Ramberg and welcome to your business. The show dedicated to helping your growing business. Over the past five years the business of body cams has grown significantly. And as weve seen in the news recently, body cams have played an Important Role for Police Forces around the country. Today we meet the man behind wolf. Com body cams whos worked diligently with Law Enforcement to come up with products that help them do their job. Open the door when Los Angeles Based wolfcom enters the Police Body Camera space in 2011, the Little Known Company quickly became a industry leader. At the time, there were only two other competitors. We were the big three in the united states. Reporter founder Peter Onruang is the force behind the booming business that built its reputation on technological innovations. Our phones were ringing off the hook. We did very little marketing. Its just like money am coulding in. The other two competitors. They had no gps. No night vision. We were the first to introduce a high quality video. Hands down. Reporter but four years after peter launched wolfcoms first camera, his world came to a crashing halt. One of our competitors decided how can i destroy this company . And basically they just told me that hey you know what, were going to bury you. I was in a meeting when one of my employees walked in and said you need to look at the news. We have no more software. Our competitor just bought out the Software Company that were using. Reporter software is critical to body cams for storing and managing videos. With no warning, wolfcoms Software Partner was acquired for 13 million by the biggest player in the industry. Next thing you know all our customers started calling us, there are rumors that wolfcom was done. Reporter peter was blindsided by this devastating blow. At a complete loss for a viable solution. But the body cam industry had always been cutthroat and building wolfcom had not been uzi. Hands up. Reporter when peter came up with the concept for the third eye body camera he was living out husband 007 dream, running a spy shop in hollywood. Happened officers frequently stopped by. One particular officer kept coming back almost every day looking through every product we have. And he would always leave, empty handed. Reporter the ever curious peter had to ask, why in he says look at me. I have over 30 pounds of gear on myself. All over my body. If only you can just put a spy camera or put a camera into something that im already wearing. And thats when i took a look and i saw his lapel mic that they use to communicate. Reporter two years later the wolfcom third eye hit the market with a camera built right in the lapel mic that officers wear. We started putting a lot of ideas into this. Including gps, night vision, the ability to the zoom in and out. Open the door, please. Shots fired. We came from that background of electronics, small cameras. Thats how we were able to stay in the game. Keep your hands where i can see them. Every time there was a Police Shooting wed also notice the spy cams failed. Reporter but the 2014 Police Shooting of an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown in ferguson, missouri, became a game changer for the body cam industry. Suddenly everybody and their grandmother wanted in on this gold rush, on this gold mine. I knew that it would blow up to maybe 100 competitors. Back up. Reporter this dramatic shift in the market, and the overnight saturation of other body cam startups, was not good for wolfcom. Now were competing with so many other competitors. Trying to push ourselves up to the front. It got a lot harder. Just to make a buck. Reporter there was also a major problem overseas. Wolfcom body cameras became targeted by counterfeiters. Peter had made the mistake of having one factory handle every part of the manufacturing and assembly. All it took was one untrustworthy employee and the wolfcom winning formula was out there for every competitor to see. You get people who just start, you know, no morals, no conscience. I mean we lost a huge field in other countries. I spent over 100,000 just on attorneys chasing people. Reporter after learning that harsh lesson, peter went to the other extreme. Creating too many moving parts to the wolfcom manufacturing process. Next you know were dealing with up to 80 vendors, that we have inventory problems. You have everything except one piece, and theres a two month delay, but youve got a customer who ordered 1,000 units. When i did it that way, theres no copycat, but it is a pain in the butt. Reporter eventually peter fixed this, too. And by the time he lost his Software Partner in 2015, he had years of startup wisdom under his belt. His resilience pushing through tough times and willingness to learn with every obstacle was about to pay off. I needed to evolve. I needed to go somewhere where i had never gone before. I need to step into the darkness. And turn it into light. So then i decided that wolfcom was going to evolve into a Software Company. And now today, im proud to say, we are a hardware, and a Software Company. Reporter the body camera business is now on track to become a billion dollar industry. Making the competition even more fierce. Some players have been accused of using unfair tactics to secure contracts. From cultivating close ties to police chiefs, to splurging on Luxury Vacations for other Law Enforcement decision makers. Get yourself some cover. Am i doing something wrong . Yes, maam, you are now. Reporter and some Police Departments have also come under fire. Approving a no bid process. Which allows a Single Company to secure a body cam deal without facing any competition along the way. Our model for wolfcom is honor, courage and integrity above all else. So well never stoop to that level. After 17 years of being in business ive learned something, no matter what, still here. You need to think of your life like an airplane. Always going forward, never going back. You cant go backwards. Hands up. Hands to your side. How many times have you passed a homeless person on the street and wished that you were doing more to help them . Well one los angeles woman decided to stop wishing, start a business, and dedicate herself to helping. Nbcs Morgan Radford has her story. Reporter hope, strength, and create. Reporter words of encouragement stamped on keys and turned into jewelry. Each key made by someone who hopes to one day have a reason to use it. How many people have you helped transition out of homelessness . We have gotten over 70plus people Job Opportunities here. Reporter growing up in hollywood, Caitlin Crosby has worked as an actress and released pop music but was seeking a way to make a bigger impact. In 2009, after encountering a young homeless couple, a light went off. And she turned a simple jewelry idea into business with a big impact. I love that. Reporter today, the giving keys factory in downtown l. A. Sits just a couple blocks from skid row. Where some of l. A. s 46,000 homeless reside. Here, caitlin employs people trying to transition off the streets. And the keys they create are then sold under one condition. That the buyer gives their key to someone who needs it more. This isnt just about jewelry to wear because its cool. It really trains you to keep your eyes open to somebody who is going through a hard time. Reporter people like Kelly Williams. Doing drugs, so ive been productically everything you could think of. Reporter what was your ahha moment when you were at your lowest and said i cant live like this anymore . Went to prison. Practically every two years. I wanted Something Better for my life. Reporter and she found it. This is where the magic happens. Reporter at the giving keys, kelly works alongside people who not only understand her pain, but also the power of redemption. Since youve been working here, youve been able to get other things and kind of come in to transitioning to have your own place. Yeah. I did it in six months working. Reporter wait so you wait, wait, wait. Back up. Hold on holden hold on, so youre saying in six months of working here. My life will never be the same. Just challenge me to just want to do good man for the rest of my life. Reporter which is exactly why experts say the giving keys could be a model for the rest of the country. They are saking men and women that have no other option, teaching them a marketable skill, teaching them to work in a team, teaching them to be proud of a product and services being delivered, and oh, by the way the giving key is making money doing this. Reporter so theyre legit. Theyre legit. Reporter giving people like Kelly Williams a second chance. If you can just make an impact on one person, you know, that thats the best thing in the world. Reporter perhaps even the key to happiness. Morgan radford, los angeles. Its one thing to sell your products to local consumers. It is another to sell to a major buyer with national distribution. Here are five ways to attract big buyers. One, use data to show traction. Buyers need to know that your product will sell. Use data like website visitors, order numbers and press coverage to show how your product resonates with consumers. Two, always have a pitch ready. You never know when you may meet someone who can help you out. Keep your phone or tablet stocked with compelling images and charts. And have a fact sheet with all of your specs and Contact Information ready so that you can send it off at a moments notice. Three, attend trade shows or vendor days. These are great places to meet new buyers. Make the most out of them by sending your most knowledgeable and upbeat employees. And if you have a booth, avoid leaving it so theres always someone around to answer a question. Four, partner with a broker. Sales brokers already have relationships with big buyers, and know how to get your product in front of the right people. But they also have reputations to protect. Like the buyers, before they partner with you, theyre going to want to make sure that your product will sell. Five, make sure your product is ready to ship. If you do build a relationship with a buyer and then you cant fulfill it, that is going to lead to problems right then and later on. Now its time for our brain trust and today were doing it from these amazing offices of warby parker here in new york city. Today, we have neil blumenthal, who is the founder of warby parker now with more than 1300 employees and a valuation of more than 1 billion and jana rich the founder of the Rich Talent Group who works with warby parker and air bnb and so many others to recruit talent. I want to talk to you guys about retention. You have 1300 employees here. I imagine youve had some turnover. Over the years. Is retention what we should be looking for as owners of companies, as people who run divisions of companies . What do you think . I think its really important to assess who you are losing, and where your company is in terms of phase of growth. Very Fast Growing Companies who are morphing and changing dramatically are going to need different people. So i think we have to be careful toll retain the people we want to and not losing those that we dont. Because people are always saying, you want high retention, right . It has been the mantra since the beginning of time of business, and its i imagine the people you dont have your whole original team still working here. Two of your founders arent here. Yeah, you know, i think its important to have cultural carriers, and these folks that really exemplify the values as a company. And those folks dont necessarily need to have been here since the beginning. But, i degree with jana completely that if you dont want 100 retention. You want some turnover. You want people coming in with fresh skill sets, fresh perspective. And i think theres this idea that culture is static. And Companies Need to, you know, stay the same and everyones nostalgic for the past. At the end of the day, companies evolve. And cultures evolve and change. And thats okay. Just like real cultures evolve and change. Right, america is different today than it was a generation ago. And these companies are, as well. So at what point do you look at your own company, your own division, and say, okay, i am losing people too quickly, versus, i am losing people at the right speed because the company or the division is changing. Well, i think the reason why people are leaving, right, is people are leaving because they dont see growth opportunities. If people are leaving because they feel like theyre not getting paid well, those are things to dig in to. If people are leaving because, you know, you need to bring in somebody with more expertise, and thats actually changing their growth trajectory. Thats okay. And hopefully theyll get a better opportunity elsewhere and will support them in that. And thats fantastic. I think its also interesting to look at what pockets, and where is this happening. Meaning, if all of a sudden youve got a lot of people leaving your marketing team, is there something wrong there . Meaning do you have to look at the leadership of that team. Is something going wrong . Or four or five members of a ten person Leadership Team is leaving that has a huge impact on how the outside world views your company. Those are two examples where you have to stop at least and say wait a minute, whats happening. Lets talk about that. The outside world. So when companies go through periods of change, oftentimes a lot of people leave, either theyre laid off or they leave themselves. How do you deal with the perception of that, when youre doing it because the company is actually moving forward, from the outside it may look like its moving backwards . I mean at least what i would say about that is its really interesting from our vantage point. We start to get a lot of inbound cous from very Senior Executives when something is not going right with a company. So i say were always an early indicator if retention is going to be an issue. Or if something is at least potentially wrong with the company. So if, for example, those are clients that we work with, lets give it a heads up. It will never say specific names of people, but you know, hey, theres a lot of people loose in your marketing team. It might be something you need to look at. So being able to have at least some sense of how thats being perceived externally, sometimes we can get in our own little bubble as entrepreneurs, that like we know why. But the outside world doesnt know why. And it has as the ceo, by the time thats happening, youre in a crisis mode. So the question is, whats your canary in the coal mine . And to our perspective, its feedback, its our Performance Management system. So we do things called month in review, so rather than having performance reviews once every twelve months or once every six months we actually do it every month so that way there is that direct feedback from direct reports, and managers, but even more important than that, we do an Anonymous Survey every six months. And we call it an Employee Engagement survey, and its anonymous. We can only drill down to groups of five, to protect anonymity. But we can cut the data by gender, bip department, by tenure at the company, so we can really get a sense of whats going on and its a commitment that we make to the team that were all going to try and make this place better and better and better so if there are people that want to leave, hopefully the reasons for that start to emerge and we can address it. Is retention a metric that you look at . Is it an important metric that you look at . Its an important metric but i never found anybody that defines it really clearly. And i know that sounds crazy, but what is retention . Is it coof people that start on x date, for how long they should actually be here . Were seven years old. Were now up to 1300 employees, the majority of whom have been hired in the past twelve months. Our retention rate is really strange. So we actually dont measure that as closely as saying, hey, are we losing good people . For bad reasons . All right. Thanks both of you so much. Thank you. Thanks. People, purpose, profits, and play. Those are the four principles that guide business at the Worlds Largest franchise gym. Anytime fitness locations are open to members, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The companys on the brink of having 4,000 locations in 30 countries, with revenue hovering right around 1 billion. Cofounder chuck runyon tells us why business is always about people, and why we all need to play more in this learning from the pros. I love the quote that leaders dont build the business, leaders build people and the people build the business. Sure you want to have a great idea. But then you got to hire the right people. And empower them to execute on the business. We place a great deal of emphasis on workplace culture. Right, how we behave. What values we have on working together. And so we really are very rigorous through the hiring process. We tried to get out of the scripted interview process. We ask questions that really want to get into their selfawareness. Right. Some mistakes they made in the past. So we really kind of want to break that down through a very lengthy interview process. We want them to get on a wipe board and give us some of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. We will ask them to videotape themselves, put a powerpoint together, do a Youtube Video to show some of their personality. To give people greater purpose, i mean, its like combining your heart power with your brain power, and they will go the extra mile, theyll work a little bit harder. And they know that theyre enriching people, or the planet, beyond just the pay check. I think you have to be very intentional about it. When were talking about strategy for the