Hi, everyone. Im jj ramberg and welcome to your business. The show dedicated to helping your Small Business grow. And happy valentines day. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But surprising your special someone with sexy pictures might be worth a thousand more. So this seemed like the perfect day to profile a company weve been watching grow for the past couple years, a company that fog kus focuses on boudoir photography. Are you nervous . Im nervous, yes. What are you nervous about . Posing in lingerie. Its revealing. Im not used to it. I often call meself a photograph therapist instead of a photographer. Theres a therapeutic aspect to what i do here. Im not a therapist. Im not guaranteeing that. But there is certainly for the right woman whos open to the experience, something therapeutic that goes on here. Just the images are a souvenir of that experience. Turn your head toward the window. Beautiful. When Jen Rosenbaum started generations photography in new york eight years ago, she had no idea that her boutique boudoir photography business would turn into something so much more than taking pictures. People assume its about sex, women taking off their clothes. For me its about a woman discovering their unique femininity. She was a stay at home mom dabbling in Wedding Photography when she discovered she had a knack for making women feel comfortable in their own skin. When a friend suggested she tag along an a boudoir set, she found her niche. Why would you want people in your bed, what are you doing . I said it doesnt matter, i dont care what you think. This is what i want and nothing is going to stop me. Her cairndo attitude translated into a very savvy grass rouxes Marketing Campaign aimed at the influencers in her target market, newly engaged women planning their womens. Planning their weddings. Tell me about the cool girl principle. I knew i had to reach other people to talk about me. Its hard as a Business Owner to talk about yourself. Nobody really wants to hear that. How do i build an army of enthusiasts to talk about me. I went online on a wedding board that i knew. A message board. Yes. This was before facebook. I ran a contest. It didnt really matter who entered the contest. I already knew the two cool girls were going to win. Those are the two girls everybody looks up to. Those girls won and part of the idea of the contest was i will take these pictures of you for free. You have to post them, talk about me and tell everyone what a wonderful experience they had. Business was booming. Just three years after starting generations, she had more clients than she could handle. Shed outgrown her bedroom and rented a studio. Her schedule was gruelling and this was not the business she wanted to run. She decided the time had come to dramatically restructure and raise prices. I was working seven days a week, a million hours a day. I was not making as much money as i wanted. I raised my prices dramatically and raised the amou decreased amount of clients i could tell. I said maybe my email form is broken. He went and filed out the form and my email goes, blink. It was a scary time. She was determined to stick it out in order to carve out a worklike balance that allowed her to spend more time with her kids. After a few months of nail biting, things started to pick up again. It was a Pivotal Moment for me. This is what separates the men from the boys or the women from the girls. This is what separates true entrepreneurs and people that struggle through the tough times. This is what is going to make your business better. The price change and extra time in her schedule allowed her to tackle one of the biggest issues with her business. She didnt want to hire other photographers so her ability to make money taking pictures was limited. If she really warranted to grow revenue, she had to pursue other ideas. She expand her business beyond just taking pictures to teaching boudoir workshops, creating howto guides that people could purchase on her website and eventually it also led to sponsorships in the photo industry. How is the split in your Business Revenue wise from taking pictures to all the other stuff you do, the seminars, workshops and sponsorships. Its half and half right now. I cant teach other people how to do it if im not actually doing it. Thats number one. Number two, i enjoy it. I enjoy connecting with clients and doing all that work. The other side of it and the other income, some of it is passive income, it allows me to have Work Life Balance and take a day off and play hooky with my kids. Her singular focus on all things related to boudoir photography has paid off, macing her the goto person on the subject. It certainly was not by design to become an expert in this field. I think because i specialized so early on i was really one of very few photographers doing that. I was starting to gain recognition and notice from the Photography Industry not just for my photography but for my message and the fact that it was all that i was doing. When you think of american innovators like steve jobs and mark zuckerberg, you might assume they were born with a gift that the rest of us just dont have. Not true says acclaimed professor adam grant at the Wharton School of business. In his new book originals how nonconformists changed the world, professor grant shares the secrets of successful trail blazers and explains how you can become one. Heres nbcs willie geist. I want to share a couple things i learned. Reporter 34yearold adam grant is teaching some of the worlds brightest young business minds to be productive by being creative. Some of you had way too much fun with this. Reporter the first step to an original idea, he says, is to poke a hole in the status quo. And see whats behind it. Originality starts with looking at the world around you and seeing something that nobody else saw. Its basically about taking the lead and saying, im going to take initiative to not only have the idea but make it a reality. Reporter in 2010, four of professor grant students at wharton did just that. They wondered why a pair of eyeglasses should cost hundreds of dollars. That question and the answer the guys found gave birth to the popular Eyewear Company warby parker. Wed like you to invest in this company to which you said no, im not interested in investing. That hurts right now, doesnt it . They were just valued at over a billion dollars. Now my wife handles all of our investments. Reporter 1. 2 billion to be exact. The warby moment was an inspiration for grants book. He set out to investigate what he had missed about his students and their idea. I thought that all original people were daredevils. What i learned, though, is that most successful entrepreneurs and in fact anybody who champions an original idea, most of those people hate taking risks. They like to play it safe, hedge their bets. Reporter another finding, that socalled experts dont always know best. We all know seinfeld as one of the most successful tv shows of all time but executives and test audiences were ready to leave it for dead before the show ever saw the light of day. The show is about nothing. Reporter but a lone nbc executive named rick ludwin whose focus was not sitcoms thought jerry, elaine, george and cramer were worth a shot. He came from the varieties and specials department. He was working with all different kinds of formats of shows. He wasnt stuck in a mindset. When he watched the show, he experienced it, he lived it and it made him laugh. He said, okay, at the end of the day, people will watch a show that makes them laugh. Reporter what does all this mean for you and your original idea . Professoren grat has a list of suggestions. First, take your ideas to disagreeable people. Those are the people who are going to challenge your ideas more, criticize you more and help you improve the idea. Reporter dont be afraid to procrastinate. Productive procrastination is about waiting for the right time to act, not rushing into saying ive got to make progress or i have to get this done. But giving yourself the full window to allow Creative Ideas to incubate. Reporter make time for leisure hobbies. Nobel Prize Winners are 20 more times likely to be a performer, actor, magician, dancer, than anyone else. Why is that . Its having a strong sense of curiosity. That leads them to explore novel directions in science work and artistic hobbies. Reporter who knew the real secret to success is all in your web browser. Fire fox and chrome users have better Job Performance than Internet Explorer and safari. If you wanted chrome or firefox and take initiative. Thats a window into the kind of initiative you take on your job. I dont like to brag but i am a chrome user and have been before i read this book. Clearly i am original. Then my work here is done. Leveraging all the difference social media platforms to market your Small Business can get overwhelming. I know. But you will love these five new tools courtesy of ink. Com that promise to take you from november to expert in no time. One, notifier, paste the url of your blog post into the search box and the site scans the post to find the twitter handles of the folks you have mentioned. Two, pablo 2. 0 is the upgraded version of buffers social media Image Creation tool. You can create great images that makes photos and texts for instagram, twitter and facebook. Three, blab is a platform where four people can shout on camera simultaneously while letting other viewers watch and interact the entire time. It makes it easier for your Small Business to get in on the popularity of live content apps like periscope and snapchat. Four, if your brand that has come to rely on instagram, check out later gram. You can imagine multiple accounts, schedule content beforehand and upload for computers instead of just from your mobile device. And five, crate is a curation tool that lets you build a Digital Library of topics, influencers and key words that pertain to your brand. The site creates a social graph that shows you what of that content performs best on social networks so you can repost it. The online interface is industry. Its an industry thats evolving and has become an alternative for Traditional Bank loans. We have the cofounder and ceo of fundation. A nonbank lender to Small Businesses. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Its fascinating to see how this has grown even over the last four years since you started. Technology has a lot to do that but its also where the banks want to participate in the Small Business lending market. By and large, whether its consumer commercial finance are here to do what the banks can or wont do. Do most people come to you first or after theyve gone to a bank. I would say the underbanked which means customers that are either dont approach their bank to begin with or dont feel theyll be successful with a bank or have been turned down. Were there to provide that capital to a customer that cant qualify for Bank Financing and the other segment of population is customers where were supplementing Bank Financing. They have a line of credit or a longterm loan in place. They need to do something opportunistic with the business and were there to provide additional capital. Lets talk about when someone might come to you, working capital . Sure, working capital really means short in cash. If you read the federal reserves most recent study, it says the leading challenge that Small Businesses face is managing uneven cash flow. And so managing uneven cash flow means its hard to predict that cash flow and, therefore, you need flexibility and, therefore, the leading product is a line of credit. The challenge with getting a line of credit, its a difficult product for a lost lenders to offer. Why . Because when things get bad in the economy, everybody pulls on that line of credit and the ship has sailed at that point. How quickly can this get approved . For instance, i had a friend that a Natural Disaster took place overseas where his company is based. He said i need a loan tomorrow. Relatively substantial. He had a good track record with his business. Would someone like that come to you . Sure. Weve funded loans between the hours of 9 00 and 5 00. The transaction came in at 9 00 in the morning and it was funded by 5 00. Thats not typical. Were usually waiting on the business rather than vice versa. Thats really the fundamental difference between Bank Financing and online financing. Bank financing is obviously the cheapest because they have the cheapest cost of capital. On the other end is online lenders who are efficient and quick because they use technology and theyre willing to price for different types of risk. If im looking to expand my business, i need a loan to open up my second restaurant. Why would i come to you instead of a bank . So what i would say is, most often the bank if that customer had a Bank Facility in place, chances are it might be a line of credit or Something Like that. The customer doesnt want to exhaust that resource because they want to keep that in place. They say to themselves, okay, no other bank is going to offer me a loan beneath that first loan i have. But we would. Why . Because we lend to customers based on the likelihood of repayment rather than knowing that were first in line if something goes bad. Got it. Again, people are coming to you for all kinds of things they would go to banks for. Refinancing. Refinancing is very common. The most common reasons we see are working capital, refinancing higher cost debt or expanding the business which could include equipment from time to time. Right. I need to go buy a brand new big machine, i go to you and get it. In general, you said you could do it in a day but how quick is it and how likely is it . What do i need to have in place so you approve it . The great thing about a firm like ours and others we compete with, theres not a lot of bar years to finding out where you stand. Because we start with applying some technology to sort of render an initial decision rather than collecting a whole bunch of paperwork, looking at that, then sort of maybe checking your credit score. We do all that up front. We can tell you rather quickly, hey, its not worth your time because youre unlikely to qualify for us or, hey, this looks really good. The information we collect depends on how much were looking for. If youre looking for less than 100,000, its as little as a few months of bank statements. If youre looking for more than that, same thing, plus maybe a most recent tax return. As you go up in scale, we ask for more and more. Is this all online or am i talking to a person . We combine the two. Its online as far as getting the application started. We render a dedicated Relationship Manager to every transacti transaction. We believe and studies show that Small Businesses value relationships. We try and give that to them. Our Relationship Managers can manage a lot of relationships because of the effort that goes into any one particular transaction. The industry is definitely growing. How do the Interest Rates vary between them . Price griffin by a number of factors. Likelihood of repayment. If the customer stops paying at the likelihood of getting money back as well as the costs it requires of a lender to have access to that capital. The point is its quite varied even within your own businesses and across businesses. Yes. Sam, thanks so much for stopping by. Thanks for having me. Flower and chocolate and wine shops go crazy shipping out gifts for valentines day this time of year. As far as it is to send something to someone you love, the one thing you miss out on is seeing their reaction when they open it. Our elevator pitcher has found a solution to that. Lets see if our panel loves his idea. Nisa amoyles is here as well as another guest. My name is jason. Im the founder of the company. Weve all been there before. A special occasion comes up and you want to send a personalized gift to a loved one but youre away from home and cant see the reaction when they receive their gift. We hand deliver the gift, show the message and capture the reaction. You then receive a private video of your special moment that you can upload to your social media. Were the only company in the u. S. To offer this type of service. In order to scale, were partnering with companies to license our equipment and technology. Weve already partnered with four companies and were currently in talks with a major retailer to distribute our Delivery Service in over 1,200 stores worldwide. Were currently raising 250,000 for a 33 equity stake in our company in order to bolster our team, in order to purchase more equipment and also to improve our i. T. Infrastructure. Good job. All said with beautiful roses that youre holding. All right, guys, ill give you this. If we can get two numbers from you, one, what did you think of the product from one to ten and two, what did you think of the pitch from one to ten . Congratulations so far. Sounds like you are hopefully close to securing this big deal. Absolutely. Lets hear. I thought you did a great job. On the product i gave you an eight. I think this is unique and a great use right now of the technology thats available and its using technology to bring people closer together. I think thats always very important and i think a lot of retailers would actually really use the product. On the pitch i thought, great job. If you could elaborate a little bit more about the Business Model and how you make money. I know you only have 60 seconds. That would be helpful to me because im left with so many more questions. Ryan . On the product i gave you a seven at at the core youre a commerce company. The products youre selling on your site need to be great regardless on their own besides just the app and Emotional Message that youre rece