good morning. coming up on msnbc's your business, the struggle for survival. what steps did the owner of a camera store take to keep his company competitive. we hit the road to find out how this business caters to celebrity clientele. plus, you may not think you're in danger of an employee embezzling from your company? are you really protected? information and advice to help the small business owner coming up next on "your business."

hi, everyone. welcome to "your business." the show dedicated to helping your small business grow. when a small town retailer faith fighting back to save his business, it gets personal. this week we meet one of the last men standing in an industry that's been decimated by the internet. brick and mortar camera stores. this entrepreneur has found a way to keep his customers coming

back. >> john is going to be so yellow. oh my god. >> oh my god! >> kind of light painting they call it. >> that is so cool. >> when these amateur photographers get together, they have one thing on their mind. who took the best photos, where and how they did it. >> i've never done that before. it's so exciting. >> for mark coman, the owner of paul's photo, gathers like this these have been the secret weapon that's kept his small camera shap in business while so many others have had to shut down. >> is everybody having fun? >> i'm having fun. >> we're like the cheers of camera stores where everybody knows your name and we really have a good time with it. that's the secret. >> paul's photo isn't run by paul anymore. mark, his son is now calling the shots and pulling in the customers and keeping up with the times >> as my peers got older, they

were not capable of keeping up as i would not be capable of keeping up if it weren't for mark. it's an entirely new ball game. >> if you listen to mark, i's not even a new ball game. it's a completely new business model. >> when my dad started the camera store business was all about consumables, film, processing, developing. we would see customers on a regular basis. that was the cash flow. that went away with digital. then in 2008 and 2009 here comes the internet and retail is struggling. >> without the predictable cash flow of film and processing or the vast product range of the internet, most of the local camera shops like paul's simply closed up and disappeared. >> we had 17 camera stores. we sold them in 1990. today not a single location that we were in have a photographic

application. all of them have become something else. >> he's a business advise tore what he calls the imaging industry. he's watched this painful process of extinction play out in laj administration small towns across the country. >> today there are 11 camera stores operating under the name. >> the problem extends beyond technology and the internet. they blame the suppliers as well. >> we have no control over the pricing. the camera manufacturers com the price. when i sell you $1,000 camera, you have to real like that $950 of that goes to the camera manufacturer. we get to keep 50 bucks. >> economically you will not survive selling cameras, period. you need other things. >> other things for mark comon begins with this army of camera buffs who have been inspired by

mark's high energy classroom style. >> how many night room kis do we have. >> tonight, 45 night hawk students have gathered in the dark. >> one, two, three. >> not just to shoot pictures of the christmas lights but to share the excitement of learning from each other as well as getting amazing pictures. >> look at that. look at that, joan. look at that. see? yes, efly. great. i love that. >> it's markets at its best. mark gathers people together, shows them how to have a great time taking pictures, takes them out for drinks afterwards and they respond by keeping his business in the black. >> i came in to take a quickie class to learn how to use a camera, in eight weeks bought a whole new camera. i went to the classes, sort of doing the home work, a back corner seat and just got pulled into it. >> what makes this work is that mark's enthusiasm is genuine.

and contagious and it builds a community strong enough to compete with the internet. >> it will generate $1,000 worth of revenue tonight which is okay. but what we're going to do is we're going to get 40 people to have a great experience and they're going to tell their friends, they're going to post it on facebook, on flick e, they're going to tell all of their neighbors that i had a great time last night and paul's photo is the place to go. >> he takes the classes to an olympic level. the u.p.s. man can't create this exrience. >> mark's ability to keep local retail relevant rests on his ability to provide experiences for his customers that can't be found anyone e anywhere else. >> it's the symbiotic relationship between the camera store, the lab and the classroom that feeds its. >> paul's photo is not alone. you can find this ecosystem

approach in other retail industries as well. >> my friends who have running stores and bike stores, they offer runs and bike rides. how many nurseries offer the free planting class. what are they doing? the same thing we are. >> mark's passion for teaching is a two-edged sword. on the one hand it's department mark's business afloat. on the other hand, bill worries that it may be preventing mark from taking the steps others take to prepare for the future. >> there's others who say they want to build something they can retire from. that means it has to be big enough that you can sell it to an investor. >> to mark, however, the big picture looks very different. >> if i can get every customer within ten miles to buy their camera here and have their pictures presented here, to take a photo class with us, that's enough for me. i'm not greedy. i'm a small time guy in a small town.

i like what i do and i like knowing my customers. on, you okay? each january people flock to las vegas to see the coolest and newest technology unveiled at the consumer electronics show. we bring you the top picks this year that can help your small business from entrepreneur.com. robin is an android phone that moves things to the cloud. two, omnity wrk a search engine to the next level. instead of a few key words, you can enter an entire document to find other related articles and sites. three, the job site ear buds are designed specifically for construction workers. so these will perform well in a high energy startup space. four, the app speedify mobile,

the fastest speeds available at any point in time. and five, the bluesmart carry on suitcase has location tracking and an app controlled remote locking system. what do oprah, justin timber lame and george w. bush have in common? they've all hit the road in style. these broths know a lot about touring. they did it themselves as a successful gospel group. they took that experience and created a luxury bus company that kate irs to a celebrity client list. ♪ if you've ever wondered how lady gaga, rihanna, air roe smith, cher or even the president get from point a to point b when they're on tour, talk to these guys. >> you have to stay focused on

what you're about and that's what we do. our customers happen to be famous. >> and what they're really about is going the extra mile. literally getting people where they need to go in style and comfort without having to worry about the details. >> you have to know that you've done everything you can to give them a safe and comfortable experience. >> when you walk around the offices at hemphill brothers coach company in nashville, you'll see the walls covered with many of their celebrity clients. clients that relied on their service because they did one simple thing right. they delivered on what they promised. and in the topsy-turvy world of touring, they rely on hemphill for being a stable force in an often unstable world. ♪ it's a world trent and joey hemphill know first hand with a history steeped in music. the two brothers grow up in a bus singing with their family band, the hemphills. >> i traveled 2 million miles on

a bus singing gospel music. it was an interesting way to be raised. >> with an intimate knowledge of what life is like on the road, the brothers knew a thing or two about what someone needs to have a relaxing trouble free trip. they decided to start the company in 1980. >> we know the feeling of being on the bus, riding down the road or being on stage. >> pioneers in the luxury coach industry, the brothers scraped enough money together to buy two old buses to get their start. they transformed them on the inside and out so they looked brand-new doing most of the e work themselves. they didn't have a lot of money but they had a ton of experience. and learned early on to overpromise and overdelivered 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they did whatever it took to keep their buses rolling. support the drivers and keep their clients happy. they started doing small local tours at first. their big break came two years after starting the business when

van halen called. >> i'll never forget the day they were in nashville and they needed to add a bus to their tour. and just so happened we had a bus available. and took the bus down there with the driver and got to meet the management and obviously we did a good job because 30 years later we did the whole van halen tour 2012. >> being prepared for that first big call led to many more and the ability to start phasing out their old buses and buying and customizing new ones to fits the needs of their high profile clients. they poured all of their resources into bringing every aspect of building their customized buss in-house, from the custom woodwork to the upholstery and painting. if a bus is ordered for a tour and supposed to be deliver on a certain date, it is. >> you might have an artist with

a special mattress or an artist that likes all white, white leather furniture, white drapes. so we'll take an existing bus and we'll make it white for that tour. their there are families that travel together with new babies. we put tanning beds in the buses. sometimes we'll set up a recording studio in the bus. >> with careful and measured growth, hemphill brothers expanded their fleet slowly only doing so when they could increase their support staff in nashville with the right people. with less than 5% turnover, frank and joey has cultivated, trained and built an extremely loyal and productive team of employees starting with the day to day face of the company, their drivers. >> we went out there and hired the best of the best for our company.

even when we really felt like we couldn't afford to do that. we couldn't afford not to. so we had to have the best drivers that becould possibly find. that built company pride. getting a call from air force one, you know, bucking buses for the president. getting a text from george strait saying i want you to build me a new bus or getting a call from the oprah show saying we want to use your buses for her show. it's always something new and it's never boring around here. ♪ if you ask around i bet you will find so many more people than you possibly imagine who have been victims of embezzlement. i've not experienced it myself, one family member and one close friend have. both who i think of very smart and on top of things at their company. and this doesn't count all of the stories that i've heard while meeting people with this program.

today we brought in jim ash, an independent public accounting and advisories firm. jim is here to tell us what we need to do so this doesn't happen to us. great to see you. >> thank you. >> if you're a victim of it, don't feel badly. you are not alone. >> sit a very prevalent event. we see it all of the time. >> very smart people. >> yes, very smart people. and it just happens to even the most, you know, people watching the situation very closely. it happens. >> let's be sure it doesn't happen to anyone watching this. tell us what we need to do. >> typically this happens a lot more in small business. and small business could be anywhere from 10 to 20 employees. and there's a combination of two things happening. there's a trusted employee who's been there for probably five, ten, 15 years and it's very trusted by the owners and it's somebody usually in the age group of 30 to 45 and they've been there at the company for a

long time and there's that trust factor. the other thing is in a small business, very hard to segregate the duties between different employees. so you can't have a situation where somebody is a bookkeeper in charge of writing checks, signing checks and making deposits. you have to separate the duties out. you have one person responsible for the books and records, another person responsible for writing checks, another person responsible for taking the checks that come in to the bank. >> and some oversight over all of those people. >> the real key to this thing is the owner's oversight. sort of like a checks and balances type of situation. an owner really has to do a number of very important things. they have to open up the bank statements. they have to look at their statements. they got to see that the checks are made to legitimate pairs. not a different name on the check. >> even if you have a different person writing the checks, they still may trust each other. i see this person is getting a

check every month, it must be good, right because that person is writing it. >> yes. >> so i as a person looking at it, if i'm not the owner, i doesn't raise a red flag to me. i trust jim writing the checks. >> and that owner when they get a folder of checks to sign, they have to look at the voucher, look at the check. >> ask question if it's something they don't recognize. >> if the dollar amount looks wrong or the payer's name. >> if it's above a certain threshold, make sure you're the one to sign it. >> it depends on the nature of the business but usually a threshold is $1,000 or a little more and it requires a double signature on the check and that way you have the check and bhans in place. >> it is not brain surgery what we're talking about right now. it is simply saying look at this. >> right. >> be vigilant. it happens so frequently that you have to have those checks

and balances in place, particularly in a small business where you can't have enough people to do all of the segregated -- >> you can't divide it out, one person doing it so you need to be watching. even if it's not $1,000. if they're 'em was ling, a hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there. >> it all adds up. >> and is it always or often just people who the owners says i would have never expected this? >> it's a great comment. that's exactly what i hear every time. i can't believe she did it. i just can't believe. she was with me at the picnic, you know, at our house last weekend. we were enjoying hamburgers together. it's true. happens all the time. >> so this conversation should be enough to -- i think about this about cybersecurity as well. you know what you need to do. you got to do it. >> yeah. >> jim, thank you for coming on and reminding us. >> thank you.

want to wear your fancy high heels but there's two feet of snow on the ground? we have a footwear product that's practical on the outside and fashionable on the inside. let's see what our invest investor thinks. heather thompson, a former housewife of new york city. >> hi, i'm cassandra and my business is pie cease water boots. protect your shoes in style. our posh ga lashes are designed for when your outfit calls or dress shoes but the weather disagre disagrees. they're just as sturd the as a regular boot but they're light and roll up and come with this convenient carry bag for storage. our initial style, the posh ga

lash is kurnling selling and we have customers in 35 u.s. states and six foreign countries. and our first customers are women who hate to change their shoes or ruin their shoes and they're loving the fashion forward look and the unique elastic closure and they're asking for many more styles. we're currently seeking $500,000 to design and develop new styles and to begin our wholesale launch. >> cassandra, we have the perfect panel for you. we couldn't have asked for two better people here. we have heather from the fashion world and alicia who investments in these kinds of things, amongst many others. i want two numbers from you guys, one to ten. first, how was the product, second, the pitch. and while they're writing that down, i want to congratulate you on your ability to give the pitch while taking off your shoes. >> thank you. >> i thought that was very well

practiced. you've done that before. >> easy to do. >> let's start with you. >> so to start i gave you an eight on the product. i'm totally enamored by the shows. i can't wait to try on a pair. for the pitch i gave you a six. you spent a lot of time talking about the product and gave us a little bit of a the sense of traction but i am left with a number of questions. i don't know anything about your background, why you're best suited to execute on this idea. i don't know why other competitors may or may not be able to replicate our product. i don't know anything about sales to date and i don't know how you're reaching your audience. i'm intrigued to learn more but i'm left with more questions. >> it's interesting. she only has 60 seconds. so you can't get to that. did she give you enough of anything to say, oh, she might

be good at this. >> you're shaking your head. >> i agree with what she said. we have no time. you have 60-second moment to tell us everything about you. so i think like, for example, the spelling i didn't think that was that important right now. i would have maybe spent more time talking about some sales figures, a little bit of marketing, how you're separating yourself from the others. i give you an eight for the product, a 7 for the pitch for the same reasons. you definitely hooked me and we both want to know more. i like that you made it mie high because in the rain it's always about the pants getting wet too, not only the shoes. kudos to you and best of luck. >> congratulations on your success so far. great to see you. thank you for all of your advice. coming on this elevator is a very good way to get some honest feedback like you just saw from real entrepreneurs and real investors. if you would like a chance to pitch them, send us an e-mail.

please include a short summary of what your company does, how much money you're trying to raise and what you're going to do with the money. we look forward to reading about your companies and seeing some of you on the shoe. up next, how to keep changes from software and technology from upending your company and the danger of overhyping with an aggressive sales approach. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? our new cocktail bitters were doing well, but after one tradeshow, we took off. all i could think about was our deadlines racing towards us. a loan would take too long. we needed money, now. my amex card helped me buy the ingredients to fill the orders. opportunities don't wait around, so you have to be ready for them. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com.

at what point do you know that you need and how do you transition from software systems that worked when you were smaller to the rancher software systems? >> so we want to talk about moving your software systems to an enterprise system. two things to make sure you do always. number one, you have to have an administrator in front of you system. you have to have somebody that you're investing in to take ownership of the product. this is a big project you're going to do. somebody internally has got to own it and take responsibility for it. it's going to cost you money to do that. if you don't have somebody in-house to have the pow tore move a system like that guard you're going to fail. and number two, you've got to be involved as well.

no system gets implemented without executive support. that person that owns the project, they got to know that you've got their back. you're going to invest the money and make sure that you're going to be there to support the person. that's the only way to succeed. if you're not ready do do that within you're not ready to move toward with an enterprise system. >> alicia and heather are back with us. great to see you guys sitting at the set. let's start with you >> my top tip is don't be so salesy. i say this to entrepreneurs all of the time. i feel like often i hear them say, if you don't invest now, the opportunity won't exist or nobody else can do what we do. and the truth is when you make bold statements like that you risk losing credibility all together. the key is don't be too salesy. the thing is, if something sounds too good to be true we know that it probably is. >> it's so true, unless it is

really true that you have to invest right now because i have another person coming behind. don't say like that. it sounds fake. if it's true, it doesn't matter. you have somebody in the background. >> my tip, keep focused on our priority. a lot of times sbentrepreneurs have so much to do. it's not about doing more it's about doing what you're doing the best that you can do it. what happens is you're like over here and i want to develop the website but i want to start my wholesale business. you to focus on the task at ho hand and prioritize that, do it the best you can do and then move on. you have time. you don't have to do it all tomorrow. >> how do you put together those priorities. do you have staff meetings where people are battling it out, fighting for their time, their share, their place on the list? >> i think that's important if you have a big staff or a small

staff, definitely involve the staff on what they're responsible for is important to them. what do they see as a priorities. if you sit back and don't get caught too much in the weeds and you take the top down approach and look at the forest through the trees, the priorities are obvious. you know what you need to do. you have to have your supply chain set. you to know you're delivering the product that's quality product making it on time. you have to make sure you margins are set. >> one of the tensions i see when i talk to companies about priorities is marketing versus product. you must see this all of the time in the companies you invest in. >> i think it depends on the business, right? it's a consumer focused business, marketing is key. if you're not making sales, it doesn't matter how much you're focused on the product. if it's something in the tech industry, then the product is everything. that kind of drives it all. you have to be cognizant of what drives the revenues and the behaviors of the consumers in

your industry and adapt accordingly. and sometimes it's helpful to have someone from an advisory board come in and shake up your view, you're spending too much time in this area. you need to get out there and shake hands and develop customers or you need to spend more time on the project. making sure you're no in the weeds and having outside view give your perspective is key. >> thank you for coming on the program today. moving on to this week's your biz selfie. from mark wall drop. a musician. he sells great acoustics there in the lone star state. why don't you put down your guitar, pick up your cell phone and take a selfie of you and your business. send it here to us or you can tweet it. and please do not forget to use the #yourbizselfie. thank you for joining us

today. we would love to hear from you. if you have questions or comments about the show, e-mail us. you can also go to our website open forum.com/yourbusiness. we posted all of the segments from today's show plus a lot more. connect us with on our digital and social media plat tomorrows as well. next week, a woman who's cracked the complicated code of winning government contracts. she shares or secret strategies for getting a piece of uncle sam's pie. remember, we make your business our business. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? american express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order

or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. >> this is one of those weeks that has been approximately 55 days long. so on this friday i have a present for you. it's from the onion. ready? "u.n. warns trump may be seven months away from acquiring nuclear weapons." according to an alarming new global risk report published tuesday by the u.n. office for disarmament affairs -- not a real thing -- presumptive gop nominee donald trump may be just seven months away from acquiring nuclear weapons. a year ago the threat didn't seem great enough to warrant serious concern but at this moment a nuclear-capable trump is a very real and very imminent possibility.