Will Bachman 00:01
Hey, welcome to Unleashed. I’m your host Will Bachman and today’s episode is a request for your help. The global coronavirus pandemic is going to be devastating to hundreds of 1000s of businesses around the world. owners and managers who run bars, restaurants, yoga studios, nail salons, and so many other businesses that are being just shut down. And we’re also talking about cultural institutions and not for profits are going to be shut down because of the pandemic. And the people who run these organizations are going to be looking for answers. So what Umbrex is doing is we’re putting together a Umbrex Small Business small organization, task Coronavirus Task Force, what we’re doing is we’re doing two things. And we’d love to get your help. So the first is we’re creating a playbook on how to respond to the Coronavirus. And then we’re going to first do that we want to work quickly on that, we’re going to publish the playbook. And then we’ll provide coaching and advice. The playbook is going to be open source and free obviously. Then we’ll provide coaching and pro bono advice either one on one to small business owners to help them navigate the playbook, or ends and groups virtual online by phone. So we’d love your help in a number of different aspects of the work plan. Let me go through those just to give you a sense of what I see as parts of the work. So first is creating content for the playbook. That’s including researching existing resources, we’re not trying to necessarily create things from scratch, creating an outline, we need someone to serve as the editor in chief, someone to serve as copy editor people to draft individual sections. So there’s a part around creating content. next section is creating the design and publishing the playbook. I’m not sure what exact form it should take. Should it be some kind of wiki that we can easily update a website. A Kindle book may be multiple forms. So we need some folks who have expertise and user interface, user experience and design to help create and publish this. We need help recruiting coaches. So you may volunteer as a coach fantastic. We also need help recruiting additional coaches, vetting people creating collateral for that outreach to potential coaches, sending outreach emails, sending LinkedIn messages, sending tweets, explaining the program to coaches and doing some onboarding. Next step is we need to spread the word to the business owners who are affected and who need this advice and help make them aware of the service. That you’re creating a website social media posts, sending outreach, and then doing some sort of intake or processing of advisees. We have some need some help on round administration. So we need a database to take to track coaches and advisees. It might make sense for us to create a tool to measure the impact of well, it’s not my my primary focus, but to just measure how we’re doing. And then we also need outreach department organizations, we want to identify appropriate government agencies, for us to reach out to to let them know about this resource. Identify the individuals that those agencies get their contact info, reach out and explain the program, we need some legal advice, both around setting up appropriate confidential agreements for our task force members. And also for the participants potentially, to make sure that people are and then also some legal advice specifically on some of the content of the playbook. So let me give you just a couple quick thoughts around what the actual playbook will contain. This is by no means exhaustive, these are my quick thoughts. There should be a selection on financial so projecting out cash flow. If you’re a small business, if you’re in a restaurant, just being able to project out your revenue, which may be zero, it may be low, if you’re doing providing takeout or delivery services, how to estimate the date on when your business will become insolvent, which is not a pleasant thing to discuss. But it’s going to be on the horizon for a lot of businesses and how to in a mature and calm manner. figure that out. strategies to conserve cash in the near term. things around negotiate renegotiating payment terms, expense review checklist, how to cancel or defer non essential spend, looking into how factoring works, delaying payments if necessary, rather than, you know, not paying at all to people that you owe money to and then negotiating a prepayment from customers. If possible subpart section in the on data. So what are some data retention requirements for entrepreneurs or business owners? If they do need to shut down? How do they protect data in the event of a business shut down in the event that they can start up again someday? How did they hold on to that data section on safety and security in the playbook health of employees, customers, vendors, etc as well as data security, IT security physical security of your plant if you’re not going to your factory to make sure it’s not broken into section on obtaining funds, so there may be local aid, state aid, federal aid, government aid, if you’re outside the US from various sources, it may be confusing and difficult to navigate. So, how to obtain funds as well as from banks or friends and family, how to think about tapping personal assets to fund the business and bankruptcy. So not a pleasant topic, but understanding bankruptcy what are the various options in your state or country and a checklist to prepare to enter bankruptcy in a as prepared manner as possible. Finally, some section on contracts. So, checklists to itemize all existing contracts suppliers how to some tips on how to work with contracts in this sort of acts of God kind of scenario, and his section on employment issues and law. So in terms of both furloughing or laying off employees, if necessary, other approaches to lowering costs while retaining staff and guidelines for working remotely, productively and pleasantly. So those are some initial brainstorm idea of what the playbook can contain. Just to give you a few ideas, by no means exhaustive. So, again, we looking for your help on multiple aspects as I laid out in the work plan. You don’t have to be the content creator, you can help with outreach. If you’re interested in participating, you can email me at unleashed@umbrex.com. And in your email, give me ideally something about you. So I know know who you are, maybe include a link to your LinkedIn profile, give me how you think you’d like to help this process. Also, if you are listening to this and you need help, you can email the same email address unleashed@umbrex.com. And give me some indication of how you what kind of help you need, what kind of business you have, where you’re located. Within a day or so I’m expecting to have something online where people can where I can point people to, I’ll publish another episode here on Unleashed with that information. So check back in a couple days, check these episodes out. And this is a time when a lot of us are in Extremis. And we also some of us may have some time on our hands. projects have been canceled or delayed. This is a chance for us to be on a wartime footing and do our part thanks