging out

there. if you're going to have external salespeople working for you or independent contracting sales tools. we do know there are companies that use these device that is are out there. i like my team to be internal. if you're out there, you better have the biggest carrot out there. >> thank you so much, eric and greg for coming on. i think hiring a sales team is so incredibly important and really tricky how to keep them motivated. i appreciate your insight on all of this. if you have a question for our experts, go to our website, open forum.com/your business. once you get there, hit the ask the show link to submit a question for our panel. again, that website is open forum.com/your business. or if you'd rather, you can e-mail your questions or comments. that address is your business@msnbc.com. in today's technology-driven mobile world, snagging more

customers doesn't have to be tedious. here are more ways to snag more customers. 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 per click ads. these advertisements can help you bring your target awe jens to your website. >> content marketing. blogs are ways to post useful material on social media platforms and customer forums. this helps more customers learn about you and helps build back links to bring more traffic to your site. four, mobile optimaization. 35% of all web traffic comes from a mobile device. make sure you have a mobile

accessible friendly version of your website. >> finally, public relations. it helps with generating media coverage and keeping your website ranking higher within the search engines. looking to get your business information and offerings in front of more customers, check out our website of the week. it provide an easy to use online dashboard to manage your price list, menus and services from one place. you can automatically update listings. the site also allows you to promote and share any changes to your listings on four square and trip adviser websites. thanks for joining me today. i hope you learned a thing or two. you can find all of the segments online as well. just go to open forum.com/your business. we also put up some web exclusive content with more information to help your business grow. we're on twitter as well. it's @msnbc your biz.

don't forget to become a fan of the show. next time, americans and their concerns about safety have spawned the prepper movement. entrepreneurs have moved in to serve that constituency. >> our demographic is people who want to be able to be comfortable and survive if there's 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. you're comfortable here. it's where you email, shop, even bank. but are you too comfortable? these days crime can happen in a few keystrokes. american express can help protect you. with intelligent security that learns your spending patterns,

and can alert you to an unusual charge instantly. so you can be a member of a more secure world. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. it's the end of the year show. only the good things. >> that's what we're all about. >> we're never about good things. we reserve it for good things. i think we can put together -- i think we have enough. i know we have enough. it's a question of whether we have enough actually good ones