how does a new hampshire theme park get customers to celebrate christmas year-round? some great ideas for making over your office and new orleans entrepreneurs flourish ten years after hurricane katrina. all 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 helping your small christmas grow. when you think of christmas, do a water park, ice cream stand and roller coaster come to mind? i'm guessing into the, unless you're spending time in the white mountains of new hampshire, where you'll find a small family-owned amusement park with a holiday theme that attracts guests from may to december. after more than 60 years in business, the holiday is still a draw for customers but it's the annual reinvention that keeps staff and guests spreading good cheer. >> people love christmas. >> don't even brother asking the

date at santa's village. here it's always december 25th. >> if you give joy you get it back and our santa's helpers know that. >> and customers are more than happy to join the celebration. >> most everybody is in the christmas spirit when they're here, whether it's in june, july, august, or the first of december before christmas. >> this jefferson, new hampshire, amusement park is a community staple. >> it's the no, sstalgianostalg. they remember coming as children themselves now. they remember bringing their children here. now they're grandparents and they're coming back. >> reporter: nor mand and cecile dubois started the company in 195. the inspiration came from their daughter elaine. >> one year we were driving route 2 and a little fawn jumped out in front of other car and i asked dad if that was santa's reindeer, and that property just happened to be for sale, which is where santa's village is today, but he thought an amusement park might be great.

>> reporter: more than six decades later the company is owned and operated by the family's third generation. norman and cecile's grandchildren, melanie staley and christian gaynor as well as melanie's husband nick. >> it's fun at times, sometimes frustrating but overall fun. >> reporter: this trio welcomes customers to santa's village seven months a year, whether it feels like christmas outside or not. >> we call it santa's summer home. this is where he comes to warm up from the north pole, take a break from making the toys, visit with the kids. that's how we get away with christmas in july. just the theme that we keep with as we expand. >> with attractions like rudy's transit coaster, the reindeer rendezvous and a chance to visit with st. nick himself, marketing is easy. the most challenging part of the business is getting families to return for, in some cases, generations. >> we need to create an awesome

product, something that they love, that they see and want to come back again and again and in order to keep them coming back, we have to keep evolving, keep innovating and keep exceeding their expectations. >> the fact that jefferson is somewhat isolated means most of the customers are making the conscious decision to come to santa's village. >> people from roughly four hours come to our park, most of our guests come from over two hours away. >> customers are always looking for what's new, and what old reliables are still there. >> being a destination for a lot of people, you have to not only keep up what you have but you have to bring in something every year because people expect that now. >> some of the newest additions have already become favorites. >> we introduced the water park about five years ago. we've added to that. elk university, where the kids go around with their tickets and find all the elves in the elfabet. that's newer. >> the most arduous tasks when

the park is shut down. >> by january 1st everything is planned. it's a very short period where we can build a new building, install a new ride. we have a great maintenance team that takes apart our rides, they refurbish all the rides. when we open in may it's auto pie loot. our hard work has come to fruition and we're ready to make our guests happy. >> any expansion at santa's village has to be planned out. small local population means a limited pool from which to hire staff. >> these small groves add five, six, seven, eight employees a year, something manageable we can find those excellent people to work with us. if we grew exponentially, it would be much harder for us to staff our park. >> hiring right the first time is also key. >> for the most part people that are here now, they want to be here. they love their job, and it shows. and the 2% that do not, they don't last more than two days.

>> melanie believes strong relationships with employees are a must, especially since they're on the front lines. the result is a low turnover rate. >> we listen to our employees. we listen to what they have to say, and we try to improve on what their needs are to make it happy. if they are happy, our guests are happy. >> despite longer summer hours, the park still attracts its biggest crowds around the holidays. >> christmastime well is our busiest time. people travel. we have snow. it's cold, but it's beautiful. the days are busier because we're only open two days a week versus seven day ace week in the sum per >> the family's work is paying off. >> the proof is the repeat customer. >> our best market something word of mouth. our guest also remark to their friends and family and tell them about their wonderful experience here and that is their main form of advertising. >> numbers are up and positive reviews online are helping drive foot traffic, too. >> the best gaining of customer

reviews happens to be through trip advisor. >> while the times have changed the goals for this family remain the same, improve the customer experience at santa's village and preserve this small business's legacy. >> i can manage my grandfather and grandmother when they started the business, they were my age, innovative, excited, ready to go. >> what norman and cecile started 63 years ago is just amazing. hopefully we can continue that tradition and for the next 63 years and keep those generations of families coming back year after year. >> the look and feel of your office can help set the tone for employee moral and productivity. even though most entrepreneurs do not have deep pockets for interior design, worried about payroll and marketing there are some simple things you can do with a relatively small budge

tote make your space look better. we spent the day with the founder of a new york city based startup that help provide affordable interior design by the hour. >> our office actually has become kind of a test ground for experimental design, so a lot of things we test out on the office, we try and see if they work and don't work and then we bring them into startup spaces, like for instance we have a green wall that will eventually become an entire green partition wall. >> we've placed a track on the ceiling, and we've taken white rope and pulled it down and tied it to the plants and we have anchors on the floor, so as the plants grow, we can raise the plants up and it will be a full partition green wall, which separates the reception area from the coworking area. >> adding something living toer space i think is an amazing sort of asset or design asset to draw

from. and so adding something like a plant wall is not terribly expensive. we're trying to design solutions that give the maximum effect for the minimum spend. >> this is our stack wall. it's made out of found objects like a suitcase. we've used round apple baskets as well. these are vintage wine crates from etsy, around $20 to $60. you can find them anywhere at a vicinityage shop or flea market. they're a big hit and a cute way to show off your snacks or food product without it being a plain ikea shelf. >> i think you're working within sort of this paradox of how do we give a space the feeling of permanence while giving it the actual impermanence it needs to grow with a company, and that transience is a very duff, gray area to navigate and i think we use solutions like the

greenhouses, so you don't have to spend two or three months in contract or getting board approval or using an architect to get a conference room up because you may not be there in six or eight months. why waste so much time, you can construct something prefab, disassemble it and take it with you. >> it's one of the first thing people notice and we named them off halo, video phone, and run the world, after beyonce's songs. on this wall we placed three vinyl deicals of our core values, they are amazing price point. we do them a lot for companies when they want to place their logo on their wall. >> the post-it wall, people write notes to could be grat late other people or mask how they align with our three tenets of home polishes brand. post-its are so inexpensive. why not have fun with it? >> this standing desk is a great example of how a design startup

offices around mobility. people are breaking out into teams of four and six and it's unnatural for people to sit down for 8 to 12 hours a day so a lot of people requested standing desks, they're expensive, $800 to $1,000. we took an ikea countertop and attached pipe legs with castors so it can move around the space and also turns into a bar when we throw events so it's a great multifunctional piece and half the cost. >> the marquee i think is probably one of my add-ones to this office. it's a great way to kind of unspire employees. we put really fun quotes up. we use this space for company lunches so we try and keep it positive with a nice message, and this is from thomas edison, it's a great quote. >> always experimenting with

lighting, you think lighting is something that could really make or break a space. we wanted to experiment with residential lighting. commercial lighting can feel cold or boiler plate boring so we used chandeliers, okay, how do chandeliers function when we put them on dumbers? can you get enough ambient light, what kind of feeling does it give you? the result actually i think was great. i mentioned desk space. one of the things we wanted to experiment was using vintage tables and how you can create a cohesive look when every single table is dumpb so ifferent so w different paint color, painted the tables the same color and what happens and it gives a unity to the work space. if i suddenly need to sit six more people or 20 more people in my office space i don't want the aesthetic to fall apart because

i have introduce a different desk or chair. how do we find the solutions that allow the flex ublt in the work space and that's something we are constantly trying to push the boundary of. >> bringing your business to the forefront of your audience' mind is no easy task, as we all know, but maub you should try this list of five creative ways to expand your market and create brand awareness. put your twitter handles on your business cards, slides and other relevant places to share with people in your targeted audience. two, mach a vine. the quick six-second video platform can be a creative way to garner a lot of new followers quickly. three, watch the competition. utilize facebook's paunlgz to wat

pages to watch feature which letsz you keep tabs on, four, mux it up with info graphics. desun and share an infographic to convey important information and five, run a podcast. the options of what you can cover in your recording are limitless from relevant breaking news within your industry to interviews with experts. there is a whole lot of confusion out there about what makes someone an employee versus an independent contractor and if you are categorizing people incorrectly you could be hit with a costly bill in the future. believe me, this is not something you want to have to worry about. we wanted to help detune each for you so you can better understand how you're hiring someone. david lewis is president, ceo and founder of operations inc., a human relations consulting firm. great to see you. >> good morning. >> the rules are pretty clear and yet still people are miscategorizing their employees as independent contractors left

and right. >> it's not that they're so clear. it's that they're so subjective right now. that's the difficulty is that i think the irs and the department of labor feel like they've put clear rules out there but the business owner, average person looks at it and says i think i have more discretion than i really do and that's not necessarily the case. >> number one, how they're paid, hourly versus project. >> so the idea here is that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably a duck and the duck in this case is employee. the more the independent contractor looks like an employee, the bigger risk you have. if you can pay them on a project basis and have a document that shows you're doing a project for a fixed fee, much easier to classify them as independent contractor. >> if someone comes in and working 9:00 to 5:00 and using your computers and sitting next to your own employees that's your point. >> they're a duck. >> say you have someone who i need i don't know, a marketing plan done or i need -- something

that is a project. >> so i think you're on the right path there. the more you can segment, the more you can specify they're responsible for a particular project or particular function that has a defined beginning and end to it, it can be done anywhere, not necessarily done in your office. it's fine to let your independent contractor in your office but having them start to look like an employee and come in and feel like they're following the rules and guidelines of the company that's where it blurs the line. >> what if there is a project? we're redesigning my home page let's just say. it's a project. it starts here. it ends when you're done, but i need you in the office when all of my other employees are working and i need you to interact with all the teams and come to the meetings. >> as long as the end pebt contractor shows that they are controlling the schedule to a great extent, that they're not being subjected to a schedule that is set by you, just like you would for your employees, show up at 9:00, leave at 5:00. the line gets less blurry.

when you start to give that person projects that yes, i have you doing the website but i also want to you update these other documents and i want you to own our database project and create a social media program for us and now suddenly that person is consuming all or most of their time working for you. now they've lost other clients. you've become the only client, you've started to become the employer in the eyes of the government. >> that's the other checklist is, are you the only client or do they have many. >> and that's always a tough one because we don't know from an independent contractor. we don't ask themmer once in a while, are we your only client or you are you doing something for other companies? it's really about the control piece and what winds up happening you have a clear-cut case when the person is doing the defined beginning and end projects and they're relatively short in duration and intermittent. the person is not therer day. they may only be there once a week or a couple of times a month. the more they start morphing into what an employee would be

doing they have to start worrying. >> and working from home or somewhere else it puts you on the independent contractor side. >> when you get audited for independent contractor status the subtle aspect of that audit is seeing if your name is on the door or cubicle. >> and finally, what happens if i have hired ten independent contractors and then there's an audit and i find out they were employees? >> you can wind up with fines, back wages, back benefits to those individuals and now the affordable care act you can wind up with other penalties asigned to the idea that you ask that to hold yourself under a certain threshold of requirement under the affordable care act. all of the numbers adds up not into hubs of thousands but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars for just a business with 50 or more employees. >> pay attention. if you have any questions, go see a professional and have them clear up. >> get professional input and advice. this is not a do-it-yourself project. >> thank you, it's so important.

so many people are doing it wrong. when we come back, what you need to know about finding a distributor. and the spirit of entrepreneurship is flourishing in new orleans, ten years after that city was devastated by hurricane katrina. 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 biz selfie comes from michael in atlanta who owns firebud brands, a line of spicy brands of condiments c. send it to us at your business @msnbc.com or tweet us to @msnbc your biz. do not forget to use the #yourbizselfie. ten years after new orleans was devastated by hurricane katrina, rebuilding effort is helping reinvent itself as a creative economy. >> passion zblat my name is kyle verner. i'm ceo of feel good flip flop. >> the name of my company is lia molly.

eye candy knit wear. >> visionary. >> ten years after the devastation of hurricane katrina, new orleans is experiencing a renaissance and small business owners is leading the way. >> it's becoming this national laboratory of the next generation of entrepreneur leaders. >> it's created sort of an interesting synergy if not an alchemy of committed natives as well as these very enterprising, idealistic newcomers. >> those who stayed in new orleans, like matt wisdom. >> it felt like the wild west, pioneers rebuilding something from the ground up. >> when everyone else was fleeing the city and businesses were closing left to right and the news was piling on about who is leaving town next, i said i'm going to do something right. this is an opportunity for me to take a gamble. for me to do something that i believe in.

>> new orleans has been growing, thanks to general race tax benefits and a rich culture. >> 30% to 40% less than new york or san francisco. why offshore to bangladore when can you do offshore to new orleans? >> there are exciting digitial media and tax credits are second to none. >> at the epicenter of all this entrepreneurability. entrepreneur's row and the ice house. the three hubs house some of the most innovative companies in new orleans. >> we're in the i.p. building in new orleans. what you have here is a community of entrepreneurs that have moved into this building in the last year from the fastest growing companies in the company to iseatz to feel goods.

the entrepreneurial community within new orleans is one of the few innovative hubs sprouting up all around the community. >> craig cordez met at the ip building and found they could collaborate on the packing of the flip-flops. >> we're shipping out margaritas anyway. sure enough, a joint venture was formed and we're now shipping out feel goods flip-flops. >> she left her job in new york as a sweater designer to follow her dream of starting her own clothing company. >> the enthusiasm for a new business here is just incredible. they rolled out the red carpet for us, you know. and was like whatever we can do to have you succeed, we want you to succeed. >> eager to support new businesses with entrepreneurs working together to succeed. >> new orleans is my huge

business partner. it's on the label. and it will stay on the label. business partners invest in your business and new orleans invests in my business, both people on the street, in the community, my friends, the businesses here. i mean, they want me to succeed. and, you know, and in ways that are beyond just capital investments. it's time now to answer some of your business questions. let's get our board of directors in here to help us out. amy kosper in editor in chief and founder of lifestyle brand, jen gruber. >> all self distribution. at what point should we look to go to a distributor? and how much should we be paying the distributor for their services? >> jen i'm going to have you

start. you have created products like the butler bag. how does he decide? >> i think the key question is if you took that same amount of time and effort that you're putting towards packing boxes and shipping and all the distribution challenges that are in front of you and use that same effort towards marketing, sales, social media, customer service, would that be more effective? scaling your business? and usually the answer is yes, when you're asking that question. there's so many different distribution strategies, it's very different from the fashion industry to the food industry. i use licensing as a scaling distribution strategy for all of my companies where you're never losing money, you're just gaining money. >> amy, is there a point, though, when you're too small for any distributor to be interested in you? >> i love this question and think it is a very important question to ask at the very beginning of your business. really it's a part of your growth strategy. i think if any kind of

distribution strategy, if you're doing it yourself, if it's costing you too much money or slowing down your growth as a business, that's when you need to entertain calling in a distributor. i completely agree with everything jen was saying and i think it's a question you need to ask yourself before you even start your business. how big do you want to be? >> how big do you need to be to get a distributor? jen, do you know the answer? >> really, again, it varies industry to industry. you have to have traction. you have to have a proven product. they also like to see a lot of marketing efforts behind your company because they don't want to have to do it all on their own. >> great. let's move on to the next question about getting advisers. >> i'm looking on advice in best practices in formalizing a board of advisers, everything from structure to expectations to compensation. >> i love this question because it's -- it can be such an enormous help. you have to be really clear and

you have to be clear with your advisers about what they're going to get out of this. >> you do. and you have to know what you want them to give and provide to you. >> right. >> there are so many different ways to structure a board of advisers. it's wonderful. to call in people who have subject matter expertise on things that maybe might be your weaknesses in your business, like financial, marketing. you know, going public. to bring all of this ten intelligence together at the very beginning of a startup is a very smart thing to do. having said that you need to -- some advisers don't need compensation. you can also offer up stocks or you can put them on a retainer. >> what do you think about that, jen, paying or not paying your board of advisers? >> i agree with amy. it really varies. if you're a nonprofit to a startup to a fortune 500 company. osama bin laden there's more ability of compensation on that end of the spectrum. the key thing is that your

advisers have to be passionate about what you're doing. >> yep. >> no matter how much money you're paying them f they're not passionate they won't be as engaged. be very clear as to what everybody's skill set of expertise is and give them an expectation to perform in that area of expertise. give them very clear guidelines like your job is to create the curriculum or create a handbook for this or develop the website equity. >> thanks to both of you. great advice. good to see both of you. >> thanks again. >> if any of you out there have a question for your experts we answer them every single week on the show. send us an e-mail and get advice from our panel. the address is your business @msnbc.com. thanks for joining us today. if you missed anything, go over to our website. it's open forum.com/your business. you'll find all of the segments we had on the show today, plus a lot more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter @msnbc your biz and on

facebook and instagram as well. next time, what do the founders of a company that turn t-shirts into quilt does when nobody wanted to invest? >> it made us very scrappy. we have -- oh, gosh, only $1,000 to spend on this advertising campaign. we had to be really smart about how to get more people to our website. >> we'll tell you why the pronl repat team is happy now that they kept hearing not interested early on. tell them i'm j.j. ramberg. 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. looking to the future in new orleans. good morning. thanks for getting up with us this sunday morning. i'm jonathan capehart. steve kornacki has the morning off. new details about friday night's shooting death of a sheriff's deputy in houston. more on that in a moment. >> plus the gulf coast is marking the tenth anniversary of hurricane katrina and the aftermath. approaching end of summer means soon it will be decision time on capitol hill for president obama's nuclear deal with iran.