because getting what you need should be simple, fast, and easy. download the xfinity my account app or go online today. good morning. coming up on msnbc's "your business," the owner of this body cam company joined up with law enforcement to help them create a product that helps them do their jobs. let's go fast and work smart. that's coming up next. hi, everyone. i'm jj ramberg.

welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to helping your growing business. over the past five years, the business of body cams has grown significantly. as we've seen in the news, body cams have played an important role for police forces around the country. today we meet the man behind wolf com body cams who's worked diligently with law enforcement to come up with products that help them do their job. >> open the door! >> he's running. >> when los angeles based wolfcom entered the police body camera space in 2011, the little-known company quickly became an industry leader. >> at the time, there were only two other competitors. we were the big three in the united states. >> peter is the force behind the booming business that built its reputation on technological innovations. >> our phones were ringing off the hook. we did very little marketing. the other two competitors, they had no gps, no night vision. we were the first to introduce a

high-quality video. >> but four years after peter launched wolfcom's first camera, his world came to a crashing halt. >> one of our competitors decided, how can i destroy this company? basically, they just told me that, hey, we're going to bury you. i was in a meeting when, you know, one of my employees walked in and said you need to look at the news. we have no more software. our competitor just bought out the software company we're using. >> software is critical to body cams for storing and managing videos. with no warning, wolfcom's software partner was acquired for $13 million by the biggest player in the industry. >> next thing you know, our customers started calling us. there were rumors that wolfcomm was done. >> peter was blindsided by this devastating blow, at a complete loss for a viable solution. but the body cam industry had always been cut throat and building wolfcom had not been easy. when peter came up with the concept, he was actually living

out his 007 dreams, running a spy shop in hollywood. lapd officers frequently stopped by. >> this one particular officer kept coming back almost every day looking through every product we have, and he would always leave empty handed. >> the ever curious peter had to ask why. >> he says, look at me, i have over 30 pounds of gear on my belt, all over my body. if only you can just put a spy cam or put a camera into something i'm already wearing. that's when i took a look and saw his lapel mike. >> two years later, the wolfcom third eye hit the market with a camera built right in the lapel mike that officers wear. >> we started putting a lot of ideas into this, including gps, night vision, the ability to zoom in and out. >> open the door, please. [ gunfire ] >> shots fired. >> we came from that background of electronics, small cameras. that's how we were able to stay in the game. >> keep your hands where i can see them! >> every time we noticed a

police shooting, we always saw a spike in sales. >> but the 2014 shooting of an unarmed teenager named michael brown in ferguson, missouri, became a game changer for the body cam industry. >> suddenly, everybody and their grandmother wanted in on this gold rush, on this gold mine. i knew that it would blow up. >> this dramatic shift in the market and the overnight saturation of other body cam start-ups was not good for wolfcom. >> now we're competing with so many other competitors, trying to push ourselves up to the front. it got a lot harder just to make a buck. >> there was also a major problem overseas. wolfcom body cameras became targeted by counterfeiters. peter had made the mistake of having one factory handle every part of the manufacturing and assembly. all it took was one untrustworthy employee, and the wolfcom winning formula was out there for every competitor to see. >> you get people who they just

got no morals, no conscious. i spent over 100,000 just on attorneys, chasing people. >> after learning that harsh lesson, peter went to the other extreme, creating too many moving parts to the wolfcom manufacturing process. >> next thing you know, we're dealing with up to 80 vendors. then we have inventory problems. you have everything except one piece and there's a two-month delay, but you've got a customer who ordered a thousand units. when i did it that way, there's no copy cat, but it is a pain in the butt. >> eventually, peter fixed this too. by the time he lost his software partner in 2015, he had years of start-up wisdom under his belt. his resilience pushing through tough times and willingness to deal with every obstacle paid off. >> i needed to go somewhere i'd never gone before. i needed to step into the darkness and turn it into light. then i decided that wolfcom was going to evolve into a software

company. >> the body camera business is now on track to become a billion-dollar industry, making the competition even more fierce. some players have been accused of using unfair tactics to secure contracts from cultivating close ties to police chie chiefs to splurging on luxury vase kag vacations for other law enforcement decision makers. and some police departments have also come under fire, approving a no-bid process, which allows a single company to secure a body cam deal without facing any competition along the way. >> our model for wolfcom is honor, encourage, and integrity above all else. we'll never stoop to that level. after 17 years, i've learned something. i'm still here. you need to think of your life like an airplane, always going forward, never going back. you can't go backwards. >> how many times have you passed a homeless person on the

street and wished that you were doing more to help them? one los angeles woman decided to stop wishing, start a business, and dedicate herself to helping. nbc's morgan radford has her story. >> hope, strength, and -- >> create. >> words of encouragement stamped on keys and turned into jewelry, each key made by someone who hopes to one day have a reason to use it. >> how many people have you tran silgsed out of homelessness? >> 70-plus people have gotten job opportunities here. >> growing up in hollywood, katelyn has worked as an actress and released pop music but was seeking a way to make a bigger impact. in 2009, after encountering a young homeless couple, a light went off, and she turned a simple jewelry idea into business with a big impact. >> i love that so much. >> today the giving key's factory in downtown l.a. sits just a couple blocks from skid

row, where some of l.a.'s 46,000 homeless reside. here katelyn employs people trying to transition off the streets, and the keys they create are then sold under one condition. that the buyer gives their key to someone who needs it more. >> this isn't just about jewelry to wear because it's cool. it really trains you to keep your eyes open to somebody who's going through a hard time. >> people like kelly williams. >> i've done drugs. i've stole. i've done practically everything you can think of. >> what was your ah-ha moment? what was the moment when you were at your lowest and said, i can't live like this anymore? >> i went to prison practically every two years. i wanted something better for my life. >> since you've been working here, you've been able to get other things and kind of come

into transitioning to have your own place. >> yeah, i did it in six months working for them. >> wait, waited, wait. back up. hold on, hold on. you're saying in six months of working here -- >> yeah, my life will never be the same. i want to do good for the rest of my life. >> which is why experts say the giving keys could be a model for the rest of the country. >> they're taking men and women that have no other option, teaching them a marketable skill, teaching them to work in a team, teaching them to be proud of a product and services being delivered. and they're making money doing this. >> so they're legit. >> giving people like kelly williams a second chance. >> you can just make an impact on one person, you know, that's the best feeling in the world. >> perhaps even the key to happiness. morgan radford, los angeles. it's one thing to sell your products to local consumers.

it is another to sell to a major buyer with national distribution. here are five ways to attract big buyers. one, use data like website visitors to show how your product resonates with consumers. two, always have a pitch ready. you need know when you may meet someone who can help you out. keep your phone or tablet stocked with compelling images and charts and have a fact sheet with all of your speck and contact sheet ready. three, attend trade shows. these are great places to meet new buyers. make the most out of it by sending your most knowledgeable and upbeat employees. if you have a booth, avoid leaving it so there's always someone around to answer a question. four, partner with a broker. sales brokers already have relationships with big buyers and know how to get your

products in front of the right people. but they also have reputations to protect. like the buyers, before they partner with you, they're going to want to make sure that your product will sell. five, make sure your product is ready to ship. if you do build a relationship with a buyer and then you can't fulfill it, that is going to lead to problems right then and later on. mow it's time for our brain trust. today we're doing it from these amazing offices of warby parker here in new york city. today we have neil blumenthal, who's the founder of warby parker, now with more than 1300 employees and a valuation of more than a billion dollars. and jana rich, founder of the rich talent group, who works with partners like warby parker, to recruit top talent. thank you so much for inviting us here. >> thanks for having us. >> good to see you. >> i want to talk to you about retention. you have 1300 employees here. i imagine you've had some turnover over the years.

is retention what we should be looking for as owners of companies, as people who run divisions of companies? what do you think? >> i think it's really important to assess who you are losing and where your company is in terms of phase of growth. very fast growing companies who are morphing and changing dramatically are going to need different people. so i think we have to be careful retaining the people we want to and not losing those that we don't. >> because people are always saying you want high retention, right? it's been the mantra since the beginning of time. i imagine the people -- you don't have your whole original team. two of your founders aren't here. >> i think it's important to have these folks that exemplify the values of the company. those folks don't necessarily need to have been here since the beginning. but i agree with jana completely that if you don't want 100%

retention, you want some turnover, you want people coming in with fresh skill sets, fresh perspectives, and i think there's this idea that culture is static and companies need to stay the same. everyone is nostalgic for the past. at the end of the day, companies evolve and cultures evolve and change. that's okay. just like real cultures evolve and change. america is different today than it was a generation ago. >> so at what point do you look at your own company, your own division, and say, okay, i'm losing people too quickly versus i am losing people at the right speed because the company or the division is changing? >> i think it's the reason why people are leaving. if people are leaving because they don't see growth opportunities, if people are leaving because they feel like they're not getting paid well, those are things to dig into. if people are leaving because, you know, you need to bring in

somebody with more expertise and that's actually changing their growth trajectory, that's okay. hopefully they'll get a better opportunity elsewhere and we'll support them in that and that's fantastic. >> it's also interesting to look at what pockets and where is it happening, meaning if all the sudden you've got a lot of people leading your marketing team, is there something wrong there? meaning, do you have to look at the leadership of that team? is something going wrong? or if four or five members of a ten-person leadership team are leaving, that has a huge impact on how the outside world views your company. so those are two examples where you have to stop and say, wait a minute, what's happening? >> let's talk about that, the outside world. when companies go through periods of change, oftentimes a lot of people leave. either they're laid off or leave themselves. how do you deal with the perception of that when you're doing it because the company is actually moving forward? from the outside, it may look like it's moving backwards. >> at least what i would say about that is it's really

interesting from our vantage point. we'll start to get a lot of inbound calls from senior executives when something is not going right with a company. i say we're always an early indicator if retention is going to be an issue or if something is at least potentially wrong with the company. if, for example, those are clients we work with, we'll at least give them a heads up. we'll never say specific names of people, but hey, there's a lot of people loose in your marketing team. it might be something you need to look at. being able to have some sense of how that's being perceived externally, because sometimes we can get in our own little bubbles. we know why, but the outside world doesn't know why. >> by the time that's happening, you're in a crisis mode. the question is what's your canary in the coal mine. to our perspective, it's feedback. it's our performance management system. so we do a thing called month in review. rather than having performance

reviews once every 12 months or once every six months, we do it every month so that way there is that direct feedback from direct reports and managers. but even more important than that, we do an anonymous survey every six months. we call it an employee engagement survey. it's anonymous. we can only drill down to groups of five to protect anonymity, but we can cut the data by gender, by department, by tenure at the company so we can really get a sense of what's going on, and it's a commitment we made to the team that we're all going to try and make this place better and better and better. if there are people that want to leave, hopefully the reasons for that start to emerge and we can address it. >> and is retention a metric that you look at? is it an important metric? >> it's an important metric, but i've never found anybody that defines it really clearly. and i know that sounds crazy, but what is retention? is it cohorts of people that

start on "x" date for how long they should actually be here? so we're seven years old. we're now to 1300 employees, the majority of whom have been hired in the last 12 months. so our retention metric looks really strange. we actually don't measure it as closely as saying, hey, are we losing good people for bad reasons? >> all right. thanks, both of you, so much. >> thank you. >> thanks. people, purpose, profits, and play. those are the four principles that guide business at the world's largest franchise gym. anytime fitness locations are open to members 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. the company's on the brink of having 4,000 locations in 30 countries with revenue hovering right around a billion dollars. co-founder chuck runyon tells us why business is always about people and why we all need to play more in this learning from

the pros. ♪ >> i love the quote that leaders don't build a business. leaders build people. the people build the business. sure, you want to have a great idea, but then you got to hire the right people and empower them to execute on the business. we place a great deal of emphasis on workplace culture. how we behave, what values we have on working together, and so we really are very rigorous through the hiring process. we try to get out of the scripted interview process. we ask questions that really want to get into their self-awareness, right. some mistakes they made in the past. we really want to kind of break that down through a very lengthy interview process. we want them to make get on a whiteboard and give us some of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. we will ask this them to videotape themselves or put a powerpoint together, do some type of clever youtube video to show some of their personality.

to give people greater purpose, i mean, it's combining your heart power with your brain power. they will go the extra mile. they'll work a little bit harder. they know that they're enriching people or the plane et beyond just a paycheck. to instill greater purpose, i think you have to be very intentional about it. when we're talking about strategy for the business, first of all, why are we trying to go there, and how does this benefit others? how are we improving stakeholders's lives? with anytime fitness, it's the members. we're getting them to a healthier place. everyone must profit in this business. of course from a financial perspective. we're in the franchise business. we have to make sure our franchisees are set up to succeed. typically in franchising, it's a percentage. so the more a franchisee does in revenue, the higher percentage we get. with anytime, our royalty is flat. as they grow their business,

we're capped out. that's rewarding to the franchisee financially. 50% of our franchisees are buying and opening more stores. that's a great testament to their success. we feel the same way about our employees. how can they come here? how can we develop their employees. how can we develop their whole stale, invest in their personal and professional growth so they can say, you know, the company made me better too. we put our revenue into a pool every year. it can fuel growth for our employees. always be learning like a lifelong student atmosphere. we want to physically improve, mentally improve. i think companies could use a little bit more play in the workplace. 7 out of 10 people, according to gallup, drive to work every day feeling miserable or neutral about their job. that's sad because we spend half of our waking hours at work. we have new rookie skits or

stupid human tricks they have to perform. that sets the tone that we are all vulnerable and we can laugh at ourselves. at the annual conference we do a parody of popular movies. we have done "star trek", "top gun", the hangover." being self deposit indicating and showing we can take the work seriously without taking ourselves seriously. the science about play validates that a company will be more curious, collaborative, they will be more creative. and we value those as we try to grow the business. >> when we come back, most of us have millennials on our workforce. the question is, how do you manage them? and how do you keep dealers and retailers happy when you're also selling products online? thank you so much. thank you!

so we're a go? yes! we got a yes! what does that mean for purchasing? purchase. let's do this. got it. book the flights! hai! si! si! ya! ya! ya! what does that mean for us? we can get stuff. what's it mean for shipping? ship the goods. you're a go! you got the green light. that means go! oh, yeah. start saying yes to your company's best ideas. we're gonna hit our launch date! (scream) thank you! goodbye! let us help with money and know-how, so you can get business done. american express open. ♪ do you have any tips on how to keep dealers happy if we're selling our products on the website as well? >> it's a great question. and in today's environment, it should be completely acceptable for you to sell on your own website. the key tip i would give you is create differentiation. to really keep everybody happy

and protect yourself, the key would be to offer your vendors one offering, bundles, packs, price promos and have a different set of offerings on your website in the direct-to-consumer environment. millennials are transforming the workplace. so if you are an employer and you're looking to either hire them or retain them, our guest has some ideas on how to do that. dan is a partner and research director on the future workplace, an executive development group. so good to see you, dan. >> happy to be here with you, j.j. >> i know so many people who are like millennials, they don't work as hard, they want to go home early or they're asking for a raise all the time. you say it is relatively easy. you just have to look at things differently. >> young people always think of older people wise and willing to mentor. older people always think younger people are lazy,

entitled, narcissistic and unfocused. >> this is not a millennial thing, it is a general racial thing. >> it is about where you are in your life and how you are viewing people who are younger than you or older than you. >> indeed, there are things we see the workplace is transforming for everyone, not just millennials. let's talk about millennials. they want fair pay. not necessarily higher pay, fair pay. >> everyone wants more money, of course. whether they're looking to get a job is, that factors into the equation. it is about fair pay for younger people because we have access to such information on our fingertips. we can go to pay scale or salary.com is and figure out how much we should make based on our title. they are more likely to have transparent discussions on how much they are making at the same company or another company. >> as hiring manager, you go look at those also and show here is our scale. here is where you fit on it and

here's why. you just need to explain to people so they get their expectations up. >> absolutely. back then you would never have these discussions. now it is so important. you can offer a ping pong table, free food, anything. >> flexible work. we talk about this all the time. companies have let people work from home, brought them back in. and everyone is dealing with this, right? >> there's no 9:00 to 5:00 workplace anymore. the average workweek is 47 hours for a full-time salary employee. and because of how technology is enabling us to answer e-mails and phone calls out of the office, people are working 24/7 for the same salary. >> they want to be able to drop off their kid to school and come to work late. >> people want maternal, paternal leave, flexible hours, job sharing. >> and not have to take the entire day off to go to a doctor's appointment. >> give an extra hour of lunch as long as they're performing.

it's all about results. that will matter more in the future. >> which means you have to be clear what the results are. if you want a flexible schedule, you need to perform to this level. >> you have to make a case for everything. >> okay. learning and development. it is not the case where people come into work and just say i'm going to give that all to you. employees want to know the company is investing in them as well. >> especially for young people. they're not going to invest in time spent working at your company. and the younger you are, the more learning and development you need because you don't know very much. the older you get, the less likely you are to say you need extra training and support. >> will dean is ceo of tough mudder. he has his whole staff do harvard business school cases. he teaches them. they learn a lot. even as a start-up they did this. >> people need to be challenged. if not, they will be bored and look for other opportunities which are right at their fingertips.

>> finally, this is so important. link your responsibilities to the impact. even if you are the person who is filing, shoe know why that's important for the company. >> a lot of people get meaningful work wrong. they think the young person just wants to change the world on the job. that's not true. it is about linking the work they're doing on a daily basis to something that is beneficial to their manager, to their team, to their ceo, to customers, to partners, and maybe even the world. and if they can't see that linkage, they're not as engaged and more likely to quit. >> you're spending time here. you want to know that it makes a difference for something in the company or the world. thank you. i appreciate all the research you have done. >> thanks. happy to be here. this week's your busy selfie comes from elizabeth davis-cerami who owns yor so sweet in kennett square, pennsylvania. she makes sweet and savory crepes and crepe cakes like you see there. pick up your cell phone, take a

picture of you and your business. no professional pictures please. send it to yourbusiness@msnbc.com. thank you so much for joining us today. earlier this week i heard a man speak to a group of ceos. he was one of a group of 16 people who survived a plane crash in the andes. he lived three months with no boots, no coat, no food. what he was wanting us to get out of this is, look, business is hard. we're going to face hard things in business and in life. we should be stressed about them, et cetera. but we need to remember at the end of the day what is really important. and keep your eye on that as you go through the hard things in business. hug the one you love. at the end of the day, that's what's important. of course we want to grow our companies and want them to be

successful for a million reasons, but remember what is most important, which is the people you love. now we'd love to hear from you. if you have any questions or comments about today's show, e-mail us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. please go to our website, openforum.com/yourbusiness. we posted all the segments from today's show plus a lot more. don't forget to connect with us on all our digital and social media platforms as well. we look forward to seeing you next time. until then, i'm j.j. ramberg. remember, we make your business our business. so that's the idea. what do you think? hate to play devil's advocate but... i kind of feel like it's a game changer. i wouldn't go that far. are you there? he's probably on mute. yeah... gary won't like it. why? because he's gary. (phone ringing) what? keep going! yeah... (laughs) (voice on phone) it's not millennial enough.

there are a lot of ways to say no. thank you so much. thank you! so we're doing it. yes! "we got a yes!" start saying yes to your company's best ideas. let us help with money and know-how, so you can get business done. american express open. ♪ morning glory, america. i'm hugh hewitt. quite a week for news to open 2018. in my eyes, the revolt of the people of iran against the iranian revolutionary guard is the story that deserves the most attention this week. at least as much attention, if not more, than the arab revolts of a few years back. if iran were to overthrow and get rid of its rulers, the region and the world would be a much safer and prosperous place. there are lots of other stories as well. here to discuss them with me as we look back to the week that were, al weave