[VIDEO] Exclusive Survival Tips From Former SBA Chief

As the crisis wears on, you might be struggling with dwindling financial resources or wondering how you can make it to the next stage of recovery. How can you ride out the storm? And where can you turn if you need help?

For advice, we sat down with Karen Mills, former head of the SBA, entrepreneur, and investor, for an in-depth discussion on how to navigate the current crisis with a special focus on women business owners. 

Watch the interview to find out:

• Survival tips to help you get through the crisis
• Tools and support for women-owned businesses
• Resources for finding grants and other funding
• More insight from Karen, who helped guide small businesses through the last economic downturn

How to Navigate Tough Financial Times: Transcript

Eric Groves: And it was interesting because Chelsey sent out a post to a bunch of our members and we had over 300 questions submitted for you. I was like, "Uh-oh. Hope she has the better part of her day because there's a lot to tackle." It should be a lot of fun. 

And we are up to 40, and climbing, just letting people in. I don't want to steal anybody's thunder, but while we wait, no new news out of Washington for any kind of relief package, it doesn't look like. No.

Karen Mills: We can talk about this be Eric rather than we have no new news.

Eric Groves: Well, we will tackle that topic, that's for sure. The way I've laid out the discussion today is we let people keep coming in, is really to talk... I use FEMA's framework quite a bit in terms of trying to respond to a natural disaster and the time periods sequentially after the disaster hits. 

And so what I thought we would do today is really kind of tackle that starting at the first stage, the survival stage, and then we'll kind of move into the recovery and then the lessons learned that we could apply to business and stuff in the future. So we will run through all of that. Well, I am going to get started. So I was preparing. I'm assuming that we're all good.

Oh, this is great. I've already got people coming in and saying that they're super excited. So that's always a good sign. So hopefully they can hear us. Awesome. Well, I'm going to get started. And I'm going to start with a little bit of bio and introduction. 

So hello. My name is Eric Groves. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Alignable, and I'd like to welcome all of you to today's discussion. 

How to Navigate Tough Financial Times

Today's discussion is entitled, Navigating Troubling Financial Times. And we've got an incredible guest speaker here with us, Karen Mills. Karen, as you probably well know, is a renowned expert in small business. She grew up in an incredibly entrepreneurial family. 

Related: Recovery Tips from Former SBA Chief Karen Mills

And along the way, she:

• Has run numerous manufacturing businesses
• Created an investment firm focusing on funding women-owned businesses
• Was enlisted by the Governor of Maine to help transform and redevelop the Brunswick Naval Air Station
• Was tapped by president Barack Obama to lead the Small Business Administration and our small business economy out of the 2008 recession.

Since leaving the SBA, Karen has served as a senior fellow at Harvard Business School and at Harvard's JFK School of Government. Along the way, she found time to actually author a book entitled Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream. 

And for all of us behind the scenes, she's been working incredibly hard to ensure that the federal relief legislation coming out of Washington really reaches those in greatest need. 

So given all that, you can totally imagine why we're just so excited to have Karen back with us to talk more about what's going on in the small business economy. So welcome to Karen.

Karen Mills: And Eric, you didn't mention the most important thing.

Eric Groves: What's that?

Karen Mills: That I'm a venture capitalist and I'm an investor in Alignable. So full disclosure, I'm all in because I think you've built an unbelievable network of small business owners. 

This is something close to my heart. And you've really created a unique environment where small business owners can help each other. So...

Eric Groves: So there you go. I couldn't have said it better.

Karen Mills: So honored to be here.

Eric Groves: I appreciate you saying that. So this was kicked off because it was in celebration of women-owned business month, which is this month. 

And leading into our discussion, we actually reached out to a bunch of business owners who were women and business owners on Alignable, and we asked them to submit their questions for you. And we were kind of blown away because we literally got over 300 questions. 

So what we tried to do is we tried to package them up into topics. And we're going to walk through those topics. And then at the end, what we'll do is we'll actually dive into some of the other questions that people have. 

For everybody out there, if you have questions you'd like to add, please go to the Q&A tab at the bottom of the Zoom window and post your questions there. We'll try and tackle as many of those as we can along the way. 

So the format for today is really to talk about things in stages. 

1. We're going to start off talking about how business owners really should think about navigating the seemingly never ending stage of survival. 
2. And then once we're done with that, we'll kind of move on to the next stage, the recovery stage. 

And then we'll talk a little bit about some of the key learnings from the COVID crisis because it is such a new phenomenon and how businesses should think about working with their businesses and legislators to improve the way that we try and tackle such things in the future. 

Then we'll try and wrap up with some other questions submitted either in advance or through today's session. 

How Can Small Businesses Get Through The Survival Stage of Recovery?

So let's start off with the survival stage. 

And the reason that I start there is in our most recent poll for October, we found that 50% of the business owners had said that they'd moved on from survival. 

But that left 50% of the other business owners predominantly in the business to consumer sectors really struggling because this has lasted so long. 

They're directly affected really by the lack or the lost consumer confidence that people have in just their safety and feeling like it's okay and comfortable to go to a locally-owned business. 

So as someone who's counseled many businesses during the last financial crisis and had an ear to what's been happening in Washington, what advice could you share with businesses who are really in a cash strap mode? Who are trying to figure out how do I get from this point in time, forward to the point in time where vaccines are out there, testing is in place, and people feel safe and consumer confidence starts to come back? 

How should they think about that?

Karen Mills: Well, Eric, thanks for inviting me because I love all small business owners. Everybody has a place in my heart. But women-owned small businesses, that's a special interest, as you might imagine, of mine. 

And I think women owned businesses are uniquely ready for a crisis like this because many of us multitask all the time with the kids. 

Now, this is a particularly difficult time, especially for those of you with kids at home—you're doing Zoom school and you're trying to run your business. So I think many, many women-owned businesses are in this category that you just described, which is still figuring out how to survive. 

And we know from data that most small businesses had only a month of cash on hand, and this pandemic was supposed to be all done in two and a half months. 

So with a little help from maybe PPP or something else, we should all be able to get through. Well, that's not proving to be the case. 

I think we all have to buckle for an additional many months, whether it's six months or eight months or two months, whatever it's going to be, we're going to have to get through it. 

And I think we all have to buckle for an additional many months, whether it's six months or eight months or two months, whatever it's going to be, we're going to have to get through it. 

And the reason that we have to get through it is for ourselves and our livelihood, but also for the American economy. 

Because to just step back a minute for this work I'm doing in Washington, half of the people who work in this country own or work for a small business. So that's half of America's jobs. 

And I think finally Congress, when they passed the first CARES Act, they realized it, that main street small business, all you folks out there, all you sole proprietorships that sometimes get ignored...

When I was in Washington and I became a member of the cabinet, people said, "Finally, we have a voice. We have a seat at the table, literally a seat at the cabinet table."

Well, people paid attention for a period of time, but as you see with the log jam in Washington, more relief is not necessarily going to come from the government. So what can you do just to survive? 

And of course, just surviving and even reinventing has three pieces. You have to do everything you can for your top line. You have to be creative because the customers aren't coming in the door. 

And just because the governor says you can open doesn't mean your consumer or your customer feels safe coming in for the haircut or walking around physically in a store. 

So maybe go online, maybe do something that you didn't do before. And the second thing you do is you watch every penny and cut every cost. 

Related: How to Ramp Up Your Online Sales

And I think this is the time when I've urged mayors and real estate developers and everyone else to say, you better give your small businesses a break because it's going to take six to 12 months for you to fill that space if that business goes out of business. 

So you may have more room than you think to talk to your lender, to talk to your real estate folks and renegotiate a lower payment or another pause.

Everybody understands it's not your fault. It's not because you're a bad business, it's the situation. 

You really have to think, 'what's my business about, and where am I really making my money?'

And the last piece is it's time to reassess your business. Sometimes you've held on to a product or a customer or a way of doing things that you thought when you had time you might change. And you really have to think about, what's my business about, and where am I really making my money? 

Instead of having 12 items on the menu for takeout, you might have six. You might not have to hire back as many folks, and you can still make money with a more focused product line. 

• Where are you making your money? 
• What customers are your most loyal and valuable customers, and how can you serve them? 
• And how can you kind of get a little bit creative about your product?

This is the moment that we have to reinvent ourselves and then reinvent ourselves again.

I know a lot of you are creative people. So this is the moment that I think we have to reinvent ourselves and then reinvent ourselves again. 

Eric Groves: It's a great point. And a friend of mine who runs a men's clothing store in Manhattan actually went to his landlord and they worked out a deal where the business owner, where he could actually just pay a percentage of his revenue. 

Because he said, "Look, I've got to reopen my business. I have no idea what kind of foot traffic I can support and keep people safe. It's how people are going to come back. But I can guarantee you that as we generate revenue, I will share in that revenue with you."

And the landlord, to his credit, said, who's a small business owner too, "We can work together on this." 

And they worked out a deal for a period of time where he can just pay him a percentage of revenue that he actually does collect. So I think that everybody really wants to find a way to help each other get through this challenging time. And your points are well-taken.

What Financial Resources Are Out There to Help Small Businesses?

There's a lot of resources that the SBA supports, whether it's through the SBDC or SCORE. 

Can you talk a little bit about beyond the relief where other people can go when they're trying to figure out things and trying to do this math and really just need someone else to talk to as part of an organization that does this? 

Karen Mills: Well, Eric, I have to say the first thing I do with many folks is I send them to you because one of the things that we found is that some of the best advisors to small business owners are other small business owners who are in a similar position. 

So maybe they're in the same town doing a different business and they know of a program that the mayor has put out. 

Maybe they're in the same business, but in a different town, and they've got some tips for how they redesigned their business. So I know you're putting together some interest groups from ways people can talk to each other. 

I think finding somebody else in your situation and not just feeling like you're alone and you have to invent the whole thing yourself. And if you find something that works, put it out there to others, either through Alignable or any way that you can.

There are resources to help small business owners right now. And I have been quite amazed and impressed. First of all, in the original CARES Act, a lot of money was allocated to the local SBA advisors and counselors, women's business centers. 

There are 110 women's business centers all across the country whose job it is to help you at this moment. And it's free, same as 900 small business development centers. There are veterans business centers. 

All of these folks, once again, may know:

• What banks are lending
• How to fill out the forms if there's another PPP
• How to fill out the forgiveness forms
• What the actual guidance is that's coming out of Washington

It's so confusing. And I think this is one of the things I'm the most annoyed about, which is why not have clear communication?

Small business owners don't need to open up 12 different sites and see 12 different instructions. It's just too much. 

My hope is that we'll be able to get lots of clarity as we go forward around how you get loan forgiveness, and what else is available.

What's the Best Way to Find Resources?

Eric Groves: If a business owner has a question about beyond the EIDLs and the PPP loans, I know there are different places within the SBA where grants are set up for different types of businesses, veteran owned, minority owned, women on businesses. 

What's, in your mind, the best resource for where to find all of those resources? Is it the SBA site? 

Karen Mills: Well, the SBA site has all of the resources. I would go to the SBA district office that is nearest to you or the small business development center nearest to you. 

They are in the business of making sure you are able to see all those. The other place, I spoke last week to about 300 mayors, mayors have been playing a role. This was a Bloomberg Harvard education segment for mayors around how they help their small businesses. 

And they are doing some really interesting things. I had urged them to convene their banks and push them to make sure they keep lending and also to make sure that on their websites and on their community sites, they post any local grants. 

There was money in the original federal money that did flow into the coffers of states and local areas, and it has been allocated in different ways by different local organizations.

So I would look in your city and your state websites and see what... a lot of them are running competitions for local grants and you may well absolutely be eligible. 

So it does at the moment take some investigation. And that's why I say form a little local group and pass all that good information on to each other. 

Eric Groves: That's a great plug there. Because one of the things that we'll do at the end of this session is we'll post the link to a survey that folks can take where they can tell us about the types of groups they'd like to be a part of. 

And we're rolling out a new platform to basically enable people to join and participate in small groups where they can find a group of peers, talk about different topics and help to solve problems together. 

And it actually grew out of a interesting situation early on. We had a bunch of florists who said to us, "Can you just connect us with a whole bunch of florists? Because we have to talk each other through this." 

And now there's a group of over a hundred florists working together on the platform, talking to each other about, well, I tried this and it worked and I tried that. And so we decided it's like we have to build on this. 

So we'll put a link into the chat at the very end where people can take a poll, and we'll try and match you up with folks to get you going in the right direction. 

Talking about getting things going in the right direction and your sort of tea leaves and your ability to reach into Washington, I think one of the frustrating things is really about all this has been just the inability to see an end, to see what's coming.

What Should Small Business Owners Expect for Additional Relief?

And do you have any thoughts around what people should expect in terms of additional relief? 

I know you're not fighting the legislation or voting on it, but is it realistic to think that there's this strong likelihood that additional relief funding will come before the end of the year or not? 

Karen Mills: Well, as you know, our politics are standing in the way of the right thing to do. And for a whole set of reasons we have not been able, since this summer, to get another set of relief out even though the money is there. 

And I just think it is worse than disappointing. It's just not how America should be operating. So we hope we're going to have some resolution, we're going to have an election. 

And then Congress needs to pass the next version of small business relief. I have weighed in very carefully and heavily on all sides for it to be large and also simple as possible. 

And I'm particularly focused on the people who need the smallest dollar loans, because I think they have had a really hard time getting access because the banks, they serve the big customers first.

And luckily a bunch of folks like Square, PayPal, QuickBooks, and Kabbage stepped in and created some user-friendly portals. 

I've been writing about FinTech for a long time, but I was very happy to see them step in without a sense that they were going to make any money from it. But just said these are the people we care about, we need to make the experience easy for them. 

And I think they're going to work very hard on forgiveness portals once they get the proper guidance so that we can make sure that everybody is not liable for their money. 

There were bad actors who got involved. The fraud protection, I've suggested an approach to the SBA to go after bad actors and pull out the fraud and not let any of the money go there.

But let's not let that get in the way of the fact that this is the time that even if you don't like to take government money or handouts and it's not your way, of course, it's not your way, but this pandemic is not your fault and we need you to survive. 

...this pandemic is not your fault and we need you to survive. 

Rest of America needs you to survive and do what you do. So every taxpayer, I think not be grudge money going to a viable small business to bridge you through to a better day, which we know will come. 

We know that this will be over it. We don't know if it's three months, six months, nine months, but we know that we will sort this out. So-

Eric Groves: Great point about the people who didn't get access. Because when you look at the fact that 81% of all small businesses are sole entrepreneurs, solepreneurs, and you look at the distribution of the PPP funds in the fact that I think it was 65% of the loan in number went to people with less than $50,000 in terms of funding, but that represented 12% of the overall amount of money that went out the door. 

And there were a lot of businesses that really suffered in that process. The solopreneurs, the business owners who had literally just started their businesses or getting off the ground, businesses in challenging economic climates or in communities that were struggling to begin with who didn't have profit, right? 

That couldn't show years of profit, but they're doing an incredible service for their community by being in business. And were very much left out. And so I think we're hopeful that in the next go round, they will sort out a lot of that and really get the money where it's most needed. 

How Can Business Owners Get Through the Recovery Stage?

Karen Mills: I know you want to go to the recovery stage. And in this recovery stage, I think there are also going to be some tools. 

I am urging that for those of you who are weathering this, okay, who've battened down the hatches, but when you open up again, you're going to need a little bit of money to hire your employees, to get some inventory in, to do some marketing.

I am concerned that we are going to be in a bit of a credit freeze. So I have some advice and some thoughts for you and for the banks. 

What I'm telling the banks is, of course, you better be lending. Because when I took over in 2009, we were in a big credit freeze, some of you may remember that. And we at the SBA raised our guarantee rates to 90%, eliminated all the SBA fees, and we got a thousand banks back to lending in six months.

And I am urging the SBA under any administration to implement exactly that because I call it the hockey stick that did happen. We now know it worked. When I did it, it was a little bit of a... well, a bold move, I guess I would say. 

We did not know it would work, but now we really know how the mechanism works. I would also urge the federal government to license these easier to use fintechs, but to make sure that we've got some oversight on the cost of these loans. 

We don't want everybody paying a gazillion dollars. But in a guaranteed loan market, with high guarantees, we should be able to have more access to SBA backed loans and also EIDL loans. These are the loans for economic injury. 

And I don't think we made the best use of them in the first round. Because many people applied for a larger loan and got cut back. I'm not sure why they did that. 

But reinstating EIDL loans, which were very, very low cost loans for 30 years, they're not grants, but that could be the kind of stable financing some businesses need to recover. 

Larger businesses can take advantage of capital markets today where interest rate is like zero. You can borrow at a couple of percent, you can get a mortgage for whatever, 3%. 

Small, small businesses, because banks are the people they rely on, have not had access to these very low cost capital markets. And that's a problem we've got to solve if we want to have a good recovery.

Small businesses have not had access to these very low cost capital markets. And that's a problem we've got to solve if we want to have a good recovery.

At What Point Should Businesses Feel Comfortable Taking on Debt?

Eric Groves: And as people try and look forward and wonder if that light at the end of the tunnel is the end of this or the train coming down the tracks, when do you suggest people think about, okay, it's okay for me to take on debt now to try and rebuild my business? 

Because there's kind of a fear that if you do it too soon rather than just staying hunkered down, you're not going to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.

And if you wait too long, you really put yourself at a disadvantage. So do you have any kind of thoughts that you would take as you're trying to factor that into a decision about when it would be okay to kind of take on a little bit more debt to get forward? 

Karen Mills: Yeah. So for small business owners, this is one of the toughest questions because you live in a highly uncertain world even in a good day. And the uncertainty in this world drives at the very lifeblood of your business, which is your cashflow. So the best thing that you can do is have a very good cash flow plan. 

The best thing you can do is have a very good cash flow plan.

And by that, I mean use this time to get out whatever tools you've got and really understand the money coming in and the money going out. Electronically in the future there are going to be dashboards that do this for you.

It's going to just suck up all your bank information and your credit card information and show you your cash flow, how it goes in and out. And the bank will use that, we hope, to pre-approve you for credit lines and make it all much more seamless. 

I can call this in my book, a small business utopia. We're a far cry from small business utopia at the moment.

So the answer, Eric, to your question is you got to take the most realistic view you can to the future streams of cash and keep your head down, I think, for a little bit longer. What we've learned from this virus is it's going to take longer than you think. 

If you think two months, it's going to be five months. If you think five months, it's going to be 12 months. So before this is over, it's going to be a while. And you need to be in a position where your cash inflows and your cash outflows are steady enough that you can get through.

You need to be in a position where your cash inflows and outflows are steady enough that you can get through.

If you see an opportunity where you could take on some debt, invest in something, get some inventory, buy some materials, take on a person and get more business, it's worth doing. 

But if you're counting on external factors to change radically for that business to come in and that's not in your control, I would say proceed with caution, looking very carefully at your cashflow.

Because as a small business, when you run out of cash, you're dead. So you got to keep a cash buffer. And when the time is right, we want to make sure that you've got access to the cash. 

So I guess the one thing Eric, I would mention that to prepare, go have a chat with your banker. Go have a look-see around the different loan options so that you are ready, that you know what's available to you, that the SBA...

You can visit the SBA office, that you've got a business plan, that you've got your banking relationship warmed up and ready to go so that when you need that, it's not three months and then a no.

Why Spending Local Helps Recovery

Eric Groves: Great points. It's interesting is that one of the things we've been championing at Alignable is a notion of my money stays local.

And one of the things that we asked all of our employees to do is literally just take out your credit card statement and look through all the charges. Look at the location of where the money is going and just do the math and ask yourself what percentage of what you're spending is staying local, versus what percent is going off to someplace like Seattle, right?

And it's really interesting how people don't necessarily understand the economic cycles that happen locally and how if you spend a hundred dollars at a locally owned business, roughly 50 to 60% of that will actually spin in the community in the form of wages, supplies, just support of local community, local taxes, that support. And that's really what's going to drive recovery. 

And we just recently did a survey that said that at the height of the COVID impact, 45% of small business owners acting as consumers shifted away from local businesses for a purpose, because of fear of their safety, right?

They wanted stuff to show up at their house. And the challenge now is we need to shift that back. We need to find a way to build confidence in coming back and spending locally. 

And one of the things that we really push a lot of people to do is just take that effort to look at your statement and ask yourself, how do I move 10%, 5% each month back into my community so it can churn around the community and we can start to recover?

Because it's going to be that level of detail. And it's a perfect add-on to your notion of going into the detail of your cashflow and really trying to understand it and being out there and talking to other people about what creatively have you done to manage your expenses. And we see discussions on that all the time. 

Karen Mills: Eric, this notion about hashtag my money stays local, I have been touting that everywhere because I think it builds off of something that we understood for a long time in federal contracting.

The SBA runs the federal contracting program that requires 23% of all federal government spending to go to small businesses. 

And we know that small businesses give a good value. Actually if the federal government does that, they get more and better service and goods than if they give it to some big contractor, and they push it down to a small business and take their slice off the top.

Small business contracting and local contracting is a very important piece of our recovery.

So small business contracting and local contracting is a very important piece of our recovery.

And one of the things that you'll see, if you look on the Biden website, is that sprinkled into all of the spending is small business contracting, minority owned business contracting, because we know that these businesses need the revenue, they need the oxygen, and they're going to provide great service. So just give them first crack at the opportunity.

In this world where you've got Amazon taking on so much, I know Amazon, sometimes you're buying from a small business, but sometimes you're buying from Amazon in a big business. And it's definitely hitting the local retail.

I don't worry as much about local restaurants recovering because restaurants and bars, you're going to go to, and they were doing very well before this crisis.

Local retail of goods, that is being challenged by e-commerce. And we want to make sure there's a place for specialty retail at the local level and independent retail, even amidst the large, big-box and Amazon e-commerce wave. 

What Will Main Street Look Like in the Future?

Eric Groves: So if you could pull out the magic ball and look three to five years in the future, how do you think main street will look? What will be the most notable thing that you'll look down main street and you'll say, "Oh, that's different. That's something new."

Karen Mills: Well, I think we'll find out when the creative minds have put themselves together. There's one thing we know, which is that technology will be much more a part of small businesses' life.

...technology will be much more a part of small businesses' life.

We've already seen that things that were difficult for a small business owner to go online for their banking, now is a matter of course, because you don't want to go in a branch.

So a lot of the things that probably were efficient, but we just hadn't moved to yet, have gotten an acceleration. And I think this will be true of these small business dashboards and the way technology can use your data to your advantage and hopefully to the advantage of your relationship with lenders and other folks. 

I think that this trend in local independent business does have some legs, particularly in restaurants and in person services, that people do want to go see their neighbors.

And after the pandemic, I think they're going to value the ability to do that even more because they know what it's like when you can't. So I think those things will not go away.

But I do think, and this one last thing, which is that there's a trend in gig workers, which of course, I think will accelerate. So there will be more independent, small businesses who have one employee themselves and sole proprietorships. And I think that will increase. 

And as a policy matter when I talk to folks in government, I encourage them to make sure they have program that that independent contractor, small business owner, sole proprietor can access because that's a job, and we need to make it a real full wage job. And we need to be able to have benefits associated with that, have them be able to get healthcare. So we need some change around that. 

What Advice Do You Have for a Brand New Business Owner?

Eric Groves: That's a great point. And I'm just looking through some of the questions that people have been asking and some of them were questions that were early on.

And there's a group of business owners that basically just started their businesses in the last year, who are looking for some advice on it's new to them, it's new to all of us as it's not just you, and looking for places to go to get advice and to make sure that they're doing things well. And so I'll throw in my pitch. 

Well, I'm so super glad that you're on Alignable. There are a lot of different places you can go to ask questions. You can go to your community and start just a local discussion and say look, "I'm a first time business. I'm trying to get my feet off the ground, was hit by COVID. And I'm looking for people who I might be able to work with to really try and get my business going to the next level."

And you can post that into your local community and get input from all of the other business owners in that community. And we're all here to help each other.

And if you ask a question like that, and it doesn't seem like it's getting pickup, we'll notice that at Alignable, and we'll try and expand the number of people that see that question to try and get you some advice. 

So I guess my big thought out to all you early new entrepreneurs is you're not alone, right? The beautiful thing is there are 6 million businesses on Alignable, all at different skill levels, some have been through this for 30 years, some just started yesterday and they're all here looking for help in a trusted environment and I hope you take advantage of that. 

...there are 6 million businesses on Alignable, and they're all here looking for help in a trusted environment. 

Any Tax Advice for Small Businesses?

And Karen, we had a woman by the name of Ebony Davis who said that she's a first time business owner and she was trying to think through how do I do my taxes right? Right? And where do I go to get advice on how to make sure that I don't check the wrong box and end up losing my business?

It's that kind of fear that people have as they're doing these, whether it's doing the forgiveness applications for PPP or trying to deal with local regulations or doing their taxes. From your standpoint, where should they look for advice on those kinds of very specific issues? 

Karen Mills: So Eric, one of the reasons I'm happy to be involved with Alignable, I said it before, is that if somebody puts out a question, they're not going to get 5,000 advertisements. You are really about getting a person there with a community hat on who can help them.

And I do think for your taxes it's probably good idea to get some professional advice, some sort of a tax fee. 

I think you need some help sometimes to get those things done well. It doesn't mean it has to be hugely expensive, but very often accountants are great business advisers.

If you're running a business, you need somebody you can talk to.

And the truth is if you're running a business, you need somebody you can talk to. That's why SBA has a million small businesses they council a year. They have 900 small business development centers. They have 12,000 SCORE volunteers out there.

You need to find your way to one or two people that you can check in with and get some advice, who are just about helping you. And the good thing about these resources really across America is that they're free. And you need that, free is good. 

Karen Mills: So you need to find somebody who's right for you. And the second piece of good news is that they're probably willing to help you online now on your timeframe, as opposed to you having to grab your pile of financial records and walk them into the SCORE office.

So for that, I would just get your team, your kitchen cabinet, who helps you think about your business. Very hard to just think objectively about your business when it's just you. 

The other thing is that you need to know your numbers, you need to have a good sense of what's going on. And you can't fool yourself. You got to have the actual numbers in front of you to make a real decision.

Because business is, you got a scorecard and it's about the money in and the money out. And you got to know your scorecard so that you can have the most success possible. 

Eric Groves: The other thing to think about, and I just saw Lily Anthony post to everybody else, there are a lot of folks out there within your community and on Alignable who are either tax accountants, or have experience with the things that you're struggling with, who are more than willing to give you some time of theirs for free as a way to kind of get to know you as a business and potentially have you as a client. 

So don't think just because you're going to talk to an accountant you're going to start getting billed immediately. In many cases they'll offer to sit down with you and help you think through things and then work towards a plan of how you're going to drive your accounting forward.

And their hope is ultimately that you'll be a client, but most importantly small business owners love to buy things, they don't like to be sold. 

And the difference between those two things is just sharing some knowledge. And that's the beautiful thing about Alignable, is you'll find people all over the place that will share knowledge. And I've seen it.

I've worked with SCORE for now over 20 years, the SBDC offices, I mean, such an incredible resource that our tax dollars pays for that is out there for you for free. 

I mean, these SCORE volunteers are literally people who have been in business for 20, 30 years who have retired and are basically saying, "Look, I still love talking to business owners. I love to go and see different scenarios." And they will work with you for free.

So if you're not taking advantage of the community's available to you, either online through Alignable or offline through SCORE and SBDC who are now, as Karen pointed out, online, then I encourage you to do so because it's an enormous resource, and we can get through this together.

Karen Mills: So I will tell you-

Eric Groves: Yeah, go ahead.

Karen Mills: ... one quick story. I walked into one of our offices in downtown Manhattan and I saw a young woman in the waiting room and she was a business owner of a new cafe in Brooklyn. And she literally had a pile of paper on her lap. And I said, tell me what you're doing here.

And she said, "I got to figure out if I have enough to buy a new freezer operation." And I said, "How are you going to do that?" She said, "Well, I got all this paper, I just don't know what to make of it and my advisor's going to help me."

And I walked back out through the office 45 minutes later, and I saw her and this old retired guy with their heads together over the piece of paper crunching out all the numbers.

Now, that was more than 10 years ago. Hopefully they all have it on a computer spreadsheet, it's all a little bit easier now. 

But I was really struck by the notion that there was a common language in that investigation, and that small business owners know this language and can speak to each other in this language, and that having somebody who's mission at that moment is to help you navigate it, that's the kind of value you need. You need a partner whose only interest is your success. 

You need a partner whose only interest is your success.

Any Final Advice and Inspiration for Struggling Business Owners?

Eric Groves: Awesome. So as we end on an inspirational thought since all of this news has been so tough to take over the past eight, nine months now.

There is a wonderful thing about sharing when you were down or you were trying to struggle through something very difficult and you found inspiration either through someone or somehow that lifted you up, right? 

We had one of our business owners, which I thought was incredible, because her name is Colette and she's from Oswego Food & History Tours. And she was more concerned about other business owners than herself.

She wrote, I am lucky that I don't depend on my tour income. I'm more concerned for the local businesses that my food tours depend on, depend on her food tours that she brings people to.

Many of these restaurants have been struggling, have cut their lunch offerings, have gone to outdoor seating. But that seating is only outside. And she's concerned that they won't survive because she herself doesn't want to eat inside, knows her friends don't either.

She said she's committed to really doing the takeout type of ordering to try and help these businesses get through this. 

But as we look towards this winter, the weather changing, so many of these businesses, these restaurants, these outdoor businesses that have been able to shift to go outdoors, who are going to be struggling, what thought would you like to leave them with about the future and the inspiration that you, as someone who's seen so much and kind of really has been involved with so many different types of businesses that we'll get through this?

What would you like to say to them about that? 

Karen Mills: So I don't want to minimize how difficult this moment is. This is probably the worst small business crisis in my lifetime, and I've seen a few crises on that.

That said, one of the things that's encouraging to me is that the rest of the world has figured out how much small business means to them. 

...the rest of the world has figured out how much small business means to them.

And you might see the Visa and the Amex commercials, but you might also just notice what people say to you and how they thank you and how they worry about you and how they respect you.

And what I am hoping is that as it gets a little tougher now with resurgences, that small business owners will see that the larger businesses in their community are leaning in to try to lend a hand. 

And one of the things I've even seen is that all these high tech entrepreneurs who used to get all the resources and all the economic development money, you know what they're saying to me now?

They're saying, "Hmm, I wonder if all those venture capitalists and everybody else could become small business counselors for the next six months."

What about if we all just did a little bit more for our members of our community who might be more local businesses than the next Google but mean a lot to us?

And I would not be shy about convening those folks. I think the small business owners invite the big business owners and the real estate developers and the landowners, and the local guys who are doing pretty well, there's a few businesses who are doing pretty well, saying, we need you to do X for us.

If you have a direct... we need you to do X for us. We need you to give us heat lamps so that we can set out on the sidewalk, Lowe's or whatever it is. We need you to guarantee us this much business as we go forward, as we reopen. And we'll come to you for the wood we need to build the patio. 

But I would hesitate to ask for that partnership now, because one good news is that America has recognized what, Eric, I think you've known for a long time and all of you know, this is core to who we are as America.

This level of entrepreneurship, it's definitely under threat. And it's not just American ingenuity and entrepreneurship, it's the American dream. 

It's the notion you can come here and start a business and flourish. And that if we don't lean into this dream, it's going to be very hard for the whole economy to recover because this involves so many jobs.

So as people begin to sort of understand the value of small businesses, asking for what we need and going to them in a way that they can respond, we might set up a new trend for the future. 

Eric Groves: That's a great point. And I think one of the things that we challenged our employees with early on was we used to provide a lot of food to our employees, especially on Fridays, and we called it our Friday Lunch Money.

And when we all went remote back in March, we asked our employees, what should we do with this money that we used to spend on food? And they said we should find restaurants in Boston. 

It went for looking for black owned businesses, for restaurants owned by black entrepreneurs. And we took that money and we would buy gift cards from these restaurants, and then we would take them and we would give them and donate them to organizations in the community that were working with youth and foster care and things like that. 

And so it just shows you that if you just ask a little bit of a question, you'll find a really creative solution that really makes both sides feel empowered and that they can do something about this and we can move this forward.

So that would be my inspirational thought to add to the mix. And as I mentioned early on, we want to help you find groups of people to work with to continue this conversation. 

So in the chat stream you'll see a link to where you can go and take a survey and tell us a little bit about who you'd like to work with and what size groups you'd like to be a part of and we'll try and match you up and find people that you can continue this conversation with.

And let me just end by saying Karen, it is always a pleasure. And we thank you for not only your guidance to the people on the session today, but for what you're doing in Washington. You're a hero of small business and we appreciate you. So thank you. 

Karen Mills: Thank you. It's great to be out there. And to everybody, good luck and thank you all for what you're doing. 

Eric Groves: Awesome. Have a great day, everybody. Hope you've enjoyed today's session.

For Karen's recovery tips, check out our webinar from earlier this year: