good morning, everyone. coming up on msnbc's "your business," it's the real world, but not a reality show. these college grads are living together and running small businesses to help communities improve their local economies. >> plus, how one small business beat the big brands at their own game. we have all that and a lot more coming up next on "your business."

hi, everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg, and welcome to "your business." the show dedicated to helping your small business grow. small business saturday is coming up. so we decided to take a look at the next generation of entrepreneurs and how some of them are focused on starting their businesses in cities that need revitalization. with some help from the organization venture for america, recent college grads are given a house, an office to work in, a little mad money so these young entrepreneurs can concentrate 100% on getting their companies off the ground, boosting local economies, creating jobs, and rejuvenating

communities. >> it's got the look of a reality show. 12 20-somethings hanging out in a house, eating pizza and letting our cameras watch their every move. but this isn't made for tv. these young men and women are venture for america fellows, trying to launch businesses in cities that desperately need entrepreneurs. like detroit, baltimore, cleveland, and right here in philadelphia. >> statistics show that we're at a 30-year low for young people under 30 starting companies. >> with less millennials starting companies, they're trying to encourage a new generation of entrepreneurs by removing the typical barriers to entry. >> venture for america looks to help revitalize american cities through entrepreneurship. the way we do that is we try to

select the best and brightest in the country. recent graduates typically, and provide them anac accessible pa. >> that path beginwise a two-year apprenticeship at one of their 17 target cities. the objective is to educate and seed companies in places where there is a need for entrepreneurs to boost the local economy and create jobs. >> they can actually spend time working directly with a founder, for a founder at a start-up in one of these cities. >> brendan rice and russell met as fellows in the program while in detroit. they were so eager to start their own business, they co-founded doze as a side project. >> this idea was born when we were room mates living in detroit with venture for america, and kind of surrounded by start-ups and had this entrepreneurial itch and one of the best places to start is where you have personally experienced problems or seen inefficiencies in the world. boat of us had experienced that kind of pain in mattress shopping and saw this huge

opportunity. >> brandon and russell's company was then selected to be part of venture for america's three-month business accelerator program in philadelphia. >> the whole point of the accelerator, what we want to provide for them is essentially remove all the barriers to working on your company full-time. >> a typical accelerator experience might include office space, a mentor, and a little financing. at vfa, they have taken it a step further, by giving their first-time founders a roof over their heads. >> almost like a fraternity or sorority house but just with people who are starting businesses and a little more serious about, like, work and getting stuff done. >> this ambitious group of entrepreneurs let us eavesdrop on their real life philadelphia animal house. minus the crazy partying. so we could get a glimpse of their last few days living together before going their separate ways. >> emily, i'm charlie. >> i'm jim. >> i'm dylan meyers, worthing on

potluck. >> i'll definitely miss the people. i think not too many of us will miss the physical house. but yeah, it's all been part of the kind of whole experience and coming home to, you know, sit on a couch with five other people who are all typing away on their computers at 10:00 p.m. on a friday night is an awesome experience. but yeah. it's going to be nice to have a bathroom that isn't shared with five poeople or to have a kitchn that's a little cleaner. >> 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this group has been eating, sleeping, and working together. side by side as they build their businesses. >> there's something about when you see other founders executing, when you see other founders that are working well into the night, past midnight, waking up early. something about that that gives you the energy to do it yourself, right? and kind of pushes all of us to be better. so we all try to be models for each other. and i think that's part of the

really big value of all being in the same place, in the same house. >> vfa has taken away the headache of food, housing, and spending money so these first-time founders can focus on one thing -- their businesses. >> the accelerator not only provided us with office space but provided us with time essentially, to not worry about financials, not worry about rent payment said and stuff like that, but to just be heads down in our company. >> many mornings, you'll find this woman head down in her business, mixing matches of her all natural avocado hair care product. her company started as a youtube channel. >> easier to separate hair into sections. >> her experience with making homemade products had enough of a following that it's now a subscription business with customers and it's gaining traction. >> the most valuable thing vfa has given me is time. time to work on this without any

fear that i'm not making a paycheck so i can't eat. that's allowed us to flourish and grow the company more. >> her fellowship started in cleveland. although she's not sure where she'll end up when the accelerator is finished, she plans to run her business in a vfa city. >> i want to create jobs and be an impact in a city that really needs it. >> with the clock ticking and the accelerator almost finished, these newly minted entrepreneurs are laser focused on pushing their businesses as far as they can before they have to go back to the real world. >> we know there's a limited amount of time where if we don't hit goals, we'll run out of business and not be in business. in order for us to continue doing this, we have to hit the goals. >> it's time for us to prove we can succeed and really push forward. that's our goal now. we don't want to start a company that just exists. we want to start a company that is really successful. >> entrepreneurs are known for their persevere rns, even when

things are at their worst, the most successful small business owners say they're not giving up. we met two founders in upstate new york who are truly survivors. they chose to fight the good fight after their business went bankrupt. rather than turning off the light and throwing away the keys like they could have, they chose to reorganize, a long and hard road, but they had a hunch and a strategy, and they went with it. that's how a brand-new brand was born out of bankruptcy. >> we really launched the tabletop brand on a wing and a prayer. that was the future of the company. we had no idea what we were doing. >> matt and greg know what it's like to be small business owners on the brink. >> how are we going to survive? how are we going to hold this together? what are we going to do? >> matt and greg found themselves in a place no business owner wants to be,

filing for chapter 11. that certainly was want the plan when they bought the company from industry giant oneida five years earlier. >> we manufactured foroni oneid and other flatware marketers. >> when the recession hit in 2008, orders for forks, knives, and spoons simply dried up. >> they stopped buying from us, or in some cases they would buy things they didn't have a lot of. it was dribs and drabs, not leerily what we needed. >> with bearically any cash coming in, the pair took a drastic action. they closed the factory, let 100 employees go, and shifted production for the remaining clients to mexico. >> we were left with a severely reduced revenue stream, and really a revenue stream that couldn't support the amount of debt we had. >> we were slow-paying people and behind on our bills. we received a letter in the mail from one of our creditors basically suing us.

so that forced our hand. >> once the bulk of their business was gone, bankruptcy became the only option. but these two refused to just walk away. matt and greg started hatching a plan b. >> before we turned out the light, we had several coils of steel, many, lying around the factory, and instead of letting them sit there, we decided to turn it into flatware. that's the inventory we started with, about $23,000 worth of flatware, as i recall. >> that $23,000 worth of flatware marked the beginning of liberty tabletop, but going through bankruptcy while starting a new brand was incredibly complicated. >> we actually created liberty tabletop and our wives owned it. the bankruptcy court knew about it. we told them this is how we're going to survive, so let us do this. >> working with creditors who backed their plans, greg and matt mapped out their exit from sheryl manufacturer's bankruptcy by launching their new consumer line in three steps. >> the plan was to sell the land

and the buildings and become a tenant. sell any asset that we didn't need to become liberty tabletop, and then the third part was to find someone to invest in us. >> it was an incredibly emotional time. on the one hand, they were entrepreneurs creating something new. on the other hand, they felt like they had failed. >> i would always go to the store with my wife and i would look at the flatware. during the bankruptcy, i avoided the flatware departments because i just felt bad. >> they had to compartmentalize and focus on the future. >> we were very good at survival. i don't know, looking back, i can't believe that we survived. >> i'm not going to say there weren't days that both matt and i looked at each other and said, you know, is today the last day? but somehow, we managed to make it through it. >> as excess equipment and steel was sold for cash to deal with the bankruptcy, liberty came to life. unlike during the oneida days, now, the factory was only open

as needed. >> i believe we ran six campaigns. each one larger than the one before, when we would bring back people temporarily, turn on all the machines, fill up the shelves, turn them back off and sell through it until we had to do it the next time. >> these were hard times for the company and the owners. >> the problem was cash flow. he would say we aren't going to make pay roll. what i would do is go down in the factory and start scrapping. >> their strategy of being an online only business that sells directly to consumers started paying off directly. >> our first sale was halloween of 2010. we literally started our business right after we filed bankruptcy. sort of crazy. >> the liberty brand in and of itself was self-sustaining and quite profitable from its genesis. >> we're bypassing all those other middle men, and it's the

most efficient way to get products to the consumer. sort of like farm to table, this is factory to table. >> the business owners got a break when the property the factory sits on was sold and leased back to them. they paid off their secured creditors and restructured their unsecured debt in 2014. but matt and greg want to do even more. >> our goal is to become so successful that we're able to pay every dime that we ever owed back to everyone. >> with sheryl manufacturing out of the woods and liberty tabletop showing signs of success, new investors have provided the capital necessary to expand the brand. bl we went from eight patterns to about 24 right now. in four different price points. the good, better, best, lux model. >> and remember the production they had to move to mexico? they have been able to bring that back to the united states. which has strengthened the company's story. >> if you were just launching a generic brand with no particular

story or no -- nothing special about it, i think it would be next to near impossible. but since we had a unique situation, we were the only ones in the united states that were making flatware, we had a special story to tell. >> a story to tell consumers and a story to tell themselves. while bankruptcy was nothing they would have wished for, both matt and greg feel they have come out stronger on the other side. >> we would rather be small and profitable than big and clumsy. you don't learn things through successes. you learn when you fail. and we failed a lot over the past seven, eight, nine years, but you dust yourself off and keep going. it is fall, and that means it's time to put away the rose and break out the cider. over the last few years, cider sales have been booming. we met the owners of two small companies who are competing with big brands. and they have discovered that their size is actually an asset.

>> these look great. >> johns, macs, we have the goldens. >> greg hall of fenville, michigan, is very picky about which apples go into his cider. this morning, he and peter, owner of nearby seedling orchard, are testing. >> you can see how they cluster, which is an unusual feature. >> and tasting. >> as a cider maker, we're looking for aroma and flavor, acid and tannin from the apple. >> as an independent brewer, greg is part of a small but rapidly growing beverage category, hard cider, where his label has been thriving. >> now it's all over the tv, all over the supermarkets. >> no surprise, all of this rapid growth has not gone unnoticed by big players in the beer category. greg is now getting stiff competition from big beer brands who have recently acquired cider

brands to market along with their other products. >> sam adams with their angry orchard. you have miller coors with a couple brands, and then you have anheuser-busch with a couple brands. they have the stella and the johnny appleseed. >> these behemoths have vast production facilities, markets and distribution channels. this puts all the smaller producers in a bind. how can an independent like greg compete against all of that? he's not competing with the big brewers for the mass market. >> we'll never be able to compete with those guys on price or efficiency or marketing or distribution execution. so we don't do six-packs. >> good bright apple. >> instead, he's concentrating on the high-end or premium market. his strategy starts with featured placement at upscale restaurants like nearby salt of the urtearth. and partnerships with celebrity chefs like jason frank.

>> the acidity is right there, it's ausm. >> greg has found that creating exclusive blends like this one for influential chefs like jason has a ripple effect. it gives him access to many other key entry points to the premium market. places not interested in featuring ciders from the big brewers. >> that opens doors to the retail trade. bars, restaurants, even the liquor stores. they know him. they know his restaurant. and if it's good enough for him, it's certainly good enough for them. >> he also says he puts very little money into advertising and instead relies on others to build the buzz around his product. he says receiving awards and reviews, appearing in influential media like this one, had much more impact. >> when we get a magazine like savouir say virtue ciders unfold like fine wines, that's

fantastic. we could never say something that good about ourselves that anyone would believe. but when one of the best food magazines in the country says that, we're golden. >> this kind of press not only reaches the consumers but also registers with retailers and distributors. >> we started getting calls from distributors all over the country saying, hey, when are you coming to california, texas, washington, pennsylvania? because we want to have your cider. >> greg says his brand's survival depends on staying out of the mass market. >> what we're doing now they can't do. they'll never do this. so we have a sustainable production advantage that they'll never be able to recreate. things are going to change. the market changes. so we look at those market changes and we adapt as quickly as possible. >> cheers. as baby boomers are retiring and younger generations are joining the work force, the race

is on to attract and retain the best talent from their ranks. entrepreneur.com has five things you should consider offering to bring in and keep millennials at your small business. >> one, offer student loan dent relief. young talent burdened by the stress of paying back their financial obligations will appreciate the help. two, let them work remotely. they like the flexibility of choosing when and where to complete their projects. three, give them gadgets. devices help them stay connected to coworkers and supervisors and are now considered necessities to this generation. four, restore the 40-hour work week. many young people aren't prepared to show loyalty if they find there's no work/life balance. find ways to build a culture where quality is emphasized over quantity. and five, let them be social. these days, people don't see anything wrong with taking a break to post on social media. you can either accept this or

possibly lose your talent to a company that will. >> when we come back, what else can you do when listings on google and yelp aren't generating enough business? and how new technology is helping the hearing empaired ofa pizza business communicate effectively with their customers. will your business be ready en growth presents itself? an express ocards can help you take on a new j, orand ur oic an on whever com next. find o howmerin exprescards and services can help prepare you r growth aopen.com.

deborah writes us, we prepare legal documents. we ared aveer tiesing through yelp and google but are not going enough business. what can we do to generate more business? >> deborah, i wish i had a little more information on whether you're preparing legal documents for other legal firms, or for the consumer. but either way, i don't know where your advertising is where your potential customers are looking for the information that relates to your business. you're doing something that is legal, and that means that it has to engender a lot of trust. so if i'm trying to get trust, i'm not looking to yelp the same way i might be looking to them for finding a restaurant suggestion. i'm looking to my trusted network. so if you're working on a b to b basis, i would talk to other businesses that are happy with your service and asking for referrals, or using them in your

advertising, joint chamber of commerce, things like that. if you're going direct to consumer, you also want to be talking to trusted advisers of the customers you're going after. so maybe you're partnering with accounting firms, where you're not directly competing with them, but you're serving the same customer, and that way you can create the cross referrals. but it is always about what you're doing in terms of a business, which is creating that trust, as well as where your customers are. so good luck. >> there is a pizzeria in san francisco where you can order without saying a word. all thanks to a new technology company called convo. the owners are deaf and using this to communicate with customers. as jolene kent tells us -- >> reporter: it is the sound of oven baked authenticity, with the right amount of crispy.

what you won't hear is the phone ring. melody stein and her husband russ are deaf, making neapolitan pizza. >> our goal is to build bridges with the community and various cultures. >> to reach more hungry customers, they turn to tech, installing a custom made system by a company named convo to answer the phone. >> we wanted to make sure we could communicate with our customers, the majority of whom will be hearing. >> call up the pizzeria, instead of a ring, a green light glows. melody picks up by a tablet, convo routes your call to an interpreter who signs your reservation or order to melody in real time. >> how can i help you? >> she then responds through the service. >> we weren't sure how it would work for us, and we went ahead and took the gamble. >> we used to miss about 50% of our calls. now with our current technology, we only miss about 5%. >> that's what melody and russ says sets convo apart from other

video rely savvervices. the company's ceo is also deaf. >> that's the technology advancement that conroe vo is as will be to make. >> i'll go ahead and confirm your reservation for 8:00. >> they have a solid four stars on yelp, packed by dinner time. customers often don't realize it is deaf owned until they arrive. >> you would be shocked how many people come in and don't notice it. just another restaurant for them, which is how it should be. >> bringing deaf and hearing diners to the same table. >> the food is really good. that's why i'm back. >> it is really delicious. i'll really enjoying it. >> as they're putting that pizza in their mouth, their face tells you everything. you don't need an interpreter for that. >> proving that pizza is a universal language. j jolene kent. the goal of the hiring process to find best candidate for the role.

but we can often trip ourselves up without even realizing it. that's because we're hijacking the process with our own biases or poor ability to really get to know the person we're interviewing. our guest explains how and how to avoid doing this. susan david is a psychologist at harvard and ceo of evidence-based schedule, a boutique management consultancy, and author of the new book "emotional agility, get unstuck, embrace change and thrive in work and life." so good to see you. >> thank you for inviting me. >> i love this topic because hiring is so hard. i find it very hard. hard to get to know someone right away. if you are coming into the process without an open mind, you might be missing out on a lot of great people. >> absolutely. hiring makes or breaks a business. >> right. >> and often in the hiring process, what people do is they come into the process without recognizing that they actually have biases. so what this can look like is we might hire someone who we are

comfortable with. if we are extraverted. we're not talking about who is most suitable in terms of this context. >> number two, don't make snap judgments. because you might find -- you're just like me this is so fun, having so much fun talking to you, i'm going to hire you and down the road you're missing on a lot of red flags. >> yes. when i speak with business owners, i find the business owners will say one of two things. the first is, i just go with my gut. i connect with the candidate, i like them, and go with my gut feel. other business owners say, i really try to discount any emotional reaction to the candidate, i just try to be logical and rational. and really the sweet spot in hiring comes with both. it comes with both. >> and then you talk about being present in the conversation. so if you're making a snap quick judgment, your mind may wander off, you said he or she is in or

they're out. >> absolutely. it is so important to be focused, and open, and present in the interview process. when we are sitting in an interview and our mind is wandering to a meeting that we have got to go to or presentation that we have got to give, or when we are thinking about a conversation that we had earlier on in the day, we are doing ourselves in the hiring process a huge disservice. and we are also doing the candidate a disservice. because they're not feeling that we are seeing them, hearing them. >> right, they're not going to do their best. >> absolutely. and even if they might be the best person for the job, they are more like through leave that interview feeling a sense of disconnect, you know. one of the other things i think is really important in the hiring process is to move from the mind set of feeling like this is an obligation.

business owners talk about really hating the hiring process. so they come to it with a sense of stress and checklist and obligation and this is something i have to do. >> unfortunately we have to end this, but i think you're right, look at it as an opportunity, not an obligation, even if you don't hire them, you may learn something from that conversation. >> thank you so much. so good to see you. i appreciate you stopping by. >> thank you for having me. >> this week's your biz selfie comes from james costello, owner of nokado of north port new york. it is a school that teaches kids and adults this ancient art of self-defense. so do not mess around with james. now, like james, why don't you pick up your cell phone and take a picture of you and your business. no professional pictures please. send it to us at your business at msnbc.com. include your name, the name of your business, the location and the #yourbizselfie. thanks so much for joining us

this morning. we would love to hear from you. so if you have any questions or comments about the show, just send an e-mail to your business@msnbc.com. we read all of them. also, please visit our website, it is openforum.com/yourbusiness. we put all of the segments from today's show up there, plus a whole lot more. you can connect with us on all of our digital and social media platforms which you can see on the screen. we look forward to seeing you next time. until then, i'm j.j. ramberg. remember, we make your business our business. will yr businesse ready when growth prests itself? americsscacacan help you take on a n job, or fill a biorde

or expanyo office take on whatever comesext. find outow ameca express s services can he ppare youfor grth at opem showdown at the polls. voter suppression already happening. one candidate mocking the democratic process. >> we should just cancel the election and just give it to trump. >> we'll talk about it with cherilyn ifill. >> and tim kaine calling out donald trump on race. >> the level of disrespect shown for this community is huge. >> and how the fbi's new investigation into clinton's e-mails could affect the race. it is "politicsnation" with election day nine days away.