Hi there, everyone, im jj ramberg. Welcome to your business, the show dedicated to helping your Small Business survive, thrive and grow. Some people just have it. We all know people like this. They have this incredible ability to charm. Call it the art of the schmooze. Now, i never met anyone who does it better than mort berkowitz. Hes the larger than life owner of a political memorabilia company. We followed him down to the Democratic National convention so that i could see him in action. How are you . Close to 1,000 buttons. Mort berkowitz is working the crowd at the Democratic National convention in philadelphia. Its a crowd. And we see them over and over and over. So you really in a fourday period, youve developed a relationship. And relationships for mort mean money. That relationship, which is sincere at the moment, also pays dividends later on. His new yorkbased company, bold concepts, designs, manufactures, and sells political buttons. Its not about his politics, he says. Its about all politics. I go to the democratic and republican conventions. And we sell buttons at both conventions. I like to think of myself as an equal opportunity offender, because ive done several negative buttons for each candidate. How long have you been doing this . Long, before you were born. No, youre very kind, but i dont think so. I think so. Well, well debate that after. I started doing buttons in 1972. So my First Convention that i did this was 1976. This week, he and his partner robin abrams are operating booths at Ten Convention state caucus sites. Are there more, please . Yes. Great. Theyll be up by 6 00 a. M. Every morning and wont go to sleep until well past 2 00 the next morning. You dont need this sleep this week . Well, i need it but im not getting it. Youll sleep on friday . No, no, no. Let me explain. The single best day of the convention for button sales is friday. Friday. Thats the day after the convention closes. Oddly enough, mort says he expects his typical customer will buy more buttons that day than all of the others combined. Why . Hes checking out of the hotel. Last minute, i need to get a gift for someone. No, not a gift for someone. Hes a delegate. He has constituents, he has relatives, friends. People push for them. People got signatures. Thats when i will sell 100 for 100. By the time he leaves, mort will sell over 40,000 buttons. How are you . All right. Thank you. Good to see you. My pleasure. While those numbers are good, he says thats not the main reason he came here. This pays the freight. But it does not pay the profit. For mort, the profits come from building longterm relationships across the country. With groups like these, clintonettes for hillary. Im going to make up a clintonettes for hillary. Are you going to . Yes. Are you kidding . No, im not kidding. Oh, okay. That is wonderful. Theyre very excited because hes offered to custom design a button just for them. I have now sent over the picture of clintonettes for hillary, and that will be back to me in about an hour and that will be part of the order for this afternoon. Senator is walking away. Morts partner robin is about to make a similar offer to this Pennsylvania State senator. I live in montgomery county. I represent montgomery and delaware county. Senator, senator. We would like to donate a button for you if you would like one. Id love a button. We would need a photo of you. We would put you on, if you want one with hillary, and donate for whatever purpose you would like them. If its for a fundraiser. Heres our card. Send us your photo and well make one with your address, and well make up a button design for you and donate it as part of our contribution. All right, cool. Very excited. Great. Another entree into another district. Mort says these are the kind of relationships which can only be built one at a time. Facetoface, and he says, they often start with an offer of a free sample. Yeah, shes the 45th senatorial district. Youre going to do a button for her for free. If i donate 100 buttons. Lets say my cost is 60. If i can then get buttons in their headquarters, maybe i take in 1,000, 2,000, whatever, and thats really what you want to do. This is all about relationships . Yes, it is. For mort, the cost of giving away free samples is insignificant compared to the years of button sales hes hoping for. Sales resulting from the relationship that was launched by those freebies. I just need you to email me a picture. Sometimes those relationships start long before the national conventions. Right here on the street with local politicians like danny odonnell. When they need to buy buttons for fundraisers, they dont go online. They call their buddy mort. Or stop by his booth at this street fair if theyre members of the broadway democrats of manhattan. Because mort is right here, and hes our button man, as he is the button man for all of new york, we are going to probably take at least a couple hundred. Sure, well sell them. The first person they think of is me because i was supplying them before. And once they have used me, they will continue to use me. Election after election. Surprisingly, the work at the convention doesnt stop there. Morts also planning for the after market. The after market of collectors. Collecting shows, et cetera, and thats terrific. And thats why youre doing the trade . Yes, exactly. Exactly. And weve gotten maybe 700 buttons in trade because i put out a catalog after. So if a button costs me 50 cents and i give her basically 1. 50, and this goes on my catalog for 10, have i made money on it . And many collectors like this woman here find their way to morts table, knowing hell trade with them, give them tips, make them laugh. Youre finally smiling. And build a relationship that keeps them coming back. How did you know to come here and trade with him . Hes been coming every day. Every time i get a button i get excited because i know im coming to this table. Youve got a reputation. So youre collecting buttons elsewhere to come back here and trade with him. Yes. Yes. Shes a good supplier for you. She has what i want and i have wwants. How does mort know whos got what he wants or needs what hes got . His secret, he calls it the art of the schmooze. The more schmoozing i can do, the better im going to do. Mr. Mayor. How are you . You were born for this job. Thank you. Goodbye. Get out of here. See you, man. Thank you. As the Campaign Season enters into its final months, both sides of the aisle will be talking more about issues that impact Small Business owners. The economy, taxes, health care, access to capital. These are just a few of the issues that Small Business owners will want to get details on leading up to election day. Here to share some opinions on where both candidates stand and whose policies may be better for Small Business owners, we have bill dunkleburg, the chief economist at the uaib and rhonda abrams, a usa today column is and also has a publishing company. So good to see both of you. Nice to be here. I want to open this up with just a general question of do you think either of these candidates understands what its like to be a Small Business owner and the obstacles Small Business owners face, the challenges they face . Ill start with you, bill. Well, you know, im not sure that they do. I guess they all have been Small Business its at some time in the past. You dont start off big, as we know. Microsoft was one person, et cetera, et cetera. So they had some experience in being small. Now, trump is certainly larger. And hes grown through the small to the large. And he must know something about being small. What about you, rhonda . What i find, we have seen this over and over again. And we have talked about this in conversations, which is that policies get enacted, laws, et cetera, that help big business and have unintended consequences for Small Business. It happens over and over again. Is there a candidate out there whos going to be looking out for the Small Business owner who really understands the challenges . Well, jj, let me just say that im a Small Business owner and i had to navigate my way through two very difficult recessions. I can tell you that no one policy, no tax, affects my Small Business and other Small Businesses as much as the Overall Health of the economy. And so i guess really the question is, who do you trust to run this economy . Who do you trust your livelihood with . If you take a look at both of these candidates, one is the far, far riskier choice. If im going to bet my livelihood, i want a candidate who i think is more trustworthy and whose judgment and temperament i can count on. I agree with you. We heard this through the recession in general and for sure that the economy is the noes important thing when Small Businesses talk about what is going to help them, its a good economy. Lets try and go through some of the issues Small Business owners tackle toll try and understand how trump will help Business Owners, how clinton will help Business Owners. Lets start with access to capital. Ill start with you, rhonda. There are a few things. Once again, its really important to talk about who is going to be able to navigate the economy. Clinton has proposed a number of access to Capital Improvements to access to capital, but i think we can take a look at her track record. As senator of new york, and remember, to this year is the 15th anniversary of 9 11, and she helped Small Businesses recover in new york. She had a 74 Approval Rating by the time she left as senator. Over half of republicans approved of her job. So in the jobs that shes held, she has dramatically improved the support and the recognitn and the retation that shes had. People think she does a good job. She has done a good job for small manufacturers to help the city recover, and as secretary of state, she has brought Great Respect to the United States and was widely considered the most admired woman in america. So as a track record for somebody who has delivered for Small Businesses in america, she has had that track record. All right, and bill, lets move on to you. Is there anything that trump has talked about in, throughout this time period, that has given you the sense that Small Business owners will have easier access to capital if hes president . Well, not a whole lot of specifics that i can recall. Access to capital, there really isnt in our top ten list, so to speak, of the problems we really face. Number one, of course, has remained the cost of health care, which we try to provide to our employees when we can, but rising costs of health care insurance, thats a real difficulty. Number two on our list is the cost of regulations and red tape. Complying with them. So we really look at all these policies that exhaust the capital that we have. Small businesses have really two important pieces of capital. One is the Financial Capital that we have, and the other is the time of the entrepreneur, how its allocated and what its used for. Now, what we have seen in the past eight years, of course, is huge amount of regulatory change and its very it really exhausts, if you will, a lot of the time which is a very valuable asset of the entrepreneur, trying to comply, find out what it is and work with it. Im the chairman of a small bank in new jersey, and i have to tell you that our rising cost continues to be just hiring people to keep track of all the nittygritties that the regulators want us to keep track of. I dont know how much value thats adding, but it certainly depletes our resources and i think thats probably one of the main concerns that we have. Number two on our list is the regulatory piece, not access to capital, but what theyre making us do with our capital or not letting us do with our capital. Go ahead, rhonda. Heres where i think you can see that donald trump doesnt really understand the real life of Small Business. In prepared remarks, not off the cuff remarks, he said it was impossible because of regulation to start a Small Business in this country. And yet over a million Small Businesses are started every year. And if you take a look at Hillary Clintons positions on Small Business, she understands the nittygritty. One of the positions that shes takeb is changing the way, and this is going to sound really boring, whether you can report on cash accounting or accrual accounting. Because im a publisher and have inventory, i have had a lot more regulation and red tape because of that. Shell cut through that. She does her homework. She thinks about what she says. I mean, donald trump has failed. Hes had four bankruptcies, leaving a wake of Small Businesses unpaid. Ive gone through a bankruptcy. My distributor went through a bankruptcy. I can tell you, as a Small Business, Small Businesses get the short end of the stick as a creditor when somebody goes bankrupt. And hes left a trail of very unhappy vendors and Small Businesses. Hes had 4,000 lawsuits, 4,000 lawsuits. Thats more than the five biggest Real Estate Developers in new york combined. Hes a litigious man. What i always find interesting on talking about it on a federal level, Small Business owners, the burden of regulation is often on the state and local level. But its also by who you do business with. I mean, were much more affected day to day by our customers. If you had a customer like donald trump, your life would be miserable. And their lives have been miserable. And look, hes been in a Job Interview, both of these candidates have been in a Job Interview for a year now. And look how they have performed in this Job Interview. If you were hiring for your Small Business, would you want someone who has mocked the handicap, who has disparaged the parents of a patriotic soldier who lost his life for the country, who has made fun of john mccain because he was a prisoner of war, who mocks immigrants . Is this who you would hire . For the purposes of this conversation, i would love to try to focus on the issues of how we think these candidates would help Small Business owners, though there are bigger or hurt. Or hurt Small Business owners. Based on their policies and their feelings about the way that we should be moving forward. And i would be remiss if i didnt bridge up immigration because its been such a hot topic over this political season. Bill, lets start with you. Donald trump has obviously expressed a lot of opinions about immigration. As a Small Business owner, how might this affect you . Well, i suppose if youre a Small Business owner who depends on very cheap labor, you know, lowcost labor, this might be an issue for you. It was, i think, concerns about that turned out to be 74 out of 75 concerns and well release the results of our survey this year, some time later this month. Thats really not a top issue unless youre right there on the border, i guess, depending on that kind of labor. Its certainly a big issue for us as a country, but im not sure that most Small Businesses are really going to be impacted by that. Let me disagree, if i can. Lets talk about h1 visas as well. Let me just disagree there. Because immigrants start businesses at twice the rate of nonimmigrants, of native born in the United States. So having an antiimmigrant feeling in this country, as donald trump has expressed over and over again, for both legal and illegal, represses the Economic Activity of immigrants in this country, which hurts all of us. I mean, thats why leaders in Silicon Valley are almost uniformly against donald trump. Because they see what kind of contribution both immigrant workers and immigrant entrepreneurs make in creating new businesses that then do business with other Small Businesses. We have to wrap it up. Bill, i want to give you the final word if you have anything left to say. Well, nobody really mentioned taxes. Many of our top concerns have to do with taxes on business earnings. Thats the main source of capital, Financial Capital for a firm, thats how we grow the business, with the profits we make. So between having taxes take the profits away from us and then having this avalanche of regulations that tell us how to spend the money we have, not very productively, i think, but unproductively, really is damaging. I think the Small Business owners are going to be looking for somebody whos going to be supportive of Capital Formation and deregulation that is not making these poor guys spend all their time and gals complying with regulations but rather growing their businesses and creating new jobs. All right, and since yo