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you the broadcast is now starting all attendees are in listen-only mode good afternoon everyone welcome to the virtual roundtable on March 15th 2018 today our guest is Patrick Newman from the Northwest Trade Adjustment Assistance Center he will be discussing this program and taking any questions you might have at when you have your questions please type them in as they come up and he will get to them either as it's going or towards the end and as always this is recorded so if you want to access it later or share it with anyone just let us know and we can make sure you get that recording and with that I will hand it over Patrick thank you so much uh I just yep however you want to do it all right there we go I will thank you all for for coming on today as manda mentioned I'm here to talk about the Trade Adjustment Assistance for firms program and what we are is a federal funding assistance program designed to assist companies that have been hurt by trade or import impact specifically many of you may know about the Trade Act or Trade Adjustment Assistance for workers programs so when a large employer lays off a bunch of people there sometimes eligible for benefits retraining benefits things like that we are the sister program of that designed to help the company survive become more competitive etc so our program is run by the US Department of Commerce and specifically the US economic development administration by way of clarification I am NOT a member of the US economic development administration our organization is a non-profit we contract with EDA to run this for the Northwest so we cover Idaho Oregon Washington and Alaska now okay so let me just jump in here we call ourselves a federal grant for maiden American companies none of that is really official North technically accurate we are not a grant program okay so we don't take in a bunch of applications and then pick and choose between the ones we think are most deserving or eligible what we are is a federal program so there are a specific set of criteria that a company has to demonstrate and if they demonstrate those they are eligible for the program and my other job besides doing client development outreach is I'm the one who gets to do the application for the company that is cost free so when a company calls and says hey I'm interested what is it that you guys do I walk them through kind of 30 minutes here's our program here are the benefits here's why you'd want to do it and here's the criteria and then I pull together their application and submit it to EDA so that's kind of a unique thing that you know typically grants you guys have to do them yourself I'm I'm here to help ensure that the company is eligible saving of time if they're not and then knowing right the criteria eligible firms can receive up to 75,000 in matching funds that's the other part of this this isn't a grant because the money doesn't go to the company okay what we do is on the next line we we help them hire technical assistance what we call consultants so they can't purchase equipment they have to go out and hire somebody many of you probably are aware of organization Idaho tech health for example they are manufacturing quote unquote consultants they will come in to a company and do lean manufacturing or product development things like that that is the kind of organization we would help a firm hire so we would identify what kind of projects would help them become more competitive what might help them develop new say more efficiencies and then we would contract directly with someone like tech help or a web developer and help them fund the pro the projects that way the reason we do it that way is one that keeps us from being a subsidy and this keeps us WTO compliant so it's a little bit of a strange deal because again we're not a grant we're not giving a money but we are essentially discounting their assistance we cover mostly manufacturing companies okay that's kind of how the program was formed was to help manufacturers we have since expanded into food production agriculture fisheries and some service firms that we have had less luck with service burns a little harder to prove import competition and as I mentioned to cover Alaska Idaho Oregon and Washington we used to have Montana but past that office that the Denver Denver sister office eligibility so what are we looking for it's similar to the Tradex program we need to show that a firm has is in some kind of distress or that there's been an actual impact okay so we're not looking for hey I'm looking to get into this industry but I know there's already a heavy presence of imports I'm kind of already impacted it's not a barrier to entry it's more are you already in business and impacted so a firm has to be in business and have sales for two years and the next two are very straightforward I need to show that over a generally two year period sales and employment have declined I'm not looking for a massive decline I don't want a firm to be down 50% before I talk to them but there does need to be a decline so layoffs are generally the first indicator that we would be someone to talk to and then the the linchpin of our program is import competition how can we show that part of those sales losses are because of import competitions the way we do that is we get to go talk to a few of their customers and that's usually where a lot of companies are like what I don't know about that it's very non-invasive we generally do it I prepare a statement and have their customers send it back to me basically saying yeah we reduce our purchases from X company because we're buying some import products that's about all their customers have to do but that's really the the best way that that EDA has has shown that we can say yeah this cuz this company is losing customers because of import competition as I mentioned we meaning I complete their applications for the company it doesn't cost them anything at that point they could get through the program be approved and stop let's say we don't want to go any further for some reason the company will have spent $0 I would also like to mention it's not an excessive amount of information I collect it's generally things they should have which is profit and loss statements balance sheets company information which shouldn't take more than 10 minutes if they know their company and then the customer part of it is really where sometimes it takes them some time to find someone who's willing to to sign off or talk to me but I can get these applications done in about a week if the company is on top of things if they're not it can take a little bit longer after we get a company into our program that's the application phase we do a strategic plan this is where we basically put in all the projects that they want us to help them fund that is about half projects and half company evaluation SWOT analysis things like that but this is really where it starts becoming fun and real for the company because they can look at what kind of projects would they want to do over a five-year period put them into the strategic plan and then we move on to implementation I put on there four to six months four months is if I can get the company to move fairly quickly on the application phase and that's that's building in probably a two to three week time frame six months is if they're taking a couple months to get me the information I need but the nice thing about our program is I'm there for the application phase my director is there for the strategic plan phase and then we have a contract administrator who works with the firm and whoever the result is going to be to implement projects and make sure that everything is fully fun the strategic plan is basically it's an analysis competition it's a review of the company and this is where companies get to say what they want to do we don't come in and say these are the projects that will make your company better it is highly company driven my directors been doing this for I think 30 years so he's seen a lot of different types of firms he may come into a machine shop and say I know you guys want to do all these kind of things you might also want to consider doing some you know lean training like it's kind of a mess around here well we don't come in and tell anybody what they're going to do and we don't tell them who they're going to use so if a marketing firm sends us a referral and says this company might be eligible and that company decides not to do any kind of marketing projects or whatever that's not our business it's it's we're here to help the firm and pretty much only the firm project ideas we overwhelmingly do marketing projects and I think the reason for that is we largely help smaller companies we like our sweet spot is probably 15 million in annual sales and under but we help a lot of companies that are in the 800 thousand a year in sales and under these are people who have a few employees let one go they're eligible and they're good at what they make you don't have a presentation you okay man better yes thank you sorry everyone this is still recording with the screen fully showing perfect okay so like I was saying we largely deal with small manufacturers so these are people who are good at what they make right now but they don't necessarily have marketing backgrounds don't have the money to bring on marketing people that's usually what we hear is I talk to a company yesterday in Oregon and he was a winery and he said if we can hire someone to go do Costco shows for us on the weekends as a contract salesperson basically that would make a huge difference so it's a big expense to bring on somebody like that but if we can come in and help with a web development upgrade right or do market research they want to expand into a new market for example not a bad idea to get 50% off on hiring some market research done outside of that we do a lot of manufacturing efficiencies process control quality control certifications IT system basically it's anything that you hire out we can generally help pay for IT systems are interesting to me because if a company just wants to go buy QuickBooks off the shelf we can't do it but basically anything else we can we we helped a lumber mill in Idaho or lumber company then lumber in a logging side and they didn't have a system to talk to each other on inventory control so we helped them fund that and that's not a cheap thing to do and we were able to pay for half of it so that that was a big help to them quality control certifications you know a lot of machine shops looking to get in as subcontractors and we deal with Washington so a lot of those want to get in with the Boeing for example they all of a sudden need to get you know certifications whether it's ISO or a RAF if you're gonna be a subcontractor and all of a sudden they're requiring you to get a quality control certification that's some time consuming but it's also expensive and we can help pay for some of that there we go so implementation is in minutes if we have a contract administrator who works with the companies once they are approved and ready to start spending one of the things that we have seen in the past is companies will get started on projects before they're before we're allowed to start paying and we beg and plead them to listen to us sometimes they don't and get started on things we cannot fund projects until their strategic plan has been approved and I make this very clear to companies my director makes it very clear generally we don't have a problem but when it is a problem it's it's a bad deal so her job is to make sure that everyone's contracts are signed properly that the consultant is doing work to the company's satisfaction so what what I really like about this program is a company can get in participate and still you know not worry so much about what the criteria for eligibility are or they don't have to work through any kind of government contracts to make sure that they can you know that they're eligible for reimbursement or something that is our job we handle eligibility we handle the contracts they just have to worry about getting us information and doing projects the firm will have five years to complete their projects once they're approved and that has now become a firm deadline we used to have companies that was kind of linger on for 10 to 12 years and not really do much and they were kind of eating up a lot of our obligated funding so that's now a firm deadline generally speaking if a company is interested and active that is not a problem most of the time within three years they use up their funds do some projects that build on each other and we like to see them start a project within the first six months and then review I didn't want to get into really a lot of the eligibility stuff it's it's really what we're looking for is companies that are either out there frankly complaining about import competition but mainly it's layoffs I can tell you as a federal program in this part of the country a lot of times especially when I met how kind of cold calling or talking to companies they see federal government they don't really want to share much information with us and I completely understand that when I came on board my my then boss was kind of like well we cold call around here and I said that doesn't go well for you does it and he said no so really reaching out to economic development professionals who know these companies better you're there you know our main office is in Seattle I'm in Boise we cover a pretty big territory it's not really effective for me to just call people to say I'm with the feds simiiar income statements it's not a good way to do it I'm also very aware that it doesn't matter who you companies don't really like to tell you not necessarily the truth but you know if they're laying people off that's not something anybody's very happy about so you know we can't always get to people and that's unfortunate or we'll get to them too late but you know if you hear about somebody who's laying people off odds are they're in an industry that has some kind of import competition anymore it's a lot of the shackles have been taken off us in order to get companies in kind of like adding the firm's or the service firms it's hard to do but we have helped some service firms we helped a software developer for example that was a surprise but he lost some customers to Indian outsourcing so it's it's the employee peace is the key that's the one I had the least amount of flexibility on but if you do come across any firms in your area that are letting off even one or two at some of these smaller firms that's generally enough for us to come in and help yeah shoot is it competitive or how competitive is it is every company who applies every company who applies and meet the metrics is in so the first the first things I do is I look for I get income statements and I get their quarterly unemployment tax reports which just through the state it shows how many employees they had each month I run the numbers and if they're eligible we move forward if they're not we stop okay and that's that's one of the biggest things I do here is I can save companies time because they're not going to complete an application and not get the benefit is there a match requirement the the match is not to us it's what they're doing is when they hire say an Idaho Tech help to come and do lean manufacturing training a firm that was eligible for the full amount of $75,000 has a 50/50 match so they do a $50,000 project but tech help they write a contract for 25,000 we write a contract for 25,000 so our money CFOs especially love this because our money never touches their books they don't have to account for it there's no you know accounting laws there's nothing basically they're just doing what they usually would it's just they get a discount on what they're hiring not by hiring so is there can they can come use apply at any time yeah there is no deadline eda requires us to use a recent month what that means is from whatever month ending we use I have four months to finish an application so right now we are still in March if the company came to me I could look at their December ending sales and employment and still have time to get an application if I talked to a compa y in September I will be creating kind of I guess I would call it fiscal years for say June or July so another part that I run into a lot with companies is if I talk to him in September they'll be thinking about their last fiscal year which may have been December ending right and so thus they will know our sales were up the last couple of years whereas if you look at it in the middle of the year it's not and that frankly that's why I don't like to get into a lot of the eligibility percentages and figures because people don't look at their sales and employment numbers like we do and that's something we fight through with EDA every day is they think that everyone reports their sales figures their export figures etc the way they want them to so I get to act as a liaison or chief arguer with EDA not only of the company but you know again that's that's the nice thing for a firm applying they don't have to deal with you know arguing about why they should be allowed in or not that's that's my job so it's pretty what if when they're eligible they can move when you mentioned that if they start the project before the applications approved and then you can't fund it do you not fund that portion that they've already funded or correct we the project we can do that so just assume somebody starts a website project right that's like three parts and it's going to come whatever fifty thousand dollars if the first part they start before they're approved and that's ten thousand dollars we cannot help fund that okay if the if the web developers willing to stop the contract that they had their due the new one with us we can pay for the remaining forty thousand going forward okay on the split base right and for smaller companies so if a company does about a million or under a year in sales they aren't eligible for as much money so they would be eligible for thirty thousand and projects funded but we cover 75% so smaller company they don't again their sales are already down they don't have the cash flow to be out there dropping 75 grand in a couple years so they come to the table with seventy five hundred and we cover twenty two thousand five hundred per project so it's a better split just not as much work can be done but yeah we certainly I mean you know sometimes we come across people who are just like well no I don't want to have to deal with multiple organizations to do a web project and I mean that stocks will help the company find someone who will but yeah generally we're like I said we tell them several times don't start anything unless you have to and then we'll get it moving as fast as possible and pay for what we can okay how many businesses do you qualify per year uh our budgets been shrinking a little bit since we're federally funded we we had a big rush of companies back in about 11 2011 2012 we got I think 22 companies and that really lopsided us so we ran out of money for a few years then we had a backlog of companies that didn't get in so I generally shoot for in the neighborhood of 12 to 15 if we get a lot more than that that basically means we can't pay out the full benefit to the companies that we have now you know we've had firms that have gotten into our program and spent zero dollars and I don't know why you would go through the process of getting into a program and then not doing anything but they do right and sometimes companies come in and use all their money in six months so 12 to 16 what that means in terms of proportion meant is I usually shoot for one a year maybe from Alaska one to two from Idaho Oregon in Washington take up the rest and just because of the number of companies and frankly like I was talking about you get over to Seattle and Portland area people are more willing to do things like this I was talking to a company yesterday brandish roll send them to me I think last June and I finally around December got some kind of response saying yeah I think we are eligible but this you know we're not going to take handouts kind of thing and I get it but somebody is you know and you know the genesis of this program is our government goes out and does trade agreements and consumers love it because they get a lot of choice but all of a sudden your customers are looking at what you sell versus what they can buy coming out of China for a tenth of the price you're going to lose some business now we are away leaving the politics out of it we're not an impediment to imports right we are a remedy we are not an impediment we don't seek to block any trade or just a we recognize that it does have some impacts both good and bad and we're trying to help those that have lost customers so but you know on the some of our sister offices on the East Coast they have so many companies that their benefits usually capped at about 10,000 per firm you know we're still giving full amounts because we have a lot of interest so it's you know it's kind of a double-edged sword there but said you need help recruiting businesses that would qualify I generally yeah I mean in Idaho we don't do as well again if I'm saying 1 to 2 that's if I can get to from Idaho in a year that's a good year we've started doing postcard mailers that are having a lot better impact but if I do those generally I'll get you know 20 companies from Washington each time interested and in Idaho you get one or two right and you know my my job is when people call I help them right now and I'm out there actively trying to find companies but you know it's also tax dollars I'm not going to go run around the state and play and be like oh so how do they learn about the program like businesses well it depends right um we through virtual round tables through you know I do I used to do a lot more of them but just email outreach I used to do some some trips and that just didn't trade shows have never been good generally speaking it's been through kind of direct mailings you know it's it's a weird we're in a weird place right because again it's federally funded we've had some issues with shutdowns right so if the government shuts down and all of a sudden they're like hey you guys can't do outreach for three months what do you do but we also can't go out and bring in 50 companies because we don't have the funding for it so we're always kind of on a line where you know if I could get three companies here from Idaho just consistently that would be great if I could get probably one to two from Alaska that would be great realistic when when numbers drop we go where the easy low hanging fruit is and that's Western Washington Western Oregon because there's a lot of firms there but again you know I I work with like that the MEP is a manufacturing extension partnership right because they're the ones who can do the work it's a lot easier for me to go explain to them hey you know you send me a company they're probably going to do the work with you so some of that and then my director he is on the road quite a bit but it's mostly over in Oregon and Washington so he goes around and does things like these or talk to congressional offices things like that but yeah any you know it's any companies that they come to us my job is to explain it to them let them know that they're eligible as quick as I can and if they are great if not try not to waste anybody's time okay well if you do have any follow-up questions I mean again it's you know it's it's a niche program right I mean we're not we're not casting a wide net to get you know hundreds of programs or companies even into our program I mean it's it's small I think our funding now annually for the whole country is something like 12.5 million okay and that's to cover eleven centers so you know again it's small I think what's effective about our program is we are targeting smaller business right I go out and I look at a lot of programs and you know I kind of like to say you know a lot of these federal programs like to help small business but not too small you know if we've got a company that does three hundred thousand a year in sales and three people and they lose one of them we can generally help and that's that's pretty good yeah you know I mean we've had a few that are you know like 100 million dollars a year in annual sales I mean we're not coming in and saving a firm right they're eligible they get in what we're doing is they're like oh we'll we'll start this project six months earlier now mm-hmm right it's the firms that are you know you never know what will happen but some of them possibly could have gone out of business or just shut doors or whatever so we can come in and make a difference it helps so those are the ones that I like again yeah if you hear of any any companies just just let me know and again I do have it we do have a travel budget I've talked to companies who are like yeah I'm interested but I'm not gonna send information somebody I don't know who's over the phone oh I'll fly up to North Idaho or drive over to eastern Idaho I need to you know it's funny sometimes people will just send you any information you ask for and sometimes doesn't matter yeah so but we are we are flexible you know I'm happy to go I can do a lot of the application in person just show up with my computer and start pulling documents it doesn't take very long but yeah I've you know I live here I'd love to see more Idaho companies we just seem to have a harder time pulling them across so yeah any referrals would be awesome okay thank you everyone if you would like to access this recording contact us here at Commerce there is Patrick contact information if you want to reach out to him directly see you next month thank you thank you you