these houses! yes, yes and yes. and don't forget about them. uh huh, sure. still yes! xfinity delivers gig speed to more homes than anyone. now you can get it, too. welcome to the party. good morning, everyone. coming up on msnbc's "your business." mystery shopping in the digital age. i go undercover to help a greeting card acquire customers. and why you need to think of yourself as a technology company no matter what it is you sell. and kohler' ceo dave kohler on the dangers of becoming insulated and how to always look for new opportunities. we have your back with information to help you grow fast and work smart. that's all coming up next on "your business." >> "your business" is sponsored by american express open, helping you get business done.

hi there, everyone. i'm jj ramberg. and welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to helping you grow your business. picture this, an army of people going to stores around the country to let you know how you're doing as a company. checking out your product displays if you're a manufacturer, evaluating your sales people if you're a e are tailer, giving you realtime information. that's what the app moby sets up and i recently downloaded it and went on a secret shopping mission for a greeting company called love pop using the technology to give them an edge over the competition. ♪ it's a wednesday afternoon and i've left my office at nbc to go on a mission. i've signed up with a secret shopping app called mobee and smartphone in hand, i'm heading to zitamer, a madison avenue department store and pharmacy in

new york city. i wanted to see how this worked so i became a mobee bee and now i'm on a mission. i've got to go find some greeting cards from a company called love pop. love pop is working with a company wiser solutions, the brains behind mobee. for my time, iron points to convert into a gift card. and love pop gets fast, affordable, realtime data that can give their business a competitive edge. >> we have some of the largest brands and largest retailers as customers, but we also have a large number of what i call the up and comer brands. so love pop is a great example. a local brand that wanted to move from specialty retail into the mass market and we're helping them get insight into what is happening in a broad range of stores across the country, which is something they wouldn't be able to do on their own. >> love pop's innovative approach to the greeting card industry is obvious the minute you see their product.

>> when you open a love pop, the first reaction is, wow, how do you make this? how does this work? and then you start looking at all the little details and appreciate what we've put into that in terms of the craftsman ship. >> since they launched in 2014, technology has been a cornerstone of lovepop's business. from the laser cutting machines they use to create the intricate designs, lovepop is shaking things up with a totally new approach to the well-established greeting card business. >> the greeting card industry is a $7 billion industry that is about 100 years old and has two major players. and we feel that it's really kind of lost its magic and is no longer as special as it once was. we are completely reinventing that with a different form factor, a different business model, a different way to speak to our customers. >> the mobee app has given me very specific instructions of what to do. once i complete one task, it moves me onto the next.

take a photo of the display. got it. next. and the most critical part of the task for the folks at lovepop is checking on the condition of the cards. >> we think about ourselves not just as a card but a small gift. and part of that is the experience of opening a lovepop and seeing what is hidden inside. that is really hard to show in a retail environment. and there is a lot of damage. so there's a lot of work that goes into making sure that a lovepop display out in the wild is in good shape. >> and that's where i come in. are there any sample lovepop cards on the display that are damaged in any way. here are the samples. these cards are beautiful, by the way. they are so cool. also they should get taller people to do the missions. because i'm having to stand on my toes to look at these. but i don't see any that are damaged. everything looks great.

okay. so, no, nothing is damaged. a small fish in a large pond, lovepop is using the immediate insight people like me are giving them as a competitive advantage. they're getting near realtime information on everything from inventory, quality control and whether or not new product releases like the new "game of throne" cards are out on display. now i have to ask a sales associate if they have the lovepop "game of thrones" cards, which i would buy if they have one. do you by any chance have the lovepop "game of thrones" cards. >> we do have one. the green one. that's the dragon. >> oh, that's so cool. for any "game of thrones" fans. i feel like this is good customer acquisition, also, because i'm going to buy one. the answer is yes. >> what mobee has allowed us to do is understand what's happening in the store in a way that we were never able to before. we're able to see what the display looks like in the store,

we're able to see what products they're showing prominently, what products are not shown as prominently. we're able to know where the display is in the store. we're able to see a lot of information that is otherwise very tricky to get. >> until recently, secret shoppers were trained and deployed to collect this sort of data with pen and paper. >> oftentimes you would see them up front with a clipboard and pen with no phone, no photographs, etc. it got the job done, yet the delivery of the data took weeks or months. there was no photographs. the data was instruction and needed to be transcribed into a database, it was not searchable, more importantly, it was not actionable. >> the ability of the technology is the ability to level the playing field so smaller companies can now compete with larger ones, collecting realtime data, customized and relevant to them at almost any point in time by mobilizing this enthusiastic crowd of users. >> so most of your large brands will have a merchandising

company that helps them in store, stocking shelves, making sure inventory levels are appropriate, changing prices, etc. the small brands don't have the ability to bring in a large scale merchandising company. so they're largely on their own. so really, eyes and ears inside the store to help them recognize and identify when they need to take action in the store. >> the last thing i have is, did i encounter any issues that made this mission difficult? i didn't. photos uploaded. the answers verified. i'm done. i just got some points. landing big orders can be a dream come true for many business owners, but as easily as those big orders can come, they can also go. the owner of a virginia printing company was left reeling when his larger clients took a step back because they were tight on cash. it was a major hit. and he had to rethink everything. starting with a refocus on smaller clients who kept his company afloat. ♪

>> i wouldn't have a business. to save my business. >> chip says clients like rebecca and jop have made the business the success it was today. the owner of we think in ink in virginia know small business owners need to be flexible with their spending. >> when you are an entrepreneur, your reaction time to market changes is fairly crucial. being able to respond quickly is everything. >> what we have today may be great for today but in five months as our business evolves and changes, that needs to be able to change with us. >> rebecca, the owner of rba options online and jop, the owner of old mechanical, don't want to waste money on printed materials like brochures or business cards. >> as a start-up, capital and cash is important. it can make the difference

between us doing a job and not being able to do a job. >> you are susceptible to busier seasons and slow seasons and downswings and upswings in the economy. >> that's why chip made it his mission to help. >> we are commercial printers who specialize in doing short-runs for customers that are in sort of a growth mode. >> chip knows all too well what it is like to walk in their shoes. >> we are talking about a small ma and pa businesses like mine. little companies that are trying to grow and don't have a lot of cash. >> chip encourages clients like rebecca and jacques to place small orders as often adds they like. >> imagine if you are the customer and your printer comes in and says, why are you ordering so many? you don't need to. i'll give you the same price, instead of buying 500 or 1,000, then when something changes, we can print you more. >> we think in ink used to take large orders all the time, but in 2008 customers disappeared and chip knew he needed to make a change.

even though chip had been doing smaller runs all along, the light bulb finally went off. >> they loved it. it was not hard to sell. >> he actively pursued more b2b relationships in order to save his company. his message was clear. >> why buy so many? you don't need that many. you're going to buy just a few. >> rebecca knows chip is always willing to help no matter the size of her order. >> fi called chip and said, i need 36 of this, because i have 36 attorneys that i want to mail this too. he would be like, okay, i don't have to order 50. i can scale it proportionate to my project. >> ordering small is something most clients never think about, so chip had to change a mindset to get business owners to reconsider owning big. jacques says tchip's prices is part of what he needs. >> it's not just smaller rungs but competitive pricing that works for us. >> this model also gives

flexibility. if urgent requests come in, the staff can handle them. >> when i've got 20 orders in the shop and somebody comes in with a unique need they have to have it by 3:00, i can butt in line and it doesn't hurt anything because it only takes 20 minutes. if you're running all big orders and butt in line, you can throw someone off by days. >> jacques like many customers sought chip's advice for ways to grow his company. >> i'm not a marketing person. i'm not an advertising guy. i need someone to help us design those products. and that is where they are great. >> even though competitors have taken notice of chip's strategy, other printers in the area haven't really followed suit. >> they think i'm crazy. that's fine. >> smaller orders have benefited we think in ink, but they have created little more work, too. >> it is harder to do because 12 orders to make up 5,000 for the year means 12 invoices. and collecting the money 12 times and depositing it 12 times, et cetera, etc. so from that perspective, it's a little more challenging. >> but in tend, it's worth the

hassle. chip says these small orders have meant big business for now and the future. >> instead of trying to reinvent who you are, figure out who you are and tell the world about it. package it so that it makes sense. we really didn't change what we do, we just changed a little bit how we do it. we changed the message. and it was really fun. to future-proof your business, you have to be focused on technology even if you don't think of yourself as a tech company. a lot of people are scared thinking, how am i going to survive in the future? well, you can do it, you just have to be aware. we have aaron shapiro here, founder and ceo of huge, an agency focused on digital transformation and marketing. so good to see you. >> thank you for having me, jj. >> you consult fortune 3500 companies, right? we think that the companies have it down, they know how to deal with technology now and the digital future because they've got so much money. >> you would be surprised, jj. a lot of big companies are scared about the future.

they have been built up over decades of doing one thing really well and guess what? the world has changed and now they have to rethink the entire business. >> the world is changing so fast. >> so fast. >> when we think about hour business and how our business works with technology. let's just talk about consumer facing businesses for a second, how do you think about transforming your business to a digital experience? >> the first thing is to think about your users and solve their problems. think about uber, for example, you can always raise your hand and get a taxi and pick up the phone and dispatch. they made it easier by making it a click of a button. if your service is as easy as a click of a button, you're going to win. >> it is almost distilling everything down to that one problem. >> that's the whole thing companies have to do, how to make service super simple, focus on solving problems and make it idiot-proof to do business with you. >> there are flower companies out there, flower delivery companies that just make it easy. they are attached to my address

book. i want this flower and it gets there on the app. the service is actually no different than what i was using before, but the process of getting that service is much easier. >> and that's the secret to the modern technology. if you think about that example, what a lot of the companies do is use data. the future of the internet is about data and machine learning and think about the idea that the company has all your information and send you offers right before they know it's your birthday or you're going to get flowers for your special loved one. that's the secret. >> let's dig into the data and machine learning. data everyone knows massachusetts sheen learning is a big scary word for a lot of people. >> the sigh borgs are going to come take over the world, right? >> i have a medium-sized company, how should i be thinking about machine learning when it comes to my company? >> there are two ways to think about machine learning. the first is voice interfaces. over the holiday season, 30 million alexa devices were sod. that means that more and more people are going to communicate with your company through voice. just like nowadays everyone uses

an app. and a.i. is a fancy way to say computers can learn from the data you have to provide better services. for example, under armour has a fitness app. when you use the fitness app, it will recommend the perfect year to improve your athletic performance. you can create the personalized experiences. >> that's the way to think about it, just taking the data and then creating experiences or whatever it is for your users. so you should be collecting this data. >> that's right. collect, collect, collect, that's the internet sbchlt but -- >> but it becomes overbearing to parse through it and use it in a way that may or may not help you by uber targeting the people. >> it can become overbearing, but a lot of small companies do this. for example, my mom is a dentist out in ohio. and she is the last person to be internet savvy, but literally 90% of her customers come over the internet. he's able to do things like search opt mization, make sure

people get reminders that it is their six-month check-in. if my mom can do it, anyone can be successful in using the web to drive growth. >> and we talked about this in the intro, you have to think about yourself as a tech company, even if you think you are doing nothing with technology. >> like it or not, amazon and google are your biggest friends and biggest enemies. you're a software company whether you like it or not and organize your business that way. thinking about everything through a digital first mentality. most companies, the first place they interact with you is on the internet. if that is not front and center with your business, you won't be successful. >> you need to be thinking, do i come up first when i search an organization. if someone searches for coffee cups, am i working in the way that the amazon algorithm notices me and puts me up higher. >> higher software developers make i.t., not the guys in the corner, but this will grow the strategy. >> thank you so much. this was great. absolutely. thank you.

and even if you have an open door policy, it can be hard to connect with your staff on a personal level. so here are five ways to build a stronger relationship with your team. one, use technology to connect. encourage your employees to friend you on all of your work-appropriate social media accounts and allow them to text, call or e-mail you directly with anything questions or concerns. two, answer every correspondence. it's not enough to just give your employees your e-mail address, you have to get back to them to avoid coming off as distant or unconcerned. three, offer profit sharing. this gets everyone on the same page and also gets them to be able to share in the rewards if things go well. four, prioritize quality time. you need plenty of facetime with your employees to build a relationship with them. so carve out time to give them formal feedback but also time to have fun. and five, give them ample time off. work stress can lead to burnout

and bring out the worst in everyone. so make sure the people not only have time off but actually take it. when we come back, your company is growing fast. so how do you maintain its culture? and do not sink your business. kohler's ceo dave kohler on why design and trust will keep your business above water. sponsored by american express open, helping you turn your ideas into reality with money and know-how so you can get business done. 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. we're very focused on keeping a good culture in our company. and as we grow rapidly, how do you maintain that small company feel while you're growing at such a rapid pace? >> that is a fantastic question. and my advice is to be totally uncompromising in your hiring filter when it comes to finding people who really resonate with your company values and mission. if that person's going to be managing other people, they're going to be really responsible for just safeguarding that mission and value, so that is the one thing you can't compromise on. if you have ever looked at buying a new kitchen faucet or bathtub, there is a good chance that you have seen the name kohler, best known for the plumbing products, kohler is a

leading manufacturing company since it was founded back in 1873. we sat down with fourth-generation president and ceo david kohler at the company headquarters in the town they helped put on the map, kohler, wisconsin. tells us why everyth starts and ends with designs and isolation is never a good thing in this "learning from the pros." >> it is amazing when you look at products how much has not changed and how much has really changed over the years. one thing is true when you think of the interprnet of things, yo think of how fast technology is moving. you have to change the speed of development and working with other partners to make sure that you can continue to drive development and innovation ahead of the markets. we are looking not just of next year but five years out, ten

years out because that's the only way we can really drive advance development around the technologies and the products we need for the future. we had electronic products in our line for over a decade. this is our first year at cvs because we want to go with the main stage where tech companies were playing. we really see an inflection point of all industry around driving and merging technology into existing products and platforms. there is always a danger for ceos or any leaders to get isolated continue to be told what they want to hear and it is really best to get energy and ideas on the front lines as well as in the market with customers. i spend a lot of my time on the front line in markets and visiting with our team members understanding what we can do better as a company and well,

that gives me the fuel and energy and drive to come back and help make a company better. everything is about design and differentiation. an organization is about design, how you design your organization to succeed, a product is about design. your business is about design, you can see what's important in a company by how high spend your time. you always have to be careful that you are not creating bureaucracy or slowing things down. you have to manage that. the things that are truly important to the business to that success and credibility, we all need to make sure we are spending plenty of time in the details on those things and design is one of those. we are not going to take anything to market that we don't believe it is unique, special, and really reflect our brands. being in a family business, one of the things that's most

important are those relationships. i have two sisters that were closely with me and on the board of directors. we had to spend a lot of time building a relationship with trust but did not exists at the beginning. we respect each other's strengths and differences and we come together in the toughest times and can work together. that's the most important foundation. you cannot collectively own and store a company if you don't have a solid under pending relationship and trust. there is an incredible opportunity to innovate in t areas, we are still innovating sinks and toilets today. you can make anything smart and different here. our plumbing industry was seen in the 20s or 30s is more of a

commodity industry and i credit my father and their generation of leadership taking this industry and turns it into a fashion design industry. anything can make into a different product and unique product. that's a challenge to find that opportunity. we now have the top two tips you need to know. katrina, the founder of ceo of bosier chocolate. we met her decades ago. scott gerber, the coauthor of "super connecter." great to see both of you. >> i love the name of your book's title. the word networking --

>> does it make you want to take a shower afterwards? >> a little, i like the concept and i like meeting new people and starting with them. >> there is a better way. >> every business needs to build a contributor network and there is a reason for this. >> the content contributor? so they write for your blog? >> you create where your voice can be out there where you can share your stories or things that matter in your local community and have a dedistinctive voice. if your brand stands for the community, other people that you can acredit. >> you build your own blog or whatever social profile makes the most sense but you are telling other people's story that's on message for you so you are leading conversations verses

being on the sidelines. >> do you pay them for this? >> you don't have to. they are looking ways to convene around other people that share like minded views. the idea that they'll be with other coaches or if you are a logistic companies, be with others that matters and get the message out there that matters. >> your company is all about stories, telling stories about chocolates. >> your company is 29-year-old now. >> i think so much innovation, without that, our brand would not be able to pivot. if i do a recipe, i never say it is perfect. i would say it is about 75% there because then it gives you that room to involve an idea. it is not too precious to change. it is not important to not rely on old experiences but to be able to step out and have new

ideas and take risks and involved. >> when you launch your company 20 years ago, you put chocolates together with all these weird ingredients of curry and wasabi and bacon. it has not done before. that's your big disruption, did you feel it is an every aleutol there? >> you can integrate of a new platform, beverage and cafe and wellness. i started a new brand because i did not want to bring the super premium voes into mass. okay, i am going to try to create a new brand. more assessable price point and that was a unique solve but it worked very well because we have the in frolfrastructure a new b.

>> congratulations both of you. i have seen your companies evolved so much over the past years. thanks for coming on. >> thanks! >> this week's your biz selfie, comes from emerald uniforms in lillington, north carolina. that's their daughter who helps work with the cash register and the other person is a mannequin. why don't you pick up cell phone and take your pictures with your business. we want selfies and including your name and anything interesting you are doing. thank you all so much for joining us. we love hearing from you. if you have questions or comments or just want to say hi, send an e-mail to your business@msnbc.com. we read every e-mail we get.

head to our website, it is your business. you can connect with us on all of our digital and social media platform as well. we have al new podcast that's called been there and build that. we look forward to seeing you next time. until then, i am jj ram beberg. 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. welcome to "politics nation." this morning, i am getting straight to the point. anybody believe we can reach a compromise on gun laws. let me remind you the fight over gun control is nothing new especially for the black community. let me tell you what i think. i think we saw a lot of emotions and little play acting and stage