she branched out from candles to textiles and did everything herself. now one small business owner is looking at growing her business using licensing. lessons in entrepreneur instances to make your small business a success. coming up next on "your business." american express open can help you take on a new job. or fill a big ord ever. or expand your office. for those who constantly find new ways to grow on every step of the journey, american express

open proudly presented "your business" on msnbc. ♪ >> hi there, everyone. i'm jj ramberg a enwelcome to "your business" the show dedicated to helping your small business grow. 2015 has been a mixed bag for america's small businesses. hiring had an uptick, small business saturday sales were up, and yet owners are not exactly upbeat about next year. the nfib small business optimism index fell 1.3 points in november. big worries continue. with us from capitol hill is congressman steve shabott. it is great to see you, congressman. >> thank you, jj. i appreciate the opportunity to be here. i spend a lot of sunday mornings

watching your show. you do a great job. >> thank you for the compliment. we are really interested in hear whag you have to say. and so i'd love to hear from your perspective, what are people worried about most right now? >> i think they're worried about the normal things. they're worried about the level of taxation in this country, they're worried about being overregulated by washington. those are at the small business level. but let's face it. they're concerned about whether we're safe in this country or not after such things as paris and san bernardino and what effect would that have on their jobs. so there's a lot of worries out there and i think it's our responsibility in congress -- and the president as well -- to deal with those issues. one of the principle problems is regulation. over-regulation. whether it's obamacare which i would argue to a considerable degree has made life much more difficult on small business folks. some people call it rather than

the affordable care act the unaffordable care act because it's costing a lot more. people are getting less for higher dollars they're playing for health care. dodd-frank legislation that was passed some years back that we have a new level of bureaucracy looking over the shoulders of community bankers and credit unions. that makes it tougher for small businesses to get loans. we're working on reducing the level of regulations in this country. what most small business people tell me is the best thing that we -- we being congress and the government -- could do for them is to get the heck off their backs. >> so i have a question for you. as a small business owner, our audience watching, we have people from your side on and people who feel differently. i think you hit on one button that most talk about which is uncertainty. and how things come at them from the last minute and they feel no move is going to be made in washington. as somebody who is dealing with

both sides of the table trying to argue your side and push forward things you believe in, how do you think small business people at home who are actually dealing day-to-day trying to pay their employees, increase their revenue, can deal with watching washington not be able to make up its mind? >> well, i know they're very frustrated, jj. and rightfully so. what we're trying to do at this point, those of us that are pushing to help small businesses rather than hurt them which is what unfortunately happens far too often in government, something like what we passed already the flexibility improvements act. which would say the bureaucracy up here passes regulation, red tape you're going to have to live by, let's make sure they take into consideration and indirect impacts it's going to have on small businesses. on taxes, for example, we need to simplify the tax code. right now not only are taxes too high, not only are they too complicated, but when we do things coming out of washington,

we usually do them at the last minute so you can't plan on them. things like bonus depreciation. things like the expansing. these are good things for small businesses. however, oftentimes it's done in november or december. so you can't plan for those things in the next tax year. so what we're trying to do is have more predictability coming out of washington so you can depend on what's going to happen here and hopefully what's happening will benefit your small businesses and not hurt you. >> so what is your outlook for next year? should we be optimistic? should we be fearful? >> i'm optimistic. i'd have to say cautiously optimistic, but we also have divided government, let's face it. we have a republican house and senate. we still have a democratic president, democratic administration, and a very unsettling, shall we say, presidential campaign thus far. i would say on both sides. so nobody knows for sure what's going to happen including me.

but it's easy to see why people are kind of uncertain and don't know exactly what to expect for next year. but let's be positive and let's move ahead and try to move this country in the right direction. >> congressman, i have one last question for you which is when we say the term small business, it covers so much ground. right? so that the person who runs a small dry cleaner in florida is quite different than a venture-backed company in silicon valley yet it is clumped together as small business. >> that's very true. >> and so as you think about policies that help small business, how do you sort that out? >> well, 70% of the jobs that are created in the american economy nowadays are created by small business folks. about every other person you see walking on the street who's working works for a small business. but you're right. the definition -- a small business can be pretty large. most of the federal programs it's up to 500 employees. but then most of the small

businesses are very small. they can be one person. they can be five people, ten. and so when we're passing laws up here that maybe a large corporation, they can hire a new accountant. they can hire a new tax person. a small business, it can be success or failure. we always have to be in consideration what we do here affects a lot of small businesses. >> because when it comes to small business, it is not one size fits all. thank you so much for stopping by and chatting with us. we hope to see you again next year. >> thank you very much, jj. nine years ago we met a woman named maishi. she's an entrepreneur who built a large candle business doing it all herself. we kept in touch with her over the years and i wanted to revisit her story to chronicle her next chapter. now she's doing something brand new. she's growing a lifestyle brand and working with licensors to

help her build it. it is a very different kind of structure with what could be very different kinds of rewards. ♪ >> this is hype-risk poker. how do i make sure that the 29 beds in this room are going to capture the attention of the broader set of retailers? >> hugh rovet is the ceo of eleri home styles. they're one of the top home furnishing manufacturers. >> how do we make sure to catch lightning in a bottle. >> my passion really is to bring the newness in the design front and being able to connect that with consumers. >> maishi is the owner of bliss living home. this year hugh licensed her designs hoping they will spark some of that lightning. what else i love is you have these birds here beautifully.

but this -- >> until recently, her company designed, manufactured, and marketed bedding on its own. at a much smaller scale. now she hopes to benefit from eleri's big scale operation. >> our volume has always been a problem because we only deliver to relatively premium market. and we can't really meet the need of their demand. >> when i first met mei nearly a decade ago, she had leveraged to start a candle business which she started from her garage. four years later, she took a big risk with that candle business when she moved much of her production out of china and built her own factory here in america. her gamble paid off. with its manufacturing capacity of more than 2400 candles an hour. >> i think this is okay right now. >> but that's not okay. that sooting is excessive.

>> back then she was just starting out with bedding. and she told me she saw entering a whole new market as extremely risky. early on things looked promising. the bliss living brand caught on with some of the big retailers. but the profits didn't follow. >> i did everything like i did for candles from design to sampling seeing the customers. but our volume has always been a problem. >> it was a different industry. and mei didn't anticipate that the profit margins were also different. >> if you're at certain skill, yourself just about to break even or not make a profit. >> mei knew the brand was popular so she focused on changing production. so she went to see a jewel branding and licensing. mei approached alana with a new strategy. she not only wanted to find licensing partners for her bedding business, but she wanted to expand to other household products as well. >> we are a licensing agency.

what we do is represent designers and design-based brands. to extend their brands, their trademarks, their design elements into a whole variety of consumer products. >> alana introduced mei to hugh. his company could produce big quantities at profitable price points. >> that way bliss living really focuses on the creative and the design area and eleri does the execution side of it. >> we wanted to be encompassing everything you want for a home from maybe one day bath and body product, bathroom accessorieacc to paint, carpet. >> and that means finding licensing partners in each of these categories who can source the supplies and navigate the industry requirements. >> i wouldn't know where to start. and i wouldn't know what the nuances of that business is. >> mei made some big changes to her company. now she focuses on licensing.

and that has meant restructuring the company. >> we don't need sales team. we don't need design team. we don't need product team. we don't need sourcing and quality control, distribution, e-commerce. >> as promising as this new direction seems, alana warns it comes with its own special risks. >> one of the hardest things we find with a licensed store, you need to trust. i think that's one of the hardest things to do. >> mei must trust me that we'll be able to execute the shipping fulfilling of her product. and i pay her a fee for that privilege. >> the new licensing model gives the bulk of the profits to manufacturers like hugh. while mei only gets a fee. however as the licensed owner, she can rework them into additional products. each one getting additional license fees. >> we want to hit home textiles. we want to hit rugs.

we want to do home decor accessories. we want to do luggage. whatever the category. stationary. >> if you knew then what you know now, would you have skipped the manufacturing and distributing yourself and just gone and had a partner? >> it would be very hard for bliss living to start from nowhere and try to negotiate a great deal for themselves. so i think that everything we do has its progression. >> while the learning curve with bedding was steeper than with candles, mei now has high hopes she's building a brand with significant growth potential. helping you stay fit and healthy is all the rage. today's elevator pitcher has a line of products that are fashionable and help to avoid skin cancer. carol roth is from cnbc and riva

losanski is part of grow biz media. >> hi, ladies. i'm the founder of m mills co. in response to the growing number of skin cancer cases among my clients, friends, and family, i decided to create a line of uv detection jewelry. each piece in our collection has a uv detection bead. that changes from clear to purple when exposed to sunlight. we are the only jewelry of its kind in a multi-billion-dollar industry. although we're still in early start-up stages, we have been featured by multiple outlets. we've even sold internationally. what we're asking for is a $50,000 initial investment. that would be used for marketing, product development including a men's line as well as getting trademarks and patents. so, ladies, i hope you like our

jewelry. we believe it fits the lifestyle of anyone looking to age well. thank you. >> thank you. all right. you two, i'm looking at your exposed skin right now and thinking of you in the sun. all right. two numbers between one and ten. one the first one for the product. and the second on the pitch. you said your clients. are you a doctor? >> i've done skin care for the last 20 years. >> got it. okay. the idea is people are going to see this turn colors and then run from the sun. >> not so much run but have the awareness and take steps to prevent skin cancer, premature aging and all those things we spend money to undo. >> you put sun screen on when you're going to the beach, but hopping in the car you don't think about it. >> impactly. most of the damage comes from daily. >> okay. so i'm miss meany. i'm going to say four and four. and you would have an opportunity if we met again for those numbers to get higher. but on the product, i didn't

understand enough about the differentiation. i don't know if it's patented. i don't know why you're going low tech instead of high-tech wearables. you know, people have their habits. and so i'm just not convinced based on what you have here that this is going to actually change the habit of putting on the lotion. there just wasn't enough in there for me. on the product side. then the same thing on the pitch side. you talked about the sales, but you didn't tell me what the scope of those sales were. you talked about maybe a patent, but what's the patent for and is it really protected? so it's very possible that you could get those numbers way up, but based on the information i have, i had to go honestly and say that's where i stood. >> thank you. all right. riva? >> i'm much more positive. we know that. >> that was sort of obviously, right? >> teeny tiny numbers. >> i think it's a good idea. i live in southern california.

we're constantly exposed to the sun. and i don't think about it. i don't really -- you know, we have a lot of outdoor malls. you're shopping, you don't -- i don't put on sun screen to go to the mall. and i think something like that where it's pretty, i don't want to wear plastic. i mean, i just don't. where it's pretty and it's fashionable and yet it's going to tell me, hey, maybe next time you come to the mall you'll put your sun screen on. i think it's a really good idea. your pitch i think lacked a lot of specifics. what i would want to know more, like, is it going to be easy to patent? and the $50,000 just seems like a low number to me. i don't think it's enough to get you where you want to go. but i think your products are beautiful and i would definitely use it. >> it's so funny. i think the $50,000 is too much. i would do a kickstarter or i would do something that sold this product first to do the proof of concept before you invested a lot of money. because you could get feedback and you could get people who said, you know what? i really wish this integrated

with the smart watch or whatever i'm doing to track my fitness. i think until you get that kind of feedback, i wouldn't dump $50,000 into trying to figure out the patents and things until you got the customer feedback. >> well, thank you both. i think this is incredibly helpful advice. good luck going forward. and thanks for sharing your business with our show. >> thanks for having us. >> if any of you want feedback like you just saw from our elevator pitch panel on your chances of getting interested investors, just send us an e-mail. yourbusiness@msnbc.com. we look forward to reading those pitches and seeing some of you here on the show. if you're anything like me, this time of year means a lot of traveling in order to spend the holidays with family.

now are five tools to keep your company up and running even when you are working remotely. boomera boomerang. your timing may not be lined up with your customers. it allows you to schedule your e-mails and send them out at specific times. drop box allows access to everyone who needs it. three, join me in providing software that doesn't require any downloads or prescriptions from you or your clients. four, if part of your business requires any form of shipping, trade ability makes this step easier. it helps you estimate costs and makes you aware of duty fees and international trade restrictions. and five, when traveling, theft or leaving something behind by accident are a possibility.

prey sends you hidden camera pictures and screen shots so you can keep your devices safe and locate them quickly. when we come back, motivating your employees particularly millennials. plus for growing your business to out of state locations. 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 felicia long who owns the swede candy cafe in lumberton, north carolina. as you can see from the pin she's a proponent of shopping small. pick up your cell phone and take a selfie of you and your business and send it to yourbusiness@msnbc.com or tweet it to us @msnbcyour biz and don't forget to us use #yourbizselfie. time to answer some of your business questions. carol and riva are here to help us out. the first one is about inspiring your staff. >> how do you create a reward system for the employees to motivate them beyond their potential and help them reach new goals in their own life and that could, you know, it could be monetary, it could be personal, really combining all the things in one to really meet what the millenials need? >> great question. start with you, riva.

>> business owners try to come up with a one sides fits all solution and that doesn't work. you need to figure out what motivates your employees, some may have young kids, maybe they want flexibility, maybe work at home days, some may be older, doesn't matter, maybe they want a monetary reward. >> doesn't it get complicated if you treat everyone differently? >> if you're a small business and people understand it's not necessarily an official program but something you're doing to keep your employees motivated or keep them interested in your business, everybody gets a reward and it's the one that makes them happy, so i think that then everybody's happy. if you gave somebody flex time and they don't want flex time it's you know like, great, roll the eyes. >> got it. carol? >> if you look at the companies that are consistently rated the best ones to work for, a lot of the times the things that they're doing aren't about giving them something tangible.

it's about giving them feedback, it's about giving them opportunities. it's making them feel heard. sometimes it's creating those values and those cultures and that foundation so people feel like they're being listened to and they have the opportunities. the other thing i will say even though monetary things are nice to have, sometimes something of equal or lesser value is appreciated just as much. i know that some of the companies now are doing things like a ticket anywhere in the world, a round trip ticket anywhere in the world if you price that out is probably less than $2,000 coach anywhere in the world. if you gave somebody $2,500, they may not appreciate so much as the trip anywhere in the world. for some reason people that experience, something that's not just a number makes them more excited, but i agree with rieva. you have to know your employees and know the things that motivate them and hopefully if you have a cohesive culture you won't have too many different

options to choose from. >> he's talking about one group of people, millenials. at least it narrows it down some. >> with millenials, the social causes, too. having something that ties into a mission that is maybe not something that they're getting personally but something where they're having an impact on something broader is really huge for millenials. >> or send them to a conference. send them to a seminar, to class classes, and they feel like you're investing in them and you care about their future as well as what they do for you. >> and tie a spa day onto that. >> okay, let's move on. it's a question about setting yourself up to grow. >> i'm thinking of expanding out of state so i am having a hard time with that so my question is, how do you set a system that can help you go out of the city and expand your business, new locations, training people, hiring and all that? >> carol?

>> i have a recommendation. you need to go out and read the e-myth revisited by michael e.gerber, because it's all about creating systems in your business and if you have that clear system down, where everybody knows what it is they're supposed to be doing and has the accountability, that is going to help you. the other thing is make sure when you're delegating you're not abdicating. just because you have somebody out of state doesn't mean you can't visit them, doesn't mean you can't leverage technologies to have a skype chat, where you're staying on top of what's going on so i think having the strong systems, maybe having the people from out of state train with you, you go in there from time to time and checking in is part of the way that you get there. >> or taking somebody who has been working with, you right, and move them so they've already been in your culture and know what everybody does. >> right. you don't want to create this new, first of all i hope it's a state that's close to where you are. it's really hard to manage a

business hundreds or thousands of miles away, but it may not even be a bad idea for you to pick an employee who's doing really well and have them be in charge of your current location and you go relocate for the first six months to launch that business, because no one is going to -- if no one is going to know even a loyal employee what it takes to launch that better than you do, because you already did one, so i agree with carol on the systems. it takes a really detailed system, this is what we do, this is how it's done. >> almost like you're franchising, you think of yourself as franchising yourself. why out of state to start? why not just a second location? >> perhaps she's all across the state but the other thing is, i think it's important to have somebody that knows that local market, understanding the customer and also understanding all the legal regulations, which very incredib vary widely from state to state. just having your team and moving them somewhere else doesn't necessarily get you. >> make sure the other location

is similar to demographically what you know because cities vary completely. you may be really successful, because there's a certain market in your city, and if that market doesn't exist in that other city you're starting all over again. >> great. it was so good talking to you. thank you for all of your help today. >> thanks, j.j. if any of you have questions go to our website, the address is openforum.com/yourbusiness. once you get there, an ask the show link submit your question there or send an e-mail to us, the address is yourbusiness@msnbc.com. there is always a new app or a website being released that promises to help you run your small business but which ones actually deliver? we asked our viewers for their favorites in this week's small biz tools. >> mileage tracker is a great app for a business. as a specialty food company

we're constantly doing demos and sales calls and we need to know what our mileage is. mileage tracker, if we put the address of where we're coming from and where we're going, it tracks our mileage, the date, and it can produce reports for us that are great for tax purposes and also business purposes. >> one of the apps that i use is called fun box. it's a way to finance invoices through quick books that you currently have if you're waiting for 30, 60 or even 90 days. you can get your money up front in just a few minutes and you're able to kind of keep your business going. >> my favorite app right now is for instagram and it's called repost and it allows you to find what other people have posted about your products, and then repost them on instagram so you're sharing their contacts. >> thank you, everyone, for joining us today. if you missed anything, just head on over to our website, it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. we will post all of today's

segments plus a lot more content with more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter, it's @msnbcyourbiz and we are on facebook and instagram as well. coming up next week we explore how calling your local plumber may be as easy as using uber. >> so what would have taken maybe a couple of days and a bunch of phone calls now takes a couple of minutes and a few mouse clicks. >> how the $400 billion home services industry is starting to tap the on demand economy. i'mment? 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 >> who's afraid of the big bad trump? two days before the next debatd, will any of his rivals atack him to his face? >> i'm not one of these other guys that goes down. i don't go down. i go up. >> and if they go too far will he run as an independent? >> if the playing field is not level, then certainly all options are open. also, outrage at the supreme court. new reaction to justice scalia's controversial comments about black students. crisis in chicago,