Hey there, everyone, im j. J. Ramberg and welcome to your business. The scramble for customers whom day shopping dollars is under way and independent businesses are doing everything they can to draw customers away from the mall, and over to main street. As weve been reporting, the Small Business saturday campaign, which is now five years old, has helped spawn yearlong shop local promotions in towns and cities across the country. In arizona, a statewide initiative called local first arizona has offered a fascinating challenge to consumers. Shift 10 of their shopping dollars to their communitys Small Businesses. The important thing about the 10 shift is that were conveying to people that small incremental shifts in their behavior can make a big difference. The message is simple. When you spend local, your money stays local. Whether youre shopping for food, grabbing a quick item from the store, or searching for a local service provider. A simple shift in the way you spend can help support and improve the quality of life for your local community. Every time you spend 100. Roughly 43 to 45 of those dollars will stay in your community and recirculate if you choose to spend them at a locally owned business. If you take that same 100 and spend it at a nonlocal corporate chain store, only 13 is going to stay. That money just leaves your community almost entirely. The statewide 10 shift campaign spearheaded by local first arizona is getting the word out that making the simple choice of shifting 10 of your spending to a local business can have a big impact. What were saying is lets all be mindful of where our money goes when we spend it. And understand the local business then, in turn, is going to have a local accountant or Graphic Designer and Web Developer and that money stays and recirculating in our local economy and creates additional jobs. So if were mindful of that and we understand that small changes make big shifts, then you can get more people on board. Im saying, small simple things. Finding a local mechanic. Getting a local haircut. Choosing a locally owned theater, a bookstore. Anything you can do, simple things. And this isnt just for consumers. A big component of the campaign is focused on businesses shifting 10 of their spending by taking a closer look at how they source products and services. It instinctively made so much sense. Being able to keep those dollars here locally. Not just for the business necessarily, but all of the ancillary businesses that feed off of them. The tax accounts, the lawyers. Adam goodmans Third GenerationOffice Furniture business made some big changes after learning about the initiative. I sat down with our Management Team to talk about who our suppliers are that we do business with. We try to figure out what are the quickest things we can do to shift and we made those shifts like Office Supplies. Were buying Office Supplies from a big box company. Well theres no excuse for that, right . Have no idea where theyre headquartered. I have no idea how theyre spending the money. I have no idea what cultural organizations they support. When adam and his team started looking at where they were spending the most money, namely with their furniture suppliers, they realized most of them were located far away in the midwest. Then they thought of their old friend and former sales person keith maclaine, who had recently left goodmans after 12 years with the company, to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. I knew nothing about making furniture. But he knew a lot about selling furniture. When he bought a local phoenix wood shop. Adam realized that they had an opportunity to have a positive impact on keiths new business by making an effort to shift some of their custom made furniture manufacturing to him. Theres a lot of advantages for us, and for them, you know, they can get things quicker. Were here if anything goes wrong with it. Or if it needs to be fixed. Or if we need to go measure before we build it. When we decided to commit ourselves in this 10 shift one of the principles we needed to do was want to keep the cost the same, hopefully well save a little bit of money. We may have to pay a bit of a premium and we figured it was going to balance out somewhere in there like that. And im happy to say in the case of keith for example, it has lowered our costs. As you can imagine shipping a conference table from indiana to phoenix adds a bit of cost to it as opposed to from 35th avenue to 3rd street, right . We have been able to realize the savings and pass them right along to our customers. Kim has owned her business since she was 19. Now, nearly 30 years later, she, too, has made the effort to reevaluate how she spends locally. How did she, the founder of local first, and the biggest cheerleader for the 10 shift campaign in arizona, make the shift for her business . So here at my record store, i, when i started the first loan that i got was with a locally owned bank at the time that then merged with another big bank and then merged with another bank and then suddenly my books were with a giant mega bank. And so that was the first thing i went for. Its important for businesses to keep their money in banks that have local decision making. Because, the big banks, especially in a place like arizona, theres no one here making those decisions. So if we had more localized decision making, banks that were mandated to lend locally, we would start to see a quicker recovery, and a little bit more local growth. So, we moved our money. In mesa, arizona, James Christianson runs the local community bank. When he heard about the 10 shift, he took a hard look at all of his vendors so he could better support the community. His shift was purchasing his Office Supplies, Janitorial Services and marketing locally. A lot more money stays in the community, which is a plus. Just building the relationships and taking that vendor relationship to a whole new level, i think theres so many pluses to shifting locally. Brandy also decided to take a closer look at the spending and sourcing at the ecofriendly taxi service. We went through every vendor that we purchase things from, from air conditioning replacement repairs, to buying chairs to buying coffee supplies and those sort of things. And we did an analysis with local first. And we found out that we were already 83 local. So, what we did was, out of the nonlocal vendors, we picked five of our biggest vendors, i guess you would say, to see what we can shift, and we shifted i think three of the five so far. And still working to do more. I dont know what our final number is, but 83 i think were probably up to 85 , 86 . For those that we spoke to, the net impact of taking the pledge to make the 10 shift has been better relationships, lower costs, and ultimately, a stronger local economy. Its a winwin for us. Its a winwin for the local community. And we feel great about that. The ultimate goal of many of these shop local campaigns is to draw consumers away from major chains and service providers, and they work. A lot of times they bring people in. But then how do you, as a Small Business, get them to come back . Well, you may want to try adding an extra helping of hospitality. Danny meyer, owner of the Union Square Hospitality group, has been running some of new york citys most successful restaurants for more than two decades. If i had to pick between being the best or the favorite id go for the favorite. There are probably places out there that have better Technical Service than we do. But we believe that its the whole experience. Mark is dannys managing partner for the blue smoke restaurant. I really dont believe that most of what we do is so unique to restaurants. So whether youre a consultant or a retail store or a plumber, you should be able to treat your customers in a certain way. They believe their extra emphasis on hospitality distinguishes their restaurants. And they say, it pays off. It pays off hugely to offer great hospitality. As a matter of fact, if you look at the zagat survey, every single one of our restaurants in a city of 26,000 restaurants, is among the top 50 of new yorks favorite restaurants. I didnt say new yorks best restaurants. So whats their secret . How do they know what their customers are really thinking . Great question. Im looking at the guests eyes, and if the guests are looking at each other, were doing a great job. If the guests are looking around, were not doing a great job. If the food is taking too long, or someones glass of water is empty, theyre going to look around. With all the attention they give to their customers comfort, it might be surprising to learn that the customer is not their number one priority. Put your customer second, absolutely. Because, if you really want to have Great Customer satisfaction, your customers will never be any happier than the people who are working in your company. We believe that that relationship between the management and the staff is the most important relationship. And from there, our guests will necessarily be taken care of. One of the toughest tests of hospitality comes when someone on the Restaurant Team makes a mistake. It can take teamwork to fix it. And we really ask our teammates to be incredibly creative, and imaginative, and saying, i made the mistake, im sorry. How can we end up in a better spot than if we hadnt made it in the first place . Danny calls this writing the last chapter. You cant unspill a glass of wine. But you can always do something to make amends. And this way, you can write the last chapter. Its critically important that we embrace mistakes that we make and use them as opportunities to end up in a better spot. I got this guy. And he was i think he was even swearing as carrie was apologizing to the table, and i approached them to, you know, guide them from the menu and everything, he was still just so angry and it takes a lot to keep your calm, and to like keep helping this person that just hates you. You know, just keep being there for them and keep trying to correct it. I think the key is really expressing to people how sorry you are, and that you made a mistake and owning up to it. Danny and mark are quick to distinguish this kind of lotty from what many people call Customer Service. I think theyre using the word in the wrong way. What service means is that a restaurant or any type of business did the things they were supposed to do. When they talk about hospitality, what theyre talking about is how did the provider of that service make the recipient feel, and theyre completely different things. And this focus on making people feel good, they say, is key to overcoming the unexpected challenges any business faces every day. Try to do what it takes to make sure that at the end of the day, whatever somebody came in to our restaurant with, they leave feeling slightly better than when they came in. If we can do that i think our restaurants will have served a purpose. If you do not have satisfied customers, you are absolutely going to get left behind. Providing your clients with what they want, when and how they want it, needs to be a priority for your business. Our guest today has tips to help you improve your Customer Service efforts before, during, and even after a transaction. Andrew schrage is the coowner of moneycrashers. Com a personal finance website dedicated to educating its readers about bheter ways to save, spend and invest their money. Good to see you. Its great to be back. So you get a customer. Takes a lot of time and money to get a customer. You better make sure they are happy once they work with you most important, right, okay so you talk about getting to know everything you can about them. What do you mean . Yeah, one of the most important aspects is your customer. And too often Business Owners are focused on their product, or their service, but not enough on the Customer Service experience. Which is really whats going to keep that customer coming back. So you need to talk to a few different groups of people. Talk to your longterm repeat customers, find out what youre doing well. What keeps them coming back when they could be going to a competitor. And then theres two other groups you want to look at. Your past customers, who are no longer doing business with you. And your target demographic customers who might currently be doing business with their competitors. Ask them what can you do better . What voids do you need to fill in your Customer Service experience . And even ask what are your competitors doing well that maybe you could bring in to your business to attract those customers . You talk about eliciting this feedback often. Do you literally mean calling people up and asking them or do you mean spending surveys . How would you get that snfgs . All of the above. I think Business Owners make it too complex sometimes and i say just ask however you want to do it. You can email them. You can use online polls or surveys. You can take more of a grassroots approach. Talk to your customers, walking in and out of your door. Go out on the street. Find people that fit your target demographic. Ask what you can do to get their business. One thing i do is, as an online publication at moneycrashers, anyone that unsubscribes i personally email. I ask them why they unsubscribed and what can we do to improve the site. Do you annoy people or no . Im sure some people get annoyed but im sure they appreciate it. Actually a lot of the unsubscribers will resubscribe when they see im invested in each and every one of them. I care about their experience on our site or maybe you can direct them somewhere. Say oh, you were looking for that. We actually have that. You just didnt see it before. Exactly. Ill show it to you now. You talk about then taking all of these results, creating a strategy and implementing them. One of the problems is you might hear from somebody i desperately need this or i really need this you have to take it in aggregate, right . Right. So theres a strategy you need to use to tackle the various issues so i recommend kind of a triaged list that you want to set up of the top five complaints and suggestions you get from your customers. So, id say start off by ranking them by volume of number of complaints, one, two, three, four, five and then youve got to take a approach where you analyze two aspects of these issues. One being the financial cost to address that issue. And the other being how much time will need to be invested to adequately address that feedback. And what youll find is something interesting. You might actually start with points three, four and five because those might be the quickest and easiest. And then you might move to one and two, because that might require the largest percentage of your budget, or maybe it will take months or years to fully address those issues. I think also to look at these people say they want this we get complaints about it all the time but is this keeping them from using the site, right . So is is it as important as people say it is even if i hear it all the time . Yep, exactly. You really need to communicate with your kwus hers. Its too often overlooked by Business Owners and by doing this youre going to find great elements, great strategies that you can use to grow your customer base, and improve the chance for longterm success of your company. Okay. And then finally reward your employee. So people who discover things, reward your employees. So theyre always looking out for the customer . Right. Its not enough for just you to care about Customer Service. You need to restore those for your employees. Start out with little rewards or incentives. Coffee, maybe take them out to lunch, maybe a certificate or picture of your best employees from the prior month. Maybe a little more tangible, a yearend bonus or salary raise for the following year directly correlated with how they perform. Andrew thank you for stopping by. You write about Small Businesses. You have a Small Business. So practice what you preach. Thanks a lot. Thanks, j. J. Customer reviews have the potential to make or break your business. So how do you get more of the positive ones, and fewer of the negative ones . Here now are five ways you can make sure your startup gets more fivestar reviews, courtesy of smallbiztrends. Com. One, ask for feedback directly. If you dont ask for their opinion, customers are more likely to just post something publicly. So its better to get their thoughts in a controlled environment right after they finish doing business with you. Two, claim your business on review sites. Set up a designated place for customers to share their reviews and theyll have an easier time finding your review space on search engines. Three, be available. Make it easy for people to reach you. Include contact information, and your social media accounts on your website. Four, monitor what people post. No matter how great your service is, youll still get a few negative reviews online. Track what people are saying so you can take action when necessary. And five, highlight the good reviews. You dont have to just respond to negative feedback. Share the positive ones on your blog and social media. Open enrollment for businesses with 50 or fewer employees is set to begin november 15th. But there are already snags in the system created by the Affordable Care act. The website for the online marketplace that will offer Health Insurance for Small Businesses has defects and mistakes, which the government is scrambling to fix by the 15th. With us to sort out what owners should do is mark gaunya, the owner and chief innovation officer of borislow insurance in boston. Mark is also a member of the National Association of Health Underwriters. And Michael Stahl is the Senior Vice President at Health Market which provides Insurance Solutions to individuals and Small Businesses. Thank you both so much for joining us today. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Okay, mark, lets start with you. What is the opportunity for Small Businesses right now . Once this website launches, presuming it launches well on the 15th . So, j. J. , i think a great place for Small Businesses to start first is to make sure that they have a licensed broker or agent that represents them. Similarly speaking when you go to court, you would never go to Court Without a lawyer you shouldnt purchase Health Insurance without the advice of a licensed professional. I would start with the National Association of Health Underwriters to find an agent at www. Nehu. Org. So mark how does this make things any different than they were before . Because if i were a Small Business with any number of employees i would go find an agent who would help me get Health Insurance. How does this website change things for me . I think the website gives brokers an opportunity to help connect those who have not traditionally offered insurance or have struggled with the cost of offering insurance. It provides them another avenue and another solution for them. In fact, over 70 of Small Businesses in this country already offer insurance and three quarters of them work with a broker or agent today. So what the healthcare. Gov or the Shop Exchange offers is another pathway for small employers to offer Health Insurance to their employees. So michael do you believe that more Small Businesses will start offering insurance . If this is just another path, right, is it going to be cheaper . What incentive will Small Businesses have to offer insurance now that they didnt have three weeks ago . See j. J. , were seeing something very different. If we step back for a second, Small Business owners are finding that Group Insurance in general really isnt working. Truthfully. Theyre seeing increased rates significant year after year after year on their group Health Insurance plan. Five, 10, 20 and they want off that treadmill. Theyre spending more on Health Insurance than they are rent. The issue is that the Shop Exchanges are not a panacea. Theyre just not. Subsidies available also match fortunately j. J. The Affordable Care act has provided a clear alternative for Small Business owners to continue to provide Health Insurance for their employees in a different way. What were finding is that Small Business owners are increasingly migrating away from Group Insurance and to an individual healthinsurance solution that is packaged as a benefits program for their employees. By doing that, they access the more significant subsidies that are on the individual Health Insurance marketplace, which also opens on 11 15, that is on average providing subsidies of 75 or more. In the meanwhile, the Shop Exchange is another thing to look at. While you are evaluating the best option for your company as of november 15th, should the website come off without a hitch and we shall see. Here is another computerized on a website way that you can see to providing insurance. Thank you for coming through and sorting this all out for us. We really appreciate it. When we come back, we have the answers to help you run your Small Business. Well discuss when its time to walk away from a potential investor and approaches to take when managing millennial employees. This business meansiness, so everything in thathe community. Its how i care for my family. What you spend in the Community Stays in the community. Were all independent folks. But, you know, one store on a block cant make it without other stores. You cant swim alone. I think if we are going to challenge the big guys or anybody out there, we have to make sure that we make it better than anybody. Then i knew i it, basically. I will go into my fridge and eat it every day and i said, man, this is a good product, then im done. Its time now is to answer some of your business questions. Lets get our board of directors in here. Jennifer is the president of the Technology Therapy group, a group focused on Digital Marketing and Michael Goldberg a visiting assistant of design at university of cleveland. Thanks for being here. So great to see you guys. Thank you, j. J. Great to be here. First question. All about the search for capital. As entrepreneurs, were confaco constantly on the hunt for funding. When is the best time to walk away from an invest snment. Michael, an interesting question. Oftentimes when youre looking for funding youre so desperate. People think they should just take anything. Thats not the case. Absolutely, j. J. Its a great question and i think the first question an optripner needs to ask, do you want to boot strap it and try to grow the business more slowly and maybe not money from an outside investor. Thats the first question you ask. Do you take it or not . I think for the person who asked the question, the presumption probably looking for money. Might want to grow more quickly. Then building that deep network starting with family and friends first because more accessible people and then branching out. Who else is in your network. You need it be looking for money before you take it. That process takes weeks, months if not years to raise capital. A lot of coffee meetings and building those networks to build the right capital source for the entrepreneur. Someone yesterday said to me, you should ask for advice if you want money and ask for money, if you want advice. Which i thought was really funny, but it seemed dead on. I spoke to a woman who was looking for funding and she spoke to a few Angel Investors who were offering her the capital and she turned it down because she realized, were in this for the long haul together and we dont share the same values. Investments dont always have to be monetary, they could be partnerships, too. I did this myself, actually. Looked at another firm, they had more tech than we did. We wanted to do a partnership and i flew out there, checked them out and i realized that they were talking one way and walking the other. So, you want to make sure youre doing your homework and making sure that you are investing with someone or building a partnership, you want to make sure that they are exactly who they say they are and not just putting on to build that relationship with you. Because in the long run, you will be kicking yourself for that. Oh, yeah. Next question. Working with a generation of employees. How do we adapt our work places to the growing Millennial Workforce . Michael, i will start with you. You are professor. Youve taught a lot of mille millenni millennials. Not that i actually understand millennials at all, i have my girls as they move into teenage, theyre going to be my little mini millennials. It is a great question. One thing i want to see of my students, they want to be engaged and have fun. A number of leading companies are giving their employees opportunities to get involved in the community. Carving out time out of the work day to do community service. This isnt just a one day habitat for humanity or one day sort of paint a school kind of project. It is substantive Community Work. Companies that do that, a great example of companies that do that. Employees are getting out in the workplace and networking with the Business Community and building relationships outside of their business relationships. Actually great for young people in a company to get involved in Community Work and, actually, in the long term a happier place for the business and good for business. Michael, i totally agree and i love the way you say engaged. I talk to myself all the time. I have a millennialbased staff because were a digital agency. One of the things they love is the environment itself. You talked about going out in the community and also bringing that community feel inside your company is important. So, making sure that the daytoday feels more like a community. The comments that i get from my team is they love the fact that we have dogs in our office. Not everybody can do that, but we have a dog friendly workforce. Look at making your own rules. Were not corporate america, youre a Small Business, you can do totally different things. Even fun little things, asking which snacks you want in the fridge could make a difference. One thing i hear a lot, they enjoy a relaxed environment. Not having to get dressed up every day, if they dont need to. That i think is really important. Not every business can do that, but that does make a big difference for them. Last for me is technology. You know, i find so many businesses forget that this is a generation that likes to say im running late through texts messaging and they may not make phone calls. The tech they like to use and grow and change with that audience would really make it more friendly for them. Jennifer, thank you so much. Michael, so great to see you. Hopefully it will be here in the studio next time. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you want to learn more about todays show, just click on our website, openforum. Com yourbusiness. Youll find all of todays segments, plus, some web exclusive conitant with information to help your business grow. You can also follow us on twitter msnbcyourbiz and on facebook and instagram, too. Next week, Small Business saturday is one day of the year, but in one alabama town every saturday is about living local. We get the tax revenue for each of our villages and since we kicked this campaign off, weve seen that rise. How residents are being encouraged to live, shop, dine, play and even love small. Till then, im j. J. Ramberg and, remember, we make your business our business. This business meansiness, so everything in thathe community. Its how i care for my family. What you spend in the Community Stays in the community. Were all independent folks. But, you know, one store on a block cant make it without other stores. You cant swim alone. So, whats next . All right, thanks for getting up with us this morning. We have a lot to talk about at the end of a week that brought us a seat change of power in the senate. More details emerging this morning on what each party intends to do and whether theyll be able to accomplish it. President obama is on his way to asia at this hour. He arrives today on a tour that will take him to three countries on a nineday trip. Also this morning, a diplomatic win for the administration. Two americans released from captivity in north korea are now back in the united states. Well have more