Tag: Small Business

For many of us, 2020 has been the hardest year of our lives. As a society we are all going through this together, we know the pandemic will eventually end, and we all look forward to better days. Since the pandemic started the small business community has suffered greatly. We hear many stories about business owners struggling to survive. About business owners having to lay off staff and close permanently. But we draw inspiration from many of the innovation stories making headlines, stories about businesses who made a pivot to join the fight, and support healthcare professionals on the frontlines of the virus by converting factories to make PPE. We hear how small businesses navigated applying for the first round of PPP loans, and hope meaningful relief for small business comes soon.  We draw inspiration from small business progress, and we stand strong with the people who went after their dreams. The pandemic will end, but dreams will not. It’s been said so many times that small businesses are the engine of our economy, and they truly are. Our commitment to helping small businesses with their financial health will continue to be unwavering.   Supporting small businesses, helping them to create a better tomorrow   Find out more about how Experian is supporting small businesses. https://www.experian.com/small-business/mybusinessfuture #smallbusiness #mybusinessfuture #businesscredit

The Federal Reserve is conducting a national survey of small businesses. This survey amplifies the voices of small businesses and provides timely economic data to policymakers who are weighing decisions that affect small businesses. The survey is open to businesses currently in operation, those recently closed, and those about to launch. All responses are confidential and survey results will be shared with participants. Make your voice heard and take the 10- minute survey today!   If you have problems with the link above, copy and paste the following URL into a new browser window: http://frb.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aXW9acz1pbB4x7L?orgid=Experian&parentid=&reserve_bank=National The survey closes on October 31, 2020. Questions? Contact ATLFedSmallBusiness@atl.frb.org.  

Corporate Pledge Experian pledges to continue to help small businesses manage their risk, grow their business, and navigate their financial health during and after these turbulent times. We are offering small business owners 20% off their initial business credit report and 50 percent off a one-year subscription to monitor their business credit score. Going through this unprecedented time takes strength, and we pledge to support small businesses. https://www.smartbusinessreports.com/godaddy/ Experian is proud to have served and continue serving the small business community for over 70 years. We have learned a lot, as we have stood with small business through the best and worst of times. Most importantly, we understand that as the economy faces challenges, so do the ambitions and dreams of small business owners – and we have tailored our solutions with this in mind. Our credit data is an integral ingredient in the success of any business. An accurate view of financial health help businesses better evaluate trading partners, tap into new markets and make real-time decisions. It’s important that every small business owner knows where they stand and how others see them, especially during the times when they may need access to new capital. To ensure that small businesses have additional resources at their disposal to make informed decisions at this critical time, we are providing discounts on our 1-year monitoring service subscriptions. We also feel a deep obligation to our clients, the lenders, trade creditors, utilities, insurance underwriters, and more as they strive to support small businesses during this time. To further help small businesses gain access to capital they need, Experian also launched its free COVID-19 U.S. Business Risk Index to assist lenders and government organizations in understanding how to make lending options available to the business segments that need it the most. This new risk index can help business risk professionals better understand the impact that the pandemic may have on commercial operations based on several key factors. We hope that our data and advanced analytics enable our clients to offer fair and responsible lending to small businesses that need it most during this time. We encourage small business owners and partners to hold fast to your original visions and leverage our experience. No dream is too big, whether you are a company of one or one hundred, we’re here to support you. And together, we can create a better tomorrow. Hiq Lee, PresidentExperian Business Information Services #OPENWESTAND

As the infections of Coronavirus continue to escalate unabated, millions of small businesses are closing and laying off workers. Others send the majority of their staff to work from home, as in our case here at Experian. If you are a business who can pivot to virtual selling Covid-19 may just be a temporary setback, but for other non-essential retail businesses laying off staff and closing their doors, workers have few options. I got a little burned out from watching all of the bad news as I flipped around cable the other night so I retreated to the den to read articles and saw that three days ago GoFundMe had set up a Small Business Relief Fund for businesses impacted but Covid-19. The goal of the fund is to raise $1.6 million, and as of this writing had raised $1.557,130 with major donations coming from Intuit Quickbooks, Yelp and GoFundMe. Hats off! Small Business Relief Fund The site is filled with over 80,000 businesses looking for donations. As I sat reading the stories about businesses here in Orange County, California, I was struck by the outpouring of support and the heartwarming comments left by customers. Many of the campaigns are launched by business owners who want to do right by their people while their businesses are struggling to remain open. Orange County businesses fight to survive A nurse from Children's Hospital Orange County picks up from Blue Bowl Teague, Ish, and Craig from Veteran-owned Blue Bowl Superfoods in Orange, California have a target of $50,000 from which a portion will go to feeding healthcare workers from nearby CHOC and St. Joseph hospitals. Their campaign description is a defiant open letter addressed to COVID-19 which reads "We are a veteran-owned small business fighting to keep our lights on because of you. You will not destroy our jobs and you will not destroy what we do." As of this posting his campaign had raised $11,548. Blue Bowl Superfoods GoFundMe Campaign I reached out to Blue Bowl and spoke with the company co-founder Teague Savitch. Teague got the idea for the company while deployed to Afghanistan in 2014, telling me “Towards the tail end of my deployment experience I was working in a team that was doing 24-7 operations and on-call all the time, always eating on the go. It was the first time in my life where for an extended period I was getting very little sleep and a lot of stress. When I came home, I started going to juice bars and really paid more attention to what I put in my body. That's when I kind of really got interested in the superfood movement. And from that Blue Bowl Superfoods was born.” When asked why he started a GoFundMe he responded “We're fighting to try and keep our doors open, and keep a paycheck going for our team, and it just so happens that our first location that we opened just over four years ago is right in the backyard of two major Orange County hospitals - Children's Hospital, Orange County and Saint Joseph Hospital. Both of those hospitals have been very key to our early success, spreading the word about our company and what we do. It's been a really popular item with hospital staff that need a meal that's healthy performance-enhancing nutrient-dense where they can come in quickly grab and go, get in and out of there and get back to doing their rounds in the hospital.” Solopreneurs turn to GoFundMe Cali Creechers GoFundMe Campaign Emily Creech of Cali Creechers, a pet sitting and dog walking business, is using GoFundMe to raise $3,500 to offset cancellations saying "most of my clients have had to cancel trips, work from home and isolate themselves from other humans in order to stay healthy." The impact of Covid-19 not only threatens her livelihood, but also her housing situation. I reached out to Emily to ask how she heard about the GoFundMe idea and she said: “I actually got an email from QuickBooks because I have QuickBooks for my business which is to keep everything organized, and they said they were sponsoring or helping promote the idea that you can start to go fund me for a local small business.” Emily says things started to change in her business around the 13th of March when she had one really big booking get canceled saying “I think people are canceling their trips because they have to, they're scared or they're elderly and they don't want anyone coming in their home to pick up their dog.” Cali Creechers got started after Emily started walking people’s dogs in her free time, picking up gigs using the Rover app. She said “You pass a background check and create a profile and people who need dog care can kind of narrow down their searches and get someone to care for their dog. So, I did that and I had a lot of really good response and I realized that it’s something I'm good at.” But Rover understandably charged a 20% fee on all of her business, so one day she decided to set-up an LLC so she could earn 100% of what she makes. Non-essential service-based businesses suffer sudden closures Team 12 GoFundMe Campaign Josh Boyd founded Costa Mesa-based Team 12 Group Training in 2013. He tells us that when the State ordered all non-essential businesses closed he had to lay off his 37 employees. He's hoping GoFundMe can help him raise $60,000 to help his employees, all out of work. Josh explained in his campaign profile, the revenue for his business is 100% Subscription-based and now that training sessions are on hold, they have no revenue to pay employees.  I asked Josh if he thought Covid-19 would do any lasting damage to his business he said, "Once this is over the public will flock to gyms and have a deeper appreciation for the service based industry because they realize how hard it is to get motivated on their own.” Adding “You truly don’t value things as much until you actually lose it!”