how the owner of a tote bag company restructured found new partners, and took the business to the next level. the ceo of planet fitness with advice on keeping your small business in shape, and the hottest new gadgets from the consumer electronics show. all of that coming up 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 everyone i'm j.j. ramberg and welcome to "your business." for those of you who've been watching the show for awhile you know that i started my company with my brother. and for any of you out there who also have business partners you know how absolutely critical it is to have shared goals. not necessarily to see eye-to-eye on all the tactics of writing your business but you and your partner have to believe in the same overall picture. so then what happens when your co-owner wants to go in a different direction or maybe leave the company altogether? as one entrepreneur discovered it took some new blood and a restructured company to try to keep her small business sailing.

>> the company was growing at a pace that was hard to keep up with. and we needed more band width, more capital into the business and not money, but we needed some skills that we currently didn't have >> beth shissler and her portland, maine, based company sea bags were at a cross roads. beth's business partner hannah kubiak wanted a change. and while the company had been growing fast beth knew she had to do something to make sure it reached the next level. >> if the company got busier you know hannah had a desire to kind of step back from the day-to-day, and i still had the vision to see the company grow and add more employees and scale it up. >> beth and hannah thad co-owned the brand which hannah had founded, since 2006. sea bags makes things like dotes, duffels and bucket bags from used sails. >> it become very clear in order to make any adjustments for either of us that we were going to have to raise some money. i couldn't afford to do it by myself and wasn't prepared to do that by myself. >> before she could restructure

anything beth needed new partners. ones that would ideally add both cash and some savvy to the business. >> we wanted the product to continue to be made in maine. we wanted the product to stay out of recycled sales. and the product and our practices to be as green as we could be. >> she quickly discovered that she wasn't going to meet her match immediately. not everyone saw sea bags future the same way. >> some of the people that talked to me originally thought oh, it would be so much easier if you just made these things in china. yeah, wrong business. that's not really what we set sea bags up to be. it would be so much easier if you just used a bunch of new material. yeah well we call that lld. so i had every one of those meetings and i usually left them kind of sick to my stomach. that was my barometer. >> as the search went on it was business as ire. the operation never slowed down despite the inevitable changes. >> we kept investing in the business as if we were going to continue to own it in the current structure because that's the only way we knew how. so we had to keep our foot on the gas and keep growing because we now had at that point over 30

employees that we were probably responsible for. >> something finally clicked, when beth met fran phillips. the addition of fran's former colleague don oakes to the conversation set the ball in motion. >> don and i are both originally from maine. born and raised here. he's thrifty like i am and he's very, very level headed and easy to talk to. and i left that meeting saying there's a guy i can learn from and work with. >> beth made it clear she wasn't looking for investors, but she was looking for partners and that she needed band width and she needed people who could work in the business. >> before any formal agreement was signed beth fran and don got to work. >> even though we went through some heavy, heavy negotiating, once emotionally we all knew we wanted to work to the don and fran crucially had a lot to share with my business. >> the hope was that their involvement would ensure smoother transition. >> the most important thing i needed to do was learn the business. so i was looking at it from the outside in. and now to be able to sit in on the inside. >> after eight months of wrangling the deal was done. both sides had to look beyond

the negotiations because they knew their skills complemented each other. >> if not for beth and my commitment to this it would have fallen apart multiple times. >> don and i quickly became adept at saying you know what? i don't have to win every single point because working to the and in business together is ultimately winning. >> don and fran came on as beth's new partners. with don serving as ceo and beth as the president. despite the formalities, the leadership is collaborative. the two-sided desk they share is proof of that. >> neither one of us is big on titles. we know they're important to others. there's nothing that's going on that beth or i isn't in the know about and one of us is taking the lead. so that's kind of how we work it. >> step one was to formally reorganize the company. including the creation of a board. >> so when we structured the deal with don and fran's investors it was just more beneficial to restructure it as an llc. >> within weeks a warehouse opened where sails could be stored and cut. on the sales side beth knew where to focus. >> our wholesale business has been extremely strong over the

years because that was my comfort zone. i wanted to direct channel. >> that's why don spearheaded a new look for seabags.com. >> we redesigned the website, both the branding and the look and feel. we shot all the bags in a consistent way. it was more a matter of doing a better jonathan telling the story. >> the addition of new staff is helping drive future growth at its three retail locations and online. >> i have marketing team can you believe it? i didn't have one before. i actually have a sales team which is amazing. where before i had a sales person. >> don has also consulted with employees to find out if there's a better way to do business. >> changes we made were really focused on how do we improve the business? and really focused on the little steps that try to make people's jobs easier. they know their jobs better than i certainly do. so we didn't try to come in i certainly didn't come in and try to tell people how to do their jobs. >> while beth and don were excited about the possibilities of the new sea bags. not everyone was. >> i think it's fair to say that not everybody reacts to change

well. it also becomes apparent very quickly of people that aren't capable of making change. there's no shame for anybody in saying that this isn't a fit. >> after all the comings and goings the staff is now at about 50. with that increase has come a push for more open communication. >> our core team is in place. and we need to get everybody settled and on the same page. >> one of the curses of being an introvert is sometimes if you think it, you think you said it. so i have to remind myself that just because i know it or i thought it doesn't mean that everybody is on board or understands. >> as sea bags goes forward beth has no regrets looking back. she's grateful that she found not just partners but the right partners to help restructure her business. >> for me, owning a smaller piece of a bigger company, and relinquishing the control is a lot better than owning 100% of a smaller company. i got the best partners.

the consumer electronics show which happens each january is a sort of tech wonderland for gadget lovers looking for the next generation of pcs, mobile devices, and all these modern must-haves. the show offers tons of great finds for small business owners who want to boost productivity or just simply upgrade their gear. here to give us a look at some of the latest devices from this year's ces is dana wollman the managing editor of engadget a web magazine with daily coverage of new gadgets and consumer electronics. great to see you. >> great to see you. >> thank you for going through that enormous show and finding the stuff that works for our small business owners. >> absolutely. i had a really fun job here. i want to give you a quick look at some of the hot stuff we saw this past week. >> perfect. so these are all different kinds of pcs. >> absolutely. yeah. so i brought the mac book air here for scale. everyone knows the mac book air and thinks of it as the quintessential thin and light laptop. guess what? there are some newcomers that

make the mac book air seem like a leg. we have ones smaller and a lot, a lot lighter. >> they suddenly look big. >> this is really an october cal illusion. what we have here is the dell spx 13. it has the same screen size as the 13 inch mac book air. but there's an optical illusion. where there's very little border surrounding the screen so you get this big expansive screen but in a size into thebook that's more on par with an old school netbook. what that means for business owners is if you're a frequent traveler like i am you have a much smaller machine that you can put in your bag. and look at this footprint. look how much space you're saving. you save a lot of space and it's also just a lot lighter, too. so i think it's the real benefit -- >> what about expense? >> not bad it starts at $800. which also beats the mac book air and a lot of other ultrabooks and ultraportable laptops, too. >> what's this one? >> this is from lenovo.

and it is one of the word's lightest laptops. this one weighs just two pounds and it's the lightest touchscreen convertible laptop. lenovo makes one that's even lighter at 1.7 pounds. you're just giving up the touchscreen. but i almost want to hand this to you and just have you -- >> see how light it is? >> have you play with this. it feels like a fake computer. >> oh, it does. it feels like a toy. >> it feels like there are no components inside that it's some sort of mock-up or dummy computer. but it's very real. and very fast. and the battery life is supposed to be on par with some much bigger heavier machines. >> i bring my computer everywhere. >> we had this at ces for nine days and carrying around a back pack all day. i would love to have something like this in my passenger bag and not have the heavier computer breaking my shoulder. >> me, too. >> is this a charger? >> this is a battery case for the iphone. this is from a company called i-back. >> okay. >> so what makes this one

special is there are charging cases but this one actually has a pop jut battery and you can buy as many of these swappable batteries. >> let me see how this works with my phone. >> yeah, yeah. >> is it heavy? >> not heavy at all. >> okay. >> so, this is the case. >> oh -- >> and it does the iphone justice because this is a thin phone and you want a thin case to go with it that showcases what a thin phone you have. so this is a pretty slim case but what's nice is you get double the battery life and in case your battery runs out you can just pop this out and replace it with a new one. and you can find this very battery for as low as $11 on amazon. >> that is great! >> so you can basically stop up and have endless battery life. >> i had one with an extra battery but it was enormous and i finally just stopped using it because it was too big and too heavy. >> and if you're like me you not only forget to charge you phone, but you forget to charge the chargers. >> right. >> so for me this would be really a godsend, because -- >> you're doing it all at the same time. >> it would be nice to have a bunch of backup batteries and

never wonder if i'm going to have enough battery life for my phone. i live on my phone when i'm traveling. i'm sure a lot of business owners do. >> what do we have here? >> this is a new phone from lg. called the g-flex 2. and it is a curved screen phone. you might wonder why the heck you need a curved screen phone. >> i am. >> it adds a lot of flexibility and durability to the device. lg had a device like this before. the screen is now tougher than it used to be. one benefit of having this device here is you're going to cringe when i do this i can bear down i can put a lot of pressure and flatten the device and it withstands that kind of pressure. >> okay. >> so imagine in i'm dropping my phone all the time it's just a much more durable phone than you're used to. also this is sort of my favorite part is it has this material on the back that's quote/unquote self-healing. so if i scratch it up like this, this -- >> it fixes itself? >> within ten seconds. the last generation of this phone also did the same thing but it took about three minutes.

now there's a little more of an instant gratification factor. within seconds -- >> basically this is for the person who is just hard on their phone? >> hard on their phone and if you're like me you just take your phone everywhere, you live on your phone and my phone, my personal phone has tons of tiny scratches on it because i've dropped it a million times. at an airport or wherever i've been traveling. >> got it, okay. >> so what is this little tablet here? >> this tablet is the dell venue 8-7000 series. and it won in gadget's best of ces award in the mobile category for a few reasons. both because of how it looks and what it does. first of all it is extremely thin. up think it's the world's thinnest tablet at just 6 millimeters thick. it's well designed has this beautiful crisp display here that i think rivals the ipad's retina display. this is an android tablet by the way. and it also has this very unique 3-d camera set up on the back that might sound gimmicky but actually allows you to do some cool things. including, point the camera at something in a room and get a measurement of space. so without -- >> that's neat. >> without having to pull out a

tape measure, let's say. >> right. >> so i wanted to measure space and see if furniture would fit there or something. so the camera is very useful. also fun. >> dana thank you so much for walking that show, and finding the great stuff that is helpful to us who didn't have a chance to be there, and also frankly aren't that qualified to go and find out what's best there. so thank you so much. great to see you. >> thanks for having me. working out in a top new year's resolution. but let's face it while a lot of people hope to adopt a healthier lifestyle it's often easier said than done. and that is why in 1992 brothers michael and marc grondahl cofounded planet fitness. they offered low membership fees and created an environment that is inviting, not intimidating. now, the business has more than 900 locations nationwide, and they have plans to expand to canada this year. in this learning from the pros we sit down with ceo chris rondeau. he tells us how letting the dust

settle and focusing on what you're good at has helped the brand grow. >> focus on what you're really great at and do that right 100% of the time customers will be happy with you. >> i think you can't be the master of all. we got rid of aerobics juice bars and spinning classes and day care and we had that back in the early days. what we started every day there was moving part and we were disappointing more members than you were really servicing. we had the courage to take it out. doesn't happen. all of a sudden our members were always happy because you couldn't let them down we focused on what we did perfect. >> it's hard to hold back. you've got to let it go out and let the dust settle a little bit to see what really sticks and not stick and see how does that work for your particular business or my particular business here that benefit us you know. i think it let it go out there, first, don't jump on it real

quick. people are going to gravitate towards it or not. you don't want to spend a lot of time going down a road that's not going to be -- i think seeing customers share their experience is obviously that they believe in your same vision and your same direction of the company and what you believe in. we just launched a new platform called planet of triumphs which is basically customers can tell us their triumphs and what they've done that's been with us. and it's some small, some are large but they're all important to us. if you're willing to show you their testimonial why they like your product over somebody else's it truly means that you're winning and hitting the right nerve than what you've been trying to focus on all along. so i think you can get that from your customer it truly means -- >> when we come back as your company grows, should you focus on value or valuation? and how did you do with my challenge from last week? are you ready to tackle a new one? the next j.j. challenge after this break.

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. this week's your biz selfie comes to us from jason and haley the owners of the pittsburgh pretzel cafe in pittsburgh, business.

so stop by and say hi to them. we want to see your selfie too, so send a selfie of you and your business and add #yourbizselfie. tweet it to us @msnbcyourbiz or add it to yourbusiness@msnbc.com. don't forget to tell us your name, your business and the name of your company. it's time now to answer some of your business questions. eric schurenberg is the president and editor in chief of ink and cnbc contributor carol roth is a recovering investment banker and a best-selling author. thanks guys for being here. so good to see you both. >> you too, j.j. >> let's get started. the first one comes from darrell and he wrote us when a business has reached the ten year maturity mark how do you determine if your focus should be on value or valuation? with value, it's generational sustainability versus valuation, emphasis on what i can sell the

business for today. i think it's an interesting question, right? because you will make different decisions if you're thinking about selling your company than if you're thinking about passing it down potentially. >> and i think the good news is is there's no right answer it really depends on your own objective. but i will tell you that far too many entrepreneurs wait too late to consider preparing for the sale process. they wait till they're ready to sip those margaritas on the beach before they prepare. so if you're even considering potentially exploring a sale you need to get your dream team to the. you need to get an investment banker or broker you need to get a lawyer and not your uncle ira, one that focuses on m&a -- >> if you want -- >> if you're exploring it. because they will help you not only get your house in order but they'll help you tell you when the rest of the -- >> when you think about business decisions if you're thinking about valuation, you may go for sort of a quick fix revenue versus the long-term strategy of of you know this is going to

work in the long-term for my kids. >> i think if you're not at the stage where you're thinking about selling, then you should take value and the valuation will take care of itself. think about it. the first question a buyer is going to want to ask is is this business sustainable? when happens when you're gone? if you're the person who has to shovel the coal then you're -- >> that's why you need to be thinking about this three to five years before you're even thinking about realistically selling your business. nobody wants to buy a business where all the growth is gone. treat like -- >> as a former investment banker i completely disagree. i think it's really important to have those advisers in place who

can tell you the things that you need to be thinking about over a couple of year period. >> on the other hand don't obsess obsess. -- the particular needs of your buyer. concentrate on the stuff you can't grow. >> expanding your sales panels. >> we're currently wholesaling a major change nationally. and i wanted to know how to your sales channels. >> we're currently wholesaling in a major chain nationally. i want to know how to continue to grow the brand and get more channels of distribution. >> the best way to get more wholesale distributors is to increase the demand on the end user. you think of the great entrepreneurs in cosmetics and

what they did. winegarden, her story is well known, she loaded the trunk of her car up with cosmetics and drove out to all the salons in vegas and determined she would not leave the area until they carried her cosmetics. the sale was already made when they went into a salon. >> you can't rely on retail to be that silver bullet. you do have to build the brand yourself. a great way to do that is by using influencers. if could be a celebrity, a niche expert in the market. a blogger, a youtuber, somebody with cosmetic ss to their following and create that demand. >> finally a question about managing employees remotely. >> i run my business from home. so a question i have is how can i better monitor my employees and our productivity while being

based online? >> that's a good question right? you may have employees who have a list of stuff they're doing, how do you know is this taking them an hour or three days? >> all of my employees and contractors work remotely. i base it on deadlines. i give them a deadline, if they meet it i'm happy. i don't care how long it takes them do it i don't care if they work in the morning or at night. for the ones that don't get it done, and it's always the creative folks who can't manage a deadline. i do a couple of things. one, i give them a fake deadline, so when they blow through the first one, they will probably make the second deadline, and i chunk down the process. instead of a big project, i give them smaller deliverables. and i revisit a few times a year what are you working on? what is taking up your time? sometimes taking projects away from people rebalancing it and sometimes we should get rid of

the work altogether if it's not profitable. >> i think you need a collaboration tool, a document tool, like google docs and other things to communicate. there are a couple things we have written about that are ingenious. there's one called murallee, a virtual white board. another one called daily update an e-mail manager thing that allows you to for example, at example send an e-mail at 4:00 p.m. local time no matter how many time zones your business in that asks them what they got accomplished at the end of the day. >> great use of tools. tools are the best thing you can use to run your company remotely. thank you guys very much for all that advice. we answer questions every week here on the show. if you have one, go on over to

our website. the address is open openforum.com/yourbusiness. once there, hit the ask the question link. if you would rather e-mail us your questions, e-mail them to yourbusiness@msnbc.com. last week, we introduced a fun new game called jjj's challenge. the first one was to clean out your inbox every single day. do you guys do this? >> absolutely not. if i have inbox of 250, i'm the happiest in the world. >> and how does tony shea do this? >> he said this is what he does. i believe. it's like a weight on my back. i did it. i started at 600. i got down to 26. i so badly wanted to come on the show and say i did it. but i didn't. i got it down to five new ones every single day, which is much

better than i used to have. it turns out i was not alone. it's crazy. i chose this as the first one to do. i should have chose an easier challenge. a lot of people had problems with it. amy wrote i'm trying the jj's challenge, the key for me is to unsubscribe. good advice. john said i accept the jj challenge from jj ramberg, 1200 e-mails to go. you go john. i know that made me feel better about what i had to do. this week's challenge, which you guys both have to do with me is from jack doresey, one of the founders of twitters and then started mobile payment company square. talk about success, jack dorsey has seen it in spades what is his challenge? get up at sunrise and start early? >> what time zone? >> it's easier in the winter.

>> is easier in the winter. it's easey for me because i'm already an early riser. >> i'm not on board with this challenge. i was offered a radio show but i turned it down because i could not get up early. can we tweak this? >> are no tweaks. >> jack will be proud of me. e-mail is tough. >> that was last week. i want to know how you guys are doing. please tweet us put stuff on facebook. use the #thejjchallenge. even though we are committing to a new challenge every week these goals are great additions to your daily routine. listen to this eric. if you didn't get last week's challenge, here are some tips about clearing out your inbox every single day. these are five bad e-mail habits you should avoid. one, overflowing your inbox with

unnecessary information. the desire to stay on top of everything is great, but if you're subscribing to too many news letters, unsubscribe from the ones you don't need. two, using e-mail for everything. if you want to chat, use an app like hip chat. three, wasting time checking out your inbox. set specific times to respond to important e-mails and use keyboard short cuts. four writing long-winded e-mails. practice good etiquette and keep your message short. make sure your subject line is clear so it's easily searchable for reference. five, never deleting or archiving. clear your inbox on a regular basis so you don't waste time filtering through old e-mails. thank you for joining us today. if you want to see any of our segments again you can find them on our website openforum.com/yourbusiness. and we have posted a bunch more content to help your company grow.

we are also on twitter. it's @msnbc yourbiz. facebook and instagram. next week an entrepreneur taps recent immigrants to teach ethnic cuisine to american foodies. >> each of our instructors receives about 50 hours of paid training. about half to two-thirds of that is coaching around teaching. because you can be a great cook but that's different from being a good teacher of cooking. >> turning the tables on the traditional cooking school model while giving immigrants an opportunity to work and share their culture. until then i'm jj ramberg. 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. death and taxes. all right. good morning. thanks for getting up with us this sunday morning. a lot to get to today including president obama's going to be using his biggest television audience of the year to pitch tax increases on the wealthy. much more on that in a minute. we're also going to be joined by some of our favorite faces we see inside the house chamber every year when the president