a temporary tattoo company based in brooklyn, new york, finds a wide audience by having a narrow focus. how one woman is redefining temporary tattoos. that's 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." getting buzz for your new product or service can be a struggle for a start-up. but that was not the case for one brooklyn-based woman entrepreneur. her artist designed line of temporary tattoos have become a hit not just with kids, but people of all ages. and the competition, of course, has been quick to get in on the craze. and that has made it imimportant for her to not let the hype distract her from being laser focused on her brand. tina roth eisenburg is on a mission. >> set up with the ugly temporary tattoos my daughter would bring home. >> she wasn't annoyed with the idea of the tattoos. she loved those. but as a graphic designer and

the woman behind the popular design blog swiss miss, she just couldn't stand how they looked. >> complete insult to my aesthetic. >> so she took matters into her own hand and like any good entrepreneur started a company that solved a problem. she called it tattly. >> what we're trying to do is just elevate what temporary tattoos can be. so we're kind of changing what -- how they're perceived. because there are beautifully designed and they're done by professional artists. >> tina's got a team of artists around the world who create the designs and then get a cut of the sales. and the designs run the gamut. which are some of your favorites here on this wall? >> some of the favorites here are the heart by anna. and i love the bear which is by our employee nick miller. >> i think the pizza. the pizza is so funny. tattly has a laser sharp focus on one product, and one product only. tattoos. do you get a lot of requests to expand into other products?

>> yes, we actually do. a lot of people still me tina you should sell stickers and do wall decals and pillows and posters and i'm like no. because i really believe in focusing on the one product, or one line of products, and just making those right. and being known to be the best in that category. and that's what i'm stieving for with tattly. >> why do you choose that path versus being known to be the best design of this kind of thing, right? because stickers, tattoos, they sort of fit in the same genre. >> yeah, but then i'm watering down what the brand tattly is. tattly, there's the word tattoo in there and it should stay like that. otherwise i'm going to be stickly. sticker. >> she says this extreme focus is part of the reason the company has taken off. she's true to the brand, and the mission. and that resonates with customers. she's not spent a dime on marketing. the company's grown entirely by word of mouth. and it's created a tattoo

frenzy. tattlies have shown up in fashion blogs, in celebrity instagram photos and on the shelves at popular stores like urban outfitters. >> the word just really spread. we never really had to do a lot of reachout, which is amazing and quite humbling. >> as to be expected, as her company grew, the competition noticed. >> there's a lot of other companies that all of a sudden popped up doing exactlied same thing all around the world. i mean just something i just realized when you have a good idea other people will follow. and so we have literally created a industry of, you know, companies around the world licensing art from illustrators and designers and artists, and selling them as temporary tattoos. >> tina's confident, though, she says her job is to simply stay one foot ahead of anyone else out there. and again, it's her focus on elevating design, and her authentic mission, that allows her to do so. as an example, she's got corporations across the globe asking her to make them tattoos.

but she doesn't say yes to just everyone. the money isn't worth it unless it fits her brand. >> we kind of have this informal rule that we don't just do your logo. because that's a really easy way for us to just kind of say, come on, let's think beyond that. let's try and elevate that concept of what someone -- what your fans are going to wear on their bodies. they don't really want to wear your corporate logo. they want to wear something that is going to suggest your brand. and start a conversation. i don't need to take every business out there. i want to take business that is true to what we are. >> staying true isn't always easy, though. tattly faced a difficult challenge on that front recently. one of the tenaets of the company, something important to tina is that all production is domestic. you say you make everything in the usa. but you had an issue with the goal tattoo.

>> a few months after we offered to produce some of the gold tattly we unfortunately learned we were miss led by our vendor. that they're, in fact, not made in the u.s. which was -- i had to take a deep breath. because i built a company on made in the u.s. you know, on this idea. we had to -- we had a long discussion whether we wanted to continue or not. and while we're still selling them now, even though they are made in china, we say on the back, they're currently made in china but we're moving production to the u.s. we have plans of, and we found a vendor that will start selling them early next year. >> what you're describing i see a lot of companies do, which is we're open. hey, we make mistakes, things happen. but we try and fix them, and we're very open about them. >> i started this company because i wanted to fix the world of temporary tattoos. and i'm not just going to get distracted. and i will focus on it, and i will -- i don't want to stop until people call temporary tattoos tattly. over the past nine seasons

we've reported on a lot of small businesses that have disrupted industries in a significant way. one of them is paperless post which shook up the traditional stegsery business. started by a brother and sister team their online innovation was an inviting change for consumers. if you're like most americans, your life has gone electronic. you shop, bank, pay your bills, and send e-mails all online. and even though there are plenty of ways to send digital invitations, when it came time to send one for his 21st birthday party, james hirschfeld was shocked he couldn't find a classy digital invitation anywhere on the web. >> i was kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place because i didn't have a budget to send paper invitations. but i also found that the existing products for sending invitations online were not as customizable and not as

beautiful as what i would have wanted. >> james, a sophomore in college, saw an opportunity. the idea was simple. create a company that could effectively translate the look and feel of a tangible high-end paper invitation to the digital realm. the first person he shared his concept with was his sister alexa. >> he kept talking about the tooth of the paper. i didn't know paper had teeth. that idea of starting out with something that had all the visual qualities of something in the offline world that people understand. and the most -- having it be the most beautiful version of that online. like hyperreal. hyperluxurious. i understand it because he kept talking about it. that's all he was saying. >> alexa loved the concept. so in 2007, while james was still a student at harvard, they pulled money from their own savings to start paperless post. >> it took us about a year and a half to get to a place where we could allow outside users to come on and use the site.

>> the idea quickly took off. gaining traction and new customers every time someone received a paperless post invitation. jonah perrettety, founder of buzz feed and co-founder of the huffington post was so impressed when he first received a paperless post invite that he eventually became an adviser and mentor to the pair. >> what the company has found is that people are receivers first and then they get a few and say, i keep getting these beautiful invitations and it's usually from a friend of mine who is a high status friend or person that i respect. maybe i should go and use this service. and then they come and use the service, and then it spreads that way. >> more affordable than paper stationery, environmentally friendly, and fast, paperless post quickly attracted high profile users and institutions. like prince charles, condoleezza rice, the museum of modern art, and the white house. with 50 million invitations sent, and a service that is very low-cost, everyone is taking notice. >> there's a lot of examples of

big companies trying to copy what the nimble, innovative start-ups are doing. and they have a lot of trouble, actually. more than you'd expect. and so i think in a way, it validates the market, and i think what you'll see is paperless post continuing to innovate, because they're not copying, they're inventing this stuff. and when you're the one who's inventing it, you understand the ideas in a deeper way. >> this holiday season, if your free time isn't overloaded with sending out those last-minute greeting cards and wrapping gifts, why not get in some helpful reading? here now are five of the best small business books of 2014, courtesy of yfs magazine dotcom. one, girl boss. filled with behind the scenes stories from the quick rise in the fashion world you'll learn success is all about trusting your instincts and following your gut. two business model generation is

for people looking to update outdated business models. get some powerful strategic ideas and tools that are easy to implement for your small business. three, do it marketing provides some helpful ways you can demystify your marketing strategy, so you can reach new customers and clients. four, good to great profiles a set of elite companies that have managed to achieve enduring success and have sustained stellar results for at least 15 years. and five, hooked, how to build habit forming products. a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to steadily encourage customer behavior. a lot of small business owners i talk to say that they are stuck at a certain level. they can't seem to grow anymore. they work as hard as possible, they've gotten by for years, and they don't know why their growth has stopped. well our next guest says that there are a lot of strategies

that owners should focus on in order to build a business that can scale. jeff hoffman is a co-founder of priceline and a former ceo in the priceline group. he's a successful entrepreneur and motivational speaker and he is co-author of the new book scale, seven proven principles to grow your business, and get your life back. it's so great to see you. thanks for stopping by. >> thanks for having me. >> and you put this together because you watched, you've helped ray lot of companies scale, companies that were stuck at a certain point. >> absolutely. my co-author david and i both work with small businesses, and we hear the same thing every day, people say, same two things, one, i'm stuck. i can't grow the business. i'm working more hours than i've ever worked so why is my business not growing even faster with the time i put in. and the other thing they say is that the reece of their life is deteriorating because they're working so much. >> so let's go through just a couple of the principles in your book and one is about creating systems. when you're small you don't need systems. right? everything's just getting done. as you grow, you need processes. >> that's exactly right. and the problem is, because when

you're small you're just doing stuff. every day you just go to work and do what has to be done, it doesn't occur to most business owners what's happening is they're designing the business around themselves. it's owner reliant. i do what i have to do every day. you're never going to grow because nobody else can help you do that because nobody knows what it is you do but you. >> the other thing around creating systems. then if you lose an employee someone can easily come in and take their place. >> that is exactly right. what we talk about is the best practices part of systems. meaning i'll hear a small business owner now they've got a couple people. sally is amazing at sales. jim's not doing so well. what you want to do is clone whatever it is that sally's doing that works so that the next jim can say show me how to do this right. that's what a system is about. right? being able to pass the best practices, and document it so anybody in your company can perform at the level of your best. >> you know notice the word of caution that i've learned about creating systems is you create them, and then they get more complicated. and then they get more complicated. so you always need to be going back to the people who are actually involved in them.

and say, how can we simplify this. >> that's an excellent point because the other mistake a lot of small business owners make, they say okay, fine, i'll create the systems, i'll document the stuff and they never go back to it. the key is absolutely continuous improvement. we do it quarterly. you revisit those on a regular basis where you go back and say what has changed in the world around us, what's changed with our customers and how do we need to update all those systems? it is absolutely a continuous process. >> okay. and then you talk about internal controls. so you can actually see if the right things are getting done. >> yes, and you know, i was thinking about this on the way here, to talk to you today, and the best analogy probably for controls, because this is where people get it wrong, they want business owners want control. that's different than putting controls, and i'll tell you the analogy. the analogy is a police officer sitting at a corner in a speed trap that's a control. anybody that speeds will get caught speeding and punished for it. but controls are putting a speedometer in front of every employee of your company in their car so they know how fast they're going, and they can prevent themselves from ever getting in trouble in the first place. >> so is this putting metrics

around things? what do you mean exactly? >> it's a mix. when we talk about controls, we talk about sort of three levels of it. and this is what the book scale is all about it teaches you how to build these three things but the first level is just visual controls dash boards like a speedometer something every employee can look at and say how am i doing? am i doing what the business needs me to do? not everybody has dash boards and they should. so that's visual controls. then we talk about procedural controls which is explaining to people how to run the business for example here's an easy one people get. is the same person that deposits money in the checking account is not the one that perhaps that has the passwords to the accounts. they're procedural controls you do. then there are embedded controls. where you build systems, that are monitoring, that's what you were talking about, the metrics part are embedded controls, systems that are constantly measuring the performance of your employees and your business and reporting it. >> all right. well congratulations on the book. it's incredibly helpful step by step on how to do these things. so thank you for coming by and stopping to talk to us. >> thank you very much. when we come back, we answer

your questions on how to get a service contract with a big organization, and how to balance two different customer bases. and, it's tea for three as today's elevator pitcher brews up for his organic tea company. 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.

get as much feedback as possible on your idea before you jump into it. a lot of people are very protective of their ideas. they don't want to share their ideas with anyone. they're afraid think be stolen or a competitor will hear about it. ideas are cheap. it's the execution that matters. >> i met today's elevator pitcher just a couple of days ago on, of all places, the escalator at saks fifth avenue which is right across from us here at 30 rock. and this is a good lesson for all of you out there. he said to me in passing, i love your show. and so i asked him what he did and he told me he was an entrepreneur who had a new tea company. so i invited him to come on the show and be an ill vater pitcher. so for any of you out there who are shy, the lesson is, don't be. you never know what can happen. so now, he's here and let's see what our panel will think of his idea. marketing guru david meerman scott is the author of the new book "the new rules of sales and service" and scott newman is the

founder of convenient site serve. >> how are you? >> good. how are you? >> good. >> thank you. >> my name is sean shafik i'm co-founder of tko hibiscus. we're the only brand producing organic teas for its great taste and numerous health benefits. we launched at the end of september 2013. we're in 400 stores including whole foods and the fresh market. the idea came a few years ago. i had an annual physical and was diagnosed with prehypertension. i did some research trying to find a natural way to solve the problem. found hibiscus tea can help maintain healthy blood pressure. it helped me out so i decided to start a company around that. when i saw that there were no other bottled hibiscus tea brands in the market. we've raised $250,000 from friends and family to launch the company and are currently in the market trying to raise up to $1 million to help us with general working capital purposes, production scaleup, technology

initiatives, and general sales, and sales and marketing as well. you can find out more at tkhibiscus.com. thank you. >> congratulations. we're very happy to see you here today. okay, guys you're tasting it. i know scott you drink a lot of tea so you're going to be a good judge of the product. >> i love my tea. >> david? scott? on a one to ten, not the product. i saw you guys smile. so i think you like the product. how was the pitch? all right. okay. david, you wrote first. one to ten. how did he do. >> he did an eight. >> why? >> i really liked the fact that you were able to be enthusiastic about your product. you know, that -- when i look at a pitch, that's most important thing for me is how is the enthusiasm. does he believe in the product himself? and i had this sense that you did. i would like to have seen you talk a little bit about what you wanted to do with the money first. just set me up. so i thought okay he's looking for quarter of a million dollars to grow. and then tell me a little bit about the product. but that's just a personal style for me.

>> all right, scott. you talk to so many small businesses. >> i did. and i also gave an eight. so the thing that i loved about it was this came from a personal passion and a personal experience. and when you start a company there's going to be highs. there's going to be lows, and if it's something that springs from something personal for you, that's going to carry you through the low times. so that i loved. in terms of the pitch itself, what i would love to hear is some stat or something about the competition. that makes me grab on to how achievable it is that you'll succeed. like j.j. said i drink lots of tea. i drink honest tea and t's tea. get this little tiny sliver of what they have and you'll get a great return. >> all right. thank you, guys for that. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> congratulations on your successful part. and if any of you out there have a product or a service and you want feedback from our panel on your chances of getting investors you do not have to run

into me on an escalator. send us an e-mail. the address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. in that e-mail please include a short summary of what your company does, how much money you're trying to raise, and then what you're going to do with that money. it is time to answer some of your business questions. the first one is having a diversified client base. >> i've been working for quite a few years now and also managed the smaller size women and i'm having a really hard time balancing the two. or do i simultaneously simultaneously and how do i do that? >> i'm glad she's asking the question. asking right now. what are you thinking? >> i think i would look at it from the perspective of what i call buyer personas which is th

idea, how are the people she's targeting, the plus-size women and the women she's targeting look at themselves. if they're very different, she has two different markets. in this case she needs to choose or she needs to work on both. if she does, then she probably needs two marketing strategies and maybe even two websites and maybe even two brands. >> that's hard when you're just starting off to have basically these two different strategies. my inclination is to tell her to kill one off. what do you think? >> i think it's a great question because every good entrepreneur faces this. if you're good, you have a lot of opportunities coming your way and sometimes the hardest thing is to choose not what to do, not just what to do. i think for me i always advise the entrepreneurs when something like this comes up, step back from it first and ask yourself, where do we want to be when we grow up? where is this going five or ten years from now. until you answer that question, hard to answer the strategic

questions along the way. if she wants a product line that appeals to everybody, that drives you in one direction. no, we want to be focussed and dominate this one niche, it may be the testimony to say no to one of those opportunities. >> if you're small and you have limited resources, you have to think where you're putting them. >> do one thing really well and then try to do a bunch of things. >> okay. and when you're picking, see which one is more successful. that's kind of easy. you have to dig into your numbers. an e-mail from bertha. how do you pursue service contracts with large organizations? what methods seem to work best? how do you get someone to pick up the phone and pick up the phone when you're knocking? >> one thing a lot of service organizations don't do well, they don't focus on speed. the whole idea when you have a service contractor, you want someone to be there when something goes wrong. the best selling strategy in my mind is that you do, you're

selling quickly. if somebody asks you a question, you respond really quickly and focusing on twitter. if somebody is on your site, they're on your site, you can interact with them right away. speed, speed, speed. then you're showing your potential customers when something goes wrong, you will be there. you will honor that service contract. >> how do you get them to talk to you in the first place? >> it's really hard, especially when you're selling into large organizations because i think one of the things that entrepreneurs often don't understand is unlike them when you're selling to a large company, there might be five levels of approval. it's going to take a while. these are not going to be quick decisions and you need to know who the decision maker is. the best thing you can do early on is figure out who that decision maker is and then find someone who works with them or for them that you can make your champion. if they're selling you or going to their boss or to someone else saying we need this, that's your

best sales job. >> to get to the point you're not selling them, but they're selling you. guys, thank you so much. this was great advice. if any of you out there have a question for our experts, please, just go on over to our website, we answer them every week here on the show. the address is openforum.com/yourbusiness. hit the ask the show link to submit a question for our panel or easier for you, send an e-mail. the e-mail is yourbusiness@mnsnbc.com. in 1970, clay matil started out as a sales manager for a small pet food company. 29 years later he sold that company, iams to procter & gamble for $2.3 billion. today, he runs the nonprofit entrepreneur think tank which helps business owners learn to become better managers and he sat down with us to share some really good tips.

>> i built my first manufacturing plant in 1977. we had no one in the company who knew how to run a plant. so, i went out and i hired a guy that ran and the best and most efficient pet food mranplant li that. having it grow faster than the company is growing is invaluable. because you need to hire for the future. not for today, but for the future. and the other thing i'll say is that i had had an annual salary in those days of $12,000 a year. and i paid him $14,000. it's not the punch you saw coming, it's the one that knocks you out. it's the one you didn't see. let's take the american automobile industry in the '80s. we saw the japanese products coming. we saw the demand for those small cars. and the big three sat there and just continue to build those huge cars with the big fins that

had 12 to 14 miles to the gallon. you have to have the instikts a and a sense of feel for your market and for your business. i always said that if i owned a popcorn stand on the corner of third and main street in dayton, ohio, i would have an outside board. ask i truly believe in an outside board. the results are incredible. again, i use the example lines, in 1986, i put my first outside board together with the help of a consultant. that was one of the first questions. you know, who buys your food? well, you know, we didn't -- what we found out after doing a survey that 70% of our customers were women. and the other thing we learned was that women love colors. so, we had a rainbow of colors

within our product line. and that was very appealing to women because they could go into the store and they could select the product based on the color. that was just one example of an outside board making a contribution. and helping you think outside the box. now, we tend to get in our own cocoons and the outside board forces you to get outside that cocoon and look back in and that's what you want. that's what you need. thank you so much for joining us today. to learn more about the show, just click on our website, it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of today's segments, plus some web exclusive content with a lot more information to help you grow your business. you can also follow us on twitter @msnbc.com/yourbiz. next week, christmas may only be one day on the calendar, but imagine marketing the most

wonderful time of the year 365 days aa year. >> we're in the memory business. we're selling heirlooms. the people that come in here are always dealing with memories. they'll look at something and talk about grandma's tree. we'll find out the secret to getting customers to think about decking the halls and trimming the tree online and offline 24/7. until then, i'm j.j. ramberg and, remember, we make your business, our business. 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 weekend war in washington. and good morning, thanks for starting your sunday with us. two wings of the democratic party will be squaring off here on this show today over where the parties should go and who should lead it into 2016. howard dean would be here to represent one of those sides and also today chuck todd will be here to talk about his new book about the obama presidency and how history might remember the presidency. following the news of last night's protest in new york city. up to 30