Ivy Hartman: Welcome to sbtv.com. Our guest today is the co-founder, president and CEO of one of the fastest growing companies in America. We’re welcoming Christopher Hurn from Mercantile Commercial Capital. Now before Chris started his own company, Chris served as a Chief Financial Officer for a large commercial real estate brokerage firm and he has experience providing financial, operational and strategic advice to small and mid-sized businesses in order to help increase their profits. Now we’re seeing a decline and softening, as you call of the economic times now but were seeing small businesses still kind of going strong. What are some tips or advise you can give small businesses in order to keep things on the upswing during an economic downturn maybe?
Chris Hurn: Well the first thing I would suggest is the knee jerk reaction that I see a lot of people in a situation like this is they're neatly trying to cut their marketing budget. It’s usually the first thing to go. And what I have told people for years and we are—we practice what we preach, and a recession is not the time to cut your marketing budget. Figure out some other things to cut, you know, get terms from your vendors, re-negotiate things, whatever but during a recession period, that’s when you pick up market share. Smart business owners, smart marketers pick up market share. And candidly, marketing is nothing more than sales on a larger stage. You know, nothing happens until you sell something so it’s really, really critical that you continue to market, you continue to be bold, you actually are going to find that you’ll stand out even more in a recession period because you don’t have as much clutter as you once did. When things are good, everybody is spending money left and right. But you tend to standout a little bit more if you can continue to market through a softening time.
Ivy Hartman: That makes sense because consumers also are looking for some stability at that time and they felt that if somebody is really pushing that product or showing this instability perfectly, then they're going to know that’s the guy to go with.
Chris Hurn: That’s exactly right.
Ivy Hartman: Even though they may not have a lot of money because they're paying a lot in gas prices or whatever, that’s where they can put their money towards.
Chris Hurn: Well what are we going to do? We’re not all going to start riding bikes.
Ivy Hartman: No.
Chris Hurn: Maybe it’s what it is.
Ivy Hartman: Maybe. So, do you have any other specific tips when it comes to marketing or well in business?
Chris Hurn: Well I would say that if you—business owners need to really think about what their differentiation is versus their competition. They really need to figure out what it is, what makes them exceptional compared to their competitors and they really need to patch that up. I mean if you do what everybody else does in your industry, then you just have—in the statistical terms, you have what’s called a reversion to the mean, which means you get everything—goes back to average, it’s about mediocrity. If you want to really excel and you want to be not just successful but significant in your industry, then you really need to focus on being bold and it’s really standing out versus the rest of your competition which means you're going to have to defy conventional norms a lot.
Ivy Hartman: So can you, as a small business owner at this point, you should develop a strategy for where we want to be, you know, three years from now. Even though we already have it but this is just a little different times. We might have to revamp some of our marketing. Or like you said, re-negotiate some things in order to try to make through this time period.
Chris Hurn: That’s exactly right and then you have to figure out what you want to be when you grow up, so to speak. I mean you can't be all things to all people. You need to pick a certain area and you stick to it and be the absolute best of whatever that particular niche is. That’s the way they excel, marketing that niche that you are the best, that you are the go-to expert in that particular niche. That’s the way to really succeed as a small business and that’s what more and more small businesses need to do.
Ivy Hartman: And actually, small businesses are probably going to outride this economic downturn rather than most people.
Chris Hurn: Oh sure. And not only that but a lot, every recession we’ve ever had, that’s when a lot of businesses flourish. That’s when a lot of startups occur, why? Because people are laid off. You know they have been thinking about starting that business for the last five or ten years but you know, the job is pretty comfortable, but as soon as they get laid off, hey you got nothing better to do, let’s just go for it. So you're going to see a lot more companies start in this recession, just like we have every other recession before this.
Ivy Hartman: Here on sbtv.com we’ve been doing a lot of reporting about how the thousands, tens of thousands of jobs have been cut in America but yet there are small business owners out there who are still—still can't fill the positions they have opened.
Chris Hurn: Oh yeah, sure. Sure it’s very difficult. It is—you know depending on swinging back to becoming an employer’s market as opposed to employee’s market, well that’s a good thing. You get another—or you can get better, more talented staff today than you could 24 months ago.
Ivy Hartman: That’s another key reason why you should be marketing stronger now.
Chris Hurn: That’s exactly right. Yeah well it shows your employees that you're here for the long haul. It shows your marketplace that you’re here for the long haul that you’re really determined to excel in your marketplace, absolutely.
Ivy Hartman: Chris, thank you for being with us here on sbtv.com. Whew! I think we might be able to breathe a sigh of relief as we kind of look at some of those economic memories in the coming months with the economy and the media saying “Well it’s not that we’re in a recession.” But as a small business owner, we’re giving you some tips here that you can avoid that. And Chris has more information on his website at 504experts.com. You can also look for more helpful segments and articles from Chris right here on sbtv.com, where small business is our only business.
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