Transcripts For MSNBCW Your Business 20170121

Hi, everyone. Im jj ramberg. Welcome to your business. The show dedicated to helping you Small Business grow. At times and i know you can all relate to this, running a Small Business can feel like a battle, but when were willing to fight for hopefully. Met one entrepreneur who is more experienced than most. Happens to make a living selling a game or war. He found himself in his own real life war with a competitor across the street. Headed down to Greenwich Village to find out this shop owner used love for the game to outsmart competition. In new york city, chess is serious business. From street hustlers to grand masters, this is the place where chess greats come to do battle. You got all type of people. Its like a war situation. You know, youve got enemies and you got , you know, you got things you want to attack. In business and in war, there is no room for sentiments and emotion, you are thrown into the war. If you make it, you make it in the battle. Owner of the chess forum in new yorks west village. Chess lover since a child, found himself applying the rules of the game to his own business. Business itself is a chess game. Like any chess game, its the thinking ahead that keeps you one step ahead of the guy moving after you and hitting you. You have to keep moving. What does it feel like now when you walk past where the chess shop used to be. I feel as nervous as it is 1955. Today. Funny. This isnt something i expect at this moment. For years, this street was a frontline between the chess forum and the chess shop which closed in 2012. It was right across the street and owned by former boss and then rival. In the early 90s, according to him, the two men shook hands and agreed after five years of sweat equity and learning the ropes, he would be become an owner, but the relationship sourered and he was told the get lost. Thats when he made the move that started the war on tompson street. Once your opened this store, there was a rather fierce rivalry between the two of you and accusations flying from both sides gl thats something i didnt anticipate again. Theres room for more of the story. Attack is the best defense. With the battle lines drawn, new yorks tight Chess Community was torn in two. Lawsuits were filed and a price war caused both businesses to take a hit. Crusts like Fidel Rodriguez were forced to choose sides. One bishop on the longest diagonal of the board. When the word got out he was going to open up a place, everybody starting coming over here. At least the ones looking for a more favorable outlet. Less pressure put upon them. A ceasefire eventually settled in with each shop courting its own customers and suppliers, but the few top left him as strong as any he learned on the board. In order to win, you need to know who you allies are. Building trust with customers is his number one priority. The point is you want one day 20 years from now somebody say you know, that guy took good care of me. Today he even takes care of former business rival who comes by to play every so often. At the end of every night. He thanks me for having kept the place open. If you are patient enough and do the right thing, you will see the enemies. With that war behind him, the battle cry now is business with a heart. It starts by doing right by the client. With sets ranging from 10 to 10,000. Its about finding whats right for the custer. Not what is most expensive. Many people come to buy something for a child. I always try to direct them to the most basic if you want the cheapest thing we have. The 10. In my heart, i feel this is whats right for you. The owner really tries very hard to create a very personalized moment here for people. Everybody feels very welcome. Business with a heart also halloween mean means making the chess forum for customers. Someone said if you close, im going to kill myself. We are these people who give them a hug and come later and all of that. Its a family. Most importantly for him, business with a heart means creating customers for life. You and i know are as you say you plant it. Your children are grandchildren will eat from it. So its an investment in the future. His online games and sales threatened brick and mortar business this warrior knows hes facing a new battle. One that could be his last stand. I had to ask him 21 years later, why he still fighting to keep his shop alive. What i hope is that maybe one day these children will walk by. If shes my age, 50 years. What am i going be. You hope you inspire them. Like anybody when you were a child. And thats the purpose of this shore now have. At this date, i guess. At this stage. There was a time where it was like a place to make a life. While his preinternet glory days may be behind him. His Greenwich Village chess shop is a labor of love hes willing to fight for. Smart enough to survive, play the game. Not get killed in the process and makes it to the end of the line, he can be the most important piece on the board. Getting fit is one of the top new years resolution every january. Since it start in 2000, people have turned to crossfit to help make this happen for them. This fitness regimen has a cult like following. At the center of it all is the bigger than life, sometimes foul mouthed, founder greg glassman. Took time out to talk to us from a crossfit gym in boston. Learning from the pros. At some point it kind of sound like going up to the ranger at the grand canyon and tell them its a beautiful hole. How did you make it . They didnt dig the hole. Nature did that over billions of years. Theyre just keeping people. Im kind of that guy. Im kind of the range r standing over the grand canyon. The best of my Business Decisions lie in the things i wont let people do, which is corrupt this brand, gouge my affiliates, im an activist. Im an exercise and nutrition activist. Keep things from affiliates. Its not charm. Its not my Business Plan. I have no charm or Business Plan. Im a trainer. All of the magic, the secret of the sauce, the thing that crossfit is the results. Out west,ky go to starbucks or a whole foods and sit out front and within 15 minutes, i will see one of us. You can spot them. So we put the brand on the bodies. The brand is in the approach. Im not afraid of a fight of almost any sort. Ive never calculated into am i going to win or not. I fight because its the right thing to do. Without an eye to winning, would bend winning. If youre like im going to do this thing and i dont care if it takes 100 months or 18 years. All my energy is going to the delivery of the punch. Not is he going to pass out on first, second, third, fifth. I dont care. Im going to keep hitting him until hes knocked out. There is no brand that has found high order success that doesnt have critics. Thats what success brings is haters. I dont know if they hate me. Im good with it. Then you get to the point im okay being defined bid my enemies. A lot of people that hate me. For me markets is any effort to improve the bottom line that isnt directly improving the product or service. My recommendation to anyone is dont market. Marketing happens naturally and effectively and the only place it happens effectively is when the end user wont shut up about what theyre getting, the product or service. As a business person, if youve got Additional Energy in the form of money or time or ideas, put it into improving the product or service so your customer can do their marketing job. Coming up in the first few results when someone does a Google Search can make all of the difference towards getting you a new customer. Find out where you and your competition rank. You can use tools like se ranking to get detailed reports on where your Company Stands across search engines. Two analyze your content. Buzz can help you get the quality of what you post by showing you if people are sharing or not sharing on social media. Three, develop unique content. 4, study your site performance by using google analytics. Use crucial information how each page the performing and how visitors interact with your site so you can make changes aaccordingly. Five, monitor fact. Your sight is ranked by the relevant domains that link it back to you so use a tool to take inventory on the sites youre connected to and think of smart ways to grow that number. Your brand is your companys calling card. It is the thing you bounce everything against. Your marketing, hiring, partnership. If you dont get brand right. Everything else can start to fall apart. That is the lesson they learned. Once they established brand. It became a shortcut that let customers know exactly what to expect. For jim and his daughter megan producing fruits and vegetables on the farm has never been a problem, but getting name brand recognition, that is mighty tough. Marketing your products is never easy no matter how wonderful the presentation is. My dad had to sit me down and say theres not money there so think of another way. As much as i despised him for it im thankful for it now because its opened my eyes to how many different ways you can go about it. They grow small scale specialty crops on top of this hill. We grow avocados, underwe gr lemons which are packed in generic packing house and go out that way, kiwi, which we market under the sweet market grand. At first they put everything into creating individual brands for each product. Then distributed those brand and products through independent retailers. Gourmet restaurants and National Chains like whole foods. Since most people think avenue ka dos are pretty much the same, they had to shout out what makes theirs so special. So they created the brand name, morrow bay to spotlight the unusual growing climate that gives their fruit the unique taste. We grow avocados because they grow very slowly and they produce a very, very rich creamy texture at the late end of the season. Were in such a different climate. He says the morrow bay label launched the avenue ka dos into their own category. Ocados intor own category. Not the only product of the brand. Also produce a citrus fruit native to australia. I discovered finger limes i thought they were the coolest thing i ever seen and i needed to plant some. If you cut one open and squeeze it, out emerges juice that explode with lemon lime flavor when you teeth crush them. Quite a sensation you never had before. Jim turned me on about a year ago. Blows everybodys mind. Nobody know kwhas they are. Theyre exceptional. Great to work with. When they can get a high end chef owner of taco temple to sample the line, they know theyll easily make a sell. Getting the attention of the general public is not so easy. Thats why jim and megan put so much effort into creating a catchy name brand for limes we rebranded burst. Both avocados and limes were getting good traction with customers. There was still a problem. They found any time they wanted to launch a new product, they would have to create a whole new brand. Which then required a whole new meeting with store buyers to introduce it. Thats how they learned there is a lot more to branding than just naming and explaining a product. They discovered they if they put everything under one name, shanly farms, they could get a lot more bang for their buck. I knew they had more items in the pipeline, shanly farms needed to be on everything. I really encouraged them to think about that two or three years down the road. I was telling the right story about the products we were selling, but never spent any time telling our story. And after a meeting with jeff from whole foods, he helped me understand how important it was to put the shanly farm logo on the product line. Through the guidance, came to see that buyers and consumers would be more open to new and unfamiliar products if they were presented as part of a larger part of brand. Much lie i pod and ipad are the apple brand. My rate of return on phone calls has gone up since weve been able to establish ourselves in the produce world and build this brand of shanly farms. There was a time when Business Plans were virtual dissertations. Many page books that looked at every single aspect of your company. Today very few people expect that presentation, but the exercise of writing a Business Plan can be useful because it forces you to think about areas of growth and pitfalls. If youre looking for funding you need to have these answers. Our next guest is going to walk us through what the plan should include. Ceo of profit partner. Writes Business Plans and create s. I think about this all the time. In Business Schools we did Business Plans for people and they were literally this big. Thats gone. Talk to us about some of the key areas that even if it is a quick power point or a couple pages long, you need to include. Well, the first thing you need to include of course is what the business is itself. A very short, i always do two to three sentences so someone can immediately get it and understand okay, this is what this business is and this is what it does. Heres the market opportunity. Heres the market opportunity. The problem i am solving, heres how many people have this problem. Exactly. So thats part one of the Business Plan is the market opportunity. So ill give you a great example of that. Working with an event center right now and in our area there are about 296,000 events that happen per year in our Northern Virginia area. This event center needs to capture 788 of them in order to reach their revenue goals. Youre getting down to very specific numbers there. You talk about in the Business Plan talk to them about how to capture leads. Yes. I would imagine youre talking in a bigger sense than saying heres how im going to get each 786. Right. There are a few ways that you can capture leads. Thats your marketing plan. I call it customer acquisition. Yes. Are we going to get people to come to our door and actually give us cash for our products or services. So things like sel, retargeting, even things within restaurants, i will include a clean bathroom as part of your marketing plan. Got it. And i have some statistics about that. It showhouse have thought this through. Of course who your team is. No one is going to invest in a company. They invest in people. In fact, for funding the number one reason that somebody does not fund a company is because they did not believe that the team can actually execute the plan. So anything you can show in terms of have you ever managed people before, have you hired, have you had to manage a budget before, have you grown a company before, those are very important when you place that information in you bio. Thats what people will looking for. Oe okay. Then a sense we know the market out there. Now tell us you really understand the competition. Exactly. One example i use is say you want to sell bottled water. Your competition is not just other bottled water carriers, its the problem youre solving so im solving the problem of thirst. Anybody who chooses to purchase starbucks or red bull is also my commission. I have to acknowledge that. Finally you talk about financial projections. When you do it, do you give the most optimistic. No. Do you give the heres the most conservative. How do you decide. I actually do a pretty conservative, not bear bones, but what we can realistically reach. So i will look at the revenues that a company should be making, the expenses it would take to reach the revenues and biggest expenses are payroll and any kind of direct labor or direct expenses that goes into producing that product of service. Youre pretty conservative. Dont be using sky high numbers. So good to see you. Thank you so much. Still to come, whats more important. Networking or using that time toll improve your product or service. The hottest online tools in apps to help you run your business. Will your business be ready when growth presents itself . American express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. Find out how American Express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open. Com. As a young ceo, how much time do you think we should spend networking and meeting people out of business versus working on product and training teams. What you want to do is spend time going out there and getting paying customers. These should be customers that arent related to you. Paying customers are the basis of any business. You can spend time making a better product. Just because you build it, doesnt mean people will come. The only thing you have to do is get the traction and spend almost all your time figuring out which marketing initiatives work and which dont. If going out and doing networking is part of markets effort, great. Focus on getting paying customers first. We now have the top two tips you need to know to help your Small Business grow. Lets introduce panel and get their advice. Founder of ceo of learn fest. And ceo of the Creative Class group of global advisories firm with clients like converse and star wood hotels. Thanks for coming. When we first met you, learnfest was tiny and then how long ago, couple years ago . Started about seven years ago. Got acquired two years ago. This big acquisition so you have really youve seen it all. Whats one tip you have for people. For all entrepreneur regardless of the industry, regardless of the company, i think the most important thing is really focus on marketing and customer acquisition. Most importantly your customers are like blood. Talk to them, listen to them, understand. Thatch is the road to better product development. I think often as entrepreneur youre focused on business model, finances. You have to focus how are you going to talk to more customers. If you listen to it really carefully, what they hate, love, youre going to be able to build a better company. Just that simple. And it cant be an afterthought. Has to be from day one. I like how you include, when talking about marketing i was thinking outward marketing, but youre really including marketing that feedback which is about product. Correct. So i want to make sure in all the different channels youre getting customers so thats really important. How are you going to do that. Secondly, how are you going to listen to them in all the different channels. I want to know how 20yearold likes your product and 6yearold likes your product. Mine is really simple. Its just about leadership. So be a good leader. This is something that entrepreneur can implement right away at no cost. So oftentimes when were launching a new business, too strapped for resources. Too business, overworked, stressed out. Dont think about how your team is feeling. May help make or break your product and take it to the next level of drag you down easily. How do you become a good leader while growing business, first and foreman, communication is key. Listen to team and take feedback. Even when owe dont like it. Also be excited and passionate about what you do. This really motivates your team. Interfere when necessary. Dont create an environment of fare where people are afraid to make mistakes. Move on quickly and forgive. Create an environment where people are excited to learn on a daily basis. Be a good mentor to your team. Make sure they can trust you and your door is always open. If i were to add something, dont expect people to read your mind. I have learned this along the way which is i think im being incredibly clear about something, but it turns out im not one thing weve implemented is get people to repeat things back to us. Make sure were all on the same page. Messaging is key. Really when people are plugged in and employees are feeling theyre part of tv bigger message and vision, theyll work that much harder, be more loyal and dependable. Thank you both so much. Efficiency is everything when youre a business Small Business owner. With the help of some use. Websites and apps, you can save some precious time in your day. We asked viewers for their favorites. I listen to ted talks. So for business ideas, innovation, those are things i like to do and look at what is futuristic and what people are doing. Also pod casts for entrepreneurs that i go to as well. Theres an app i really like that makes me and my company more productive and efficient called turbo scan. Enables you to scan any paper document anywhere you are with your phone. It takes a picture of it and turns it into an actual document that you can make a pdf of an email to someone and it looks like you just had the actual document and doesnt look like a picture or a copy of the original. One we use a lot is fiber. Outsources platform. Lets you connect with Business Services all over the globe for as little as 5. First point we have when we have a task to do. One particular online tool is a word press in combination with woocommerce. Backbone for current online sales and as well as marketing as well. We utilize word press as back end infrastructure for website as well as our online blog. This weeks comes from duane harris who owns big mountain entertainment in mahwah, new jersey. And he told us he is a big fan of the show. So thank you so much for watching duane and thank you so much for sending in your photo. All of you please do the same. Pick up your cell phone. Take a acceselfie of you and yo business. Tweet it or end it to us. Please include your name, name oz business, and use the location. Thank you so much for joining us today. We love hearing from you. If you have any questions about the show, email us at your business. Also please head over to our websi website. We posted all of the segments from todays show plus a whole lot more. You can connect on digital and social media plat tomorrow form we look forward to seeing you next time. We make your business our business. Will your business be ready when growth presents itself . American express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. Find out how American Express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open. Com. For all americans, its happy Inauguration Day because anytime we have an inauguration, it means that our reach public still exists. And the continual, you know, renewal of there being new president s is a process that continues. That have in itself fomatically is a good thing. Whos with me . Come on all right, i have somebody to introduce you to on this fine inaugural friday. His name is tim araya. Tim araya is the base player and lead singer for the band slayer and being the lead singer of the band slayer is a job actually being anybody in the band slayer, its a job that has specific requirements that dont apply to all that many other jobs in life