Small Businesses - You’re Not Alone - The Attorneys of Ingram Offer Important Information & Resources for Small Business Seeking Assistance

Adrienne Garland (0:10): Hey everyone. My name is Adrienne Garland and welcome to sugarcoated. Sugarcoated is a podcast that was born from the notion that for far too long women and other people who inside felt like they just didn't fit in and maybe small or even large ways had to sugarcoat their words, their style, or in general, their way of showing up in the world. This podcast started out as a dedication to women leaders. You see, I wanted to shine the light on all the incredible work that women do and how they're making an impact, and I still do.

Adrienne Garland (0:50): But I realized that a key reason that women have struggled, in my opinion, is that they've had to conform to certain cultural norms and ideals, which are inherently designed to keep those outside of the norm from standing out. This has prevented more women from being recognized as the powerful leaders that we truly are. Join me, Adrian Garland, the CEO and founder of She Leads Media, each week as I dive into raw conversations with some remarkable badass women that will help you to strip away your sugar coat and go in the direction of your incredible dreams.

Adrienne Garland (1:34): Hi, everybody. My name is Adrienne Garland, and welcome to Sugar Coated. I'm here today with the incredible people from the law firm in New York City called Ingram. And Ingram is an incredible law firm that is super supportive of small businesses and growing businesses, large businesses too. But they have been huge supporters of She Leads Media for many years now, and I really appreciate all of the support and the advice that they provide not only to me, but to the community of women that are part of She Leads Media.

Adrienne Garland (2:16): So I'm here today with three different people from Ingram because we have so much information to share. So I'm here with Warren Friss, Sheila DeGasper, and Jennifer Zurigi. And I'm gonna let each one of them introduce themselves, and then we're gonna just jump right into a conversation about what businesses should be thinking of during this time, and we all know what this time means, but during this time and beyond. So I'm gonna start with Sheila. If you could just introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about yourself, and then we'll go to Sure.

Unknown Speaker (2:56): Jennifer and Sheila Kwan.

Jennifer Zurigi (2:58): I am a corporate partner at Ingram. I've been practicing for almost fifteen years now. I've been help range of businesses from early stage to more fully developed in in a number of different capacities and transactions and contracts in, I guess, various stages of the life cycle. So, yes, basically have a a broad range of experience in in many corporate matters.

Unknown Speaker (3:26): Awesome. Jennifer?

Unknown Speaker (3:27): Hi. I'm Jennifer Zurigi, and I am a partner in our firm's commercial litigation group.

Unknown Speaker (3:33): Terrific. And Warren?

Warren Friss (3:37): Adrian, everyone. My name Warren at Ingram. I'm a corporate and business attorney. I've been practicing for about thirty years. I've been at law firms like Ingram.

Warren Friss (3:51): I've also been in house. I've worked at the tops company. I worked at the tops company as general counsel. So I have some experience on the other side. And I've also had my own startup entity, so I have sympathy and experience for all entrepreneurs, and I I very much enjoy working with entrepreneurs and people in early stages of their business.

Adrienne Garland (4:16): That is excellent. And I love that, Warren, too. I always feel like you can really relate to all the women who have started businesses and that are growing them. Whenever you come and speak at the SHOE Leads conference. I I think that's it just offers another layer to sort of let them know that you're in the same shoes as they are, and they might be women's shoes, but that you can empathize with some of the challenges.

Adrienne Garland (4:48): And today's podcast and conversation is really about all of the things that entrepreneurs are facing right now. And obviously, it's not just women entrepreneurs. We're focused here on the Sugar Coated Podcast on women entrepreneurs, but this is a just insane crazy time for so many people. And when we were preparing for this conversation, we had a really great talk about everything that people should sort of be considering and and doing or even not doing. So why don't we just jump right in?

Adrienne Garland (5:27): Because I know that there's a couple of areas that we wanted to talk about.

Warren Friss (5:31): Sure. So there there are four things that, you know, I've been talking to people about and trying to help them with as they review what's going on with their businesses at this extremely challenging time. One of the interesting things is that entrepreneurs are usually in a different position or startups, but the situation we're in now, even the most seasoned businesses that have been around for many, many years are all facing the same struggle. Not only the entrepreneurs in this together, everybody's really in the same boat. So the four things, the first three are really financial and the last one is not financial at all.

Warren Friss (6:10): The first three is really taking a close look at your business. So number one is looking at your revenue projections over the next two, three, four months as far out as you could possibly look. And I know it's extremely challenging given the uncertainty, but you know, we've now been in this situation with the coronavirus and the economy for about six weeks. So people are starting to get a sense of how much it's affecting their business. You can look at how your business has done in the six week period versus last year and then in the four week period and the two week period sort of see where you are and how it's progressing or regressing, whether you're down 20%, 30%, 60%.

Warren Friss (6:54): Get a sense, a realistic sense to try and figure out what your revenues are going to be or are likely to be over the next several months. Then obviously you have to look at the other side of the ledger and look at your expenses. That's always as painful as looking at revenues sometimes is. Looking at the expenses is also challenging. So That's obviously everything from your employees, consultants that you've hired, leases that you have, space you're using, vendors.

Warren Friss (7:25): First, taking a look to see what you can do without, what you could cut back, but also to take a look and see, you know, to the extent that you owe people money, what you can do to either defer paying some of that money or sort of, you know, work out a deal where you pay less of the money, you know, just just pay less. And, you know, it's a hard thing to do when a lot of people aren't used to doing this, you know, asking for a reprieve or a deferral, but just know that everybody is. And, you know, this has nothing to do with how you're operating your business. It's just a business reality. And you know, it's something that you have to do.

Warren Friss (8:00): And even though it doesn't feel as though you have leverage because you know, we're all in this situation where we're asking for deferrals, you really do because you know, nobody right now is going to end up in a fight or a lawsuit over you owing them money. I mean, it just doesn't make sense. So, you know, it really makes sense to talk to people and see what you do to, you know, sort of

Jennifer Zurigi (8:20): save money would you say that you're kind of both looking at the revenue and your expenses? You know, I I find people are looking at it, you know, one from the perspective of what what they need now, like, the short term just to kinda make it past the next, you know, couple of weeks. And and although there has now been kind of this trailing period, it still feels, I think, like a a cash crunch. And then, you know, having those negotiations, you know, kind of just better informs, you know, you and and and your business as to kind of what what your position is now, but also what your position might be later on and kind of the the viability of of what you're doing and and how you may need to change things up and and how you wanna use those resources that you are able to kind of reserve now in the short in the short term.

Adrienne Garland (9:14): Yeah. I I think it's such great advice. One of the things that comes up for me when I hear that, you know, when I sort of put on my entrepreneurial hat, and I know this from also going through the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses program, a lot of women business owners have resistance. I don't know what the word is, but there's a lot of emotions that are tied to the financial piece of their business. And some of them, you know, push off the responsibility of looking at the numbers and the finances to other people.

Adrienne Garland (9:52): So I think it's such great advice, now to really take control of your financial situation and get to know your numbers like the back of your hand. And there's so much emotion. Number one, forget about the pandemic. There's a lot of emotion tied to finances. And then when you layer on all of the emotions that are coming up with the pandemic, I I think that business owners could get lose sight and maybe start to go down a path of, you know, I'm I'm not doing well.

Adrienne Garland (10:30): I don't know what to do, and not even kinda get to this practical advice that you're giving. So I know that we talked about something before, and I don't know whether it was Sheila or Jennifer who said, you know, recognizing that this pandemic is beyond your control.

Jennifer Zurigi (10:50): Could you talk a little bit about think you might have both spoken about it, but it is something where, you know, people are very much emotionally invested in their their business, especially, you know, when I say say somebody starting out, and I do think maybe it is something specific or in particular with women, but I think it applies, you know, you know, it is somewhat gender neutral as well. And it's kind of hard to put on that kind of rational, you know, making sure your focus is is trying to be and I hate saying that, like, like, women aren't irrational. But, you know, you have all of your, you know, some hopes and dreams, etcetera, that are that are tied up into your business. And And it is something that where you you kind of really do have to look at those hard numbers and really think about, okay, what was your business plan? Revisit that, revisit how, you know, what you're thinking, what's realistic in terms of of what, you know, the short term, midterm, long term potential, you know, revenue sources are for you or or or cash or things to meet your cash flow needs and how realistic it is to attain those and how realistic it is to what your business will look like in the long term.

Jennifer Zurigi (12:09): Kind of to reiterate what what was said earlier, you know, everybody's in the same boat, but everybody also doesn't have a crystal ball. So although that's important to make sure you're you're being realistic, it is a little challenging because we don't know what the future looks like. We might get glimpses of it with how everything obviously is going online, things, areas of different industries that may not be as adversely affected. So it's been trying to think about what you are doing, how that applies to the current situation, how you think that might apply to what the country looks like or what industries look like, as we do start opening up for business again and what that looks like. I know there has been, you know, a lot of different opinions say on how and when that will happen.

Jennifer Zurigi (13:05): So you kind of have to stay nimble as well. I mean, it's a lot to ask, to make sure that you can try to go towards, you know, a direction or potentially multiple directions to kind of keep your options open and viable in order to potentially take advantage of opportunities that might arise as well. And that just might not look like what you had initially thought was going to be what your business looked like.

Warren Friss (13:40): Yeah. I think Sheila, you know, you raise a good point about being realistic. And one of the options I think people don't consider sometimes, especially this sometimes works for a company that's in early stages, is to just sort of put everything on pause for six months or nine months or four months. You don't have to stay in business, you know, if you're at a certain stage where you can just slow down and take six months and work on certain things and not stay in business and save some money and then, you know, open back up and whatever your business is and, you know, in six or nine months when things are better. Think that's something that people

Jennifer Zurigi (14:17): don't touch And on top of that, you know, I don't wanna always be a negative, not only because things won't be this negative. I think everybody does have, you know, hope that things will get better and change and that does create opportunities. And there's a lot of businesses that are hurting and it might be in the industry that you're currently working in. And those businesses might have had to furlough people or potentially lay off those people. And that's, you know, when things get going again, that puts those businesses kind of behind the eight ball too because once business picks up again, they don't necessarily have the boots on the ground.

Jennifer Zurigi (14:59): And that could be an opportunity for you if you're conserving your resources or if that makes if that makes sense for you to then jump back in and potentially, you know, be in a more competitive position as well potentially.

Adrienne Garland (15:15): And, Jennifer, I know that you talked earlier about getting creative. Can you just talk a little bit about that?

Sheila DeGasper (15:23): Yeah. Yeah. I think I mean, I think Sheila was touching on that a little bit in that the the part where you're very realistic about what's going on, what your situation is, but then that, you know, being creative and thinking outside of the box for what you need to do now going forward and what those potential opportunities may be. I think the the third part of this is gonna be being flexible because as Sheila said, we don't know exactly what's coming in the future. And it may be, you know, being creative about a shift to your business.

Sheila DeGasper (15:54): It may be, you know, coming up with different various contingency plans for how things go. What do I do now, you know, in this moment when I have to pay these bills? You know, what could I do next as things do start to reopen? We've heard a lot of talk about various phases of reopening and sort of starting to think how you might be able to shift your business. As Warren said, it might be pausing your business.

Sheila DeGasper (16:18): You know, for some, it may be the reality of closing it, but for everyone that's gonna be a little bit different, but I think it's important now to really, you know, first look that and see what your real situation is as best as you can project it and then start to think creatively what the different possibilities are for you and your business.

Adrienne Garland (16:39): Yeah. I love that. And, you know, I'm a business person, went to business school, and you always sort of start with what does the marketplace look like and where is the opportunity. And and while that changes, of course, right, the marketplace is always shifting, it has never changed so rapidly. So what we looked at when we all started our businesses was a very, very different world than it is now.

Adrienne Garland (17:12): And that what it's going to be in, you know, who knows what period of time, three months, a year, five years. And and then as a business, thinking about when things do come back to this new normal, knowing that you must have different approaches when the market does change because I've read things that this is not the last pandemic that we're going to live through. And it's this idea of being, like, super nimble and flexible, I think, is really important for all business owners to have at the top of their mind. It needs to be built in to their strategy.

Sheila DeGasper (18:03): Yeah. So that's not something that we always did before. Right? You know? Oh, we need to have backup plans for x, y, or z, but that kinda goes to the bottom of the list because there's so many other day to day things that we're dealing with.

Sheila DeGasper (18:17): But I think now this is gonna be something where business owners need to and will take it more seriously of coming up with various contingency plans and and different ways to go even if we do get back to our new normal and eventually even to what we was our normal that that could, you know, all of a sudden shift again. And we need to go back to doing things remotely or a change in in our, you know, business plan. And I think people need to start, you know, preparing for that more.

Adrienne Garland (18:47): Yeah. So why don't we go back? Because I know that we wanted to also talk about after taking a a real assessment of what your revenues potentially are and what your expenses are, many people are going to fall short. Right? So Warren, I know you wanted to talk a little bit about where can you get money or anybody,

Unknown Speaker (19:13): you know, jump in. Where

Unknown Speaker (19:14): can you get you

Jennifer Zurigi (19:16): for bringing that up because I meant to mention that earlier that in order to kind of one, you know, looking at that revenue and some sort of financial relief that could help help give you a little bit of breathing room, you know, to sustain your business. There are a number of programs, you know, I think by now everyone's heard of the CARES Act and how there was a three fifty billion dollars fund or a program called Paycheck Protection Program. And it's a loan program through the Small Business Administration, but it can be converted into a grant. So it's overwhelmingly the most popular program because it is something where you can borrow funds up to a certain amount, it's two and a half times your payroll costs for basically your trailing twelve months or your payroll costs from 2019. I don't wanna get bogged down into details, but it would essentially provide you eight weeks of payroll and plus you could use it for rents and utility payments.

Jennifer Zurigi (20:24): And if you use it according to the SBA guidelines, it's forgiven at the end and there's no tax consequences to it. So it's a very popular program. It was so popular that within ten days, the funds were gone. So the Senate just passed additional funding, I think it's 300,000,000,000 and so it's most likely going to be passed. So then there's another bucket of money for small businesses to go after.

Jennifer Zurigi (20:57): And I would highly recommend, especially if your business is affected by the pandemic, 99% of businesses are to apply for that loan, you would go to, you would first go to your lender, and it's typically recommended to apply through them. Although there have been a lot of controversy about who's had access to that initial tranche of funds. And basically, bigger businesses seem to have taken a lion's share of that. But with that said, I think there's going to be a focus on getting the monies to who really need it and the smaller businesses. So I would encourage people to apply to the extent they have not.

Jennifer Zurigi (21:44): Yeah, there's other loans available, but that, you know, which you can go on the SBA website and economic injury disaster loan other things that other, you know, that's more of a true loan, but it is available to almost all borrowers, you know, basically if you have less than 500 employees, which is a lot of businesses.

Adrienne Garland (22:06): Yeah. And I know, Jennifer, that you wrote a piece that outlines some of the resources that are available to small businesses. I can provide a link in the show notes so that people have access to that. It it would be great to update it with this new information because I actually don't know all that much about when those that the second tranche of funds is going to be released. So that would be great.

Adrienne Garland (22:37): And, you know, it's funny. I think back to one of the conferences that she leads media held, and one of the women who wrote a book, Elaine Pofeldt, she wrote a book called The 1,000,000 Dollar One Person Business. And it was all about how these entrepreneurs use contractors and really, they're they're only employee, and yet they're, you know, very healthy businesses. But when you look at some of these grant programs, there's specifications that you have to have, you know, three employees or more. And I know that that doesn't sound like very much, but there are so many people out there that are running these micro businesses, I guess you could call them with, you know, maybe one or two employees, and then they use contractors for everything else to kind of keep their costs down and to be able to operate in an expense position that's lower than carrying an employee.

Adrienne Garland (23:44): And I feel like so many of those businesses, while they are classified as, you know, micro, if that is even correct, what and I don't know if you know the answer to this, but what are some of the resources that might be available to people speak the that.

Jennifer Zurigi (24:00): PPP program, some people call it PPP program. It is available to that type of a business. However, you're kind of pointing out one of the weak areas in the sense that if you have independent contractor wages or payments, any $10.99 payments do not get included in the amount that you can basically use as in the formula of how much you can borrow. But somebody who's self employed, can apply for this loan as well. It basically would be it would be your net income up to a 100,000 multiplied by 2.5.

Jennifer Zurigi (24:39): So it's not necessarily, depending on how large your business is, a ton of money, especially if it is, you have a viable business that you rely on a lot of independent contractors. But the SBA did provide specific guidelines, which was that if you're an independent contractor, know, you would be entitled to apply yourself. So to the extent that a business is built like that, and, you know, some of these links are basically broken to the extent some of these independent contractors aren't getting relief. Yeah, there could be damage to a kind of a business structure like that or, or harder to potentially recover.

Adrienne Garland (25:23): Yeah. I have another question that just came up too. And I'm thinking about the businesses that are the these sole proprietors who maybe do make the decision that they're going to shut their business because after they've kind of taken an assessment of everything, they just realized that, you know, now's the the time to close. Maybe they were holding on by a thread and this, you know, sort of put them over the edge. Are those people eligible for unemployment?

Adrienne Garland (25:57): And I guess it must differ by state, but I was just thinking like what type of financial resources are available to to sole proprietors shutting down their business and not knowing what the next steps.

Jennifer Zurigi (26:11): Yes. You're right. There's a federal unemployment insurance now available for those who are self employed, who who aren't basically no longer working. You would apply through your state unemployment unemployment office first, because one of the requirements in order to be eligible is to be rejected at the state level. And so you would apply and most, I think the New York website is, they've worked through their backlog and they're, so I think that it's a little bit easier to get your application in than it used to be.

Jennifer Zurigi (26:47): And I think that the instructions are pretty clear. I'm sure there's always questions filling out these forms, But yes, so at a minimum, it would be 182 at the state level plus $600 per week federal level, there's a cap for the state unemployment at, I think it's $5.00 $4 So there is some relief and that 600 kind of kicker like addition is available, you know, would be applied through July, but otherwise the federal unemployment benefits would be available for thirty nine weeks. So yeah, that is definitely something for a self employed person who basically all of their business dried up should look into.

Adrienne Garland (27:38): And I know we also thank you so much for that. It's so helpful. Some of this stuff just reading through everything can get overwhelming and confusing, especially when you're operating from this, you know, emotional point of view. Sometimes you can't can't absorb what you're reading because you're clouded by your emotions. But I know that we talked about that there could be some other creative options too instead of just, you know, shutting down or pausing.

Adrienne Garland (28:11): Warren, I think that you mentioned a couple of other maybe creative things that businesses might be able to do, whether it's, you know, like a joint venture or something similar?

Warren Friss (28:22): Yeah. You know, it's you know, so many companies are going through the same situation, and, you know, there'll be companies that are in your particular industry that are going through the situation. So even though they might be competitors and and people that you normally would not reach out to and and talk to, there may be some opportunities to join forces. You know, somebody may be looking to you may be surprised that somebody else is looking to exit the business, and they may have a customer list or a person or some business that would actually be very helpful to you that you might be able to, you know, purchase or give them, you know, a piece of equity in your company or, you know, pay them out over time. You know, you you never know who else is is struggling and and pretty much everyone else is.

Warren Friss (29:07): So, you know, it could be the opposite. It could be that that you have the opportunity to sell a piece of your business to to somebody else or sell a piece of your business and continue to consult and help them and make some money that way. So it's definitely a time to reach out to other companies in your industry, you know, vendors that are in the industry but don't do exactly what you do and, you know, just have a discussion and see if there there are opportunities because you really don't know, you know, what's going on with specifically in somebody else's mind. And until you talk to them, you know, you're gonna you're not gonna find out. So sometimes those can those conversations could be very helpful.

Adrienne Garland (29:47): I love that. And I I think that that takes a lot of boldness and creativity to say, let me reach out to, you know, someone who may have been a competitor because they might be in an even worse situation than you, and you could be their savior. So I I like that flipping of the thinking and being confident to to put yourself out there and reach out. And, you know, I don't know if any of your clients have been successful in doing anything like that. That would be interesting to hear.

Adrienne Garland (30:28): But if not, you know, when you say reach out, do you have any suggestions of maybe how to reach out to these people? Yeah. No.

Warren Friss (30:40): I I actually I'm glad you asked. I'm a big fan of of using LinkedIn for things like that. So, you know, you could easily find people that that you know because you know their names or just look, you know, companies that you know of and find out who's working at those companies and just reach out and, you know, try and connect, say hello. If you don't hear back and they don't connect, you know that, hey, they're not the right person to talk to. But I found that that more often than not, I get a response and you make a connection, you have a conversation, you know, and and you're not necessarily starting a conversation with, hey, do you wanna merge businesses?

Warren Friss (31:15): You're just, you know, reaching out and and, you know, they may be thinking the same thing you are. So I, you know, I like using LinkedIn for those purposes because you can find people and, you know, it's a it's a way to softly approach somebody and see if they're interested in the conversation.

Adrienne Garland (31:28): Yeah. That's great advice. And I I too love LinkedIn, and I think, you know, I'm not an expert, but I have had some really great success. And when reaching out on LinkedIn, I think that it's really important to be a human being and to not approach anybody, you know, right away and hit them hard over the head with like, hey. You know?

Adrienne Garland (31:55): I might be able to save your business. So because I do see people approaching LinkedIn in in a wrong way. And I think the more that we can humanize LinkedIn and just use it as a conversation starter, I do think that the better everybody will be and the even the more that they will will trust some of the connection requests coming from LinkedIn.

Unknown Speaker (32:21): Absolutely. And sometimes you just learn, you know, speaking to somebody in the industry, you learn things, you know, that that could be very helpful, you know, even if it doesn't turn into, you know, a a business proposition.

Adrienne Garland (32:33): Right. It's it's networking, and you never know who they might be able to introduce you to or put a seed of an idea in your head that can really help you. So I I love that advice. And I was just thinking, you know, so many times on LinkedIn, I'll get these crazy messages, you know, from people. A lot of times, it's it's I can do your SEO for you.

Adrienne Garland (32:57): But it just makes me think about something that happened to me recently that was a scam. And I I wanted to talk about it and bring it up on this podcast because with all of these all of the information that's out there about all these different grants and loans and all of that, I think that there are, you know, unsavory people out there that are trying to take advantage of people. Something happened to me the other day where I received a very legitimate looking check-in the mail, and there was just one slight thing that was off about it that made me look up and do a little research and, you know, come to find out that it was, you know, a fake check even though it looked so real. And I'm on high alert for things like that. And I just thought to myself, man, somebody else who is maybe desperate for money or like hopeful, maybe not desperate is not the right word, but like hopeful that they're receiving something and then they receive something, you know, you immediately go and deposit it into a bank.

Adrienne Garland (34:13): And I just I wanna put the word out there that people need to be very cautious about everything right now.

Warren Friss (34:21): Yeah. There's a tremendous amount of cyber fraud. You know, be before the coronavirus hit, it was already, you know, significantly increasing. And we have we have clients. You know, even even at our firm, we've had instances where people tried to get information through us and it's a huge problem.

Warren Friss (34:41): And now with the pandemic and more people, you know, working from home using the internet, you know, remotely and connecting to, to work environments, it's even more challenging and there's even more cyber frauds. You really have to be super careful before you give out any information on a website, even filling in a form. Sometimes it looks like it's coming from your bank or it's coming from another company that you work with, and they ask you to fill in some information. Always look at at the actual email address, not just the name of the email address, but if you click on the the name, it'll show you the actual email address, and that that can be helpful. But it's it's something to be very, very careful about these days.

Adrienne Garland (35:21): Yeah. You know, it's it's funny. I there was another thing that I got just yesterday. And when you just said that about the email address, I said, gosh. That happened yesterday.

Adrienne Garland (35:32): There was I got a notice from Discover, like a Discover credit card from Discover that there was like an unsavory transaction on my Discover card. And it's the email address said Discover, and then I'm like, I haven't used that card. I don't even know. It's not out in circulation. It's in my drawer in the kitchen.

Adrienne Garland (35:56): So I I looked, and then I saw that the account number didn't match my account number. And then I clicked on the email address, and it said, like, video whatever at blah blah blah. So, yes. And this is these are the things that people who are busy and they're hustling and they're, you know, hopeful for money, these are the things that get overlooked. And then in this worst financial situation, they can be hit even harder.

Adrienne Garland (36:22): And it's just it's heartbreaking.

Unknown Speaker (36:25): It's you have to be super, super careful.

Sheila DeGasper (36:27): Yeah. We're becoming more reliant on the technology and and the email communications. But I think, you know, we're used to not using the phone now. And I think right now it's even more important if you see something that doesn't seem right, you need to confirm it with a phone call. And we dread that now, the waiting on a phone and getting ahold of someone.

Sheila DeGasper (36:46): We're so used to the email. We're so reliant on that right now the way that we're all working remotely but it's really important to take that extra step, click on the email, see if you recognize it, pick up the phone, call and make sure it's coming from whoever it says it's coming from. And before you do anything with that email.

Adrienne Garland (37:04): Yeah. And that's such a great message too because so many people I I you know, maybe it's just the the things that I'm looking at online, but there's a lot of, you know, hustle. There is all this opportunity. Go out and grab it. And I think when you're in that pace and that frame of mind, you don't take the opportunity to slow down and question things because you're like, hustle, hustle, hustle.

Adrienne Garland (37:35): Let me take, let me grab, let me, you know, see what I can do. And I think we all need to to take some deep breaths because while it's important to hustle maybe for some, you have to hustle smart or maybe or maybe stop hustling.

Sheila DeGasper (37:54): No. It's gonna be different for everybody. And for some, you know, there's an ability and a need to to hustle, but you have to do whatever you're doing in a smart way. And for some, that may mean taking the pause, taking the deep breath, slowing things down a little so things don't fall through the cracks.

Adrienne Garland (38:10): Yeah. What what are what are some of the businesses and and the, you know, with the clients that you have, what are some of the businesses right now that have successfully maybe pivoted or they're they weren't too affected? What are some categories just to throw it out there? And this is not saying that you should get into this business. I just I just wanna put some hope out there that there are things that are still happening, and people are

Jennifer Zurigi (38:42): okay. There are some people that are okay. Clients, but they're in an industry that you would expect given given the environment because they're an essential business. One is a food supply supplier, and and so they continue to supply a lot of, in particular lunches to schools, even though students are home. And then the other is somewhat related, they provide services to grocery stores and help grocery stores determine what they need to purchase.

Jennifer Zurigi (39:12): So even though they're more of a software provider, they do have to update a lot of it based on what the inventory is. Anyway, long story, if you're servicing an essential business, I think that or an essential business, you're kind of under that umbrella of an essential business. So those are a couple of clients that I feel like are weathering this storm okay. But by and large, I'm mostly fielding calls of, hey, I put my application in, what do I, you know, for loan assistance, etcetera, and kind of people who are still in, although not not as well, still in a crisis mode or still in a hustling mode to try to kind of shore up their capital to maintain cash flow.

Adrienne Garland (40:11): Yeah. I I I think it's so important to have a trusted, you know, adviser or or set of advisers or source that you can go to, and that's, you know, that's why I'm so happy that we're having this conversation because to just have a relationship and be able to pick up the phone and say, can you just point me in the right direction is invaluable. And I think a lot of people, small businesses, and people in general can sort of take a chapter out of that book and say, if you can be helpful today, you know, it might not mean that you're gonna get a dollar in your pocket, but that could be a a real investment in relationship building for the future. And that, I I hope, is what business is going to be about in the future. I hope there's more humanity and less focus on, you know, how how do I get something from somebody.

Unknown Speaker (41:20): That's just my my hope. My my big hope for how businesses

Unknown Speaker (41:26): And to that extent, mean,

Unknown Speaker (41:27): this is in a yeah.

Jennifer Zurigi (41:27): From a, like, legal or business perspective. But, you know, yeah, I feel like that with the crisis, you know, people are connecting more with, you know, with their current friends, with past friends, with different communities that you've been involved in and kind of to your point about humanity, I do think, you know, with kind of the having to hunker down and shelter in place and be with your, hopefully, you're with your loved ones. And if, if not, you're still connecting with your loved ones and people you care dearly about. And it has kind of, I think refocused some of people's priorities to more, less oh, I had to go to that fancy restaurant or see that like that the new hot show or get my nails done and get my hair done and kind of in that type of cycle of living more materialistically not, I'm not anti capitalism, but where you're like, kind of focused on some other things. I think with that said, I

Unknown Speaker (42:36): think that

Jennifer Zurigi (42:37): kind of more human approach to things, I think, and kind of realizing what maybe people's reshuffled priorities are. I think that is potentially you know, an avenue for business where it's not this kind of cutthroat and and just bottom line.

Unknown Speaker (43:00): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (43:00): Yeah. I know. I agree with you too. I gotta say I I can't wait to get my hair done again. Just

Unknown Speaker (43:08): Oh, Warren,

Unknown Speaker (43:09): too bad we didn't have the video. And

Unknown Speaker (43:12): people would would know why that's funny. True.

Unknown Speaker (43:16): Good point. Good point.

Adrienne Garland (43:19): Oh, that is so funny. But, yeah, I I think that that again, you know, operating from that place of humanity and and when you think about, okay, how can I be more human? That can actually create business opportunity. So instead of coming from the perspective of what's the business opportunity, what's the business opportunity, shifting it, like you're talking about shifting the the way that you're thinking about things, I think that that is is sort of what what business innovation is all about. So it's good that we're getting back to this.

Adrienne Garland (43:58): It's terrible that it had to take this for us to, you know, think about things in a different way. So I just think that this is an incredibly important conversation, and it's one that we all need to be having. I love that you guys are an incredible resource. And I I would love for you to maybe just let everybody know how they might be able to get in touch with you, talk to you, if they do have any pressing concerns.

Warren Friss (44:31): Sure. It's our website's Ingram LLP, I n g r a m l l p. You can reach us through our website, and you can Google us, Warren Frist, Sheila DeGasper, Jennifer Zurigi, and, or or reach out through through Adriana. We'd be we'd be more than happy to help. Just have a conversation, provide some advice, whatever, you know, whatever people need, we're happy to chat.

Adrienne Garland (44:57): That is awesome. Do you are are there any final either a piece of of advice or, you know, just something that you you wanna say before we close this excellent conversation? Or songs that you want to sing.

Unknown Speaker (45:16): We've we've

Unknown Speaker (45:17): spoken about Chill up.

Unknown Speaker (45:18): You know, for me.

Unknown Speaker (45:19): Like, everybody, you know, everybody is in this same boat. You know, I I know, you know, there's there's highs and and lows to to being in this predicament and and and you're not alone. And and I was joking with these these awesome folks earlier just about, like, I I feel like in my head is is always the the song by the BG, staying alive, staying alive. And it's all about just staying alive. You know?

Jennifer Zurigi (45:41): Whether you're that's still that that might entail putting your business on on pause or you need some financial assistance via kind of the government programs that are out there that, you know, especially if you need to take advantage of it and hopefully everyone's, you know, staying alive.

Adrienne Garland (46:02): I love it. Great. That is so funny. So thank you so much. And I really appreciate having this conversation.

Adrienne Garland (46:12): And, of course, I appreciate the relationship that we all have with one another. It has been one of the highlights of She Leads Media just being in conversation with all of you for these years and having you just be real big supporters of She Leads Media and everything that we're doing. So thank you. I'm very grateful for you, and I'm grateful for your incredible advice and that you're here for everybody as a resource.

Unknown Speaker (46:38): Thank you so much, Adrian. We appreciate it, and we enjoy it.

Unknown Speaker (46:41): Thank you.

Adrienne Garland (46:42): Yay. Okay. Thank you. And if you, again, want to get in touch with Ingram, you can go to their website at ingramllp.com. Thank you, and have a great day.

Unknown Speaker (47:11): This is

Adrienne Garland (47:12): the She Leads Podcast Network.