Payroll Protection Program

Welcome to today's webinar. My guest today is Katie Santos and we are going to talk about the payroll protection program and we had lots of hearts or plans of exactly what we were going to say as far as that act and that money is concerned and all those things have changed in the last day. So PPP or the paycheck protection program was funded by Congress, the U S Congress as part of the Corona virus aid relief and economic security act or cares and there was a 350 billion program, but we heard when we woke up this morning that all of that 350 million has now been allocated. So we're going to talk about that a little bit or we're going to talk about other things that might well help all of us in this time of Corona virus. A little bit more about Katie's Katie Santos as a studio owner, she has two amazing partners, both of which I'm lucky enough to have met as she's a [inaudible] teacher, party's educator and a business consultant for mind body, Evernote and work the system.

She's also my colleague on the [inaudible] method Alliance board and she's had various roles there and we've done lots of things together. We um, and today is all about sharing our kind of understanding of this piece of legislation and how we can make the most of that opportunity as the police professional skier. We don't claim that we have all the answers to everything. We're no substitute for your financial advisors, your lawyers, your accountants, people like that, but we hope that this conversation is going to help folks survive what is going on in their businesses. We will be editing this, it'll be up on the website in the middle of next week and I'm very happy for everybody to read it. This webinar is free today. We free when we put it on our website. Before we start here, I'm just going to ask a couple of quick questions using the polling software just to see where folks are and partly my goal in this is just to make sure that today is really a U S edition of this particular webinar. Very happy for other people to join, but really we're focusing on us stimulus legislation and it's going to end that poll. And as we kind of expected and hoped everybody is from the U S and my other quick question here is, uh, are you a, just put it up here, a practitioner, a teacher, a studio owner or something else?

I try to be very inclusive and include everybody. So today we are about two thirds or more than that, three quarters of studio owners and about a quarter of teachers. That's fantastic. And my last question today before we start the program is all about the PPP program. Did you apply for the payroll protection program? Did you apply and you have no idea what happened.

Did you apply and you got the money, but it hasn't arrived yet or did you actually get the money? You know, so those are the four kind of categories that we have there. I'm just curious to see what folks have, I'm dying to know the answer to this question. I'm just going to share the results here. Two thirds did not apply. Yeah, 30% why not? Sure. What happened? And 7%, which at the moment is about one, one out of the people on the call actually got the money that they were awarded it, but they don't have it yet. I'm interested to know your secrets.

So Katie, let's start off with what's happened with the payroll protection program. What do you understand is the status, and this is on just so everybody knows, this is April the 16th clock, Pacific Pacific day flight. You laugh, but we have to do that for sure. Um, so congratulations to the one of you that that was awarded something. Um, there are a few that got awarded. So this was originally um, put forth for small business owners, those under 500 employees and under a certain, now I can't remember what the revenue cutoff was, you know, in my view that's not small. Um, that's more like mid size.

You know, we think about micro when it comes to us. So as expected it was exhausted last night at some point. Now the question is right now that I haven't gotten an answer for. I tried to talk to some assembly people today who are busy. Does that mean that the people who are in process of you know who submitted their applications maybe 12 days ago, is your hand over your allocation of money or if you haven't heard anything, does that mean, sorry you're out of luck. We're not clear on that.

I don't know if anyone really is. Even if it's a bank. The second thing is there's really good guidance that there's going to be another fourth round of some sort of funding. Now that involves some logistics that the senators and the Congress people are a little bit reluctant to do, which means getting on a plane and flying to D C so they can vote. Why they can't do zoom meetings like the rest of us. I don't know, but there's something written in there. But I think there's enough pressure from state governors especially to be able to get some pressure on our, on our Congress to pass something else.

So then the next question is those of us that did apply and are sitting somewhere in limbo, does that mean we're first in line for this next round or do we start the whole process again? My personal guess is it's the latter. It's, you've got to start the whole thing over again. That's just a guess. I'm kind of a worst case scenario girl. So there's that. Um, there's also another program out there called the economic injury disaster loan that got put forth as this great $10,000 grant that you could get almost immediately that did not materialize it then since it's got changed slightly to reflect that it wasn't just going to be $10,000, it's going to be $1,000 per employee that you had, um, at the time of the shutdown. So that got taken down a little bit. And again, I personally don't know anyone that's gotten any funding from that at all.

So not to start out on a bat now, but we also want to talk a little bit about what if you didn't apply, um, what if you did apply and didn't get the money? And what else, what else can be out there for you? So we might ask maybe, um, if you didn't apply, was there a reason, did you feel like you didn't want to, did you, and you can maybe put this in the chat, we're kind of going off the cuff, ah, you only asked for 5,000, um, did you not apply because you didn't think it, you needed it or did you not apply because you didn't want to get yourself encumbered, which is not about decision and that you might end up closing my, I might be curious to know the answer to that so we can kind of let you respond. Maybe as you, as we're talking and we'll see in a poll, Katie, there's a few things in the chapter that might be good to look at. Right? Right. So Susan and Tanis both indicated they didn't have employees, so that's why they didn't apply. And there are of course, waste now for independent contractors to have applied the application processes the same. The calculations are slightly different so they could apply for themselves.

But the good news is to, at least in the state of California now as of yesterday, the governor has mandated something called the, um, pandemic unemployment assistance so that those people who were independent contractors can apply for state unemployment and the federally funded additional $600. So thanks to you for putting that in there. So that's good. At least there's somewhat protected. Um, we do have employees, we did that a long time ago before AB five came rolling along and I'm, I'm really glad that we did for numbers of reasons. One applying for this. Also my people have the capability to get sick leave should they need it and paid family leave and an unemployment. So that's nice. Um, banks in Texas won't give it to them unless they've had a business account with the bank. There is, I'm going to give you a little tiny, um, side note, a place called bank Vista in Minnesota of all places have been lovely.

They did get some of my fellow business consultants got their applications through pretty quickly in four days. Now, whether they're still accepting applications and holding them for a possible next round, I don't know. But that whole mandate to be able to have an account, there's some class action lawsuits against banks that are mandating that. So the smaller, more regional banks are, there are some that are open out there. You have to dig through a little bit. Um, do you put the link in the chat? So yeah. And Tanis you can apply for unemployment too.

And we now know since the last time John and I talked, even though he and I suspect that this was going to go on pretty long, we now know it will. So now's the time to step forth and try to get some additional assistance. So we've, we've kind of um, brought out some additional ways that you can get assistance in the form of grants and or loans. One thing I'm telling my clients is to really sit down now knowing that we have a little bit longer of a timeline that we're going to be under this. I would really do some soul searching and, and think, do I want to continue in my current form in my business?

Do I want to keep paying the rent that I'm maybe paying? Do I want to envision a different business altogether in a different place? And if so, can I get out of from under what I'm under right now as far as rent commitments maybe are concerned. So before you jump the gun and do too much crazy loan applications, I would really do some soul searching around that. I do know that, um, we run a very large studio with a very high rent and honestly we're thinking about like, as my business partner says, she goes, there's no lack of plans.

We have no lack of plans at all. So we're thinking of all different contingencies. Um, if we can't get rid of rent abatement and that sort of thing, but there's good news. I, I'm assuming that most everybody that's on here are women, right? So I'm going to make it a little women centric, but there's national association for self-employed has several growth grants available. There's grants.gov there's grants for women.org so poor JIA is probably slamming these into the chat as you go and we will put them into the description, right John when, um, we got a great um, chamber of commerce perk in our tiny little town. So we have a very powerful chamber of commerce and I know most of us think about the chamber as being a place where realtors hand out their cards.

And that's certainly true with a lot of chambers, but ours is really, really amazing. And they hired a consulting firm called Townsend and associates to work with Lafayette businesses on researching different grants and loan processes and things like that. So as I know more, I'm starting in the process with them as I know more, I'll pass these on to John and his crew so he can pass them on to you, but hit up your local chamber of commerce and see what they've got in store for you. Now, most chambers don't have money, so don't ask them for a grant. But they do, it's their responsibility to have some ways to, to navigate this landscape for you as a business sounder. If you're not a member, it might be time to be a member and no, I don't work for them. So, but ours has been really great. They're also a great resource if you're looking to talk to your landlord or to change locations. They know usually about locations before most of us do. So there's also, we talked about the pandemic unemployment assistant for independent contractors.

There's um, also the, if you do have employees, there is a refundable payroll tax credit and the deferral of your portion of the payroll tax to be paid for up to two years. So what that means is let's, let's pretend that your burden as an employer is about 20%. If you have an employee, your portion of that going to the government is now deferred. And I believe, I'm not sure how the payroll tax credit exactly works. I'm not an accountant, but I know it's a thing. Um, but that deferral is great. If you don't have cash. Now, I will give a caveat though is payroll taxes must be paid at the expense of everything in your life. Meaning they'll come and take the chair, they'll come and take your books, they'll come and take your house if it's not paid.

So if you don't think that you've got runway enough to pay those into years, my advice is to pay them as you go. If you've still got your people working. I've got some people working, doing virtual, so I'm paying my payroll taxes and they're much smaller than they were. Another little piece of advice for employers there, if you are employers, is approach your workers' comp and your liability insurance companies right now and retool what you have estimated to be your payroll for the coming year. So they're going to look back at 2019 and say, Oh, she had you know, $30,000 in payroll. We're going to estimate that she's got a little bit more than that for 2019 while maybe not.

So have them estimate that down and you can forecast out a little bit. I personally pay my payroll or my worker's comp with each payroll, so it's, I don't have to give them a big deposit. I think John, you probably do the same with ADP, right? Yup, yup. Um, but then there's also, yeah, sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Quick question here. Do you think, you know, we were talking a little bit about the PPP program being out of funds and the same with E I. D. L. O there's a lot of acronyms.

Um, but you know, there was so many politicians that are going to be getting our calls and the people on this calls, you know, pressure to like, Hey, we need some more money here. And we were chatting before about some of the big industries, like the airline industry is receiving a lot of money. Um, and you know, there's some great people to work there and all of those things, but there's the other gazillion people that don't have the lobbyists to interact with Washington here. So for the few people when we did that survey that haven't applied for the PPP, if it opens up and it's everybody's on a level playing field again, you know, can you just talk a little bit about how people should be ready to apply for that? And this applies, you know, there's a P P program, P P P program for small businesses, but there's another one for independent contractors. You can kind of explain if we assume that they're going to open up again, how, what do people have to have ready, be ready, open your Dropbox and throw in every one of these documents? Right. So first off, you have to have the application, which did change no less than three times in the two weeks in between discussing and implementing. So have that filled out.

If you're going as a business, not as a, you know, solo practitioner kind of thing, you have to have that application. You have to have all of last year's payroll documentation. That includes the nine 40 the nine 40 ones. Everything from independent contractors. If you had them, like I had a marketing person, an account, a bookkeeper, even though they're not factored in, they want that documentation. I did also throw in a P and L from last year. Um, I threw in all the W2 information, so all the W2 reports and those submittals, I had an explanation, um, because I own part of my husband's company, so I had to explain and disclose it.

I owned part of his company even though he wasn't implying applying. Um, I had an explanation of operations. I also had an explanation we had last year, a total of 17 employees will over the course of the year. Some moved away, one got married in March, Scotland, lucky her. Um, some quit. And then my business partner had a stroke. So we went down steadily downward and we had to have a full explanation about that. So that all lives in one big file in Dropbox.

And then you can just drag it and drop it into where ever portal at the time for independent contractors and sole proprietors, it's a little bit different. You're going to pull your schedule C, so it's the number at the bottom of your schedule. See that you're going to use as your calculator, right? So on both of these calculations, it's two and a half times quote payroll. If you have run all of last year, that means as an independent contractor, the bottom line of your schedule, C divided by 12 times 2.5 right?

If you've exceeded $100,000, good for you. You're running a good show, it's going to cap at $100,000 so the max you can get, I believe that, what did we figure out? The calculation was 800 or $8,080 or something per month times two and a half. So it's about $21,000 maximum that you can get as a sole proprietor. Independent contractor as a business. It's two and a half times your average monthly payroll in 2019 unless you're giving them a good reason, which like I did why I'm using the calculation from January to the end of February because I had less employees then.

So I'm using that as my average monthly payroll times 2.5. That's what I'm asking for. Right. So have all that documentation ready. Overexplain like crazy. Um, make sure everything's accurate. You've got your right, um, EIN number or your social number, you've got your name right and all its different possibilities. Have that ready to go when they opened the door again and start looking for other banks. Now start looking for credit unions and small regional banks that will take these without you being an existing customer.

Yeah. I had a friend who is with bank of America and she banked with them for a long time, which she was scared of having a credit card with them. So she just said a debit card because she didn't have that credit card. They wouldn't help her with the PPP even though she had a banking relationship. Yeah. That's the kind of like in a lawsuit. Yeah. Not my favorite.

Um, there's also, you have P the plot is method. Alliance is throwing out a lot of resources, great resources written by different people on the board and that the PMA has sourced itself. Um, and put up for free whether you're a member or not. So that's great. The other places to look are, um, Ursa, which is the international sports and racket health, international health and sports racket association. Um, you've got to look that up. Gee, I think I'm saying it wrong, but they run, they're the membership organization for big clubs, but they have a lot of lobbying power and they have their finger on what's happening when it comes to our, our industry, not our businesses and our business size necessarily, but certainly our industry. So they're a good resource and they're allowing some of their resources to be out for free because their membership is brew expensive. They are lobbying, um, for attention to our industry. So that's good. They're, they're not working to get us looked at as essential businesses, which I don't think we necessarily are, even though we feel that way, but they're certainly helping, um, get recognition. Um, the other is mind body online.

Now I know that's controversial, but they're working really, really hard. You know, they've got 60,000 customers world raw wide and this is hit them really hard because every single one of their customers are shut down and in trouble. So they have some lobbying power. They're working quite a bit with Ursa and other lobbying organizations to come at Washington to help us out. They are also mitigating a month of services and they've opened up all of their marketing services, which if you are using all of them would be quite expensive through June.

So if you're on the MINDBODY platform, go hunting around and the marketing tools, turn that stuff on and see what you can do if you're working with virtual clients. And that's a big help. Cool. Thank you. So let me summarize if I was to say there as a takeaway here is you and I both think that there's probably going to be some more money in this PPP thing, do we? No, no, we don't have any, we don't have official one. And so it's another chance to roll the dice and maybe get access to these funds. Is that kind of fair Katie?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you know, the other thing is we in the [inaudible] industry, we're blessed, right? We, we've always had the joke that it's nothing but rich people that come and use our services, which we all know is not necessarily true, but that's the impression, right? The reality is we do have some of those clients in our, so it doesn't hurt to put all this together and go to a client and say, listen, I have a problem. And in this day and age, like I've got several wealthy clients we could probably approach and I know that their dividends are being cut and what they're making on their CDs is pitiful. So if they can have the twofold benefit of helping somebody who they adore and love whilst getting maybe two or 3% interest, that's a win for everybody. So don't be afraid to talk to people who you think might be your biggest supporters. We did it years ago when we expanded and you can create your own terms for these kinds of loans. And the best thing is, it's not like the bank.

If you need to walk away, you need to walk away. We made that very clear to the people that we took loans from. You know, this is a gamble. We're expanding at the time. I had another partner who was coming back from a, a big health scare. We weren't sure if she was even going to survive and we were Frank with them. We said if she goes down, we go down, we're out, we can't pay you.

And they were like, that's fine. So you can structure those loans however you want. You can pay them when you want. I would recommend that you really put up barriers. If you do something like that, don't tell them that they can train for free.

Don't let them have free classes. Make it a business relationship. So it's very separate. [inaudible] so one of the kind of questions in this that you raised was, you know, should I really take the money? Should I leverage up what's going to happen to my business? You know, if this thing lasts a very long time, am I getting myself deeper into a financial bad place? So I've, you know, we've chatted a bit about this, but the kind of curious what you think about as what I think is going to happen, I'm going to take California because we both live here, but it's, you know, the same timeframe but just adjusted a little bit when you're, where you are in the U S or in the world. But what I kind of think is that somewhere kind of late summer, late, late spring, early summer.

So I'm going to say sort of June-ish just being kind of vague in this, we'll see a little bit of opening up of the economy. So all of these indicators will peak and they're beginning to come down. And then the things that are most essential in our society will begin to doubt that's Disneyland. But you know, some people might think that's essential. Yeah, that'd be things that open up a little bit and then a few weeks later, if there isn't a resurgence on this, there'll be some more things that open up. And I'm caveating those, the assumption that effective and widely available testing is available because that's the only way that you can kind of monitor what's going on. If, you know, if you have to wait until people arrive at the ICU in your hospital, you've really got so far behind it. So I'm kind of assuming that there's effective testing kind of going on there and that will begin to begin to see the economy kind of open out.

And then there's another kind of thing in this, which is when do we start getting the antibody tests? I, we've kind of joked about this, that we've got a certificate on our phones as you know, I have the anti doctors, um, and that that will be there and then that'll kind of make it a little bit easier, particularly of the antibodies you won't have to wear quite as much as the protective equipment. That assumes for a second year that the antibodies really do protect you from the Corona virus. Can't catch it again. Or if you get a heavy dose, you don't catch it. You know, there's a lots and lots of assumptions in this that I can kind of see that kind of beginning early summerish kind of thing. But when do you get to the point of feeling confident enough to open up your polarity studio? Uh, I think that is a little bit late. I don't know what you think Katie, but that's not kind of early summer to my mind.

I dunno. It depends. Um, you know, I've been kind of hunting around. In fact this morning I was on another, um, HR call with an HR group who were talking about mitigation processes in your workplace as things start to open back up. And sadly I was telling John this, there is no guidance for us anywhere. I clawed through OSHA resources. I went through different fitness sites.

There's nothing documented anywhere that says, you know, once you open from a standpoint of public health, you have a responsibility for your clients, but you also have a responsibility if you have employees or independent contractors. Um, and there's lots more to say about that. But now is the time to start thinking about what does my space look like when I reopen, let's say June, right? Will I have people going in one door and out the other? Will I minimize how many people I have in the studio at any one time? Do I even put group classes, mat classes back on the schedule?

If I do, how big are they? Do people bring in their own mats? Um, you know, this sounds awful, but how can I monetize that? Can I get more Mattson? Can I get more straps in that I buy to sell to my clients? Um, and start having the conversations with them. We're doing a focus group and um, on Saturday actually with a kind of wide base of different clients who have different health concerns and do different programs in our studio at different times and their different age groups.

And we just want to find out from them what will, will you think about returning? If so, when, what will make you more comfortable? What will make you less comfortable? Will you do similar things that you did? If you didn't, what would you do you know, what other allied services can we provide? And that's going to give us a road map to what we look like when we reopen. I mean it really has to come from them. We can imagine all sorts of great stuff on our own, but we have to make sure the clients are going to go with that. Right.

How are you thinking of doing the focus groups? Well, the three of us owners, my children or I have grandchildren next door. It's so great and they come out this time of day and I can look at it from my window, but they're playing. Um, the three of us Sounders are going to get on and I've preset questions. We have some people that are not comfortable getting onto a zoom call. I was careful to make sure I didn't invite the people who I know had good advice, but we're going to take over the conversation, you know, conversational uh, Nazis we call them or something.

But so we can approach those people on the side. But we're going to open the door and say, you know, based on the questions that we gave you, what feedback do you have? We're hoping that they come up with some great ideas for us as well. And then from there we may end up being Frank with them at the end of this. Like, you know, like I said earlier, we have no shortage of plans and these are some of them, yes.

Questions in the focus group, I can do that. I can hunt around while I'm multitasking. Um, so we, you know, we're just gonna use them as guidance. What do you think is the best way for us to move forward? So far I've gotten three people. Um, respond back to me. I'm going to control a and copy this and, and I'll say those three people all said, um, yeah, we're, we're dying to come back. We're hoping they're going to be very forthright.

There's a lot of very smart people in our group as I'm sure there are in yours. And they want to see us all succeed, you know? Yes. They're afraid of their own whatever's going on with them. But the bottom line is they are going to spend the time to talk to you. I am not giving them any kind of renumeration for this.

It's just a community share. So don't feel like you have to give anything away. Yeah, yeah. I think it's going to be interesting. I think, you know, some people are going to feel like you have virtual map classes. They kind of worked for me. Yeah. That was an easy way of doing it. I liked being at home and I've got over that kind of, you know, stigma of like, Oh it's not the same if it's not, it was different, but is it, is it serving you adequately? So I think, you know, Goodwill sees some changes in the landscape. Yeah. I also think if you, let's say that I'm 70 something and I have asthma and I haven't had the coronavirus, I'm probably gonna put off that visit maybe until after the vaccine, which kind of playing around with the timeline. I see the vaccine as being very, very late 2021 before that. So, okay. They give you a caveat to that because I purposely included a client in here who is going through stage four breast cancer treatment and had been coming.

We have a policy at our studio, it's called Jamie's policy. If you're going through treatment, you're exempt from cancellation, dings and things like that. So she would come as she could. She was the first one to respond back to say, I am happy to come back to my reformer class, assuming we're doing the social distancing thing. I was like, wow. Right. So yeah, we just don't know. We really don't know. Yeah, no, I, I think this idea of doing this market research to find out, you know, what do I need to be offering what my particular client basis, this is my bank calling. I just have to tell you right now, I will Katie and I'll just chat about it. No, no, no. I won't.

It'll probably be long. Whew. That's either no, you're, you're in trouble or I'll let you know. We'll put it in the, in the notes afterwards. Yeah. Well, if they leave a message, I'll, I will listen to it. It could be, I'm fighting with an app situation for them, so it could be about that. But anyhow, um, yeah, I kind of see, you know, there's a couple of things in here is, um, you know, we've got this antibody test, we have the vaccination hopefully, you know, only 18 months away, that kind of thing. Um, but you've got this kind of interim period here where it really, really disrupted in society. It's just not quite the same. We're not, it's like not quiet. It's massively different from [inaudible]. Yeah.

Um, what do you think is, you know, there's a lot of people losing a lot of money here and losing their jobs and still having expenses. Um, you, do you think that this is gonna look a little bit like the recession of 2008 or, yeah. Um, you know, we're so lucky that we're in this time now because a lot of our clients who are in finance or, or other jobs like that can still be working. So that's the difference now that we saw in 2008 that we're probably not going to see as acutely right now. Right. I would guess that the places like, um, not to throw them under the bus, but 24 hour fitness and planet fitness, they're the ones that are going to suffer because they've got a little bit lower end of, of demographic coming to them. For one, we didn't see a big change in our business until a year and a half or so after this big crash in 2008 and that's where we started to see just little tiny bits where people were still coming but they were doing different services. So that speaks to, you know, that's another thing that you want to talk about when you do your focus group is what kind of different services might you be interested in? Do you have to pivot more to private one-on-ones?

Maybe shorter ones. Especially if you want to have some lag time in between clients coming in and out of the studio, things are going to hand up like we talked about yesterday on the quarter hour, God forbid, you know, people will have to memorize, um, will they want to do kind of quasi virtual and maybe occasional privates. You have to think about all the different possibilities and be ready for those pricing options. The beautiful thing right now is on two levels. You can start going through your key performance indicators for last year and go, Oh, this program I thought was so amazing and whose person that ran it drove me nuts, made me no money at all.

Like that workshop that you kept thinking was such a great thing. Get rid of it. Um, start to take out those underperforming products and processes and services that you had and start to reinvent things a little bit. By the same token, it's a perfect chance to wipe the slate clean with your independent contractors and with your employees. You can change how you're paying people right now. So there's been some discussion. People are, are, um, especially on mind body one, which is, uh, uh, owners, uh, community for mind, body clients, business owners. Lots of people are saying, well, I'm worried that my employees are making more of my independent contractors now are making more with unemployment. And when I go to hire them back, they're going to say, no. Well, I got news for you. If you offer them a job back, they have to take it. They can't continue on unemployment and you will keep getting things in the mail to check in. Are you open yet? Are you bringing back those furloughed people?

And if you are and you say yes and they're saying, no, I don't want to go back, there are benefits go away. So they will be back. It's really not a concern at all. Um, I wish I had unemployment. I have to say they are making some good money. Um, so start to look at all of that. Do you have to change I for one, pay a certain way for reformer classes that worked well in the past and I've never changed it because we've had some legacy employees. Now I'm, things are gonna change. Sorry guys. It's going to change a little bit. You can, um, start to think of new alliances that you can make with fellow business owners in the community. Can you create something that's, uh, a massage and a private package with a local massage person? Do your, um, wellness clients that you have that are post rehab, are they either reluctant to go back to their PT or can they not see their PT as much? So partner with those PTs down the street, maybe they've had to choke down the amount of employments that they can take and they trust you enough to take some of their clients or their patients. Right?

Reframe your marketing completely. So it's not my favorite thing, but there's a great book, uh, that I don't have handy, but there's a great book called, um, Oh gosh, Donald Miller and he wrote the story brand marketing framework and he's got a new marketing book out, but he, he takes you through a really easy way of creating your marketing speak and your one liner. And now more than ever, it has to change a lot. It has to be much more compassionate. Not that you weren't already authentic, but it needs to be a little less sexy in my opinion. Um, that's me. Doesn't have to be, but also authoritative. We are health professionals. We're wellness professionals and people need our guidance to get them out of this funk of sitting on their bums that they've had for the last, you know, four or five, six, eight, 10 weeks whenever it's over. And we, they need our guidance partner with the nutritionist that you trust, maybe a registered dietician if you want to go that far to offer online workshops right now.

So you can start to build the anticipation of you reopening and changing your, your programs. It feels like this is a real opportunity to research. You know, the things you don't have time to do normally. So research your customer base, find a best you can, what they might do, posters thing, and then also look at your business along hard Hardway and you've mentioned this on our last webinar, but I think it's a really key point. This might be the time not to borrow a lot of money to keep a business together. You might be the time to say, you know, this is time to reinvent myself and do something different. So yeah, that's a horrible thing to kind of say in a way that sometimes borrowing more money does not make it.

Yeah. But it's also a great opportunity to reinvent yourself. We have questions over here. John, did you see them? I do too. Is three ounces then. So the first one is from Sherry. I kind of part time instructor apply for both unemployment insurance as well as PPP. I don't believe so. I'm pretty sure not. Um, I'm not positive. I know it's gonna vary state to state as well.

It's a little risky out of my scope. How's that? I don't want to give you bad advice. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that either. But I do know, I have talked to people who've applied for both and that's been here in California. They've had their own independent business so that they are, uh, at LC, but they're also, um, trying to do both. The applied for unemployment and that person told me in the process of applying for unemployment, she had to talk about the PPP thing. I think that there are people checking. I've never looked into that.

I don't know. But people are applying for both. Yeah. And along those same lines, um, there was questions about how many different banks can you apply to for the PPP right. And a lot of people did eight, nine, 10 banks and their desperation and nobody's again really clear on that. The advice that the um, SBA gave out or the us chamber of commerce gave out is if you get movement on one of these, call the other places or contact the other places and say, I have movement on this bank so don't put me through yet. Or if you have fully funded, tell the other banks right away that you've got funded. Yeah, I think that's just fair to everybody else.

The next question is from Susan. Will there be or are there any options for small businesses that employ contractors? So that's interesting. I'd love to know Susan, where you are. Um, because the designation between employee and contractor are completely separate. So a contractor for purposes I'm going to speak in California, language is one that has their own business with their own tax ID number and business license. If it's required and files a schedule C and in California has to do something completely different from your core business. Right?

So that means I as a [inaudible] studio can hire a marketing person or a bookkeeper. If I hire a yoga teacher or a massage therapist, they're still kind of under our umbrella and don't meet the requirement of being an independent contractor. Sad to say. Um, I will also say that the state of California was a little bit blahzay when they put their ruling in place in January and they said, Oh, you know, take your time. We know it's, it's a big deal. So take your time to get this sorted out and get your people employees. Now that that argument has changed and they are on it in the state and the state of San Francisco, London breed would like that to be the case. But in the city of San Francisco, they are demanding that you immediately change your contractors to employees because they're misclassified. Many other States are putting forth legislation similar to California's to say people that are misclassified need to be changed right now as soon as possible.

Especially because of this pandemic. So, um, I don't know, Susan. Yeah. So your people are all independent contractors. Pennsylvania I think is moving pretty quickly to changing that. I do have a couple of clients in Pennsylvania who are making the change over to employees. And, um, from an altruistic point of view, I don't know about you guys, but I know I can probably never pay benefits, medical benefits or retirement benefits for my employees. I'm not that big. It's just not sustainable. So if I can make them employees, make them accountable to us as a studio and be able to give them the benefit of sick pay if they need it and family leave if they need it. And workers' comp, if they get hurt on the job, that's a great thing.

I think I can give them and I can afford to do that. Do you have a good resource for someone making personal loops for clients to purchase? I've seen them over there, but they are $70. Yeah, I don't, I know, I know. The process is cumbersome. I've talked to the people, a good citizen. There's also a resource. And, um, forgive me, they were, I can't remember their name. Their loops are really cool, but the, and they're from China and I really hit a wall with them. I actually tried to get them wholesale account with them and they were pretty, they said, well, we'll give you 10% off. I was like, really? Um, so good citizen as a resource are great. Great couple.

Why not pull out the sewing machine and see what you can do? Right. Um, we have to get creative. I know I'm sewing masks as soon as I get an interfacing. So maybe we can get one of those heavy duty, um, things that work on backpacks, right? That's, that's a kind of sewing machine you would need hit up some of your clients. Do they have that heavy duty sewing machine partner with them? Why not? Um, I'm going to add to, um, to this, let's have you look at the CDC website.

They have some great posters that you can put up around your studio when the time comes about hand-washing and infection control. I know we, we all know all those things ad nauseum. Like in our sleep we notice knees in your elbow. We need to wear a mask. And, um, also I have uh, our t-shirt supplier. It has been a great resource for masks. So he somehow, I don't know how he did it, but he got hold of quite a few cases of mass, not medical grade. So we're not taking four from medical people, but they would be handy to have in your studio because I, for one, I'm going to mandate that staff wear mass staff wear gloves, clients wear masks. Um, you know, we've got the six foot thing around our front desk. I don't think I'm going to make her a sneeze guard cause she sits down and people are standing up. Um, but look up all the resources you can from OSHA or Cal OSHA, which is the occupational safety and health association. The best I could do was find information on aerosol borne pathogens of which this is one. So I've um, developed this big long document around controls that we're going to have in the studio when we reopen that.

Something that people should be working on is thinking about, you know that yeah, I know when they opened the door for sure this is the time not only to do all your key performance indicators and clean up all your books, um, change your services, but start to write down procedures. So I do have, this is, this is a company I'm working with is work the system and they have this really great book that frankly I read it once and I kind of went LA, I don't want to make procedures boring. And then I picked it up again a couple of years ago and I realized, wait a minute, they're speaking our language, they're having us look at our overall business and create these great operational principles that you talk about to your public. And we, we did 10 or 20 of them, I can't remember how many, but we use them in social media. Like we stand for making sure that our clients are partners with us.

And you know, our goal is pain-free movement. That's great social media fodder, but it also informs my client directly. These are the, the standards that we hold our studio to. Then it has you go into operating principles, which are kind of internal stuff. How do you run the studio? For instance, some of ours are keep it clean and serene, meaning get the sticky mat off the floor and put away where it's supposed to be. Um, we, we like the color purple, meaning we welcome people of all shapes and sizes and orientations at our studio. And we're okay with different points of views. You know, one political point of view over here and another one over here. It's all about friendly conversation. So start to start to write those out.

What do you want to stand for as a studio to your public and to your staff, whether they're independent contractors or not. And then from there you start to dive in and go, okay, what are the day to day policies and procedures I want to see in place? Leave out right now. You know how we're going to handle infection controls, but how are you handling your banking? How are you handling uploading videos from zoom to Dropbox to your membership area? Put that process in place so that when you reopen and you're having to spend your time nurturing your clients and your team, you're not having to get called away because somebody doesn't know how to do the banking or how to upload those videos or where on your resource page, the straps and loops live or how to order them. All of those day to day things.

This is a perfect time to start to write those down. Keep them all in Google docs. Thank you. Yup. Um, one of the things I'd love to close out here is just talking about mental health and looking after the mental health with yourself, but also your team members. Do you have any advice for everybody on that?

Boy, don't we all go through those? You know, I have days when I don't watch, I'm sorry David mirror. But when I don't watch you, I feel better. Um, I have days, I feel very cheery and happy and I have other days, like yesterday where we talked about our roadmap and I was like, Whoa, I just want to throw up. So, Oh, masks from Bella. Great. Um, what we did with our staff at the start of this is we went on to Headspace and we bought them all, um, under a corporate, you know, Headspace for work. We bought them all a year's subscription to Headspace. I would, I have this vision of some Saturday afternoon getting the entire team on zoom and listening to Headspace together. So far that hasn't materialized, but it's, there is a plan. Um, you know, there's a lot more drinking going on and not to be funny, but it's a fact and it's wonderful when you're in the middle of it, but it's like creeping up earlier and earlier every day. I, we gotta warn ourselves about that. We've got to make sure, I hope all of you are taking time out to do your own classes and to, to get on piles anytime. And I got on there with Kara Reeser the other day. I'm like, I just want to be told what to do. Come on Kara.

So it was great. You've got got God to keep up your strength. For me, I'm, I'm spending more time sitting at the desk, but I'm also spending more time taking care of myself because you don't have those constant client interruptions that you get in the studio. Can I just ask you, you know this question thing, right? I've just noticed that Jackie Hinton from good citizen is on the thing. I mean if I ask her to join us as a panelist doubt out. Awesome. Okay.

I hope you got your pants on, Jackie. I'm sorry to do this at like the last second. It's a neat pants. It's all about tops right now. Can you unmute her? Oh, hi. I'm like still in my PJ's. Oh, right.

I'm sorry to do that to you. I hope you don't mind. You're beautiful. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Thank you for this. This is amazing. Oh, welcome. Can you tell us a little bit about your business so everybody can hear and I saw in the chat that you wrote that you have amazing wholesale options. So yes. Um, so we started back in 2000 and I'm shaking and nervous, um, in 2015 and, um, I started because when I was getting certified in [inaudible] back in 2006, I was just like grossed out that I had to use this. So I was like, why can I have my own and why can't they be super cute? So, um, uh, we kind of like threw the idea around and, and then went through, went to a bunch of manufacturers and finally found one that we really liked. Um, so here we are. Yeah, she's Jackie's great.

I've worked with her off and on for a couple of years. So see, um, so we do have really good wholesale pricing, um, for studio owners. Um, currently, um, um, you can just email us and we can send you all the information. We're, we're completely sold out right now. Um, but we are taking preorders. Um, and so we're really excited about that, but, but we're really happy to just help anybody stay clean and healthy. And it's just, this is kind of going to be like the PPP Jackie. We've got to get our orders in now cause we did order shortly before we closed down for that reason and I was like, Oh my gosh, she's running out. Yes. Yes. So it's shark tank time for your girlfriend. I think. Seriously.

Yeah, we've talked about that. I don't know. It's CRA. It's crazy. We just have to get through this craziness first. Yeah. Yeah. Well anything we can do to support you, we, we certainly will. And if you want to tell us, stop talking about you, we'd be sad. But no, that'd be great. How much I appreciate you. Yeah, yeah.

If you could, um, email us afterwards, um, you know John at [inaudible] anytime and that's anybody here. We make sure that when we put the video out, we'll have some links to you and whatever you'd like us to share with them. That's so sweet of you. And same here. We can share anything y'all want to as well. Um, our email is info@goodcitizenla.com. Um, so please feel free to reach out and thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for doing this. This is amazing.

Well thank you Jackie. I'm sorry to like drag you in front of the camera when you're in your PJ's. I put them tee shirt on my Broadway. Thank you so much Katie as well. Hey, do you have any last advice before we wrap up today? No, I'm, I'm available, I'm doing lots of consulting. If anybody needs any help, Katie santos.com. Um, I've got my email in the chat there and you know, I'm sure we'll be back again.

John and I have a good time with this and we're grateful that you guys are on board and listening in and, and you know, shoot us questions, whatever, whatever you need, we're here to help, right? Absolutely. And please, if you have subjects that you'd love us to talk about or people you think we should interview really, really interested in there. Um, this week we're doing three webinars, so tomorrow we're talking to one Nieto in Madrid. Um, on Tuesday, we are talking to Maria EOT about a choreography for teaching online classes. And so to help people kind of think, how do I modify my repertoire to make sure I deliver great ones there. And then on Thursday we have James Crudo coming on and he is going to really focus, the whole thing is going to be around looking after our own mental health. Like how do we deal with this?

Cause this is stressful where we're going through, I think that there was a prevalent is grief and this is how do we help each other through this? And, um, please look after yourselves and wash your hands and anything else, Katie? Nope, that's it. Can't wait to meet everybody in person someday. Oh, I hope so. Sooner the better. Yeah. Bye. So [inaudible].