what can you do to protect your small business from hackers? and a cooking school uses recent immigrants as instructors to teach their native cuisines to aspiring chefs. we've got that and more coming up next on "your business." ♪ small businesses are revitalizing the economy and american express open is here to help. that's why we are proud to present "your business" on msnbc.

hi everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg, and welcome to "your business." if you're looking for an international culinary adventure without a passport then look no further than new york city's league of kitchens. it's the brain child of social entrepreneur lisa gross. the company's mission was simple. to be a cooking school beforewhere immigrants could share their country's culinary traditions. it's a saturday afternoon in cue gardens, new york and four earring students are traveling for an afternoon of emessive stud any a new culture, cuisine and neighborhood. >> hi.

welcome. this is -- welcome to my home. >> reporter: if this doesn't look like a typical cooking class, it's because this isn't your ordinary cooking school. >> so you are welcome here and you belong to me now and i belong to you. >> reporter: born out of regret lisa gross had an idea for a business that was simple and very personal. a product of half korean and half russian jewish heritage lisa loved to cook but failed to learn and fully appreciate her grandmother's recipes before she died. >> i starteded to try to teach myself from books, you know from recipes online but something was always a little bit off or missing, and so that became this fantasy of oh wouldn't it be great if there was a korean grandmother i could learn from go into her own kitchen, and learn from her and family recipes and that came to the idea wouldn't that be great if you could do that from all over the world? >> reporter: lisa ought out ofsought

out recent immigrants from many places who were talented home cooks to share their unique epic cuisine with a small group of students in the comfort of their own home. >> new york city right now is actually statistically the most diverse place on the planet, but for so many people your only interactions with immigrants are in service positions, in the league of kitchens workshop the instruct. who's the immigrant, is really the host the expert. they're the ones who are sharing their story and their expertise, and so often the immigrant is the one who's being taught, too, or the one who's in a position of dislocation or disorientation and so that convention's power dynamic is really switched in a league of kitchens workshop. >> reporter: and that's a welcome change for these mostly middle age recent emigres who found meaningful well-paid jobs in the united states to be a challenge. especially with newly learned english skills and little prior work experience. >> but i think what really unites them is they're all very

passionate about cooking and teeding people and sharing their knowledge, and hosting people and that's where they find kind of their happiness is in doing those things. >> how do you make this? >> we going to learn today. >> ah, yes! >> reporter: lisa does more than just hire these recent arrivals. she also helps train them. >> each of our instructors receives about 50 hours of paid training, and about half to two-thirds of that is coaching around teaching, because you know, you can be a great cook but that's very different from being a good teacher of cooking. each instructor teaches a series of practice workshops, then they get coached afterwards and we also work with them to create their teaching menus. each instructor teaches the same menu at every workshop. we design the menus for them so there's something for a beginning chef an advanced chef. >> reporter: this was central to their living back home. >> my mom was primarily a stay at home home. she was constantly in the

kitchen. that was her main role was making sure that everyone in the family was fed. and it was not just like one meal a day. we're talking about four meal as day. breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner. all four have to be fresh meals. >> reporter: before meeting lisa, many of these women had tried to make a business out of they are cooking, but found it difficult to run those type in new york stip without marketing and delivering setting up the food. >> one things we provide to all of our instructors is the marketing, the signup apparatus where all the students register through us and pay through us. we organize everything, and so that allows our instructors to really focus on what they're great at which is cooking, teaching sharing, hosting. so this is sort of freeing, that they can just let all of that go and just focus on the thing that they really love and are good at. >> reporter: now they have a place to sharp their skille their skills and earn some money.

before they get a job they have to go through an audition. lisa insists she gets the best aroundants actually to get our first six instructors we interviewed close to 150 people and did in-home cooking auditions with about 25 because there's no staff at these workshops. it's really in the hands of our instructors. i think it's been a really kind of exciting and em poub powering experience to have these groups come into their homes especially food professionals, too, and really appreciate their cooking and their skill and their knowledge. the league of kitchens model shows how the immigrant experience can be an integral part in passing on skills and entrepreneurial wisdom to a new audience. that was the case for an chicago artist who couldn't find a pair of shoes. like an immigrant father, he decided to make them himself.

george blogos grew up working in a suburban cobbler shop. there he watched and learned the old world craft of repairing and building shoes from his father john, an immigrant from greece. >> it's hard work you know? kids get dirty, you know and it's not easy. >> reporter: after college, george started a career as a teacher, but soon found himself day dreaming about being his own boss and going into the shoe business just like his dad. >> growing up you know in my family, you always had to buy shoes that could be resoled. my dad always wanted you to have shoes that would last. >> reporter: george realized in an era where things are disposable, a well-made pair of american shoes was hard to come by, so george set out to assemble a group of artisans to revive the craft of shoemaking in the united states paying special attention to sourcing all of the materials and labor in america. >> that's kind of when the idea was sparked of how could we make a shoe or boots in america,

make them out of the best components. really in the world. hand craft them the old-fashioned way, and offer them at a price that that's attainable. >> reporter: he named his company oak street boot makers and started his search to find the best materials possible for his uber american shoes. he didn't have to go far to source the most important ingredient. the leather. it just so happened the last remaining tannery in chicago, this leather company, a fourth generation family-run business was just a few miles away. >> he's here i would say at least once a month, but we talk much more often. he wants to know what the footage is when is it going to be ready? how. looking, and that's a service we're here to provide. >> reporter: the longtime supplier of leather to companies that make high-end shoes like alan edmonds. nick, the fifth generation at his family's legendary company, is very interested in making sure the leather that takes up to six months to tan is just

right. even for a smaller company like oak street. >> making leather is a craft. there's a lot more steps than most people realize. >> reporter: with the leather sourced in america, george started working on his designs. many of them a riff on the classic boat shoe. the key element in his version, hand-sown seams. he went searching for a place to assemble a small con tingant of sewers pap few craft people with that unique skill was maine. once one of the state's biggest employer, the shoe industry has all but disappeared there with the work being done cheaper overseas. adam sutton's factory from bangor is one of only four left in the entire state whrchlts george contacted me and wanted to come and see the factory, he sort of fell in love with what we were doing, and then he started to tell me his story and getting back to the whole, hey, i want to make product in

america. >> reporter: the timing was perfect. sunt's factory was not going to make it without an influx of work for its highly skilled hand sewers and crafts people with the all-american high-quality supply chain figured out george launched his business online. not sure whether anyone would be willing to pay between $250 and $450 for his hand-crafted shoes. one mention on a blog called secret port sealed his fate. >> but that day we sold out of all of our inventory, within 24 hours, we were out. and so -- the fact our shoes are handmade present add problem . . -- presented a problem, because they take about six weeks to make, and we know that that's a long time but even though we sold out, we immediately went to a six-week pre-order system and customers were still ordering. >> reporter: now oak street boot makers has stoked the artisan economy with hand-crafted shoes with people still waiting sometimes six

weeks for a pair of him. his hands-on approach has him working side-by-side with nick on the leather before it ships to adam sutton in maine to be hand sohnzone sown and he personally monitors and inspects every pair of shoes before they ship. >> we don't see our factory as just a factory that's making our shoes. it's really a relationship. when i see a shoe i can actually often tell who sewed it. it's almost like their signature. and so going to maine and being a part of that is just, it's part of the dna. cyber crime is a real risk for companies big and small, and even with all of these stories of cyber crime out there, too many small businesses are not updating their security policies and tools. do not start thinking about this once it's too late. i cannot stress enough. it doesn't have to take a lot of

money. it doesn't have to take a lot of time, but you have to take this seriously. scott schober is the president and cbo of berkeley electronics systems a company that designs and manufactures security products, and shawn cairn is a director at west monroe partners technology infrastructure and operations practice based in chicago. they're here to share some security measures that you must take to keep your business safe. thank you so much for coming on the program. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> scott, let's start with you. i mean i think for a lot of people, they think i'm just not getting around to this because i'm overwhelmed by it it's going to cost too much money, take too much time. what can somebody do? >> yeah good point. a lot of times just best practices. sharing within small businesses what the risks are, where the vulnerabilities are. certainly it's important that all organizations back up their data on a regular basis. if not daily, at least weekly in case they're hacked as far as a ransom ware attack where it

locks up all your critical information and you're at ransom. that's critical. but best practice is even to avoid phishing attacks, an attachment inside an e-mail alerting employees no the to click on that because that could then down load malware and cause all kinds of havoc. >> what kind of advice do you give to people to talk about phishing scams, for instance? how often do you bring it up? what examples do you give them? >> all the tile. a lot of times give the example if it looks convincing looks real that's most of the time what these guy, doing. they have advanced tools to make it look convincing like it's from your bank or something like that. if there's any ounce of suspicion do not click on the attachment. rather go directly to the url, the website of your bank or whatever else you might be checking. >> maybe say to employees look you don't want to be the one who's responsible for -- >> exactly. good point. >> for cyber crime in our company, right? just get them to remember it. shawn, what are some of the things that you see people fail

to do you know small businesses that get attacked? >> i think the first thing to consider with small business is understanding that the amount of money that they spend to protect their organization is a lot less than the big players are. however, today there's a lot more access to tools through computing and things like that they can access and deploy to protect the environment in the beginning. so looking at anti-e-mail ware and anti-spam ware for e-mail to blaect scott mentioned around those phishing attacks. look at the backups to back up now to the cloud and have all your data in a severecure environment. >> one of the most important things and most neglected is strong passwords. i say this again and again every single day. a six-character password doesn't dut. you got to have at least 15 characters upper case lower case numbers with symbols, and it shouldn't be a common word in

the dictionary, or your wife's name or pet's name or anything else. obscure. something you can't remember, but got to write it down in a secure place. then you minimize the chance you're the next victim to get hacked. very important. >> and shawn, shouldn't have the same password for more than one site? >> that's correct. a big mistake, utilize passwords across different technologies. especially sharing them between the business environment and home environment. that's really where the challenge is. >> right. somebody told me a real good idea, which is create a sentence in your mind right? >> sentences are a great idea. also using things like the last book you read or the last movie that you watched. something along those lines that is easy enough for you to remember at the moment but also provides you with the ability to add some of those special characters in. so mentioned the @symbol, 1 for an i, making it a more difficult sentence for someone to guess using tools but also something you can remember easily without having to write it down or store

it somewhere else. >> scott, leave us with one last point which is how often should you be doing an audit on your security systems and processes? >> for small businesses this is really something they should be doing on a quarterly basis as minimum. depending upon the nature of your business financial, things like that more sensitive data you probably want to do it more often. at least on a month will basis and nothing wrong with having an outside company even come in periodically to do a you haver in 5b89 or penetration test to test how secure are your computer net wroshgs. >> great. thank you to both of you for coming on. in a lot of cases we know what we should be doing. people just aren't taking the time to do it and they will regret this if something goes wrong. this whole conversation is is a great reminder. thanks a lot for coming on. when we come back beal look at whether a start-up should offer ownership to its staff. and hung grip for dessert? with their product, you can text for a tasty treat.

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. today's your biz selfie comes to us from the fun people at the apparel company ciao bella moda international.

send a selfie and add the harb your biz selfie. tweet it to us or e-mail it to your business @msnbc.com. please don't forget to tell us your name city and name of your company. ordering food online is fast becoming the go-to way to have your dinner delivered to you. today's elevator pitchers have come um with way to make your order via text. let's see if they whet our panel's appetite for their product. the small business administration and chairman of the latino coalition and small business expert jim returns as well, the host of the small business advocate show. >> he's greg. i'm stewart. we're co-founders at eat a bit dotcom. last year 70 billion dollars worth of take-out and delivery food orders were placed at independent restaurants in the u.s. only 3% of those orders were

electronic. most food orders are still placed on the telephone. the reason is nobody's come up with a truly universal way to place electronic food orders. imagine if those phone call was replaced with today's most popular form of communication, text messages. >> we've patented an intelligence device that automatically takes food orders for restaurants chatting oefker text message. the device then prints the order inside the restaurant, on paper, in standard format. in our hometown of charleston south carolina we've printed over 10,000 of these orders in the last year. making money leasing these devices directly to the restaurant. stewart and i spend almost $100,000 of our money to get where we are today. we're asking for $500,000 to take it nationwide. >> congratulations. give you these to you. on a scale of one to ten how well they did with the pitch. so funny, you live in your own world. in new york city i don't know

anybody that calls. everybody does it digitally. you're right. it's a tiny portion. >> yes. >> so hopefully you guys will capture some of that market. okay. start with you hector since you seem to be done between one and ten? how did they do? >> 8.5. a great presentation. they definitely know their market. i would like to hear more what they would do whip the $500,000 and going for debt or equity. >> got it. okay. jim? >> my pen doesn't work. >> oh. it doesn't? just tell us. >> 8.25. >> all right, getting specific. >> yes. >> why? what do you think they could have done better? >> done better? >> uh-huh. >> my concern is that you might not be -- the only thing worse for asking for too much money is not asking for enough. >> got it. >> that would be the concern. >> if they had asked for more money, you might have given them a 10? >> might have. >> might have. >> we'll talk afterwards. >> good response. you guys good luck with everything. thank you for coming and pitching to the show. appreciate it.

seems like a really interesting product and thank you guys for your feedback on that pitch. if any of you have a product or service and want feedback like in from our elevator pitch panel on your chances of getting interested investors, please send us an e-mail. "your business"@msnbc.com. include a short summary of what your company does how many money you're trying to raise and what you intend to do with that money. we look forward to reads some of those pitches and seeing some of you here on the show. there are tons of blogs out there offering free advice and information on the latest industry trends but which ones are actually worth your time? here now our five useful small business blogs you should be reading courtesy of yfs magazine. one hub sub blog. the site is a trusted industry source for advice to improve your kpip the inbound marketing strategies. two the atkiss marketing blog.

the analytics platform publishing content focusing on testing and valuating necessary data for your small business. three, the pay roll blog by sure pay roll. get the latest information on tax as well as small business tips and economic trends. for both sides of the table, by mark schuster a two-time entrepreneur turned vench capitalists giving firsthand advice on raising capital through the lens of a vc and five the blog from 500 start-ups, an early seed fund and ink cue balloter program sharing useful insight on lean start-up practices and metrics. it is time now to answer some of your business questions. so let's get our board of directors in here to help and jim and hector are back with us. this first question is about equity. >> i'd like to know when fannedand if it's okay for a start-up to offer ownership to prospective and current staff?

>> a great question. not alone in having this. start with you. >> j.j. she says she's a start-up. >> uh-huh. >> i don't think it's a good idea to have employees be owners of the company until down the road. now if you're going for venture capital day one and you know you're going to be divesting in this company in a few years maybe that's what you need to do. if kbrur trying to build a mainstreet business ease essentially any employees you bring in as owners that they are key employees you're going to keep a long time that you don't plan to ever fire. so i'm not crazy about equity for employees early on. >> right. it's different, right, in silicon valley it is expected. >> that's right. >> in many industries it is not accepted? >> a rare exception, for main street. >> those are high-growth businesses. that's more common. i agree with jim. my father used to say, you never take on a partner unless they can do something that you can't do. so if it's just about financing those employees, i think there's other ways to do that. >> the other thing, can you do all kind of thing, profit-sharing plans which

aren't about giving ect get that your company still allowing people to share in your success and be motivateed by your success. >> that's right. >> the last question who writes my husband and i are starting an office cleaning company. he has 25 years of cleaning experience and i have 20 years of customer service experience. but together we do not know how to come up with pricing to charge for the jobs. please guide us to know how much to charge our future clients. is there a formula to follow? i'm going to start with you, jim. your latest book "age of the customer" and pricing is all about this as well. >> that's right. the thing is this is a personal service business and a start-up. one of the biggest mistake as company like that makes initially, associating what they charge with wages. what you charge has to be a flies will sustain your company financially. what you take out of the company is unrelated to that. so you have to make sure you don't confuse wages with what you have to charge and you have to convince -- charge whatever you can convince your customers you're worth and also

competitive pressures. but make sure you don't get in the trap of associating your price with wages. >> so how do you even come up -- where do you even look to start to come up with a number? >> got to do your homework. market research. ask a perspective customer what's they're paying or would pay. you need to know your business. what is your distinct competitive advantage what will it cost to run that operation and the profit you iran tend to make. do your homework sharpen the pencil and make sure you have a viable business. >> you both mentioned go to your competitors. if they're charges say $5 are you offering anything better that gets you up there? >> that's right. >> right. >> either you're providing more services for the same amount of money or you're able to lower that cost. then somebody's going to pay attention to you. all things being equal, why should they change? >> right. okay great. thank you guys so much for all of this advice. very very helpful appreciate it. so good to see you guys. and if any of you have a question for our experts, just go on over to our website.

the address is openforum.com/yourbusiness. there just hit the ask the show link to submit a question for our panel or e-mail us your questions or your comments that address is yourbusiness yourbusiness @msnbc.com. actually, not letting you leave yet. you have to participate in this with me. this is week three, starts week three of the j.j. challenge. it for all of you out there you know this. a new segment challenging ourselves to pick up some of the habits of really successful entrepreneurs. last week jack dorsey founder of twitter and square and it was to get your day going before sunrise. do you guy doss that? >> absolutely. >> so easy for me. i totally -- >> i'm on the air at 6:00. >> there you go. i failed. the week before came from tony shade, clean out your in-box failed. this one, simple. wasn't alone. up before 3:00 a.m. and-of-without the alarm have been since i opened my business in 1992.

early morning is best mind is fresh, phone isn't ringing. you can get a lot of work done without interruption. also, as hard as it may seem to gelt to the gym before sunrise, it's worth it. i get rid of thoughts in my head i walk up whip that can suck energy, that way rid of distractions by the time i get to work and neil tweeted if my kid is up i'm up too. does it count? i don't think so. there you are getting no productive work done if you're kid is also up with you at 6:00 in the morning, but you may be having fun. anyhow it does not count. get up earlier, sorry to say. this week's challenge comes from denae ringalman, founder of indiegogo, a large and fast growing site hosted more than 250,000 campaigns and is active in more than 200 countries and here is her challenge. ask one of your employees to give you a review. have you guys done that? >> i haven't but i think it's a good idea and pretty brave.

you don't know what's going to come back on the other side. really good. >> i do too. >> the corporate calls it 360. the 360 review where you get a lot more than just -- you get other people ask, telling you what you need to be doing, yeah. i've never said rate me. i've set rate our company. how did we do? that's a good idea. >> here you go. this is going to be hard. i think hard for a lot of people. one thing i have to stress is you have to make sure you create an environment where people feel that they can be honest with you, because if not, this is a wasted exercise. do not get defensive. i suspect we're all going to learn a lot from this which will make us better leaders. let me know how it goes on twitter or facebook using the #the j.j. challenge. i'll look for these and i'm going to do it as well. good luck everyone. to learn more about today's show just head over to our website. openfor um.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of todaying

segments and a lot more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter, it's @msnbcyourbiz and we are on facebook and instagram as well. next week the creator of a new app which provides health coaches is going after customers any way she can. how the company vita health is maintaining focus while diversifying theirs outreach? until then i'm j.j. 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. 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. [ applause ] good evening. i'm chris matthews out here in phoenix, arizona, with