her new yoga company got the attention of the press but she wasn't quite ready for prime-time. what did she do wrong? and meet the preteen bow tie designer who turned his pint sized passion for fashion into a booming business. all that and more coming up next on "your business." ♪ small businesses are revitalizing the economy and american express open is here to help. that's why we are proud to present "your business" on

msnbc. ♪ hi there, everyone, i'm j.j. ramberg and welcome to "your business." when bizzie gold launched her fitness brand buti yoga, her number one priority was getting pr. she was really good at getting pre press, but her brand-new business wasn't quite prepared for that kind of exposure. so instead of having a company built on a house of cards, bizzie set out to fix the infrastructure of her business so that the next time there was an influx of press she'd be ready for it. ♪ soon after she started her los angeles based fitness company buti yoga, owner bizzie gold got an opportunity most founders only dream about.

>> just my little kind of outreach got me a huge feature in "self" magazine and we were still a teeny tiny little company. had this big future. >> it's the kind of promotion you can't buy. an entire spread in a national magazine. with readers exactly in her target market. this could be a dream come true. a game changer. well, unfortunately for bizzie, it was neither. >> as soon as i got booked for that it was that like pang of like, oh, no. i wasn't prepared. >> before starting her company, bizzie was a yoga instructor and had a background in both pr and marketing. so when it came to launching her business, she played to her strengths, which were developing her programs, and then getting the word out there. >> my plans, they weren't revenue based. they weren't numbers based. they were more pr platform strategies. >> but it was her weaknesses which turned this great plan into a great missed opportunity. >> i wasn't prepared, i didn't have a dvd.

i was doing teacher trainings but it was on a much smaller scale than i do now. i totally put the cart before the horse. >> when all those people read the magazine and came to her website, she had nothing to offer them. nothing to sell them. no call to action. they came, they saw, and then -- >> all this website traffic, i had all the numbers to say look i had all these people on my website. did i monetize anything? nope. did i capture any e-mail addresses? >> so nothing. >> nothing. >> all of these visitors wasted. >> but wasted in terms of, not capturing information from them, not tracking any data. not having a product to sell that first time that you have that appearance. >> it was a hard pill to swallow and a big lesson in running a business. now, there were a lot of things bizzie was doing right. after all, she was hot enough to capture the attention of "self" magazine in the first place. to see what it was all about, i did a short workout with her that left me breathless. >> come to a static hold drop

that right arm behind your back. push through, open up the chest. now you're going to circle the hips, you're going to lift and circle through. lift and circle. >> her unique methods which include a combination of yoga, plyometrics and tribal dance, got some high profile celebrity support early on. julia roberts, jennifer love hewitt, the kind of people that other people want to follow. >> a celebrity that comes on board and supports what you're doing, it definitely has a big impact on how the public views what you've created. >> but after she realized she wasn't prepared to capitalize on the growing interest in her company, bizzie started to change things. in essence, she had to as she said, get her two week mba. >> i basically had to start all over again. we had all these great things on the outside and superficially everyone thought wow, this is growing, it's successful. but on the inside, when you're in the office on a day-to-day basis, it was a, i don't want to say disaster, because we got a

lot accomplished but it was not a well-oiled machine like it is now. >> the first step in creating that well-oiled machine was rebuilding the website. which looked fabulous to the eye, but was a total dead end for potential customers. with no functionality for e-commerce or capturing e-mails. >> because i started off with this cheap website, i was like oh, just throw something up not realizing that's the bread and butter of your business and it's the skeleton that you have to build everything onto and if you don't have a good skeleton, the whole thing is going to collapse. so, it's been a process to rebuild the website or change this and try to piecemeal it all together. >> with the new website that was capable of scaling as her business grew, bizzie developed several complementary products including a workout dvd, meal plans for weight loss, and a clothing line. >> having that marketing automation software built in where you're capturing e-mails, upselling every time you have a product, or informing people, hey, we have this product or hey there's a workshop here, it's so

important. >> the next step in her mba crash course was taking a closer look at her company's customer relationship management system or crm. integrating crm software in the fold of her business was eye opening allowing bizzie to create campaigns to track and measure the performance of her products. now, data was no longer the enemy, it was her friend. >> i was not a data person. i was not a numbers person. i wasn't the kind of person that was like, yay, a spreadsheet. no! now, my spreadsheets are my life. and your cumulative totals and daily averages, those are the things that really help your business grow. >> now, when this fast-growing business, rated the number two global fitness trend gets a press hit -- >> what is buti? >> buti is a fusion of yoga,

tribal dance, and plometrics. >> they're ready for it. >> thegrio.com, part of our nbc universal family is celebrating black history month with its grio 100. it's a list of black leaders in fields like health, education, pop culture and entrepreneurship who are making history. one of them is fashionable preteen mo bridges. he started making bow ties when he was 9 years old because he thought they made him look good. he turned that talent into a business, mo's bows. that's now generating thousands of dollars in revenue. nbc's lester holt has the story. >> talented, precocious, well dressed. >> my fall collection. >> reporter: 11-year-old mosiah bridges is that and a whole lot more. >> i'm nbt, the next big thing. >> don't laugh until you've heard his story. mo, as he likes to be called, is the creative force behind mo's bows.

he makes and markets bow ties. and in the last two years has sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of his own handmade, and colorful, designs. why bow ties? >> well, bow ties, they make me look good and feel good, and they just give me that spark inside. >> how did you one day decide i would look so great in a bow tie? >> because you know, ladies love chubby cheeks. so i decided to just get a bow tie, and rock it. >> this trendy sixth grader has been writing his own rules of preteen fashion since he first put on a tie for a trip to the neighborhood play ground. >> i was 3, and that was when my mom started allowing me to dress how i wanted to dress. >> so you would wear ties just for formal occasions? >> yes, i would wear ties to ride my bike and i would also wear ties just to go play on the playground. >> like i said, formal occasions? >> yes. >> his great grandmother, a seamstress, taught him how to sew. and a business was born.

you could buy mo's bows at retail stores in several states. and also, all around the world, via the internet. >> do you want to get beverages? >> his mom refers to herself as his mom-ager. >> thank you, mom. >> you're welcome. >> raising an 11-year-old. >> take the garbage out, please. >> now? >> and managing a budding fashion icon. >> this is absolutely a family business. between myself, my mom, my sisters, and granny, and of course mo we have been doing it since 2011. so for about two years now. >> we say mo is the ceo of mo's bows but momma is the ceo of mo. >> mo often gives his ties fun names. this one is g.i. bow. in a world of neckties he's determined to change the tastes of american men one neck at a time. >> would this work or would this be over the top? >> it would work. >> mo finds much of his inspiration at the local fabric store. he has a fine eye for detail,

and for what sells. >> i think this one will be good. >> what works for me, he thinks, is this chevron pattern. >> it's me? >> yes. >> you going to name it the lester? >> mm-hmm? >> you promise? >> yes. >> all right. >> you heard it. a promise straight from the mouth of the next big thing, and bow ties are just a start. >> i want to start my clothing line by the time i'm 20. >> so you're going to get in fashion business? >> yes. >> so we're talking beyond ties, suits, sweaters. >> beyond ties. like fubu, michael kors. >> mo is going to be up there with them some day? >> yes. >> businesses of all kinds go through growing pains. running a start-up when it's just a few of you wearing all kinds of hats and sitting right next to each other is quite different than running a mature company with more employees. so how do you get from point "a" to point "b"? robert sutton is a professor of management science and engineering at stanford. he cofounded the institute of

design and the stanford technology ventures program. he is also co-author of the new book "scaling up excellence: getting to more without settling for less." great to see you. >> great to see you, j.j. >> i hear this all the time. i mean i went through it. you're a start-up. you're sitting next to each other. you don't have to have conferences because you're right next to each other. >> right, right. >> and suddenly you hire all these employees and you need systems in place. >> it's a tragedy but it's inevitable. >> it's inevitable. so let's talk about how you get there. you talk about spreading the right mind-set. >> yeah, so, -- so a lot of times when entrepreneurs start a company they're focused on just growth, growth, growth. but one of the things that we saw across our studies is the ones that scale well, is they slow down to spread sort of inject people with the right way of thinking. not just running up the numbers as fast as possible. a good example is actually facebook. which from the beginning mark zuckerberg would talk about his perspective and his strategy. and now that there are thousands of people, when you're brought on as a new engineer they don't

just throw you in to position. they spend a full six weeks having you work on different little jobs. and kind of learning the new fast and break things mind-set. >> it's interesting, right? because when you're small you just kind of assume everyone thinks the way you do. >> right. >> but you need to institutionalize that so as you grow new people feel the same way. >> and it's amazing how quickly it happens. one of the other start-ups that we followed, citrus lane which went from six to 20, mariah finley is the ceo. she described to us, we used to be in my house sitting around the kitchen table, now i got 20 people, i got to talk to them all the time about what our goals are, what our strategy is so we're all on the same page. >> so she might not talk to everyone as it continues to grow but you need those managers to talk. >> right. >> then you talk about eliminating bad apple behaviors. but not bad apples. you don't talk about getting rid of people but behaviors that are happening. or both. >> to me it's actually both. >> okay. >> there's a lot of evidence that to spread excellence that bad is stronger than good.

so for example if you just have one team member who's destructive in some ways, incompetent, nasty, sort of pick your poison, lazy, your productivity goes down, performance 30% or 40% so you got to get rid of those bad apples, and bad behavior. like one of my favorite bad behaviors is you have a meeting with your top team and they all look at their cell phones and there was a company, and this is not very nice, but i think it works, that i just got done doing it actually a gig with yesterday and the founder what he does is when they take out their cell phones he takes them away from them and puts them in a bucket. nobody is bringing their cell phones to meetings anymore. they're actually listening to what's going on. that's probably a little bit hard. >> i think that's a smart idea. >> nipping bad behavior in the bud and he described one of the reasons that finally drove him to do it is they were talking about doing an acquisition and one of his board -- one of his top team members voted for it, and didn't -- >> didn't even know what it was. >> so no more cell phones. >> gosh. create hot emotions.

what's that mean? >> so, so it turns out that when you want to spread ideas across a company that's part of scaling, too, you want to spread good behaviors, good beliefs and behaviors, if you just make a rational argument it turns out that statistics show that stories don't work, the statistics don't work, stories do. >> mm-hmm. >> so you got to spread stories and get people emotionally cranked up so we say you've got to sort of get the hot cause going. get people excited about this job, absolutely fabulous steve jobs, he always declare an enemy to get people sort of cranked up emotionally. and then he would sort of guide them to what some of the specific things they would do. so, hot cause, cool solution. and you want to get the emotions going. and then you get -- move that to action. >> thank you so much for coming on the program. good luck with the book. >> thanks so much. as your company grows it's hard to keep track of what everyone is doing. but it is important that you do. not to micromanage them, but to ensure that people are spending time on the right things, and that you're not blindsided when

something you think is really important, that they had put on the back burner, is not complete. well our app of the week can help you with this. week done is an interactive platform where people can record what they've gotten accomplished and what's still on the to-do list. easy to read status reports are e-mailed to managers laying out an overview of the week. this way, you can better assign tasks and plan out future work loads. tech mistakes can be costly. affecting not only your budget but also your productivity. here now are five common mistakes you might be making right now, courtesy of ink.com. one, creating passwords you can remember. use a manager like dash lane or last pass that will create complex combinations and then fill them in for you automatically. two, using an older version of microsoft word. the software now runs in the cloud and saves documents as you type. three, not using a legitimate smartphone case.

switch your slim little cover to a protective hard shell case. if you drop your phone and it survives you'll be glad you made the change. four, wearing earbuds during work. your ear canals weren't designed to have something stuffed into them all day long. invest in a good set of headphones. and five, removing your computer's virus checker. the scanners are annoying and slow down your computer. but, a virus could keep you offline for days. when we come back, more things you need to know to run a successful small business. including, how to maintain a company culture when bringing in new people, and how to use social media to market globally. and a salty tale about the importance the story behind your small business plays in attracting and keeping customers. 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. we had ups and downs. i could tell you some of the downs were pretty bad. and it took a tremendous amount of courage, it took a lot of fortitude. it took a lot of thought, it took a lot of strength. and it took a lot of work and i'll tell you, if you're an entrepreneur, it means taking away from your families. it means taking away from things that you like to do. it means total, absolute

commitment. you can't do it part time. >> let's catch up with what's going on in the world of entrepreneurship with three things you need to know about small business this week. the obama administration has again delayed some of the affordable care act regulations for some small businesses. the mandate that companies with between 50 and 99 employees provide health care has now been delayed to 2016. small business confidence in the economy is still in the upswing. the national federation of independent business says its optimism index was up slightly in january to 94.1. this is the third consecutive increase. and democratic senator maria cantwell of washington state is the new chair of the senate small business and entrepreneurship committee. she takes over from louisiana senator mary landrieu. really successful companies have a relationship with their customers. one that's about more than just selling them something. it's about connecting with them. and the way to start that relationship is to share your story. a bit ago we discovered that you

can get customers excited about something as ordinary as salt when you give them insight into your passion behind it. ♪ >> a red salt from hawaii for pork, seafood. also for maybe fruits. mango salsa. >> mark bitterman has changed the way people think about salt. >> when you have a couple of salts here, your smoked salt. >> yeah. >> your chocolate salt. >> it started with a trip overseas with his wife jennifer. >> one day i was just riding through the north of france and i stopped by a truck stop to get a good bite to eat. and i ordered a steak, and i was eating the steak and i just started to realize like, what in the world am i eating? this is completely wild. >> what drove mark wild was the exotic taste of locally produced salt that flavored his steak. >> i was like, well what's this salt? and he's like, this is salt from girond and this is where my nephew, the owner's nephew lives.

so i get on my motorcycle and go blazing out and find the salt, and meet the saltmaker, and i fell in love. >> that passion for regional salt soon grew in to a collection of salts from around the world. he and jennifer decided to make a business out of it. opening the meadow in portland, oregon. but how do you convince prospective customers that your salt is quite extraordinary, and very different from your common everyday table salt? in their case by getting the customers engaged through the story behind the condiment. so mark and jennifer started to add value to their brand by telling true personal stories about themselves and their products to their customers. >> someone walks in the door that you've never seen before, and you spend some time talking. and you start to feel your relationship and this connection. >> anne louise sterry is one of

their portland customers. >> he's on a motorcycle trip doing whatever he wants and he goes to this little friend of roadside restaurant. i want the romance of this. i want that in my life. >> the stories and word of mouth made the salts a phenomenon. a new york branch was opened in 2010, and the bitterman's enthusiasms caught on not only with home cooks, but with professional chefs as well. award winning chef, owner of the portland, oregon, restaurant paley's place, tossed out all of his supermarket salt after meeting mark. and he says his patrons immediately noticed the difference. >> the comments would come back saying, what did you do? how did you change this? what happened? the only thing i can attribute to is the different salt we're using. they can't put their finger on it but i know what happened. >> and this story adds charm and value to the products sold in the bittermans' meadows. >> over and over again people were converted. wow. we can't live without this now. it's changed our eating and our life.

it's huge. >> this kind of connection between owners and customers goes two ways. the bittermans listen to their customers just as enthusiastically as their customers listen to them. >> our restaurant supply business is a great example. we have restaurants coming into the store and they're asking with about all these different salts and saying, well, can we buy it for our restaurant? we say, sure. that happens again and again and again. >> by sharing their unique travel and food stories one-on-one with customers, the bittermans business has grown in ways they never anticipated. >> we don't do advertising. we think the real way to build a business is word of mouth. it's extraordinarily robust. it's very resilient and it works in ways you could never preticket. you don't define what your market is. who your customers are. they do. it's time now to answer some of your business questions.

let's get our board of directors in here to help. angela is the co-founder of savor the success, a business network of women entrepreneurs, she is also the co-founder and ceo of ohm aroma. and michael goldberg is a visiting assistant professor. he is the man behind an online course called beyond silicon valley, growing entrepreneurship in transitioning economies. let's get to the first question. the first one is about the internal challenges of growing your company. so one of the biggest things we're struggling with right now is our company's growing dramatically. we're trying to figure out about how we can maintain our existing company culture while bringing in three, four guys at a given time each month, and what's a proven model to maintain a company culture, keep it moving forward. >> i'm obsessed with company culture because it is the thing that keeps your company -- it's the glue that makes your company stick as you grow. savor the success has grown significantly quickly. how do you do that?

>> when you don't have time to keep training and the budget to hire a huge training company, the best way is to make sure your leaders share your company ethos and mission. and they're the ones that are really training the incoming employees. and i also find that if you can find employees that naturally can thrive in your company culture and who really believe in what you stand for, it's 50% there. >> you know, michael, i think a lot of entrepreneurs are so busy when they start out, they're just trying to get product out the door, work on their sales. they don't stop to think about what is the culture i'm creating, and that comes back to bite you when you're a bit bigger. >> i agree. and many people join startup companies because they want to work directly with founders. they want that rolling up sleeves and doing a little bit of everything. as you add more and more people, you begin to put more and more layers between the people you hire and the founders of the company. one of the keys even for companies that are beginning to grow, and you hear about the zappos of the country, you want to make sure the new people you

are hiring have access to those leaders. i think, as angela said, the leaders tend to set the ethos in the company culture. you want to figure out how to create a direct line for even the newest person on the totem pole to the founders of the company. >> next up, i question about getting the word out about your brand internationally. >> aside from the marketing strategy everyone uses, twitter and facebook, what is the cheapest, most effective way to market globally? >> so there's the gold key program through the export assistance center through the department of commerce. there's over 100 export assistance centers across the united states. and this is a great one-stop shop. the program is $700 and what they do they will set up meetings for you in the country that you want to and that's for a day of meetings. if you want an extra day it's a little bit more but that's a cost effective way to take advantage of a u.s. government funded program to take

advantage. there are trade missions that can be federal trade missions, state or even local. this is, i think, more expensive. it can be up to about $5,000 and they're not always particularly targeted at the industry you're in. there are sometimes opportunities that are tailored to specific industries. but trade missions are another way. i think the third thing i would say, all of our communities have great vibrant international folks who are from overseas that are local, and they can be great forms of contact to help you link into their communities where they came from. >> and finally this entrepreneur wants to know about reaching small customers. >> we sell a product that's great for local stores to grow their music community. how do we effectively reach all of those little locations when they're spread out all over the country? >> it's hard, right, angela? if you know you want to get into walmart, you have one target. you work on that. how do you reach so many little stores cost effectively? >> and especially music stores. i think with music stores because there aren't so many, the best way to do that is

actually for live listings is go through google and scrape their addresses, who owns the stores, and you can reach them effectively that way, hire interns. and the other thing with his product in particular it's so important that on his website it's such an experiential product, and most of us have experiential products, the most effective thing if you can get the stores to come onto your website and there's a video where it shows, in his case, a professional musician who is demoing the product from a to z, it will reach the target client much faster and more effectively. >> yeah, it's challenging. you don't have the time to drive across the country, though that would be fun. one of the things i've seen effective is writing articles. there are so many different opportunities and whether it's sort of on your own blog or this entrepreneur if there are people in the music business maybe reading about things. you can't necessarily say, here is about my product.

but maybe if you took a take on something around the industry, and maybe you're not even pushing your product directly as part of that article but then it's like, hey, this is written by this, the ceo of this company and here is a link to his company, you are adding something to these owners, you pique their interest. and then there's a link to the company you have and they'll find out more about your product. an indirect way to market your product by providing value in a written piece. >> and what about trade shows, angela? >> trade shows are more effective especially in his industry. the more niche it is, the more important it is to have a presence in trade shows. trade magazines are a great place to provide content to reach target clients. >> great. angela and michael, thank you so much for helping us out today. we love seeing you guys. thanks so much for joining us today. if you missed anything head over to our website. 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.

it's @msnbcyourbiz. do not forget to become a fan of the show on facebook. next week we head to startup grind, a conference that connects tech superstars with entrepreneurs hoping to follow in their footsteps. >> the reality of it is in 2014 there's got to be some sort of technology component to your business. >> we'll look at what you need to know to stay up to date with the latest tech trends. until then, i'm j.j. ramberg and, 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. our lead story tonight is an exclusive. you will not hear this story anywhere else. to get this story this week, we sent producers from the show basically to the end of the world. technically we just sent them to the end of the country. we sent them to the rio grande valley, the tippy toe of texas. it is so far south, it's south of mexico. if you want to get to chihuahua or tijuana in mexico, you go north from the rio grande valley in texas. it a really big place. you now how people say -- the state of texas is the size of france? rio grande grand valley is the size of