good morning. coming up on msnbc's "your business," a hyperlocal marketing approach. and two companies, one focused on golfers, the other on flowers, grow their businesses by making everything here in the usa. we're keeping it local, that and more, coming up next on "your business." american express open can tep 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 open proudly presented "your business" on msnbc.

hi there, everyone. i'm jj ramberg, welcome to "your business." the show dedicated to helping your small business grow. when your company provides a service, getting your clients to trust you goes a long way, and when you're dealing with people's pets, we all know how people feel about their pets. one business owner of an online service that matches pet owners with pet sitters inspired confidence in his potential customers by taking a hyperlocal approach to marketing. he now has the community barking up storm about his company. ♪ it is a beautiful saturday morning in santa monica. these cute pups and this their

human counterparts are ready to get their party on. they're celebrating the fourth anniversary of dog vacay. an online service that connects pet owners with animal-loving sitters. in 2011 my wife and i visited our family on the east coast, and left our dogs in a kennel here in los angeles. we came back to a $1,400 kennel bill and rocky was hiding under my desk for three days, trau traumatized by the experience. we knew there had to be a better way. >> he and his wife started offering dog sitting services out of their home. the response was huge. eight months after posting on yelp, they watched over 100 dogs and earned $35,000 in cash. they knew they had their paws on something great. aaron took a risk and dove in head first. he developed a website and started recruiting sitters to post on the platform. >> we had a few customers, they told a few people, we launched, a couple people wrote about us and it just started to snowball.

>> the site now features dog sitters in more than 3,000 city and counting across thes and canada. it also offers offices like day care, dog walking, and grooming. on weekdays, matt drops his dog pierre off with natalie, a dog care employee. >> i can ask my friends to watch my dog but sometimes you feel guilty doing that. >> we're caring for your dog, a member of your family. it's a high bar to say leave your dog with a stranger. >> so they do everything they can to make sure their customers feel comfortable entrusting their furry companions to anyone they find on the site. >> pet sitter and client relationship is not a one-time thing. when you find someone you trust, you use them again and again.

what can we do to add value to that relationship? >> adding value means accepting only 15% to 20% of the people who apply to be hosts. sending frequent photo and text updates during a pet stay and 24-hour customer service. >> thank you for calling dog vaca, this is anthony, how can i help you? >> at the end of the day when it comes to family,, it's really much better if someone tells you they used the service or trust the service. >> gary and yvonne are retirees. these face-to-face encounters help seal the deal. >> you can see our profile but with the actual meet and greet, you get to know the person. they get to know you. i think the more you speak to them, they understand what we're about. and what we actually do.

you can feel their anxiety go a little bit. >> frequent community events is another way dog vaca gets the word outp this they often partner with local rescues. in hopes that even if their efforts don't translate into sales right now, they may in the long run. >> it's an investment. people use the service when they travel. you can't sell it like you would a pair of shoes or a belt. often people need to hear about it more than once before they're comfortable trying the service out. they see an event and later a friend might mention it and they see an ad and those three things together, they say, okay, maybe this thing is real. >> having local hosts attend the get-togethers is key. >> they see this is not a company representative. this is i a real person who is doing it, enjoying it, passionate about it. >> i've given my card to new

clients. when they see leaving their dog with a total stranger is better than leaving their dog the akennel. >> each new city means a demographic that has different needs, wants and specifications. >> we learn a lot about what people are looking for. how they might use it differently in different areas, what's important. we can use that information to help inform our matching engine, to help guide our dog sitters to say here are things you can do in this area. here's where people look for referrals around dog sitting. if you're in manhattan, you don't want to travel more than a few blocks. los angeles is a different story. people are used to driving and used to spending 20 minutes in a car. >> aaron knows talking about how great the service is means nothing if you aren't taking the time to listen to your customer. >> we've learned to listen to the guest, listen to the host. do our best to listen to the dogs, of course they don't write

reviews. and even listen to our employees to try to find the balance. it's an ongoing learning. this business is based on trust. when it comes to local, there are a lot of ways to look at it, local marketing like with dog vaca and local operations. in north carolina we met the owner of a company which produces golf products who was dead set on making sure all his manufacturing happened in his home state. >> dollars and cents wise, it is cheaper for us to make the product here than it is to make it overseas and it's more effective. >> we can drive and within two hours we can be at every one of our suppliers. >> when charlie was ready to launch his line of luxury golf accessories, he knew he wanted to source all of his supplies locally. the founder of stitch golf in north carolina took advantage of all the possibilities he saw in his home state.

>> one business owner new he wanted to source all of his products locally. >> knowing that north carolina furniture industry had fallen on hard times, he recognized the potential, got in his car, and started driving until he found the materials he needed. >> i told my wife i was leaving in the morning and i'm not coming home until i figure it out. that was my objective, whether it was four days, three days or five days. >> this entrepreneur went door to door looking for the right partners to help make his first product. >> we started out with leather covers, and it was something that we could manufacture here. buz of tbecause of the resource had at hand. >> that paid off. stitch now has an established supply chain. >> we have suppliers in cary, high point, greenesboro, charlotte, conover. concord and gastonia. >> anthem leather is one of the companies in high point. >> the main thing is our flexibility. as long as we have the leather in stock, we can turn it around

pretty fast. >> i can get the product that day or the next day. >> the company sells stitch the leather it needs based on demand. supplies are delivered fast. at the start, carrie bishop and charlie walked around the warehouse trying to figure out which liner would be best for the golf club covers. >> one particular fabric we deal with is made her in north carolina. that's very important to us to keep it as much local as we can. >> as a business owner who used to deal mainly with the furniture industry, having someone like charlie knock on terry's door was a welcome change. >> a lot of times you don't have people coming in and wanting to do business with you. as they continue to grow, we're able to sell them more. >> charlie needed someone to embroider his products. that's where royal embroidery and more fit in the picture. >> we've done presidecovers for

president and royal boyses. we don't want these ending up just anywhere. >> they're quite close, figurative len and literally. >> they're right down the street. >> royal embroidery has expanded because of its ole in this local supply chain and part of its operation is now dedicated solely to stitch's needs. one of the biggest advantages of having local suppliers, charlie can easily keep an eye on the quality of his expanding line. >> when you built product, you don't know what it looks like unless you go over there. >> i know what my products will look like. i can drive over and see the manufacturing process. >> this close proximity allows stitch to react fast to its growing clientele. >> i can launch a new product pretty quickly. >> while charlie says that

sourcing locally works for his company, he admits nothing is perfect. >> we could have built more product or had more product to sell if we brute in large lots from overseas. it is a drawback. we can only do so much. >> stitch's own production manager who previously worked with major brands has even said that manufacturing state side can be trickier than manufacturing overseas. >> sometimes she says that was easier. it was easier to do that, coordinate 100 factories and coordinate supply he's all over the world. >> charlie says his products are made in the usa and that's the way it's going to stay. if he can do it, he believes other entrepreneurs can do the same. >> think about what's in your backyard. you know, find out what people do, what are the industries in your area and how can you tie into it. wanting to keep things in the usa also played a major role in the success of a san francisco floral company.

the owners at bringing on a midwest farm fuel desire to support local farmers and how her small business is blooming. >> reporter: when a bouquet of flowers shops up at your door, you usually wonder what they're from. christina wonders where they're from. >> i was eating at thinks farm-to-table restaurants. this he would tell me the name of the chicken that i was eating. but they had imported car nations on the table. >> that's how her now multimillion dollar company, farmgirl flowers got its start. >> i was at home writing business plans. >> she has no formal training in floral design and no business degree. >> i just started researching and i found an industry that was huge. but had very little innovation in it in recent years. >> those flowers company used imported stems but stemible said no to flowers shipped from

thousands of miles away. >> the same way we shouldn't expect to eat a nice ripe peach in november, we shouldn't expect to get certain flowers in december. >> she knows the importance of seasons and supporting local farmers. >> there used to be 100 rose growers, now there's 5. >> she tried to get investors to back her farm-to-vase idea but ended up with a string of rejections. >> i accouple female investors toll me i should take my husband in with me to pitch, being a solo female founder is very difficult. >> undeterred she boot strapped the startup herself. >> i would get up at 3:30 in the morning, load my car with flowers, busy days i'd have to make several trips back and

forth. >> it was a labor of love and blossomed into a business that now ships across the u.s. today she has close to 50 employees. >> the farmgirl team starts their day here at the flower mart, often while it's still dark outside. the flowers are sorted and snipped, carefully arranged and wrapped. the end result, more than 300 bouquets sent daily. >> they're known for that signature farmgirl finish. burlap wraps cut from used coffee bean sacks donated by roasters. it's charming and eco friendly. some flowers are shipped. if they're local, many arrangements arrive by pedal power. >> i have a flower delivery for you. >> i can't even breathe they're so beautiful. >> hard to believe the brain behind these bouquets was once teased. >> i did used to wear flowers in my hair a lot. now it all comes full circle back. who's laughing now? >> exactly.

>> sumi das, san francisco. it's the beginning of spring and flowers aren't the only things that are blooming. small biz trends.com gives us five ways to breathe new life into your marketing campaign by including aspects of the season. one, add vibrancy. match your messaging with the season by using bright colors and include a theme of renewal and replenishment. two, run facebook contests around spring holidays. events like mother's day can be perfect marketing opportunities. tap into the time of year to re-engage with your customers. >> three, sponsor a local team. many sports restart their season in the spring so consider supporting a group or event that will bring you exposure with your target demographic. four, clean up your web presence. remove links that aren't helping you and make sure you don't have any misspellings or bad grammar on your pages. add target key words to your

image captions as well. five, bring people together. get to know your customers in person through meet-ups, workshops and sales. i wonder how many of you know your neighbor at work or how many of you know other people in your industry across the country? both likely have a lot that they can offer you and you them. eric groves is the co-founder and ceo of alignable. he's here to tell us about different types of connections you can help to make your company grow. so good to see you, eric. >> great to see you, jj, thanks for having me. >> you were part of constant corn tact which grew so tremendously to help small businesses and went off to create alignable because you found businesses weren't talking to each other, am i correct? >> i had a great are at constant contact. one of the biggest challenges small business owners faced was

getting access to information and customers that would help move their businesses forward. so what we built alignable to do was allow small business owners to make connections within their community, across the country, to get access to the information and the customers that would actually drive their business forward. >> let's talk about some of these connections. and some of them we know they're there, we just don't take the time to do it. so recommenders nearby, if you are a hair salon and there's a wine shop next door, maybe do something together. >> absolutely. you know, 80% of a small business owner's customers come from a five-mile radius. inside that five-mile radius are other business owners. those business owners willing to recommend your business to other customers and drive your business are goal. you never know where you're going to meet them. we have a business owner here who's a designer in massachusetts who was going through a directory on alignable and noticed another woman there

that she had been working out with in the gym for months. turns out that she was a business owner as well and she made that connection through the platform and now they're working together to refer each other customers. >> you can get recommendations. talk about connecting with friends nearby. >> absolutely. you know, out of the gate it's not always somebody that will recommend you new customers. you need to go out and invest in getting your face and name out in the community. the two great ways to do that. one is set yourself a goal of connecting with two new businesses each month. and reach out to them, connect with them and take it offline, have a cup of coffee, spend ten minutes with them, get to know them and understand their business. as you get it know each other, you'll be more likely to recommend each other's business. the other thing you can do is simply leverage your knowledge within the kmoon to the share insight that helps other businesses succeed. we had an insurance agent that introduced himself to the community in kansas.

where he basically came out with three tips for business owners looking to understand their insurance policy when they have employees using their personal vehicles to drive their product to a customer. and by doing that, not only did it spark a great conversation but it also set that person up as the go-to expert on insurance within that community. >> i'm going to do these next two together. your neighborhood and others in your industry. the point about making connections here is, you don't have to re-invent the wheel. if you have a question about parking on your street, perhaps your next door neighbor has already dealt with it or if you're a cupcake store and you're trying to find out what machine to buy, there's probably another cupcake store that already knows this. >> absolutely. sometimes the answer is ten feet away through dry wall. you just need to be able to meet that person and ask that question. the opportunity to open up a dialogue in your community or across your industry, will get

answers, trusted answers, because they're coming from other business owners. it's a great source of information and knowledge. businesses love to help each other out. all the cupcake stores across the country aren't competing with each other. they actually like to share knowledge and help each other succeed. >> that gets to your last point, too. make connections with people who are sharing similar challenges. that could be your neighbor, someone in a similar industry across the country or perhaps someone in an entirely industry and is just dealing with the same stuff you are, insurance, what have you. >> yes, absolutely. when you think about the challenges you face, whether it's i'm trying to figure out how to get my yelp reviews to work or find access to lenders. there are hundreds of thousands of businesses across this country that have already solved that challenge and are more than willing to share their insights. all you have to do is build a

network and share this network. >> thanks so much forever coming and talking about this. we've been talking about it a lot recently which is get out of your space every once in a while, even though your to do list is so long and go talk to other people. there are short cuts, whether it's referrals or answers to some issues you're having. there are short cuts out there if you just go talk to people. >> your number one new source of new customers is word of mouth referrals that means you need to have a network. >> great to see you. >> you as well. thank you very much. still to come, how to grow your business and get your product into more retail outlets and why giving away something for free can lead to higher profits. 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 we are in the search for new customers constantly. and so my question is really to find the right customers, what's the best way to go about finding new boutiques that would want our products and services? >> what i would suggest is that you find a sales rep, find an independent sales rep who can go out and look for new clients, new boutiques and new customers for you. how do you find that person? what i would suggest is start with thinking about what you want from this person.

you could pay them by the hour or what about hiring a sales rep on commission will make between 5% and 25% of a sale. that's nothing out of your pocket. that might be an attractive thing. you want to cast a wide net. linkedin is reputable. it will probably find you very, very qualified people who do this for a living, go out and prospect for you, find some people and you'll interview and hire. one thing i would finally suggest, as you hire someone, hire them on a test basis. you want to make sure you have the ability to work together well. that's not always true. so hire someone on a test basis, see how it works, see if they can get you new business. if they do, bring them on full time and voila, you've grown your business. it's money out of your pocket

but it's okay because you're making more money. we have the top two tip to know to help your small business grown. investor phil town and barry moltz. good to see you both. >> good to see you. >> larry, let's start with you. >> my number one tip, it's a very, very simple formula, people times process equals profit. we all know that people is the most important part of the business. ideas are really meaningless. it's all about execution. you have to find the right people who will follow your mission. multiply that times a process. you have to have systematic ways to do everything in your business. marketing, sales and development. finally, that will equal the maximum profits. so many small business owners get paid far too little for what they do. they have to find out where is the leverage in their business. i can make more money having an

80% gross margin than a 30% one. >> how often do you see small business owners who know they don't have a plus people who make excuses to keep them around. >> all the time. they hire people who aren't as good as they are. they stay at the center, everything goes through them. they don't hire good, independent people who operate the business on their own. that's a big problem. >> phil? >> one of our companies does a great job with as a service company, education company. they do a great job of bringing people in and giving away their best stuff for free. i'm going to encourage all of our viewers to see if they can't find some aspect of their company they can give the people to build their credibility without any strings attached. this company brings people in, they spend three days training them. at the end of the three days of training, what they've done is establish the credibility of the brand, established that the people need the product and they send them home without selling

them anything. it's an incredible -- it's tripled their revenues over the old model. >> they sell them something after. >> they sell them something after because the client or the customer is demanding it at that point. >> can i ask you a question. >> sure. >> i get that, right? it is a bigger scale of getting something in the apps store for zero and selling them after you're addicted to the game, you sell them something more. >> true. >> what about for something like this, education and something that's big and takes three days and you have to fly there and spend three days of your time, is there the problem where people think, it's free, it's not going to be as good as something i pay for. >> we thought that might be a problem. you hear people say if you're free, they're not going to buy, you're going to waste your time. they paid better. and they buy better. >> got it. >> i think the reason is you start to remove that sense of

the company trying to sell me something, trying to pull me in, you know? it's gone. people -- honestly, people are waiting for the other shoe to drop. >> presumably a lot of them drop out at some point, too. you've really qualified the customer who are willing to pay more. >> the dropout rate is more about just where are you going to price your product. if you were pricing products from let's say $100 up, you probably wouldn't have dropout rate at all. this company is pricing products at 5,000 and up, i think. >> right. >> there's a dropout rate. nonetheless, 40% of people who go through this process end up buying something. >> interesting. thank you. good to see you both. this week's your business selfie comes from karin's florist in vienna, virginia. they've been in business for more than 60 years and they say they love our show. pick up your cell phone and take a picture of you and your

business and send it to us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com or tweet it to @msnbc your biz. use the hash tag your biz selfie. here's what i learn on today's show. we talk about digital marketing but we should never forget, especially in the beginning when you're launching your company about face-to-face contact with your customers. if you're getting them to trust you, if they know who you are, they may be willing to forgive mistakes early on or they may feel more confident working with you. we'd love to hear from you. if you have questions 0 are comments about today's show, e-mail us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. also click on your website it's openforum.com/yourbusiness. we posted all of the segments from today's show and a lot more. connect with us on your digital and social media platforms as

well. next week, manufacture us heard the phrase the customer is always right. we introduce you to one entrepreneur who says, not so fast. >> be responsive. be attentive. make the customer your priority but at the end of the day, know that that customer is not always right. >> we'll tell you why the owner of this texas garbage company doesn't believe that every complaint is his company's fault. 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 >> happy friday. it's great to have you here. there is a lot going on tonight. some politics, not politics. we have news of profound importance to 10,000 american military families, but it is mostly being ignored by politicians thus far of both stripes. i will say, though, if we are a good country and one that is trying to get better as a country fbls the whole problem of politicians ignoring this thing may soon change. we have that story ahead tonight. we also have news tonight out of flint, michigan. we have political news tonight about one mid-western state which i think is going to make a lot of republicans really, really