Sandberg on State of Small Business

Facebook Chief operating Officer Cheryl Sandberg. She joins us on the phone from Menlo Park, California, and also with us a small business owner, in fact, the owner of Echo. And forgive me, I didn't hear the name Um, and I just want to check with see me at a bajo. She is the owner of Echo and she doesn't sewn the phone in San Francisco. My apologies. I just want to make sure I had it clearly. Cheryl, let's start with you tell us a little bit about this survey.

So you're right that this survey is quite devastating. You know, we started working on this actually before were coronavirus. With the Small Business Round people, and we thought we'd put a survey out, you know, the state of small business and it would be very very positive, right, unemployment historically low levels, entrepreneurship driving, and then coronavirus hit and the

picture we got back was sobering. But I think even more important, more than a third of small businesses have stopped operating entirely expects to fail if things don't change within the next few months. And the stat that really hit me was more than half of small business owners don't think they're going to be able to rehire their employees. So yeah, absolutely, so, see me, you had this exact experience,

so help us understand exactly what happened. I mean, your story has something of a happy ending, But that devastation that that Cheryl talked about, I mean you experienced it firsthand right off the bat. Um. Yeah, so I experienced the first time because one this whole thing hit, I had to let both my whole team and shut down my business for the first three to four weeks. Um. And it's not just me, I guess all restaurant owners and small businesses in San Francisco, especially because of the

overhead that comes with being a business in the city. UM, once you have one week two weeks without customers or your usual stream of revenue, you are hemorrhaging funds. UM. And I saw very quickly. My restaurant is located in the so my neighborhood. UM. Once my business closed, I started to see all the other restaurants and corner stores

around starting to take the same lead. UM. Fortunately for me, I connected to an organization that's a nonprofit that's feeding the homeless and the elderly and generally vulnerable populations in the city right now. So I was able to within the past two weeks rehire my cord team. UM. And you know, that's a positive story. But UM, that's not going to be the case for many small businesses UM, who are just not going to be able to rehire their course stop another issue, or maybe it's not an issue,

but UM. One main problem that small business owners are having getting their teams back lies within the fact that the employees are sometimes making more unemployment than they would be making coming to work, especially now, which California is a different all six entertainment UM, there's really no incentive for them to go back to work. So it's a

tough time all around. The small businesses right now. So, Cheryl, when you see the results of the Facebook survey, and we've been talking often a lot about, you know, what needs to be done, especially for small business We just came off a conversation you know about you know, our backbone is small businesses and it's going to be tough

for them to resist going back. So what do you see as kind of the necessary components to protecting our small business community, making them safe so that they can come back safely when the environment changes. So look, you know, part of it is bridging until we get there. So obviously the government loans matter. We put a hundred million dollars to work and just gramps to small businesses all

around the world. We hearmarked forty million of that for the United States and half of that for women, minority and veteran owned businesses. Because we all know that when crisis hits, the most vulnerable get hit the hardest, and so we all need to do everything we can to bridge. We're working on more products that helps small businesses go online if they weren't online before to the extent they can.

They need to do more online, were reaching customers online, were providing services online and then once they come back to work, how do we do that safely? We see curb side checkouts, we see people doing art classes online. There's an amazing story of a bookstore that um located in University City, Missouri. They're called I See Me and they're really for black children to discu over role models

and learn about African American history. But it's very much a community based thing where everyone went there in person. They're now doing those same storylines online. Local businesses are going to have to be able to morph to do more things online, and that's what we're seeing. So, Cheryl, I wonder what you make Especially given your background you worked at the Triasury Department. You understand the inner workings of government really well, the balance between the public and

the private. What does the government need to do in the short and mid term to ensure that private efforts like the one that you just described can be successful in the long term. What do we need from the government at this point? Well, when you ask that question, I feel like it's really all hands on, Jack. When you lead local government, state government, national government to be helping bridge for companies, which they are, but also helping

us keep safe. You know, as we open up, how do we do it to protect everyone, Make sure our hospitals don't don't get overrun, make sure that information is clear and flowing. I think, you know, we've been through a lot, but there is a lot ahead of us, and it has to again be everyone doing their part. You know, we just have time. I think for one

last question, and I do think about what's interesting. Is this is a time, as you know, I feel like the tech industry was largely on everyone's radar, a lot of scrutinyous happening. Do you see this time, you know, you talk about the things that you guys are doing to help bridge the gaps for small businesses? Is this a time to kind of potentially, you know, improve your image. You know, the government has been looking and and you know, politicians,

I'm just curious how you see that. So we've been trying to do the right thing all along, and when we've made mistakes, were hard to correct them and prevent them next time. You know, right now, we're just rolling up our sleeves and doing everything we can to help small businesses get through it. Roll up products that can help them, you know, things like fundraisers for small business

you know, we have fundraisers for nonprofits. We had fundraisers for you know people, but we never would have rolled up fundraisers for small business until this crisis. We are just focused on putting our efforts to what can help, and we believe that we do the right thing. People will figure that out and believe that we are over time. Share all signs of hope there in the Bay Area. At this point, you guys been locked down for a

long time. What's it like right now? I mean, I haven't left my house like a lot of people, but so I don't know. But I know that I'm lucky, right, I'm lucky that I can do my job from home. My siblings, both my brother and my sister, and my sister in law, and my fiance's brother and his and his wife. They're all frontline health workers. They're all doctors and frontline health workers. Right. I've been fortunate I could stay home, and I've had a responsibility to do that

to make it safe for for others. You know, if we look at this report, which isn't just the local area of California, but more nationally, fifty of small businesses say they're still optimistic about the future of their business, even in the face of all of this, people people with PAM and I think I think that is something that we can feel really good about. Yeah. Absolutely, it is nice to see that optimism considering all that certainly small businesses have had to endure. Caryl, thank you so

much for your time. We really appreciate it. Facebook Chief operating Officer Cheryl Sandberg on the phone from Menlo Park, California, along with Simi Ada Bajo, owner of Ico. She joined us on the phone from San Francisco. A small business owner, as she said, with a partnership and being able to bring back workers. That's a big deal, right, well, a big deal. And also, as we talked about at the top, I mean having gone through what so many have gone through,

which is just getting us effectively wiped out. Some really interesting statistics there