00:00Congress is really close to approving a second round of funding. I believe the last report I
00:04saw yesterday said the House still needed to vote on the second kind of stimulus bill and funding
00:09package that'll benefit small businesses during this pandemic. But what we saw with the first
00:14package, of course, is that not everyone has a chance to kind of take advantage of that. And
00:19per usual, you know, we've seen a lot of our Black-owned businesses speaking out to say that
00:22they were unfortunately in that number that didn't have the chance to really take advantage of that.
00:27So Melissa, I wanted to kind of get your thoughts on what are some of the things that we can kind
00:31of do to rally together as a community of both businesses and also the consumers who love you
00:37guys' businesses to kind of lift ourselves up and make sure we're not leaning too heavily on the
00:41expectation of government funding or other resources that unfortunately just may not come when we need
00:47them as soon as we... Yeah, I mean, I think there's so many things, especially as most small business
00:52owners are not funded, right? So it's like we're living, we're operating our businesses paycheck to
00:58paycheck for the most part. And even if you do get a round of funding, it doesn't mean that you're
01:03necessarily going to get another round of funding or maybe you don't even have the expertise to know
01:09what to do with that with that round of funding. So I think it's a matter of first of all, of course,
01:14apply for those loans, apply for those grants, like apply, but don't rely. Like you cannot accept,
01:21you can't expect that this money is going to be the money that carries you through to that next
01:27quarter when you can see some returns or see increased sales. So make sure that you're doing
01:32everything you can to make sure that people know whether that is like the banks and the government
01:38or down to your customer base. Like, don't be shy. This is not the time to have ego. This is the time
01:44to really lean in on your audience and let them know like, hey, we're a small business owner and we
01:49need your support. You know, you love having us around. You know, these are some ways that you can
01:55support a small business. And some of those can be financial, but also like there are tons of ways
01:59that small business owners can lean on support from their community that don't require money. So whether
02:06that's engaging on social media, whether that's sharing your story, whether that's forwarding
02:12your email, there, there are lots of ways that we can and should be reaching out to our very
02:18community to say, hey, this is, this is why we need support. And these are ways in which you can
02:24support. I've always thought about relationships from the mutually beneficial standpoint. It's like,
02:30you need to let people know, you know, why they should help you, how they should help you,
02:35and then what's in it for them to make it as easy as possible for you to ultimately get your outcome.
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