good morning. coming up on msnbc's your is business a radical philosophy helps create feedback and collaboration. how upcoming changes at facebook could affect your business, and new companies cashing in on legal cannabis trend. let's grow fast and work smart. that's all coming up next on "your business." hi, everyone. i'm j.j. ramberg, welcome to

your business, the show helping you grow your business. doesn't matter if you're a managing or employee, just about everyone dreads employment review. radical candor, former google executive kim scott. it completely changes the way we give and when we give feedback. it can have a big effect on both the culture of your company and ultimately the bottom line. either a moment seared in kim scott's memory. she was an up and coming silicon valley executive working at google. she had just finished what she thought was a killer presentation for co-founder and then ceo eric schmidt when her boss sheryl sandberg pulled her aside for a chat. i thought, oh, boy, maybe i screwed something up. maybe i didn't nail it like i thought i did. cheryl started the conversation telling me about things that had

gone well in the meeting. of course, what i wanted to hear was what i did wrong. she said, you said um walking fr 15 years with a hunk of spinach in my teach and nobody told me. >> it was a dose of clarity that helped a management style called

radical candor. she would later write "lean sin" leadership, humanity and directness. aimed at making kim be better at her job and a better boss to the team she was leading. >> very often people treat their bosses like tyrants to be toppled. they treat their peers like enemy combatants, employees like pawns on a chess board. that's kind of what happens when you're just professionalened not seeing the people you work with as fellow human beings. being professional can be dangerous because it leads to apathy. so at the very least you want to give a damn about the people you work with. >> kim created a simple two by two grid to explain the philosophy she explores in her mood "radical candor, be a kick ass boss without losing humanity." you need to blend two things caring personally and

challenging directly. >> a really important part of radical candor is being willing to bring your whole self to work, be more than just professional. you've got to bring it to work. that's part of it. >> how do you know the balance between what some may say is professional and others may say personal at work. where do you strike the balance? >> the balance gets measured at the other person's ear. you don't want to be creepily personal but you want to take a moment to care about the other person as a human being. that's kind of the care personally dimension. >> and then there's the other side of the equation. challenge directly. >> unfortunately the beatles got it wrong. love isn't all you need. you need challenge directly. colin powell said leadership is often about being willing to piss people off. this is willing to piss people

off. you get told, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all. now all of a sudden you've become a boss and it's your job to say it. figuring out how to be willing to say the thing that might upset the other person because they need to hear it, because you hear about them, is the essence of radical candor. >> if you miss the mark you veer into three danger areas. obnoxious aggression, insincert. >> what happens when you care too much. >> the bottom quad ront, aggression. we are all occasionally jerks where we're so focused on criticizing something or fixing a problem that we forget to take a second to show we care about the person. that's obnoxious aggression. >> what are the other three. >> when you fail on both dimensions at the same time, and we all do, i call it

manipulative insincerity. when you nets show you care nor challenge directly that's manipulative insincerity, passive aggressive behavior, also the self-protective quadrant. i'm really busy, really mad. i just don't have time to deal with this. i'm going to shut my door. >> it may work in the short-term. >> it's not going to work in the long run. you your self will be miserable if you hang out too long in manipulative insincerity or obnoxious aggression. it's bad for your team and bad for you. >> what if you care too much? >> when you care so much that you're reluctant and unwilling to challenge directly i call that ruinous empathy. that's the bigges mistake. 85% of the time that's the mistake you make, at work and also frankly at home is being so concerned about the other person's feelings that we're unwilling to tell them something they could fix easily if we just

told them that it was a problem. >> the goal of this philosophy is to balance all of these elements and deliver praise and criticism through the prism of radical candor. to see kim's ideas in action we decided to visit evernote, a company built on helping you organize your life. ceo chris o'neil has adapted radical candor framework and is helping his team learn how to put it into action with a workshop that helps them to give and receive radically candid feedback. >> i care about people, that's easy access but being direct part doesn't come naturally to people. you need to create conditions to make it okay. >> i understand the sense of urgency. i appreciate you letting me know, because i had no idea. >> set the expectation and bring it into the open to make sure people feel comfortable giving feedback. it's definitely a journey for me and a journey at evernote as

well. >> facebook recently announced its news feed algorithm is getting a huge makeover, and that means big changes to business as usual. keenan beasley co-founder of black box, marketing technology, updates and what you need to know to stay on top of your brand's facebook game. thank you for coming and doing this for us. before we get into what you need to do, tell us what's changing? >> so essentially facebook has made a switch on prioritizing personal content. they really want to see things building connections between people. they are focusing on what you see from your family and friends. that's a big shift, because we've been seeing our news feeds dominated by media and news outlets. so it's a huge shift in the marketplace. >> okay. so if i am a company, and i've been getting a lot of my traffic from ads i'm buying at facebook, on facebook, how is that going

to affect me. >> what's going to happen now, less ad inventory. essentially what you'll see is the cost of those ads will go up. that's going to be a huge shift on the financial impact on a business owner. >> right. so if you're getting a positive roi on ads now, perhaps you're not going to in the future. >> correct. it could slide down. i think it's key to focus on making sure you have really relevant content going out in that marketplace. i'd encourage every business owner double down on high quality content. >> this is content that people are getting naturally from me versus paid ads. >> correct. >> tell me the difference -- talk to me about the difference in those things, where i should be focusing. >> two things to look at, organic reach, which is really the ads -- content you post on your page that viewers get to see naturally. you've spent a lot of time building up a following base and you're posting content for them.

>> does that get pushed down. >> that gets pushed down as well. >> hit on both sides. more expensive, less ad inventory and organic content will fall below friends and family. >> correct. correct. >> so, what should i do? i'm a company who has relied so much on facebook to get the word out, where do i put my money now and where do i put my effort, right? the effort on the organic side and the money on the outside. >> in the ad side there's no change in facebook business manager. what you have to look at is the cost of ads. that's something you need to watch financially as you're running your business. as you have less inventory, then you need to really think about, okay, how do i improve my roi or maintain that roi i have before. the big thing making sure you're targeting and reaching the audience and giving something quite shareable. you still want to move beyond the paid piece. you want to use paid as stimulus

for more content you need to make sure you have best quality content that's going to engage with your audience. i think what facebook is doing is shifting things toward video. the big thing is you're creating content. think about the video content you produce and leverage live ads. >> so if i have video content, in my organic reach, you think that will come higher. >> it will slide you slightly higher in the algorithm. >> what about influencers? there's been so much talk about influencer marketing. instead of you liking my page to stay j.j.'s coffeehouse or j.j.'s coffee, if i have now gotten an influencer to like it and that influencer is your friend, that content will still come high, right? >> absolutely. influencers have an advantage in this marketplace. i think with this new shift mark zuckerberg rolled out their power is slightly higher now. they are seen as friends, not

businesses, personalities that have done a great job engaging with an audience. it's smart for business to leverage that influence they have over their consumer base. i would expect to see a lot more brands focusing on using the right influencers to reach the audiences that are needed for their business. >> interesting. but if you pay the influencer, the influencer needs to disclose that. does that content then fall lower down? >> we haven't seen that yet. >> okay. >> this is all pretty new. social is still new in the advertising space. so the regulation isn't as strong as we see in tv or some older blogs. >> so look, the whole thing about algorithms, we see this in google and now facebook, they are trying to get content to people that people want. so it all comes down to do you have good content that people want? >> absolutely. >> thank you so much. i appreciate you coming and explaining all this to us. >> absolutely. thank you. despite a threat from the federal government to crack down

on pot businesses, more states are legalizing marijuana. vermont legalized recreational use on the heels of california's decision to do so. this is spurring creation of new businesses around cannabis. nbc's jacob soboroff with more. >> with cannabis legalized in california, businesses are springing up to do a lot more than just sell people weed to smoke. >> usually 1 to 200 drivers. >> one of pot businesses hoping california's move from medical to recreational pot will pay off. >> download our app and you're able to shop and delivery driver will arrive on average 20 to 30 minutes. >> what did you do before? >> ups. >> i just noticed talking across the street ups delivery truck. there's two of them right there. do you see a day when there's delivery trucks of that size driving around state of california. >> definitely.

definitely. >> scott peabody and monica low operate a cannabis catering business from her house. >> this the crushed cannabis i have put in there. it's been simmering in here for about four hours already. >> the amount you use just depends on how high you want to get? >> yup. >> monica and scott hope to capitalize on legalized pot and foodies. >> in california so much focus on food, i think we'll see tons of cannabis related cuisine. >> if you want to incorporate it into your daily life, it should extend to more healthy options. >> are we going to see jamba juice with cannabis. >> i would love that. >> hoping selling it means making it, too. >> we speak about intellectual property. two businesses on the west coast accused of violating another company's ip, though they had no intention to do so. they eecach received cease and

desist. here is a story on how they almost lost everything. santa cruz is a northern california beach town with a reputation for great surfing. catching the waves here is so popular that the locals call their town surf city. >> you look around town, you see surf city barber shops, surf city cafe, surf city everywhere. >> bruce knonoland is the third generation on the wharf which has been serving businesses for 50 years. a year ago he dashed off a t-shirt design he hoped would catch on big time. >> we moved around some letters, this looks good surf city santa cruz. >> soon after it went on sale it caught the attention of a rival surfing community 400 miles to the south. bruce's mother and co-owner got an upsetting notice. >> she came to us with a letter

she received from lawyers representing the huntington beach convention bureau. she wasn't sure what the letter was about. >> the letter threatening litigation claimed huntington beach, california, also a popular surfing town owned surf city usa. at the visitors bureau christina glyn helps local businesses. >> we sat down in the conference room, read the letter. it was actually a cease and desist letter asking her to cease selling t-shirts with the logo santa cruz surf city usa. >> with this notice we demand on or before friday september 6th, you must agree to cease selling or any other manner using serve city usa marks. so what that's saying in flan english unless you cease and desist immediately we're going to sue you. >> an intellectual property

attorney and partner in silicon valley. he's a santa cruz resident and surf. >> i was outraged someone could claim trademark to surf city usa. >> trademarks like coca-cola or exxon are used to identify a brand. they can be registered with the government and protected by law. >> bruce innocently thought a great t-shirt would be surf city santa cruz, california, usa. unbeknownst to him somebody else claimed to have trademark rights. my mom was freaking out, she thought she would lose the business, her house, swimming pool. she was frightened at her age she could lose everything. so was i a little bit. >> when big organizations take on small mom and pops like the nolands, the cost of fighting back isn't worth it. when ted offered legal as far as force free that allowed them to fight back. the result, a compromise

agreement. >> move usa half inch and plug in original below it now we're original surf city usa. >> so my reaction when i got this letter was that this isn't real. >> i was kind of like, yeah, got to be a joke. >> michelle and elias from portland, oregon, received their own cease and desist letter. >> of a letter from united states olympic committee to not use the name anymore. come to the attention you're operating restaurants under the name olympic provision. however we request you ultimately discontinue unauthorized use of the federally protected mark olympic. we came up with that name because we were in the olympic mills building, an old cereal mill building. >> in the northwest there's tons of companies with the name. >> you don't own the word olympic. if anyone owns it, the greeks own it. how do you own olympic. >> we were baffled.

initially we figured there was a way around it. >> i had called my taken and, you know, we might not deal wit. he said you do realize they can come and seize all your profits from prior years and your assets. i was like, okay, that's out of the question then. then i was like, we'll fight it. then my attorney informed me that no one has ever to date been successful. these are people with a lot more money than our company have tried to fight this and not won. the chances are too slim. >> at this point the brother an sister team had to decide if they wanted to challenge the u.s. olympic committee and risk even greater losses or back down and accept the high cost of changing their name. >> we're looking probably around 65, 75,000 just in that. >> that's just the start of what it cost them to change the name from olympic provisions to olympia provisions. >> i hate even thinking about it. >> then there's various cost connected with changing the website. >> you don't have that history on that do maybe name, it drops

you down in ranking. if you're not at the top of the list, it definitely takes a hit in sales. i really felt like i was doing it the right way. we had an attorney do a the right way. we had an attorney do the name search, an attorney do the llc. and then to find out we weren't. i consider myself a fairly intelligent person, and i missed this. >> we have a very exciting announcement. we're offering five people the chance to come on the program and give an elevator pitch in front of two buyers from hsn. they're going to judge the pitches and they will vote on who will be invited to pitch their product live on hsn's monday night show, american dreams. that means you could get your product in front of the hsn audience who are ready to buy. send us an e-mail to yourbusiness@msnbc.com. include a short summary about your product and why you think it is a good fit for hsn. we look forward to seeing those

pitches. >> still to come, how to find and hire a ceo who will take your company to the next level. and our brain trust tackles the tricky issue of staying on brand. 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. ♪

>> this e-mail comes from sharon. she says we have a staff of over 30 and deliver balloons for every occasion and decorate for both private and corporate firms. how do i hire a ceo to really bring order to our back end and even franchise? >> so, sharon, listen, if you're a small business, which it sounds like you are, hiring a ceo is a huge decision. it's going to take a huge amount of money and resource to do the job right. so here's my advice to you. i would be looking for a part-time ceo to come on in and offer you some advice. first place i would reach out to is an organization like score. you might want to try your small business development center. they can connect you to people in your area with management or even ceo experience that can come in and work with you so you can figure out what you want the ceo to do, what their roles and tasks are and what kind of value a ceo can bring to your company. once you get comfortable with

working with somebody part-time, you may want to bring the person on full time or look for someone else after that. at least you will have a much better idea the type of person you're looking for. start slow. it is a huge investment that will take a lot of resources. if you make the wrong investment or decision, it could be a big problem for you. now it is is time for brain trust. we get to look at some of the hard decisions you have to make in business and find out what people did to make those things happen. we have christiane lemieux. it is a major order, direct-to-consumer furniture company. >> it is is. >> you were the founder of dwell, dwell studio, which you sold to wayfair successfully. congratulation stpwhrs thank you. >> and the founder and ceo of tough mudder. it is incredible. now look at you. so i wanted to put you two together because you both built

brands that had obsessive customers. people are obsessed with you guys. and i want to know about a time when you could have had an easy win revenuewise but maybe it would have gone off brand. because i know that is a hard decision to make. >> i think it's very hard as an entrepreneur. it's something that i call shiny object syndrome. you get these things that come at you from all over the place that seem shiny and worthwhile. but when you start to dig into it, you realize it will jeopardize your brand. many times people came to me with offers to do diffusion lines. when you really get to it, most of the time it was the service of the other company coming to partner with us. a lot of times it would be easy revenue and sort of a low lift thing to do from a kind of company standpoint. but at the end of the day it would have eroded the brand in ways that would have not felt

authentic to the people that loved it. i thought about that every time i made a decision, putting it into the lens of the authenticity of the brand. does it feel like the person that i am in this journey with -- would it be interesting. would they feel it was authentic, and something that is core to what we do. >> that sounds good. it has worked for both of you. but in the moment saying, okay, here's a revenue stream. >> yes. >> right? and i'm going to be giving up the revenue and picking the risk that my being married to the brand is actually going to work in the end. >> i remember our first event we were looking to get media around it. we went out to l.a. and went to tv production companies. we are going to make a tv show around tough mudder. it became clear we weren't aligned.

20,000 people have the logo tattooed on them. if that doesn't talk about brand engagement, i don't know what does. the tv shows that are moved of competitors who are participants look like idiots. but it is popular as well. we will be able to track the sponsors. i'm very glad we didn't do it because i'm not sure we would be in business today. it was a tough decision. >> what are the things you ask yourself, that people out there can ask themselves. someone comes to you with an amazing opportunity. you know there is guaranteed revenue. your business is going to grow versus a slower rise for your business. what do you ask yourself when this opportunity comes? >> it is like playing the chess board ten moves forward. what the ultimate young going to be? is the short-term gain going to be long-term erosionment i would ask if i diffuse today and use

this dollar and do this deal, what will it mean for the brand i've created. the brand we created up here would erode very quickly and sort of drop down to a place that's really difficult to recover from. so i think in a lot of ways, especially when it's brands, slow and steady and really considering every option is kind of a long-term journey. >> okay. how do you get yourself to believe in slow and steady. >> it's tricky, right because we're all told to consistently grow. slow growth is boring and dull. but long term there is a clear mission. it is something we always try to come back to. growing a global tribe that lifts the team and camaraderie and personal encouragement. via media, training, we say is this consistent with the mission

of the company. is it helping us to achieve those goals. there are many things we could be doing with the brand. how can we serve that purpose? >> will and choiskand christian you for coming on. we really appreciate it. >> thank you. this week's your biz selfie is from pamela webster of mobile, alabama. they own righteous shoes and apparel along with clothing, they sell apparel for clergy and religious books and other gifts. 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. include your name, the name of the business. thank you so much for joining us today. we would love to hear from you. if you have any questions or

comments or anything to say to us 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 are posting even more content 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. remember, we make your business our business. 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. ♪ morning glory, america. i'm hugh hewitt. all eyes have been reading and all reporters and pundits analyzing the house intelligence committee memo. that's of course my focus this morning. by way of background, i proceed with caution. my first guest was a special assistant to edwin meece in charge of reviewing applications. in those days, the fbi's