Businessman and TV personality Robert Herjavec, best known as an investor on the hit show “Shark Tank,” is helping bring the American Dream to middle America in Season 2 of “Small Business Revolution.”
The show, which airs on Hulu, centers around getting small communities to rally around their local businesses.
“In small towns, small businesses are really struggling to survive,” Amanda Brinkman, the show’s co-host and the chief brand and communications officer at Deluxe, told Yahoo Finance.
“You’re seeing third generation mom-and-pop shops having to close,” Brinkman added. “It’s because they struggle to compete. You have big-box retailers and national restaurant chains moving in, and it’s hard for those little guys to compete with that national budget.”
In this season, Herjavec and Brinkman provide small businesses in Bristol Borough, Pennsylvania, with tips and tools to succeed.
Yahoo Finance asked Herjavec how small businesses can protect themselves in a time where cyberattacks frequent the headlines.
“‘Gosh. ‘If big companies can’t do it, how do I do it as a small business?’ So, what I say to small businesses, it’s cloud computing,” Herjavec said. “You can outsource all of that today. Just like you don’t have to do your own marketing, you can outsource that to Deluxe. You can outsource that to public companies. Don’t buy your own firewall. Put that in the cloud.”
A secure site is attainable, but it’s not possible to be 100% un-hackable, he said.
“It is possible to create a system where if you know something has happened you can respond to it quickly. Equifax is not in trouble because they got hacked. Equifax is trouble because they got hacked eight months ago and during that time people stole 143 million records. If they got hacked and within a day or 30 minutes they figured that out, the damage would have been less.”
Herjavec, an immigrant and Canadian, still sees opportunity in America for small businesses.
“The state of the American Dream, regardless of what you hear, is alive and well. Still the greatest country in the world to start a business and be successful,” Herjavec said.
The new Republican tax plan could help small businesses, according to Herjavec.
“I mean, you can argue all kinds of things about the administration. But if this is the one thing the current administration gets through and is known for it’s fantastic.”
He continued: “Fundamentally, I believe in people’s desire to better their life. And if you can lower taxes and give me the ability to become rich, I think the average person will take advantage of that and do better for themselves. And I think a lot of people misunderstand that. They think when ‘I want to become rich’ means I just want to splurge money and do all kinds of things. If I have more money, I’m going to invest more in business, I’m going to employ more people, I’m going to help my family, I’m going to send my kids to private school. That’s what gets the economy going. Big fan.”
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Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
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