We’re Not Saving Lives. We’re Saving Livelihoods

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman in this week's bonus episode David bilstrom and Matt raiker two Business Leaders who have played important roles in Western North Carolina's attempt to recover from Hurricane Helen talk about what we're still figuring out about Disaster Recovery the world tends to move on pretty quickly after an event but the economic recovery can drag on for years and it can be especially devastating for smaller businesses the data from other catastrophic storms David tells us suggest that more than half of the small businesses in the Asheville area could be gone within a year and of course those odds are not improved when insurance companies find ways not to pay claims and when government takes too long to respond as you'll hear at the time we recorded the conversation in mid December the US Congress still had not appropriated funds to help that did finally happen at the end of December but it's still tempting to ask shouldn't we be getting better at this even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges in fact that's the whole idea behind the 21 hats Community engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insights only another owner can offer if you're interested in learning more step one is to sign up for a free trial of the Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners so you don't have to go looking for it step two is to get on our slack Channel where you can you can ask questions get vendor recommendations and tap the wisdom of a very impressive crowd just search the 21 hats Morning Report to subscribe joining me this week on the podcast are David bilstrom whose consulting firm flashing red light is based near Asheville and Matt raker who is executive director of mountain bizworks a community development financial institution based in Nashville the episode is titled we're not saving lives Liv we're saving livelihoods welcome David and Matt our special guest today it's great to have you here you've both had very intimate views of what Helen has done to the businesses of Western North Carolina maybe you could start by telling us uh about what roles you've played Matt you first tell us what a cdfi is and then tell us uh what yours does yes so I work for an organization called Mountain bisw Works uh and as you said we're we're a cdfi or a community development financial institution um so we're a nonprofit mission-driven um Small Business Development organization you know we really believe in the power of Entrepreneurship um as a pathway to Economic Opportunity um you know and we work all across the you know what we call Western North Carolina or the you know the mountains uh the appalachin Mountains region of of North Carolina we've got our main office in Asheville uh but you know we serve the whole Mountains region which you know is a very uh rural regions a very small business driven region um with like 99% of businesses in our region are are small businesses um you and so cfis are a great resource for access to funding um whenever Bank capital is not available you know a lot of different scenarios where that comes into into play and um we've seen cdfis are powerful type of entity uh very useful uh in times of you know after natural disasters um as as we seen now and also saw during Co few years ago as well so it's fair to say that you had relationships with lots of businesses in this area well before the disaster hit oh yeah 35 years of working uh in Asheville and and across the region so really really deep relationships David how about you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to know the community well um I'm not from Asheville um but I heard someone once say I got here as fast as I could um 15 years ago and um I've had a long career in Tech and venture capital and I moved here with my own job working remotely as an advisor to entrepreneurs and Executives um really all around the world but largely not here um so this was before remote was a thing and um that meant that I brought I think my rough count is 50 businesses now that I've either invested in or been a board member of or been an advisor too uh over about 40 years so everything from well Disney where I was a vice president um down to operations that started in garages and stayed small so that that breadth is really what has fueled my interest in the Asheville community and along the way I've spent much of my adult life in the outdoors and that's one of the reasons why I love being here and the Blue Ridge Mountains and so many of the businesses I've been involved with are in the outdoor industry and either on the service side providing experiences or uh manufacturing uh clothes equipment and selling products and and at retail so all of those businesses were uh affected by Helen and that's really the lens that that I was looking at it um during during and after the event you also uh have some background as a first responder yeah I have it not secret parallel career the same length as a first responder I got my EMT um and did Mountain Rescue for the first time probably 43 years ago I think it is so um I've worked at times as a volunteer I've worked as um a part-time and even a full-time first responder and so during this disaster for the first week that was my role um and then we started shifting into the rebuilding role particularly in the business Community got it so maybe you could both give me a little bit of a status report I guess it's been a little more than two months now um since the storm hit what's the situation on the ground now maybe you first met sure well we just got drinking water back in Asheville so you know roughly 2 months uh without plottable water and so you can just imagine what that you know did I mean just just to kind of you know a little bit of you know what we've been through those those huge storm that major flooding trees down um mud slides land slides you know there was a a moment there where you know there's two big Ash EXC me interstate highways that you know cross through Asheville one going east west I40 one going north south um i26 um and where three directions you know were washed out where the only way we could get out by Highway was to go south down towards Greenville South Carolina and we still have I40 you know West headed into Tennessee still out probably will be out um until sometime later 2025 and then uh headed north uh they've got one uh one lane now reopened on i26 headed into Tennessee so have some connectivity there but yeah there was no no power for for 2 weeks um for most FK for most businesses no water for about 2 months in Asheville and similarly in a lot of other smaller communities that especially those along rivers and streams that had Water Systems knocked out they had sewer systems knocked out you know the storm was um just about as bad timing as you could ask for um you know it was September 27th you know when it hit which was going right into Leaf season you know and which is one of the biggest tourism months um for uh for the region and so effectively the governor first day said we're we're closed for tour for tourism don't don't come um you know it wasn't safe for people to come and uh we're we're still down about 70% on tourism we are now reopened you know so please do think about coming back to the region that' be a great way to support Western North Carolina with we we do encourage folks to come back um but yeah we're we're still down you know around around 70% and so it's been you know I'm sure we'll get into it but it's been really hard for you know so many businesses just to kind of figure out what how do they navigate this you know how do they get back to being fully you know fully open could you give us a sense um take us uh walk us through Asheville a little bit what what what would we see today if we were there so in the downtown area which is up on a hill um physically um is is pretty good now and now that we've got water back uh we're mostly able to be you know opened again and businesses are are coming back you know there's a lot of challenges still with uh you know numbers are down with the number of people you know there and then employees you know there are a lot of people that had to leave the region during this you know because there no power no water whatever and still a lot of struggle to get employees back but downtown looks okay um then if you go towards the River District there's still I mean you could go down there and you might think that wow the the the floods and the damage in the hurricane came through yesterday I mean just it's still there's mud and debris uh everywhere if you can imagine you know you know the French Broad River Runs you know right through Asheville we've got the river Arch District which is a really awesome you know arts and creative and maker Community a lot of craft breweries and other and other folks totally underwater you know record water levels down there and you it was it was a good 30 ft you know above where the river normally is and so now you know we got the tree Corridor along the sides of the of the rivers and if you look 30 ft up you can see where the river was because there's like debris and trash and things you know all caught in the trees so you can kind of see the history of where everything was and so yeah still tremendous amount of cleanup you know yet to be done like like we I think we we've got the life safety stuff under control you know mostly and folks have just you know lost their homes been able to find at least temporary housing so huge progress in the community um on that we're really just at the beginning of being able to really recover kind of economically and that's going to be a long long transition you know Matt I think if if you could C categorize in aggregate the size of the businesses their annual revenue the economic harm just slowly and methodically that would be a good thing for the 21 hats Community to hear like we are them they are us and they may not they may not realize that it's pretty abstract unless you've been here we're running a grants program right now and trying to get you know emergency relief out and you we opened it up we got a little over 800 applications in in this program um so we got we got data from 800 businesses combined they have million in economic losses um so that's an that's an average of a little over $300,000 in losses between physical damages and economic damages um per business so 300,000 is the average the median is closer to 85,000 so there's there's some really catastrophic losses you know in there the vast majority of these are businesses to and a half million and below it really you know a million in revenue and below so you know very very small uh businesses and those damages are that you're talking about are physical damage as well as business Interruption yeah so the direct physical cost and then and then thinking about you they lost a lot of businesses lost you know October November and then portions of who knows how many months until we really kind of get back up to where we were David do you have a sense of what percentage of the businesses that were in existence there before the storm are going to make it back well we have some data on that from Katrina and similar large-scale events and so I'm not disrespecting um the quote unquote average Florida hurricane they're all potentially catastrophic and they're all terrifying um and they're all disruptive but these events where we're talking about over 100,000 structures uh significantly damaged or removed and over a 100 lives lost this kind of Katrina scale event um there is some data and it it is sobering so the data from Katrina is 40% of the businesses will not reopen in the first six months or they'll open and then close um and then I believe it's within one year then another 20% will fail so so potentially we could see as much as half of our businesses not be here in November of 2025 now it would be foolish to ignore past history as we project the future but we don't necessarily have to have that happen this way and it's frankly one of the reasons why I'm so excited about having this discussion with you today with Matt that um perhaps other regions in the United States that are facing similar catastrophic weather events can see them as catastrophic economic events this is surely an economic catastrophe and as Matt was saying large swaths of the service economy employees are just not here there's either nowhere to live for the first couple of months or if there was a place to live there wasn't a place to take a shower and if there wasn't a place to take a shower you know a number of people aren't really comfortable cooking at home they depend on eating out and there was nowhere to eat one of the things I noticed among among many of my friends and colleagues is if you have schoolage children you had to leave because there was no child care and there was no school some of the schools open what Matt about six week Mark I think yeah that's right y so for six weeks yeah we enrolled our kids in Virginia schools you know um but they said it could be two three four months before schools were able to reopen before they can get water back so when the kids leave at least one of the parents has to leave you know many amilies are two income even if one of those might be part-time so that either is not here um and working remotely or just not working you know these issues are suffered um more painfully the lower on the economic scale you go and you you can see it so um even today I notice at lunch I don't have a problem finding a table and I try to eat out as much as I can uh to support the restaurant tours that I know and I'm seeing them because they're working in their restaurants because they don't have enough staff but their restaurants aren't full and um the roads are full but those are dump trucks and caterpiller uh excavators and uh trailers and dust so their streets are very very busy but it's not with employees who live here so the economic catastrophe is something we definitely want to focus on well Matt the uh the data that David referred to was based on the experiences of other locations during other disasters do those numbers though match up with your gut sense of what you're seeing and uh experiencing talking to the businesses in your area yeah I mentioned we're like a real local small business driven you know community and uh we we just we're passionate about our local businesses and that's got some strengths that's got some challenges you know on the challenges side like we can't call you know some headquarters you know and say hey send us some money and bail us out but uh it creates tremendous relationships and Community engagement um and really strong customer bases you know that that you know love their local businesses so I mean we've seen businesses come together and collaborate to kind of figure out how to get navigate these challenges uh in all kinds of ways and the community like David said I mean like we're all thinking about you know hey should we should we go out to eat tonight or go out to lunch and we're like yeah let's do it um uh you know to support uh our local restaurants and and everything that's re that's reopened I think and we saw this during CO as well um because of how entrepreneu and local business driven we are I think we're going to have many more businesses that are able to survive um and so hopefully we are absolutely going to have losses I mean we've had a number of folks and you know even anchor small businesses that are cherished that are not going to be able to make it through some of the sheer amounts of you know challenges they they've faced but I think we're going to be well below the hopefully um 40% you know number and or the 60% you know after a year um number but that will require ongoing commitment to you know having the right relief programs and other kind of supports to help those businesses you know make make it through you that's what that's what we're focused on David I think you explained to me in another conversation uh what was different about this disaster and that's the sense that you know there are a lot of places that know they could experience a hurricane or a flood of some sort and even they sometimes aren't prepared for it as well as they should be but they they know this was a total surprise uh you're in the mountains uh flooding was not anticipated and I'm pretty sure not that many businesses had flood insurance is that right yeah yes and why would you in the mountains that's a great question and you know the way I usually break it down both with one foot in in the business world and one foot in the first responder world is the weather forecast was was well known to the degree that the First Responders were requesting additional resource ources to be stationed uh in and around Asheville and Western North Carolina and throughout the 25 counties um before the storm so the morning of the storm on Thursday the National Weather Service forecaster for this area came into work and saw the stream gauges in Georgia as the storm moved North originally from the Gulf and could see that they were intensifying the storm was intensifying and that was a surprise I'm no weather expert I'm not even an amateur weather Enthusiast but my understanding is hurricanes have never strengthened they've always weakened in this scenario and in this case it was strengthening unlike Florida this is the second component of the three issues we don't really know what to do with that kind of forecast in the area so do we tell everybody to evacuate if so how are they going to do that does everyone have a car despite the two interstates they're pretty small by interstate standards and everything else are two-lane uh Mountain Roads so it's not even clear that evacuation is a good idea that really leads us to the third problem which is they didn't know where so from my house in Black Mountain which was absolutely one of the ground zeros one of the multiple ones we actually had tornadoes in the neighborhood both evidenced on the weather radar and by the Twisted trees in the aftermath so tornadoes in the mountains at5 200 ft and 5,000 ft my understanding is that's never happened before and 20 minutes from my house to the east no problem bad thunderstorm that's it a little standing water on the road Creeks overflow quote unquote flooding as I think most people imagine flooding but up here at 25 200 ft and above um the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi is Mount Mitchell it's in my backyard and that's 5,000 F feet above my house and so that's not flooding that's flash flooding with tremendous violence and flow and so it's really the power and velocity not the rising water it just many of the deaths were just the house the structure the person the car was just Swept Away not Rising Waters quickly like you see in uh the lowland floods so all three of those components the fact I didn't know exactly where it would be not even within 10 or 20 miles and then um what do we do do we evacuate or not I mean I have a lot of respect for how Florida and other places that have experienced hurricanes at a coastal level are prepared they have a mechanism it's days in advance everyone's on the same page we don't have that I think we can in the future but that Devastation meant that we had everything from an outdoor retail business where the entire building was swept away and all of the contents and as Matt mentioned this is our busy time like October and November that's the time you make most of the money in the year if you're in the outdoor business so Not only was it lots of inventory it was overfilled with an inventory for the tourists and the holiday season all gone and then you have businesses that are untouched but they don't have electricity they don't have water and they don't have employees so that's that economic harm and then there's a there's another one that we haven't mentioned which is is there are 25 ferally declared disaster counties and there are many counties in Western North Carolina that were untouched and they lost their October and November as well even though they had power and water throughout the entire time because public authorities correctly I think told everyone to stay away and they did so Matt given that level of Destruction and the unlikely uh scenario that any of these businesses had flood insurance how does a business recover yeah that's a great question and and just on the impact one thing that kind of helped put this in perspective to me is the North Carolina Department of Transportation they tallied up um in all the previous hurricanes and natural disasters in North Carolina you know of which there's been quite a few especially in the eastern part of the State uh hurricanes total damage to our transportation system roads and bridges and whatnot of 1.1 billion total um all everything preh Helen and just from Hurricane Helen we're already at 4.5 billion and still counting in damage yes you know so more than 4X over the whole history of natural disasters in the state so um really stunning you know businesses right now depends on what kind of business you are you know we we've been focused we focused very early on on kind of getting three main things you know in terms of business support uh up and run uh one was we just saw How deep the impact was and so we said there's going to need to be some Grant support so looking at how you know the money that just helps folks pay some of the recovery cost some of the rebuilding costs you know and get some of that just Community Support too behind them to know that you know we're there for them that encouragement to be able to you know come back recovery loans as well very important um because you're going to need that working capital you're going to need to borrow to fix your building or replace things get through the months that you lost and try to keep employees on and then we've been providing a lot of kind of specialized like recovery guidance right Consulting effectively on you know supporting folks just having a sounding board to kind of think through how do they triage what's in front of them how do they deal with you know filing different Insurance things how do they apply for SBA Loans um and just navigate all the different programs um that are that are out there and I think you we've done this not just Mountain bis works but all the small business and entrepreneurial groups across the region you know I think one of the one of the Hallmarks of our region is like you know we work together very well you know because we are kind of a rural uh region with you know typically with lower resources so we've got to collaborate to you know to to go further together and so that really benefit us you know we were able to quickly get together and figure out what's going on where's everyone at what do you need and have really been collaborating on being there to support our businesses I really want to brag on Matt and his leadership team for just a moment because I think this is a teachable moment for other regions and when I first heard of Mountain business works when I arrived I didn't even know that they had loans and microloans I thought that their brand was so strongly associated with their education programs which were collaborative and connected with the community College the University of North Carolina University system support for small businesses um they didn't compete with each other they collaborated and supported one another and so that history Decades of history of education meant that they were perfectly positioned to pick up the new challenge of educating an entire region on how to apply for a loan how to apply for FEMA funds this is not an area that most people people even know what FEMA does let alone how how to do it and so that education role as Matt says very generously not not just Mountain bis works but the other small business support funds the Chamber of Commerce and so forth I'm not sure we'd be here um a as far along as we are with the business Community if we hadn't had that swing into action and when I say swing in action I mean in the first week while we were still doing uh recovery work in in first respond um agencies yeah one one week after the um you know the hurricane we launched a an Emergency Bridge Loan program that was the first thing we were able to kind of get going uh called the wnc strong you know recovery loan uh program those are loans up to $100,000 so just kind of emergency working capital to help folks be able to get through the immediate months and until some of the longer term relief the federal relief and whatnot becomes available you know we've had over a thousand um businesses app to that we've already approved for and funded 460 uh of those and so over 26 million uh deployed uh across across our our footprint um and now we're you know we're really thrilled to also now be rolling out some Grant programs um as well we've got right around 4 A5 million raised thus far uh in Grant programs um going out in the in the region and those are going to be business saving you know those are going to make the for so many businesses they have a little bit of Grant support uh and but we need more you know that that's just a start um we've got you know just in our program we've got over 18 million in requests you know on the grant side so we're going to need a lot you know a lot more but those those two programs also give us a ton of like data that's really helpful to kind of see exactly where the need is and to be able to tailor our response and help business owners also kind of think about put their their situation in context and think about how they can really put together a plan to you know to get reopened or or you know stay resilient through this yeah so 460 loans made in roughly not even 10 weeks that's not the applications there were more applications than that presumably so I would challenge any region in the United States to process from zero that kind of rate and my understanding Matt is part of that was because you already had the test run with the pandemic yes yes I think being able to you know have some of those um programs those Frameworks and that the gray hair and you know everything that goes along with running a disaster program uh but having some of those skills available is is key um cdfis um across the country were on the front lines during the pandemic and I think nationally we're going to have more natural disasters you know there's just there's going be more climate impacts more things so I think you know all communities really need to be thinking ahead of the disaster um and we're still you even though we've been able to use some Playbook from from previous we're still invading a lot of stuff as we go after disaster which is the worst time to be able to create a program when you're also navigating a crisis and everything but yeah I think really encouraging folks to be thinking just like we do on the on the life safety side of like Emergency Services preparedness you know thinking about on the economic recovery side what does that resilience for our community look like in it and I kind of say it's like we're not saving lives but we're saving livelihoods because we know so many of our small businesses and the jobs support really is the backbone of our of our economy here I want to ask you a couple of questions about uh the recovery loans one is I believe I've been reading that the SBA disaster loans are depleted at the moment and not available is is that still the case yeah yeah you brought up a real sore topic for us yeah we're not very happy about that and that's a waiting uh appropriation from Congress I assume that's right yep um SBA um really since Maui um has been saying they are running out of money so s SBA us small business administration runs a disaster Loan program which it really is the main recovery tool for small businesses uh because typically you maybe you can get some local grants or or things like that but Fally it's these disaster loans it hasn't been available at all it ran out of money um you know right when Helen hit you know and then we also had hurricane Milton in Florida right after that too so they had no money and and they've got something like 10,000 applications so they're still taking applications in tremendous demand um normally there would be hundreds of millions of dollars in relief flowing through that program and we've had none I mean actually technically we've had 5 million but you know that's such a rounding ER it rounds down to zero effectively that must be incredibly frustrating incredibly frustrating yes yes yeah so um we have a private foundations and we have um uh some we were able to get some State uh allocation uh to fund some of the loans that mountain bis works is doing now and that is uh maybe another uh point of preparedness for the 21 hats audience which is um some of us are actively involved in advocacy at the legislature and with the administration at the state level uh less so at the federal level but we have some of that too within the business community and we've needed to reach out and we have found the legislators for the most part want to know what we think um some of them are business people but many are not so for instance there's been uh quite a bit of fast education on behalf of of us Advocates as explaining the difference between an SBA loan and a government grant because many of these small businesses are were already servicing debt as most of the 21 hats audience is familiar with with their existing business now imagine servicing your debt and then the pandemic happens so then you take one of those government loans at a low interest rate but it still has to be repaid and then you lose uh the two best months of your year for Revenue now how do you feel about getting a loan where you need to sign a personal guarantee with your house that is the reason why we need the grants because some of our most experienced business people with traditional businesses that are loved and in a great location this is tipping them over the edge that's it I've been working for 10 years or 20 years or whatever it is to create this business that employs people and funds livelihoods and I've already already had debt I don't have flood insurance because I wasn't aware I lived in Florida and now my best option is to sign for more debt so it's not free money from the government it's it's really bailing out the majority of the Employers in the area not unlike some very large scale government bailouts that have occurred for business in other sectors that's actually something I wanted to ask you about I guess the question really is whether recovery loans are even the right tool in the aftermath of something like this there are plenty of businesses that got idol loans loans that were exactly as you said they already had a debt to service and now you're piling more on top of that uh who knows uh how sound their business model was before the disaster it probably wasn't improved by the disaster what are we learning through this experience are are recovery loans the right approach well I I'll I'll let Matt answer in just a moment but I wanted to give a little bit of local color right next to my town is another town where I worked in the fire department part-time for 10 years called swanana NOA and you may have seen swano in the news because it had some of the most horrific loss of life and it it's a low-lying valley so um with the businesses built along the river so it was one of about 10 communities where more or less all the businesses were just swept away and so their recovery is going to be measured in years not months and the issue is it's not just in that in that Community the fire department now will be forced to look at at um letting firefighters go and it's a rapid chain of events they have to look at reducing their costs by letting Personnel go because that's the biggest cost in a fire department and they'll have to do that because the revenues for the for uh the expenses at the fire department come from taxes on income and from sales tax and in our state roughly half is from sales tax well the sales tax has to be earned in that region in that fire district and most of those businesses are gone so there won't be any sales tax revenue so when that happens they were going to need less School teachers and less people working in the stores and you can see how this starts to spiral down so it's actually not a loan it's an investment in the future uh Taxation and and support for other jobs in the region because it ripples outwards yeah yeah that's a good that's a good point David I mean there there's huge cost down the road you know if we don't act to save the fabric or small businesses that we have I mean the the lowest cost time is like right away you know to get that recovery Capital to businesses and I think we definitely have to be you know looking at um not just not just recovery loans but think you know think about like the forgivable you know paycheck protection loans you know during the pandemic um you know hugely um important to so many uh small businesses and so I think you know we think about how much do we spend on you know Economic Development to create new jobs you know uh in our communities um to attract uh large employers um well I recovering these jobs is like the biggest Economic Opportunity we have right now and so many of our small businesses their people's retirement funds their kids college funds you know it's everyone's you know uh their house mortgage and their rent uh and you know so if we if we lose those those are going to be devastating long-term consequences and and the Ripple effects as David said you know if those employees leave or those families leave the communities and your then your schools start losing children and then they start losing funding I mean it's you get into a vicious cycle there if you don't act in act at the level that's that's really needed so we we do think you know we need to look at things Beyond just loans in this environment have you guys seen examples of the kind of entrepreneurial resilience that we all saw after or during the pandemic what are entrepreneurs doing in your area to survive that you've noticed first off so many of our restaurants I don't know how they did this they just figured out a way to just make meals and give them out the First Responders give them away for people in their you know in their neighborhoods weren't charging anything just you um and then they had to kind of figure out all right well how do we get water you know and there was a whole series of different entrepreneurial Solutions um for for how to do that you know we we had you know people like having all these totes popping up at all your restaurants at big containers where you could have potable uh water there and then and then people in other nearby communities they they would like fill up several of these or or tankers on in their trucks where they could could get water or well water and they they would drive around you know Asheville for example you refill these up at businesses you know every day so it's like a whole little cottage industry around that dollar a gallon dollar a gallon yeah there's some there were some big businesses but there were also some small businesses that were just able to connect the dots between these people have well water or access you know in a town that was less impacted we're going to truck it in you know every day well you know we're pretty happy and proud about our you know craft breweries that we have here which obviously takes a lot of water you know to to make beer um and several of those they if they had water or they were able to with Partners get like tanker trucks of water to come in from other breweries from out of the region they would say hey we're going to fill up we'll send you we'll bring you a tanker load of water and so they were they were bottling water before we were able to get a lot of the kind of uh water supplies and here now now we have we have enough water bottles now please don't send any more water bottles but that was so important and then they were figuring out how to get that to different places so they could get some level of operations back up and running and just trying to do something to to to get back open I think some of the entrepreneurial um improv that I've seen has uh revolved around uh transitioning from those free meals to selling meals to selling meal experiences and just like Co where restaurants switch to a a counter model instead of a table service model same kind of innovation restricted menu uh able to get it for go World kitchens came and I don't know if you're familiar with their model but they employ local Che um chefs and restaurant owners so that they and their staff stay employed um to make the food that world kitchens gives away and we also saw some of the retailers that saved their inventory were able to turn around and um have a popup location outside of the direct flood zone um but staying in the region if there was one thing that you could change about the way this country responds to disasters what would it be what's what's the one thing that you've learned from this that you would most want to emphasize either of you for me it's you don't want to be coming up with your Disaster Response programs in the middle of a disaster you know and that's been so much of how we've been doing it uh across the country particularly on the economic recovery side how do we support businesses and entrepreneurs you know we need to really have some tools and systems that are available for communities all across the country so you know how do we how do we learn some of the best practices from areas that have fared and and figured out some of these things that work um we've certainly got some lessons here we got some things that we don't want to do as well but I think I think being being more ready there um so that you know when communities uh you know hopefully they never do have one of these but but we know that you know there are more and more of these type of events happening uh that there's more of those offthe shelf kind of tools and we can be more adaptive and respond quicker and do a better job saving you know more of these businesses and not having those long-term impacts how about you David well I don't know that I have a simple answer I think it's it's part of what Matt said that economic disaster was of the pandemic illuminated really how America works that the service economy is largely populated um through small business not large business yes there's lots of McDonald's but the vast majority of the folks work in smaller restaurants and those restaurants as we learned in the pandemic painfully only have two or three weeks of cash flow so that response probably needs to be measured in weeks not months and the federal government and the state government are not set up for that they're just not and in the pandemic you know I think the mistakes were made in the PPP structure I personally know of some businesses with 20 or 30 million in in Revenue with fat margins and um no real risk through their job Force who got PPP loans on the order of two to four million which were forgiven and it was just free money from the government I don't judge that looking backwards because we had so many success stories from PPP where businesses did stay and and thrived and kept people employed and we did not have an economic disaster that we might have had but looking forward I think we would like something a little more accurate a little more precise a little more efficient than the PPP program was thrown together which by the way took long longer than two weeks before the first check started arriving I don't have the solution but I have the problem statement you know in my work with with business owners of all sizes insurance is not our first topic but it's not our last and one of those pieces of insurance that's a big surprise is that your property insurance and your general liability insurance is not going to help you when there's a flood that's an out but what was shocking to at least four business owners that I know intimately well in all four cases they have yet to see a claim approved for their business continuity insurance which as most 21 hats Community would know is very expensive Insurance uh I've only bought it once for one business it was just it didn't make sense for the business model for the other businesses and all four of those business owners stretched and paid the premiums and they are not seeing claims because in the policy deck sheet there is an exception for flood and one of those four didn't have any flood damage they just didn't have water electricity from the town they didn't have water electricity from the town because of a you guessed it flood so that's the basis of that claim being denied so far so the claim was denied even though they weren't physically affected by the flood but their access it was a derivative effect of of the flood so we're going to see some of this play out in the courts but I think fundamentally business owners educating themselves on the limitations of their insurance and understanding that um in these climate events the insurance industry as I have read in the business press more than once the insurance industry has figured out climate change is real and they have changed their policies carefully and methodically so that they don't have to pay for it and they're not I don't think I've even heard of anyone getting any insurance claim and I I'll add one thing on the insurance thing is um you know you can only get flood insurance if you're in the flood plane you know and what we saw was a lot of this damage was beyond the flood plane where you can't even get flood insurance you know so they're they're totally uninsured that's going to be more and more common uh you know as we look at climate events so we got we've got to really rethink Insurance um and make that really work better for for because that could be a tool you know that can be one of the key tools where you can get funding quickly in theory uh if if we look at it and have it set up the right way are both of you confident that Asheville will make it fully back and be the special place it has been yes yeah where our communities come together and and and there are going to be hard times um and and you have things that are going to be different um but uh the strength of of this community is is so apparent and uh we we really red together and we we really do like I said invite everyone to start coming back because we we are open and you know we want you to be a part of our our comeback story yeah I I agree completely um you can't really kill the place and you certainly can't kill the culture and it's a culture of resilience um th this region is an area that is culturally and geographically remote from the power centers in the South but it's where they come for vacation so um this is this is this is going to be fine but it's going to be painful um it's going to be painful rebuilding it's going to be tough and of course it won't be fine for everybody not everybody's going to going to make it back it will not and as usual Equity is g to is going to rear its head and and people most disadvantaged are the ones that are going to hurt the most my thanks to David bstrm of flashing red light and Matt raaker of mountain bizworks thank you for taking the time I really appreciate it somebody wants to contribute is there a place you'd recommend they go absolutely thanks Lauren yeah people can go to wnc as in Western North Carolina wnc strong together.org and you can see the latest of where we're at with the recovery and there's a place in there to donate to impacted uh very small businesses across Western North Carolina yeah and I'll I'll add that um you know any donation of any size really does make a difference at this point I'll put a plug in for the outdoor spaces that are near and dear to my heart um in outdoor recreation uh we set up a fund on myself and some other folks to fill in the gaps not covered for the outdoor spaces and that's rebuild black mountain.org great thank you [Music] both one thing before you go everything we do at 21 hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together if you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes consider joining the conversation you can do that by joining the 21 hats sounding board a slack Channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom Forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast you can sign up for both by subscribing to the morning report if you have any questions you can email me at Lauren 21h hats.com and if you get something out of this podcast or out of the morning report please tell a friend tell an enemy tell every business owner you know your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us thank you it means a lot this episode was produced by another entrepreneur Jess steron founder of blank word Productions thanks for listening everyone [Music]