this psychologist was stunned when she was diagnosed with type i diabetes. she created a bag for fellow diabetics to carry their supplies. see how our team helped make her business healthy, coming up on a special edition of "your business." >> small businesses are

revitalizing the economy. american express is proud to present "your business" on msnbc. hi evan, i'm j.j. ramburg and welcome to "your business." have you ever met someone that leaves with you an unforgettable first impression? that's the way we found about janet goodman. we met her at an entrepreneurial conference in 2014 where she was seeking advice for her startup. her product was a purse with special pockets designed to help a person with chronic disease carry all the medical supplies. janet who was at retirement age, was hitting road blocks. we decided to give her a helping

hand with a "your business" makeover to see if we could get her small business headed in the right direction. meet janet goodman, she's 66 years old and winding down being a psychologist in ohio. her second act as an entrepreneur is an unexpected road the day she woke up with blurring vision and unquenchable thirst. >> i've always eaten well, i work out, i'm not overweight and it hit me out of the clear blue. it's like where did this come from? >> reporter: at age 61 janet was diagnosed with type i diabetes, which requires constant blood sugar monitoring and insulin injections to regulate the disease. if not carefully controlled the condition can easily land you in

the hospital or be fatal. >> that was just devastating to me. i think i walked around for a month just near tears the whole time, not knowing just even what to do or how to do it. >> reporter: we first met janet a year ago at a conference for entrepreneurs in nashville. >> the name of my business is yadabags. yadabags is a purse that's designed to carry medical equipment for people with chronic disease. so people with diabetes can put all their paraphernalia in it and actually find it. >> reporter: she came to us to ask a question on camera about getting funding on her business. >> since yadabag is a startup i'm really interested in how to go out and get funding, if i don't want to go into any more debt than i've already gone into. >> reporter: it was inspiring. here's a woman at retirement age, but instead of heading out to the golf course, she wanted to start a new career, helping herself and others with diabetes.

>> i couldn't retire, truthfully, and sit around and just play bridge or sit by a pool. i get antsy. i like to be busier. >> reporter: when we met janet she'd already invested $60,000 of her own savings, but she was a little lost. she believed wholeheartedly that there was a market for her business, but didn't quite know what to do next. so we enlisted a team to try and help her out. coulda dabags really be a successful company? or should she end it here and not throw good money after bad. our first call was to marketing expert denise blasovic from the s3 agency. denise and i had a heart-to-heart. we'd both been a little skeptical that the company could work. >> i want your honest opinion. when you saw the yadabag the first time you thought -- not a bag for me. >> so did i. >> reporter: but we were just a focus group of two, and not the target market. so we decided that if we really wanted to know if this bag had a

customer base, we'd have to take it on the road to get more feedback. >> thank you very much for your help. have a great day, ladies. >> reporter: denise traveled to austin, texas, to hand out surveys and conduct a focus group at the taking control of your diabetes conference, where janet, her husband, fred, and daughter, karen, had a booth with a pretty steady crowd. well i was surprised in austin, there were a lot of people who reacted positively to the bag and more people liked the name. >> i didn't expect it either. >> and the catch phrase yada yada yada was made legendary in one of the best known tv shows of all time. >> the popular culture tame from "seinfeld" where wasn't it elaine that i think first said. >> i met this lawyer, we went out to dinner, i had the lobster bisque, we went back to my place, yada yada yada, i never heard from him again. >> and it just popped in my head. i said let's call them yadabags. >> with our hunch about changing the name of the business wrong, we wondered what else we had to

learn from the yadabags target market at the conference. the results of the focus group and the survey in austin were mixed. 45% of the respondents thought the bag was attractive, and solved the difficult problem of carrying supplies, but when asked what they thought the price should be, the average answer was $43. that was a big problem for a bag that was costing more than double that to produce. >> we came back from that research and it wasn't a ton of research, it wasn't expensive research but it was research and we came back they're going new plan, new strategy. >> it was tough to know there's a market out there for this bag. >> yes. >> armed with this new information we rolled up our sleeves and started to think about solutions that could get yadabags off and running. >> shes aa lot vested in this and a great place that she's coming from, but there are a lot of people that have tried to do this and failed. so what we really honed in on how do we make this different and capture what's special so we'll have a critical mass that can make it a viable business. >> janet has a lot invested in yadabags, but does she have what it takes to make this business work?

stick around to see what our makeover team recommends. instagram isn't the only social media that depends on visuals to catch the attention of your customer base. check out these five ways you can utilize images on twitter, courtesy of smallbiztrends.com. one, bright colors and images and photos get attention. they stand out and make your post pop. two, horizontal images are best. long, vertical uploads get cut off in certain views and can be difficult to see if fully expanded. three, share images directly. click on the little camera icon below the twitter update box to upload straight to the site. image tweets get double the interaction of a standard link tweet. four, put words on your images to convey meaning in a glance. factoids and motivational quotes on images do well for a business audience. and five, tag people or companies in your images. you'll get their attention and

if it's a positive tweet, they may retweet it. this can be a great way to tap into a larger business' following and convert them into customers. when we come back, how to manage when you're not a good manager. and can this business be saved? find out how the "your business" makeover team worked to rebrand and lower the manufacturing cost for the yadabag. the flenlling company say little 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 wiz selfie from betsy babcock of handsome brook farms in franklin, new york, here in an american gothic motif with her husband. take one of you and your business and send to us @yourbiz or tweet it to @msnbcyour biz. that became a business fueled by janet's savings and enthusiasm for the product. our team of experts go to work finding solutions to get yada bags on the road to profitability.

janet believes she has the makings to make a successful business with the yadabags. when you talk to her it's hard not to be taken in by her enthusiasm. >> it's a colorful lining because the line something the pick-me-up. exactly. i don't like dull. >> but right now the fledgling company is little more than a few steps beyond the idea stage. there is an actual product but the numbers don't add up and there isn't a clear plan on how to turn that around. >> we have an unusual situation here right now. every bag we sell we lose money on because it cost us more to produce it than that. >> this is not terribly unusual at this stage. especially for a business that

started at the dining room table, with janet sewing the first prototypes one by one. >> i kept cutting up different linings to see what would fit and what it looked like. the first one took about two months to really just sew and create. >> once she felt she got the design right she hired someone to do a small but costly production run to see if people would buy the bags. after getting some sales, she was optimistic and ready to produce more. but when she looked into manufacturing in china, which she thought would be cheap, she found that she'd have to make 1,000 bags to get the right price. that put her in a chicken and egg situation. >> i'm not willing to risk retirement. if i can get orders and i have to put money in to get product that i know is going to sell, i would do that in a minute. >> with an order for a thousand bags unlikely at this point, we set out to find a solution for her chicken or egg problem, by doing what she thought was impossible, finding a domestic small batch manufacturer that was cost-effective. and we found just the people to help us out. janet, i want to introduce you to matthew and tanya. >> hi matthew, hi tanya.

>> they are the founder of maker's row. >> maker's row is on online marketplace, we connect small businesses and big businesses with american manufacturers to produce products here in the united states. >> you didn't know about maker's row but guess what? we did. so we went and we contacted tanya and matthew and they were a great help to us. you will learn about that in a moment, but they're going to be help to you going forward, too, because once somebody finds a factory, that's not it, right? >> that's just the first step. this is a process. you're choosing a partner that you want to be able to develop a product that's never been built before. >> maker's row did a little homework for us with an introduction to mitch conn, the president of unionware. they helped us surprise janet and fred with a tour of the new work, new jersey-based factory where the ordering minimum is 300 pieces, a much easier pill to swallow than 1,000 overseas. >> mitch. >> nice to meet you also, mitch. in is quite a place you have.

>> let's see your bag. tell us how much it cost to make this one? >> putting it together was $60, not including material. it was labor only. >> let's see your bag. >> okay, here's our bag. >> oh. very nice. >> and the total cost? >> the total cost -- >> to put it together? >> would be around $47, and the material should cost no more than about $7 or $8. >> total? >> yes. >> everything? >> oh, i could love him. >> would you like to give him a hug? >> totally. >> mitch explained that the approach to manufacturing in china where labor is inexpensive is less efficient than the way they tackle a wag like janet's here in america. >> we took out almost about 60 steps in manufacturing the bag

and that's how we were able to lower the cost. >> once we tackled manufacturing, we moved over to marketing. denise thought the yadabag messaging was not telling the right story. >> so looking at our positioning, where we are right now, yadabags is a purse with pockets competing against all other purses and medical supply bags. there's no real focus. so we'd like our tagline to be your diabetes, your supplies, your yada. brings a smile. >> i like it. >> again your intent. >> and it tells you what we're doing. >> what was the old one again? >> organize with style. >> but organize with style, i could be at the container style. although janet liked the new tagline at first, she decided later to change it to organize your diabetes supplies with style. remember, the research in austin indicated people would only pay about $43 for the bag. so even at the cheaper cost, the retail price would be nowhere near that. so denise wanted to expand the target, and to do that, she focused on creating not just a product but an entire line, something janet had been thinking about before but hadn't yet realized. >> we want to call the yadabags

the classic purse. it's got a classic style. >> i like that. uh-huh. >> good. it also makes it feel like the company is big. >> yes. >> the idea from denise? have janet design a cheaper insert bag called the insider. >> this is when we can reach men, we can reach children, we can reach people who have type ii diabetes and still appeal to the women who have type diabetes who are our core market who might not have the money for this bag or might not want that style. >> denise also had some ideas to revamp janet's website. >> we want to have a happy feeling, nice colors that appeal quee cally to men and women and kids and this here would be a slider. so whatever is featured up here can be featured down here for direct click through. >> with a plan for marketing and manufacturing in the works, i wanted to turn back to the original question at hand. should janet spend more money to see if she can get this company going or should she call it quits? what did she need to see that would convince her that it's worth it to invest more? she told me if she could sell out the bag she currently has,

she'd feel confident about dipping back into her savings. that means you got to throw spaghetti at the wall, you have to think of every single place that you can sell them. >> um-hum. >> marketing is great, but it's not great if nobody is seeing it. >> right. i got to get them out there. >> so your homework is think through where you would find a bag like this. >> um-hum. >> go introduce yourself. give them some bags to put on their shelves, to sell. you could give it to them on consignment if they didn't want to buy them from you. >> right. >> prove to them there's a market out there. >> to help janet find marketing and get her bag into the hands of customers we introduced her to several key players that would serve as an informal advisory board like suzanne, a diabetes educator who also started make a bag for supplies. her business didn't make it but she wanted to make sure that janet's does. >> hi. >> hi, janet. how are you? >> okay, suzanne. how are you? >> and we introduced her to

raica barabas, the director of badgirl adventures in cleveland, ohio. they let janet sit in on some of their saturday entrepreneurship classes, opening up an opportunity to bounce ideas off of and network with. janet hit it off with christina castillo wright, she offered to help janet work on the new insider concept that denise suggested. >> i'm out here in portland, oregon, and i am a help aide designer. >> with all of the resources at hand, we gave janet a challenge. pull this all together to relaunch yadabags by november, just in time for american diabetes month. so this was a big day. >> oh, wow. really big. >> do you have after this day is this the business you think it could be or thought it would be? >> i think it's really moving in the direction that i envisioned. >> what did you learn? >> oh, wow. i think the biggest piece for me

is feeling like i have some support in developing it, and somebody to think with as opposed to trying to figure out all of this stuff out myself, which i can't do because i don't know a lot of it. >> but by the way, you've done an amazing job. no manufacturing experience, no design experience, and -- >> right. >> you created a bag. >> uh-huh, i did, right, i got there. >> you didn't yet create a business. >> well i sort of got there but i didn't get there. >> you've got a bag, not a business yet. >> i've got a bag. >> denise blasovic, the ceo of the 3s agency you saw in that piece is here with us now. >> hi there. >> thank you for all of your help with that piece. >> is a pleasure, she is such a good cause. >> you spent so much time with her, what do you think? will the company survive? is it worth her spending more money? >> any new business is a big risk and i think her industry, others have tried and failed, so her very best chance is to listen exactly to all of the experts that you guys compiled for her.

i think if she does that, she has a really good fighting chance. >> all right, good, we hope so. we want to hear from you, though, do you have any ideas for janet and her company? should she invest more to keep it going or should she just stop now? let us know what you think on our facebook page or on twitter, we are @msnbcyourbiz. it's time to answer some of your business questions. denise blasvick is sticking around and ben par, co-founder of dominic fund an early stage venture fund and author of the book "captivology, the science of capturing people's attention." good to see you, ben. >> thank you for having me again. >> all right, let's just dive right back in. the first one is about being a manager. >> how do you build a strong management team when you, yourself, are not a great or experienced manager? >> i love this question. because it is the problem, the key problem in so many startups, so let's start with you, denise. >> it is a key problem and so many people don't realize the

value of having one and don't get to the point where they need one. i commend this gentleman for saying i need to do this. so where do you go from there? to me the biggest thing whether or not you use a recruiting tea whether or not you use a recruiting team or do things on your own or do kind of boot strap, you want to make sure you get the right people first time out. if you get the wrong people in as management team first time around, the rest of the company will wonder and you will too am i ready for this, not just the right person but the right position. so top grading, i don't know if you heard of it, but topgrading.com. developed by dr. bradford smart. we don't learn how to interview as entrepreneurs and businesspeople. this takes the interviewing process to a completely different place. it's a little bit more uncomfortable. you get a lot more insight. so someone has to really want to work for your company to get through this process and you get a lot more insights before they ever make that commitment. >> i think that's a good point. also, ben, you have to hire

people who you're willing to learn from, right, because -- i mean, he's taken the first step, which is admitting he's not a good manager himself, but is he open-minded enough to listen to what others say? >> which leads exactly to my point which is you have to hire people smarter than you. there's a second point to that, you have to be able to check your ego at the tour. the greatest entrepreneurs are able to review the smart people. and allow them to do their thing. allow them to do the work that they do best. and if you're not an experienced manager, you hire these people and you listen to them and you learn from them and you check your ego at the door. you will become a better manager. you have to start with hiring those smart people. >> let's move on to the next question about extending your brand. >> i'd like to know more about how to strengthen my core business while still focusing on expanding and diversifying.

i found that my core business is not very scalable, but i want to maintain it because that's my bread and butter. >> there's a couple ways to go about it. spin it off or have a small team dedicated to it. she is showing great foresight in thinking about how to make the business move forward faster by looking at this. figure out a group of people who can focus just on the core business, then go and build out the other side of the business. because you want to bring in that revenue. so i think it's a smart thought that she's having right now. >> right, it's sort of like the core business is like the angel funding for these other ideas. what do you think, how can she do both at the same time? >> so you'll pardon my driving analogy but i've worked for bmw so i think that way. you can't drive two cars at once. you can't go in two directions at once. important to decide, am i spearheading the bread and butter operations, or am i going

to be the one who takes this leap and does the new stuff which everyone is the one you think you're best suited for. you got to find something to head up the other one, no question. >> you think it's a hiring issue. >> i do. >> you concentrate on one, have someone else concentrate -- >> it's a leadership issue. you might have someone else on your team already that can do it. >> she talks about her brand here. how do you maintain the brand of the core business while trying out some other things? >> well, if she's talking about something that is something that can be a brand extension, that's pretty easy. if she's discuss something that's a completely different business, i don't know that the brand is really relevant to make a new brand. >> to your point, ben, right, maybe spin it off? >> absolutely. if it's part of travel in her case, making that extension doesn't matter, but it's harder when it's a completely different business. >> okay. let's move on to the next question. it's an e-mail about marketing which says, i'd like to market myself as clergy to take advantage of the things i've

learned and to share with more people but a lot people find it an issue for clergy people to be marketing. so i'd like to hear your wisdom about that. denise, you have a marketing company. interesting question. >> it is a very interesting question. of course you kind of get stopped up on the word clergy. really, you can replace that with doctor or any kind of professional and think about does that take away from the efficacy of what you do in people's opinions. the question, do you want core or do you want more? that's all the people you can reach without marketing. you've got to decide what you want to do. if you look at dr. oz. look at joe osteen, who's learny, it's worked for them. but if that person doesn't really know what they're talking about, they're just a marketer, so it's a very careful balance. >> i think we talk all the time on the show about authenticity and it's a buzzword in the business world. i think it gets to that, right, ben? if you're authentic and it's not just cheesy marketing, might be

okay. >> if you don't make it cheesy marketing. so my advice is to really focus on content marketing. on, you know, on promoting what you're doing and talking about what you know, in this case, maybe having a personal blog or having a blog for your clergy work. instead of being like here i am, i'm clergy, talk about the stuff you know, faith and family. content marketing doesn't feel like marketing at all, it feels like you're giving advice and insight and that's a perfect way to go. >> i agree with that. that's fantastic. >> you don't need to send direct mail. you can do it different ways. thank you, ben and denise, for your advice, really appreciate it. >> thanks, j.j. >> please head over to our website, openforum.com/yo openforum.com/yourbusiness. or just send an e-mail. the address is

yourbusiness@msnbc.com. we like to check out twitter to see what small business influencers have to say. recent guests and co-author of the new one-minute manager ken blanchard tweets, when working with somebody on a performance challenge, address it early with an open mind. the vice president of home improvement company porch.com writes, don't be easy. saying yes o every task, meetup or request can hold you back from success. nfl great and entrepreneur fran tarkenton tweets, i've learnhood it in football and business, teams win, individuals lose. with phone in hand and a computer readily accessible, entrepreneurs like you and me are relying more and more on online tools to organize our lives and companies. that's why we went to viewers to ask them which ones they squawe by. >> an app i like is todayle,

toodledo. it's a very simple app that enables you to plan and prioritize the things that you have going on in your business. and in your day. so you can organize it according to is this a high priority and what is my goal for this task, as well as when is it due. >> an app i really love is winstreak. it's an app that allows you to implement every single morning some goals you have for the day. each morning, i implement the goals. this is how i manage my wins for today. as an entrepreneur, motivation is so important. so when i go to my winstreak app and see how i'm producing that i da, it really keeps me excited and motivated. >> just go to goggle.com and type in mobile friendly, you come up to this google mobile friendly analyzer. type in your website and it will tell you, is it mobile friendly or not. the new rules google are pretty

soon if it's not mobile friendly, they're just not going to list it in the rankings and you're going to disappear. you got to test out your site. it will show you how it looks on a phone. it will tell you what parts of it look good, what parts don't. go to google.com, type in mobile friendly and type your website address into that test. make sure you get it done and fixed. >> an app i use is called cozi, c-o-z-i. it kind of blends between our family and our business. it's kind of our life management tool. so it is a scheduling tool. and it allows us to put everything that's going on in our life and coordinating that. it sends us reminders. so that is just, then, a god send for us. >> thanks, everyone, for joining us today. please check out our website for more. it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find today's segments and web-exclusive segments that will help your business go.

twitter, @msnbcyourbiz. facebook and instagram too. next week, one entrepreneur who decided the best way to help animals she loves was to start a company introducing them to them. >> you can't go diving with a shashlg and not want to do something to try to save them. i see that in people, the fear switch to fascination. >> we go swimming with the sharks in hawaii. until then, i'm j.j. ramburg. 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 party goes on. good morning, thanks for getting up with us. the conservative forum for many of the republican presidential candidates did take place yesterday without donald trump, but that doesn't mean donald trump's name didn't come up. it was one year ago today. a deadly encounter between an unarmed black teenager and a police officer in missouri sparked months of unrest and started a national conversation about how police and minority communitie