how did san francisco entrepreneur turned his retail store into a full-blown lifestyle company? plus a bay area restaurant gets customers to help pay for employee health care. and liberty tax ceo john hewitt on how to make your customers happy even when they're not getting happy returns. we'll have 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." the show dedicated to giving you tips and advice to grow your small business. i met ami arad when i was in san francisco a few months ago. i happened to take a tour of his private club called wingtip and i was fascinated by how he had built his brand. every single thing down to ami's own clothes seemed to fit the image he created for his company. so i asked him if i could come back and get a little more insight into how he turned his idea for a men's clothing store into a full-blown lifestyle company.

>> reporter: ami arad is a self-described modern gentleman. >> the modern gentleman sort of seamlessly traverses work play family friends, different social settings. and appreciates the finer things in life whether that's food and wine spirits and cigars beautiful cars, nice timepieces. >> and his san francisco based company wingtip, which is half public retail store, and half private social club is focused on making sure that that gentleman, and some ladies too, have a place to go that fits their lifestyle. what are you guys selling here? it's not just that you're selling whiskey and shoes. you're selling something bigger. >> i think at it's most simplest level you're selling an experience. >> wingtip started in 2004 as an e-commerce store, curated by ami who, since a young age also appreciated fine wine, cigars

and fancy clothes. >> i would show up to a very old-school bar in san francisco in a sport coat and a tie, with a cigar, which you could smoke at this particular bar in the mid '90s and i'd order a glass of port and no one there ever carded me because who would assume that a 19-year-old kid would be having that type of experience. but that's what i liked. >> after a few years, ami had enough funding to open his brick and mortar store. then in 2010 he started the member's only club. was it scary for you to maked investment that this club required? >> i would say it wasage educated gamble. >> educated because ami had developed an incredibly loyal customer base at the store. one that he turned to to recruit the founding members of the club. >> i sent out an e-mail on a saturday morning to about 40 of our bess customers. very high level explanation of what we were trying to do. i asked for $1,000 per person and i need to know by tomorrow. and we got there.

>> roger was one of the first to join. >> so what about the store made you want to join a club? >> it was the people. just the overall thought that went behind their front line product. >> roger is an ideal member and shopper. >> i've tried this on for two months. >> really they're all one and the same. when you join the club your dues go towards a credit at the store. >> all of the things that we sell are part of the modern gentleman's lifestyle. the difference at wingtip is that through the private club you actually have a chance to experience things before you buy them. >> in other words, not only is everything at the store for sale, but everything at the club is for sale, too. the smoking jackets, the gas ware, the key holders. it worked on me ami and i sat down to have a signature wingtip manhattan. >> cheers. >> and within seconds, i was tempted to buy everything around me. i already want to buy this as a gift. >> we'll take care of you later

today. >> the key to ami's success is in the details. every single thing is telling the story of the modern gentleman. there the billiards room the tradition of sabering the champagne, the $18,000 bottle of whiskey. kristen has been a member for the last few years. >> every little detail you know, from the mirror that they have with the shoes all around it. i love the fact that all of the different board rooms are a different style. i think one of the biggest things our customers and members are attracted to is the authenticity of the space. it doesn't feel corporate. >> part of that realness also comes from ami's ability to laugh at himself. is there something a little tongue in cheek about this place? >> i would hope there's a lot that's tongue in cheek about the space. so i believe that we can sell and enjoy luxury goods, but without pretension. >> there are examples of this everywhere. like here in the board room.

this is the wingtip board of directors? >> this is my fictitious board of directors. the people that inspired me. >> oh, this is funny. let me see how many of these i know. billy ray valentine. >> you're missing my head of sales here which is big tom callahan from tommy boy. >> this is perfectly in line with the way ami has grown the company. he's primarily driven by his own instinct. are you a focus group of one then? >> i always loved the henry ford quote if i asked the public what they wanted they would have told me faster horses. i constantly listen to customer feedback, member feedback employee feedback but at the end of the day i'm always going to trust my gut the most. >> and his gut is telling him it's time to expand. he hopes to have wingtips in cities across the country. >> we'll hopefully be open in l.a. this time next year and the hope is that we're in five cities by 2020. >> another business in san francisco, this one a restaurant, has also come up

with an innovative business model, and in the process found a way to win both customer and employee loyalty. nbc's cynthia mcfadden reports that employees are receiving benefits like health care thanks to patrons. >> here in san francisco, the birth place of america's counterculture, a new revolution. ground zero this tiny french bistro. owner jennifer would be the first to say hers is not the fanciest or the hippest restaurant in town. but the grilled heritage pork chop is hard to beat. but really made zazdy's famous is something else on the menu right there in the fine print. >> $1.25 surcharge to provide health benefits for our hard-working staff. which is less than a parking meter around here. exactly a parking meter will cost you more than $1.25 for 30 minutes and that provides every staff member even people that work one day a week with full benefits including full health insurance, full dental paid sick leave and the 401(k) with a

match. >> it was a resume she first cooked up after her own career waiting tables. >> always being treated like a thief, that i was replaceable, irrelevant to the business. >> when she bought this place ten years ago she you doed zazie would be different. >> so you can live like a restaurant. >> exactly. >> yeah? >> yeah. >> and plan for your future. >> this little restaurant, our 32 employees that contribute to the 401(k) have over $1 million in savings. and the average age here is 26. >> you could personally make a lot more money if you didn't do it this way, couldn't you? >> know, i don't think i could. the reason for that is the turnover is incredibly expensive. people that have been here a long time can turn out a kind of work level that someone who's only been here six months can't. >> i'm a chef here. i've been working here 15 years. i love my job. >> one of the dish washers here has been here 20-some years. >> this is our job. we're not actors who are just trying to make a buck.

we're here to stay. >> to say that just because they don't put on a suit and go to work every day, they don't have a real job or they don't need benefits like a real worker would, is ridiculous. >> but all this goodwill must come at a cost right? after all, san francisco is one of the most competitive restaurant markets in the world. >> a successful restaurant is profiting 5%. >> what do you guys do? >> closer to 22%. >> 22% profit? >> on a good year. my accountant is going to kill me for telling you that. >> a recipe for success that has them all coming back for more. cynthia mcfadden, nbc news, san francisco. john hewitt has made quite a name for himself in the tax preparation industry. the cofunder for jackson hewitt a company which he no longer works but bears his name is the founder and ceo of liberty tax service based in virginia beach, virginia. now the third largest tax prep firm in the country, liberty has 4300 locations and continues to

grow. with taxes due any day, john talked to us about making your customers happy, principles trumping policies and getting out of the box in this learning from the pros. >> making customers happy. you never meet a customer's expectations. you either exceed it or fail to meet it. >> our goal as ceos is to have a higher and higher percentage of exceeding customers' expectations. caution is a thing of the past. you have to go for it. we do one thing almost no one does. we're one of the few national companies that calls every customer two days after they've been in and asked them how we did for them and how we can improve. they like being called. they like being asked. they return that we have a higher retention when we call our customers and ask them how we did.

flexibility is key because you have so many different kinds of customers. so you got to do things different. if you're competing against a multibillion dollar company, and they're open certain hours, or you have to do something different, during our peak season instead of open 9:00 to 9:00, we're open from 7:00 until the last customer leaves. you can't use the same weapon. so you have to be flexible in thinking of weapons that you can utilize that they're not utilizing. or else you're not going to win. same sword, same shield, same armor. they're going to win. principles trump policies. there isn't a law that's written that is fair. in every situation. every law and every policy has exceptions. we love our policies. even our own organization where i'm totally against policy over principle, we have many of our managers that just love policies. one time we had a rule where the franchisees could only talk to accounting department between 2:00 and 4:00. well at 4:15 somehow a

franchisee got a hold of someone in accounting and the person said well i can't talk to you it's past 4:00 and hung up the phone. that's -- i mean that's just bad business. we can't let a policy interfere with doing the right thing. get out of the box. i think that almost no one thinks outside the box. i think in school you're rewarded for staying inside the box. in this country, when you go to elementary school, middle school high school college, you're taught to most places to think inside the box. that the right answer is nine times nine 81. you get rewarded for conforming. so the rebels the steve jobs and bill gates, they drop out of college, and they get outside the box. thinking outside the box is critical to change the world. be strategic. it sounds like a no brainer. i think so many people they

think a profit is the key to successful business. it's really cash flow. you can be profitable but if your -- if you're not cash flowing positive, you're going to go out of business. we have some great operators who are get at getting customers in the door but the cash flows to them is like greek they have no clue. it's one of the two major reasons that 95% of small businesses start fail because they just can't handle their cash flow. when used correctly, youtube advertising can be a great way to not only grow your business but also generate actual sales. here now are five mistakes to avoid when running youtube advertising, courtesy of entrepreneur.com. one, waiting too long to take advantage of youtube advertising. it may mean investing some money and some time now but it's still pretty new, so inevitably, the prices are going to go up later. this is a good time to try it out.

two, not using in-stream ads. these are the skippable five-second ads that you see when watching a video on youtube. if your goal is sales, these are by far the most effective. three not having a great video created. your content should scream quality or else reviewers aren't going to trust the ad. give a call to action within 30 seconds. get to the point quickly, and make sure to tell a great story. four, not tracking the right things to analyze. you can look at helpful metrics such as rate and a lot more by clicking on columns. and five giving up too quickly. if you see any traction with your ads, and things seem to be moving in the right direction, don't be so quick to take them down. i speak to owners of companies that have tech teams all of the time and one thing that i often hear is that they wish they had more women in that department. our next guest is a big proponent of gender diversity, as well as other diversity

amongst your engineers. stephanie leffler is the ceo of crowdsource a cloud based platform that helps companies find curette, train manage and place freelancers and contractors across multiple talent bases. good to see you. let's start is what is kind of an obvious question but get it out there and have you answer. why is it important to have women on your tech team? >> well i mean i think it's important to have gender diversity kind of in all departments. >> mm-hmm. >> but in particularly in the technology group i feel like that hasn't always been the case. and it still isn't. because i think a lot of girls don't take that direction. but at the end of the day it comes down to communication. and i feel like adding a female perspective sometimes just changes the dynamic enough that better communication ensues within that team. or if it's just a single person or a couple of people running technology for a small business it sometimes helps people feel more comfortable or more willing to communicate about the problems and really ask questions. >> so, where do you find them? because i hear this over and over again, which is i would

love to have more diversity. gender diversity in engineers, programmers, right, but i cannot find women to hire. i would, if they came through my door. so where do you find more people? >> well, yeah i think it is a challenge. i would say in the candidate pool women are not always equally represented. so you have to go a little bit further. some of the things i would recommend would be to go to a local college, and a lot of the career training type universities are a great place to start. meet with professors let the career department know that you're looking for a diverse group of candidates and often they'll send people directly to you. another good technique is to train people from within. you know a lot of people assume that technical roles are sort of you must know when you walk in the door. but the truth of the matter is is that you don't have to know and there are a number of technical roles where you can be trained relatively quickly. so if you find somebody with great communication skills internally, consider offering them the ability to train. and aside from that you know

just continue to develop relationships with your internal team, and ask them to reach out to their network. i say that's another great way to target a particular type of candidate. >> so if you follow the news out of silicon valley there's been lots of stories recently about companies that are not very friendly to women, and particularly technology teams that are not very women friendly. and so what can you do as a company to make sure that you are a welcoming place for women to come work in the tech team? >> sure. so i say one of the things you can do is to make sure that your benefits package speaks to women and at least acknowledges some of the things that women, in particular, are going to be most concerned about. just things like maternity leave and certain types of health care coverage. in addition, i think when you interview female candidates it's not a bad idea to have a female team member in the room. because it just helps put the situation at ease or you know rather than having three male developers sitting there and sort of a firing squad it's always nice to have you know a

familiar face in the room. i think that can also help. >> stephanie, so great to see you. >> nice to see you, as well. thank you. small business owners are always looking for new ways to work faster and more efficiently. and that's why we asked our viewers for their favorite apps and tools that help them push their businesses forward. >> an app that i live by is good reader. and it really allows me to manage all of my documents in a paperless way. whether it's signing documents, or marking up giving feedback to my staff members, it really allows me to get rid of the pen, get rid of the paper, and do everything on my ipad. >> we use mix cloud. mix cloud is an app similar to spotify or pandora but you can customize play lists and inter interact with customers on a social media. it's a great marketing tool. >> one website i love to use is ijot.com. it allows you to send a video

e-mail and if you get the paid version eight hows you to even brand your e-mail so that you're talking and they open their e-mail and they get a video. it's great for customer service and for promotional. >> we use the amazon seller app to help us efficiently source new products. with this app, which is an app for mobile devices, it allows you to either take images of a product, or scan a barcode, and it will link to the amazon listing for that product, tell you how many third party sellers are selling the product, what the price is they're getting for the product, how much the fees amazon collects for the product, and how long amazon expects to be selling the product. it's a wonderful way to quickly go through wholesale catalogs or trade shows and find viable products if you're an amazon third party seller. >> when we come back making sure you have all the bases covered with your taxes, and selling versus expanding your

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in this timeless selfie portrait. now we'd like to see your selfie. send it to @yourbusiness@msnbc.com. don't forget to use the the #yourbizselfie. it's time now to answer some of your business questions. let's get our board of directors in here to help us out. scott bellski is at adobe, also the co-founder of an online platform to showcase and discover creative work. and executive creative director of wayfair, largest online retailer of home furnishings and decor. good to see both of you guys. it's fun to have you both here because you both started your companies, grew them and then sold them to public companies, so you have similar experiences. let's get to the first question. it's about taxes. sorry, taxes. it's coming up.

>> i think the main question i would have is how to make sure you're covering all the bases you need to have in terms of legality with taxes. i have an attorney and i have a financial person, but i'm not really sure i'm doing everything i need to do. >> this just gets to the point of hiring people that you can trust. and how do you find them? you can't just find any attorney, any accountant. >> i've been through this in a very interesting way. i had just a sort of general tax adviser/accountant. then i found out that there are people who specialize in industries. so i hired somebody that specialized in the manufacturing and actually home furnishings industry and centered around creative business. and he was able to walk me through the myriad of ways that i was not maximizing my tax returns over the years. and i actually got money back. so really finding somebody who specializes in the business that you do in taxes is so key. otherwise you're literally throwing money out the window. >> right. >> i agree.

i think it's also important says to have -- or to know the difference between insights and answers. obviously you need answers from professionals. but insights can come from friends in the industry you know advisers that you have. i mean personally i think for me, a lot of the insight's around effective tax management and accounting often come from friends. then i will check them with my accountant or lawyer. >> let's move to the future of your small business. >> when do you know if it's the right time to sell your company or to scale your company and to grow your company? >> perfect panel for this. okay, how did you decide? >> where do we begin? >> this is the journey. >> if you are -- first of all, if your company is not growing, it's actually not a good probably time to sell because you're not going to do very well by selling it. >> you won't get the multiple. >> exactly. >> also if your company is not growing, it's also not a great time to scale because there are so many pitfalls. you can go from having a company to not having a company very quickly. >> for sure. when you're thinking about who the right parent or acquirer

would be you're thinking about a place that would help you to grow. and if you have exposure to the upside in the scale, which is a common arrangements in acquisitions, that's going to do very well for you. >> yes. one of the things as an entrepreneur and you look at your business there comes a day when there's a fork in the road. and you can either i think for me it was either raise a lot of money and build the kind of infrastructure you would need to scale your business or a strategic merger where you're taking advantage of some of the things they have some of the scale they have. >> great. let's move to the last question. it's about company culture. >> what are some great ways you that you authentically integrate your company culture that really gets everyone feeling enveloped in that culture but also seeming not force? >> i love company culture questions. because we've profiled a bunch of company, warby parker as one of them that this has instituted this great culture right from the start. i think it's interesting to think about how do you create a

culture when it's not the start? it's easy when you're starting out. but if you already have a company, how do you then start saying oh wait now i need to think about culture? >> it's funny because we had a very distinct corporate culture with a merger with a very large company, and it feels very different from a cultural perspective. but i think it all comes down from the sort of people that start it. so from the founders. and i think whatever your kind of you know mantra is put it out there and put it out there consistently. so if, you know if team building is what you're after, then do it and do it consistently. and do it authentically because i think when you hire a bunch of consultants to come in and tell you what kind of corporate culture you have, people understand that and feel it and it feels very forced. i think if it comes from the leadership in the company and it's really authentic, then people will buy it like it and, you know put it forth. >> i think the point is you have to talk about it too, right? >> you do. >> if it's just you thinking this is the culture, people may not know. >> well if you boil it down i think it comes down to stories.

you know it's stories about joer coming adversities or dealing with difficult customers or hiring someone and learning that it wasn't right and sharing those stories. that's why they say the greatest leaders are storytellers. the other thing about culture is it's the hardest thing to build. it's the easiest thing to lose. if you hire the wrong person you change the dna of the team. it's like a toxic -- it's just like a toxic infection. you have to kind of immediately fix it. so cultivating and being the steward of the culture is an active responsibility. >> that is the point. at quirky you know the company quirky, we did a story on them recently. and they have these, i think, eight core values or six core values. and when you have that written down, and they're specific, right? it's easy because you can bounce everything against those core values. >> i also think accessibility is also really important. that's like a sort of economy 2.0 kind of notion that you can walk into the ceo's door and really talk about things. and there's a lot of communication. and i think that's really important. i think that's probably one of

the distinct advantage warby parker had from the start. those guys are, like door open. this is our community. >> transparency. >> transparency. we're all talking about this and in it together. when people feel like that and there's not a lot of layers then they're willing to you know coalesce and get behind it. >> yeah i love company culture. they're some of my favorite stories to do. great to see both of you guys. thank you so much for your advice. and if any of you out there have a question for our experts, just go to our website because we answer them every week here on the show. the address is openforum openforum.com/yourbusiness and then hit the app to the show link. you can also send us an e-mail if you'd like. that e-mail address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. we are always checking out twitter to see what entrepreneurs and small business owners are talking about. here are some tweets we'd like to share with you. business consultants with this morning. always be prepared. some angel investors unassumingly lurk in random places just to scout their next

investment. your business panelist and tech entrepreneur jennifer shaheen tweets, the sweet spot in digital marketing is strategies that bridge the gap between mobile devices and in-person experiences. bring the two together. and small business influencer carrie wilkerson with this advice. i've said this before but it bears repeating. you have to say no to the good to make room for the great. thank you so much for joining us today. if you want to catch any of our segments again, just head on over to our website. it is openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of today's pieces plus some web exclusive content with a whole lot more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter. it's at msnbc/yourbiz and we are on facebook and instagram as well. next week we profile a business that's a comic bookstore by day and a hot night life spot by night. >> one of the coolest things about having the geek easy is

that it brings people into this comic shop that would maybe never set foot in a comic shop. that they have to literally walk through the comic shop to get into the geek easy. >> how this orlando-based retail store is converting new clientele into loyal customers. till then i'm j.j. ramberg. and remember we make your business our business. american express for travel and entertainment worldwide. just show them this - the american express card. don't leave home without it! and someday, i may even use it on the moon. it's a marvelous thing! oh! haha! so you can replace plane tickets, traveler's cheques, a lost card. really? that worked?

american express' timeless safety and security are now available on apple pay. the next evolution of membership is here. the final countdown. and good morning to you out there. thanks for getting up with us this sunday morning. a lot to get to on the show today including why all eyes are on hillary clinton this morning. i think you know the answer. we're all anticipating, we're all waiting for that official launch of her presidential campaign. that could be coming any hour now. we're also going to take a look at the "snl" factor. our friends in studio 8h greet the expected rollout of another clinton campaign for president on their show last night. also this morning, it was supposed to be a big weekend for senator marco