hi there, everyone. i'm jj ramberg and welcome to "your business." we often talk about focus on this program. zero in on your strengths and play on those. don't be too taken by the shiny object. those opportunities that seem they could be great but will ultimately just distract you from your goals. but i recently met the founder of the new app b2health. and her strategy seems to be working. when stephanie launched her company vita health she made a decision that she wasn't going to depend on just one strategy to find her customers. >> we are live on our website, direct to consumer, and we have employers that are live working with employees, and we have studies we are doing at duke. >> vida is an app that is filling a gaping hole in the health care market. >> vida health is a 24 by 7 on demand service where you get access to a health coach, you get daily support, very specific personalized guidance to what you need. >> here's how it works, you sign up and answer a few questions about your goals. for example, do you have diabetes? do you want to lower your cholesterol? are you just looking to get fit? and then what kind of coach do you want? a cheerleader, drill sergeant? once you put in all this information, that app connects you with a health coach. >> so tell me what's been going on since i talked the you last time? >> well, i have been on track with my goals. >> heather mirasha has been using the app since september. >> my health coach she makes me make nutritional choices, exercise choices, like what is the best exercise to do for the area that i want to work on. >> heather found out about vida through word of mouth. a friend suggested she download it. and that's exactly what stephanie was hoping for with vida's business to consumer strategy. >> people start to download and talk about your product and they share it. >> but this is just one leg of the three-legged stool. part two is getting employers to sign up with vida. >> employers will market the product, they will pay us but market the product to employees directly. and they see it as a service. >> once you get an employer to work with you, you suddenly have access to all of their employees. so one call gets you many. >> right. >> versus consumer which is one to one. so why not just focus all your attention on working with employers? >> sometimes when employers market to their employees, people don't pay attention. they don't -- oh that's my employer right? but if their friend you know uses the app in the app store and tell them about it then their employer tells them about it then they go oh i need to do this. >> then there's the third leg, working with big names in health care. >> we are doing clinical research studies with duke around cancer and heart disease. those are both areas where, you know, we just don't have a lot of ways to support patients. what we do is provide a service and a technology model to really provide that day-to-day care in a way that's really affordable. >> to do all three of these things at the same time meant stephanie had to put together the right team. connie chen the company's chief medical officer is a practicing physician. >> i do think it makes it easier for us to have conversations with medical institutions because we're building from you know on the ground experiences of having less patients. >> how important is it for consumers to see that you guys actually work with the very well-known brands in the medical world? >> i think likewise it's incredibly important for consumers to see that everything we do is evidence based. >> stephanie admits that simultaneously going after three targets is hard. you're just starting out, you have a team but it is not an enormous team. and so some people would say, you are being schizophrenic by going after these three different channels at the same time. how do you divide your time? >> i realize it is somewhat contrary, but i have seen companies spend three years going after one provider or relationship and learning very slowly. and we want to learn fast. learning fast benefits all the channels at the same time. >> there is one key strategy that makes this all work though. and that is that for all the different channels she's providing the exact same product. >> the if we had to build separate products it wouldn't work. >> right. >> of course that would be de-focusing and we wouldn't have the bandwidth to do that. >> at this point there's no customization for the channel. stephanie says that works because no matter what the end is the same. >> at the end of the day the consumer is the customer. so we get the same request whether coming from their employer or direct to the app, the same product request. >> for now stephanie is keeping with her plan. basically because it's working. but like any good ceo, she's constantly looking at her data and talking to her customers to see if things change. >> if one channel becomes, blows out, of course you move energy in that direction. but right now they are all working so we are scaling them as fast as we can and learning as fast as we can. appearance matters. it is why entrepreneurs often find themselves spending months discussing and planning even the smallest changes to their website or logo. but while some strategies are timeless designs that resonated with customers five years ago will not necessarily work today. here now are five trends you should consider for your next website revamp courtesy of entrepreneur.com. one, huge and beautiful images. thanks to three unique stock photo sites and faster broadband speeds, you can use bigger and better elements on your website. two, semi-flat design. microsoft and apple pioneered the flat composition look. expect to see variations where flat-i sh items are combined with world enhancements. three, better typography. they are incorporateing thoughts in their lay yachts. four, hand-drawn illustrations with larger imagery, pleasing fonts and co lorps becoming standard designs look to differentiate with lay yachtouts to add a personal touch. and five background video. movie images can help sell the soul of your company. there are an overwhelming number of websites and apps out there to make your business life easier, but it is incredibly hard to sort through them all. nothing is more helpful than knowing what works for other people in your position, so we asked our audience for their favorite tools. >> a great web it into that i have found useful is called indeed, i-n-d-e-e-d. it's a website to find professionals to work on projects without bringing on the staff. you can have them work just on that project and not have to worry about insurances or benefits but get some really qualified people to work on projects or something that you might want to do for your business. >> one of the web pages that i use on a daily basis is about.me. it's free to use, i use it for my company to express what i do. it's a quick bio and am able to use it to grow your company as well. >> i use shopify to set up my website. shopify.com. it's a full-service website. it provides templates so no matter what you're doing, it will set something up. and you can do e-commerce transactions. and i found that it's one of the best sites around for setting up a website and maintaining it. >> my favorite website in the last two months is calendly.com. it will provide calendars for your meetings. i love it because i created my own brand url. i set my base and timeslot and then send this to the groups that i want to help me with. it tells me when is the best time to call. >> one of my favorite apps is called picmonkey. it's a website where you can edit your photos create collages, you can add text on your photos and it is very helpful if you are blogging because in a couple of seconds you can create a whole new product without spending a ton of money on the product shop. >> one great website for e-commerce sellers is suredone.com. i just started using it and what it does is it pulls your e-commerce listings for me it's 15-00 listings from e-bay in just a couple of clicks i'm able to create my own store front, still have my stuff on e-bay and then can send all that information, my listings my pictures over to amazon to etsy, it's an amazing tool. it could be because of the current economy, a reaction to the changes in health care laws or new technology which makes it easier to track, but increasingly small businesses are hiring freelancers rather than full-time employees. at cnbc sharon epperson tells us freelansing is embraced by employees and employers. >> kyle davidson has been on many as ventures. but one that's been most meaningful came after he left living sobl an online marketplace to feature local deals for its subscribers. >> living social decided to refocus the core business refocus sort of their strategy a little bit and decided as a result to shut down the adventures division nationwide. >> davidson worked on that team crafting deals on snowboarding skiing, rafting, wine tours and other trips. when his job came to an end, he embarked on a new adventure. launching his own business creating an online marketplace designed specifically for consumers seeking active excursions. and he hired freelancers to work with him, mostly members of his old team. >> i rehired a lot of my part-time staff from living social, we hire 23 part-time workers, we call them guides and every one is a freelancer. >> there's been a dramatic increase in the number of people working for themselves over the past decade. about 53 million americans are doing freelance work today, that's about one-third of the entire u.s. workforce according to a recent study conducted by the freelancers union. >> the whole landscape is changing. the digital age has played a huge role in that. the market, i can get great freelancers, so i can have access to that why wouldn't i want freelancers? it only makes sense for a ceo or anyone running a company to do that. >> for davidson having a freelance staff is essential for his business. >> it's much easier to have a larger staff because you have more flexibility in terms of scheduling. the more people you have the more options there are for who can work. >> hiring freelancers provides more options for businesses large and small. >> it's going to change the way that corporate america works, but the small business landscape operates, because you have access to different kinds of people on shorter-term assignments. the work environment is changing. from thinking about long-term careers from what we used to do in the past to thinking about working on a project basis. >> the freelance economy changing the way americans work and the way companies hire. when we come back we'll answer your business questions on funding and what you need to set up a consultancy. and magic johnson is obsessed with her new line of jeans for women of all sizes. if i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing i've learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. today yourbizselfie comes to us from camilla smith from paper cailla surrounded by scrapbooking paper. tweet it to us at msnbcyourbiz or e-mail it to us at yourbusiness @msnbc.com. you have certainly heard of magic johnson, nba legend turned entrepreneur, but the business sense in the family did not stop with him. his wife cookie recently tested her chops at an adventure of her own. a premium jeans filling a void in the market for curvy women. and the company is making some noise. cookie johnson has always been obsessed with fashion. in college she studied clothing and textiles and went on to have a career as a buyer. then came a high-profile marriage to nba stuperstar magic johnson and kids. >> i was at a point in my life where i was looking for something to do. because the kids were older. >> her biggest frustration with fashion since taking a break to raise her family? finding designer jeans that fit her curvy body. >> i thought, hey, you know i'm not the only one out here like this. i'm not the only curvy girl in the world. if i design a jean to fit a woman with a real feminine body i think that it would be very successful and think there are a lot of women who would want this jean. so you know i just started working on it. didn't think anything would come of it but here we are. >> instead of having her husband invest and support the start-up cookie decided to launch the business on her own. >> i have always been kind of dependent before i got married and always had goals for myself. so for me to be able to create this and do this on my own was very important. >> with an eye to creating on-trend jeans that were fitted properly for the curvy woman, she approached a clothing manufacturer already experienced in designer jeans. >> i knew the retail side but didn't know the wholesale side so that's why i partnered. you know i found someone who was in the business you know knew it really well, and then we created product from there. it's a little easier on you because they already have the infrastructure. >> jeans by cj was born. and one of their first customers was oprah. >> we sent some jeans to oprah hoping she would wear them on her magazine. i found out later that she tried them on for a photo shoot, loved them so much she took them home. she wore them every day over that weekend. they were so comfortable. and so we were very lucky to get her seal of approval. >> the jeeps have names like faith, joy and peace. cookie's goal is the same as when she started, to make women feel good about themselves and their bodies. >> we say that these jeans are woven with a little bit of self-esteem. and i think it's empowering for women it. sounds silly to say that a jean can empower a woman, but if you thought about women who go and shop and they look for certain things and they just can't find them it can become very depressing. so to make women happy and feel good about themselves you know it was a great plus. it is time now to answer some of your business questions. so let's get our board of directors in here to help us out. alicia seren is here from the angel investment firm focused on seed and early stage investments. and steve straus is the senior columnist at usa today small business and the founder and ceo of theselfemployed.com. this e-mail came in an e-mail i'm in the second trimester of my business. i now need financing for marketing and advertising. at this stage, which would be best, crowd funding, a micro loan or a private bank loan? i like that we get this question pretty much every week, so where do you think they should start? >> i think if you have a sense of a direct relationship with your marketing, spend and revenues that it generates, loans can be a really good thing because you have confidence that you can easily pay the loans back and don't have to give up equity. however, if you don't have that sense of that causal relationship then crowd funding could probably be a better outlet for you because the campaign itself is really an exercise in marketing and advertising. the one caveat i would say to that is that it takes a hell of a lot of work. and if you don't meet your funding goals, then you will have to return all the money. so if you do engage in crowd funding, make sure you can hit those goals. >> people think crowd funding is so great, you put it out there but then you have to tap the network and hope that it spreands. steve, i think alicia had a really good point, which is marketing, unless you directly know your return on investment on your marketing, you don't know if it's going to, in anything is going to come of it. >> exactly. marketing is very important because that's how new people learn about your business. and i would say in this case if the business is in the second trimester, it's starting to show, it's starting to kick. that means that it's maturing a little bit. in that case i do think that a conventional loan or small business association loan is probably the way to go. that means separating if you haven't already, your business credit from the personal credit. getting an employee i.d. number from the federal government and getting a dunn number from dunn credibility and setting up a separate bank account and getting a business lope. i have to agree with what alicia was saying about crowd funding, there's magical thinking that goes on that if you just put up a video on kick starter strangers will fund your business. and as you mentioned, jj that's not the way it works. i think a more mature business will probably go in a different direction and establish credit and use that to grow your business later on. >> by the way, if you're going to get a bank loan they are going to ask you how are you going to pay this back? now if you can show there's direct marketing, right, i spend x number of dollars and will get x number of dollars back it's going to be much easier than say, i'm just going to throw this out there to see what happens. okay, we'll move on to the next question about the importance of getting social. >> i've heard so much about it and there's so much out there, but what is the real value of social media for marketing your company? >> that's a good question. i was on a panel with someone the other day, steve, who said guess what? i don't use social media, i use e-mail and that's where i get the best return. almost like what we say with crowd funding people have this impression that go to facebook and twitter or instagram and suddenly people are flocking and that's not the case. but there is a value. >> i think it's the $64,000 question for a lot of small business people because they hear so much. we all hear so much about social media and social media marketing and should you do it? in my "usa today" column five or six years ago when i was first writing about social media, i wrote a column about twitter. should you to the? and i said no! it was blasphemous. but what was interesting was it became the most popular thing for all the wrong reasons that i ever wrote. because twitter got ahold of it this strauss guy is an idiot, but then it went viral and there was something i didn't get. for most small businesses, the value proposition is two-fold it can help you brand your business if you do it consistently again and again and again. you have to make a commitment to it as you would with any of your marketing. the second is and this is what i learned from a woman named jenny, i think she may have been on your show before jj jenny wrote me to say, what social media does it's also social networking. and what you can do with it is meet people you otherwise wouldn't normally meet and make relationships you otherwise wouldn't normally make and therefore get new business that you otherwise wouldn't normally get. that is a great proposition for social media. >> and i think alicia social media is helpful in the way that you can target your potential customers are using it. otherwise you are throwing it out to the wind. >> i think there are two big benefits with social media. first is very quantifiable benefits. you can say, look i'm going to spend this amount on social media, like a facebook ad and see very direct results from that. users coming to your website, new visitors and so that could be a huge benefit. but also like steve said -- >> that's different. that is using social media platforms to advertise. >> no absolutely. >> that's different than putting out my facebook post or tweeting. that's important to remember the one you're talking about. >> absolutely. you could potentially engage with your customers there, but if you're just posting things on a regular basis through instagram or through facebook or on twitter, you're engaging with your customers on a constant basis. and that's important because you are building good-will with them reaching them where they are putting their eyeballs and you have to keep in mind a customer is much more valuable to you because you can continually sell products to them. it's so much harder to get a new customer. and so if you're maintaining that relationship with them on a regular basis with social media, and meeting them where they are, spending their time then that can be incredibly valuable for your brand. >> right. the real issue is are you creating content that they want to read that they want to engage with? and that's tricky. >> i think what you both are saying is you have to pick the social media platform maybe not the one that you like but that your customers tend to use the most. that's where you have to be. >> yep. let's move on to the next question. this is for all of the consultants out there. >> as a consultant what are the must-have legal documents? >> good question. and by the way, so many people are consultants, right? they may have a business but also do consulting on the side. so how do they figure out what they need? >> so some of the big documents that come to mind are certainly an operating agreement, articles of incorporation, any specific licenses or permits you might need for that specific business and make sure you have your tax i.d. documented. but my caveat to all of this and my dad is a lawyer would kill me if i didn't say this you should always make sure that you get great legal counsel and not be penny-wise and pound foolish. because the legal documents you might need could very sri depending on the corporation you have set up what state you're in, what specific business you're in do your homework. >> steve, how do you find the right person to figure out what documents you need? >> i agree, you do need to speak with a lawyer. there are times you can do it yourself and there are times not to do it yourself. when you're getting started and trying to figure out how to set the foundation of your business up, it's not the time to do it yourself. meet with a lawyer and find out. i agree, you have to incorporate. so you need articles of incorporation, you might want to have an employee or an employment agreement with people you're working with. you want to make sure they are at-will employees it's called. and i would think, especially for a consultant, a non-disclosure agreement and mda might be an important document to have as well. >> okay well, thank you, guys so much for answering all the questions. very, very helpful. and if any of you out there have a question for our experts, we answer them every week here on the show. so send it in. our address is openforum.com/yourbusiness. once you get there, hit the ask the show link and you can submit your question or if it's easier for you, e-mail us your questions and comments to the address yourbusiness@msnbc.com. so today ends week three of the jj challenge where we've actually gone out to really successful entrepreneurs and asked them what is something you do. and we are going to try to do it for a week also. last week came from renae, the founder of indygogo and she challenged our employer to give us a review. have you ever done this? >> yeah. >> have you? >> yeah. >> we have gotten the least feedback because you guys are hard. but for those of you who chose to opt out, i encourage you to do this in the future. i did it last week and followed the challenge and asked my employee for specific feedback. one employee on certain areas, and i made it so she felt comfortable knowing i was absolutely taking this seriously because she had to feel free to be honest. and i definitely came out with good feedback that will help me in the future. so i encourage everyone to do that. this week's challenge, you guys came on a good week because this week's challenge is a little bit easier and a lot more fun. this comes from stewart wiseman. when he was in his 20s, he designed his first pair of shoes for his father's company called mr. seymour. so he originally thought he was going to get a job on wall street, he joined the family business instead. he took it over changed the name when his father passed away. today the brand is known for its red carpet creations and the shoes are sold in more than 70 countries around the world. stewart weitzman's challenge to us is participant in one cultural activity this week. if we do that we'll have the benefit of a happier life learning to be more organized with our time and we may get inspired as an entrepreneur in ways we do not expect. ease for you guys this week right? >> i like that one a lot. you know, over the holidays actually, i went to a local play with some people that i do some work with and it was a great event to go to a cultural event together. it got everyone out of their comfort zone. it is like seeing the teacher outside of school we saw each other in a different context. i agree, it was really fun and valuable. >> i think it can inspire you. so i expect both of you to do this. i expect all of you to do this. let me know where you end up going, send photos let us know how you were inspired and post it on the msnbc your business facebook page or tweet it to @msnbcyourbiz and use the #jjchallenge. have fun with this. thank you so much for joining us today. to learn more about the show head over to our website, openforum.com/yourbusiness. you'll find all of today's segments plus some web exclusive content with a lot more information to help your business grow. you can also follow us on twitter, it's @msnbcyourbiz. and don't forget to become a fan of the show on facebook and we're on instagram, too. next week one orthodontist found the winning formula to have everyone in his practice only doing what they do best. >> we were able to focus more on what we do day to day, up against the road patient care in service rather than clerical things. very difficult to scale, too. so we try to make it about the systems, not about the owner. >> we'll see how consolidating overhead and detailed analytics had this small business brace for greater growth in the future. until then i'm jj ramberg. and remember, we make your business our business. if i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing i've learned is my philosophy is real simple american express open forum is an on-line community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. happy friday. # first 24eu7bgs things first. the beltway keeps telling us is totally over divisive social issues. the very first thing the republican congress moved on after they got control in washington was abortion. they intro tuesdayed five or six different abortion bans or abortion restrictions right off the bat at the start of the new congress. they decided the one they would run with would be a federal nationwide 20-week ban on abortion. they ran it through

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