. >> hi, everyone, welcome to "your business" we bring you a story of an army veteran turned entrepreneur who made it his mission to hire troops returning to civilian life. he says it's a way to give back and build up his work force with dedicated and committed employees. >> my goal was basically to be a commission officer, retire and lead the good life. >> in 1987, kevin knight joined

the army, fulfilling a dream he had since a kid. just two years later that dream was destroyed when he was injured during a train drill. he was no longer considered fit for duty. >> that must have been devastating. >> very devastating. it was zev devastating to hear that your life long dream that you have always wanted to do cannot be fulfilled. i recall sitting in the doctor's chair and i was just crying, crying, because i didn't foe what the next round was going to be. >> reporter: after heading home, kevin graduated from college and spent some time working under ceos of big corporations, but his fellow soldiers were never far from his thoughts. >> i wanted to serve my country and, basically, i said i want to try to do something i can do to get back to my fellow veterans. >> so he started knight solutions in 2005 t. company specializes in construction and maintenance of va hospitals and cemetery sfwls the va has a

focus to bring all of the cemeteries up to a shrine status. so knight solutions wanted to be a part of that. i few by getting the opportunity to do work at the national cemetery would allow me to bring on some veterans wherever we operate there ut the country. >> reporter: ricardo daniels is one of the veterans knight solution hired to maintain it. main tang is a way to pay respect to those who came before him. >> it makes me as a veteran feel honored tob able to serve these individuals who have given their lives to us. and i mean i don't even foe them. >> reporter: currently about a third of the work force are veterans. kevin says army strong isn't just a recruiting slogan. it's a way to know those employees will be company strong. >> i like hiring veterans, i know few layout the mission, you tell them where we're going to be, at the end of the day you

will get there. especially work income cemeteries, they take ownership. hey, i'm taking care of my brother or my sister that i served with. >> reporter: with each new job that comes in, kevin starts with calls to local veteran offices, new organizations connect knight solutions with people in their network that are a good fit. some are chosen for the job. >> once they come back home, they're looking not for a handout but a hand up. they're looking for someone that's an employer that will understand, you know, i've served my country. now i'm here to try to serve my family. >> reporter: kevin's own experience has made him particularly skilled at working with other veterans. >> you are dealing with guy was have seen things that you never even imagined. they've seen things that may come back to them. >> reporter: kevin says if you offer veterans clear access to the help they need and prepare your management staff to hand him these unique situations, these risks are no more than when you add any other new hire

the team. >> you have to have your manager on staff equipped to deal with types of situations. you have to be compassion fat and stern with them. you have to let them know, this is no cake white house, this is a part of the mission. >> reporter: for christopher pancos who served in iraq, understanding the transition into civilian life isn't always easy is especially meaningful. >> my wife was a fellow reservist. i recently lost her in combat action if a combat zone, so i'm still dealing with personal trauma issues and my own crisis in my own way and knight solutions has been very good to me. they understand i'm going through a personal crisis and, you know, even with the personal crisis that i am dealing with, again, they understand and, you know, i really can't express the grt tude that i have vochlt the veteran organizations can also be an additional resource to

help employees that are struggling get back on track. >> we have an open line of communications for our employees. we are here to help an support them along the way. if there are difficulties with the veteran, please feel free to call us, contact us, send them through course and served them out. that's one of our policies. >> and knight solutions has found hiring these men that have served our country faithfully is both good for the country and good for business. >> i always like to ask people, why not? why not hire someone who has given us america the opportunity to do what we do every day? why not the skills they have or skills we learn while serving. this gives you that opportunity to complete the cycle of life for these veterans, these guys who have made a commitment to serve the united states of america where we all live and eat and breathe every day. >> when kevin knight left the

army, he put his skills to work starting his own busy as we saw. a while back, we saw a veteran who fulfilled her dreams by buying into a franchise. >> i grew up so much in the navy. i think it has only helped me now. >> reporter: ayman do crowe thrived in the culture of military life. >> it's not for everyone. i didn't think it was for me initially. it taught me so much. >> reporter: amanda spent her entire career in the navy, where she was told where to go, what to do and when to do it. she loved her job as a special ops parachute rigger. she also had an exhibit (neural streak in her. >> i didn't want to work for anybody else. i feel i am a leader and i can manage a business on my own. >> reporter: these two personality traits may seem at odds, entrepreneurs are risking mavericks, making it up as they go along?

right? well not us as, aamanda found a way to run both sides. >> running a franchise. >> you are your own boss. have you the backing behind you. >> reporter: another navy vet, he was her inspiration. he opened up one of about 4 u. post-net franchises, specialize income mail and and business services, as a retired military officer like ayman dark, he was looking for order and found it in the post-net online pan wal describing how to run the company. >> we are used to having systems in place and following those systems to the letter. ten when you bring a new person in, that person is taught that system. >> reporter: after visiting his store, amanda decided to sign up. >> i looked at him and said how do you start one of these? >> reporter: steve greenebaum is one of the co-founders of the post-net. >> you are capturing every e-mail address. >> absolutely. >> reporter: he finds people

like amanda and dennis have ideal backgrounds for franchisees, people who are team players but also want to be their own boss. >> veterans have innate qualities and respect for systems and following processes and are very driven people that understand that results at the end of the day are what matters. >> we don't compete against each other. we work together. that's something that was instilled in me in the military is everybody is family. >> reporter: of course, all this sharing of resources and information isn't free. franchisees pay significant fees and royalties by go to the post-net founders or franchiseers, steve greenebaum and brian spindle. >> the investment is around doctor 1200,000 with working exam. it breaks down an initial franchise fee of doctor 30,000. a store development fee under doctor 100,000 to build out the store. >> i think you ned to accept the fact you are always going to be giving money the your incher

forever, not all entrepreneurs want to do that. that's why people don't franchise. >> the right reasons to become a franchisee is recognizing that there is strength in numbers and that joining a large organization with a brain trust and resources creates a tremendous amount of opportunity. >> reporter: helpful advice and operation manuals can make big difference, but they can only take you so far. according to sba, buying a franchise alone is for the better german tee of success than starting up a business from scratch and greenebaum agrees. >> at the end of the day the execution is really at the store level or with the owner themselves and their ability. >> reporter: for people like amanda and dennis, that's where the ent (nufrl drive kicks in, to make the real difference between failure and success. >> owe, i wish i could have been making money on day one. but i know that takes time and as much energy as i put night is what i definitely see come out.

on weeks i don't get out of the store as much and do as much marking, that itself weeks that i don't see my sales where i wanted them to be. so i know it is a direct reflection of how hard i work. i completely understand. when dealing with a growing work force, managing staff and their shifts can be hard. so if you are looking for a simpler way to handle your small business' scheduling feeds, check out our website of the week. wheniwork.com is a platform that allows small businesses an easy way to manage staff schedules. whether you rely on remote freelancers or hourly workers, manage payroll all from the same web-based calendar, you can use the site to message your employees through 26th or text messages so you can guarantee they get it. a complete linked in profile is a good practice, to be an effective networking tool, there are a bunch of things to lie about. here five ways to get noticed by

top industry players and potential leads, courtesy of entrepreneur.com. one, take advantage of notifications, see what other linkedin users are doing in their careers and use this feature as a chance to congratulate them. two, connect with related brands, watch for new opportunities in the invitation section and use linkedin to easily map out who to contact and reach out to. three, share valuable and expert context. comment and share articles that create meaningful conversations and increase connection. four, pay attention to profile views. while many users keep their profiles private, a lot still show up on linked in. so keep an eye out for these people because its common for them to contact you for an opportunity, especially after several times and five give out endorsements. you pay have noticed your contact endorseing your brand skills, returning the favor is

just one more way to build out your own contact web. for those of you who feel there is only one way to operate in the business world, fit in or get out, well, listen up, being different is a powerful force if you know how to make the most of it. so here to talk about using your differences to attract opportunities issies brogan the publisher of owner magazine, a busy magazine to help you grow your kaim capability itself and connection and author of several best selling books the newest is "the freaks shall inheret the earth". >> so happy to be here. j. j. >> i think of entrepreneurship as often for weirdos and i can't go work for anyone else, i have to go work for myself. >> i think that's where we start. a lot of the advice we get comes from nbas, they say you got to shave off all those rough edges. along the way, everything that

made the person weird is probably what was going to make them succeed. it gets pulled back aways. you hear that over and over again. i think that for every richard branson who kept going as weird as you want it to be, there is a lot more people that got throttled back a bit. >> talk about this business of longing. >> we're in a different time. as everyone is starting to cover social media, they're saying this great opportunity to engage and check. it's a great deal of data on what people. and believe in. it used to be whatever is around you, you got. at reebok for instance goes after cross fitters and says we will make shoes for you cross fit people. spartan and says we will make shoes for spartan racers, which is different from other companies like say nike who says we will make shoes, we hop you like them. it's not a big versus small story. it's a story of how you work with a tribe that you believe is a part of your community. >> i like this idea of tribes.

share the passage, not the products. products often times are a dime a zivenlt i can buy this cup, i can buy this cup. i might buy this because of some connection i have. >> sure. same exam as the last one. i can say with reebok people who are spartan racers, i saw a guy at the gym, are you training for a span tan race? instant connection t. passion drives people to do what they are doing. people who love to identify, i'm the type of person who? are the easiest and best person to sell to if that's the project you are working on. >> exactly. they've already self identified. this is your next point, let the buyer be the hero. >> steve jobs said it. you can be the dj. everyone got i. i would love to be the dj. i would love for people to leak my music. making the buy ter hero makes the story about them. if you are making any kind of a

product or service, peak it about how successful they are. don't end that jerky sentence because we helped you, that's assumed. make it about them. >> tell their story, not yours. back to the weirdos, misfits, et cetera, if are you a true weirdo, misfit. are you the one that didn't get along with any group if school, do you need to have someone by your side that is a little more socialized? i this to go into the investor meetings or partner meetings or can you celebrate your weirdness? >> i think there is time for both. it's interesting. some of the people i'ded to me as freaks are the california leading trial attorney arc dentist who changes the way he does dentistry that's a much more personalized service a. bunch of cpas one of the which travels the world if his rv giving out advice for accounting. i think you can still be a weirdo vand a business sense, if you know you don't have a busy

sense, that's why i bro the book, ask questions, if your heart in your belly says this is a bad idea. if you fail, learn if the failure. the book is full of learning from failure, i think that's one of our best teachers. >> thank you so much for stopping by and talking about it. when we come back, brad harrison and brings brogaf answer your small business questions about things about the best time of day to send e-mails and whether you should bypass the easy clients in favor of ones that may bring you more of a profit. today's elevator pitcher has a socially conscious running apparel company that gives back to people in need of food and water in developing nations. .

it's time to answer some of your questions, brad harrison is the entrepreneur and managing partner focusing on entertainment, media and technology, chris brogan joins us as well. let's get to the first question, it is about finding the right customers. >> how can you switch from the low hanging fruit and focus on clients that might be easier to work with and be more profitable. >> gosh, chris, i was just talking to a friend of mine who owns a small business, he says he sees this opportunity and doesn't have time for it because he knows the low hanging fruit will continue to pay the bills. >> you do have to divide that. to me it would be a two-thirds, one-third. you have to have some sort of r

& d space to me it's sales, keep remembering you need to let the big guys be no more than 15% of the mix. few lose them, you lose a spashl amount of revenue in one spot. i think it's bad tan take a percentage towards it. so, you know, i think we've talked on the show over and over about social media, driving engagement, building up your user base of people interested in engaging with your brand. i think that's how you identify these more committed, more dedicated customers. right. you have to start a dialogue in other channels and you have a little more of a brand itentty rather than the buy-sell relationship. so i think it's just about figuring out how to own a conversation that will attract the people that can be long-term customers. >> okay. let emphonto the next question. it's about paying advisers. >> when a business is developing

a board of advisers or board of directors, what itself the ideal way to determine a compensation package or how to participate with that board member. >> that's a good question, there is something different about a board of advisors and board of drenlors. let's talk about advisers first. >> well, i have been on several different boards of advisory and one or two directors and the thing with advisory is that usually there is a promise of shares. we were joking they're never worth anything. the compensation package, it's really most time the advisers are looking at how much of my time do youp and what are you asking me for? can i be helpful or are you stamping my name on your product. you want to really understand how you can best work with that person in a way that helps grow them, also that you leverage what they're best at so you can get the most value out of that experience with them. >> what i was going, what chris talked about is actual lay couple of different things that

an ad advisor delivers value, so there is the value that comes from associating his name with a company or his or her fame with a company. then there is the value they create by spending time working on tangible initiatives for the company. so it's important to define what role you want that adviser to play in terms of what do you expect them to, do how many hours a week do you expect them to do it and, you know, it's okay to give them a little something just for being a part of the team. i think as you start to get into greater and greater equity grants, it's really important to have to define metrics around what they are going to do. >> you certainly don't want to get advisers early on and giver out equity and find out they are worth nothing. they are not that helpful. >> right. there is a lot of circumstances where that happens for one of two reasons, one is ziems the adviser isn't fit for the fuente. sometimes the organization really is spinning in so many directions that it's not really the adviser's role at that level to go in and really fix that for

them. there is a lot of challenges that can go with that. >> the other thing is how you view your entire board of advisers as a whole. one of the things that a lot of entrepreneurs do is they never put their entire group of advisers in the same room at the same time, which creates two problems, one is they don't know each other, two, have you advisers giving different conflicting pieces of advice because they've never sat down and talked. >> it depends what kind of adviser dos you have, a board or people dpou to tore different things so there are lots of ways you can skin this cat. let's get to the last question it's about the right times to connect with your contact. >> what time should we send e-mails? send it at a certain time or localize it or local time zones or how it will figure out when to send an e-mail. >> i like this question, science of e-mails? any advice? >> yes, i would say don't send important e-mails late in the afternoon or ever on a friday and i also don't like to send

important e-mails early on a monday, primarily because when i look at my own schedule, fridays are chaotic and people are trying to get out of the office and monday people are trying to get caught up. so you want to try to find windows, breaks in the action where people are actually going to be able to get your e-mail and interact with it. >> if you are sending individual e-mails, you can pick the time. a fuse letter, very few people are adding if zip and postal codes. it's hard to set up your software to go at a set time. what i find to do is pick off times. fingerprints, my weekly news letter comes out on a sunday, when people are done with family stuff or in between different religious obligation, they can pick a tuesday or some of these other times, like brad said a friday is never good or early on a monday is never good. i think the hottest spot for productivity and/or non-work related are somewhere between

10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. it depends on the you are targeting a lot of people or one. >> chris's point if you are sending it to a mass group of people, constant contact, look at the data and look at the open rates and try a couple of different times and whenever you get the highest little of engagement. that's what you should go with. >> the beauty of the internet. >> all data. >> chris, brad, thank you so much, so good to see you both. we appreciate your advice. stick around. i need you for the elevator pitch a little later in the show. if any of you have a question from our experts, we answer them every week on the show, go over to our would be site. the address is open forum.com/your business-it the ask the show link to submit a question for our panel, if you'd rather, e-mail us your questions t. address is your business@msnbc.com.

companies have shown us you can have a successful business to give back to make this a better world to live in. >> that is the goal of today's elevator pitch as well. >> runners race for a cause. historically, there has been no brand that allows runtories give back outside of a race. every piece of union j. apparel is inspired and when a winner boys it, they help that country with clean water, tanzania shorts, they give one year of drinking water to a tanzania family. we are in over 100 stores and more revenue than under arm our had the first two years combined. we are growing 100% annually. we are raising doctor 300,000 to bring along independent sales reps, improve our ecommerce site and ire people in marketing and operations to help us scale quickly. we believe by doing what we do,

we become the next under armour and get 10 to 1520% return. >> thank you. you have come full uniform i have to say. that was one of the bet elevator pitches we've ever heard. i'm not the judge. chris, brad, on a scale of one to ten, i want to hear not how good the product is but how good the pitch is. all right. i like the colors very much. >> thank you, i appreciate it. >> brarksd no looking at chris. i just saw that. >> i gave a nine but i gave a fin because i alwaysly the there is a little room for improve. to add a little bit more. i thought he made great eye contact. i thought he covered all the salient points and gave a relative growth trajectory which we know as under arm our. he did a great job. >> where is the room for improvement? >> i think the room for improvement is a bit crisper on

the miamiing, that's basically it. >> chris. >> i think i will give him a ten. i can understand the improvement. i think you can get a ten and still improve. i think the pitch is crisp, the information was good. the place i would consider adding, i'd take out some word to have more room for the impact of what i feed. what was interesting that you didn't say is i feed bodies, like the product is all handled. you just need the revenue extra money for bodies is kind of cool. so i'm excited for you. >> congratulation, you got one mu examiner about to go online and buy some right now. good luck with everything you are doing. thank you for what you are doing for the world as well. >> thank you so much for joining us today. if you missed anything openforum.com/your business. will you find all of today's segment plus web exclusive content with a lot more information to help your business grow. you can follow us on twitter and

we are on facebook and, okay, instagram as well. next week from lady gaga to the president, a long list of celebrity clients rely on this national tennessee bus company to get them from point a to point b. >> being able to go out on a tour and do it successfully and know that when the tour was over that, client said, i want to you guys back next year. >> we'll see how this business has been going the extra mile for customers for more than 30 years. until then, i'm jj ram burg. we peak your business our business. . it grows more sophisticated every day. if it were a business, it would be a fortune 500 company. fraud has evolved.

american express intelligent security gives you tools to fight fraud and a global service network that never stops working. so you can be a member of a more secure world. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. good evening, thanks for joining us this hour. this is how wars end. december 15th, 2011. members of the u.s. military performing ceremony known as the casing of the colors. it's a ceremony that involves lowering the u.s. armed forces flag. carefully furling it and then encasing it to signify the end of a mission. that ceremony on that december day in 2011, that moment marked the official end of america's near decade-long-war in iraq. and now 2 1/2 years after ending that war, we find ourselves engaged in a national debate about potentially going back. sunni militants on the march in iraq, overtaking the same cities the u.s. military fought to hold years earlier when u.s. troops