Hi there, everyone. Im j. J. Ramberg, and welcome to your business, the show dedicated to giving you tips and advice to help your Small Business grow. For most of us, when we talk about main street, we think of it as the heart and soul of small town america. This symbol of what makes america american. And those main street businesses from the Hardware Store to the barber shop or the local bank, these are what we think of when we think of Small Business. So, how is main street america doing in the face of our countrys economic ups and downs . We decided to travel the country to find out. Our next stop . Brundidge, alabama. Sweet home alabama im in brundidge, alabama. Population about 2,000. Im halfway between montgomery, alabama, and pensacola, florida. 60 years ago, main street was hopping. This was the place people came to shop, convene and hang out. Look around now and its not exactly the same. There are a lot of vacancies here. What happened . The same thing that happened to a lot of towns in america. Factories shut down. People lost jobs and then Big Box Stores moved in. Brundidge isnt a ghost town and it doesnt intend to be. We want to know, what are those Business People doing to keep their Small Businesses alive . And what is the town doing to make sure that brundidges main street doesnt disappear . Hi. Im chairman of the board at First National bank of brundidge, alabama, founded in 1904 by my great grandfather. Im also the mayor of brundidge. For a Small Business person here in brundidge, to survive, what do they have to do . What are they doing thats working . I think the stores that have survived, probably the number one thing is service. Hi. Im anthony foster, the owner of fosters barber shop. Ive been here on main street about three years. What are you doing right that some other people didnt do . Well, i dont know what they didnt do, but what im doing is trying to provide that service that they come for, trying to keep the relationship with our customers. My name is bill grafton, i own graftons home furniture. I got rid of my dumpster, my fax line. You just try to cut your overhead and thats the only way youre going to survive. My name is ok mcdowell, known as the sign man. About 24 years now. But overhead really jumped, electricity and everything, its tough. I dont have any air conditioning, just antique air conditioners, better known as a fan. You keep the overhead down, you got a chance. Im the owner of motry service center, brundidge, alabama, main street. Do you own the building or have to pay rent . We own the building. That must be helpful for you. Oh, we would have to go out of business if we didnt own the building. Located here for six years. Utilities here in the summertime, in the wintertime is goes up from 300 to 1,000 a month. You cant afford overhead with the extended hours with the customers we have coming in. How about you . You own a small bank. Small Community Banks have had some trouble in recent years. But you guys are still around. What have you done . Well, what we did is we didnt try to chase the almighty dollar. We tried to keep doing what we were good at. And the type of lending we were familiar with. Weve weathered the storm. You just dont make the margins you used to make. The margins are very thin, very thin. Ive got to do it in order to get people to travel that far to buy furniture. This little town cant support, you know support them. Are you feeling optimistic about this company, your ability to shift and keep it alive . You have to. Survival of the fittest. If we dont adapt and change, we aint going to survive. Whats next . Does brundidge have to brand itself something to get people off the highway . Yes. Thats something that the Brundidge Business Association are working on as we speak. Studio 116. These are all local artists youre exhibiting . Im chris rich. And im sarah disbukes. We are owners of studio 116 which has been open about a year. Its a gallery of local artists and musicians. We have artists from northwest florida and all of alabama. Its interesting, because this is not like anything else on main street here. Studio 116, you walk in here and it feels like youre in a different town. Well, were very happy about that. As we both traveled a lot and we you know, are kind of drawn to artists and live music, we wanted to see that in our hometown. They were looking at this space as an Artist Cooperative and we partnered together. You have a really unique real estate deal that makes this happen, right . Right. What is it . We basically cover his insurance and his taxes and as we become more successful, then we renegotiate to help out mr. Hollis even more. Arts community. Arts and studio 116. Sweet home alabama meeting everyone in brundidge was incredibly fun and interesting and we are continuing with this main street series. If you think we should visit main street in your town, please write us and tell us why. We would love to hear from you. Email address is your business msnbc. Com. If youre in the need of the perfect location for your new startup or expansion project, check out our website of the week. Zoom prospector. Com helps Small Businesses identify possible places to set up shop based on a range of community and property characteristics. After answering some questions about your market, type of business and real estate needs, the free site will provide a list of places that fit your criteria. You can also use zoom prospector to locate your target demographic and look for places that way. Key met rirics can help you courtesy of mashable. Com. One, high time spent per page can indicate a particular page as confusing to navigate. If users are spending minutes on a page without a video, article or indirect element on it, you likely have a problem. Two, retweets translate into information on active engagement with your brands content. Be sure to track them. Three, its no longer sufficient simply to track your overall follower. Ma defriend your brand and make sure you understand why. Total exits, you need to revise that part of your site. Add a clearer call to action or suggest a related page to visit. And, five, human response lag. Track how long it takes your team to respond to Contact Inquiries and then shorten it. Linkedin is a great way to market your business and yourself. It gives you visibility, credibility and approachability. But you need to do more than just take two seconds to fill in your profile. Admittedly, thats what i did. I put just a sentence or two to fill out each section. When our next guest took a look at my profile she said i was missing a big opportunity. I invited her on the show to teach me and you how to create a Linkedin Profile that works for your company. The owner and contact creator at your professional writer, which helps executives and entrepreneurs communicate what sets them apart in the market. And you write a lot of peoples Linkedin Profiles. I do. We spent a lot of time on the phone together. Before we go into the mechanics, why do you need a Linkedin Profile . Today the reality is that people expect you to be on linkedin. And when they search for you, limpingedin is ranked very high in searches. Your Linkedin Profile will be one of the first things they see. You had john davidco. He has a photo there. Excellent photo. For many people i recommend have a professional head shot. For johns business, this just wouldnt make sense. He has an Auto Repair Shop and his photo is friendly, approachable and has his company logo on his shirt. You have a place to give a summary. One of the most overlooked aspects of the Linkedin Profile and absolutely one of the most valuable. If john had his summary, it would show up right before his current job. And the summary gives you 2,000 characters to say what you want about you, your business and link your target audience directly to you. If you have great quotes from people who are happy, include those. You can talk a little bit about depending on what your business, you might want to get into why youre doing what youre doing. Many people are coming for your service but theyre also coming for who you are. This is your opportunity to speak to your target market in the way that you want to. Okay. Moving on to some more stuff that hes doing well, his experience. You like how he has written his experience . Its brilliant. In five succinct sentences, john has said so much. Im the president of auto repair. We know who he is, his credibility. My father and i started our Automotive Repair business in 1975. History. Its a Family Business. Then he says weve grown to be the most successful on the main line. So we know he is successful and he has told you where they are. We know his geographic community. The last two sentences i just love. My daughter started with us two years ago. She is the future of our business. Its approachable. Absolutely. And you say that linkedin is about approachability. Hes talking about i. He is telling his story. Doing it succinctly. Beautifully. Giving you a reason to connect with the company. When we go to his skills and expertise, he has a lot of people talking about his skills and expertise. Absolutely. And this is something that you need to fill in your profile. The skills that john has chosen to use are things that he selected. Linkedin gives you the opportunity to include 50 skills and then people can go in and click on and endorse you for those skills. Okay. I think the takeaway from this, there are so many other places to fill out here. The takeout is take some time, talk in first person. Be approachable and fill out every single part of the profile. Exactly. Dont skip anything . Exactly. Thanks so much, susan. Check my Linkedin Profile next week. When we come back, questions on funding a Family Business. And building a team you can trust. Plus, when her retail cookie business wasnt making enough dough, she took it wholesale. Find out how doing that brought her some sweet profits. Im a hard, hard worker every day. Im a hard, hard worker and im working every day. Im a hard, hard worker and im saving all my pay. Small businesses get up earlier and stay later. And to help all that hard work pay off, membership brings out millions of us on Small Business saturday and every day to make shopping small huge. This is what membership is. This is what membership does. Sometimes in order to succeed, you have to reevaluate your business model. That was exactly the case for one woman whose retail Cookie Company needed some more dough. She cut her staff and reduced the number of sweet treats available to order, but her strategy for survival included one key ingredient. Shifting the majority of her business from retail to wholesale. Judith moore launched the charleston Cookie Company in 2003 with one idea in mind. I thought i was running a Cookie Company. Then i discovered we were running a gift company and the gifts happen to be cookies, really good cookies. It was brn out of moores search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. When she didnt find one, she decided to make her own. Initially, the business thrived, especially on the retail side. Thanks to the companys website, moores cookies and brownies have even made their way around the globe. Of course, that was then. Now the Retail Business is down and moore is trying her hand with a new group of customers. What were doing now is really emphasizing the wholesale aspect of our business until the retail recovers. For years, charleston cookie has sold wholesale to Sanctuary Hotel and dean and deluca. It has now expanded to cisco and the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. As the economy worsened, the number of products was cut as a moore evaluated every job, including her own. And so management had to jump in and do everything. And thats when i went back to working in the oven again. She says its no easy task. In fact, it can be a pretty slow process. While retail orders come in at any time, it can take months to agree on a wholesale deal. The wholesale shift has been a welcomed change for the charleston Cookie Companys executive pastry chef. The move means a little more mixing and baking, but the woman known as judy pop says this decision was key to survival. As anybody knows a bakery, wholesaling keeps it going. I was really excited when we got wholesaling. So i was more probably ecstatic than anybody. She believes wholesaling does wonders for promoting charleston cookies allimportant brand. Retail is retail. Those are customers walking in. Those are from the internet, word by mouth, pabut wholesalin youre going throughout the businesses of charleston or even outside of charleston. A more efficient keeps in check. Keeping any leftover dough to a minimum. Wholesale does differ from the retail, but every batch is made from the same recipe. Charleston cookies which is. One thing is for certain, moores original idea of running a 100 Retail Operation is no longer an economic reality. It may be the balance that we will have, whether i like it or not. Obviously, the gifting business is more high profit than the wholesale but the wholesale brings in enormous volume. It is possible that the volume for wholesale may even increase to 70 30 retail and depending on how much volume that is, then that will be just fine with me. Its time now to answer some of your business questions. Sarah robinson is the ceo of the Sarah Robinson company, business coach, strategist and speaker who helps Small Business owners set their companies apart. She is also the author of the book fierce loyalty unlocking the dna of great to see both of you guys. Great to be with you. The first question is about owning a Family Business and getting funding. As a familyowned business, how difficult is it to get funding from general resources such as sba, venture capitalists or crowd funding . We had someone on recently who said that he never funds relatives. So what is your take . Is that common or no . Does it matter . I think its wise not to fund relatives, because all kinds of bad problems could happen. But i think that all of those ways of getting funding are difficult. Sba loan is difficult. A traditional funding is difficult. Crowd sourcing is difficult. The trick is to figure out which one is the best fit for your kind of company, start there and then if that doesnt work out, move to the next one and move to the next one. Do you think most investors or most banks care if youre relatives or not . I think they do. Familyowned businesses have their own set entrepreneurship in general is fraught with risk. Familyowned businesses have a lot more risk generally associated with them. How long has this business been around . What kind of business is it . As an sba loan sba loan, basica you have collateral, i dont think that would matter so much as a familyowned business. Crowd funding, vcs, thats going to be really, really tough unless you you have something kind of real unique and dynamic to that youre trying to get money for, the kind of business you have. What do you need to do if you are spouses, siblings, mother, son, whatever you are, in order to alleviate anybodys fears. You have to have a really good backup plan. In terms of whats going to happen. Anybody coming in to invest in you, spree, is that the name of the company that was husband and wife founded and everything was wonderful and then an ugly divorce and the whole company fell apart. And so its about nothing was in writing ahead of time. Maybe just address it and alleviate fears right off the bat. Go to the last question. Its about growing your business and expanding the number of employees. As the Small Business begins to expand beyond your personal capacity, how do you build the right team to make sure that becomes an entity that can run without you over time. Particularly, how do you figure out how to hire that first employee . Well, my guess is that she is either the visionary, the person who really sees the big picture of where her companys going, or shes the doer. Shes probably a combination of both because you sort of have to be. I would figure out if i were her which one she is most dominant. The one who has the big picture, is she the one that goes out and does stuff. And then the next person needs to be that other person. If shes the visionary, find the one thats going to get stuff done. If shes the operator, find the big picture. How do you set that plan for who youre going to hire, at what pace, at what stage . I think we have talked about this earlier. Hiring slow, firing fast. Dont rush into anything. Its not a bad idea to hire a head hunter or employment agency. You might spend money up front but youll make sure the talent is culled out. You have to figure out, what are you lacking in . Is it sales . Before you make that hire, if it is sales, do you need a dedicated salesperson . Can you use a manufacturers rep. You need to go over what youre lacking before you commit to actually hiring people. That brings whole other costs, managers, benefits, managers arent ready to deal with. Great to see both of you guys. Thank you for your advice today. If any of you out there have a question for our experts, go to the website. The address is openforum. Com yourbusiness. Hit the ask the show link to submit a question to our panel. That website is openforum. Com yourbusiness or email us your questions or comments. The address is yourbusiness msnbc. Com. We like to check out twitter so here are some of the latest tweets. Trade organization tweets, if you have thousands of people on a mailing list it doesnt matter if theyre the wrong people. Our friend says, make a list of liabilities. Know the numbers. And nancy with good advice for everyone. Tough times dont last. Tough people do. When youre the coowner of a business, one of the Major Conc