Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Carolyn Corner. Uh I am so happy to have two very special guest with me this week. uh we are talking about small businesses and I have uh Austin Thomas with me with Thomas Management Consulting and he is a small business owner who consults with small businesses and so can have multiple layers of perspective for us and then we also have Mary Blackman Campbell um she is running for House District 90.7, but it's also a local small business owner and so one of the things that's very. About her as a candidate and she does bring that very important perspective um to politics and uh hopefully to the legislature uh next year, so we would love to have her there and she really does have a great perspective um this week we are also getting ready uh through the campaign to roll out our small business objectives uh in our small business policy page and talk about issues that I've heard for so long on the campaign trail, They're really important to small businesses in this district. Uh one of the courses health care one of the big issues that I'm running on and lots of small business owners uh struggle to get health care for themselves as well as provide health insurance for their employees. Uh we need to invest investment in infrastructure transit things like that to support our business community in this district is also very important um and beyond that there's a whole series of very important programs to provide capital to small businesses. Uh. Community development Financial Institutions, Small Business administration loans um through the Community Reinvestment Act uh that can help boost the small businesses in this district and so these are the kind of things that I'm interested in being an advocate for uh after I'm elected in November uh but to kick us off uh I wanted to turn to Austin because you do have such a wonderful and multifaceted uh perspective on everything. Can you talk a little bit about what your business does to help small businesses and A little on the problems um that you see a small businesses facing in this district in this area well uh thank you again for having me on uh my consulting business. Thompson Management consulting uh focuses on businesses primarily and zero to 5 years of startup. so we we tackled the early stage of a business life cycle because 9985 to 99% of all businesses fail within the first year. so. I recognized the need to uh to be educational. It's not just about writing a plan or doing research, but I have an educational approach on how a business moves from seed stage to to start up stage to growth establishment and so on and so forth to the life cycle. uh primarily I'm engaged with business plan, writing and research uh which involves understanding the operations of the business. The marketing How. A small business is going to market the various aspects of marketing you have all traditional styles of marketing and then you have digital marketing you have uh Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and you have uh videos you have all these wonderful aspects to make a business visible. so I encounter uh entrepreneurs who are looking to start a business that really do not understand all the that is available to them. So I try to you know um incorporate all of that and uh and You know how to how to develop the plan and as well as the financial aspect of it that the quantitative part of the plan what I have encountered um as far as issues and problems uh access to capital remains a problem for many many small businesses but made on the independent and micro level um uh a lot of mom and pop models are still financing from from um retirement savings. From uh angel investors uh you know as opposed to large small businesses that are um they're lucky to to access capital from SBA and from larger uh for for a larger business model now um I've uh what I try to do with small businesses and let them understand where they are in this in the small business Picture small business defined as uh as an entity of 500 employees or less right, so you can have a small business with 500 employees and you can have a small business with two employees. so. Of those a lot of those make up uh many of the businesses we see the local cafes restaurants little retail outlets uh in our area, those were the hardest hit during the nineteen pandemic because many of them did not get access to uh the P and EIDO funding as the largest small businesses did so access to capital. um the cash flow that's needed to help a business remain liquid that continues to be an issue in our in our small business. Yeah. so uh and III, very much appreciate that and uh I was just talking with Mary about this before we started the show and the business that we have this wonderful restaurants. We have this incredible uh you know set of restaurants uh in the seventh district in Gwinnett and Forsyth and I'd just breaking my heart. I know these folks put their heart and soul into this business and um we're just talking with a guy a few minutes ago who had to had like fourteen different restaurants. Not just you know kind of scattered around in Georgia, but also around the. Right uh you know he's like they're making you know, usually one would make 20000 a night now it's making 3000 right. Yeah. incredible blow this closes. Yeah um um so so Mary. why don't you tell us a little bit on your story? You have a different take on kind of a different uh sort of business, but uh you know, can you talk a little bit about what your business is and then uh you know what some of the challenges are you face but in general and getting started and as we've hit the the the crisis sure um. So um I own a retail store. It's a children's retail store. It's a little bit non traditional. We are part of a franchise um we resell items gently-used items from people like you, Caroline if you ever wanted to resell your gently used items well that's why I started this. Yeah. It's a wonderful way to be able to give back to the community if you're one of the people bringing in items or if you're one of the people working for me. We're able to keep things in the stream of commerce longer reduce reuse and recycle, and I've been doing this now for 13 years and I love it and um one of the things challenges that I had very early on was I had a female business partner and myself, and we struggled to get access to funds. It was very difficult like like Austin talked about. it's very difficult to access this SBA funds. There are an enormous amount of hoops you have to jump. We were fortunate we had somebody guiding us and holding our hand in the franchise, but a lot of people don't have that there is a real cost to join a franchise and for some people it's worth it and for others they they wouldn't be able to open their concept if they partnered with the franchise. so we need to be able to take down some of those barriers to access this financing Um I like I said I've been here for 13 years in Gwinnett County are um location is just outside of the 97th. House district but in Georgia seven by Georgia and we um we really really struggled with Kobe hit about a week before we actually closed our business our revenues drops 75% and this was in our busiest month of the first half of the year, March and April. um it always uh it falls around Easter whenever Easter happens. that's when we're gonna get busy so we always take this 2 months together and that. When we were closed, March and April um for most retail businesses is what carries you through to the fall into the holidays and to that traditional black Friday so losing those weeks was particularly difficult for retail and for our franchise. Um I made a commitment and close to my store earlier than I think I was the third or fourth location and my franchise to close and made the commitment that no matter the cost. My goal is to make sure that everybody in my business stayed healthy and so that's why we close when we did unfortunately um that came in a real cost, We lost revenue early on when other locations were still able to generate some income we reopened in a more measured and slower way than a lot of locations did and that does affect um can be quite confusing to consumers and this was already a stressful and confusing time for people. So we are still seeing a drop in foot traffic since we've reopened in June, we reopen to the public in late May early June, um our foot traffic is down about 40% and our sales are down about 30%. so we are holding our own 30% drop is actually quite respectable. Uh I've heard exactly the story that you're talking about from friends who own restaurants that their revenues are still. Seventy 70% that they're only seeing 30% of what they used to so we're surviving, but we are not thriving and it is very much unknown. What will happen in the next twelve to 18 months so well, Thank you for sharing that story and uh yes we are we're hearing a lot of that and I just wanna invite people who are watching this if you have questions for me or for a panelist uh please submit them uh in Facebook and the Facebook feed and uh uh my staff. That will we'll shoot it over to me and we can ask these guys some questions or I can answer some of you if you wanna talk to me um so going back, you know Austin I you know what are things that every small business owner should know about right now as they confront covet. What are you advising people to do in order to get through this really tough time? I'm asking those um to understand how to pivot you know, basically what else they can they can think of doing in this period of time uh, for instance um business. Was Once you know like a restaurant that once had dine in and um you know take out uh now they're looking to uh to do all the services like delivery and so on and so forth um cafes uh looking at um not being able to lease out the facility for small functions, but that they can you know on the outside on a smaller scale right. it's it's not that a. Come come to a screeching halt, but just finding ways to adjust during this period That's within compliance of the CDC guidelines, but I I've I've uh like like Mary suggested or stated earlier, I know there are several restaurants uh that that closed and reopened um they had to actually let go of their staff um one restaurant in particular reopened uh off of hurricane. And they brought back 50% of their staff the first round were they were unsuccessful in receiving um the EDA loans, but then on the second round they were able to get you know a decent uh disbursement and they were able to reopen back up but um now it's it's like 50% of what they were doing before, but they're getting by another business on Grayson Highway. uh they're actually see there. They're running a banquet hall and they're actually seeing limited events you know um coming back to them. Of course uh I think it was a 300 a three as a person uh occupancy, but now it's like half of that so they can maintain speed distance. you know so it's it's advising businesses. Okay if you if you have to come back, these are some of the things you have to adhere to as far as the as the CDC guidelines for the pandemic, but also uh these are some of the other things you can do in order to um still you know generate some revenue uh paying the full rent for space right now is totally impossible. uh as as. For traffic is down um demand is down because nobody's out shopping at the high volumes as they were over it. but um just trying to capitalize on every opportunity they can uh going online Uh Grubhub, you know that kind of thing you know and and those things those things do help. Yeah. That's good to know. Yeah, I think yeah, we're we're all challenged to think creatively uh yeah as we're all holding on and and hoping we can find ways through alright well um. If you have questions out there for our panelists uh for me, please let us know and just put them in the comment box Uh in in the Facebook feed here uh Mary How about you? What are your thoughts about you know advising small businesses and how to get through this sure? um I think that you know it. it was what was interesting to me and I think I'm even seeing this in every reopening of phased reopening. We were very thoughtful about how we reopened um there were a lot of things that weren't known and looking. I realized that that there is uh there could have been um could have maybe been a little bit bolder and our reopening as long as we were measured and careful and safe while we did it. so um it's an incredibly anxious time. we all we felt as though I have been doing this job for the better part of 15 years and I felt like I was learning something new every day when I walked into work and this is supposed to be a job that I knew like the back of. But the unknowns the stress the the the irritated customers that aggravated customers because our limitations um that was very difficult um be prepared to be a little bit of a therapist if you're a retail business owner right now, particularly to your staff Um get an enormous amount of pushback on our requirements. Um I was very fortunate that I our company had not had uh. Customer until this past week um when we finally did have somebody who who who lost their temper and through a few things um yeah um because we uh we we wouldn't serve them without wearing a mask and we require them um we require them of ourselves as well and we have we've proven um in our staff that it's keeps us safe. We had uh a staff member recently that tested positive for covet. We made a very difficult to lose. um until the staff could all be tested and in an accurate window where we would know and be able to reopen in a safe way because that where she worked for three full days before they were informed by the contact tracing that they've been exposed not nobody else got sick on that stuff There were eight other people who worked with her and it is because we have a Holy Trinity at my business. We keep six feet apart. Wear masks all the time and we regularly cleanse wash our hands and clean surfaces um and this is what is really where or let down by our state and let down by our state government and by our governor and by our president was a lack of understanding. This was a public health problem that needs to be handled from top down and by not having that um there is a lot of anxiety and. A lot of agitation that people making ten to $15 an hour shouldn't have to cope with and that's the biggest frustration that I see as a as a retail and I'm an owner. Operator I work in the business and that's that's the number one thing that I see it just kills me we lose staff over the stress of having to manage people's expectations. Yeah. yeah. Are you seeing that sounds like you've you've had similar or similar stories? Austin are you yeah and um. Especially in the in the food service business, especially when you're engaging, you know um our customers uh it is a lot of frustration because you know as I've advised I'd advise um business that I have. I have three business plans that I'm working on right now. Neither one of them are in the food service one uh currently one is to start a uh a food truck, but it won't be until 2021 right now some of the. Businesses I've I've worked with um as I try to tell them adhere to what the CDC is saying, look at the FDA and look at OSHA right because to look anywhere else you just won't get the the full accurate information. uh if you the first the first the first uh point of um of obligation, is to protect yourself and protect your workers if someone comes in and they don't wanna wear a mask or if someone is working with you and they're comfortable wearing a mask that person should not be. Yeah, you know because if you're especially in food service right, so you know, yes, I definitely have heard some of the stories and I think um you know we're we're currently in a situation where people have a choice of whether to or whether not to wear a mask and trying to enforce it. someone you know the person I feel that you're infringing on their right or their personal space or whatever. but the important thing is number one obligation is for protection of the entrepreneur. The worker and that's what I try to emphasize. That's great. Yeah. I just it is it is very frustrating. We could have leadership that gave us very clear instructions so we didn't have to fight over this. We didn't have people saying well, you know it's it's only I only have to wear it if I feel comfortable wearing it and you wear it I. Interjected. I'm so sorry, Carolyn and I'm interrupting, but the thing that just grinds my gears about all of this is this whole idea that we have to get business back up and we have to reopen our economy but if you hug me before I'm able to open my doors, what kind of success are we were actually seeing right for businesses like mine right kind of custom I actually seeing I'm not and in this really this reopening the economy getting back to business, it wasn't taking businesses like mine and into consideration. III read a statistic and now it's escaping me, but isn't it like 70% of people employed in Georgia are employed by small business. I mean it's some ridiculous number. Yeah and and we are the backbone of the economy of the state of Georgia and he took no consideration to what he did just said. Yeah, Well, sixty-six of all net jobs are created by small businesses. Thank you. That's the number that's the important thing that we have to remember if small businesses are driving this economy, then the small business. In regardless, if they have 500 employees or there are small business of two employees, they all should be treated with a sense of importance in a sense of urgency right because they're creating they're creating the jobs and with jobs come uh disposable income to go out and spend and when people are going out and spending that creates more jobs. so you know so there's definitely uh um uh a sense of dis loyalty and trust right now um that we. As small businesses are not being taken care of and I could tell you if I hadn't decided to run for office already, this would've done it. Yeah. It's like I just I just was on a uh uh a press conference with uh doctor Michelle, who is uh you know uh a doctor on the front lines dealing with pro and she emphasize something that's very important. You know if we had done the work upfront, you know with the public health issues to deal with the mask wearing to set the diamonds clearly, yeah, we would be in a much better place. Everybody right now for small businesses for all of us, you know Mary and I are parents who are we are like trying to you know, do these jobs but also homeschooling our kids um for everybody, this would be so much better and the third so frustrating is instead of actually doing the hard work making sure we have a public health system that is funded that is robust. We have testing we have you know a system to deal with the disease instead, they said. Oh, well, we're just not able to do that. Everybody just go back to work and let's work our way through this. Yeah. You know the economy will come back when people aren't afraid when people can work without fear and that's that that is one of my yes. I've been it's very ining to watch and that's a whole other. Let's talk about employment and trying to employ people in this type of climate. that is a whole other conversation for another day it is and it's it's an uncertain climate because you're not reapplying folks for sustain. You're reapplying folks not knowing all within a month or so I might have to lay them off again. So yeah, I mean that's another thing I hear just give us certainty just tell us what the path forward is show Yeah and yeah. so alright we have um what we're going to um so again if anybody has questions, please let us know this is some amazing panelists who really have some really important insights on to what small businesses are facing and what they. Um but let's let's uh one of my last question here is you know what is it We need to do in Georgia uh to better support our small businesses and we can think about this both with the Coc crisis and we've talked a bit about that at this point, but but you know once we move back uh we have uh Biden has a plug and build back better and I like that a lot because we want it. We gotta build back but we wanna fix some of the things that have we're not working for us before so I'm part of Austin. Like you're you've got thoughts on that. Yeah, I'd like to see I'd like to see debt relief legislation uh especially for the businesses that were not able to reopen um again we have to thank it wasn't because of negligence that they were inoperable that they were rendered you know not being able to pay their bills and cover and in many of them may have to file bankruptcy right so I would like to see debt relief legislation for those businesses that have to. Because of the pandemic right because again, if if the small businesses are driving the economy, we should put emphasis on making sure that we're getting their doors back open so definitely and also a stimulus uh to help with programs um and getting businesses not just back open. But now, how are you going to drive successfully after closing your business and even if you have to uh to go through the pandemic uh struggling? What type of programs are there to get you back to that successful level that you experience it so debt relief and assistance programs to help businesses be sustainable and to really get out of this successfully. Uh huh. Okay. great very thoughts on that I would I would agree absolutely with everything that Austin is saying, um some other things just as an owner Operator um the the labor cost that I incur now, you know we we're open for. We're open for work and not for customers while we're cleaning um in the mornings and in. The additional labor costs every week we provide um protective equipment, you know we provide PE to our staff. we provide to our customers, the additional and they are considerable additional cost um in order for my facility to be safer, I upgraded my ventilation at my own cost um because my landlord was not interested. um I upgraded the clams um that was for me something that I thought was gonna be very important that there were they're just ongoing cost. Directly affect the bottom line and that directly affects my ability to grow my business and to get back to what was a full staff I used to employ fifteen people I'm like twelve now and it's unfortunate that I'm not able financially to bring those three jobs back and that's just a 25% decrease, but that's significant and if you think about that might cost. Have gone up to a place where I can't absorb you know that I can't bring those people back on. that's going to ripple out into the bigger community and my store is relatively a success story in what's happening right now, I mean big picture wise. I'd love to be able to see some grants or some um funds that will offset those costs. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. So you know there has been legislation that was passed in the US house uh months ago 3 years ago. And uh it's just been held up in the Senate and a lot of it was for uh grants and loans to small businesses to extend the P program to make sure that there is support uh for staying open um also there's there's been many funnel through local businesses from those kind of aid packages. I sorry funnels to local government and and and you know they can distribute some of that to businesses um and Talking to somebody a few days ago, I was talking about how uh where he lives um the uh local government is giving grants to small businesses to help them retool to do things like the ventilation to help restaurants make sure they have outdoor seating during the winter as it gets colder uh and so just making a suggestion out there to anybody who's at the local level and who might uh be able to help some folks with this sort of more targeted uh type grants to help business tool and to. Those caught and hopefully we'll see some of those I know. Gwinnett County had some incredibly fortunate and was able to avail myself of well. I say incredibly fortunate I got up three nights in a row at 3 o'clock in the morning to try and submit my ED because this server kept crashing third night got in so and right. Yeah, I mean that was the only then but um you know a lot of people weren't that lucky you know Gwinnett County had money and I didn't take advantage. Because I wanted to leave it available for people who hadn't had access, but hope is coming and then you know you talked about Michelle earlier, she's she's such a remarkable candidate and her experience is gonna be invaluable at the legislative level um but as a health care practitioner, she knows this better than I do, but one of the things that we need to do in my opinion as a small business owner, I have you talked about how small business owners struggle to insure. And to ensure their team, I absolutely do even with the shop platform. The costs are prohibitive for my team. Um I'm fortunate right now that everybody on my team is able to access health care through a spouse or through family um so we don't have to offer these ridiculously I call them step off a curb plans because you know they're just they're this high risk. You know the high deductible plans that will. You from going bankrupt but don't really cover much of anything else um a plan that I feel good offering, but it's what I myself and my employees would be able to afford um so by expanding Medicaid Medicaid and into Georgia, it will absolutely help small businesses It will help me as a small business owner and it will help it will directly affect at least 50% of my staff in a very if we're able to do. So I I just it's one of those things you don't think about right away how health care but health cares in everything and especially in the small business? Yeah. so we'll have to we have to wrap it up. You guys have been moving. I'm gonna thank you all so much. okay. That is this. It's a simple and short and we just you know get to get to the point um I'm gonna get one question uh it was for me asking about uh what uh you know what I would do to help small businesses after I'm elected and um you know just building on the points uh that Austin and Mary uh made. One is health care and Mary is absolutely right that this filters through everything um many small businesses. They're just they they just purchase insurance to the exchange. They're they're small enough that they're exchange and um you know the challenge on the exchange is that Congress under Republican leadership has cut all the supports out from under the exchange so that families end up paying extortion rates for health insurance, but it means a small. They can't function they can't grow without affordable health insurance. I've talked to folks who wanted to start a small business wanted to go out there and do entrepreneurial things, but they can't leave their job where they have affordable health care. Yes and it is crazy um so going back fixing the Affordable Care Act to bring down the cost of health insurance for all of us middle class families expanding Medicaid so that our working families. Who are lower income have helped and I know about that is that it helps employees that might not make might not work full time might not have sort of a uh you know a really solid income, but it helps all of us with our own insurance rates. go up because we pay that uncompensated care and that pay for that um so fixing the Affordable Care Act and also uh introducing a public option um which I want to see something that is an affordable option for individuals, but also if something that. Business can rely on um in order to help ensure their employees and give them an affordable option as well. and I think you know there are many other issues and I talked about some of them early on but if we can fix the health care issues, we can unlock tremendous amount of entrepreneurial potential uh in our community because it is shocking how much is really tied up. uh you know of our of our lives or weirdly distorted by our failure to deal with health, insurance and health care um and you know. Expanding access to capital as Austin was talking about making sure that you can get loans and I don't know how many people I've talked to. they're like the bank will only give me a loan once they're assured that there's absolutely no risk and uh you know and I'm like well, you know you gotta you do wanna make sure it's a good investment and a good evaluate carefully all of that, but at the same time you know you need to make sure that people are able to do these things that are entrepreneurial um that are innovative and that they can get uh you know access. To help help get that going um and transit uh we have a soul-sucking commute here. I don't know how many people I've talked to here also Cannot open their businesses are struggling with their business because nobody can get to their business because of the traffic in the gridlock. so those are just a few things that we need to tackle we're or losing employees because they lose their only source of transportation to a car accident or car with you. Yeah. Oh yes. Queen Amazing campaign staff who can't get to the campaign you know they can go and uh that is just been it is one thing after the next and it is time to fix a few things. Uh yes, yes. so thank you guys. I'm honored to have you all that was a great conversation. Thank you very much for being here. Thanks to everybody who joined us and uh I look forward to seeing you next week at 6 o'clock at carolyn's corner. Alright. Thank you. So much Carol.