coming up on msnbc's "your business," the owner of virginia's red hen restaurant refuses service to the white house press secretary, sarah huckabee sanders. does it make any business sense for owners to reject customers? this notebook company has taken the element of surprise to new heights, swearing its employees and vendors to secrecy to stop any leaks about upcoming products and designs. and celebrities robby patel and kristen belle along with their cofounders create a snack bar that's helping to save children's lives. when it comes to making choices for your business, we have your back. that is all coming up next on msnbc's "your business."

>> announcer: msnbc's "your business" is sponsored by american express. don't do business without it. >> announcer: your business is sponsored by american express. don't do business without it. hi, everyone. i'm jj ramberg and welcome to "your business," the show dedicated to helping your growing business. these four actors never imagined entrepreneur would be a role they'd each take on, but then they saw something they simply could not eforgeforget. we sat down with robby patel and todd grinnell to talk about the snack food company, this bar saves lives, and how their day job helped get the word out about this snack that is something but subtle about its

missio mission. >> it's in your face. >> this los angeles-based snack food company is anything but subtle about their mission statement. >> the name, first of all, is, i think our biggest calling card. >> they don't mince word. the name of the company says exactly what they're trying to do. this bar savves lives. >> we want to end childhood malnutrition worldwide. it's an insanely huge goal, but that's really what's at the heart of the company. >> it all started with a humanitarian trip. actors ryan devlin and todd grinnell went to liberia in 2008. >> we toured a refugee camp, where we saw dozens of kids who were literally wasting away because they didn't have enough food. and it crushed us. and we left that place that day and we decided that we had to do something. >> that something ended up being this snack bar company that gives life-saving food to malnourished kids all over the world with every snack they

sell. when they first started, these actors knew exactly what their mission would be, but they had zero idea about how to begin. so they started to make calls to people they knew, including fellow performer, robby patel from "master of none" fame. >> so ryan devlin is one of my closest friends and he calls me up one night and says, listen, i know you've done some busy stuff before. todd and i have this idea, i want to talk to you about it. and about two hours later, i had not only given him whatever advice i could think of, but also decided to join the movement. >> their next call was to another famous friend, kristen bell. >> we gave it to kristen as well at the same time because we wanted her reaction on it, and she had the same reaction that ravi did, which was, i need to be a part of this. so really from the get-go, it was the four of us. >> four cofounders with tons of acting experience and lots of passion, but no clue about how

to make a tasty snack bar. >> we started just trying to make granola bars in our kitchens at a certain point and they came out in these like sheets of just brick. it was like, you could have knocked somebody out with it. >> the one thing we know we have is, we have some famous friends. so a bunch of celebrities helped connect us with various people in business and philanthropy, people who ultimately became advisers in our most -- and our closest confidants as we ran this business. >> they knew that their fan base would help with that first sale. but to get repeat buyers, it would be all about the product. it took them almost five years to finally launch something they felt could hold its own in the crowded snack industry. >> now, look, nobody is going to buy our bar unless they love the taste of it and they love how it feels. and i'll tell you, this is the best bar out there. >> we're trying to save the lives of children who are dying because they don't have enough food, so if we have to be sort of audacious and in your face about it, we have no shame about

that, you know? we put this bar saves lives all over the place and put our mission statement at all points of sale and all of our displays and all of that stuff. we are not shy -- about saying this bar saves lives on everything. >> from the start, they knew tha they'd need reinforcements. >> because we were actors, we'd never started a business before. i don't think any of us really know how much work it was going to be and how hard it would be. we were really working to get to the point where we could bring in people that were more experienced and could run it better than we could run it. and it just got to that point naturally. >> so in 2017, they brought on ceo paul yu, who's no stranger to celebrity businesses. he was working at jessica alba's honest company when he first heard about this bar saves lives. the cofounders now focus on contributing their strengths to the company and leave the rest to paul and his team. >> i really love it, because each founder has their own secret sauce and secret weapon. so i call upon their expertise

wherever i need it. i'm not an actor and i don't ever profess to become one. so it's wonderful that we could leverage each one in their own individual flair to get out and tell their story, and not just our story, but more importantly, the stories of the people we're trying to help. >> it's all about experience. being in the world of formal storytelling is not unlike being in a world of trying to impact people through a product. it's just instead of a movie, it's a granola bar and a virtual reality experience that's on our website. people can all of a sudden be in haiti and be in touch with the people, the lives that they're actually changing. >> you can find this bar saves lives in retail locations all over the country, including starbucks, whole foods, and target. and the company's donated over 3 million nutrition packets to children in need and counting. ravi hopes a they're doing will inspire other companies to follow suit. >> i want people, every time they pick up one of our bars, i

don't want them while they're eating the bars to think of anything other than how delicious it is, but when they're done or look at the wrapper, i want them to think, like, something good just happened as a result of this thing that i was going to do anyway. we take a lot of pride in giving as much as we can, in the best way possible. and to me, from a business perspective, that is symbiotic with success. i want people to look at our company and be like, those guys did social enterprise better than everyone else and they redefined what social enterprise could be. and hopefully as a result of this, more and more companies pop up doing the same thing. would you turn away a customer because you don't agree with their political or maybe some other opinion? well, that was the case in lexington, virginia, when the owner of the red hen restaurant asked white house press secretary sarah huckabee sanders to leave because of her affiliation with the trump administration. this comes on the heels of the supreme court supporting a colorado baker's right to refuse

to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on religious grounds. as business owners, this begs the question, how wise is it to reject any customer based on their beliefs. >> daniel has conducted research on employee and consumer reactions to companies that takes controversial political stands. and tom is the chairman of the del fyi group, author of eleven groups and an adjunct professor at boston's school of management. good to see both of you. >> thank you, j.j.. >> this is so interesting to me. and i actually want to flip this discussion. because there are some cases where you want to make a stand, you probably know what you're getting into, right? you maybe not know the extent of the backlash or support, but what happens when people are asking you to make a stand? i'm going to start with you, tom. that's the hard decision. this is your customers, consumers, saying, there's going

to be a backlash if you don't take a stand, and then you fear the backlash from the people who do want you to take a stand. >> yeah, first of all, as a business owner, you can't avoid this topic. it's not one that you'll be able to sidestep or won't go away. and in some ways, it's getting much more pronounced. because through social media, my ability to influence is not based on a capital campaign. i don't have to pay people to get out and protest. i do it very effectively just online. so my advice for most business owners is prepare for this, talk about it, have the conversation at least internally and decide where you want to come down in terms of a value statement. and have a team internally that can deal with this like any other pr crisis, because it will happen to you. you won't be able to avoid this. >> that is indeed what it is, it's a pr crisis. so we were talking earlier, if you could give the example of what happened to delta? >> yeah, delta wanted to stay neutral after the parkland shootings a few months ago and they announced that they were going to eliminate a discount for nra members because they

want -- they wanted to be neutral and stay away from the topic. and despite their best efforts, they got dragged right back in and because people interpreted that neutral signal as a stand in itself. >> right. so what does your research show? how can your research help businesspeople make decisions? >> yeah, it starts with the realization that consumers and also employees. we shouldn't forget them, because they're a major piece of this puzzle, that these different stakeholders, they have much different expectations than they used to. they used to look for companies for purchasing a product, the quality of the product. now they're asking much more frequently, who is the company? what do they stand for? so their expectations have changed a lot. some of these expectations are based on messages that the company is sending themselves. so the company is saying, we ---ion, twe -- ion you know with the environment is important to us. we value diversity. and when one of these issues comes up politically, it's only

natural for a customer to say, i saw your statement about the environment, we just pulled out of the paris agreement, what do you think about it? and it's those expectations that are driving a lot of this and that companies are finding that they made some statements in the past that are coming back and they're going to have to honor them. >> so do you think, tom, that if you are not willing to put your money where your mouth is, then, then you need to stop standing for something, right? i mean, as a company now, do you not only need to stand for something in the way you run your own business, but you better be prepared to stand it for politically as well? >> part of what i hear daniel saying and part of what i see in his research is you have to come up in an organization with a values proposition, what do we stand for? and be ready to have your board and chief executive message that. so whether it's gun control or whether it's a certain aspect of human rights or whether it's protecting animals or whatever it happens to be, you have to be ready to take that stand.

>> right. if you're talking about it publicly. >> well, yes. because surely a lot of found and ceos, c suite people have very strong beliefs about things right now. and daniel, they are not transferring it to the scene and what the company stands for. >> yeah, this is a question that comes up a lot. and i think a lot of ceos, they can sometimes be overeager to put their own personal views on the company. i think that's a mistake. i think that the -- if a company does take a stand, it's got to come from the organization. it has to come from the desires or either the values or the performance needs of different stakeholders. so for example, if it's going to affect service to customers, that's an important aspect. if it's going to affect the performance of the company, then employees are going to be affected. so what ceos have to do is they have to balance what they see as the values of the company, with what they see as the performance, you know, how the

performance is going to affect. and those are the two main dimensions that ceos have to do. but it shouldn't come from their own personal opinions, because then it comes off as heavy-handed. and you'll see a revolt from consumers and employees. >> well, and i think -- to what you were saying before, tom. it's almost not fair to the organization if this comes out of nowhere, right? it has to be, we're all on the same page here, right? this is what we believe. this is our mission. join us or not? it's up to you. but because there may be a negative effect on your company. >> of course. on your company, on your employees, on your customers, on your brand. the red hen example is interesting, because i think in that case, they actually took the employees to the back room, to the kitchen and decided as a group. >> which is what we're saying is a great way to do it. >> precisely. so daniel's point, you have to take a stand, but be very careful, especially a as a small business. as a ceo, to impose your views unilaterally on the organization, on your customers, on your employees. that is the wrong way to go

about that. >> daniel, how long -- the companies that you have studied, how long have the effects gone on? there was a big dip or a big increase in customers because of a stand a company took. and then does it stay that way or does it -- does everything sort of right itself after a few weeks? >> it is so hard to untangle the effects of these things. we do see some short-term blips, you could say, in the stock market price of some companies. we see some changes in sales, but that's something that is still being studied. i'm working with a colleague of mine in germany to look at this right now, to look at the longer term affects. the jury is still out on how lasting these effects are. >> and i think you'll have more and more examples to study as we go on and customers become more activists, right? with social media. great to see you guys. i would love to continue this discussion. revisit it again in six months or so, i bet we'll have some more examples.

>> no doubt, we will. >> good to see you both. who doesn't love a surprise? i know i personally love them. and the owners of a notebook company discovered the surprise of impacting their customers. part of the thrill for them is also figuring out how to keep the latest surprise a secret from their anxiously awaiting fan base. if we made it easy for the word to get out, the word would get out, so we don't make it easy for the word to get out. >> every year, fours tim times year, this chicago-based company, field notes, goes into full stealth mode. i wouldn't say it's nsa or cia level skulduggery, but we've learned we need to be careful. >> the glass door to shipping is covered in paper to hide what's going on behind the scene. and the staff knows to keep their lips sealed. >> people in the area will stop by and try to get a peek.

>> and all the while, excitement is building for release of the company's newest limits edition designs of their vintage style notebooks. >> everybody loves a surprise and everybody loves being part of the secret of the surprise. >> this tradition started about a decade ago, when the owners realized they wanted to spice things up around the company. >> it would be easy to make a couple of products and keep making those products and selling them, but coming from a design firm background, we always worked best when we had a new project to jump into. so this way we've artificially given ourselves four very important products every year. >> field notes lamplged as a bit of a surprise in 2007. >> aaron, one christmas, made a bunch of little notebooks by hand, called them field notes and send them out to his friends. and he called me up and said, what do you think about your crazy little notebooks i made? and i said, i don't think

they're so crazy. we made a short run of 300 or 400 three-packs, made a website very quickly, and the first day they were available, we made 13 sales. >> since then, they've sold millions of field notes, in large part because of their surprise days. >> launch day is a ten. that day, that week is tense and nervous and that day and the next few days are the best. >> it has the field notes loyal fan base champing at the bit to get the latest designs, which have been created with different themes, colors, and types of paper in mind. >> we have something new to talk about with our customer base. >> it serves a purpose as not only a revenue base, but the centerpiece of our markets efforts. the print base have grown from 500 to 40,000. who knows where we go from here, but it's an interesting problem. >> the key to the surprise strategy is taking it seriously. outside vendors are sworn to

secrecy. everyone's told to be careful about what they put in the trash. and you'd be hard-pressed to find any designs laying around. >> we had one printer who had a company-wide meeting to say like, we're working field notes now and they do these limited editions and if anybody spills the beans, you know, you're gone. >> die-hard customers have been known to hunt for clues. a visit to headquarters is a chance for people to buy more notebooks and look out for any signs of what design is coming next. >> mostly, it's just people coming into the store and trying to sneak a question by someone. they'll say, i'm going to place an order, but i don't want to order right now if it's coming out next week. and i'll say, well, i can't say, so you probably should just wait. >> we had people digging through files on the we said, just guessing urls and things. >> and to keep the internet buseding, jim likes to have a little fun with the field notes fan base. >> people anticipate them and we leave obtuse hints around the

web that are indecipherable, but doesn't keep people from trying to figure it out. >> and the real fun happens when shipments start going out and customers start getting their packages. >> we try to keep people on their toes. we've been good at surprising people and doing things they don't expect and zigging when they think we're going to zag. we don't want to be predictable. >> these campaigns are about more than just building relationships with the field notes customers. it also gives the company a chance to work more closely with its retailers. >> we announced to our retailers a couple of days before we announce to the public, asking them to keep it quiet. they will get their orders on the day or a couple of days after the launch. so they're able to capture on the excitement. >> it's valuable to the stores to have them in stock, because when the excitement is online about the new product, they can say, hey, we have the new product, come in and see it. >> despite the steps field notes has taken to keep a lid on things, there was one time their cover was blown after someone posted a picture of a special

edition online. >> it was a big deal, because it's a disappointment for us to have the surprise spoiled, and i think for a lot of our customers, too. they really want to know the next edition is, but part of them really doesn't. and i think that they appreciate the theatrical nature of the product launch. >> after all of this time, jim and erin still love the creative process. and much to the delight of their customers and staff, field notes is still finding ways to raise the bar. >> we have a backlog of ideas. some of them we may do and some of them we may never do. and some of them people have asked for, and some of people have never asked for. it's a big commitment once we commit to an idea which it's key to us we find something to learn along the way. and what we learn, we communicate through the product to the customer base. i think they appreciate that, i hope. when we come back, how to get funding when you don't have a history of running a company. and why you should actually see your critics as your allies.

it's pretty amazing out there. the world is full of more possibilities than ever before. and american express has your back every step of the way- whether it's the comfort of knowing help is just a call away with global assist. or getting financing to fund your business. no one has your back like american express. so where ever you go. we're right there with you. the powerful backing of american express. don't do business without it. don't live life without it. one of the best practices to raise seed fund, given that you do not have any history running

this sort of company before. >> my advice to any first-time founder is twofold. first, to make sure, before you pitch anyone, that you have great conviction in your idea. you are going to be spending a huge chunk of your life, probably 24/7 thinking about this for many years. so you want to make sure you are ready to do that before you pitch anyone. once you feel that conviction, the second thing i would recommend is your pitch has to be tailored to answer the three questions on any seed investors mind. those three questions are, first, why you, why are you the right person to do this idea? second, why now? why is now the right time for this idea to work? and then third, how much are you going to make for me as an investor? is this the right business model? is this going to be a huge company? and the investor wants to see great potential return, and make sure that they are going to deliver those returns to their own investors.

>> we now have the top two tips you need to know to help you grow your business. let's introduce our panel and get their advice. jennifer doelski, the author of the new book "purposeful." and tom davidson is the founder and ceo of everfy. you've grown your company from zero to 1,600 people. congratulations. what's something you've learned thing others should copy or avoid? >> i think the best thing we've learned over time is to be very authentic and very transparent to the extent that you can. employees these days are coming into companies just craving transparency and authenticity. one of the first things we do at everfi, we stab people in the heart and praise them to the back. what that means is with your

employees, no one wants to go back to high school. no one wants to be in a chitty-chatty culture. people want to be around people where they're doing something important every day, where they feel like people are being authentic with them. what that really means, if you have a problem with somebody, have an issue to work out, go shut the door and talk it out. at the same time, one of the best things i've found you can do is talk behind people's backs all the time, praise them and really build them up. it's contagious. >> it sounds good. but 550 people. >> yeah. >> does it work with all 550 people? >> it's literally one of those things, every single day, it is hand to hand combat on it. you have to reenforce it at every turn. don't tolerate it when it's not playing out that way. interesting thing about it, it's playing out with our customers. it's interesting, you get these slogans people put on the walls,

where the customer is always right. often, the customer isn't always right. the most authentic and interesting relationships, the best relationships we have with our customers and our partners are often the ones that have the most friction. >> i want to go back to your employees. that's what you started with. it is all well and good to say don't talk behind people's backs. people feel more comfortable talking behind someone's back than they do face to face. how do you nip that in the bud? >> first, what you do is you really have to embrace a culture of discomfort. the best companies in the world are constantly in a state of being uncomfortable. and i think part of that is you're showing up every day, you're working with people you may not know. and at every turn you just have to reenforce it. it's not going to be tolerated and cheer it on when people do that and take that on as a part of the culture. it's something that has to be instilled in every single part of the organization. it has to be done every day.

>> all right. jennifer, you have spent so much time, first at change.org, now at facebook, your book, talking about building movement. and that -- i mean, truly, that's what every company wants to build, right, that's how you get loyalty and how you get people talking about you and people coming back. how do you build a movement? in two seconds or less. >> the most successful movement starters are people who push the boundaries, whether they're trying to change the world or their workplace or their neighborhood. and in purposeful, i describe people who are both entrepreneurs and also people who are activists. the most successful ones use their critics as coaches. so the more successful you become, the more likely you are to encounter criticism. and what i've seen is that people who do this well are able to separate criticism that's outside of their control, so about your gender or race or appearance, from criticism that's about what you're doing and how you're doing it. one of my favorite phrases here is even the best athletes in the world have coaches. so if we think about it, serena

williams' coach doesn't have a better serve than she does, but she has value to add. if we can look at people who are critics of ours and see them as potential coaches, someone with valuable feedback, they actually can help us get better. >> do you think people are good at this? >> i think that successful movement starters are good at this. and i think we all can be. so there's a story that i tell about a woman named mary lou jepsen who started an organization called one laptop per child. she was trying to build solar laptops. everybody told her it wasn't possible. instead of getting discouraged, she did what i call leveraging the nay sayers. she went out and found those people, went to a big tech company in asia, they told her there's 23 reasons why this idea won't work. instead of letting that get her down, she said, great, there's 17 of them i know how to solve. i don't know the rest. let me go back and figure those

out and then i'll come to you for more criticism. and they actually helped her debug her product. >> all right. that's a great story. and something we can all learn from, right, if somebody says no, ask them why and then try to fix it. so good to see you both, thank you. >> thank you. this week's your biz selfie comes from jim seitzer created a product called the bandbell. pick up your phone, take a selfie of you and your business. send it to yourbusiness -- or tweet it. do not forget, we need your name, the name of your business and its location. thank you so much for joining us today. we really love hearing from you. so if you have anything to say, or question, an idea for us, just send an e-mail to your

business -- and check out our website. it's msnbc.com/yourbusiness. we are on digital and social media as well. one other thing, remember to check out our podcast. it's called been there. built that. you can download it for free at apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. we look forward to seeing you next time. i'm j.j. ramberg. remember, we make your business our business. it's pretty amazing out there. the world is full of more possibilities than ever before. and american express has your back every step of the way- whether it's the comfort of knowing help is just a call away with global assist. or getting financing to fund your business.

no one has your back like american express. so where ever you go. we're right there with you. the powerful backing of american express. don't do business without it. don't live life without it. good morning, and welcome to "politics nation." yesterday, the best of america was on display as thousands took to the streets to protest the trump administration's family separation policy at the u.s./mexico border. but more on that in a minute. because this week i also watched, as one of, if not the true purpose of this white house came