Open proudly presents your business on msnbc. Hi, everyone ep, im jj ramberg and welcome to your business, the show dedicated to helping your Small Business grow. A few months ago i started meditating. I know for any of you out there who are not into this kind of thing you may be rolling your eyes and wondering why are we talking about it on this show. Give me a second. I tried it because so many entrepreneurs i know said it was helpful to them in running their Small Business. Although it is still new to me, and to be honest with you, i think it is very hard because im the kind of person who never sits down, i do think theres something to it. So i wanted to talk about why. And what better way to start than a woman that started a company around teaching people to meditate. It is 9 30 on a friday morning in los angeles, and people are streaming into the morning session at unplugged meditation. Who comes to these classes . Anyone from a heart surgeon to the head of a Small Business that makes doughnuts. This guy, mark, whos doing 12 super bowl commercials. Susie olive schwartz is the owner of unplugged. She started the company in 2014 after her motherinlaw suggested she should start meditating herself. I was flying back and forth between new york and los angeles. I was very stressed. She said to me, you should try this little exercise. In three minutes i shifted from stress to calm and i thought, why is everybody not doing this . Susie conjured up the idea for unplugged when she could not find a place to meditate that felt right. A studio geared toward someone like her, high energy, busy and efficient. I have to admit im an impatient new yorker. I wanted it to be an experience and interesting as opposed to long and boring which sometimes it can often be. Often times when people hear mindf mindfulness, meditation, it turns them off. Thats some hippie dippy stuff. Thats not me. I have too much stuff to do. Right. You dont have to put labels on it. What youre talking about is simply calming down. Right. I think heres the deal. We are plugged in all the time. We have a lot of things coming at us. Were stressed. What you need to do is shift in that moment of stress. And thats meditation. Or whatever you want to label it. In susies previous life she was a new york fashion editor working for magazines like vogue and marie claire and doing tv appearances all the time. Her life was hectic. I would wake up and be out of the gate, get it done, get it done, get it done, do this, do this, do this. I would come home and id be like, uh. I missed being present for the day. Its kind of like when you eat a bag of cookies and afterwards you say where did they go . Thats how i was living my life when i was a fashion editor. Lets face it. Starting a business, even if its one that focuses on meditation is certainly no easier and no less stressful than being a fashion editor. Susie credits meditation with helping her get through all the tough times of launching a company. My husband always says thank god you have a Meditation Studio in here because you would be a disaster without it. Natalie bell is one of the teachers at unplug. As you breathe in shes been hired to work with teams at big corporations like Merrill Lynch, chipotle, Merrill Lynch and bloomingdales. In business we realize there are too many distractions. With distractions come negative thinking. Meditation allows us to refocus. The sign has shown us is retrains your brain, your ability to focus, to shift out of negativity, to reduce stress in the body and we know from that that we have increased productivity. But meditating is not easy for everyone. I tried out one of natalies classes. I think thats hard. Yes. I definitely feel calmer. I have to admit i find your class really hard. I suspect for somebody new like me its good to start in small chunks. Absolutely. We start with a fiveminute practice. Teach maybe no more than ten minutes with companies. Malika chopra is the author of living with intent. She says the benefits of meditation for entrepreneurs are abundantly clear. First as natalie said, it reduces stress. For a Small Business owner, theres a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety. Every day youre dealing with different things. When you meditate, you start to decrease the level of cortisol. It teaches you to be proactive instead of reactive. Our mind is usually racing from one thought to the next thought to the next thought. Often we dont take the time to think is this the right reaction . When we meditate we settle down our minds thoughts. Third, it helps increase empathy. When you can feel more empathetic to others, your team, your customers, to people in your work space, it improves with communication. That helps with team work. Nancy truman has experienced all of this. Shes the founder of fonuts, a Los Angelesbased bakery. She says meditation has helped her with everything, dealing with small issues throughout the day to coming up with Bigger Picture strategic plans for her company. I become very myopic when im not meditating or i get stuck on one thing. I ka uhl call it going down the slippery slope or going down the rabbit hole. Everything else gets blocked out. Im right here. When i meditate it helps me to open it up, i see everything. Im able to strategize, take all the elements in and then proceed. But like with so many other things that we know are good for us, like exercise and eating well, Getting Started and staying on track with meditation can be hard. There are a lot of options from classes at studios like unplugged to apps like head space and calm. The key is just giving it a shot. Heres the deal. You are never going to find the time to meditate. You have to make the time to meditate. There are a lot of very busy people like oprah, arianna huffington, deepak chopra, president of american airlines, theyre all making the time to do it. The reason why, it changes your life. The Maker Movement continues to flourish in the u. S. As budding entrepreneurs leave their day jobs to pursue their passions and creigh yates. That movement has helped spur another phenomenon. Maker spaces that give those creators access to tools, education and collaborators all under one roof. One of those is maker house in seattle where we met a bunch of entrepreneurs using the space to make everything from portable hydroponic gardens to extension cords, custom bikes and guitars. Never before in history has it been easier to create and scale a business as it is today. Whether youre coding or whether youre looking at making a physical product, you can start something and scale at a pace thats never been seen before. You know that product idea you scribbled on a piece of paper and then threw in a junk drawer because you didnt know how to make it . Well then listen up. Theres a new breed of highly innovative entrepreneurs called makers, who are at the leading edge of a growing do it yourself movement. They are taking their ideas from napkin sketch to product, fast every than ever. Using a place called a maker space. Woodworking, welding, laser cutting, 3d printing. Now anyone willing to pay a small membership fee can gain access to sophisticated tools like these. That can quickly catapult an idea beyond a hobby, taking people out of the isolation of their garages and into the collaborative atmosphere of a maker space. We describe it as a gym with tools. As a member, if you dont need wood or metal shop access, its 89 a month. If youre looking to do woodworking and metal working its 189 per month. None of these memberships have any contracts associated with them because we realize that people may just have one project theyre really trying to work through. It may only take a month for them. Designers ellie and mike khemry opened maker house in seattle, washington. They were frustrated by the lack of actre access to prototypes a tools. They realized this was a barrier to entry for smaller firms and entrepreneurs that had great ideas. To be able to have access to Something Like this and compete at that level with those companies without having financial constraint on their business is huge. New maker entrepreneurs actually making physical products at maker house include Jeremy Hanson and his own grown gardens. Com. A hydroponic greenhouse intended to grow foods in homes and restaurants. And taylor sizemore, and his custom bicycle company. And this handcrafted vintage inspired wallingford guitar company. Before joining the maker space, it used to take 60 plus hours to make just one guitar with his limited access to tools and a decent space to work. Now with everything he needs under one roof, he has a lot more time to spend on building his startup guitar brand. Ive actually gotten a lot done here. For johnson, access to the Maker Community has been a huge help solving design problems. Sometimes someone walks up and theyre like, why havent you tried doing it this way . Its like, i never thought about it before. Thats awesome. Its part of the proximity and part of it is the type of person that maker house attracts. Kevin fall loves bouncing ideas off fellow maker house members to see which of his conway electric products resonates the most with them. F reimagining the extension cord. Hes free to design without worrying how hes going to tackle each step. We can basically start with an idea in the morning and have a prototype at night. We do everything in here. Well use lathes, mills, well use the wood shop. And then well grow parts using the 3d printers so we can custom design just about anything we need. I think of this one like magnum p. I. s ferrari. Absolutely. Brie pettis is the ultimate maker entrepreneur success story. He and a couple of gear head friends got together at a hacker space they created in brooklyn, new york and cobbled together a 3d printer. Now the company is at the hub of the 3d maker revolution. We got our prototype to work, we quit our jobs and started the company. Our goal was to change the game and bring 3d printing to people. Now makerbot printers are part of the Standard Equipment at most maker spaces. Pettis is the maker they all want to be. You can become an entrepreneur, express your ideas physically. If they catch on in the world, youve got a business. Managing a team doesnt come naturally for every Small Business owner but it is definitely a necessary part of running a successful company. Ink. Com put together five free online resources that will help you hone your leadership skills. One, master class management. Com offers a free online course that covers a range of topics that will teach you to be a better manager. Pay attention because theres a quiz at the end of each section. Two, open learn offers lessons ranging from introductory Operations Management to how teams work. Three, alison. Com has classes for the entrepreneur who needs to learn quickly. About topics like selecting your team, Business Assessment and ethics. Four, latitudeu has a course that helps you manage difficult employees. And five, mindtools. Com. The site lists 57 techniques to improve your leadership abilities. Click through to find helpful information. Anyone who has a Small Business has to be able to talk about it in a really compelling way. I dont care if youre trying to raise money or get new customers or land a new partner, you need to reel them in with what our next guest calls an irresistible pitch. Carmine galloway is a communication adviser and bestselling author. His newest book is the storytellers secret. Hes here to give us ideas on how to create the irresistible pitch. I love it. Thank you. Your first point is brilliant, which is grade school language. I like you already. Of course its brilliant. Use grade school language. People think they want to use confusing jargon, it makes you sound smarter. Whats amazing is that in the last ten years we have learned more about how the brain processes information than weve learned in all of civilization. So we know what words work and what brain chemicals those words release. And we know how this works. If i read your book im going to find those words . What are the words that work. Simple words. Simple words. This goes back to Winston Churchill who said short words are the most ancient, which means they resonate with people. One of the first tips you mentioned is use simple words instead of long convoluted words. Use sixth grade language. Bill gates, elon musk, Richard Branson. Whenever they deliver presentations that are meant for the masses, meant to reach the widest number of people, they bring down their language. One syllable words, simple words that actually are in a textbook tool, shown to be appropriate for the sixth grade. By the way, i wouldnt think of this as talking down to people, because when you say sixth grade, its just explaining simply what you do. I cant tell you how many pitches ive heard and they leave and i dont understand what you do. Just explain it to me in simple language. Dont fancy is up. Explain what you do. Simple, steve jobs said, simple is harder than complex. It is. Okay. Next one. Idea on the back of a napkin. I actually learned that from Richard Branson who said, carmine, i hear hundreds of pitches every year. If your pitch, your idea, cannot fit on the back of a napkin its rubbish. Specifically, an airline cocktail napkin, not just any napkin. Can you write tiny with a really thin pen . Simpler is harder than complex. Its really important to see the whole picture. Can i give you an example of one of the great Business Plans of all time. Please do. Two men sitting in a bar, one drinking whiskey, one smoking cigars. This was in the 60s when they could do that. They decide to create an airline and put it on an airplane napkin, draw a dry angle. We have dallas, san antonio, houston. That is the original Business Plan for southwest airlines, originally on a napkin. That democratized travel. The pitch has to be simple. The pitch is the thing that has to fit on the napkin. The business itself, the intricacies of it is a level down. The pitch has to be on a napkin. Finally, this goes to the napkin you just showed, show pictures, not words. Pictures are much more persuasive than text or words alone. If i were to deliver information verbally, again, this is one of the things weve learned in neuroscience, when i deliver information to you verbally, youll remember about 10 of this conversation tomorrow. But if i were to show you pictures, like that napkin, retention soars to 65 . Very well established in the neuroscience literature. Why is it that sales people especially are still giving powerpoints like 20 years ago, full of text and bullet points. Instead, if you watch some of the best ted talks and best presentations, theyre very visual, pictures over words. Yes. That applies to whether youre using powerpoint or one of my favorites is prezzie or apple keynote. Take your content and make it visual. The story has to come first. You cant do that unless you understand the narrative first. Carmine, thank you for coming on the program. I suggest that everyone read your book. This is very simple, Important Information that youre giving us for our irresistible pitches. So good to see you. Thank you. I appreciate it. People come to pitch in the your business elevator looking for funding for all kinds of things. Some need money for marketing, operations or to expand their sales team. Todays elevator pitcher has a moving Crate Company hes trying to grow and has specific needs. Lets see if he moves our judges. David s. Rose is the ceo of gust and the founder of new york angels and tanya yuki is the founder and ceo of sharably. Hi. My name is adam and im the founder of value crates. We make moving easier, faster and eco friendly. Customers go on our website, select the package, we deliver, they pack and move and we pick them up from their new location. Since starting 18 months ago in washington, d. C. Weve had hundreds of happy customers who have raved about us and told their friends. Weve secured five figgs in equipment financing to purchase our crates. We formed major partnerships with moving companies and Property Management companies and well roll out storage here soon. Which we expect to be highly profitable. In order to dominate the 33 billion storage and crate moving market we need your help. Were asking for 200,000 in seed investment in exchange for 10 of our company. Were going to use that money to buy a crate cashing machine which will lower our Largest Labor cost. We will invest in Technology Platforms that will allow us to franchise nationwide and establish paid Marketing Campaigns. Im a former speech writer and my partner is a twotour combat vet. We know how to get our message out. I am bothering you because im standing right next to you to tell you your minute is up. Lets see what the people who count think about the pitch. I want two numbers, the first is on the product, the second on the pitch. Tell me, you said youre going to buy a washer for these. Right now what are you doing . Its by hand. Its a painful, manual process. Its dog hair and glitter and vacuuming and cleaning. I bet. I imagine you have different sizes as well. Right now we have one standard size. Thats a competitive advantage for us because our customers tell us when these get full, theyre too hard to move around. You can stack them easily if theyre one size. Correct. Tanya, lets start with you. Product pitch, 9 for product and 7 for pitch. What i love about the product which i actually wanted you to sell to me a little more. You dont have to deal with packing tape, disposing of boxes and all of that great stuff and breakage. It sounds like something that is easy to use and i would love to use for a move. That was terrific. For the pitch what i would have wanted to hear more of, you mentioned that it was a really big, i think 33 billion industry. I wanted to understand how much of that could you own, what were the demographics on people who were moving, how many boxes did people need . A bit more of the brass tacks of how you were going to scale your operations. David, lets hear what you thought. Its a funny world because i scored them exactly backwar