and the bill you need to pay? do it in seconds. because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. go to xfinity.com/myaccount good morning. coming up on msnbc's "your business," breaking up is hard to do. the co-owners of this furniture company went their separate ways. find out how their reconciliation resulted in real growth for their company. that, and why combining love and business can be a heart breaking obstacle to success. that's coming up next on "your business." we can help you take on a new

job, fill an order, expand an office. for those who find new ways to grow your business, american express open proudly prevents "your business" on msnbc. hi, everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg. welcome to "your business." running a company can be exhausting and stressful and people deal with this kind of pressure differently, which can make it tricky, if you are in a partnership. owners of a tennessee company found a breaking point. one partner decided to stay while another decided to go. here is their story. ♪ >> you get burned. you have to step away or it will kill you. >> jeff estes and nate akey were in their business. it was clear, their partnership

wasn't working. >> i'm not going to lie, i'm entertaining the idea of i don't care. burn it down, i don't care. >> they were friends that joined forces to run 5 strings in tennessee. when they launched together, decisions were easy. it didn't take long to realize, that wasn't going to last. >> when you are a partner, you are married to them, in some capacity. instantaneous partners, you have tension. we would have tiffs, but we would work through them. >> that was in the beginning. soon, the small things started to feel bigger as more jobs came in. >> it becomes hard to talk to your partner working 70 hours a week with them. >> work became all consuming, putting a strain on both of them. >> we had monthly paimts, shop rent and ourselves to pay.

we were learning a lot of lessons the hard way, by fumbling the ball. we lost money. it can take away all the passion and all the love. >> their dreams felt more like a nightmare. today, everything looks good for them, but getting to this point was the biggest lesson of all. >> we had to go through dark stuff. didn't expect people to understand. >> nalt was struggling with work/life balance, started feeling anxious about the furniture brand. so, he made the heart wrenching decision to step away. >> nate looked at me. he's like, man, i don't know if i can do this anymore. it was work, then work and work and work. >> i left to get a break. i left for money. i left for health insurance. you know? like all those things that seem to be so hard to get when you are self-employed. >> nate remained a partner on

paper but wouldn't make money or be involved in day-to-day operations. this was hard on another level. >> you know how humiliating that is. how humiliating it is to walk away from the only thing you have talked about for two years and your identity is wrapped up in that with your friends, everyone in town? >> jeff decided to keep the company going. he had faith. >> he chose to stay. he chose to do it. he chose to go through all that stuff. for him, he saw something on the back end of that that was worth it. >> the two never hashed out what went down between them. there was no promise nate would come back and they barely talked about it. jeff coped by working harder. >> at first, i was totally understanding. then, like, for a little while, i was grieving in a weird way. burying myself in work.

taking on jobs i shouldn't have. hiring out aggressively. we went from zero employees to five employees in eight months. that's terrifying. >> with the work issues pushed aside, they remained friends and saw each other all the time. with jeff feeling overworked, resentment was brewing. it came out during a weekend away when a verbal sight nearly resulted in blows. >> we never took the time to explain to each other what we needed. in doing so, we both became resentful toward each other. didn't care to learn what we needed. >> it had been nearly two years since nate left the company and was thinking of jumping into the industry again. >> i was missing it. i was missing it the whole time. i needed it to make sense. >> he didn't go to jeff because he didn't want 5 string to be burdened with his full-time salary. >> that's when jeff lost it. why would you go and ask

somebody else for work before you asked me? >> i was like, well, i didn't think about it like that. i felt like i had been trying to be sensitive to the the fact that i left. always. it's probably the most intense argument we had. >> it may have been brutal, but it did the trick. the two were ready to call truce and get back to work. >> how does it bring us back together? it's airing out our dirty laundry in an aggressive way. i don't think it's as aggressive as it is passionate. >> each partner had to accept the baggage they brought with them. jeff was living in the past, holding a grudge against nate for leaving. >> he's like you can't hold it over my head forever. let it go or i'm out. i'm thinking to myself, like, oh, man. i'm holding on. like, i'm so angry. i look now, i was holding on for

so long. nate had to trust jeff as an equal and stop being controlling. >> i was like why are you doing it like that. i assumed authority over hichl. he's like dude, leave me alone. i'm a business partner, too. you let me make decisions and trust me. i'm like, you're right, you're right. >> today, they focus on their strengths. with nate's return, 5 strings taking on more work and making more money. >> functioning at 70% of your capacity. introduce another component and you can do more work. >> the two founders are spending less time fighting each other and more time concentrating on what they can do to make their partnership tick. >> jeff has to take care of jeff and nate has to take care of nate. if we're not, you might as well not be in business.

your relationship will affect your business. what we don't stop to think about is our romantic relationships can affect our companies, too. alfred edmond is senior vice president for black enterprise. he and his wife co-authored a book. >> good to be here. >> we hear of these issues, interoffice relationships gone bad. you are talking more than that. what's going on at home or your personal life or dating life. that can affect your business. >> this comes from 30 years of writing about and studying entrepreneurs of black enterprise and realizing most of the time when businesses get derailed, or fortunes are lost is not the result of a business orca rear financial decision. a lot is done about the pressures of starting a business and how that can put strain on your relationships, not a lot of people talk about how toxic

relationships undermine your ability to run, manage your business and have major consequences if you don't handle it correctly. >> avoid mixing business with your personal life. >> you need to approach people that you begin to establish relationships with in the same way a single parent is very wary of being responsible of who they bring around their kids. is this person safe for me? are they safe for my kids? are they going to distract me from being an effective parent? the same thing running a business. >> don't share information in the beginning. >> it may not be a great idea. if you are making a lot of money or close on a big deal, the first date is not the time to tell them. i'm about to come into several million dollars. you don't know their motive or agenda. being cavalier about that can cause major financial problems. >> even if they are not going to do something, you may have shared confidential information,

then break up and you just don't feel comfortable with it being out there. if you don't think it will happen, you are not comfortable. >> nobody thinks it is going to go bad. we know, statistically, most relationships are going to end and half of them aren't going to end well. you are right. the person, when you start dating them, they don't think i'm going to wreck this person's business. depending on how it ends and people get emotional or venn dicktive, you don't know. again, you want to protect your proprietary information about your business until you know who this person is. you have an understanding of where the relationship is going. >> keep your dating life separate from business life. one is about who you date. let's save that for the next point. second, maybe don't talk about it at work? what does that mean? >> a serious effect. thinking of a person i know who is a brilliant business leader, but still leads his personal

life like a college frat boy. that's not the image or perception, you don't want staff, investors, co-workers, managers having conversation about what you did last night or last weekend or what showed up on instagram. not focused on who you are as a business leader setting the tone. it's very, very important, you are never really off. who you associate with when you are not at the office can have a direct impact of you as a leader in the company. >> finally, let's talk about who you date. you have met a client. you are very attracted to her or him, should you be dating them. someone in your office, should you be dating them. how did you as an entrepreneur deal with potential rules policies around this. >> first of all, talk about the obvious stuff. how very slippery the slope is from romantically involved to sexually harassed.

even when you win a sexual harassment case, it's $100,000 in legal fees. when you lose, it's six figures, seven figures, eight figures. what happens if it doesn't go the way you want it to go. is the person more important as a client, investor or love interest. >> take a second, stop, think, figure out the best way and move forward. >> no doubt. >> great conversation. thank you. >> my pleasure. it is a classic business disruption story of our time. in the same way that uber shook up the taxi industry, airbnb took over the hotel industry taking unoccupied apartments. willie geist sat down with brian chesky. how they went to a company valued at $30 billion. >> this is literally just the

beginning. >> how does a 35-year-old ceo with an estimated personal net worth approaching $4 billion travel the world? by crashing at other people's homes. >> hello. how are you doing? >> you are actually staying in this airbnb right now? >> yeah. this is a house in harlem. my girlfriend and mom were here last night. we had food together. it's cool. i stayed in hundreds of them. at one point, i lived on the website. i gave up my home and went home to home. it's been amazing. >> reporter: airbnb began with three inflatable air mattresses on the floor of his apartment. today, they have 3 million listings in 65,000 cities in 191 countries around the world. it's valued at $30 billion. nearly twice the value of hilton worldwide. he grew up near albany, new york. the son of two social workers.

from a young age, he was fascinated by improving things that didn't seem right to him. >> interests. i guess i have been obsessed with a better way to design something and probably first and foremost, a better way to design community. >> reporter: long before he became one of the leaders of the new economy. he was an artist, a hockey player, a competitive body builder. if the modern playbook for a start up icon includes dropping out of an ivy eeg school, chesky took a different roult. he went to rhode island school of design and met joe, who later became one of three co-founders of airbnb. >> we thought design isn't how something looks, it's how it works. what if you could go somewhere and feel like you live there? >> reporter: that simple idea

was born of necessity. he quit his design job and joined a partner in san francisco. between the two of them, they couldn't pay their first month's rent. >> that weekend, there was a conference. all the hotels were sold out. we had this idea, let's create a bed and breakfast for the conference. we pulled air beds out and inflated them. we called it the air bed and breakfast. >> reporter: a lightbulb went off. early skeptics didn't believe people would invite strangers into their homes. in 2008 without big investors, they began covering their costs by selling breakfast cereal. >> so, joe and i are totally broke. one night, we are in a late night in the kitchen. we are air bed and breakfast. air beds aren't selling well. we'll go to breakfast cereal. we called obama o's and captain

mccains. that is how we funded the company. today, we say we are cereal entrepreneurs, with a twist. i'm brian chesky. >> reporter: their scrappiness caught the attention of one of the first investors around the time the economy was crashing. >> we haven't made money. paul graham said it's like an investment nuclear winter. i'm looking for people that won't die. you are like cockroaches, you won't die. the idea spread city by city, block by block and grew auz a network. >> reporter: with the rapid expansion from 120,000 listings in 2011 to 3 million today, regulators are struggling to handle the boom in short-term rentals. >> we are sitting in a beautiful home in new york city. it's one of many cities that passed laws or regulations to restrict airbnb's ability to operate here. what is your answer to critics

who say it's bad for affordable housing? >> the story of most people in the community is people that are average income, depend on the money to get by. the average person is renting the home they live in. >> reporter: airbnb launched a new division called experiences. you can book a stay that comes with a local experience like surfing with adventure man in l.a., finding zen or learning from a samurai artist in tokyo. one of the things you found younger customers are seeking experiences. they don't want to accumulate things as much as experiences. how did you tap into that? >> there's a shift that happened, when i was a kid, the american dream was a house and two cars. people started valuing experiences more. >> reporter: a new experience

launching in new york, a partnership with harlem grown. rent a room and spend a day helping out. have you seen in research that customers want more of this kind of experience. >> they don't want to just see the eiffel tower or statue of liberty. they want to meet people like tony. you leave and memories are of people. >> reporter: what do the next ten years look like for airbnb? >> it's not just a place to stay, we are going to design the end-to-end trip for you. travel is not about where you go, it's who you can become and the memories you can make. i really want us to be in the business of putting these magical experiences, not just a place to stay. while we do not think you should obsess over what your competition is doing because you need to focus on your own company, you have to know what they are up to. smallbiztrends.com give five ways to track and monitor other

players in the industry. one, compare your seo efforts. do a google search using popular keywords that relate to your business. is your company at the top or do you find your competitors constantly outranking you? it may be time to work on the seo if the latter is true. two, check out customer review sites. check out complaints or compliments competitors get for you to improve your product and services. three, use google alerts. monitor and track specific companies so you are always in the know of the latest news stories. four, follow competitors on social media. you can learn a lot about their strategies and subscribers following on twitter, facebook and linked in. five, buy from them. go the old fashioned way and do hands on market research. check out their store, surf their site and chat with their service team to gather intel to

help you improve your offerings. still to come, how to attract qualified female candidates to traditionally male dominated business. and a mother's day elevator pitch that turns kids' art work into digital calorica galleries and coffee table books. 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 do a great job finding recruiting and training and keeping awesome people at our company. however, it is a traditionally man stop and we would like insight into how we could attract more women to the drain and sewer field. >> ellen, i love this question. i think it is important to leverage a personal brand. share your own story, why you chose this business, this industry, why you love your company, and share why you're so supportive of women in the workplace. i think if you share these various aspects with your culture, values, benefits, why you're so supportive of diversity and inclusion in the company specifically, you'll attract talent early on and can do so on platforms like linkedin or mobile which are aiming to help you strengthen your employee brand.

i'm carolyn lanzetta, ceo of plum print. we take the piles of art that kids bring home and turn them into beautiful coffee table books. no more clutter, no more guilt. make it super easy for parents. drop the originals in the prepaid box and ship it back. plum print photographs all the art and creates a custom book for you. you get an online gallery of all your art, permize e izpersonali and you can share with family and friends. while we started with kids' art work, there say broader market opportunity here. sports trophies, family history and more. overall, it is a $20 billion market, and plum print's poised to really dominate the full service niche. we have product market fit, solid customer base and strong

technology platform and now looking to scale the business into new markets and with new strategic partnerships so we're looking for a $500,000 investment in order to do so. to learn more, please visit plumprint.com. >> nice job. >> thank you. >> there you go. >> both of you. two numbers, one to ten, what do you think of the product and what did you think of the pitch? >> okay, so on the product itself, i gave you a seven. i love it. it seems amazing. i totally get you're targeting parents. but i have no idea how much it costs and so that's probably one of the big things i would want to learn more about. and on the pitch, i felt like you gave a lot of interesting information on the background, but i would have wanted to know more about your back ground. i want to hear your story. i heard a little bit of traction, but i don't know your competitive advantage. and don't really know how you're reaching customers. so it was a little bit lacking there. but still the delivery was great and the numbers are still quite high. >> great. gene? >> you love this, i know this, right? you have kids, right? >> i have boxes of their art

work, boxes and boxes, yeah. >> it makes sense to me. sometimes i -- for the product itself, it is a ten. to me, i get it as a kid, you know, every parent wants this, i agree with you 100% on the price. your pitch to me could be a lot quicker. it is so obvious what you're doing here, you're just taking all the clutter and turning it into a book. if you charge $10 bucks to do it, in. if you charge a million bucks to do it, i'm out. >> what is the price? >> the price starts at $85 for a soft cover and hard cover at $138. >> okay, so, i mean, that's something to consider. i think that's an important thing to bring up when you make the pitch. product is awesome, pitch, incorporate price into it. >> i like that you send the box. i don't have to deal with going to find something to put all their art work in. congratulations. good job for coming on the show. thank you for your advice. very helpful. we now have the top two tips

you need to know to help grow your business. alicia and gene are back with us. hello back to the set now. alicia, let's start with you. you were starting a new initiative to help advise startups which i think is really neat. >> point 25 initiative. >> i think it is great. what is one thing you would advise a growing business or decisionmaker? >> my top tip is to think of every meeting as an opportunity. and i say this because i work with a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders that go into the meeting and they're trying to pitch for the big contract or they're trying to pitch for investment, and if they don't get it, they walk away completely dejected. and my whole thing is, think about it in another framework. think about going into this meeting as an opportunity to learn, as an opportunity to build a relationship. so whether you get the contract or not, if you have gone into the meeting and researched the person, and maybe you asked some advice and maybe thought about who they could potentially introduce you to, regardless of the contract, you're getting value, you're opening a dialogue

and sometimes if you're building a relationship, if you come out of that meeting and that's what you have in tact, that could be more valuable in the long run than closing the deal. >> and, by the way, you can't always close the deal, opften deals are done because of relationships. we wanted to partner with this one company, they said no, no, no, no. but through my talking to this woman, she learned i was an expert in the field. when people would pitch her, she would start coming to me to get my advice on it. it took three and a half years but finally they worked with us. through that time, she realized this woman knows what she's talking about. >> the connection became more valuable. >> exactly. gene? >> my tip today has to do with ransom ware. have you been hit by ransom ware? >> i've been hit by something that looks like ransom ware but was not ransom ware. >> it is a huge thing. it is going to affect millions of small businesses around the

world. >> explain what ransom ware is this. >> you download a file and click on it or launch it or go to a website, malicious website and you don't know it because they look the same, you hit the wrong thing, it launches a virus on your computer, and what it does, it apack ttacks all the files or network, encrypts them, locks them down and you get this message that says you have to pay us a ransom if you want the unlock key to decrypt the file. and it needs to be paid in like bitcoins. it is really bad. if you pay the ransom ware, you're paying hoping they give you the unlock key. you pay them and then -- >> you have what? you have sufficiently scared us. >> big issue. it is going to affect a lot of businesses. there is three things to do. talk to your it firm and make sure you have the best security software. train your people to make sure

they are doing what they got to do, alert themselves if there is anything that looks kind of funny. and get online backup software. that is the big trend this year. there is great companies doing this, carbonite is one, mossy, microsoft has products as well. that way if you get hit by a ransom ware attack, you say, okay, fine, we're going to restore from our last good backup. >> thanks, both of you. this week your biz selfie from mike adams, owner of firehouse coffee in allentown, pennsylvania. mike is a volunteer fireman who saw his fellow firefighters, police officers, nurses and ems workers fueling themselves on bad coffee. he wanted none of it. he decided to create a great tasting gourmet brew just for them. it is so much fun for me to see all the companies you're running. please send me photos. take a selfie of you and your business and send it to your business at msnbc.com. include your name, the name of

your company and your location and use the #yourbizselfie. thank you so much for joining us. we love hearing from you. if you have any questions or comments about the show, e-mail us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. you can also go to our website, openforum.com/yourbusiness. we posted all of the segments from today's show and a whole lot more for you. and don't forget to 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 j.j. 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. because almost all of them are very well known. they have been vetted over their lifetime essentially. but very well known. highly respected. really talented people. and that's what we want for the fbi. >> good morning. and welcome to politics nation. that was president trump saying he can make a quick decision on the next fbi director. it was a week full of turmoil after the president fired director james