tv Your Business MSNBC June 7, 2014 2:30am-3:01am PDT
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she expected her security guard business to grow by 5%. to her surprise revenues sky-rocketed by more than 600%. how simply changing her perspective changed everything. coming up next on "your business." >> small businesses revitalizing the economy and american express open is here to help. that's why we are proud to present "your business" on msnbc.
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hi there everyone. i'm jj ramberg and welcome to "your business." growing your company has a lot to do with your skills and those of your employees, but it has just as much to do with attitude. i recently met the owner of a security guard company who showed me that a simple change in her perspective turned her slow growing company into a fast growing one. to jessica johnson who grew up in the bronx new york, there was no question that when her father died she had to take over johnson security bureau. the security guard company, his parents and then he had run for more than 50 years. >> the bronx has one of the highest unemployment rates for the entire state of new york and some of the higher rates across
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the country. it was incumbent upon me and my broth tear make a contribution back to the community that helped us. >> her mission was clear from day one. but her sights, well, they weren't set very high. at the time the company had 16 guards and she put together what she thought was an optimistic projection. 5% growth each year for five years. >> i didn't have the scope right. and i think that's what stops a lot of small businesses or at least keeps a lot of small businesses and entrepreneurs where they are is they don't realize the size of the opportunity that's out there. it's all about perspective. >> her perspective was way off. today she has 150 employees, and her revenue increased more than 600 times. a far cry from that 5%. so, what changed? well, walid has been with the company and here's how he describes it. >> we went from narrow vision to
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a very large vision. >> an adviser asked jessica what she would do if money were not an issue. >> that's when the light bulb went off. now since i would say about 2010 we have been working on all sin lin ders we have the realization it is much bigger. >> she started bidding on jobs they didn't think they would get. >> even when we didn't know what we were doing we were talking like we did. you know, they say fake it until you make it. we faked it for a long time. and then after a while we weren't faking it. >> early on when you guys were pitching big clients and you had not had many or any before, were you sitting around a conference table what are we doing? >> we didn't have a conference table. we had some -- we had a card table and folding chairs. it wasn't that complicated. we figured what did we have to lose. the worse they could do is tell us no. >> it was hard, tough, a lot of late night, some crying, a little laughing but we stuck to it and did it. and we figured if we could do
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this service why not try and go after that business. >> soon, someone didn't say no. and that was the beginning of this nonstop growth. >> they called us i believe it was on a wednesday, and said they wanted us to start the following monday. so we had to hire people, have them trained, have them certified with the site specific training and ready to work for the following monday. >> johnson security bureau went from 16 employees to 36 employees overnight. they expanded their services, providing both armed and unarmed guards. >> she went out and got the necessary certifications for johnson security, here in new york state as well as in other states for us to partner with other security firms. >> all of these changes meant they had to look hard at the way things were being done internally. >> lots of things had to -- i mean, i have a friend that has this saying if you can't change the people change the people so. there are people that started the trip with us that are no
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longer on this ride. because they didn't have the vision. >> we're constantly evolving from the employee handbook, policies and procedure, and coming with new ideas. >> jessica and the team are still out there pitching, and when i asked her how big the company can be, she told me this. >> i think this company can rival some of the largest security companies in the world. >> you were telling me right now i think this company can be as big as the biggest security companies in the world when you got here you said i think we could have 5% growth. that is a big change in attitude. >> it is a big change in attitude. but i've seen big things happen and i've seen big things happen in a small amount of time. why not. >> jessica's company is doing well because she figured out how to grow it. growing is not always the right answer. one cincinnati family-run jewelry store is alive and well after 100 years in business thanks to their decision to do
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the opposite and scale back. barbara joe foreman known as bj says that her customized jewelry store is her own creation. it was founded in 1913 by her grandfather boris. this snatsy institution was run by her father and then her brother before foreman took over. >> it seemed to me there were enough jewelers throughout who did platinum, gold, ruby, sapphire, diamond. i was in the arts and i wanted something a little different. >> foreman gave it a try with her mother's support. no one had expected the business to last after her brother's death. >> he had pretty much prepared the business to close after he died. he never guessed that i would run it. >> so, what did foreman do? >> we changed everything. >> foreman's daughter said the
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timing was right for her moth tear introduce ring, pendants, necklaces and bracelets that people might not find. >> when you think of a brand no matter what industry, it's always evolving and always changing. and this is a great example of a business that has really evolved. >> to make the turn, foreman followed her heart. she didn't want to follow what she calls the industry standard. >> i didn't feel like going into millions and millions and billions of dollars and being on that level. i didn't want to do it. >> what she did want to do was create a scaled down yet more personal operation. >> we do a lot of custom work, we repair, we restring pearls, we change people's jewelry so it's wearable and we sell them jewelry. >> foreman knew the way litmin did business needed to evolve. >> i wanted to hire people who knew what they were doing or i could train them to do what they
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were doing, that they should do for me, and then go do it. >> and foreman knew how to warm up the space to better suit her personality and welcome clients. something else you'll notice about it is that it's on the second floor. while the decision to move up has deterred foot traffic customers seek out the business now. >> you could pop in and pop out quickly. and you could still do that but most pell don't want to do that when they come here now. they want to sit down, they want to talk, they want to see what's happening. >> the space is smaller than former locations but employee sarah says the setting is more inviting and customers spend more time looking. >> this is a business about relationship, it's not just about you know, jewelry. >> with the move to the second floor, litwin adapted a more web centric marketing strategy. blog foess, facebook and enews letter drives customers to check out the selection. >> customers that came here
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decades ago are still coming and then new customers, they are coming because some of them because of the social media networking and because the things they see on facebook. >> foreman cut hours and started taking appointments. she's only open four days a week. foreman says she has no plans to grow further. even when taking into account success. she's scaled down for now and she's liking it. >> i just wanted to be small and be nimble. i think you have to find your own niche. the big boys are so big and they have such deep pockets, how can you butt heads with them. who wants to even. >> every year angel investors deliver billions to start-ups. some of the most successful companies were fund bid angels. ford, and amazon.com w. three secrets for winning over angels is david, the chairman and ceo
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of gust which operate as platform for early stage equity investing, and he is a founder of new york angels, also the author of the book "angel investing" the guide to making money and having fun investing in start-ups. what more could you want. >> that's the goal. >> you have been doing this a long time. you see so many pitches and there is something about the successful withins that pique your interest that a lot don't have. let's get to your tips. know everything about your business. isn't this a given? you see a lot of people who don't know everything about their business? >> you would think it's a givenment is can't answer the simple questions about their competitors, margins, projections, about their supply lines. about their employees, about their path. you have to know absolutely everything. investors are betting on you and your ability to lead this company and so you cannot possibly be overprepared.
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>> right. then if you don't know the answers they lose confidence in you. >> if you don't know it it's all right to say i don't know and i'll get back to you but do that more than once 0 or twice or on issues they think are important like what are your margins and you'll be in trouble. >> got it. get to the next one. have a business with goldie locks projected financials. >> yes. goldie locks and the three bears, the business that you are presenting to angels for funding when you do projections and show how much revenue you are likely to get, if you show too much, if you are saying we'll do $50 million this year from a standing start nobody's going to believe you. on the other hand if you do too little and say after 10 years of working hard we'll do $50,000 a year in revenue. >> too cold. >> so the goldie locks predictions are just right. it means that the business has to be rational and for a business to be investable by angels has to be something where there is a significant up side.
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>> and don't re-invent the wheel. i cannot say how important this is. lots of this has been done. >> absolutely has been done. there are few new things under the sun. and so if you come into an angel investor with a strange capital structure, or you're looking for weird notes or terms, or you've done strange deals with friends or family it's going to screw it up. >> it looks questionable. right. what's the point. >> there are ways of doing this so don't re-invent the wheel. use existing standards and deal structures. >> great. thank you so much for giving us insight. i know a lot of people are looking for money. one quick way how do you find angels? >> on gust.com or by going to your local angel group. there are hundreds of angel groups in every state in the u.s. and every country in the world. and those are angels who are pro actively looking for new businesses. >> great to see you. >> thank you. we all depend heavily on the opinion of other when's we make
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our purchases. in today's crowded app store you need lots of positive reviews to give your app the boost it needs. five things you can do to stay on top courtesy of entrepreneur magazine. one, use a review plugin. operator is one plugin of many that make it easy to prompt the user to review your app. two, incentivize users. reward them if they choose to leave a review a. good way is providing points or credits. three, offer exceptional customer service. a good experience is a sure way to get a positive review. consider integrating health shift, through a live two-way instant messaging window. four, time the prompt. wait to ask for a review until after the user has accomplished something within your app. or has finished with his or her intended task. asking them to leave a review when the app first loads can
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annoy people and make it less likely that they will do it. and five, run a contest. give out prizes to randomly selected users who leave a review. when we come back, we'll talk more about growing your business as we answer your questions about expanding from a local company to a national one. plus, how to deal with posts on social media that could be causing upset. and our experts decide whether today's elevator pitch for a magnetic pocket to wear while jogging will have a good run. 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.
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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. you need to put away your pride. you have to be willing to really put your neck out there at every single turn. i remember after one event i was pitched as being like speaking at this glamorous fashion show. it's a good marketing opportunity. it was on an incredibly rainy day in the basement of a hotel, four people turned out. you have to put your pride away. there are bone crushing humiliating moments in being an entrepreneur. >> time to answer some of your business questions. let's get the board of directors in to help. leslie is the president and ceo of predictable success, an incubation company, also author of the new book "do lead."
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jim is the creator and host of the week day radio program the small business advocate show. he is also author of the new book "the age of the customer." so good to see both of you. some of my guests who have been here since the beginning. and new books for both of you. congratulations. let's get to the questions. the first one is about social media. >> my question would be how to deal with social media and the platform that is giving employees, independent contractors, even consumers when they go out and become emotionally upset. >> interesting because you want to empower employees to talk, but you kind of want to control what they say. how do you do that? >> don't. i think people can smell it a mile away when you try to artificially jig that stuff. my view about social media not just in terms what if employees are going to say but what customers, clients say, just do good work.
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it will work itself out in the end. i see so many people chags down rabbits and we've got a local coffee shop and close to town. the folks that own that spend forever chasing down two bad reviews. they had something like 780 really good positive reviews. do good work. nobody cares about small stuff like that. >> but do you have to have a policy for employees? >> i find most business owners do. they invoke that type of a clause because they don't want to hear bad news. for me, if i was running a business where an employee went and put something negative on line that's a massive wake-up call. and i'm the one has to go and fix something, not the employee. >> that's where you want them to come to you about that. you do not want -- employees not negotiable. the customers, the way you solve that is you have plenty of -- you have to make a lot of good deposits in your social media bank. so if there is a negative one it's overpower bid the good
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ones. >> neither of you saying you should have a talk with employee about here are our guidelines for the way to use social media. >> that's what i said. talk to your employees -- >> your line is don't do it right? >> well, that's the first thing. non-negotiable. you don't post things about the company that are negative and then instrument a conversation about what they have to say. if you have sflg to say about my company, you have something to say about the product, then let's talk about that in house. if you are taking my paycheck you're on my side. >> all right. >> can i get a job with you? i'm on your side. >> some things are non-negotiable. >> let's move on to the next question. this one is about expanding your brand reach. >> i'd like to know more information about how to expand our business from a state business to a regional or national business. rereally have been in one area and we'd like to grow and see how we can constructively move into other areas without overwhelming ourselves.
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>> good question. >> first you have to understand, you have to determine whether your business is ready to grow or not, whether your organization is ready to grow. just because you want to grow doesn't mean you are ready. you have to have the capital t people, the right reasons to grow. so let's say you are at that point. you said okay, we're ready for all of those reasons. you have to decide do i want to capitalize that growth, or do i want someone else to. and that's where you have the fork in the road. you go and you get investors, borrow and you grow that, you manage all of the operations, the other option is franchise. >> let's say money is not an issue, they want to do it internally. how do you start. you have to find a good manager, sales people, do you go yourself and move to a different state for instance for a few months and set it up? >> i like to have two principles in mind. one is try as much as possible to use the ripple effect. keep pushing your boundaries, the second is make sure that the market is telling you, i mean the market is a clever beast in the capitalistic world we live in. when the market is telling you you should open in chicago, open
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in chicago. what tends to happen with small business owners, we meet somebody we like and say hey, you can work with us. and they say sure, we start something up and six months later, we're trying to knit this together. working in ripples than chess moves and listen to the market. is the market telling you to do it. >> customers action you never go wrong listening to customers. >> like you're start your company again. the next one, a question about contacting your cows temperat i. >> i don't want to be one of those people sending their news letters you see it deleted. how do i distinguish myself? >> my sense about e-mail news letters we moved away from themming really of any utility in getting new customers. i think that's dead. i think we're spitting against the wind and i like the way anna put it, becoming one more of those things that you know, you scroll through, there are 500.
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delete, delete. what i believe that e-mail news letters moved into is to be good for stickiness, for keeping loyalty with existing customers and clients, building up sales, in cross sales, keeping in touch, making sure. because those people have put their hand up. they like your stuff. >> and you were talking so much about customers a minute ago. maybe ask. >> that's right. of course they tell you by the way they respond to your news letter. one thing i would like to point out to the young lady there, don't send your news let tear people who didn't ask for it. that's when you become what irritating people. don't do that. make sure you are semding it to people who have asked for it and then make sure your content is good. which is as you say, making sure it's what the readers want. >> it's about content. i open the news letters that i know are going to have something valuable. okay. jim and les, thank you for all of this advice. stick around. we need you in the elevator in a
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bit. if any of you out there have a question for our experts, all you have to do is go to our website, the address is open forum.com/your business. hit the ask the show link and submit a question right there or send us e-mail, the address is yourbusiness,@msnbc.com. you have sensitive material you are sending digitally that you want to keep sflift if you want complete control over who sees your files check out our website of the week. it's an on line platform that lets you set self destruct timers on items you want to share. upload files and send them, recipients are not able to print, save or screen capture them. if the file is forwarded you can control if any other people can view it. the site tracks how many times your file is viewed and by whom. millions of online websites and mobile apps promise to help you
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be efficient but which ones are actually helpful? we asked some of our small business viewers to share with us what online tools and apps they are using to help them stay ahead of the pack. >> one of my favorite on line tools i love to use is zero which is an online accounting tool that helps you manage your in coming and outgoing expenditures and income. it's a really great product for doing invoice, it's inexpensive. it's a monthly fee so great for small businesses when they don't have a lot of funds for accounting. >> we use a free app called cloud app. it allows us to send
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it allows me to carry my energy gel, credit cards, it won't bounce, it's comfortable to wear. you can use it for hiking, biking, running, walking or shopping and we found a market in the travel industry as it discreetly carry as pass important. >> the running apparel industry is a billion dollar industry. we've been reaching by attending marathons around the country for the past 2 1/2 years such as the boston marathon. in that time we sold 50,000 units and we are looking for as well we've gathered 20,000 e-mails. we would like to find $250,000 to help us go in retail stores as well as be able to develop a line of colored pockets and you can reach us at larue sport.com. >> congratulations on your success so far. i'm going to hand these to each of you. scale of 1-10, how well do you think they did on their pitch? and you know what, when i saw it, great product, i didn't think of it for your passport. that's a great idea.
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>> very popular. >> okay. let's see what these guys think. >> i gave it a european 7. >> okay. >> one thing they did well, one thing to work on. >> one thing they did well was really explained the product well. the thing they could work on i think they should pitch to somebody who is much more their target demographic. no. i think that product's a great idea. i would like to see it more tactile. it felt a little flimsy to me. aid like to feel a little more solidity. >> jim. >> i gave it 8.5. >> our first .5 on the show. >> i like the fact that it's what you are passionate about, what you like. you guys use this stuff. and you use your product so people are attracted to that. i'm concerned about the money. if you're going to do what you want to do, you're going to be undercapitaliz undercapitalized. if you go after money you need
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to go smaller and grow your way into it or go bigger because anybody who is going to give you that money is probably, if they know what they are doing they are going to be concerned. don't give your company away for $250,000. >> you think they should ask for more? >> more if they are going after investors especially. absolutely. that's the biggest thing. i liked it. >> fantastic. you guys, congratulations on all of your success. again i wish i had it last week. good luck with everything that you guys are doing in the future. thank you for everything today. appreciate it. >> to learn more about today's show click on our website. open forcome.com/yourbusiness. some web exclusive content with a lot more information to help your business grow. follow us on twitter. @msnbc your biz and on facebook and instagram as well. coming up next week, we take you to the community of steward,
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florida. the city has not one but two main streets. >> we want to bring everyone into our area. because it's the city of stewart. i don't think we're at that point where we're saying there's too much of anything. >> we'll tell you why no one is giving up on the double main street concept even though one has been a lot more successful than the other. this is all part of our continuing series main street usa. till then i'm jj 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.
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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. happy friday. thanks for being with us tonight. if you are a 23-year-old pair a trooper and you took part in the nazi occupied shores, you would be 93 years old just like jim martin in. jim martin, 101st airborne division, he at age 93 chose to mark the 70th invasion of the d-day invasion by parachuting in once again. whereupon, he promptly gave the single most straightforward and magnificent on camera
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