HATTIE: Hi, I'm Hattie Bryant, and welcome to SMALL BUSINESS 2000. Today you're going to meet a man who has had so many jobs he can't remember them all. That's simply because he could never find a job that made him happy. Today he's the owner of Hartford Communications. 

HATTIE: John Wargo, our sales and marketing adviser, will talk about why a video brochure for a business is good for a product or service that is difficult to describe in print. 

And Bruce Camber will take us into cyberspace. 

HATTIE: And now SMALL BUSINESS 2000 Master Class. Let me tell you quickly that this is not a traditional course or class. A Master Class is what many musicians take as they are advancing in their training. We have teachers to teach us the nuts and bolts, the scales, the how-to. We have master musicians to teach us how to take the heart and soul and put it into the music. The same is true with learning about business. You can learn nuts and bolts from a book. We think you can only learn the heart and soul from a person who has already done it. So come with me to Priest River, Idaho, where you will meet Greg Thurman, the owner of Hartford Communications, a master small business owner. 

In the beauty of the great Northwest, Priest River, Idaho, just 60 miles south of the Canadian border, Hartford Communications is bringing life to old telephone systems. 

GREG THURMAN (Owner, Hartford Communications): We bring in used, abandoned communications equipment and we make it like new: Form, fit and function. As we buy a system, that system may not fit the needs of the next customer. So we'll take all the components, go through them and put them on the shelf. Then as a customer calls in and we design a system for them, we'll pull the needed components off the shelf to rebuild for a custom configuration. When it leaves here, it looks like brand-new, it performs like brand-new. A lot of customers can't tell the difference. 

HATTIE: Greg got the idea for his business while working for someone else. This employer wasn't interested in pursuing it. 

GREG: I borrowed $4,000 from my mother. I bought my first system and here I am today. 

HATTIE: With about 20 employees, Hartford will generate $6 million in sales and ship its products to 14 countries. It even has offices in China and Mexico. 

Tell me why this is called Hartford Communications? Is there -- was there a strategy about that? 

GREG: Yes, there was. At the time that I started Hartford Communications, everybody in this industry had some derivative or acronym for communications, digital, and they all sounded cutesy pie, high-tech. In 90 days, you're old. OK. I was a one-man company working in my garage. I had to project an image that didn't exist. I wanted something that sounded established, reliable, quality, dependable. And I struggled with that using acronyms or abbreviations in my company name. One day watching TV, the elk went bounding across it. And there's Hartford Insurance, and I think, `Gosh, what could be more reliable or older or more dependable than a New England-based insurance company?' So I went through several combinations of names of that nature. But the first thought, `Hartford Communications,' proved to be my best option. 

HATTIE: And so you did a name search? 

GREG: Well, actually, I called Hartford Insurance and asked to speak to their legal department. And I said, `I'm starting a company. I want to call it the Hartford Communications Group.' And they said, `No, no, no.' And they actually helped me with my company name so I didn't infringe on any of their copyrights or trademarks. 

HATTIE: So you asked permission. Have you every heard the phrase, `It's easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permissiom,' but you went ahead and asked permission? 

GREG: Well, it was a lot less headache that way.  I'm not in the habit of sticking my hand in the fire if I can avoid it. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) You just heard how Greg named his business. Here's the card of a new small business owner we just met. He left his job with IBM, which took him all over the country. Now he's back home with his own firm named GTT, which stands for `Gone To Texas.' 

So you're in your garage and you started this business. And you named it Hartford Communications. You're a one-man operation. 

GREG: That's it. 

HATTIE: How did you get your first piece of business? 

GREG: I put an ad in a trade magazine. I took out a little two-column inch ad. And all it said was, `I buy Mitel, top dollar paid.' And at that time, I didn't have anything to sell. I was trying to buy. I got more customers calling, assuming that I had equipment, than I had people calling offering me with equipment for sale. 

HATTIE: So you knew you were on to a great idea immediately? 

GREG: Yes.   I started working immediately 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week. 

HATTIE: OK. It seems to me you had an opportunity here to stay a one-person, high-paid consultant, doing a little bit of business for big dollars. Did you ever consider staying as a one-person consultant? 

GREG: That was my wife's preference, you know. 

HATTIE: So you really wanted to grow a business? 

GREG: Oh, I think anybody that gets into business and tells you they don't want to grow is a company that's doomed to death. If you're not growing, you're dying, you know. Because if you don't sell that product to that customer, your competitors will. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) After one year at home, Greg moved out of his garage when he was no longer able to handle all the details of a growing business. 

GREG: Actually, I went on a hiring binge. I thought it was so neat that I could get rid of these responsibilities. I actually hired too many. And that was more a case of where I didn't know really what I wanted them to do. I didn't have defined objectives from each position and I overstaffed. 

In staffing, you know, the owner of the company's responsible for everything. But that doesn't mean they have to do everything. And if they're going to have somebody else do something, they need to clearly know what it is they want that person to do. With a job description, now they can take and measure performance. And if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. 

HATTIE: So you think that we should take a pencil to the paper and write a job description before we hire our first person? 

GREG: Absolutely. I was fortunate because our growth curve was so steep that even though I might have overstaffed initially, within a couple of months' time there was plenty of work for everybody. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Providing an environment for people to work creatively is one of Greg's principal goals. Was there ever an employer that created the kind of environment that thrilled you, that jazzed you up? 

GREG: No, there really wasn't. In fact, when I started Hartford Communications, my one guiding light was that I didn't want to be like any of my previous employers. Their motivation was by intimidation. Innovation was a top-down, as opposed to the Tom Peters' model, which is bottom-up. You know, my job as the owner of the company is that of a facilitator.  I'm here to create an environment where the people that are doing the job can do it the best way they can. Now sometimes their ideas aren't always the best. But, most of the time, their ideas are better than what I would have come up with. So I give them as much room as I can. 

Well, as an example, the industry currently ships electronic circuit cards in packaging such as this. Hartford used to do the same thing. Now this is a corrugated box. And inside we have an egg crate foam with a circuit card placed inside of an antistatic bag. There's cost associated with all these products and the packaging. But there's indirect cost, as well. That cost is in folding the box together, labeling it and then storing it. 

HATTIE: The time it takes and the storage space. 

GREG: Yes,  and that's where we came to a problem that we gave our shipper, Don Beamer, an opportunity to shine.  That problem was we were running out of shelf space. And so I gave him the problem of finding more shelf space. So instead of going out and finding additional shelf space at a good price, Don addressed our packaging as the problem, and not the lack of shelf space. And his solution was this container here, and the card snaps into place inside of it. 

HATTIE: OK, so it's going to travel safely. 

GREG: As long as it's inside of this box, it's protected from physical damage and from electrostatic damage. And because of the nature of this design, I can stack several of these at each technician's work station. And as they complete work on a circuit card, which is at a static protected work station, they can put it into this box, snap it shut and send it back to be put into storage. 

HATTIE: Plus, it's very thin. 

GREG: This takes up about half the space of the corrugated box. We doubled our shelf space without buying anymore shelving. We also had some benefits come to us, which we weren't looking for. And number one, I can see what's in here. So I don't have to put a label on the outside describing it. Now in the past, we're in a hurry and we've got several parts being packaged. We put a part in the box with the wrong part number on it. We ship it to a telephone company on the other side of the nation. And they get this box anticipating that it's going to be this part. They put it on their service truck. They drive 30 miles to their customer's site, and they open it and, `Oh, dear.'  Since we've gone to this package that hasn't happened. 

HATTIE: Because you can see from the outside the serial numbers, everything... 

GREG: You can see what's in there, absolutely. 

HATTIE: Instead of saying, `Do this,' you say, `What can I do to help you do your job'? 

GREG: I've never been a freight clerk before. How could I tell someone else how to do it? 

HATTIE: So do you pay people huge amounts of money? How do you get these people that create their own work and design their own plans and come up with these ideas? 

GREG: Well, I don't think the average person is motivated by money as much as they are by job satisfaction. Now that doesn't mean I don't pay them. We use the North Idaho pay scale, that's given to us by the Department of Labor--the Idaho Department of Labor. And then we pay above the average here. And then we have bonus plans, which the employees control. 

HATTIE: What do you mean the employees control? 

GREG: Well, it's a productivity, on time delivery and quality issue, things that they have control over. I don't like profit sharing at all. You know, a profit--the first thing a good CPA is going to do, it's his job, is to find ways to reduce the profit you report to the Internal Revenue Service, you know. And--and they find legal ways to do it. But if they do that, it impacts an employee bonus. It also means that someone has to manage it. And I don't want to manage it. So our bonus plan is set up so it's self-regulating. 

HATTIE: Does the bonus come to me, right then, that week? 

GREG: Monthly. 

HATTIE: I think that's important as opposed to waiting for a whole year. 

GREG: Absolutely, immediate gratification. If it's too far out in the distance, in the future, you know, they lose sight of it. 

HATTIE: So did this guy get a little bonus that month when he thought of this? 

GREG: Yes, he did. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Greg was not always in Idaho. Bob Potter, the executive director of  Coeur d'Alene-based Jobs Plus, facilitated his move from Southern California. 

BOB POTTER (Executive Director, Jobs Plus): Back in history, the greater Coeur d'Alene, north Idaho area was big in mining and timber. And it was good for this area. But it was commodity driven. We had a sign wave kind of an economy. We needed to diversify our economic base. And Jobs Plus was formed in order to take on that mission. 

We had to do it the hard way, and put a strategy together to recruit. A very simple strategy: small, medium-sized companies; will operate in a high cost area of the country; that are not location dependent; that could operate anywhere; that are financially strong; strong enough to move, because there's no use wasting your time in a company that just doesn't have the financial strength to do this. And we'd go after them. And we had to start the hard way. Plain old pick up the telephone and cold sales calls. 

You know, I think the lesson I've learned on this is that every small business owner needs to really look at all of the little line items because, you know, we've learned that we can cut costs by 20 percent of most companies we've recruited out of Southern California. So by looking at workman's comp and looking at utility rates and lease rates, and comparing that to some of the other places in the United States, and the cost of living and salaries for middle management. 

Usually these small town have very highly qualified professionals that want to live here, and that will sacrifice to be here. And so, you know, a review of that is healthy. And I don't advocate just relocating for the sake of relocation. But to have a business case approach to it, you can save some money. 

GREG: We like what we saw very much. The cost of real estate then was, comparatively speaking, dirt, you know. So that was a real big attraction. But more important than that was, you know, the way of life and the quality of life. It was pretty tremendous. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Not only did Greg save on his operating cost by moving to Idaho, he found a partner. 

GREG: When I moved up here, I started looking for someone to help me. And I found that person. That's Jim Hunter. Jim Hunter is a tremendous resource. I made him an equity partner. 

HATTIE: Tell me why you brought Jim in as an equity partner. 

GREG: Because I couldn't pay him what he was worth annually. I needed to let go of some of the management responsibilities of the company. I think the average founder of a company at some point has to say, `The company is not me, and I am not the company. They're two different things.' And to make the company grow and prosper, that sometimes they need to bring in somebody as a partner. And as I grew, I incurred additional operating expense, which took cash away from inventory, which took away from sales. And I was on a flat, if not maybe a slight, downward trend. 

HATTIE: Well, you said, `If I don't get some help in here, I'm just going to shut this thing down,' or did you feel... 

GREG: Well, shutting down wasn't an alternative. OK. I don't give up easy. I'm the kind of person that would--if my paw was caught in a bear trap, I'd chew through my leg to get away from the bear trap. 

HATTIE: OK. So this is what you're doing? 

GREG: This is what I'm going to do. It's going to succeed. 

HATTIE: And a lot of this success is dueto the partnership with Jim? 

GREG: It wouldn't have survived without the partnership. 

JIM HUNTER (Hartford Communications): I was doing small business consulting for the small business development centers in Idaho. 

HATTIE: How would someone in his situation attract someone like you? 

JIM: You got to be willing to give up a little bit, which Greg was. Probably the thing that Greg did better than most of the companies I've consulted with was recognizing specifically what he needed. And he was willing to give up a part of his baby in order to make the baby healthy. 

HATTIE: Greg has done many things right. But he says the best decision he's ever made is to recruit Jim Hunter as his partner. There are many horror stories about partnerships, and many of us don't want to go down that road. But Greg had hit the wall. He had a good idea. He had a good work force. But he was overwhelmed with what lay ahead of him if he wanted to grow. He knew he was unsophisticated about the financial side of the business, and he had to face his weaknesses. 

Jim Hunter's training and experience were an ideal match for Greg. But Greg had one problem: he couldn't afford to pay Jim. So the two of them sat down and negotiated some salary for Jim, and then Greg gave Jim a part of the business. Typically we think we can hire someone to do any job. But often you might find the best people for the job can't be hired. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) You ride your bike to and from work? 

JIM: I do. I ride my motorcycle whenever I can. It's like a compressed vacation. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) What made you excited about doing this? 

JIM: Well, the future. The opportunities are probably as great as I've ever seen. 

HATTIE: What's the worst decision you've made? 

GREG: The worst decision? Hmm. See, that's hard because my personal philosophy about decisions is the worst decision is the decision you don't make.  Because it doesn't matter if you make a decision and it's wrong. You can fix it. But if you don't make it, then nothing happens and there's nothing to fix. 

BRUCE: Hi, I'm Bruce Camber. When I met Greg it was obvious that he had a passion for telephones and for communications. Because he's a tinkerer and a very creative person, he looked at a telephone switch that was junk to one person and it was beauty to him. 

Some of you may be a little like Greg when he was back in his garage. You have an idea to take something old and recycle it and make it better than new, and possibly open a new market as a result. I'd like to encourage you to explore your idea. Let's go to the Web. 

(Voiceover) First, we'll take a look at the baseline information about recycling. From our home page, I'm clicking on `business basics.' From here I enter the word, `recycle.' And here I find a list of 25 articles. Let's select the fourth article, Save Money and Resources. As conservation and recycling have increasingly become part of the fabric of America, know that it's happening in many other cultures around the world. It's time to recycle. 

It seems to me as an avocation, or even a passion, that all of us should be asking the question: How heavily are we walking on the earth? And if there is a way that we can possibly lighten the load. 

(Voiceover) On the back of our T-shirts is this statement, `If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.' 

Greg is recycling telephone switches. I wonder what you and I could recycle as a passion or an avocation. Let's think about it. Let's think about it, and in a future week, let's revisit and see if we're walking a little bit more lightly on the earth. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Hartford Communications uses a video brochure to introduce themselves to prospecting customers. Since very few of their customers meet them in person, this is a good way to engender warm relationships. 

JOHN: What we're seeing today in the marketplace is really progressive customers are finding that in addition to print, they're sending videos. They're sending videos because they can display their product that are on video. For example, you could talk about a beautiful resort. But a video really shows it. You think about a cruise, but the sights, the sunrise, the sunset. You could capture it on video. You think about the features of an automobile, and you can try to imagine new features. But you don't have a frame of reference. Show it on a video. Professionals that are selling various kinds of lessons, various kinds of learning tools and instructions, are showing on the video samples of what they can learn. 

And what people are finding is that the video is actually portraying that product and service better than words. And so what's happening is--and it's very inexpensive. You can dupe one for a couple of bucks. You can send it out Priority Mail for three bucks. For $5 or $6 to a very qualified prospect, not as a saturation now, but to a qualified prospect, the ROI could be phenomenal. 

HATTIE: (Voiceover) Follow up by telephone after mailing video or print brochures to customers or prospective customers. Research shows you can significantly boost sales if you follow up every written contact with a telephone call. 

(Graphic on screen) 

Follow up by telephone 
after mailing video or print 
brochures...you can 
significantly boost sales. 

HATTIE: If you knew when you started Hartford Communications what you know today, would you have done it? 

GREG: That's a tough question.  There's two sides to it. If I knew then what I knew now -- how hard I work, the pain I've gone through with my family, the work, the financial crises and everything, I'd say, `No, I wouldn't do it again.' 

But if I knew then what I knew now about running a business, I would have been better prepared to run a successful business. And a lot of that pain may not have occurred. 

You only go through three phases in your entire life; as a trainee, as a technician and an owner. And getting from a trainee to a technician, everybody can do that. Getting from a technician to an owner, it's--it's a--it's a character trait. Not everybody's cut out to be an owner. So the first thing to do before deciding to be an owner is decide where you are, you know, where you fit. Are you really, you know, made up of the stuff necessary to be an owner? 

You've got to be a risk taker. The riskiest thing in the world is to start a business. If you aren't innately a risk taker, it'll destroy you. 

I enjoy what I'm doing. So with everything's that happened, all the ups, all the downs, this is fun. 

The Closing of the Show.