Dashboard: Learning From Helene and Milton

[Music] welcome to another 21 H dashboard I'm Lauren Feldman and I'm here with Jean Marks happy Monday Jean hello Lauren how are you I'm doing great you good good good so far we're not going to talk about the Phillies so uh we're just going to talk business okay you think everybody knows what Philly fans I think people might have figured it out uh let's talk about something more serious um I'd like to talk to you about the Hurricanes we've been experiencing the last few weeks first Helen and then last week Milton and you wrote a piece for the hill in which you kind of sought to reassure the business owners of Asheville uh you wrote Asheville small businesses will ultimately recover and they will be better than ever I hope you're right about that but I'm I'm curious why are you so sure that those businesses will recover and be better than ever I mean first of all U I do want to say this I had a lot of reservations about writing this piece and I'll tell you the reason why like why I mean you know who the hell am I sitting in Philadelphia on a 70 degree fall day you know what I mean uh writing to the Ashville small business owners you know you're gonna you'll recover you'll be fine you know what I mean like I have like you know you there there's a level of naiveness and ignorance um for me to actually be writing something like this because I'm not there I'm not experiencing doing it and honestly I was on LinkedIn and you know I I've seen posts from some Nashville some excuse me Asheville business owners that you know they're they're having a hard time getting money back from their insurance or they were underinsured or they you know they you know others that just regardless of whatever they get back it's not going to be enough and they're they're going to wind up going out of business and you know it is their livelihoods I don't know I just at first I was like just like you know I'm so blly sitting you know far away saying like come on guys you can recover you know and I just I feel like it's just like you know I don't um it's it it's not like I'm there feet on the ground by the way I've been to Asheville a number my favorite hotel in the country is in Asheville The Grove Park Inn um there's all sorts of conferences that go on there I love Asheville I've heard great things about it I have a couple of friends who live there I've been dying to go for a long time oh it's so nice Lauren yeah you go to the Grove Park it's really great and you have a cocktail on the porch there Overlook the the mountains and all that it's like this old restored beautiful Resort um it's just a really great you know it's a really great place but and then the town itself is beautiful North Carolina is but I I think you make a good point there the the the things that have made it great in the past I suspect will make the community great again in the future um but I do worry about the specific individual businesses that have been hit by this yeah there's no question there's going to be there's going to be plenty of businesses that don't recover and don't come back and in the end I decided to write it um you know and I discussed with my editor because I I just um you know I I I do believe that Asheville will come back and I cited examples of other towns and areas that were hard hit by hurricanes and that Charleston South Carolina you mentioned yeah that and they look at Charleston I mean it's like amazing right now it's booming it took time it took time and sometimes time is not on the side for a lot of businesses and you know but but but these will come back and Asheville is one of those places and anybody who's visited there you just know they're going to rebuild and they're going to come back and if you can if you can stick it out if you know for those businesses that are resilient enough they will um you know they'll they'll they'll get their return on investment and things will turn around but it's going to take a while and anyway I don't know I just I just want to say like I really feel for those people it's really it's you know it's brutal it really is brutal let's talk about a few of those challenges one of the things that happened in Nashville that surprised everybody is that you know nobody thought there would be essentially storm surge uh flooding um in the mountains like that um and of course few of those people who live there the businesses there had flood insurance uh for obvious reasons which was one of the reasons I worry about the businesses there I mean they're going to have a hard time with their insurance claims I suspect am I right they are I mean a lot of them um were underinsured or didn't have the proper amount of insurance um so you know if if there's any businesses that have been in a disaster area um or even people that might be listening now that might be affected by the most recent hurricanes I mean yes insurance is is obviously very important FEMA you go directly to their website um does have uh the funding and grants and and help for businesses and don't discount the the SBA the small business administration mean remember that the SBA primarily guarantees loans to small businesses however it is mandated to provide disaster loans directly both to small businesses and individuals and these are very lowest you know long-term loans uh that are there for that purpose to try and help you recover from something so you know if you are running a business in a disaster area if your insurance fall short the S you know uh whatever funds you can you get or don't get from FEMA you should absolutely be going to the the small business administration and applying it is money that is that is available for you again both uh for your business and individually it's very important resource although one thing I I wanted to ask you about that is uh a lot of business owners I think you might be one of them are are reluctant to take on debt even in Good Times yeah so taking on debt in a really tough time can be a real burden it can be um and but you know it's all about return on investment so um you know anybody that takes on debt that's smart about doing it they're doing it for a reason and they they they can engage again the ROI of doing something like that these loans again are very low interest rates I forget the low the interest rates they're charging which helps and they they they have a uh you know it's much extended payments as well so you know if if you take out a loan for you know a million dollar or a few hundred, or whatever it is and you're careful about what your monthly debt maintenance is going to be under that loan it you know it could very well be something that you can afford um and will help you get back on your feet SBA Loans as well you can you can defer paying back the loans for a while until you get back on your feet and also you can prepay you can pay down the loans without penalty so those are all you know and again because you're in a disaster thing there's less there's there many times the collateral is not required so all of that is something to consider as well you mentioned the ROI can you generalize is there a smart way to spend that borrowed money I mean obviously you want to do invest it in a way that's going to build the business back as opposed to spending it on you know ephemeral things that AR aren't going to have that Roi yeah I mean like just in a simple example I mean it's hit your operating cost so say you borrow $1,000 from the from the small business administration and you use $1,000 to repair your property and get up in business and then you defer payment of that whatever you can six months or a year and then you start paying it back and you know that your monthly payment is going to be $100 uh to pay it back or $50 whatever you know you just want to project out that once you do get back on your feet and you you know you have to be thinking that way um how will that monthly payment figure into your overall operating cost and if your operating cost can cover it and still return a profit to you then and you you know you're committed to your business and that's something that would make sense to do so I you know I mean you know there just countless small business have done it and if it doesn't pencil out um is it maybe time to think about not reopening 100% yeah I mean that you know you have to think about the fact that your uh uh maybe your business you know I don't know maybe uh Mother Nature did you a favor um if you're unable to afford to pay back the loan over a longer period of time particularly those sort of you know generous loan terms uh maybe you know again maybe the business itself wasn't so profitable to begin with maybe that's a cause for you to make other decisions back to insurance for a moment um you consult with a lot of clients do you have a sense of what percentage of them have business Interruption insurance so most do uh because they're usually included in in package policies um but I think that the the lesson that we learned from here you said at the very beginning of this interview was that uh uh you know people business owners in in Asheville for example were not expecting to get flooded and didn't have flood insurance and you know maybe that's a consideration in these you know in these times of climate change and these times of you know other factors um you know you maybe that's a thing that you have to talk to your insurance agent flood insurance if you're in a non you know risky area like Asheville was was probably pretty inexpensive to get and you know looking back maybe not anymore yeah but looking back on it with 2020 hindsight you know if you you know if you say to your your um insurance broker and I'm going to have these conversations with my insurance you know although we don't have property because we're all virtual so I'm not quite sure what impact that would have on me but I would be I will be advising my clients that when they come up for Renewal you know how that list of potential all natural disasters I don't care if it's earthquakes floods you know whatever acts of God um I think we've learned from Asheville that they can happen anywhere you never know I mean even in Philly New Jersey you know we we get earthquakes once in a while very small ones but we get them and who knows you know so why not have that insurance do you think everybody should have business Interruption Insurance yeah yeah everybody has to I when I say has to I mean it's it's I think it's absolutely critical to have business Interruption insurance and that goes even Beyond U just the risk of of of natural disasters I mean you know because of the threat of even cyber you know you you breaches and all that are so much more than they ever were right that can shut down your business for weeks at a time um you you you every business if if again if you're going to look and um renegotiate your insurance or when you come up for Renewal you better make sure that you've got business Interruption Insurance are there any other lessons to be learned from this yeah I um the other thing I I you wanted to also mention is the whole disaster recovery and continuity plan and all that kind of stuff I mean I know we always hear this from all the experts you know about you need to have a disaster recovery plan and blah blah blah you always think like maybe this just you know applies to people in disaster areas again uh the business owners in Asheville you know they've learned that lesson the hard way and if we can walk away with nothing from this maybe there's lessons that you know we can you know you know we can learn from this uh we all should have disaster recovery and continuity plans are they the same thing or those two different things same things it's really the same because I I think of continuity as you know what happens if the the owner gets hit by that proverbial bus and disaster prep is you know what we're talking about here they tend to overlap and they tend to be in a similar you know in a similar document and um you know what my advice is for this which I you know I've been giving to clients is go to chat GPT start there uh tell them the the existence of your business and say that you want to have a uh both you know for any potential disaster as well as um you know what you're um you know as well as any thing that happens to your owners you can give it some you know some specifics and then as it starts generating parts of it you can start thinking about um things that are very very much you know detailed for your own business it will create a good plan for you that you can then Circ I mean you're not going to take it at face value you then circulate it among you know your business advisers your attorney your accountant your senior managers and you know you tighten it up but it it's something you you really do want to have in place so that you can pull out that you know that Playbook as to what you do I'm curious you know and I it it'd be a good piece to write you know not now obviously but uh the people in Florida I mean you know I mean you Asheville is one thing where it took everybody by complete surprise but you know if you're running a business in you know the Gulf Coast or on the east coast of Florida are you um I'm assuming I can't imagine that right a business and not having a disaster recovery plan I mean that you know state gets H with hurricanes every year and I'd be curious to know um you know how many businesses there actually do and I'd love to see some examples of what they look like it's a good article actually Warren you know I know you like to go to Florida you should something to think maybe not right now but you should go down there I would write this right now can you imagine call him a business owner and say I you're just desperated by Hurricane disas recovery um but it would be an interesting conversation to have um well you know how you ask it you could have that conversation and you know if you say to them listen I'm I'm really sorry you went through this but I'm hoping we can all learn from this can you tell me what would you have done in advance if you had it to do over yeah what I would be doing is if I was an insurance company I would be like listen I do a lot of work with a hardford I'm thinking of talking to them and saying you know you guys should like have like a detail pay for a detailed survey of business owners in Florida you know and find out how many of them have that plan and then um you know we should then do some contents around that saying like Okay well if you have a plan what what's in it what can the rest of the country learn I'm assuming if you're running a business in Florida and you do have a disaster recovery plan I'm assuming there's probably some good ones you know what I mean these people have some think right and it might be some good uh some good U you know material for other businesses around the country well kind of on that point um what do you think about the fre quency and the severity of these storms that we're seeing I I don't think I've ever seen you write about climate concerns um do you think we businesses included need to be paying more attention to that and thinking seriously about what if anything can be done to to try to stop this from continuing to get worse yeah I mean there's there's no question that the planet is warming will it be at a crisis level I'm not an environmental scientist so I I just don't know and Lauren come on you and I are old enough to remember back in the 70s and the 80s there's always been a lot of scientists you know about overpopulation of the world and food running out and pollution and the ozone layer and all of that I'm not saying those aren't Justified claims but there's no question that that it's happening I just don't know the severity of it and I do have full confidence in the human you know humans to adapt to their surroundings you know so but I think that if you're running a business and you are prone you know you're on Coast land for example or you are in an area that's known for you know bad weather tornadoes things like that in the midwest or whatever I mean yeah there clearly I mean we're seeing over the past few years at least that um there's been an uptick in it I don't know it's funny I mean whether you believe in it or not whether you believe that there's significant climate change happening and it's serious serious serious or maybe you're like listen the planet's been around for four billion years so you know we don't know if it's just a blip or not you know you're still a business owner and you have a responsibility for your employees and your community so you you do need to be prepared for these kinds of things you know I mean it's just it's a fiduciary thing so you can't ignore it you can't I bet you you know business owners in Florida are not ignoring that as much as they might have been a few years ago um well there's some politicians there who might or might not be ignoring it today as well yeah the politics of all of that is uh you know that that's up in the air I mean people have to you know whatever different politicians are going I were you reading like last week whatever there was all this like about conspiracy theories about you know manufacturing the hurricane or whatever like great stuff I think a certain congresswoman from Georgia uh started that conversation it's really hilarious stuff um but I listen I mean sort of hilarious yeah you know the the media will do what it is the the bottom line is is that you um when you talk to business people that are that that are running companies people are pretty sane you know and they understand that these are all risks and these are things and um you know and and they have to take they have to take precautions and just make sure we have people that were responsible for Lauren you know what I mean so we have to be thinking about this stuff anything you're working on that we should watch for this week so yeah I um I just wrote a piece I published last Friday maybe we can talk about back to CRM in technology I've been you know I've been doing Le I've been spending a lot of time in uh Reddit every day on different CRM subre reddits which I've really been enjoying and I keep seeing the same question about people looking for free crms customer relationship management applications for their businesses and um so I wrote a whole like a 1200w thing in uh who who creates free crms oh there's tons free CRM oh yeah yeah see the very fact that you're asking that question um leads me to want to maybe discuss this further maybe you know next week after you've read the article definitely would would you recommend that a business use a free CRM that seems a little sketchy oh well that's I you would be surprised at how many businesses use free crms because you know is this open source is that the idea uh no no no no no it's just it's free and uh so again I I advise strongly against it and I list out a bunch of reasons why I don't think that's going to stop people but at least uh I wanted to get my thoughts down in writing so just a you know maybe that's a good conversation we can have next week that sounds great Gene marks is a CPA who writes weekly on small business for the guardian the hill the Philadelphia inquire the Washington Times the Chicago Daily Herald Forbes an entrepreneur you can also hear him on ABC radio's ey on the world with John Bachelor Jee hosts two small business podcast with paychecks Corporation and the Hartford thank you Jean thank you Lauren we'll see you next week have a great week everybody [Music]