>> he branched out and did everything. now one small business owner is looking at growing her business using licensing. lessons you can use 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 order. or expand your office. for those who constantly find new ways to grow on every step of the journey, american express presents "your business" on msnbc.

hi there everyone. i'm jj ramberg. welcome to your business the show dedicated to helping your small business grow. 2015 has been a mixed bag for small businesses. hiring had uptic, sales were up yet owners are not upbeat about next year. the small business optimism index fell 1.3 points in november. big worries continue over profit, health care, taxes and federal regulations. with us from capitol hill is congressman steve shabbat. the republican from ohio chairman of the house small business committee. so dp to see you. >> thank you, jj. appreciate the opportunity. spent a lot of sunday mornings watching your show. you do a great job. >> thank you very much. we are really interested in

hearing what you have to say and so i'd love to hear from your perspective what are people worried about most right now? >> well, i think they are worried about the normal things, worried about the level of taxation in this country, worried being overregulated by washington. let's face it, they are concerned about whether we're safe in this country or not after such things as paris and san bernardino and what effect that would have on their jobs and so there's a lot of worries 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 right now. overregulation. whether it's obamacare which i would argue made life much more difficult on small business folks, some call it rather than the affordable care act, the unaffordable care act because it's costing more, people are

getting less for the higher dollars that they are paying. dodd/frank, legislation passed some years back that we have a new level of bureaucracy looking over the shoulders of bankers especially community bankers and credit unions, makes it tougher for small businesses to get loans. we're work on reducing the level of regulations in this country. what most small business people tell me is that the best thing we, we being congress and the government, can do for them is to get the heck off their backs. >> so, i have a question. as a small business owner, our audience watching, we have people on from your side, people who feel differently but i think you hit on one button that most people talk about which is uncertainty. and how things come at them at the last minute, or they feel like no movement is going to be made in washington. so as somebody who is dealing with both sides 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 employees, increase their revenue, can deal with watching washington not be able to make up its mind? >> well, i know they are very frustrated, jj, and rightfully so. what we're trying to do, those of us pushing to help small businesses rather than hurt them which is what unfortunately happens in far too often in government things like something we already passed, the regulatory flexibility improvement acts which when the bureaucracy passes regulation, red tape that you have to live by, let's make sure they take into consideration both the direct 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 too complicated but even when we do good things coming out of washington, we usually do them at the last minute so you can't plan on it. things like bonus depreciation.

things like the section 179 expensing, these are good things for small businesses, they can take advantage of these things, however, often times it's done in november or in the last minute in 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 and hopefully 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, vid to say cautiously optimistic but we also have divided government. let's face it. 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. let's be positive and let's move ahead and try to move this country in the right direction. >> congressman, one last question 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's all clumped together as small bills. >> that's very true. >> 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 now are created by small business spokes. every other person walking down the street who is working works for a small business but right, the definition, a small bills can be pretty large. most of the federal programs 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 that appear that maybe a large corporation, they can hire a new accountant, a new tax person, a small business it can be success or failure. so we always have to keep in consideration what we do up here affects a lot of small businesses. >> because when it comes to small business it is not one size fits all. we thank you so much for stopping by and chatting with us. we hope to see you again next year. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. nine years ago we met a woman, may she, an impressive entrepreneur who built a large candle business doing it all herself. we kept in touch with her and i wanted to revisit her story to chronicle her next chapter because now she's doing something brand new. she's growing a lifestyle brand and working with licensers to help her build it. it's a very different kind of structure with what could be very different kinds of rewards.

>> this is high risk poker. how do i make sure that the 29 beds in this room are going to capture the attention of the broadest set of retailers. >> hugh is the ceo of new york city based elry home styles. his company is one of the country's top home furnishing manufacturing marketers. >> how do we catch lightning in a bot. >> what he means by lightning in a bottle is finding a product that would dazzle the big name retailers. >> my passion is bring the newness in the design front and being able to connect that with consumers. >> may is the owner of maryland based bliss living home, this year hugh licensed may's designs hoping they will spark some of that lightning. >> you know what else i love is you have these birds here. >> embroidered. then you soften it. >> right. >> until recently may's company designed, manufactured and

marketed bedding on its own at a much smaller scale. now she hopes to benefit from elry's big scale operation. >> our volume has been a problem because we only deliver to relatively premium market and key can't meet the need of their demand. >> when i first met may she leveraged her china connections to grow an impressive whole sale candle business which she started from her garage. four years later she took a big risk with that candle bills, when she moved most of her production out of china and built her own factory here in america. her gamble paid off and the factory delivered a huge competitive advantage. with its manufacturing capacity of more than 2400 candles an hour. >> i think this is okay right now. >> but that's not okay. >> back then she was just starting out with bedding. and she told me she saw entering a new market as extremely risky.

early on things looked promising, the bliss living brand caught on with some of the retailers. but the profits didn't follow. >> i did everything like i did for candles, from design to sampling and seeing the customers in the trade shows. our volume has always been a problem. >> it was a different industry. and mei didn't anticipate the profit mor begins were different. >> if you are at certain scale, you are just about to break even. or you're not even able to make a profit. >> mei new the brand was popular so she focused on changing production. that's when she went to see alana of new york based jewel branding and licensing. mei approached her with a new strategy. she not only wanted to find licensing partners for her bedding business but wanted to expand the brand to other products. >> we represent designers and design based brands to extend

their brands, their trade marks, design elements into a variety of consumer products. >> alana intervoosed mei to hugh. his company could produce big quantities at profitable price points. >> focuses on the creative and the design area and elry does the execution side of it. >> with elry handling bed. >> we wanted to be everything that you want for home. from maybe one day back in bathroom accessories to paint, carpet. >> and that means finding licensing partners in each of these categories. who can source the supplies and navigate each of the industry requirements. >> i wouldn't know where to start and what the nuances of that business is. >> mei made big changes to her company. now she focuses on licensing and that has meant restructuring.

>> we don't need sales team. we don't need a design team, a product team, we don't need sourcing and quality control. distribution. >> as promising as this new direction seems, alana warns it comes with its special risk. >> one of the hardest things we find with a licenseor you need to trust, that's one of the hardest. >> mei must trust me that we'll be able to execute the production, sourcing, shipping, billing 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. mei only get as fraction as a fee. however, as the license owner mei can rework the designs into additional products each one generating additional license fees. >> we want to hit home textiles, rugs, wall decor, home decor, luggage or whatever the category, stationary. >> if you knew then what you

know now would you have skipped this stage of manufacturing and distributing 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 zeal 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 is building a brand with significant growth potential. wearables that help you stay fit or healthy are the rage. the elstraighter pitching has a line of products that are fashionable but help avoid skin cancer. see what two of our favorite judges think. carol roth is a host of don't quit your day job yet on cnbc.com. she is also an investor and entrepreneur. and reeva is ceo of grow biz

media. >> hi ladies. my name is mandy, the in and arounder of mills co. if you could wear something that would help to keep you beautiful. in response to the growing number of skin cancer cases among my clientsings friends and family i decided to create a line of beauty detection jewelry that would help better understand their daily uv exposure. each piece in the collection has a uv detection bead. that bead changes from clear to purple when exposed to sun light. we are the only jewelry of its kind in a multi-billion-dollar health and beauty industry and designed for prevention. although we're still an early start-up stages we're featured including the "huffington post." we actually 10 sold internationally. what we're asking for is a $50,000 initial investment that money would be used for marketing, product development, including a men's line as well as getting trade marks and patents. so ladies i hope you like our

jewelry. >> thank you. all right. you two, i'm looking at your exposed skin and thinking of you in this. two numbers between 1 and 10. 1 the first for the product, and the second on the pitch. you said your clients are you a doctor >> i have done skin care for 20 years. >> so the idea is people are going to see this turn colors and run from the sun. >> be able to take steps to prevent skin cancer. premature aging and those things we spend money trying to undo this will help prevent it. >> you put sun screen on going to the beach. but hopping in the car you don't think about it. >> most of our damage comes from daily. >> carol, let's start with you. >> okay. so i'm miss meany. i'm going to say 4 and 4. 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 are going low tech instead of high tech wearables. 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 wasn't enough in there for me on the product side, and 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 pa tent for, and is it 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. >> reeva. >> i'm much more positive. >> that was sort of obvious. >> tiny numbers. i think the product is a really smart idea. difference carol lives in chicago, i live in southern california. you are constantly exposed to the sun. i don't think about it. i don't really you know, we have

a lot of outdoor malls, shopping, you don't -- i don't put on sun screen to go to the mall. i think something like that where it's pretty, i don't want to wear plastic. i don't. where it's pretty and it's fashionable and yet it's going to tell me like hey, maybe next time you come to the mall you put your sun screen on. i think it's a good idea. your pitch i think lacked a lot of specifics. i would want to know more. is it going to be easy to patent, and the 50,000 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 -- >> it's so funny i think the $50,000 is too much. i would do a kick starter or do something that sold this product first, to do the proof of concept before you invested a lot. you can get feedback and get people to send you know what, i wish this integrated with my smart watch or with you know, whatever i'm doing to track my fitness. and i think until you get that kind of feedback i wouldn't dump

$50,000 into trying to figure out the patents and the things until you got that customer feedback. >> all right. thank you both. i think this was incredibly helpful advice. good luck. good luck going forward. can't wait to see what happens. thanks for sharing with our show. if the any of you out there have a product or service and you want feedback like you saw from our elevator pitch panel on your chances of getting investors, send us e-mail. your bills@mkz.com. in that you have to include a short summary of what your company does, how much money you're trying to raise and what you intend to do with the show. we look forward to reading those pitches and seeing some of you here on the show. if you are anything like me, this time of year means a lot of traveling in order to spend the holidays with family. but as a small business owner that doesn't mean we can close shop. here are five tools that will help you keep your company up and running even when you are

working remotely. >> one, boomerang. depending where you work from your time may not be lined up with employees or customers. it allows you to schedule e-mails and send them out at specific times. two, dropbox safely stores important documents while allowing access to everyone who needs it. three, join me provides virtual meeting and screen sharing software that doesn't require downloads or subscriptions from you or your clients. four, if part of your business requires shipping, tradeability makes this step easier. the free ups tool 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 always a possibility. prey sends you location information, 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, strategies 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 from felicia long in north carolina. as you can see from that pin there she is a big proponent of shopping small. why don't you pick up your cell phone and take a selfie and send it to us. or you can tweet it to us@msnbc your biz and use the hash tag your biz selfie. time to answer some of your business questions. carol and reeva are here. the first one is about inspiring your staff. >> how do you create a rewards system with employees to motivate them beyond their potential, help them reach new goals in their own life and that could be monetary, it could be personal, combining all of the things in one to meet with the millennial's need. >> start with you. >> so i think one of the problem a lot of business owners make they try to come up with a one size fits all solution and that

doesn't work. you have to figure out what motivates your employees, some may be younger, have young kids, maybe they want flexibility, work at home day, some may be older, maybe they want a monetary reward. >> doesn't it get complicated if you are treating everyone differently? >> if you are a small business and i think people understand this is not necessarily an official program but something you're doing to keep your employees motivated or 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 like you know like right. >> okay, 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 are doing aren't about giving people something tangible. it's about giving them feedback, it's about giving them opportunities, it's making them

feel heard. so sometimes it's really about creating those values and those cultures and that foundation sue people feel like that they are being listened to and they have the opportunities. the other thing that i will say is that 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 ticket anywhere in the world. which if you price that out is probably less than $2,000 coach in the world. if you gave somebody $2500, they may not appreciate that 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 do agree, i think you have to know your employees and you have to know the things that motivate them and hopefully if you have a cohesive culture you won't have too many different options. >> sounds like talking about one group which is millennials not that millennials don't feel

differently than each other but it narrows it down. >> also with millennials the social causes too. having something that ties into a mission, that is maybe not something that they are getting personally but where they are having an impact on something broader is really huge. >> send them to a conference, send them to a seminar, send them to classes, ask if they want to learn something. then they feel like you are investing in them and 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 in expanding out of state, and 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? >> i have a recommendation. you need go out and read the --

it's all about creating systems in your business. i think if you have that very clear system down where everybody know what is it is they are supposed to be doing and has the accountability, that is going to help you. the other thing i think you need to do is make sure that when you are delegating that you are 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 technology to have a skype chat or something like that where you are staying on top of what's going on. i think having the strong systems, maybe having the people from out of state train with you, you going 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 have been in your culture and know what your company does. >> right. you don't want to create this new -- first of all i hope it's a state that's dleels where you are because it's 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 is the doing 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 -- no one's going to know, even a loyal employee, what it takes to launch that better than you do because you did one. so i agree with carol on the systems. it takes a really detailed system, this is what we do, how it's done. >> almost like you are franchising. >> request fran chizing yourself. why out of state to start. why not a second location. >> perhaps she's all across the state but the other thing i think it's important to have somebody that knows that local market, uk tnderstanding the c m customer and the legal regulations that vary state to state. having your team and moving them doesn't necessarily get you there. >> and make sure that where you open that other location it's similar to demographically what you know. because cities vary.

you may be successful because there is a certain market in your city, and if that market doesn't exist in that other city you're starting all over again. >> great. so good talking to you. thank you for all of your help today. >> thanks,jj. >> if any of you have a question send it to us. go to our web sight, openforum.com/your business. you'll see an app to the show link and submit your question or send e-mail to us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. there is always a new app or website being released that promises to help you run your small business. but which ones actually deliver? we asked our viewers for their favorites. >> mileage tracker is a great app that we use. as a specialty food company we are constantly doing demos and sales calls, and we need to know

what our mileage is. mileage tracker, you know, 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 tech purposes and business purposes. >> one of the apps is fun box. it's a way to finance invoices through quick books that you currently have you are waiting for 30, 60 or even 90 days. you can get your money up front in a few minutes and able to keep your business going. >> my favorite app right now is for instagram and it's called repost. it allows you to find what other people have posted about your products, then repost them on instagram so you are sharing that. thank you everyone for joining us today. if you missed anything just head over to our website it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. we'll post all of today's segments and more content with more information to help your bills grow. you can 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 days and a bunch of phone calls takes a couple minutes and a few mouse clicks. >> how the $400 billion home services industry is starting to tap the on demand economy, till then i'm jj 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 what a weird political news day has been. with all the drama in the democratic party for once. with the bernie sanders campaign now suing the democratic party. as we speak, like right now. and the hillary clinton campaign accusing the sanders campaign of criminal theft. it's this big fight over data in the democratic party. a data breach. it is a strange fight. it is ongoing right now as i speak. we're going to have the latest on that in just a moment tonight. but we are going to begin our show not with that story. we are beginning our show with a bit of a special report. we cover a lot of crazy stuff on the show. and there has been a lot of this show. we just had our seventh birthday this year, which means that in