good morning! coming up on msnbc's "your business," the musical group the jonas brothers have stopped touring. so, once manager dad is now using his skills to open a hometown restaurant. we'll tell you what the owner of this old-school camera store did to pivot from a product-based to a service-based business model in order to survive. and the creators of a high-tech safe try to lock up our judges' approval with another elevator pitch from the consumer electronics show. let's work fast and grow smart. that's all coming up next on "your business." ♪ >> announcer: "your business" is sponsored by american express open, helping you get business done.

hi, everyone! i'm jj ramberg, and welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to helping your growing business. kevin, joe, and nick jonas, their names, their faces, and their music are known around the world. what you might not know about these stars is that they can trace some of their roots back to north carolina, where their father and former manager was born, raised, and has now returned along with their mother. and there's a very good chance you might see one of those famous brothers enjoying a bite at their parents' latest venture, a local restaurant named after their great grandmother. ♪ >> this is first time my dad's ever done anything in the restaurant business. it made sense, but it definitely felt a little like, felt a little crazy. he pulled it off. >> kevin jonas will never be an ordinary customer at nellie's southern kitchen in belmont, north carolina. >> there's a certain kind of love in this food. >> it's not because he's a

celebrity. >> any time you come to nellie's, you'll get a taste of like how my family grew up. >> it's because the owners are his parents. >> i absolutely respect and totally love that they went back to, like, their hometown. this just makes sense for them. >> after a successful run managing kevin, joe, and nick's careers, kevin sr. and his wife, denise, decided it was time to go back home. kevin hadn't lived in belmont for more than 30 years. >> as you grow older, your heart is grown home, there is no question. you start to feel a need to not just pass through. >> they wanted to contribute to a community that meant so much to kevin, as well as pay tribute to his past. >> eventually, my wife said, why don't we do a restaurant? and if we're going to do a restaurant in belmont, it should be devoted to your grandmother, a great lady who worked hard every day of her life in the cotton mills, then would come home and make the most amazing southern comfort food. >> not only did kevin want to share many of his grandmother's recipes at the restaurant, he

was also trying to find a way to help relatives who had been affected by the closure of local cotton mills. >> a lot of my family went through transition, having worked in cotton mills. we had some musicians in the family that were out of work, and we had music here, so i wanted to provide an outlet for them. it really was a desire to do something good, almost a side project. >> in spite of the global recognition of the jonas brothers name, when they opened nellie's, kevin and denise made a conscious effort to not market it as a jonas brothers restaurant. >> i had studied quite a number of celebrity restaurants that had opened and closed, and i think part of the problem is the name will bring people initially, but if the experience is bad, it backfires right away. >> they knew that in order for this to work, the jonas brothers celebrity had to take a back seat to this new, local identity. >> if you walked in this restaurant, had dinner, and left, you would never really know that it had anything to do with the jonas family, unless you went to the bathroom and you hit, i call it the wall of

shame, but the wall of fame back there. >> kevin and denise wanted to build something that would stand on its own, but that hasn't always been easy. >> we like to say we had temporary insanity when we chose to do this. i guess it's my fault because i'm the one that said, let's open a restaurant! oh, god. >> right after we bought the building, i was standing in the corner and i said to my sister, i think nice going to be a lot of work. and just as i said it, the ceiling caved in, gravel, water, tiles. and so, we knew it was going to be a challenge. >> and that was just the start. kevin thought that after being in the music industry for so long, the transition to a restaurant would be easy, but he was wrong. >> i was ill prepared. when you're managing talent, you're working with budgets, you're working with tours, you're constantly thinking about the end result, and i knew what good business looked like. but really, it took opening the doors and failing to realize where the needs were. >> so much was new to him. he was dealing with near constant employee turnover and

small margins, while simultaneously trying to make sure that customers walked away talking about their great chicken and dumplings and collared greens. >> i love for people to walk in and feel the atmosphere, but all of that still requires that the food is cooked well, comes out on time, is warm and hot, that the service is what it should be. >> the improvements took time. >> the name recognition probably lasted three months. if in that three months we weren't making changes, we're losing customers. >> nellie's evolution included studying diners, asking what they liked and what they didn't, as well as figuring out a better workflow. >> we really had to concentrate for almost a year, year and a half now, on making sure every little thing has thought, that nothing leaves the kitchen without a purpose, that what happens in the kitchen has a purpose, that the people we hire really are a specific group of people. >> where kevin and denise have always excelled is hospitality.

under cotton, twig-inspired lightning and a portrait of nellie on the wall, they greet as many diners as possible. >> when we were on the road with the boys, we're really interactive, trying to get to know their fans and make sure their fans stayed fans, so i kind of do that with the restaurant, too. i want to make sure our guests are fans and they continue to stay fans of nellie's. >> the nellie's brand is now so strong that few customers realize there's even a jonas brothers connection, and kevin says that's a good thing. >> they come in because they've heard about us, they've heard about the food, they've heard about the environment, and that now is the change. what i hear more than anything else is people are coming to nellie's because they've heard it's excellent, and that makes me happy. >> despite their sometimes crazy schedules, kevin and denise are grateful for the constant support of their children. >> they have been so wonderful the entire journey. they will come here every time they can. they actually love to be here. they love to have influence. they have input. nick's probably come here more

than anybody. and joe is an investor in other restaurants, and kevin helped us build this building out. >> kevin jr. was happy to help his parents start this latest chapter in their lives, and he's inspired by the positive impact that nellie's is having on the community. >> as a father, i totally understand, like, what it would be like to leave a legacy for your kids, and you know, put your mark on something, and he's definitely done that here in this town. we're here on the floor of the consumer electronics show in las vegas for our elevator pitch this week. mitch danzig, so good to meet you. >> thank you. >> and this is your product. what's it called? >> the iq pro sports safe. >> you were an investment banker, right? >> for 25 years. >> so you're used to stress. >> different stress, yes. >> different stress. how do you feel about going into this pitch? >> looking forward to it. it's a great product and i have a great team behind me to try to get this out here. >> okay, fantastic. let's head over. you're going to be pitching to two investors. the first is nesa from scout

ventures and susie is from adam factory and crossculture ventures. >> great. >> are you ready? >> looking forward to it. >> all right, let's go meet them. >> hi, guys, i'm mitch. i'm here to introduce you to the patented i-key pro smart safe, the only wi-fi-enabled safe to safely secure and access everyday items. we use internet-connected smarthome technology. we are positioned for growth being at the intersection of the opioid epidemic and smarthome market. it's easy to set up, takes three minutes. connect to your app and you get realtime security alerts that tells you if anyone tampered with or accessed your safe. it can automatically update itself and you can remotely open the safe from anywhere in the world by an authorized user or customer service. during the first six months of our controlled release, we have over $100,000 in sales and exceptional user feedback. with your help, we could be in every home and office. we are seeking $1 million for marketing and operations in exchange for 15% equity.

thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thanks, mitch! you did it! now you've got to hear what they thought about it. you're not done yet, but you're done with your part. good, good job. >> thank you. >> all right, nesa, let's start with you. >> great job. >> thank you. >> you told me all the information that i needed to know. the only thing you didn't tell me about is whether there are other competitive products on the market, which i'd love to know, but it's hard to get everything in one pitch. so, on the pitch, i gave you an eight, and on the product, i also gave you an eight. >> thank you very much. >> all right, perfect. susie. >> yes. for me, i'll give you an eight on the pitch. i think you missed the price point on sharing what that was. i believe it's $149. so, pretty competitively priced, accessible number. and on the product, i will give you an eight as well. >> what do you hope to get out of ces while you're here? >> recognition. it's the first of its kind. so the hardest thing for a first of its kind product is to get people to know it, so we want

people to touch it, peel it, play with it, understand what it is, what it's for. it's not your traditional safe in the basement that you go to once or twice a year. it's for everyday items and the smarthome connectivity takes over. >> you're saying there's no other iot-enabled safe? >> there's no other wi-fi-enabled safe on market today. >> okay. >> i'm also curious about the opioid epidemic that you were mentioning that this was inspired by. >> the original concept of a form was to fit into a medicine cabinet or bedside drawer, which is where americans keep about 99% of their medication. with the epidemic out there, the diversion of pills, we want people to lock up their drugs and keep it safe from diversion, from kids getting into it, et cetera. that's why we started with this, and it's grown into so much more. >> this is what i was thinking. it's not necessarily for your passports or what have you, but stuff that you do not want your kids to get into. >> security and privacy. >> you're targeting parents. >> parents, roommates, college kids, assisted living. there's a bunch of markets. >> roommates, i didn't each think about that. well, fantastic job. >> thank you very much.

>> great scores. great scores from these potential investors here. good luck with everything. >> thank you. >> and thank you both so much for everything. >> thank you. >> that was great. as was so incredibly clear at ces, the world is changing quickly, and your business needs to keep up in order to stay competitive. a while back, we met one business owner who had to face this head on. he was one of the last men standing in an industry that's been decimated by the internet, brick-and-mortar camera stores. despite the insane levels of online competition, he found a way to keep his customers coming back. >> john is going to be so jealous. >> he is going to be. >> oh, my god. >> oh, my gosh! >> kind of light painting they call it. >> really bad dinner. >> so cool! >> when these amateur photographers get together, they have one thing on their minds, who took the best photos, where, and how they did it. >> i've never done that before, so that's like, oh, so exciting. >> for mark coman, owner of

california-based paul's photo, gatherings like these have been the secret weapon that have kept his small camera shop in business while so many others have had to shut down. >> is everybody having fun? >> i'm having fun. >> good. we're like the "cheers" of camera stores, where everybody knows your name, and we really have a good time, and that's the secret. >> paul's photo isn't run by paul anymore. mark, his son, is now calling the shots. and pulling in the customers and keeping up with the times. if you listen to mark, it's not even a new ball game, it's a completely new business model. >> so, when my dad started, the camera store business was all about consumables -- film, processing, developing. we would see customers on a regular basis. that was the cash flow. that went away with digital. then in 2008-2009, here comes the internet, and retail is struggling. >> without the predictable cash flow of film and processing or the vast product range of the

internet, industry analysts say most of the local camera shops like paul's simply closed up and disappeared. >> we had 17 camera stores, sold them in 1990. today not a single location that we were in has a photographic application. all of them have become something else. >> bill mccurry of princeton-based mccurry associates, is a business adviser to what he calls the imaging industry. he's watched this painful process of extinction play out in large and small towns across the country. >> ten years ago, ritz camera had 1,200 camera stores. today there are 11 operating. economically, you will not survive selling cameras, period, full stop. you need other things. >> other things for mark comon begins with this army of camera buffs who have been inspired by mark's high-energy classroom style. >> how many rookie night lockers do we have? raise your hands. >> tonight, 45 night hawk

students have gathered in the dark. >> one, two, three. not just to shoot pictures of the christmas lights, but to share the excitement of learning from each other as well as getting amazing pictures. >> look at that. look at that, joan. >> oh, wow. >> look at that. >> yeah. >> see? yes, evelyn! great! i love that! >> it's experiential marketing at its best. mark gathers people together, shows them how to have a great time taking pictures, takes them out for drinks afterwards, and they respond by keeping his business in the black. >> i came into it to take a quickie class to learn how to use a camera, ended up in eight weeks buying a whole new camera. >> of course. >> absolutely. so i kind of went to the classes, started doing the homework, kind of took a back corner seat and just got pulled into it. >> what makes this work is that mark's enthusiasm is genuine. >> i like that. look at that. >> and contagious. and it builds a community strong enough to compete with the internet. >> you know, we'll generate

$1,000 worth of revenue tonight, which is okay, but what we're going to do is we're going to get 40 people to have a great experience, and they're going to tell their friends, they're going to post it on facebook, they're going to post it on flicker, they're going to tell all their neighbors, man, i had a great time last night and paul's photo was the place to go. >> mark takes the classes to an olympic sport level. good retailing will create an experience every time you buy something. the u.p.s. man can't create that experience. >> paul's photo is not alone. you can see this ecosystem approach in other retail industries as well. >> you know, my friends who have running stores and bike stores, they offer runs and bike rides. how many nurseries offer the free planting class, right? and what are they doing? they're doing the same thing that we are. if i can get every customer that's within ten miles to buy their camera here and have their pictures printed here, to take a photo class with us, that's

enough for me. i'm not greedy. i'm a smalltime guy in a small, little town, and i love what i do and i like knowing my customers. john, are you okay? in business, just as in life, when we do things is just as important as how to do something. timing affects everything, from when to hold the meeting to giving a presentation or even taking a break from your to-do list. our guest explains how business leaders can master the art of timing. daniel h. pink is a sales guru and the author of six provocative books. his latest is called "when: the scientific secrets of perfect timing." great to see you, daniel. >> thanks for having me, jj. >> this is so true, that timing is everything. so, you have so many great tips in the book, but let's just go through a few of them that leaders can think about. and one that you talk about that i thought was interesting is organize the day based on timing. how do you do that? >> absolutely. well, one of the -- you're right that timing is everything. the problem is that we think timing is an art, when it's actually a science.

there's a rich body of science telling us how to make better when decisions in our life, and it starts at the unit of the day. what we know from some fascinating research is that our day generally proceeds in three chunks. we've got the peak, the trough, and the recovery. the peak is when we should be doing our analytic work, writing reports, auditing. the trough, which is for most people in the early to midafternoon, administrative stuff and filing. the rebound, the recovery, is usually in the late afternoon, early evening. that's when we should do more of our creative work. and what we tend to think in business is that all times are created equal, and the mistake that we're making is that we're focusing on what people do, who they do it with, how they do it, but we're leaving aside this question of when they do it, and it makes a huge difference in people's performance. there is evidence out there that time of day explains about 20% of the difference in performance among people. so, timing in this case isn't everything, but it's a big thing. >> tell me about this one,

manage products using the uh-oh idea. >> oh, my, yes, indeed. so, there's a researcher named connie gersich at yale whose done research on how project teams work. the idea is when a team has a project, they work in a steady, linear way, and she found that videotaping tons of project teams, audio taping them, watching what they actually do and say, that most teams at the beginning of a project do nothing. they tend to start getting going at the exact midpoint of a project. so if a team that has 34 days to do something, they don't really do anything the first 16 days. on day 17, they say, uh-oh, we squandered half of our time, we have got to get going. and so, instead of this steady linear process, you have something that is punctuated. inaction, big punctuation mark, then we get going. so, what bosses can do is they can raise the prominence of midpoints. the other thing we can do at a midpoint, and this is so interesting, we can pretend that

we're a little bit behind. there's research from the national basketball association, the nba, that shows that in general, teams ahead at halftime are more likely to win the game with one exception. teams that are down by one point at halftime are actually more likely to win a game than teams that are up by one point. >> let's talk about working with your employees on their reviews. bad news first. so, you owned a good note, is that why? >> oh, boy. i mean, how many times have you said or heard i've got some good news and some bad news? and when we deliver that, that combo, we often give the good news first. why? it's uncomfortable giving bad news. you don't want to seem like you're a jerk. but what the evidence tells us very clearly from the science of timing is that four to five people prefer getting the bad news first, not the good news first. they want the bad news first and the good news next. why? because given a choice, human beings prefer endings that elevate. we prefer rising sequences to declining sequences.

so, this piece of evidence has changed how i do things. i was mr. good news-bad news. now i'm the king of beginning with really, really, really bad news. i love delivering bad news straight out of the delivering straight out of the gate. >> that intuitively makes sense. that goes into this next point too which is interaction with a customer, always end on something positive. i've read studies who talk about how customers feel about a company even if they had the worst discussion in customer service. as long as it ends positively, they feel okay with the company. >> there is fascinating research to this. just in general how any kind of experience ends dramatically shapes our memory and impression of it. you can see this in yelp reviews of restaurants. just pull up yelp reviews and you will see a huge portion evaluate the entire experience based on what happened at the end. hey, they gave me a free dese .

dessert. hey, they made a mistake and they were jerks about it. focus on the endings. this is true not only in retail where some clerk walk out from behind the counter and hand it to you. this is true in service businesses as well. when you're ending a project, do something to commemorate it. do something to end it on an upswing. your client is going to remember the entirety of the project with greater appreciation. >> we can only go through a few, but everyone should go out and get your book when. so good to see you. >> thank you, j.j. >> even if your business is doing well, poor money management can drive it into the ground. leaders need to ensure there is enough to the bank to cover unexpected costs or reduce sales. here are five ways to improve your cash flow. one, increase your prices. if your cost of operations

hasn't increased, raising prices will have an immediate effect. two, encourage your employees to upsell and cross-sell. restaurants are great at getting customers to spepbtd more for value meals, premium drinks and side dishes. work to develop special bundles for your best customers. three, redid your inventory. conventional wisdom says for most businesses 80% of profits come from 20% of their products. take a look at your best and worst sellers and develop a plan to offload the goods tying up capital and not moving. four, try a crowd funding campaign. if you have a project or a product you want to start, go to sights like go fund me and you can receive money from a wide range of people in a short amount of time. five, go through your credit

card statement. chances are you are probably paying for a service you don't even use anymore that is simply automatically renews every year. >> when we come back, what you need to do to keep your marketing message consistent and how to target bigger highe higher-paying clients. 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! we help all types of businesses with money, tools and know-how to get business done. american express open.

how did you manage consistent marketing messaging in a global economy? >> creating a global marketing message that's consistent is really all about finding partners that share your long-term view of your brand. there are a lot of global partners out there that really just want short-term growth. they may not want the same message you have and may think short-term. make sure you are vetting your partners, making sure they have a long term view of your brand and having realistic growth expectations for yourself, making sure everything you put out there is consistent across the world. >> we now have the top two tips you need to know to help grow your business. let's introduce our panel and get their advice. a social content analytics

company ceo and senior small business columnist at "usa today". and the founder and ceo of selfemployed.com. great to see. >> you great to be back. >> tonya, you are coming off a key note speech to a whole bunch of businesses. tell us one thing to help grow your business. >> focus on being the only rather than the best. being the best can be incredibly subjective. and it can change over time. so really doubling down on those capabilities, technology or services that just your company can provide. as long as that's important to your customer, it means they have to do business with you, which is a huge competitive advantage. >> how do you become the only? so many companies are doing the same thing. is it the only in a broad scope only or i do this one particular thing within this broad business i have. >> i'll give you an example. so we do a ton of things across social media analytics. we track absolutely every

business in the world and have is historical data five years. if that matters to a customer, they have to do business with us. all the other things are important, but it really comes down to the one or two things that just you do. >> what happens when somebody copies you and you're not the only anymore? >> you need to be thinking ahead. you always need to think about where the puck is going. you can't sit on your laurels and congratulate yourself. you have to always think about what's next. >> for a day. steve, what are you writing about these days? >> good tip. i like that one. here's what i think. if you want to grow your business, one thing you can do is target bigger and better clients and customers. so often my small business brothers and sisters target other small businesses or individuals. what's great about big clients, meaning corporations, governments, they have bigger needs. the thing about companies with bigger needs, they have bigger budgets. if you establish yourself as someone who can go out and get

corporate government contracts, procurement, that kind of thing, you're going to be able to grow your business and maybe even work a little less. >> what do you do to get that first? what is holding them back? confidence, connections? what's keeping them from getting that? >> there's two ways. one is outreach. finding companies that most likely would be needing services like your competitors, who do they work with? you want to look for procurement officers, vps in your industry. and that industry, that kind of thing. let me give you an example. i have a friend who sells real estate in los angeles. for many years, he sold single-family homes, made a ton of money. he was happy until it didn't work. the real estate market crashed and he didn't know what to do. his mentor said look at commercial real estate. for the same amount of time you sell a single-family home you can sell a six-unit apartment

house and make the same amount of money. he pitched himself, marketed himself and he started getting more commercial work, and it worked for him. we can do that kind of thing for our businesses as well. >> so look at a broader horizon. >> and bigger client base. >> great to see both of you, as always. >> thank you. >> thank you. this week's your biz selfie is kenneth beache from metric environmental in indianapolis. they help clients minimize the environmental impact of their businesses. now why don't you pick up your smartphone and take a selfie. no professional shots, please. and send it to us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. use the #yourbizselfie.

thank you so much for joining us today. we would love to hear from you. if you have any questions or comments, just want to say hi, e-mail us at yourbusiness@msnbc.com. or you can also go to our website. openforum.com/yourbusiness. we posted all the segments from today's show plus a lot more. and we put out more things every single day on 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? i don't like it. oh. nuh uh. yeah. ahhhhh. mm-mm. oh. yeah. ah. agh. d-d-d... no. hmmm. uh... huh. yeah. uh... huh. in business, there are a lot of ways to say no.

thank you so much. thank you. so we're doing it. yes. start saying yes to your company's best ideas. we help all types of businesses with money, tools and know-how to get business done. american express open. our business. ♪ ♪ morning glory, america. i'm hugh hewitt. while much of america's business and political elite is in davos, here on msnbc following developments in the russia probe and the exploding fbi and doj controversies. after the week opened with the collapse of the schumer shutdown, a huge win for donald trump and mitch mcconnell and great shock to the democratic base about the lack of resolve among senate leadership, the news quickly turned to the continuing eruption of economic good news for workers and companies across the united states, as well as the surprising emergence of the