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 jj ramberg and welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to helping your small business grow. when you think of christmas, do a water park a roller coaster and ice cream stand come to mind? i guess not. unless you're spending time in new hampshire. that's where you'll find a park with a holiday theme that attracts visitors from may to december. after 60 years in business, the holiday 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 bother asking the date at santa's village, because

here it's always december 25th. >> if you give joy, you get it back. and our santa's helpers know that. >> and customers are happy to join the celebration. >> most everybody is in the christmas spirit when they're here. whether it's in june, july, august. >> this jefferson, new hampshire, park is a community staple. >> it's the nostalgia. they remember coming as children themselves. they remember bringing their children here. now they're grandparents and they're coming back. >> norman and cecile's inspiration came from their daughter. >> a little fawn jumped in front of our 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. >> more than six decades later the company's owned by the family's third generation. norman and cecile's grandchildren. >> it's fun. it can be difficult at times, can be frustrating, but overall it's fun. >> carrying on a legacy is a lot of responsibility. but 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. since the theme we keep with as we expand. >> with attractions like rudy's transit coaster, the reindeer rendezvous, 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 they love, that they see and want to come back again and again. in order to keep them coming back, we have to keep evolving and innovating and exceeding expectations. >> the fact that jefferson is somewhat isolated, it means customers are making the conscious decision to come. >> most of our guests come from over two hours away. >> customers are always looking for what's new and what old reliables are there. >> being a destination for people, you have to keep in what you have and bring in something every year. because people expect that now. >> some of the newest additions have been favorites. >> we introduced the water park about five years ago. we added to that. elf universities where the kids go and find all the elves. that's newer. >> most happen from january

through memorial day when it's shut down. this is when the brainstorming turns into reality. >> by january 1st, everything is planned. it's a short period where we can build a new building, install a new ride. we have a great maintenance team that takes apart the rides and refurbish the rides. all of our hard work has come to fruition and we are ready just to make our guests happy. >> any expansion at santa's village has to be planned out. a limited pool from which to hire staff. >> these small growths add, you know, five or six or seven or eight employees a year. that's 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 who 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 line. 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're happy, our guests are happy. >> despite longer summer hours, the park still attracts its biggest crowds across the holidays. >> christmas is our busiest time. we have snow. it's cold. but it's beautiful. the days are busier because we only open two days a week versus seven days a week in the summer. >> the family's work is paying off. >> the proof is the repeat customers. our best marketing is word of mouth. they'll remark to their friends and family and tell them about their wonderful experience here. that is our main form of advertising. >> numbers are up. >> the best gauge of our

customer feedback and our customer reviews happens to be through trip adviser. we were selectioned one of the top 25 in the united states. >> 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 imagine my grandfather and grandmother when they started the business, they were my age. i'm innovative, excited, ready to go. >> what norman and cecile started 63 years ago is just amazing. hopefully we can continue that tradition for the next 63 years and keep those generations of families coming back year after year. the look and feel of your office can set the tone for employee morale and productivity. even though many entrepreneurs do not have deep pockets for interior design because they're worried about payroll and marketing, there are some simple things you can do with a

relatively small budget. we spent the day with a start-up that provides affordable interior design help by the hour. ♪ >> our office actually has become a kind of test ground for experimental design. so a lot of the things we test out in this office, we try and see if they work or don't work and then we'll bring them into start-up spaces. for instance, we have a green wall that will eventually become an entire partition wall. >> we've placed a track on the ceiling and have anchors on the floor. 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 co-working area. >> adding something living to every space, i think is an

amazing sort of asset or design asset to draw from. adding something like a plant wall is not terribly expensive. we're trying to design solutions that have maximum effect for minimum spend. >> this is our snack 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. they're around $20 to $60. you can find them in a vintage shop or flea market. they're a hit and a cute way to show off snacks or any kind of food product without it being a plain ikea shelf. >> i think you're working within this sort of paradox of how do we give a space the feeling of permanence while giving it the impermanence it needs to grow with a company? and that transience is a

difficult gray area to-and-a-half date. we use the greenhouses so you don't have to spend two or three months to just get a conference room up. you may not be there in eight or eight months. why there be when you could construct something prefab, disassemble it, and take it with you. >> it's one of the first things people notice when they come in. and of course we named them after beyonce songs. on this wall we placed decals of our vals. they are an amazing price point. we do them for companies when they want to place their logo on their wall. >> the post-it wall. they put it on to congratulate other people are mask how they align with our three tenants of home polish's brand. i think post-its are inexpens e inexpensive. why not have fun with it? >> this standing desk is a great

example of how we design office start-ups around mobility. people are breaking up into teams of four and six. and it's unnatural for people to sit down for 8 to 12 hours a day. a lot of people asked for standing desks. but they're really expensive. so in this case, we took an ikea countertop and attached pipe legs with casters so it can move around. and it turns into a bar when we throw events. it's a great multi-functional piece and it's half the cost. the marquee i think is probably one of our favorite add-ons to this office. it's a great way to kind of inspire employees. we put fun quotes up. we use the space for company lunches. so we try and keep it positive with a nice message. this is from thomas edison. it's a great quote.

>> we're always experimenting with lighting. i think lighting is something that can really make or break a space. we wanted to experiment with residential lighting, commercial lighting can tend to be or feel cold or sort of boilerplate boring. and so we used chandeliers and we wanted to see how do chandeliers function on dimmers? can you get enough ambient light? what kind of feeling does it give you? i think the result actually was great. i mentioned desk space. one of the things we wanted to experiment was using vintage tables and how to create a cohesive look when tables are different. we used something as simple as a paint color. we took all the tables and painted them the same color. it gives a unity to the work space. if i need to sit six more people in my office space, i don't want the whole aesthetic to fall

apart because i have to introduce a different type of chair or desk. how do we find solutions that allow this transience, this flexibility in a work space? and i think that's something we are just constantly trying to push the boundary of. ♪ bringing your business to the forefront of your audience's mind is no easy task as we all know. maybe you should try this list of five creative ways to expand your market and awareness. one, push your handles. put your twitter handles on business cards, slides at a conference, and other relevant spaces to share with your target audience. two, make a vine. the quick six-second video platform could be a way to garner new followers quickly. three, watch the competition. utilize facebook's pages to watch feature which let yous select pages you want to keep

tabs on. and examine what and how often they post. four, mix it up with intographics. people are more visually engaged. design one to convey important information. and five, run a podcast. they can easily be downloaded and listened to anywhere. the options of what you can cover in your recording are limitless. there is a whole lot of confusion out there about what makes someone an employee versus an independent contractor. if you are categorizing people incorrectly, you could be hit with a costly bill in the future. this is not something you want to have to worry about. we wanted to define each for you so you can better understand how you're hiring someone. david lewis is the president and ceo and founder of operations inc., a human resources 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. i think the irs and department of labor feel they've put clear rue rules out there but then the average person looks at it and says i think i have more discretion than i actually do and that's not the case. >> let's go through the checklist you have to think about. 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 you have a document that shows that they're doing a project for a fixed fee, much easier to classify them as independent contractor. >> okay. so if someone comes in and they're working 9:00 to 5:00 and using your computers and sitting next to your employees -- >> they're a duck. >> okay.

let's say you have someone who -- i need a marketing plan done, 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 that can be done anywhere. it doesn't have to necessarily be done in your office. it's fine to let them in your office, by the way, but having them look like on employee and come in and feel like they're following the rules and guidelines of the company, that's where it blurs the line. >> so what if there's 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 these teams and come to the meetings. >> as long as the independent contractor shows they're controlling the schedule to a greater extent, that they're not at a schedule set by you, show up at 9:00, leave at 5:00.

then the line gets less blurry. it's when you start to give that person projects that, yes, i have you doing the website but i also want you to update these other documents. and i want you to own our data base project. i'd like you to create a social media program for us. now suddenly that person's consuming all or most of their time working for you. now they've lost over clients. you've become the only client. you've become the employee. >> that's the other point on the checklist. are you the only client or do they have many? >> that's always a tough one. we don't know from an independent dependent contractor. we don't ask them every once in awhile, are we your only client or are you working for other companies? it's about that control piece. usually what ends up happening is you'll have a clear cut case when they do the beginning and ends projects and they're relatively short in duration. and the person's not there every day. but the more they start morphing into what an employee would be

doing, the more you have to start worrying. >> and if they're working from home a lot or somewhere else, it puts you on the independent contractor side. >> when you get audited for independent contractor status, one part of that is if the name is on the door or cubicle anywhere. >> and scare us. what happens if i have hired ten independent contractors and then there's an audit and i find out they were employees? >> you could wind up with fines, back wages, back benefits to those individuals. and now with the affordable care act, you can wind up with other penalties assigned to the idea you did that to hold yourself under a certain threshold under the affordable care act. all of those numbers adds up. not into hundreds of dollars but thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars for just a business with maybe 50 or more employees. >> right. okay. so pay attention. if you have any questions, go see a professional and have them clear it up. >> get professional information and advice. >> all right.

great. thank you for clearing this up. 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. we thought we'd be ready. but demand for our cocktail bitters was huge. i could feel our deadlines racing towards us. we didn't need a loan. we needed short-term funding. fast. our amex helped us fill the orders. just like that. you can't predict it, but you can be ready. another step on the journey. will you be ready when growth presents itself. realize your buying power at open.com.

this week's your biz selfie comes from michael in atlanta who owns fire bud a line of spicy condiments and sauces. take a selfie of you and your biz and send it to us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com or tweet it to @msnbcyourbiz. hughes #yourbizselfie. the spirit of survival remains strong in new orleans ten years after the city was devastated by hurricane katrina. the rebuilding effort is reflected in a group of entrepreneurs helping the big easy reinvent itself as a creative economy. ♪ >> passionate. my name is kyle burper, i'm the creator and ceo of feel good flip flops >> my name is sima sue khan dan,

i make eye candy neckwear. >> ten years after the devastation of hurricane katrina new orleans is experiencing a renaissance and small business owners are leading the way. >> new orleans is becoming this national laboratory of the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. >> it created sort of an interesting synergy if not an alchemmy of committed natives as well as these very enterprising idealistic newcomers. >> those that stayed in new orleans like matt wisdom and ken purcell from iseatz were considered pioneers. >> it made us feel like we were pioneers rebuilding something from the ground up. >> everybody else was fleeing the city and businesses closing left and right and the news piling on who is leaving town next. i said you know, i'm going to do something right. this is an opportunity for me to make a gamble but for me to do something i believe in.

>> new orleans has been growing thanks to a low cost of living, generous tax credits and a rich culture. >> you can start a business for 30% to 40% less than new york or san francisco. why offshore to bangalor and you can offshore to new orleans. >> there are exciting digital media and film related tax credits that are available and the tax credits are second to none. ♪ >> at the epicenter of all of entrepreneurial activity is the ip building, entrepreneur's row and the ice house. inspired by silicon valley in new york, the three hubs house some of the most innovative companies in new orleans. >> what you have here is a community of entrepreneurs that had moved into this building in the last year from the fastest growing companies in the country to iseatz to feel goods. what this board represents is

the entrepreneurial community within new orleans and it's just one of the few innovative hubs sprouting up around the community. >> kyle burner and craig cordez met at the ip building and found that they could collaborate on the packing of kyle's flip-flop in cordina's large warehouse space. >> a joint venture was formed and we're shipping out 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. i mean, they rolled out the red carpet for us, you know, and was like whatever we can do to have you succeed, we want to you succeed. >> reporter: new orleans is on the rise, a recession proof haven 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 liable. 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 to answer some of your business questions so let's get our board of directors in here to help us out. amy kosper, editor-in-chief at "entrepreneur" magazine and gen gruber founder of empowered by jen gruber. our first question is getting your products to your customers. >> we've been self-distribution. how much should we pay a

distributor for their services, and at what point? >> jen, you created products like the butler bag. how does he decide? >> well, 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 of the distribution challenges for you, would that be effective in scaling your business? usually the answer is yes. there are so many different distribution strategies it's different from the fashion industry to the food industry. i used 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 where you are too small for any distributor to be interested in you? >> i love this question and it's a very important question to ask at the very beginning of your business, because really, it's a part of your growth strategy and

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 and i completely agree with everything jen was saying and i think it's a question you need to ask before you 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? >> it's really again, varies industry to industry. you have to have traction. you have to have a proven product, and 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. >> the next question about getting advisers. >> i'm looking for advice on best practices and formalizing a board of advisers, everything from structure to expectations, to compensation. >> i love this question, because it can be such an enormous help, but 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. i mean, there are so many different ways to structure a board of advisers, and 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 intelligence together at the very beginning of a startup is a very smart thing to do but having said that, you need to, you know, some advisers don't need compensation, but you can also offer up stocks. there are different ways to do it or put them on a retainer. >> what do you think about, jen, paying or not paying your board of advisers? >> i agree with amy. it varies. if you're a non-profit to a startup to a fortune 500 company, obviously 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 if they're not passionate they're not very engaged. be clear to what everybody's skill set of expertise and give them expectation to perform in that area of expertise, give them clear guidelines, your job is to create a curriculum or create a handbook for this, or develop the website equity. >> great advice, good to see both of you. if any of you out there are a question for our experts we answer them every week on the show so send us an e-mail and get advice from our panel, the address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. thanks everyone so much for joining us today. if you missed anything g to our website openforum.com/yourbusiness, you'll find all of the segments on the show today and a lot more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter, it's is

the@msnbcyourbiz and we're on facebook and instagram as well. what do the founders of a company that turns t-shirts into quilts do when nobody wanted to invest? >> it made us scrappy because oh gosh, we only have $1,000 to spend on this advertising campaign so we had to be really smart about how we're going to get more people to our website. >> we'll tell you why the project repat team is happy now we kept hearing not interested early on. until then i'm j.j. ramberg, and remember we make your business our business. our cosmetics line was a hit. the orders were rushing in. i could feel our deadlines racing towards us. we didn't need a loan. we needed short-term funding fast. building 18 homes in 4 ½ months? that was a leap. but i knew i could rely on american express

to help me buy those building materials. amex helped me buy the inventory i needed. our amex helped us fill the orders. just like that. another step on the journey. will you be ready when growth presents itself? realize your buying power at open.com the gops freak out over donald trump. just two months to iowa, can anyone stop him? also, the latest on the planned parent hood shooting? plus new questions after the police shooting of laqwan mcdonald. we'll look at the state of civil rights in america, 60 years after the montgomery bus boycott. martin luther king iii will join me live.