it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. how this woman creates a successful business cleaning up crime scenes meth labs and homes of hoarders. how these women at a prison are turning their lives around. 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're proud to

present "your business" on msnbc. hi everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg and welcome to your business. the show dedicated to helping your small business grow. if you have a business that artdss an issue that's hard to talk about, it can be tricky to spread the word. if you work in a industry associated with horrible events for example, a crime scene, how do you put a positive spin on it? >> we went to tampa to talk to an inventor who finds a way to market her company, which cleans up after some horrific situations. in shows like "c.s.i." and "breaking bad" crime screens pivotal settings. in real life there's often

chaos and debris left behind that no one wants to clean up. except for former law enforcement officer laura spalding. she saw an opportunity. >> it was a double homicide. it was on christmas. i was helping these people that really had no means to pay for it. but, their home jnowner's shurnd covered the clean up. after that i said this is it for me. this is what i want to do. >> reporter: so she started spaulding recon. after setting up camp in tampa, florida, she soon found she had little competition. but the work wasn't steady at first. >> the cleanups are sporadic. it's not something you can open a brick and mortar put up a forsale sign and then people walk in. we added hoarding. >> the tricky nature of business

means laura can't spend her days waiting for the phone to ring. >> it's an wareness thing. i'm going to hoe teshlgs apartment complexes, insurance companies. when they get that call they don't know where to turn. you get the same reactions, we don't need this service. then two weeks later, they're calling you. i can't believe i'm calling you. when you need it they knew where to pick up the card. >> reporter: that's what happened to gay kohler. tragedy struck. >> my son was killed january 4th of this year. he was murdered by a young man that he was going to give a ride to work that morning. and, the police came and, um had my house for most of the day that day. and when they let me back in they told me that there would

be you know a lot to clean up and that it was -- because it was biomedical waste, it would be better to get somebody. >> reporter: a quick call made to a number she never imagined she would have to dial and laura's team was on the scene. the workers took care of a job that gay was thankful she didn't have to do herself. >> it's very tumultuous to lose a son, a child, especially like that in your own home. it made things easier. if i had to clean it up my son had to clean it up it would have made it so much harder. i was glad i met laura before something like that happened. >> reporter: and to grow her business, laura knows that's one fact she needs to change. not all publicity is good. >> this is not your typical service. not a typical coupon or find a buy one get one free.

that won't apply. you have to be very strategic about how you advertise. some of the advertising has been billboards with outlines of dead bodies and, you know that will definitely get your attention. i know they're going for an awareness type of thing. maybe it worked for them. that type of approach doesn't work for us. >> reporter: instead, discreet professional bro churs that address each service individually make sure east customer base is treated separately. >> i designed the bro churs. i don't want a one size fits all bro chur. the hoarders don't want to know that you do a crime scene. they associate themselves to the crime scene. and then they feel worse. >> reporter: that spills over into hour he team delivers on each and every job. >> for hoarding we're sensitive about the way we speak to them. we teach the employee that you

have to be empathetic. i'm going to help you today. we're going get started. we're going bag up a couple of bags. you have to be sensitive in these situations. i spend more time on that because i think not everyone is from the same background. not everyone grieves the same way. >> reporter: knowing her employees well means the high level of service her business is known for continues on even if she's not taking care of the job herself. >> i can tell their strengths and weaknesses. if i put them on a crew i can assign who i want to be the lead and the contact for the customer. >> reporter: her ability to speak to the needs of her customers and market what many see as an unsavory business tastefully means the future is bright for spaulding decon. not only in florida but nationwide. she's franchising. she has inquiries pouring in. >> we do the services that no one else wants to think about. we provide peace of mind and

restoration of property. i think the growth of this business is unbelievable. it's a recession-proof business. the need is never going to go away. the awareness is only growing. ♪ >> getting past horrible events and life-changing mistakes can be a monumental challenge. that's when sbrerp neuroism can be a positive force. that's what we discovered when we visited a women's prison in organize porpg where learning to own a small business is helping inmates to turn their lives around. ♪ at the coffee creek correctional facility in wilsonville, oregon once a week you'll hear a conversation like this. >> if you have a receptionist there, is she an expense? >> an expense. >> reporter: this is a 32-session course teaching female inmates at this minimum security campus how to start and

run their own companies. >> effective communication involves active listening to understand what others are saying feeling, and needing. >> reporter: some of these women have been convicted of crimes like attempted murder assault, and manslaughter, nobody cares what the people did to get into prison. the focus is what they'll do when they get out. >> i have always liked to run things. i would like to be the owner of a business rather than the employee. >> reporter: shalonda ford is a student of the life class. throughout the term she and fell lee classmates are learning everything you need to know to launch a company from the ground up. >> we cover the p and l, the balance sheet. we cover soft skills like communication. effective listening. effective speaking. we cover marketing. the class is built around being able to write a business plan. >> reporter: doug cooper is the assistant director of

mercycorps. he's been with the program since it started. >> people are going come out and having a felony conviction will make it hard to find living wage jobs. to be able to start a business or be self-employed seemed like a viable option. >> i didn't think anybody would want to hire me. so the idea of starting my own business and being my own boss and still being able to make a living was very appealing to me. >> reporter: so far, about 100 inmates have completed the course. and 5% to 10% of them have started businesses. michelle will soon join those ranks. she's just about to start her company. forget me not cards and prints. just about a year and half out of getting out of prison. she came up with the idea while enflold the life class. >> in prison mail is a huge issue. a lot of people are disappointed when they don't get a birthday

card. it seemed like it could be a good thing to do. if you could mail out cards for people and not have to worry about it. >> reporter: she was ready to go. >> it was pretty exciting to actually, um you know sit down and write something up. and -- and figure out what the feasibility of the idea is and really pick it apart. >> reporter: but actually starting a business right out of prison isn't the goal. creating the confidence so someone could start one is. >> we want them to be more economically secure. by that have that as a means to rebuild their lives. be successful. never come back. the name of the institution is correctional facility. if the implication is that you're learning to do something better. that requires education. >> reporter: tanya was one of the first students to ever take the classes while serving an 8 1/2-year sentence. >> i know when i started the life program, i started to have

that little glimmer of hope. that i don't have to be that person with the mark. >> reporter: in the four years since we reported on mercycorps the life program has expanded to gig harbor. the program just graduated its 11th class. douk cooper says the program has reduced the recidivism rate of its students by more than 40%. >> i refuse to come in and leave the same way i came in. that was my thing. i knew underneath everything else, there was a bigger person than what i portrayed myself to be. >> i think i have been most impressed by the women's desire to change and to start a new life. and consequently it feels like we're doing a real service by trying to give them a way for that to happen. >> this is real. this is real. you know, i feel like i can't be stopped. ♪

investing in customer service can really pay off. fortunately, there are plenty of createive ways to delight your users without a big budget. here are five ways to regularly wow clients. one, free extras and upgrades. complimentary perks like express shipping and sample products generally won't hurt your margins but can increase revenue. two, invite them to hang out. give your best clients a behind-the-scenes experience to learn what you and your team really are. three, offer a giveraway. bund al bunch of your products together and create a sweepstakes they can enter. coupon codes often work wonders. four break the rules opinion when interacting with customers, it's easy to read from a script. make exsengss when customers

have uncommon issues and ask you for help. and fiver, telg their story. your customers are real people with powerful stories. authenticity can go a long way. still to come what you need to do to make sure your business is still profitable five years from now. and more of our viewers' favorite small business online tools and apps. 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. this week's your business selfie is from michael connelly from sprindfield, massachusetts. who runs a unique diaper company called stinky kax. i love this company, by the way. it's a good gift. if you would like to see your picture up here on your business, send a selfie of you and your business to your business. tweet to @msnbcyourbiz. time to answer some of your business questions. let's get our board of drerkts in here to hemp us out. amos windbush iii is a ceo of a universal transfer company.

mike perless is ceo of forbes media. let's get to the first question. >> what is the biggest challenge that most businesses have that prevent them from making it five years from the dhat they start? >> a good question i think. you cover a lot of businesses. >> we do. and, as you know from my background, i was also in venture capital for a long time before i joined forbes. to me it's all about people. if you make the wrong choices about people early in your trajectory, getting to five years is difficult. making the right choices, though it's hard maybe takes a little longer. have to be more selective. that is the important factor. >> the first five years, what's so tricky hopefully, you're growing a lot. you need people who are really flexible. they somewherehave to understand that the job they have at day one is

probably not the job they'll have at year three. >> very true. i would say rigidness. being very rigid in your idea of what your business should be could be or how you perceive it to be tomorrow. and undercapitalization. some of the biggest and toughest issues that reaching that fiftyh year. >> next up, a question about contracts. >> so one of our mane challenges is to get people to honor the contracts that they signed. so what we would like to know is how to maintain the relationship with the customer so they can fulfill the contract and actually see the results produce in their life and their business that they actually paid for. >> what's tricky about this is that people expect immediate results. marketing and pr sometimes you need to wait. if he's done let's say, a six-month contract and a month in they're saying i don't see

anyone. where are my customers, they're going to throw it out the window. what can you do? >> if i had a chance to talk to him, the question i would ask is, what is it that's disappointing your client? and he might say, that they're not getting results quickly enough. this is an example of where you really just need to spell out what you do. how you do it. what people's expectations should be over what time frame. we see this question a lot. we have an entrepreneurship channel on forbes.com. these kinds of questions come up particularly around softer businesses where it's not black and white. what's going to happen in the near term. >> i think your point about expectations might be the most important one. >> and communication. throughout the period of you working with that particular client, you should always be in communication with them talking to them having an open dialogue on what's work what's not, how can we tweak it. sn how can we change it?

i think you look at that type of business, it's a six-month run. it's something you have to be in it for the long haul. if you're charging 60 k for that work, you have to let them know you may not see results in the first couple of months but it will be there. >> the last thing you want is somebody who is unsatisfied. >> exactly. that's not just a -- it's not just a bad situation for the customer who is not interested in paying because they didn't think they got value. it's a bad situation for the marketing company because that's bad word of mouth. particularly in the marketing world. >> right, exactly. >> no one is going to back out of a contract and run around the world telling everybody that they really loved the company. >> they're great. hire them. let's get to the last e-mail. it's from karen. she writes i've been a chiropractor for 23 years and i'll well branded. i'm changing dreks and going into holistic wellness care.

how do i rebrand? >> wow. that's a great question. i don't think you should necessarily have to rebrand. i think you are who you are. most companies, their branding relies on the presence of the ceo and executive of the business. if you're moveing from a regular kirchiropractic business and into a holistic business you are who you are. the core of your business should transcend marketing or pr. >> it doesn't seal like it's so out of left field, right? it's all within the same general umbrella. it's not like now i'm suddenly a baseball coach. right? >> i think that's right pop to move to nutrition and yoga and structural integration, all the things you can do connect todd

chiropractic services are important. i suspect she talks with all of her clients about what she believes in and what will be best for them. it probably isn't very much of a leap. she should specifically start to write about it talk about it engage with social media. >> right. >> try to connect with her clients and their bigger universe of people. maybe hook in with caregivers who come from one of the other tent posts of holistic care-giving. and -- >> and i thought about, start with your existing clinlts. you don't have do rebrand yourself if suddenly you start offering this service to people you're already working with. it will happen itself. she might be overthinking it. >> it's a built-in market. >> it sounds like a good idea to me. i feel better already. >> you can go see her. both of you, thank you so much for your advice and for stopping by. >> thanks. >> thank you. >> if any of you have a question

for our experts, head to our website. the address is openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll see a button that says ask the shows. again, the website is openforum.com/yourbusiness. or send us an e-mail. in today's world, there seems to be an app or a website that claims to help you with everything. from falling asleep quicker to improving your payroll procedures. which once will actually deliver in making your entrepreneurial life easier. we give you some of the tools our viewers swear by. >> as online sellers, a big part of our business is shipping products. and we use endicia to quickly and efficiently ship products. it's a desk top or web-based system, however you choose to

use it. it processes and prints your shipping labels. we've have been using it for almost ten years. for us by far the best solution. >> i use an app. moldiv. it helps me focus. i use it every day pretty much. >> one of my favorite apps to use is todoist. it works on the phone, e-mail. it's something that helps absolutely keep me on track with my to do list. >> samebox is an amazing app and resource management tool. it automatically sorts. it has a label called same news letters. it puts all the news letters in the same file. there's a sane later.

people you e-mail frequently it puts in your inbox. i saver about four hours a week from checking e-mail when i use it. it seeps you focused. it puts the other e-mails in folders you can check later. >> one of the apps i absolutely love is podio. it's a project management system. it has the ability to be reconfigured and built for your specific purposes. i have different work spaces. different work spaces for projects. for internal applications such as my finances my sales. within each work space, there are customizable apps. i can build a project management system that works for me and the way i want it to work. rather than just how it's preboxed. do you leave your business from the top down with the old command and control system? management systems that used to work in the past don't necessarily work anymore. our guest says today, effective

leadership is done with more of a side by side example. ken blanchard is here opinion he's the coauthor of the new one-minuteman aj-- one-minute manager. how are you. >> good. >> it mousse have been interesting to go back and revit the book. let's start with one-minute goals. what is that? >> that's so important. if you're -- you want your people to do something, they have to be clear on what you're asking them to do. today, with one-minuteman aernlg rather then a him setting the goals for everybody, it's much more collaborative. he sits with them they set to goals together so everybody agrees upon it. they know what direction they're supposed to go. once goals are set. and you don't want a lot of goals, you want three to five at

most the once that can be the biggest impact, then you want to make sure people are look at them continually. the major management style in the past was some manager would tell people to do something and they would disappear until you made a mistake. then they would be seagull managers, fly in make a lot of noise, dump on everybody, and fly out. you can't micromanage everybody. you want them to be able to catch themselves doing something right. that's different in the tone. and then in they make a mistake, rather than punishing them the one-minute redirect says as you said this is what i've observed. doesn't seem to be the direction we were talking about. do you agree? and how can we get back on line? >> how do you think employees should be praised? >> well as soon as possible. you know, you don't want to wait

for an annual performance review. if you see something going on well go to them and say, gee, let me tell you what i have observed. this is how i feel about it. congratulations. keep up the good work. that's why some people say, how can you say this is a one-minuteman ajer. it doesn't take very long to acknowledge. >> how often? how often should you acknowledge someone for good performance? you may have someone doing great job all of the time. you don't want to constantly be praising them. it may lose its value. >> yeah absolutely. that's why i said you praise them a lot, maybe in the beginning when they're learning a new task or they're inexperienced. once they become experienced, you know you're not doing it as much. you're hoping they're going to be catching themselves doing something right and cheering themselves on. you're always there to enkouj them if they need it. you don't want them to be depending on you patting them on

the back all the time. that could be overkill. >> we talked a bit about this already. you don't reprimand. you kreredirect. what is the difference? >> the reprimand was almost like a form of a punishment. the whole idea of the redirection is really both of you taking a look. you say, gee, here's what i'm seeing. this doesn't seem as i said in the direction we want. how do we get back in line? what you don't want to do is let people get off the wrong way and not do anything. you know say, well i'll get them when we do the annual review. you don't want to do that. you want to be on top of things. so people can continue the go in the direction you want. >> so much of what you're talking about is about collaboration and getting your employees as engaged as possible. >> absolutely. the greatest entrepreneurs realize their number one

customer is their people. if they take care of their people empower their people you know those -- they're going to go out of their way to take care of your number two most important customer, the people that use your products and services. then they'll be excited about you and become part of your sales force. that takes care of the ownership and the profit and all those kinds of things. that's the direction. >> ken, congratulations on taking a new look on this old very successful book. we appreciate you stopping by. >> thank you. we appreciate your energy and what you're doing. entrepreneurship is the back boen bone of the country today. >> to learn more click on our website. it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find today's segments. you can follow us on twitter.

@msnbcyourbiz. we're on facebook and instagram as well. next week while some business owners hope for less regular likes. greg is lobbying for more. >> i have taken action in washington. we've been meeting with senators introducing them to beauty counter. a company pro commerce and pro regulation. >> how this woman is on a journey to change the rules arnold how beauty products are made. until then remember we make your business our business. i'm j.j. ramberg. 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. >> a frog in my throat i'm sorry but a little more suspense in the show than usual. my voice might give out at any moment in which case then what will happen? you have to stick around to see, right? voice notwithstanding we have a big show tonight. interesting news out of the escaped convict story in upstate new york. late-breaking news on that tonight. we've got scary sea creatures news coming up. that's exciting. also the latest in the big hullabaloo in congress this democrat on democrat fight which is interesting and really unresolved. so there's a lot coming up particularly for a friday night. we begin here in poland. capital is warsaw lovely this time of year. if you want to have a very, very fancy meal like you want to have the most