Support Small Businesses to Save the Economy

Video Transcript

We need to focus on small business to save the economy that is the topic of my discussion today with Andi Gray she is president of strategy leaders hello Andi hey there good to be here today we’re talking about my favorite topic great well let’s do it then how are small businesses faring in this difficult time um it’s pretty tough uh some of the estimates are that we could lose 50 percent of small businesses through this uh entire covid experience h the belief is that while the last pandemic from 2008 to 2012 it wasn’t actually a pandemic was an economic collapse that cost us about seven years to recover from and that was only the banking sector the automotive sector and the insurance sector and now we’re talking about something that is impacting every part of our economy yeah why widespread is there any particular sectors that are especially hard hit in the small business environment well i think we’re hearing a lot about the obvious ones uh restaurants limousine services airlines resorts anyone that caters to the leisure and business travel sector is especially hard hit but they’re not alone so when you look at a marketing company or a consulting firm or you look at a construction company they all had shutdowns in the beginning of covid depending on how quickly they got moving and started to look at how to pivot to something additional that their customers needed was a factor n how quickly they were able to recover and specific to the market that you focus so much on which would be both transportation and manufacturing those sectors are having very uneven results so some parts of transportation are doing well delivering all the packages that we’re ordering they can get parts from their suppliers who may or may not still be in business whether or not their customers still want what they were making or can afford to buy it now there are a lot of ifs going on out there we have a manufacturing client that i’m very proud of they at the beginning of covid they produced environmental designs so they would make my office look like my office or my shop looked like my shop and they immediately went to work producing ppp ppe equipment um so protective gear and they also went out to all of their vendors whose workforces were being laid off for lack of work and said send them to us we’ll put everybody to work and made massive amounts of protective gear in the beginning learned a lot about the materials that worked and didn’t work and are continuing now in an entirely new line that didn’t even exist as a business for them uh 90 120 days ago so the entrepreneurial spirit lives on in small business although there are lots of obstacles to in its way uh we’ve had some government support we’ve had the paycheck protection program we’re waiting for a second wave of support i’m assuming you would argue would you not i don’t know is has that been inadequate from a small business standpoint up to this point you know it’s really interesting at the beginning of covet the optimism level of small business was very high and i believe that that was the case because of the idol program which was the loan program where business owners were promised six months of gross profit in order to help them get on back on their feet they would have to pay it back as a low interest loan and they’d have 30 years to do it which would make it a very usable source of funding uh and then that was followed by the ppp the paycheck protection program where they were going to get money basically to take the burden off of the unemployment programs in the state and keep people working as those programs so first the idle program cratered they took the money away from that program and most people who came through that program only got 150 000 which is nothing near what they needed in order to recover and the ppp program that money they had to use very quickly it was gone and they were left with nothing to keep working on solutions yeah okay so they’re in dire straits right now uh what kind of i mean to us to a large extent they’re buffeted by forces that they don’t have control over and yet do you offer some tips for survival what is within their power to do in these dire times for small businesses well i think i think there’s a lot that um that all of us can be doing so uh it’s very important to think local as a consumer and to make the effort whether you’re gonna buy face to face or buy over the internet do it locally find someone locally who makes what you need and give them the business we need to really look at the crowd funding and opportunities to put small amounts of money into buckets that can be used by people who are purposeful with moving their companies forward go back to the farmers market every week those those things are open and that money goes into small business hands um go to your nail salon go to your hair salon um keep using your landscaper these are things that in the beginning we shut down very quickly and have the opportunity to recover very quickly and they also for the most part are some of the most fragile businesses because they tend to be much smaller in size yeah but as the as the perhaps to call it the second wave of cobit 19 is hitting us now it becomes impossible for certain businesses such as restaurants to even be open even if we want to patronize them so they’re in a position where i don’t know what they’re going to do other than just batting down the hatches and hoping they survive it well i think any business owner that takes the approach of batten down the hatches and hope is uh hope is not a plan uh it’s a reaction and it’s not going to be enough to get them through they’ve got to uh like our client who pivoted from making one thing to making a nuts they’ve got to think about pivoting as well whether they want to start selling cooking classes over the internet or they want to start distributing bread to grocery stores that are looking for something unique to offer or they want to figure out how to cater to a set of clientele who are willing to order healthier meals whatever the idea i do think most business owners are stuck talking to themselves and that’s not a big enough group so bring your family together bring advisors that you respect together get a group of people on the internet to start talking together about ways that you can innovate and do something you never thought about doing before so you are arguing really the case for small business reinvention in a very in the most creative sense imaginable really there’s i don’t think anything less will feed survival for most businesses if you just look at in 90 days we became an e-commerce uh economy and an e-commerce country we had thought it would take us 20 years to get to where we are in 90 days most small businesses were not prepared to play on a level playing field as e-commerce participants but if they don’t figure it out now it’s going to be very hard to get through this but you know who dominates the headlines it’s the big companies it’s the amazons and the big merchandisers big retailers big manufacturers how important is small business to our economy so it’s easy to report on the big guys they have to publish their numbers they’re on the bloom the Bloomberg terminal all day long and that’s why we talk about them because it’s easy the numbers are small business 95 to 98 of all companies in this country are privately held and owner operated they make up half of our gdp that’s the money that we produce and move through our economy every year comes from them they employ half of our workforce and more importantly they employ the first and the last or they represent the first and the last job for every worker in our economy so that means the kid who’s coming out of high school or college and is trying to get their start with their first job is going to have fewer options and the senior citizen who is looking to close the gap on social security or looking for that last meaningful piece of contribution uh to their work uh resume is not gonna find a place to put that to work and that to me is probably the most disturbing part because as human beings we are wired to contribute and when we don’t have an opportunity to contribute that is when as a society we begin to lose hope what do you mean when you talk about the need to create a 21st century economy so um i did a lot of research on this was of the greatest gifts in my life to do that and what the 21st century economy is all about is that new model here in the united states how do we continue to grow and develop as an economic powerhouse for our place in the world fortune 500’s gone offshore to Asia we’re having all these fights about offshoring and ensuring money that’s already happened small business privately held business is the place where the game gets played they’re here they’re local they’re on main street they’re in everybody’s house right now they are working for the benefit of their local business their local employees their local customers those are the ones that are going to drive a successful u.s economy in the 21st century but their failure rates are horrendous three out of four gone in every 10-year cycle that’s 600,000 in a year that we kill off typically however in in this coven we’re talking about killing off millions in a year’s time so we’re going to take huge losses here unless we get moving and teach these businesses how to survive and give them the support that they need to get through this and if we don’t get them through this we’re going to have a really tough economy for a very long period of time because we just don’t have that many businesses employing workers if we can help them stay in business which comes from the federal government they’re the only ones that can print money right now then we keep the economy moving until it can stabilize well perhaps the one silver lining is that maybe the situation for those of us who have seen their local businesses either go under or be on the verge of doing so perhaps we are beginning to gain a new appreciation of the importance of small business to our own lives and to the economy in general and Andi Gray i want to thank you for helping to open our eyes to the importance of small business and its plight right now what we can do to support it and our hopes for its continuation and how important it is to our american economy thanks so much for being with me today really appreciate it thank you thank you for having me it’s a joy