they're in the forefront of the maker economy, renting the high tech tools to entrepreneurs wanting to create the next big thing. and we go down to the floor of the advertising specialty convention to see some wacky ways you can promote your company. 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.

hey there, everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg and welcome to "your business." maker spaces. they come in all shapes and sizes but they all have one thing in common. accessibility to tools, to education, and collaboration where inventors, hobbyists and hackers can all come together oobtd experiment, and make things, all under one roof. for entrepreneurs, a maker space can level the playing field. so that they can now make prototypes just like bigger companies do, but at a price point similar to a monthly gym membership. we recently spent the day at makerhaus in seattle, where we met a bunch of entrepreneurs using the space to make everything from portable hydroponic gardens to extension

cords, custom bikes and guitars. >> never before in history has it been easier to create a scale of business as it is today. whether you're coding or whether you're looking on making a physical product, you can start something and scale at a pace that's never been seen before. >> you know that product idea you scribbled on a piece of paper and then threw in a junk drawer because you didn't know how to make it? well then listen up. there's a new breed of highly innovative entrepreneurs called makers who are at the leading edge of a growing do it yourself movement. they're taking their ideas from napkin sets to products, faster than ever, using a place called a maker space. >> any time you put powerful tools in the hands of regular people they suddenly will find uses for the technology that we've never thought of. so our job as technologists is to make technology cheap, easy,

and convenient. put them in the hands of regular people, democratize the technology and then make it easy for them to figure out what that technology is for. >> woodworking, welding, laser cutting, 3-d printing, now anyone willing to pay a small membership fee can gain access to sophisticated tools like these that can quickly catapult an idea beyond a hobby. taking people out of the isolation of their garages, and into the collaborative atmosphere of a maker space. so you describe it as like a gym with tools. and as a member, if you don't need wood or metal shop access, it's $98 a month. if you're looking to do woodworking and metal working then it's $189 per month. none of these members have any contracts with them because we realize that people may just have one project that they're really trying to work through, and it may only take a month for them. >> designers ellie and mike opened makerhaus in seattle, washington. because they were frustrated by the lack of access to tools and

prototyping equipment for their own projects. both former employees at large, fortune 500 companies, professional tools were something they took for granted, and realized were a barrier to entry for smaller firms and entrepreneurs that had great ideas. >> so to be able to have access to something like this and compete at that level with those companies without having that financial constraint on their business is huge. >> new maker entrepreneurs actually making physical products at makerhaus include jeremy hanson. and his own grown garden dotcom a hydroponic greenhouse intended to grow food in homes and restaurants. and tailor sizemore and his custom bicycle company. another small business calling makerhaus home is scott johnson's hand crafted vintage inspired wallingford guitar company. ♪ before joining the maker space, it used to take 60-plus hours to

make just one guitar with his limited access to tools and a decent space to work. now, with everything he needs under one roof, he has a lot more time to spend on building his start-up guitar brands. >> what took him 60 hours, now that he has access to a rueter and some of these more professional tools, you know, has been reduced to i think like 20 or so hours. which is a huge increase to his margins. >> i've actually gotten a lot done here. >> and for johnson, access to the maker community has been a huge help solving design problems. >> sometimes someone just walks up, and they're like, why couldn't you try doing it this way? it's like, i never thought about it before. that's awesome. and it's part of it's just the proximity and part of it is the type of person that makerhaus attracts. >> the great thing about maker house is that they're not only tools that you can use, but really it's a tribe. what you're joining is a club where everybody contributes. that's the great thing about this space.

>> kevin fall loves bouncing ideas off fellow makerhaus members to see which of his electric products resonates the most with them. reimagining the extension cord, his business has all the tools and equipment at his command so he's free to design without worrying how he's going to tackle each step. >> we can basically start with an idea in the morning and have a prototype at night. so we do everything in here. we'll use lathes, we'll use mills, we'll use the wood shop. and then we'll grow parts using the 3-d printers so that we can custom design just about anything we need. >> i think of this one as magnum p.i.s. >> the ceo of 3-d printing company maker bot is the ultimate maker entrepreneur success story. he and a couple of friends got to the at a hacker space they created in brooklyn, new york, and cobbled together a 3-d printer. now, the company is at the hub of the 3-d maker revolution. >> we got our prototype to work, we quit our jobs and started

makerbot. our goal was to change the game and bring 3-d printing to people. >> now, makerbot 3-d printers are part of the standard equipment at most maker spaces, and he is the maker they all want to be. >> you can become an entrepreneur, express your ideas physically and if they catch on in the world, you've got a business. >> getting new customers shouldn't be your only focus. retaining your current clients is just as important, if not more important, so here now are five tactics for increasing brand loyalty from entrepreneur.com. one, feature your fans in your content. putting them in the spot light shows you appreciate them. two, take customer advice. create polls and offer incentives so that your fans will participate. if you end up making a change based on the feedback, give them credit for coming up with the idea. three, give upgrades. if they're actively engaging

with your brand, they'll likely be great vocal cheerleaders to their family and friends. so send them something they haven't tried from your product line, or if you have a premium service give them the upgrade for free. four, be there when customers need you. your blog and social media may not be your primary channel for customer service, but make sure the people in charge of those mediums are capable of helping your clients solve common problems. and five, be more convenient than anyunelse. find ways to make your customers' life easier so that they'll always be coming back for more. back in 2008 we first told you about blake, an incredible entrepreneur and the man who created toms shoes. his idea was to give back. for every pair of toms shoes sold, a pair goes to a needy child. since then, he's branched out, taking that socially conscious entrepreneurial spirit to other endeavors. nbc's jenna bush haig are recently caught up with blake as he attempts to enter yet another

new market. >> blake gets shoes. he gets business. he gets big ideas. we first met blake a couple of years after he founded toms. a company dedicated to giving back. for every pair of shoes sold, a child in need receives a pair. the company later expanded in eye wear. once again aiming to help people through a model blake termed one for one. but while toms thrived blake did something that few successful ceos would ever do. he took a break from the business. >> so you had the sabbatical. >> yes. >> but you just couldn't stay away. >> i knew i wanted to come back and kind of re-engage. but i also needed a new battle. a new challenge. >> and so blake came to the south by southwest festival to reveal his new challenge. coffee. >> i had kind of this ah-ha moment. we can, you know, extract this coffee and buy this coffee from local farmers, creating economic

development, and every time, you know, we bring the coffee out, we'll invest in water systems in the surrounding areas. so we'll sell coffee, and we'll give water. >> for every bag or cup of coffee sold, toms will provide clean water to help someone in need. allowing people to make one for one giving part of their daily life. people buy shoes if they need a new pair of shoes. >> sure. >> people buy sunglasses when they need a new pair. >> yes. >> people buy coffee every day. >> yes. >> i've been saying in the office start our day by improving someone else's. there's very few things in our life where we can be really purposeful and have a sense of mindfulness every time we consume something. >> blake isn't trying to take on coffee giants like starbucks and duncan doughnuts. but appealing to a more niche customer. the coffee can be purchased online. but also bought firsthand at whole foods. and it's a newly opened toms coffee shop in austin. a place that blake hopes will foster community. >> we're looking at as part of our, you know, kind of giving

philosophy at toms by creating these community spaces, already give back to the community. >> as toms continues to give and grow, the company and blake show no signs of slowing down. is there an overall goal or an end game and is there a point where you're going to say, okay i'm done? >> i don't think i ever stop, because i love what i do. i love the impact we're having. and i think that we can have even a greater impact in so many different industries that we're not even in yet. >> while the next big idea is brewing blake wants people to drink up and keep giving back. >> this is to starting your day by improving someone elses. >> what a nice day to start our day. >> we've got so much more coming to help your business. we'll share some online tools to grow your company. and we'll have advice on bootstrapping to increase valuation. and i head down to the floor of the advertising specially institute show to see some inventive and unique items to promote your 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. if you're on a limited budget i always give people the advice, get the prototype made and make sure it can be mass produced. and that is the most important place to put your money. there, and also in the packaging and the marketing of it.

you've got to be different. you've got to make it stand out, and worry about the patent and protecting yourself later. you've got to spend the money to be first to market. >> let's catch up now with what's hot in the world of entrepreneurship with three things you need to know about small business this week. the weather finally got better in march, and so did small business confidence. the nfib's small business optimism index was up two points last month to 93.4. the survey also showed an upward trend in expected sales and future demands. another survey showing that despite fears about the affordable care act, small business hiring remains steady. payroll services surveyed 3500 firms with 300 or fewer employees. 26% of those companies added employees in march. 20% cut jobs while about half were holding steady. and maria contreras sweet was sworn in by vice president joe biden this week as the new head of the small business administration. contreras sweet was born in

mexico, and immigrated to the u.s. when she was 5. she founded the pro-america bank which helped fund hispanic-owned businesses. swag. whether you know it as souvenirs, free gifts or promotional products, no matter what you know it as, it can't be beat when it comes to getting the attention of new clients. imprinting your company logo or message is easy to do on just about anything these days and we headed over to the advertising specialty institutes awacky product show to get an up close look at the latest unique items for promos with a purpose. >> welcome to the asi show. down these rows you'll find all of the t-shirts, the mugs, the pens, the hats that you can give out to your customers. but we are here today to find the most interesting, whackiest thing that will help your company stand out. come on. you have one of the most original products i've seen yet today. show me what it is. >> this is the revolution of the touchscreen glove.

these things are awesome. what you do is you throw your hand in here. you sync it with your phone and as you're walking down the street when your phone rings you might have your phone in your wallet -- sorry, it might be in your jacket, in your purse, it rings you press this button over here and you can actually take a phone call on your glove. i'm not kidding. it is wild. volume up, volume down. you got all the controls here. you can hang up on your friend afterwards, see you later, bye. and you're laughing. >> it's so original and for the company whose logo is right there, everyone is going to be looking at it. >> you're 100% right about that. it's great visibility. it's tech savvy. it's cool. it's funky. people that have their logo on here are going to have their brand associated with a really funky idea. >> it's great. you're selling jack daniel's? >> i wish we were selling jack daniel's. no we're selling t-shirts. our company t-shirts and we package them in a way that makes it more interesting for the end user. >> this is a t-shirt right here? >> this is a t-shirt. >> you got to stick it in water or anything? >> no water. just unwrap.

it's going to have wrinkles, of course. just wash a couple times and it looks like new. >> hamburger. this is crystal for those not from the south, southern white castle, and you know, t-shirt. we made it look like a hamburger. they gave them out at about 250 restaurants all over the south. >> this is creative. all right. i'm taking this. see you. >> see you later. thank you. >> i have never seen anything like this before. >> personalized customized brand. so color process so anything you want on here, all the way to full color picture we can get that for you. >> are companies using this to give out to people to wrap presents with or using it to wrap their own presents? >> at times using it to wrap their own presents for corporate gifting programs or fund-raising programs. >> that's great. it's not just wrapping paper you have here. you have chocolate -- >> die-cut boxes. these right here can be imprinted both on the outside and the inside. color imprint with whatever you need on that. and then we produce the sleeves for the candy bar paper right

there. >> nobody is forgetting that company name. >> personalized. >> if you're looking for someone to light up, this is the booth to come to. >> we try to have a good time. >> what's your best seller here? >> the best seller that we have in the booth today would be the light-up the times. and you will find these at sporting events. >> this is my favorite i got to say. >> you look the tambourine. >> it goes with my hat. what are these? >> these are light up ice cubes. if you put them in your drink you'll always know where it is. >> what's fun about them is that they're light up ice cubes. >> exactly. they don't help chill your drink but they're easy to find. >> and do you have a glass that these go with? >> just so happens. we always have martini glass close by. >> that is fantastic. cheers. and if you really want to get noticed, what do you think of this? there's always the t-shirt gun. hoe! there are countless online tools and apps that can help you run

your business more efficiently and profitably so we went out and asked small business owners to share with us what tools they're using that might help your company. >> buffer is an amazing app that you've been using for the past calendar year. it allows us to automate our social media scheduling for twitter, facebook, google plus and allows us to idea when we have the highest conversion, the highest engagement and allows for a complete schedule so our social media is always active. >> there's a unique tool we find called i spin notch that allows you to check competitors keywords and marketing budget. allows you to understand the keywords to attract the same customers. >> if you're just getting started with social media i recommend social strategy builder dotcom. every great social media service actually starts with a strategy. so before you go out and tell your story, build it online with this easy drag and drop tool.

it will be the simplest thing you do all week. >> really good app that we use is rapportive, when we're trying to get in contact with somebody that is a little bit difficult and we can't use linked in or something else we install rapportive. >> so much of the marketing we do is with video and it takes a little bit of effort to make it look super polished, so a great app or website that i use is called five er f-i-v-e-r-r. you've got to really sort through, you can find people doing cool things, including stingers and graphics, stuff that will make your video and online marketing shock. >> a key aspect is customer service and one app that we found very valuable and that's camtasia. it allows you to record a screen path on your computer and we send that to our customers when they have a question. so we are no longer really typing customer service

responses. we take a screen camp and customers love watching the video. it's a medium they're used to seeing. they're used to that communication, and they're used to acting on that information. >> it's time now to answer some of your business questions. let's get our board of directors in here to help us. carol roth is an on-air contributor at cnbc. she's a former investment banker and entrepreneur and an investor. and john jantsch is a marketing consultant best known for creating the duct tape marketing system. his new upcoming book is called duct tape selling. think like a marketer, sell like a superstar. great to see both of you guys. >> good to be back, j.j. >> let's get to the first question. this is about the state of your finances. >> everyone tells you you have to look at financials. how often should you review your financials? should it be monthly? quarterly? or every day? >> that's a good question. i'm glad she's starting with the basics that she needs to look at

her financials. too many people ignore them. how often? >> i like to sit and watch the money come in every day. but that's not realistic for everywin. i think there's a microand a macro answer here. if you do a lot of transactions, if you have a restaurant, you have a retail company that you have transactions coming in every day you have to make sure that you have those cash balances taken care of every day. from a broader standpoint you want to be closing out your books for sure, every month. looking for trends it's very difficult for a small business to find trends a weekly, daily year over year to see what's changing in your margins. that's going to give you a really good sense of where your business is at. >> how often do you think you should be projecting you should be projecting forward? >> well, it's always dangerous asking financial questions of a marketing person. but, you know, my view on it

actually is that it's just one piece of the overall business puzzle and you actually need to be building -- there probably are financial indicators that need to be part of how you measure your success for your year, for your vision, for the business and for all growth. you need to be looking -- you first need to understand which one of those indicators are showing you're meeting your objectives. but i also take a view that you need to be looking at these not as just the owner, but how can you use your financial information as way to build a stronger culture, to share with everybody on the team what the picture of the business is how profit is made, how expenses really erode at your ability to pay greater salaries. and so i take a view that it's not simply just a bookkeeping or accounting function. i think it's really an overall marketing and maybe even cultural function that says you should really be looking at it on certainly a monthly basis, but teaching it on a quarterly basis. >> absolutely. because this is the way you can set goals. you can go back to your team and

say we didn't meet this goal. and if we didn't, why didn't we, and now let's go back to the functions of our company and see where we need to be paying more attention. >> and not only your team, but if you have lenders or investors, they're going to be wanting to visit your financials on a regular basis. see how you meet your goals. >> let's move on to the next question. this is about the early days of your company. >> ideally, what's the best way to boot strap your company to build valuation so you don't have to give away too much of the company early on? >> this is a good question for you because a lot of this has to do with marketing and selling. >> yeah, the way you build valuation is to get profitable customers. if somebody -- this is a very specific question, don't have enough information on, but my pad answer for that is if somebody says i don't have cash to throw at stuff, is to really start first off, understand what it is that you do that's valuable and unique. and go out and start building relationships with potential strategic partners.

other businesses don't always want a piece of the action. there are other businesses that want to partner with you because they think what you do is really cool and unique and they'd like to introduce you to their clients and build a whole team of those kind of people, and that's a greet way to get exposure to somebody else's market who already has some trust, even though you may be getting started in boot strapping. >> that's a great idea. >> you have to know what creates value in your business. paying customers helps create value. sometimes you have the opportunity to sell first. it's a way to test out the product, see if there is a viable market before you invest a lot in it. and a lot of companies are going the way of crowd funding in things like kick start, or there's a company called oculus ripped that sold to facebook for $2 billion. they went out to potential customers getting their buy-in and get using that capital to go ahead and expand their product and facebook liked it so much, they plunked down $2 billion for it. >> you've proven your market,

right? you've shown that people are willing to pay for this, that they're interested in it. >> i was going to say, i'd further add that that's a great way to develop a product period. we do that all the time, to collaborate with your customers. because a lot of times, marketers or companies will build stuff and hope somebody wants it. but much better approach is to have somebody want something that you're building, while you're building it. >> okay. the next question comes from the owner of a software company. it's about finding partners. >> i've entered into a partnership with a telesales firm and a marketing agency combined with our crm to offer this as a package to our customer base. the question is what are the pros and cons of this approach and what might be the risks in doing this? >> he's asking it a few minutes too late since he's already entered into the partnership. >> i think the pros are pretty clear. i'm going to talk a little bit more about the risks. the risks are when you partner with somebody, you're taking on them as a liability. if they fall down, whether it's

from a customer service standpoint or a pr standpoint or whatnot, that reflects on your business. you have to be really clear up front about who's doing what and making sure that you have the right partners. i know i said this probably three or four years ago on the program, but you want to date somebody before you get married. so go into these partnerships very slowly and try them out. but also be very clear about roles and responsibility. who owns the ip and what happens if it goes south, because when you're good friends, it's very easy to come up with the divorce decree, so to speak. put that prenup in place first. very difficult to do that once you have the relationship that's fallen apart. >> john, is there any way to make it clear to your customers that we are three different companies, so if something goes wrong with one of your partners, it doesn't reflect on you, or no? >> yeah, there's a challenge with that, because what you're really trying -- i mean, if somebody's going to buy from you, they need to be confident that you have a unified approach and that you're all on the same

page and that you can, in fact, deliver -- because the solution that he proposed or that kind of combination, there's probably one company out there they can buy that from. so what he's doing is piecing together something that frankly i think has a lot of great opportunities. obviously the risks carol talked about exist, but that company i would suggest is going to be much more nimble in how they can respond and react and change and grow with customers, and so the real positive with that is you can have a very small kind of start-up company that can partner with some other folks that are already proven and already kind of down the road and it can be a really great way to lift you up and get you into opportunities that on your own wouldn't even exist for you. but certainly, you want to make sure that first off, you all have the same belief system and the same values and you all want to treat the customer the same way, because that's the only way to have this unified. >> and be clear on who that point person is, because that's where i see this really breaking down in a package from a customer service standpoint. >> carol and john, thank you so

much for all of your insight. really appreciate it. we'd like to check out twitter to see what people are saying about small business. "usa today" small business columnist rhonda abrams tweets some sound advice -- a start-up needs a good board of directors. using social media to become a resource for things other than what you sell shows the customer that you want to deliver value. and serial entrepreneur with this wisdom. respect your competitors. don't envy them. envy will bias you to be like them. respect will help you stay true to yourself. to learn more about today's show, all you have to do is click on our website. it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of today's segments plus some web exclusive content with more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter. and please follow us on facebook

and we're on instagram, too. next week, a show dedicated to using the tools of the 21st century to compete in the marketplace. we'll show you how a bar in san diego is using data from a drinking game to gauge -- customers really want. sean wyclef, who disrupted the movie taking business with innovating. until then, 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. the gender gap on equal pay. on wednesday, republicans blocked the paycheck fairness act from coming to a vote in the senate. it's a bill that's aimed at providing more protections from pay discrimination for workers, but it fell six votes short that the supermajority actually needed to bring it to the senate floor for consideration. >> this fog of filibuster, we can't even get to a majority vote on how to make sure women get equal pay for equal work. no wonder people are