find all the answers you're looking for - because getting what you need should be simple, fast, and easy. download the xfinity my account app or go online today. good morning, everyone. coming up on msnbc's "your business," the clothing company dstld was the first to launch a crowd funding campaign. we look at how they raised $7 million and tripled their revenue. jason baldoni of "jane the virgin" on creating content that feeds the soul and both clients and consumers are loving it. and dr. deepak chopra with advice an alleviating stress in order to be more productive at work. let's grow fast, and work smart. that's all coming up next on "your business." >> business business is

sponsored by american express open helping you get business done. >> hi, everyone, i'm j.j. ramberg. welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to helping your growing business. some have called equity crowd funding revolutionary for many start-ups and midsize companies looking to raise capital. and in 2015, a new set of s.e.c. guidelines injected even more popularity into these investing model. the founders behind at pairle brand dstld were some of the first business own others to take a chance and ride down this new avenue when they needed some cash. now, with their journey in the rear view mirror, they recently gave me their take on the experience, and how they bravely navigated through the unexpected bumps in the road. >> it was a game changer. as part of the 2012 jobs act, suddenly companies were able to offer equity to the general public, not just accredited

investors. and the l.a. based fashion brand dstld jumped at the chance. >> three -- >> hold on. >> two -- >> yeah! >> when we first met the dstld co-founders mark lynn and cory epstein they were venturing into uncharted territory. >> there were a lot of unknowns. you're going to have challenges. >> despite facing the occasional hurdle and a handful of hiccups, dstld's campaign was a success. it raised $1.7 million from more than 1700 investors. fuelling significant growth for the company. before the campaign, they had reached a total of $3 million in revenue. they had a customer base of 21,000 people, and a staff of eight. a year after the offering, lifetime sales had tripled, the customer ways more than doubled, and the number of employees had grown to 14. you were one of the first companies to do this. was it more work than you

thought? less work than you thought? >> it was a lot of work. when people ask you is it an easier way to raise capital than any other traditional source, it's definitely not easier. it's just different. >> they believe one of the reasons it worked for them is that they already had a passionate base of customers. so, they had a built-in audience to go to with the offering. >> it was really just a matter of engaging our customer base. that was really where the majority of the financing came from. very loyal customers that used our traditional marketing channels to let them know what we're doing. and give them the opportunity to invest. >> if you're not public facing, it probably doesn't make as much sense to do online public offering. >> second, they understand consumer marketing. they'd already figured out a way to let people know about their fashion line. now, they had to use those same skills to explain equity crowd funding. must have taken a lot of education. people heard crowd funding and

they think kick-starter, i'm going to give them money and they're going to give me a t-shirt. >> we had to craft the story with the right level of sophistication in order to inform and educate about something that's never been done before. >> consumers have band width for a certain amount of messaging from companies. so you had to decide, do i send them an e-mail about these brand new pants, or do i send them an e-mail about our equity crowd funding campaign? >> yeah, i think we were definitely sensitive to not bombarding customers with these messages and segmenting the way people who were only interested in product, and had, you know, either never clicked through anything that talks about investment, or let us know explicitly that they weren't interested in those messages. >> but of course ultimately selling shares in your company is very different than selling a t-shirt. and cory and mark knew they had to hire key people with relevant experience so they didn't stretch their existing team too thin. >> you need a strong finance and accounting team throughout the

year. and leading up to the raise. and you need kind of a communications pr marketing manager. and i say that's kind of the baseline to do a raise like this. >> not to mention, they needed to ensure they had enough money to dedicate to raising money. >> you're looking at like $200,000 as like the minimum to launch. >> while the campaign was successful in the end, it was not without its issues along the way. there was a payment processing system error, and some investors accidentally got charged twice. it wasn't dstld's fault, but it is certainly not the kind of thing you want associated with a brand-new campaign like this. >> we had some technical glitches, which, to undo those glitches, were very complicated partner platform, and they had to basically refund investors. >> oh, that feels like a knife in your heart, right? this is it. this is like launching a product and have something go wrong and that could be the death of it. >> we had to then go back hat in

hand and say, now would you -- >> would you like to wire us -- >> would you still like to invest via this platform? >> both founders describe being a pioneer in this kind of fund-raising as exciting. but at times nerve-racking. if you were to start a new company tomorrow, which would you do? >> i'm a huge fan of this model. for me it's a no brainer. i would definitely go this route. we believe that this capital is probably more patient, and more willing to be aligned with the goals and values of both us as founders, and our incredible team. >> now that you have 1700 new people who are owners in this company, have you mobilized them to be 1700 marketers for you? >> yeah, i think that's exactly how we think about it. is that we're building this army of ambassadors that have a real stake in the future of the brand. >> we had a one investor write in, he said, this brand is like a man smoking athe a gas station. it's about to blow up.

>> so it's no surprise that as cory and mark looked forward at the capital they need to continue to grow their company, they decided going back to the crowd for round two is the only way to go. after justin baldoni was catapulted from obscurity to stardom when he landed a part on the hit "jane the environmenten" but recently it's his role as entrepreneur at wayfarer entertainment that has everyone buzzing. from content veriation to negotiating business deals, justin and his team have taken a do it differently approach, despite endless pushback early on justin learned how to push through all the rejection, he never wavered on his core belief and now wayfarer has become a force to be reckoned with in the industry. >> he's on the hit show "jane the virgin," his social media

following adores his every move. he's got a storybook personal life. and since 2013, he's been at the helm of wayfarer. a thriving multimedia company. but six years ago, actor justin baldoni was living anything but a fairy tale life. >> my house went into foreclosure. i just wasn't fulfilled. i wasn't getting jobs. >> so at the age of 27, justin quit acting, and took a leap of faith. embarking on a life changing journey. he hit the road for a year, stepping behind the camera to create a documentary series called "my last days." he hoped that by sharing the courageous stories of the terminally ill, he could inspire people to live life fully. >> i want everyone to know, you don't have to find out you're dying to start living. >> everybody thought it was crazy. like who's going to ever watch a show about people who are dying. and we told these stories for nothing. for no money. >> justin convinced actor rainn

wilson and his team at soul pancake to partner on the project. >> they were like, we love this. we don't think people will watch it but we want to make it >> but the millions of views proved everybody wrong. >> it ended up becoming one of the most watched documentary series online ever. i believed that we were vastly underestimating our audience and that really everybody is hungry for meaningful content. so after my last days went crazy viral, we decided to start wayfarer. >> through his storytelling journey, justin discovered his entrepreneurial calling. to build a go-to company for brands and networks who craved commercially viable, highly entertaining content, that offered a soul stirring experience at the same time. >> we wanted to create content that was elevating the human experience. we knew we had something. we knew we were able to tell stories in a way that other people weren't. and we believed that what we brought was kind of our unique

value proposition to the industry. >> it's something he and his team like to call choccoli. >> we call it chocolate covered broccoli. it's a medicine in the dog food. it's a spoonful of sugar. we want to give you really cool, interesting stuff. we also want to create something that's inherently good for you and good for your soul. >> but getting big name clients to feel confident in wayfarer's mission proved to be a big challenge early on. >> we went and knocked on every door. people were just like, oh, yeah, you guys are good people. we're never going to buy anything that they're selling. you get told no 1,000 times you want to pack up and go. but when you're doing it for the right reasons, you don't. and then, this beautiful blessing happened. >> he was offered an audition for the part of rafael on "jane the virgin." >> i went in. i hadn't acted in a few years and a month later i was shooting the pilot. three months later we were at the golden globes. >> he knew the opportunity could give his start-up some much needed credibility. soon brands like wells fargo,

ford and subaru were knocking on wayfarer's door. over the past few years, justin and his growing stream turned wayfarer into a profitable success story. with a 400% year over year revenue increase. but balancing a booming business, a thriving career in front of the camera, and a treasured family life, has proven to be a challenge. a lessen justin wished he learned years ago make yourself dispensable. >> how can i empower my team to be able to do what i do better? and then what's cool is you can see their strengths grow and their qualities grow and they flourish. it's about saying like, well, let me teach you how to fish so you can feed yourself so we can actually scale and grow. >> his unique take on negotiating contracts is something that wayfarer's clients have come to value greatly. >> we talk about well how can our first offer be what it would

be if we were to negotiate for three weeks? because time is everything. time is our most valuable asset, right? so why are we spending so much time negotiating like a point here or a credit here? like let's stop doing that crap. my biggest mistakes were when i let my ego get in the way. >> justin recently checked his ego at the door when he made the decision to step down as the day-to-day leader of the company. >> i know there are better people for that. allowing myself to support the company in the way that it needs so it can fly without having to make every decision. >> wayfarer's current project in the spotlight is a dinner conversation series called man enough. justin hopes it will help redefine traditional masculinity >> we start to tackle all these cool things like marriage, and infidelity, and porn, and fatherhood, and the gender pay gap. nobody would give us money to do it. so, i said let's do it ourselves. basically leveraged and risked the entire company, took all of

our success cash and we funded the show ourselves. >> the timing couldn't have been more perfect for this concept. soon, wayfarer was able to turn the tables on the industry. >> at the exact same time we funded the show, made the show, weinstein happened. so here we are with the only show talking about the pitfalls of traditional masculinity. >> the men's grooming brand harry signed on to foster man enough right before the show launched. >> sometimes when people say no, that's just an opportunity. there's a quote about being dry in the ocean, and cool in the fire. and that's so much about kind of what it's like to be an entrepreneur. it >> at work, something happens to all of us that makes us feel stressed. and we may think, hey, a little stress is okay. we put in long hours, we're

dealing with new challenges, tight deadlines, and stress comes with that, right? well, our next guest says that over time, those stresses will take a toll on you physically and emotionally, and that is not good for you personally, or for work. so what you can do to counter those negative effects? dr. deepak chopra is the cofounder of the chopra center for well-being. he's the founder of the chopra foundation. and a pioneer in the integrative medicine and personal transformation. he's authored more than 85 books. the latest one is called "the healing self: a revolutionary new plan to supercharge your immune system and stay well for life." it is such an honor to get to talk to you. >> thank you very much. >> thank you for joining us today. there's so much to talk about in this book about how we can heal ourselves. but i want to focus on stress right now, because i think that is what keeps so much of us back at work, and you say that we're so used to this low level stress we don't even recognize it's happening, because we're learned

to adapt to it. >> only 5% of disease related mean mutations are guaranteed the disease. 95% of our genetic activity that leads to disease is influenced by stress. and of that stress is the most important. but good sleep, movement, exercise, breathing, stress management, good nutrition, and being in touch with nature will guarantee, in a way, that you'll have less inflammation, which is the predominant factor in 90% or more. >> let's take the person who, they have a lot going on at work. right? there are so many things coming at them, and they say to you, of course i'm going to be stressed. this stress powers me. this is what gets me going. right? it's just -- it's a part of going through this part of my job. what do you say to this? >> you are misusing your

imagination. instead of using your imagination for stress, use it for creativity. take a few breaks. even if you take a one minute breathing break, where you count your breath, in breath four seconds, out breath six seconds or to the count of five and you do it for one minute, you feel less stressed. if you stop and become a spectator of your thoughts you have less stress. if you feel the sensations, you'll have less stress. if you think of someone you love, you'll have less stress. if you do anything that stops what is happening, and stop being a bundle of conditioned reflex and nerves, constantly being triggered by people and circumstance, you'll have less stress. so i use something called the s.t.o.p. formula. it stands for stop, three, take three deep breaths and smile, it changes how you feel -- >> can you stop on that for one

second. the act of smiling, which you can do, easily, right? now you weren't smiling, now you're smiling, actually physically changes how you feel? >> right. because when you are happy you smile. but when you smile your brain gets the feedback that you must be happy. so it's a feedback loop. so smile. >> so smile. >> observe either the sensation in your body, or your thoughts, and then proceed with awareness, compassion, instead of reacting, observe your reaction to react. that's it. it's the highest intelligence is to observe yourself without judging yourself. and then the rest will happen spontaneously. you don't have to think positive thoughts, this idea that just stop, observe yourself, and don't judge yourself. and even ask, this deal didn't happen today, or whenever, how is it going to change my life?

if you reflect on that a little bit, you'll see, most of the time you'll waste your time worrying about things that you have no control over ultimately. >> thank you so much. it was wonderful to talk to you. the book is really wonderful. and i urge everyone to read it. thank you so much. >> thank you very much for having me. i talk much more with dr. chopra on an upcoming episode of our podcast. i was very inspired by our conversation, as i was by his daughter whom i met while working on a story about meditati meditation. i originally got interested in meditation because so many successful business people i knew had started a meditation practice and they swore by the benefits, both for life and for work. so i met up with a woman who started an entire company around meditation to learn more. ♪ it's 9:30 on a friday morning in los angeles, and people are

streaming in to the morning session at unplugged meditation. who comes to these classes? >> anyone from a heart surgeon, to the head of a small business that makes doughnuts. this guy mark who runs, is doing twelve super bowl commercials. >> suze yalof schwartz is the owner of unplugged. she started the company in 2014 after her mother-in-law suggested that she should start meditating herself. >> i was flying back and forth between new york and los angeles, and i was very stressed. and she said to me, you should try this little exercise. in three minutes i shifted from stress to calm, and i thought, why is everybody not doing this? >> suze conjured up the idea for unplugged when she couldn't find a place to meditate that felt right. a studio geared toward someone like her. high energy, busy, and efficient. oftentimes when people hear mindfulness, med tags, it turns them off. >> right. >> that's sort of some hippy

dipty stuff, that's not me, i've got too much stuff to do. >> right. >> but you don't have to put these labels on it. what you're talking about is simply calming down. >> right. i think here's the deal. we are plugged in all the time. we we have a lot of things coming on us. we're stressed. >> what you need to do is shift in that moment of stress. and that's meditation or whatever you want to label it. >> in her previous life, chefs a new york fashion editor working for magazines like vogue and marie claire and doing tv appearances all the time. her life was hectic. but let's face it. starting a business, even if it's one that focuses on meditation, is certainly no easier and no less stressful than being a fashion editor. suze credits meditation with helping her get through all the tough times of launching a company. >> well, my husband always says thank god you have a meditation studio in here because you would be a disaster without it.

>> this is one of the teachers. she's been hired to work with teams like merrill lynch, chipotle, deutsche bank and bloomingdale's. >> in business, there are too many distractions. with distractions come negative thinking. it allows us to refocus. science has shown us that meditation retrains your brain. it retrains your ability to focus, to shift out of negativity, to reduce stress in the body and we know from that, that we have increased productivity. >> meditating is not easy for everyone. i tried out one of natalie's classes. >> i think that's hard. >> yeah. >> i definitely feel calmer. >> i have to admit, i find your class really hard. i suspect for somebody new like me, it's good to start in small chunks. >> absolutely. >> we start with a five-minute practice. we teach maybe no more than ten minutes with companies. >> nancy truman has experienced all of this. she's the founder of a los

angeles-based bakery. she says meditation helped her with everything from dealing with small issues throughout the day to coming up with bigger picture strategic plans for her company. >> i become very myopic when not meditating or i get really stuck on one thing. i call it going down the slippery slope or down the rabbit hole. everything else gets blocked out. i'm right here. but when i meditate, it helps me to open it up, i see everything and i'm able to strategize, take all the elements in and then proceed. >> but like with so many other things that we know are good for us, like exercise and eating well, getting started and staying on track with meditation can be hard. there are a lot of options, from classes at studios like unplugged to apps like head space and calm. the key is just giving it a shot. >> there are a lot of very busy people, oprah, ariana huffington, deepak chopra, the

president of american airlines. they're all making the time to do it. the reason why, it changes your life. when we come back, why you should be thinking about automating your market and sales, and do you suffer from analysis paralysis. do not panic. what paths to take when you are frozen with indecision. 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. as entrepreneurs, we're paralyzed to make decisions, so what was the time you were paralyzed to make a decision and what do you do to find the solution? >> daniel, that's an incredible question. we're always, as entrepreneurs, paralyzed to make decisions. what the toughest ones for me are hiring and firing decisions. that may be someone you're uncertain whether to hire or someone who has outgrown their role even they fit at one point. when i'm paralyzed, the very first thing daye is get out a pen and pad and mark down every single pro and con i can think of. as entrepreneurs and people in general, we're lucky there's so many options available to us. most often, we don't think of

them. what i'll tend to do is right down every option how i can hire or in certain cases fire this person and what's the best way of going about it. >> we now have the top tips you need to know to help grow your business. let's introduce our panel. ben parr is the founder of octane ai, a platform to help stores with messenger marketing. jonathan lipton started a number of companies or help start them, now is the co-founder or ceo of a private digital platform for investors and philanthropists. good to see you. >> ben, you are responsible for those messages coming to me when i have abandoned my cart. encouraging me to buy things at e-commerce stores. nice job. >> you're very welcome. >> you've gotten me to buy a lot of stuff or people i know to buy a lot of stuff. what's a tip you have for a growing company. >> automate your marketing and sales. one. most important sales about growing a business is scaling.

we talk about it all the time. but you, the entrepreneur, the human, is not a scaleable thing. you have to find ways in which to scale. there's a lot of tools and a lot of products to help. let me give an example. if you're trying to sell to more, you need to score and figure out who those leads are and you need to categorize them. most entrepreneurs do that manually. there's tools like hub spot or sales force that help to automate the process. if you can hack it up a little bit, you can scale your business a lot more or another example, if people are abandoning carts or e-mail, you can automate the e-mail and messages using different tools. tools like fire base and tools like zappier can be your best friend when you figure out ways to automate and collect data. you can do all sorts of things that one human could not do before. >> also, the beauty of automating is it frees up your time to do other things like test. now you have everything

automated, let's say you have an abandoned cart, you can test different messages on other people because you're not spending time finding those people. >> exactly. >> great idea. it's interesting. it's very complementary to what ben said. get out and listen. we have in a digital world where everything is automated. that's great and that's the way of the future. as entrepreneurs, we have to be on a listening tour. take one meeting with everyone. anyone who comes up. great ideas come from the most unusual and random places. >> how forthright are you about your ideas? you've helped start a number of companies in the financial services world. you have your own now. it was a big idea. you tell people about it when you're having these conversations? >> you know, i do. it helps you to hone your message. two, it helps to iterate your product when you get feedback that's honest. you have to get out in front of people. you'll be really surprised how people are forthcoming on their

ideas and, again, ideas come from everywhere. be very diligent with your time, don't overpromise. but also meet people that don't necessarily obviously advance your cause. meet them because you want to meet them, you want their opinions and pay it forward a bit. >> got it. great. thank you both so much. this week's your biz self-yes comes from dave lambert who owns iq optical in richmond, virginia. his father practiced optometry for 50 years. he partners with a nonprofit that focuses on lower income patients who can't afford glasses. why don't you pick up your smartphone, take a selfie of you and your business and send it to us or tweet it to @biz msnbc. include your name, the name of your business and the #your biz

selfie. thank you for joining us today. we'd love to hear from you. if you have questions or comments, just want to say hi, e-mail us at your business at msnbc.com. you can go to open forum.com/your business. we posted all of the segments from today's show plus a lot more for you. we have even more for you on all of your digital and social media platforms as well. we look forward to seeing you next time. until then, i'm jj 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. ♪ good morning and welcome to politics nation. some burning questions i have today -- what are the democrats doing on the ground to ensure 2018 midterm's election win? in a moment, i'll ask dnc chair tom perez just that. former h.u.d. secretary and san antonio mayor julian castro, is he running for president? he'll be here to give us