good morning. comingup, this owner of a new york chess shop. the colorful creator of cross fit warns that success can bring out the haters. prepare to fight. that plus creating a brand that resonates and putting together a plan that works. that's coming up next on "your business."

♪ hi, everyone. welcome to "your business" the show dedicated to helping your small business you. at times and i know you can all relate to this, running a small business can feel like a battle. but one we're willing to fight for. we met one entrepreneur who is more experienced than most. he happens make a living of selling a game of war, chess. but he found himself in a real-life war with a competitor

across the street. we went to greenwich village to see how this chess player used his love of the game to outsmart his competition. ♪ in new york city chess is serious business. from street hustlers to grand masters, this is where the chess greats come to do battle >> it's a war situation. you got enemies and things you want to attack. >> in business and in war and there is no room for sentiments or emotion. and if you make it, you make it. >> this man is the owner of the chess forum in new york's north vil and. he found himself unexpectedly having to apply the rules of the game to his own business. >> business itself is a chess

game, like any chess game, it's the thinking ahead that keeps you one step ahead of the guy. >> what does it feel like for you now when you walk past where the chess shop used to be? >> i feel as nervous as if it was 1995. >> today. >> it's funny. this is something i didn't expect at this moment. >> for years this street was the front line of a bitter war between the chess forum and the chess shop which closed in 2012. it was right across the street and known by his former boss and then rival. in the '90s, the two men shook hands and agreed that after five years of sweat equity and learning the ropes, kashan would be an owner. that's when he made the move and started the civil war on

thompson street. >> once you opened this store there was a fierce rivalry between you two and accusations flying from both sides. >> that's something i didn't an tase pit. sometimes attack is the best defense. >> with the battle lines drawn, lawsuits were filed and a price r caused both businesses to take a fit. customers like fidel rodriguez were forced to choose sides. >> when the word got out that he was going to open up a place, everybody started coming over here, those looking for a more favorable outlet. something with less pressure. >> a cease-fire settled in with each set courting its over customers and suppliers. but the feud touth him a lesson. in order to win you need to know

who your allies were. building trust with customers is his number one priority. >> the point is that you want one day 20 years from now somebody to say, you know what, that guy took good care of me. >> today he takes care of his former business rival who comes by to play. >> at the end of the day he thanks me for keeping the place open. if you are patient enough and do the right thing, you see the bodies of your enemies floating. >> business with a heart. doing right by the client with sets ranging from $10 to $1,0 $10,000, it's what's finding what's right for the customer. >> many people come to buy something for a child. i direct them to the most basic, the cheapest thing. in my heart this is right. >> the owner really tries very hard to create a very

personalized center here for people and everybody feels very welcome. >> business with a heart also means making the chess forum a community for his customers. he rarely closes before midnight and he's always open on holidays. >> somebody once said if you close i'm going to kill myself. these are these people who give each other a high five and make fun of each other and play. all of that, it's a family. >> most important business with a heart means creating customers for life. >> as they say, you plant it but your children or grandchildren will eat from it. it's an investment in the future. >> but as online gaming and cells threaten his brick and mortar business, this warrior knows he's facing a new battle, one that could be his last dance. i had to ask him 21 years later why he's still fighting to keep his shop alive >> i hope that maybe one day

these children walk by if he's 6 or when he's my age. >> you hope to inspire them. >> like anybody when you were a child. >> and that's the purpose of this store now? >> at this stage, i guess. at any stage. but there was a time when it was a place to make a life sfl while his pre-internet glory days may be mind him, this shop is a labor of love he's willing to fight to the end for. after all, he's a survivor. >> works hard, smart enough to survive and play the game and not get killed in the process and makes it to the end of the line, he can be the most important piece of the board. getting fit is one of the top new year's resolutions every january. and since its start in 2000,

people have turn to cross fit to help make this happen. this fitness regiment has a cult-like following and practiced at 13,000 affiliated gyms all around the colder and counting. at the center of it, founder greg. he took some time out to talk to us from a cross fit gym in boston about why he never backs away from a fight and the importance of letting relts be your brand in this learning from the pros. ♪ >> at some point it kind of sound like going up to the ranger at the grand canyon telling him, it's a beautiful hole, how did you make it. he didn't dig the hole. nature did that over billions of years. i'm kind of that guy. i'm the ranger standing over the grand canyon. the best of my business decisions lie in the things i want let people do, which is

corrupt this brand, gouge my affiliates. i'll an activist. i'm an exercise and nutrition activi activist. ♪ it's not my charm, not my business plan. i have no charm, i got no business plan. i'm a trainer. all of the magic, the secret of the sauce, the thing that's cross fit is the results. out west i can go to a starbucks or a whole foods and sit out front and within 15 minutes i'll see one of us. you can spot them. we've put the brand on the bodies. the brand is in the approach. ♪ i'm not afraid of a fight of almost any sort. i've never calculated into it am i going to win or not. you fight because it's the right thing to do. and without an eye to winning, we've been winning. when you're look, i'm going to do this thing and i don't care

if it takes 100 players and years it's cool. all of my energy is going into the delivery of the punch, not is he going to pass out on the second, third, fourth punch, i don't care. i'm going to keep hitting until he's knocked out. ♪ there's no brand that's found high level success that doesn't have critics. that's what success brings. haters. they hate me. i'm good with it. then you get to the point i'm okay being defined by pi enemies. a lot of people that hate me, my problem is if they love me. yeah, [ bleep ] haters. everyone that came in here, someone brought them in. someone brought them in. i don't do that. advertising doesn't work. for me marketing is any effort to improve the bottom line isn't necessarily improving. my recommendation to anyone is don't market. marketing happens naturally and

effectively and the only place it happens effectively is when the end user won't shut the -- up. that's your market. as a business person if you've got additional energy in the form of money or time or ideas, put it into improving the product of service so your customer can do their marketing job. ♪ coming up in the first few results when someone does a google search can me all of the difference towards getting you a new customers. inc.com gives us an idea of understanding. find out where you and your business rank. get detailed reports on where your company stands across serge engines. two, analyze your contents. this shows you whether people were sharing or not sharing it

on social media. three, develop unique content. search engines don't like copycats so use an online plagiarism to detect duplicate information. four, learn crucial information on how each of your pages are performing and how visitors interact with your site to make changes 0 accordsingly. and five, honor backlinks. so use a cool like open site explorer to taken inventory on the sites you're connected to and think of smart ways to grow that number. your brand is your company's calling card. it is the thing that you balance everything against, your marketing wimarket i ing, your hiring and partnerships. that is the lesson the owners of an agricultural company in california learned once they established their brand, it

became a shortcut that let their customers know exactly what to expect. ♪ very jim shanley and his daughter megan, producing trop grade fruits and vaenl tabl on their family farm has never been a problem. but getting national name brand recognition for their produce, that's been mighty tough. >> marketing your products is never easy no matter how unique they are or how wonderful the presentation is. >> my dad had to sit me down and say, there's not that money there. think of another way. and as much as i despised him for it, i'm thankful now because it's opened my eyes to how many different ways you can go about it. >> the shanley's grow small scale specialty crops on top of this hill here in california. >> we grow avocados, fingerer limes, we grow lemons which are packed in a generic packing

house, kiwis which we marktd under the sierra sweet brand. >> at first they put everything into creating individual brands for each product. they distributed those branded products through independent retailers, gourmet restaurants and national chains like whole foods. since most people think avocados are pretty much all of the same, the shamlies felt they hado shout out what makes their avocado so special. they created the brand name to spotlight the unusual growing climate which gives their fruit its unique taste. >> we grow avenue ocados here i bay because they grow very slow and produce a rich creamy product. >> customers bought. >> we had customers asking when the avocados were going to come. >> we're in a different

microclimate. >> he says the morro bay label launched their avocados into their own category. >> all they wanted was an avoca avocado. we had avocados. they wanted morro bay. >> the shamlies also produce an exot exotic citrus fruit native to australia. >> when i discovered the limes, i needed to plant some. if you cut a finger lime out and squeeze it, it explodes with lemony-lime flavor. >> jim shamly and shamly farms turned me on to these things a year ago. it blows everybody's minds. nobody knows what they are. they're exceptional, great to work with. >> when they can get a high end chef, owner of taco temple, to sample the line, they know they'll easily make a sale.

but getting the attention of the genel public is not so easy. that's w jim and megan put some much effort into creating a catchy name for their line. >> we rebranded them citrus lime. >> while both morro bay avocados and citrus burst limes were getting good traction, there was still a problem. they found that anytime they wanted to launch a new product, they would have to create a whole new brand which then required a whole new meeting with the store buyers to sbrus introduce it. they discovered that if they put everything under one snname, shamly farms, they could get a lot more bang for their buck. >> i knew they had more items in the pipeline so shamly farms needed to be on everything. i encouraged them to think about that. >> i was telling the right story about the products we were

selling but i never spent any time telling our story. and after a meeting with jeff from whole foods, he helps me understand how important it was to put the shanley farm's logo on our product line. >> through jeff's guidance, they came to see that the buyers and consumers would be more open to new and unfamiliar products if they were presented as part of a larger shanley farmer's brand. much like ipod and ipad are part of the apple family brands >> it makes scheduling a meeting easier. my rate of return on phone calls has gone up since we've been able to establish ourselves in the produce world and built this brand of shanley farms. there was a time when business plans were virtual dissertation many page books that looked at everyspect of your company. today very few people expect that kind of presentation. but the exercise of writing a business plan can be useful

because it forces you to think about areas of potential growth and pitfalls. if you're looking for funding you need to have these answers. our next guest is here to walk us through several key things. so reworth is founder and ceo of the profit partner where she writes business plans and creates financial forecasts for small businesses seeking funding from bank. good to see you. >> thank you. >> i think about this all of the time. in business school we did business plans for people and they were literally this big. >> that is gone. >> talk to us about some of the key areas, even if it's a quick power point or a couple of pages long you need to include. >> the first thing you need to include of course is what the business is itself. >> right. >> a very short -- i always do two to three sentences so someone can immediately get and understand, okay, this is what this business is and this is what it does. >> and here's the market opportunity out there. >> here's the market

opportunity, yes. >> basically the problem i'm solving. >> exactly. >> here's how many people have this problem. >> exactly. that's part one of the business plan, the market opportunity. i'm working with an event center right now and in our area there are about 296,000 events that happen per year in our northern virginia area. this event center needs to capture 788 of them in order to reach their revenue goals. >> you're getting down to very specific numbers there and you talk about in the business plan, talk to them about how to capture their leads. i manual you're talking in a bigger sense. >> right. right. there are a few way to capture the leads. your marketing plan. but i call it customer acquisition. how are we going to get people to come to our door and actually give us cash for our products or services. so things like sco, retargeting,

even things within restaurants i will include a clean bathrm a part of your marketing plan and i have some statistics about that. >> so it shows that you have thought this through. and then of course who your team is. because no one is going your te, because people invest in people. >> exactly. in fact, for funding, the number one reason that somebody does not fund a company is because they do not believe that the team can actually execute the plan. so anything you can show in terms of have you ever managed people before, have you hired, have you had to manage a budget before, have you grown a company before, those are very important when you place that information within your bio. >> that's what people are looking for, okay. and then a sense that we know the market out there, now tell us that you really understand the competition. >> exactly. so, one of the examples i use is, let's say you want to sell bottled water, your competition is not just other bottled water carriers, it's the problem that you're solving. so i'm solving the problem of

thirst. so anybody that chooses to purchase starbucks or red bull, that's also my competition, and i have to acknowledge that. >> finally, financial predictions. >> yes. >> when you do it, do you give the most optimistic example? >> no. >> do you give here's the most conservative? how do you decide? >> i actually do a pretty conservative, not bare bones, but what we can realistically reach. so i will look at the revenues that a company should be making, the expenses that it would take to reach those revenues. and the biggest expenses, of course, are payroll and any direct labor or expenses that goes into the product or service. >> be pretty conservative, no pie in the sky numbers. >> yes. >> so good to see you. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. still to come, what's more important, networking or using that time to improve your product or service? and the hottest online tools and apps to help you run your 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. as a young ceo, how much time do you think we should spend networking and meeting people outside of our business, versus working on our product

and training our teams? >> what you want to do is spend time going out there and getting paying customers, and these are customers that preferably aren't related to you. paying customers are really the basis of any business. so you can spend time making a better product, but just because you build it doesn't mean people will come. you've got to get the traction and spend almost all of your time figuring out which marketing initiatives work and which don't work. and if going out there and doing some networking is part of your marketing effort, great, but focus on getting paying customers first. we now have the "top 2 tips" you need to know to help your small business grow. alex yvonne tovel is founder and ceo of learnfest.com, acquired by northwestern mutual. and rhonda florida is the ceo of the creative class group of global firm with clients like converse and starwood hotels.

good to have you both. >> glad to be here. >> alexa, when we first met you, learnvest was tiny. and how long ago? >> started about seven years ago, got acquired two years ago. >> okay, in a big acquisition. you've seen it all. what's one tip you have for people? >> so, for all entrepreneurs, regardless of the industry or company, focus on marketing and customer acquisition. most importantly, your customers are your lifeblood. you want to talk to them, listen to them, understand. that is the road to better product development, and i think often as entrepreneurs, you're focused on business model, finances, how do you get the company up, technology. you have to focus on how to talk to more customers, how you're going to get this into people's hands and get their feedback. if you listen to them, what they hate what they love, you'll build a better company, and it has to be from day one. >> i like how you cloout include -- when you're talking about marketing, i was thinking about outward marketing, getting customers in and building the

br brand, but you're including marketing the feedback. >> so, in all different channels, you have to make sure you're getting those customers. so how are you going to do that? and how are you going to listen to people? i want to know how your 20-year-old customer likes your product as well as your 6-year-old customer. >> mine is simple, be a good leader. this is something entrepreneurs can implement right away at no cost. oftentimes when we're launching a new business, we're strapped for resources, we're busy, overworked, stressed out and we don't think about how our team is feeling, but your team can help make or break your product and they can take it to the next level or drag you down easily. how do you become a good leader while growing your business? communication is key. listen to your team and take their feedback, even when you don't like it. and be excited and passionate about what you do. this motivates your team. interfere only when necessary,

and don't create an environment of fear where people are afraid to make mistakes. move on quickly and forgive. you want to rather create an environment of constant improvement where everyone is excited to learn on a daily basis. and lastly, be a good mentor to your team. make sure they know they can trust you and your door is always open. >> and if i were to add something that goes with mentorship and communication, it's don't expect people to read your mind. i have learned this along the way. >> right. >> which is, i think that i'm being incredibly clear about something, but it turns out that i'm not. and one thing that i've implemented is get people to repeat stuff back to us. make sure we're on the same page. >> i totally agree. >> messaging is key. and when people are plugged in, employees are feeling they're part of the bigger message and vision, they'll work that much harder, be that much more loyal and dependable. >> thank you both so much. efficiency is everything when you're a busy small business owner. with the help of some useful websites and apps, you can save

some precious time in your day. we asked our viewers for their favorites. >> i listen to ted talks. so, for business ideas, innovation, those are things which i like to do and look at, what's kind of futuristic, what people are doing and mind-set box about that. there are also four podcasts for entrepreneurs that i go to as well. >> there's an app that i really like that makes me and my company more productive and efficient. it's turboscan. you can scan any paper document anywhere you are with your phone. it takes a picture of it and it turn it into anctual document that you can make a pdf of and e-mail to someone, and it looks like you just had the actual document, and it doesn't look like a picture or a copy of the original. >> we use a lot of fiber. fiber is an outsourcing platform, let's you connect with business services around the global for as little as $5.

that's really our first point whenever we have a task to do. we see if we can get it done on fiber. >> one particular online tool i use is a word press in kpinsion with wucommerce. that is the becomebone for our current online sales as well as marketing as well. we utilize word press as the back end infrastructure for our website as well as our online blog. this week's "your biz selfie" comes from dwayne harris who owns big mountain entertainment in mahwah, new jersey. they provide musicians, magicians and comedians for events and nightclubs and is a big fan of the show. thank you so much for watching, dwayne, and thank you so much for your photo. now, all of you, please do the same. pick up your cell phone, take a selfie of you and your business, and send it to yourbusiness@msnbc.com or tweet it to @msnbcyourbiz. please include your name, the name of your business, your

location, and use #yourbizselfie. thank you so much, everyone, for joining us today. we love hearing from you, so if you have questions about the show, e-mail us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. also, please head over to our website, openforum.com/yourbusiness. we've posted all of the segments from today's show, plus a whole lot more. you can also connect with us on all of our digital and social media platforms as well. we look forward to seeing you next time. until then, i'm jj ramberg, and 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. we may switch presidents, but we're just going to switch legs and keep on marching. we won't back down! we won't be trumped! >> hello, i'm al sharpton. welcome to "politics nation." on saturday of mlk weekend, just days before the inauguration, thousands of people joined me in the nation's capital to protect the dream of dr. martin luther king jr.