#Next20: Reimagining small businesses during COVID-19

Watch #Next20 Episode 4, focusing on the heartbeat of our communities: small businesses. Sibile Marcellus of Yahoo Finance talks economic empowerment during #COVID19 with Kezia Williams of the Black upStart, Elizabeth Gore from Hello Alice, and small business owners Lyndsey Brantley of Camellia Alise & Michelle Swittenberg from BRWL Studio.

Video Transcript

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Hi, everyone. I'm Sibile Marcellus with Yahoo Finance. Welcome to #Next20, Verizon's new series of conversations about race, social justice, technology, and business issues that will define the next 20 years. We're talking to changemakers and exploring what inspires their activism and ideas to build a better future.

With this conversation and this series, we hope to accelerate their calls for change and move the world forward for good. The topic today is economic empowerment. I'm thrilled to introduce our panelists-- Kezia Williams, CEO of The Black upStart and founder of #MyBlackReceipt and Elizabeth Gore, co-founder of Hello Alice. Welcome.

ELIZABETH GORE: Thank you.

KEZIA WILLIAMS: Hello, Sibile.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Hello. The coronavirus pandemic has impacted the entire economy, and small businesses have been hardest hit. To give you a sense of scope, up to 60 million employees in the private sector work for small businesses. A recent survey showed that 70% of small business owners, because of the coronavirus pandemic, have had to lean on loans, such as the ones from the Paycheck Protection Program, use credit cards, and even tap into their own personal savings to stay in business. Kezia and Elizabeth, let's first talk a little bit about your own businesses and why it's so important to achieve economic empowerment. Kezia, we'll start with you.

KEZIA WILLIAMS: All right, well, thank you again for having me. And thank you for Verizon for inviting Elizabeth and I-- Sibile, you as well-- to have this important conversation about what happens over the next 20 years. I know you mentioned My Black Receipt, but My Black Receipt is an extension of The Black upStart, which is the business that I own.

Black upStart teaches Black entrepreneurs how to start a business but not just how to start a business, but how to start a business that creates jobs. Currently, there are 2.56 million Black entrepreneurs, but only 109,000 of them have the capacity to employ at least one person. So for Black upStart, we like to teach entrepreneurs-- Black entrepreneurs, specifically-- how to become Black employers.

Through Black upStart, we hold six-day bootcamps. And we invite Black faculty members to teach from a Black curriculum that teaches entrepreneurs how to turn the obstacle of race into a profitable opportunity. Every single example that we introduce in that classroom is centered around how Black entrepreneurs like Issa Rae were able to start with just a little bit and grow that into a lot. We know Issa Rae started out on YouTube, and now she's got HBO. And people are choosing Team Issa or Team Lawrence. But she had to start first with a crowdfunding campaign.

And then we partner with community development and financial institutions. And I'm happy that she brought up the Payment Protection Program because CDFIs have been at the center of that conversation. But we partner with them intentionally so that entrepreneurs can get access to the financial resources that they need in order to scale their business. So every Black entrepreneur who graduates from our program not only has an innovation, but also access to cash flow to help scale their enterprise.

The last thing that I'll say is in the last census, it was mentioned that 18.5 million black people were either in the workforce or looking for jobs. The 109,000 Black entrepreneurs that I mentioned earlier employ less than 1 million people. Our goal is for every Black entrepreneur there is to create enough jobs so that if Black people wanted to work for a Black entrepreneur, they could.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Elizabeth, tell me about economic empowerment at Hello Alice. How do you address that there?

ELIZABETH GORE: Well, our number one job is to stand right behind with our technology people like Kezia who are leading the rest of us. So thank you for all the work you're doing. It's amazing. So at Hello Alice, when we launched years ago, our objective was to help small business owners launch and grow. And within that, we made a commitment the day we launched to prioritize women, people of color, and our US veterans. We did that because these are the fastest growing individuals in entrepreneurship and, might I say, the most successful.

But you know, we really felt like if we could use learning and technology to get the right resources in the hands of small business owners that we could lower the overall fail rate and increase the success of our counterparts. Since then, we're proud that we help around 200,000 owners. And it's certainly been a different time. You know, we've always been about growth. And now, we're-- it's OK to say we're about survival during COVID-19.

We have built the COVID-19 business center to ensure that we're providing navigation tools for small business owners for funding, grant support, federal support, peer-to-peer communities, and then most of all, guides and e-learning modules to help you apply for PPP, to temporarily close your business, to understanding industry guidelines that you're going through. But at Hello Alice, we really try to be the technology fuel behind small business owners, as well as the networks that support them, like Black & Brown Founders, like Bunker Labs for veterans.

So that's where we stand. I am proud of the owners. No small business owner says, I'm going to make a plan to pause my business. That is not in our DNA as entrepreneurs. So that the hard decisions that our owners are having to make right now, particularly in isolation, we're trying to be there for them not just from a technology standpoint, but also to connect with each other.

So on Hello Alice, we have this Business For All community of owners who talk to each other every day. There's about 160,000 chatting with each other. I think the best advice you can get from anyone is a peer right now, another business owner that you relate to that maybe is in the same industry, same geography, and they can reach out and help you through this crisis.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Finally--

ELIZABETH GORE: Uh-huh, please.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Why is the health of small business so important to this country?

KEZIA WILLIAMS: Oh man, well, I think Kezia said that the amount of jobs that small businesses create is palpable. And we shouldn't just think of the owner but the amount of tax receipts that come into communities for education, infrastructure, the amount of employers, the amount of jobs they're creating, and then finally, central services. We need to remember that child care services, your local eateries, food and beverage, those are all essential services that are provided by small business owners that absolutely have to be supported and keep going.

And then finally, you know, it's not just the economic health of a community. It's the actual ability to-- you know, small business owners are your neighbors, right? They're your neighbors. They're your peers. They're your friends. They're your parents. And so it's also about community, and it's essential that we can keep our communities going by supporting our small business owners.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Kezia, the minority-owned small businesses have been disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, the financial fallout. Why is that?

KEZIA WILLIAMS: Yeah, I actually was going to piggyback off of what Elizabeth said and then answer your question. One of the things that Elizabeth stated was that Black and brown founders were the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs. I want to punctuate that fact by saying that Black women are the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs, and I don't think that that's by happenstance.

I think when people think about entrepreneurship, they automatically assign the success of entrepreneurship or even leaders behind entrepreneurship to white men like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. But Black women lose over $840,000 over their working careers and not because they're not twice as smart, not because they don't work twice as hard, and not because they're not twice as good, but simply because they are Black and they are women and they are trying to overcome the pay gap.

What I think is especially unique about Black women being the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs is that that occurred pre-pandemic, and that occurred with a population that also works full time. I think that that's especially important for us to discuss because these Black women, Black people have been trying to close the pay gap through entrepreneurship. So entrepreneurship for them represented an opportunity for them to create the type of economic independence that majority workplaces often do not create for us.

You talked about the deficit of funding for minority entrepreneurs. There was a report that came out that said only 10% of Black and brown entrepreneurs got access to the Payment Protection Program. This was stimulus dollars funded by taxpayers' hard-working money. So that's Black. That's brown. That's white. That's every other ethnicity they claims themselves to be of citizenship. If you are paying taxes, you should have had fair access to the Payment Protection Program.

You also-- I believe you mentioned the Economic Injury Disaster Loan, right? So did not gain access to those funding, and I think that a part of that has to do with systemic racism. The PPP was allocated through banks. And Black entrepreneurs, brown entrepreneurs have historically not had access to funding the big banks. So because they didn't have those relationships, they got locked out of that process.

For Black upStart-- and I think for other programs like Hello Alice, where Elizabeth was talking about how peers get to communicate with peers-- entrepreneurs are having to find creative and innovative avenues just to keep doors open so they can close those funding gaps and also create jobs where necessary where those exist.

And the last thing that I'll say is also mentioned My Black Receipt. My Black Receipt was a manifestation and a vision in response to the deficit of funding. Instead of relying on the government, which has just, quite frankly, failed Black and brown entrepreneurs, we lead on Black consumers who spend $1.3 trillion annually on products and services and ask them to channel their resources, their cash flows to Black entrepreneurs that need it most so we are prove false that 40% of Black entrepreneurs will go out of business by COVID. Our goal is to reverse that trend.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Kezia, you mentioned there systematic racism and the impact that's had on small business owners and the fact that we're seeing them hardest hit by the financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. But I wanted to highlight what you did about it. You actually, you know, brought some action, and you founded that #MyBlackReceipt campaign. And in three days, people spent more than $0.5 million. How do you keep that momentum up?

KEZIA WILLIAMS: You know, I'm happy that she brought that up because we have actually relaunched My Black Receipt for Black Business Month. Shout out August 2020, it's Black business month.

ELIZABETH GORE: Yay.

KEZIA WILLIAMS: And our goal for-- yes. Our goal for My Black Receipt was, again, to place some of the power-- all of the power, really-- in the consumers' hands and also in businesses that support Black business's hands as well. For My Black Receipt, what was trending during the time of the public execution of George Floyd was this whole concept of buying Black.

Usually, when Buy Black has been popularized in the media, it has been in response to corporate misbehavior, like putting a Black boy in the coolest monkey in the jungle t-shirt. It has been a response to treating Black customers like criminals. It has been in response to putting a white woman in blackface. And this time, it was in response, again, to the public execution of George Floyd. What we wanted to do was not just ask people to put their receipt, which they obtained from a Black-owned business where their protest was, but to make buying Black more than just the hashtag, more than just a one-day activation, more than just the public call to action, but an actual physical manifestation of you putting your dollars in a Black-owned business materialized in the document, which was a receipt.

On the other half of that, the receipts were uploaded into a technical platform and probably counted for all of the nation to see that we are greater together than we ever are as individuals. We set a goal of spending $5 million over 17 consecutive days, and I'm happy to report that we spent $7.6 million over those 17 consecutive days.

ELIZABETH GORE: That's so awesome.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Very impressive.

KEZIA WILLIAMS: Thank you.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Elizabeth, I want to bring you in, in terms of advice that you can offer small business owners because this is obviously not business as usual. So how do they navigate the unknown.

ELIZABETH GORE: Yeah, there's three things I'll say. One is apply, apply, apply. We-- to Kezia's point, we were so frustrated by the lack of funding from federal heading into small business owners that, frankly, are the ones who are working the hardest. And so we're really trying to create creative capital and lift it up from small grants from organizations. Verizon actually-- with Hello Alice, we have a business small grant program launching in a couple of weeks that is making sure that we support the-- both the pivot and the success of diverse small business owners. But there are a lot of private grant programs out there.

Second, I would say is really think of erasing your white board and starting over. No matter how awesome your business plan was prior to COVID-19, you have to relook at it, rebuild it. The world has changed. Customer behavior has changed. Cash flow has changed, digital-- so that's the second.

And the third is really about not making decisions in isolation, even though we all are in our homes right now. Reach out to groups. I mean, look at the program that Kezia runs. Do six-week bootcamps. Go apply to things like that. Find other founders. Join our Business For All community, and get help. So you know, find creative capital, erase that whiteboard and start again, and don't make decisions in isolation I think are the three biggest things that I would tell any business owner right now.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Elizabeth, you mentioned there that Hello Alice has partnered with Verizon to help small business owners especially with that pivot, that transition if pre-pandemic they were actually relying on interacting with customers in brick-and-mortar stores, in physical stores. And now all of a sudden, it's like, well, your store is closed. How are you going to stay in business?

ELIZABETH GORE: Right.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: So how are you-- how can you help small businesses who were so reliant on stores to now move into the digital space and do it successfully?

ELIZABETH GORE: Sure, so we've created-- we call them guides, but really think of them as e-learning modules, on how to pivot your business in specifically the industry you're in. So we worked with Yahoo Finance and Verizon on how do you do digital transformation and pivot. So if you go to Hello Alice, we have free learning guides that will help you really access internet tools, payment, cash-- payment options, and so on. And then you can sign up for sprints and do those e-learning guides with your peers.

So you can select 10 other-- let's say you're a bakery or you're a shoe store-- other owners that are going through the same process and go through a 10-day sprint together to do that. There's mentors involved in that. There's how-to experts. And frankly, that's any transformation right now in your business.

If you're required by law to go cashless, we'll help you through that. If you're going for the first time in selling your wares online, we can help you do that. So as a social enterprise, we're a free service to really help owners go through that. And in the COVID-19 business center, you can identify which industry you're in and then which state because that will, obviously, say from a legal perspective, what are the transformations you have to do, but also from a trend perspective.

And then finally, I'll say that our founders who really want to connect with other founders they identify with-- if you want a search for an ethnicity or a location or an industry or gender, again, please reach out and find those peer-to-peer mentors that you relate with because they'll give you that best advice for that transformation.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: So Elizabeth, what do you think will help small businesses be successful during this period of crisis?

ELIZABETH GORE: Oh man, you know, I love entrepreneurs because they always pivot. And being an entrepreneur and an owner is incredibly hard. And particularly, I think women, people of color, we're working double hard already, and we have extreme highs and lows, whether there's a pandemic or not, if you run a small business. I don't know any small business or entrepreneur who's not always worried about cash flow, not just right now.

So that entrepreneurial spirit is what makes small business owners great. I actually think we will see some incredibly innovative businesses come out of this pandemic, particularly women. I'm biased, but we tend to really build need-based businesses where we see a hole that we can fill or we see a need in our community that maybe we can help and monetize. So I think you're going to see almost a gap-filling.

The second thing I'll say is even big enterprises-- Fortune 100s are having to shift and pivot right now. Small businesses and entrepreneurs can shift faster. So if you can jump in there and plug a hole for an enterprise company and make money that way right now, because we tend to be able to move faster and be more nimble, that's a massive opportunity.

So I think you're going to see new businesses come out of this. I think you're going to see women, you know, elevate even higher. We're also giving more agility right now because we're working from home. We're with our children. We don't have to fight for a seat at the table as much because we're digital. So while I want to be clear that this is a very hard time for folks, I think we're going to see incredible innovation from what we call the new majority of business owners-- women, people of color, our military community, the LGBTQ+ community. I think you're going to see some exciting stuff.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Kezia, some of the most powerful business owners have emerged from periods of great distress. So what kind of businesses do you think will succeed right now?

KEZIA WILLIAMS: I'm happy that you started it off like that. Yeah, some of the greatest entrepreneurs have emerged from periods of stress and de-stress-- yeah, or distress. A couple of entrepreneurs that come to mind as being my heroes, Mary McLeod Bethune, you know, folks normally remember her as being the founder of the Bethune-Cookman University, but she started off with a one-room schoolhouse. And she paid her rent every single week by selling sweet potato pies to the mine workers down the street. I think there are so many stories that often go untold when we're talking about Black entrepreneurship and how to succeed specifically like a Black entrepreneur using the Black-print.

What type of businesses do I think will emerge successful during this time? I think it's those businesses that remember their purpose but forget their point. And when I say that, I say that we walked into 2020 with a plan that we made in 2019 and then COVID gut-checked us--

ELIZABETH GORE: Now it's gone.

KEZIA WILLIAMS: Right. So the entrepreneurs who will be successful--

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Exactly, exactly.

KEZIA WILLIAMS: --in 2019, my business is going to hit six figures. In 2019, I'm going to become an employer. In 2019, I'm going to expand outside of this market. This is my purpose, but perhaps the plan has changed. And so entrepreneurs who embrace that concept I think will go further than those entrepreneurs who are digging in heels and holding on. They will go backwards. We're only going forwards.

And secondly, I think that partnership has emerged as well as something that folks should consider. As we watch the news and we see Microsoft trying to buy TikTok and we see a lot of these mergers and acquisitions, you know, folks are having continual conversations about what it means to work with other people-- Black entrepreneurs especially, right? I always like to encourage Black entrepreneurs to consider the concept of rising tides lift all boats.

Sometimes we're so focused on the next boat, right? Is that boat bigger than my boat? They a medium-sized boat. I'm a small boat. But we need to be focused on being the tide, right? The tide lifts all boats. And in that parable, I believe, is the whole power of collectivism, right? Community.

With the Black community, I think it's important for Black consumers and consumers that support Black-owned businesses, whether you're Black or not, to extend grace. What I've heard through this whole Buy Black movement is folks are expecting Black-owned businesses to do business like Amazon and Walmart without Amazon and Walmart budget. Just like a lot of the big businesses that Elizabeth had mentioned are trying to figure things out, small businesses are trying to figure things out as well. But while they're trying to figure things out, that does not devalue the product and service that they deliver. And so moving forward, I think it's those businesses that will emerge as successful competitors in this next phase.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: #Next20 is all about looking at issues that will shape the future. What do you think minority-owned small businesses will look like in 20 years, Kezia?

KEZIA WILLIAMS: My goal is to see the number of black entrepreneurs double. But my goal is to have entrepreneurs also realize that starting a business is one of the most smart and intelligent things that you can do in 2020, whether you have an employee or not. Of course, we advocating for that. Statistics say that Black wealth is projected to be zero by year 2053.

So in 20 years from now, my goal is to have Black people really understand how to speak fluently the language of wealth. What does that mean? We're entering into an unprecedented time where the stock market is going on sale. If you have cash that you can spare, cash that you can invest, that's an opportunity for you to potentially get your own seed funding through investing, right?

Now is the time for you to get your credit together in the event that you can buy an asset at a discount. Now is it time for you to starting an LLC with your family so if you cannot buy assets as an individual, you can buy assets as a collective. Now is the time to make intentional decisions about controlling, again, our $1.3 trillion worth of buying power now, when Black-owned businesses need it, not later 20 years from now.

So 20 years from now, my hope is that Black wealth will be double, triple, quadruple what it is right now, that there will be a lot of Black investors that perhaps Black entrepreneurship is not for you, but your investment in your brokerage account is looking real fat and looking real healthy, and finally, that Black family LLCs can say, I could not buy an asset as an individual, but I bought this whole block with my family, and I'm very proud of it.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Elizabeth, in closing, small businesses are suffering. It's a really challenging environment out there, but give us a reason to hope.

ELIZABETH GORE: Well, because they are small business owners. They are the most innovative people in our country. And most of all, they're banding together, helping each other. And I think for the first time, they're getting the credit they deserve of-- when you walk down Main Street and you go into shock because your favorite restaurant, your child care facility, where you buy your groceries is closed, I think we all realize the extreme importance and value of small business owners through our everyday lives.

And then most of all, I'm very proud to see the importance of Black and brown founders and women in our military community lifted up as those owners and as the future of business. So I'm optimistic because I'm an entrepreneur , and I know how hardworking entrepreneurs are. They pivot to everyday already. They're versatile, and they have good values.

So I'm all about the future. And I agree with Kezia that we are on an up trajectory of lifting up those small business owners in the right way. And Hello Alice, we'll be here day and night to help any small business owner pull through this crisis, but also through future opportunities.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Well, Elizabeth Gore, co-founder of Hello Alice, and Kezia Williams, CEO of The Black upStart. It was great to have you both on. Thanks so much.

KEZIA WILLIAMS: Thank you, Sibile.

ELIZABETH GORE: Thank you both. Kezia, you're awesome. Thank you, Sibile.

KEZIA WILLIAMS: Elizabeth, you're great. Love the polka dots.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Our next panelists are living this conversation every single day. They're small business owners who have been directly impacted by the pandemic, and they've pivoted their business strategy to stay in business. I now want to welcome in Lyndsey Brantley, CEO of Camellia Alise and Michelle Swittenberg, co-founder of BRWL Studio. I'm going to ask you both to tell us a little bit about yourself. Lyndsey, let's start with you. I know that since there's been this stay-at-home, shelter-in-place orders, the amount of demand for makeup has gone down. So how has this impacted your business, which is skin care?

LYNDSEY BRANTLEY: Yes, so thank you so much for having me, by the way, today. So I have a business model that consists of three different things. I'm actually in our spa today. So we have a brick-and-mortar spa. We have a training academy, and then we have natural skincare products. So with COVID hitting, we had to instantly close our doors to our spa and our training academy and pivot many of our resources to our e-commerce sales for our skincare products. So it's been quite a challenge. I'll definitely say it wasn't easy to change things around so quickly, but we did it. And our company is still moving forward.

In addition to that, I normally do skincare products specifically for ingrown hairs, razor bumps, stretch marks, things of that sort. But we also started pivoting into making hand sanitizers because we had a large shipment of aloe and some other natural ingredients come right before COVID hit. So we had to change some of the products we offered, as well as some of the services we offered.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Michelle, you're the co-founder of BRWL Studio. Walk us through what was going on when New Jersey actually shut down all of the spaces, including your business.

MICHELLE SWITTENBERG: All right, similar to Lyndsey, we didn't really see this coming. The week before we were actually physically shut down, we had started to test live-streaming. I was probably one of the last people to get a webcam on Amazon. And we had started testing live-streaming. And as soon as the pandemic hit and studios were shut, we went to solely live-streaming our boxing and yoga classes. And then as we were coming out of the shutdown and things were allowed to open up outside, we started with small what we called sweat squads going to people's backyards and having our boxing and yoga classes. And then finally, when the parks opened, we were able to go to having outdoor classes.

So now, we pivoted our business. We still have our brick and mortar because we were in the process of building out a 2,700 square foot studio in Orange, so we'll have that. But we use that now solely for live-streaming our classes. And then as I said, going-- now we go outside to parks in the general area and brawl, basically.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Michelle, I'm just going to ask you a practical question here. How easy is it to box wearing a mask?

MICHELLE SWITTENBERG: Well, the good thing is, outside in New Jersey, as long as we can maintain physical distance, we don't have to wear masks. So we're very conscious about making sure people wear masks to the location and then separate. And then in our studio, we've had to be super careful. It's set up so the one trainer that's in the studio leading the class is actually on a different floor from the person who's producing-- well, it's me-- who's producing the live-stream. So the trainers are not wearing masks, but I am when I'm in the studio.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Verizon recently launched this program, Comeback Coach, that provides one-on-one training between business owners and business-- small business experts. What advice do you have, Michelle, for people, based off of your experience, who are trying to weather this crisis?

MICHELLE SWITTENBERG: I think the piece of advice I have-- and I sort of wake up and tell myself this advice every day-- is stop waiting for things to get back to normal. We need to assume that this is the new normal, and we have to continue to be creative every day for how we're going to do business going forward. So even with BRWL, while we'd love to get back to, you know, a situation where we're in a studio, we have lots of ideas for ways you can still build the camaraderie that happens when you're in a studio but outside of a studio or even distanced over technology.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Lyndsey, what's your advice? You said that you've pivoted your business-- skincare, even making sanitizers. So what's your advice for other small business owners who are trying to survive?

LYNDSEY BRANTLEY: My advice is feed the need. Find the need. For us, we had to change things because we needed to meet the needs of our clients. At the moment, they didn't necessarily need to come in for facials. They couldn't do that. So we made sure that they had DIY kits, things that they could do at home in the interim. And I totally agree. As a business owner, stop waiting for things to get back to normal because this is the new normal. So I just say, you know, look at being innovative and finding a way to meet the needs of people currently.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Michelle, looking forward, when you look at the landscape, what do you think will be the future of working out? Do you think it's people staying at home exercising and streaming, or do you think that we will eventually get back to the place where people are heading back to workout together-- not just in a park with social distancing, but together?

MICHELLE SWITTENBERG: I think that realistically, and just based on science, I think it's going to be a while before people are going to feel safe being in an enclosed space. So I do think that people are understanding that they can still work out at home. They can-- you know, some people workout solely. Some people, you know, do the live-stream classes. There are people who need on demand, for instance. So we're trying to address all of those modalities because I do think that we're not getting back into the studio anytime soon.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Lyndsey, what can customers, consumers do to support small businesses like yours?

LYNDSEY BRANTLEY: You can shop with us online. And also a lot of the classes that we were having, you know, in our studio, we're now doing virtually as well. So you know, look for small business owners. Buy from them. Support them. Follow them on social media. So I just say to support us is, you know, to buy from us. And even though it's in a different way-- you may not be buying services, but you can buy more products. You could buy more virtual consultations.

So just support us by sending your dollars our way. We need it. You know, I'm trying to support my six employees right now who can't come into the spa. So we need all the support we can get.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Yes, absolutely. You mentioned the six employees that you're trying to support. How has your experience been, when it comes to the Paycheck Protection Program and getting some assistance from our government?

LYNDSEY BRANTLEY: So I will say that I was very fortunate. You know, I was so excited to listen to things that Kezia was speaking about. I was one of the people who was fortunate enough to get the PPP in the first round, but it was simply because I had an established relationship with my banker. So as soon as it, you know, was available, I went to that person. A lot of small business owners don't have established relationships with, you know, bankers, and it was a lot harder for them. So I found myself having to counsel others and send resources so that some people who didn't know where to go could find a banker to help them. But I was very fortunate in getting the PPP the first round.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And Michelle, we've been talking about how small businesses owned by minorities have been hardest hit during this pandemic. What has been your experience with BRWL Studio, in terms of getting some assistance, and what advice do you think you'd like to share with other small business owners?

MICHELLE SWITTENBERG: I think what we-- we've only been open since November of 2019, so I think what we had built in was a good starter community. And that has definitely helped us because people who had been coming to BRWL when we were open continued to come online. And then I think in terms of our trainers, one of the things that we saw was a lot of the big-box gyms that they worked at also immediately furloughed them. So we were able to keep brawling.

And actually, we've been able to attract new trainers to what I'm considering our platform, our live-stream platform. And we sort of switched even our payment model, just to make it more lucrative for trainers to be trainers at BRWL. Because you know, since I own my building, I didn't have a mortgage that I needed to pay, necessarily. So I was able to funnel more of those resources to my trainers.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: And in the next 20 years, what do you think the landscape will look like for small business owners, Lyndsey?

LYNDSEY BRANTLEY: So I think that the future is bright. There are a lot of business owners right now pivoting. They're being innovative. Their businesses are growing. Right now, you know, we have so many people supporting minority businesses more so than had been in the past couple of years, I believe so. I'm excited for businesses.

And also, Sibile, just to speak-- you know, I spoke about PPP. But before PPP, I actually funded my business by doing pitch contests. I won over 10 pitch contests. So I just also want to encourage other business owners to know that there is alternative funding out there for small businesses as well.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Michelle, looking at the landscape for minority-owned small businesses, what do you expect to see in 20 years?

MICHELLE SWITTENBERG: I mean, I think the one thing in COVID that we've been able to demonstrate is how nimble small businesses can be. I mean, even when I look at the restaurants in my area, they were so nimble at becoming also marketplaces. They were nimble to, you know, move to takeout. I think that's what set-- has set small business apart from some of the larger facilities.

And then also I think that people sort of-- our customers sort of understand the unique niche that we occupy and are-- probably now see how much more lively, for example, a downtown is with small businesses, versus, you know, other types of businesses.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Do you--

MICHELLE SWITTENBERG: So I think the future is bright.

SIBILE MARCELLUS: Right, right, right, absolutely. Well, Lyndsey Brantley, CEO of Camellia Alise, and Michelle Swittenberg, co-founder of BRWL Studio, it was great to have this conversation, a very insightful #Next20 episode. Thanks so much.

MICHELLE SWITTENBERG: Thank you.

LYNDSEY BRANTLEY: Thank you.