Hi, everyone. Im j. J. Ramberg and welcome to your business. Brothers trent and Hoey Hemphill know a thing or two about buses. Growing up as part of the gospel group the hemphills they traveled millions of miles on their family bus which was perfect training for launching a luxury Coach Company when they left their music careers. Pioneers in the entertainment bus industry their commitment to exceeding expectations on every tour, every time, has resulted in a client list thats a whos who of musicians, actors and politicians. If youve ever wondered how lady gaga, justin timberlake, rihanna, britney spears, aerosmith, cher or even the president , get from point a to point b when theyre on tour, talk to these guys. You have to stay focused on really what youre about. And thats what we do. Is just our customers happen to be famous. And what theyre really about is going the extra mile. Literally getting people where they need to go in style, and comfort, without having to worry about the details. You have 90 buses, and you know, 10 to 12 people on each vehicle. So, you know, at night you may have 1,000 people moving by the time you go to lay your head down. You have to know that youve done everything you can to give them a safe and comfortable experience. When you walk around the offices at hemphill brothers Coach Company in nashville, youll see the walls covered with many of their celebrity clients. Clients that relied on their service because they did one simple thing right. They delivered on what they promised. And in the topsyturvy world of touring, they rely on hemphill for being a stable force in an often unstable world. Its a world trent and Joey Hemphill know firsthand with a history steeped in music, the two brothers grew up in a sort of partridge familystyle bus, singing with their family band, the hemphills. I traveled 2 million miles on a bus singing gospel music. So, it was a very interesting way to be raised. Usually, in one town, you set up your gear, you perform. You tear down your gear, and then you go to bed, and wake up in the next town. With an intimate knowledge of what life is like on the road, the brothers knew a thing or two about what someone needs to have a relaxing and troublefree trip. So, they decided to start their bus Leasing Company in 1980. We know that feeling of being on the bus, riding down the road, or being on stage. So, i think that was a valuable time for us and a Training Ground for me and my brother or what we do now. Pioneers in the luxury coach industry, the brothers scraped enough money together to buy two old buses to get their start. They transfortunatelied them on the inside and out so they looked brandnew. Doing most of the work themselves. These buses were 15 years old when we bought them so they already had over 1 million miles on them. So each time when we would book a tour, they would be the last buses to leave nashville, and the first ones to come home. And sometimes they would come home on a wrecker. But we learned a lot, and we were able to learn the business end of the bus business and just learn to survive, even with older equipment. They didnt va lot of money, but they had a ton experience and learned early on to underpromise and overdeliver. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they did whatever it took to keep their buses rolling, support the drivers, and keep their clients happy. They started doing small, local tours at first. Their big break came two years after starting the business, when van halen called. Ill never forget the day they were in nashville, and they needed to add a bus to their tour. And just so happened we had a bus available. And took the bus down there with a driver, and got to meet the management, and obviously we did a good job, because 30 years later, we did the whole van halen tour, 2012. Being prepared for that first call led to many more. And the ability to start phasing out their old buses and buying and customizing new ones to fit the needs of their high profile clients. As the company grew, they poured all of their resources into bringing every aspect of building their customized buses in house from the custom woodwork to the upholstery and painting. If a bus is ordered for a tour and its supposed to be delivered on a certain date, it is. After all, if Justin Timberlakes 2020 experience tour starts on a thursday in cleveland, then justins star bus and all the support buses for the musicians, the crew, and everyone, need to be there. You might have an artist that has a special mattress. Or they have an artist that likes all white. White leather furniture, or white carpet, white drapes. And so well take an existing bus, and well make it white for that tour. There are families that travel together that have new babies. They want those cribs, you know, the monitors. We put tanning beds in buses. And sometimes well set up a Recording Studio in a bus. And that way they can go down the road, and record their latest hit. With careful and measured growth, hemphill brothers expanded their fleet slowly. Only doing so when they could adequately increase their driver pool and support staff in nashville with the right people. With less than 5 turnover, frank and joey have cultivated trade and built an extremely loyal and Productive Team of employees. Starting with the daytoday face of the company, their drivers. We went out there and hired the best of the best for our company. Even when we really felt like we couldnt afford to do that. We couldnt afford not to. So we had to have the best drivers that we could possibly find. And that built company pride. Being able to go out on a tour and do it successfully, and know that when the tour was over, that client said i want you guys back next year. Mark larson started as a driver, and now schedules the fleet of almost 100 buses. He often has to face the painful reality that they sometimes have to turn away longtime clients because of scheduling conflicts. If they dont have the best drivers, mechanics and equipment ready to roll on a tour, they simply wont take the gig. Ill look at our business like a chain that youre as strong as your weakest link. So its very important that everybody that you got out there, driving your bus, is top notch, and all of your equipment is in really good condition. Getting a call from air force one, you know, booking buses for the president , getting a text from George Strait saying i want you to build me a new bus. Or getting a call from the oprah show saying we want to use your buses for her show. Its always something new. And its never boring around here. When you first sign up for an email list you usually think its a good idea. Hundreds of junk mails later, you might find that our website of the week is just what your inbox needs. Unroll. Me is a free service that helps you unsubscribe from the messages you dont want. The system analysts what listserves you signed up for. You get the choice to stay subscri subscribed, unsubscribe or have your email to a rollup. The web may be a great place to find your next big business idea so here now are five sites you should check out to get some inspiration for a new product or Service Courtesy of businessesdaily. Com. One, stroll through stumbleupon. The site recommends websites to check out and can be a good way to get inspired by context you wouldnt have necessarily found through other channels. Two, reddit is a good place to start if youre on the prowl for a new tech related product or service idea. Users submit content that others can vote up or down. The ask me anything feature can help you learn what potential customers want and need. Three, pinterest is one of the best ways to see what products are trending now, and comments are open to everyone so you could get a firsthand look of what people think about different images on the site. Four, search twitter questions. Dont just follow trending tweets or hashtags. Scour through questions people are asking for new ideas. And five, visit Niche Networks and apps. Seek out social media sites that would attract your clientele. Knowing your audience helps you better serve their needs. The role of websites has changed since social media came onto the scene. Your website and social media platforms serve entirely different purposes and shouldnt be twins. But branding the two should be kept front and center. So here now with some quick tips to help tailor your content for the right audience and experience is a Founding Partner and ceo of the s3 agency an ad agency with a special focus on social media so great to see you denise. Its great to be here. Youve done this so much for so many of the makeovers weve had on this show its great to have you talk to our whole audience about ways to think about your website and ways to think about social media and so lets just start with the idea of Community Experience. Which one is a Community Experience or if they both are in what ways are they different . Well, by default social media kind of gives it away. Thats the community. But it used to be that the website was everything and then social media emerged so websites arent really the primary engagement platform anymore. Thats where individuals go. And individuals go there for a very specific purpose. Theyre looking to find out about your product or service, maybe where it can be bought, how to contact you if theyre annoyed or maybe they want to send you a nice compliment and maybe to find out how to find your social media thats a big thing that people go to brand websites now for. So all that stuff should be easily found but also should allow the individuals to determine which information they want. And you have an example here for, is it 8 00 . 8 00 coffee is one of our clients and we recently redid their website and really looked at what it was that people were looking to do and created paths to allow each individual to find what they wanted as easily as they could. Very important. On the other hand, social media, if you look at facebook, and we have something here from eight owe clock coffee to see the difference, facebook is where you can have the quick little interaction where you can give them a little surprise. Where you can say hey, were going to define the experience for you. Sure, people go on your Facebook Page and dig down deep, but most likely, the most recent thing that you posted theyre going to interact with. So youre creating that control and then the community is responding to it. And often responding to each other. Which is really nice. And then here the the predingtdable which im guessing is the website versus surprising. Yeah. Its not that you can never have surprise on your website. Little easter eggs or something you can throw in and thats wonderful but the focus is getting people what they want when they want it. Right. So if im a zoo people are probably going to see what is the most recent exhibit thats important for me to know about. The sea lions. I know im coming there to see the exhibit is where the Contact Information how do i get there. What are the hours. Im a mom, im busy i want to be able to see it easily on mobile or wherever im looking at it from and thats very important. Thats turtleback zoo and also on their social media on the other hand again you can sort of throw something surprising out there so you have the information on the website you can inspire the social. So, as everybody knows, february 2nd is groundhog day. Uhhuh. So our groundhog at turtleback zoo may not be as famous as punxsutawney phil. Hes very accurate and he takes over twitter for the entire month of february. So hes predicting way more than the weather. He predicts super bowl winners, accurately. He predicts, you know, whos going to be an American Idol and do well whos going to have a fashion trend what the all rightry numbers may or may not be. Hes not always 100 ive got to tell you but its something fun that people engage with. I have heard you talk about this groundhog before. This is not the first time ive heard about this groundhog. Okay then finally focus on engagement. So the website obviously, you want to come up high in the Search Engine results. Make sure youre writing correctly. Not in a secret way trying to trick the web crawlers. Theyre on to that now. Thats sort of a thing that we used to do years ago. Now as long as you write properly about the things that you want people to find, in thinking about the terms that theyll be searching to find you organically that will start happening. Whereas social media you want engagement, you want quick little statements something that has a great picture. Pictures arent really going to do anything for seo but on facebook for example people have a great response emotionally to that picture and a quick little thing. It kind of goes back to predictable versus surprising because on the website. To have good seo you want to have good content that people are looking for and expecting to get it all wrapped together, and then also surprising and engagement fit together on the it does. And so youre right they shouldnt be twins but your website and your social media should be related. You dont want to feel like its an entirely different brand when you go from one to the other so its just walking that fine line of which bit goes where. Sometimes there are things that can be shared. But think about each one with a different head so youre giving that visitor the right experience. Great advice. Easy way to think about this. Thank you so much. As Small Business owners we are inundated with pitches for new tools and services. But the best way to know what works is to find out what other people are using. We recently asked our your business viewers to share their favorite Small Business web tools. We use an app called over and its 1. 99 and we use it to be able to put websites, as well as any branding message across any photo that we use. And so when you share this with your social media and it gets hashtaged the viewer immediately can tell that its from kirks eye wear. Samepage. Io. We use this app. Free for ten or fewer employees in your company. Its a collaboration app. We use it to throw things at the wall and see if they stick. Edit, chop, hack, and then when were done we take the output and put it into our official package that we use for our customers. One of my favorite websites is scoop it. If youre an entrepreneur or a Small Business and youre looking for content, this is a great site for you to go to, and what you will find is that there are a bunch of bloggers and writers that are aggregating the information. You can go in and just scoop it and share it with your community. Text messaging has not built my data base for emails therefore i found a Service Called virtual merchant mobile and it is a great website because not an application not only just allow me to gather their swipe their card at a good rate its much better than square or other products out there it also allows me to gather an email address and in the last two years weve gathered 22,000 customers email addresses from working at expos and shows that if we had used another source we would not have had. So i use whats up simply i love it because i have people working overseas. And so, it allows us very simply to just connect and communicate very easily simply because the email usually whats happening is people dont necessarily go on the emails but they always have their whats up like blinking, coming up, and my favorite app that ive been using for about five years or so is called check this its an online shareable checklist for outlining service. What i love about it is its quick its easy it works by for example using keystrokes to capture information, make a note, grab a url from the web and all of these information can be ar viefed. One lightly is skwiftly which they do Little Design fixes fast so like its christmas and you want to put a santa hat on your logo theyll turn it around within an hour and its really inexpensive and great. Still to come the cheeseburger network and jay golds from the New York Times answer your questions on buy sell agreements and whether or not its possible to be too innovative. And where better to learn about the fine art of negotiating than from the hagglers at works famous fulton fish market. If i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing ive learned is my philosophy is real simple American Express open forum is an online 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 its open for everyone. Theres not one way to do something. No details too small. American express open forum. This is what membership is. This is what membership does. Steinway sons builds a piano to a standard and not to a price and thats a very unusual approach to marketing these days of product. But for us we build this instrument, always to improve it, to make it better, but not to build it to a price point. Negotiating can be tricky. First some Small Business owners bargaining can be comfortable and things can get contentious. Weve had a lot of experts on the show tell us how to do this including academics and negotiating consultants. But we received no better advice about haggling than from joey at new yorks fulton fish market. 785. Im coming in here, i admittedly know very little about fish. Right. Im here with a mission because i have to buy some fish. What would i do . There are four things. Number one, you must know your product. Whether its fish, or stocks, you have to know the kind of commodities youre dealing with. In this case you have to know the quality, the size, the species. You cant look at a red snapper and say how much is that bluefish . Thats not a good thing. Because they will take you for someone who doesnt know what theyre talking about. Somebody who just fell off a banana boat and you have no time for that. Do your research. The second thing you have to know is you have to know yourself. You have to exceed confidence. You have to be firm when you counter and not firm when you need to be. Thats a good negotiator. The third thing you need to know is know the person youre buying from. You have to know if he has a lot of product or a little prod