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everybody i'm jake ward i'm the president of the connected commerce council i'm excited to be your host today as we cover a lot of grounds um we have some great speakers including the governor of nebraska who's been kind enough to give us some time this afternoon we're going to hear from a number of business leaders in nebraska as well as a number of actual small businesses the topic of our discussion today is one that's on the minds of many small businesses both in nebraska around the country how do we survive the coven 19 pandemic but mostly how do we build a new normal right how do we build a road to recovery one that we know is going to be spearheaded by small businesses in the same way that the economy was driven and supported by small businesses in the past and so what is the um what are the hallmarks of progress that we should recognize what are the lessons that we should learn and how should we work together to make those things a reality for our part the commerce council is a non-profit nonpartisan trade association for 11 12 000 small businesses our membership is growing every day largely because of events like this and because of the resources that we are working to put together to make small businesses lives easier in these tumultuous times primary among those resources right now is a report that we recently released called digitally driven which assesses and analyzes the ways that small businesses have utilized digital tools and technologies of all sizes to improve their businesses to be more agile during the pandemic and to prepare for this new normal that we're going to talk about today i'll reference this report a number of times throughout the next hour i'm sure but if you'd like to dig into the report itself connectedcouncil.org you can't miss it so let's let's jump right in we've got a lot of ground cover and not a ton of time to do so so uh it's my privilege to welcome governor ricketts governor thank you for spending the time this morning this afternoon my pleasure thank you very much jake for having me on and thank you to the connected commerce council for not only pulling this together for us to be able to talk about these important issues but uh for allowing me to be on here to talk about what we've got going on with the state and you're exactly right jake when you're talking about how important this is you know certainly as my experience was as the chief operating officer at what is now td and marriage trade we use technology to be able to disrupt an industry and using you know digital technology and digital resources is going to be really important for any industry just in general and then of course you mentioned the pandemic which we're all aware of and that just adds another layer into why it's so important small business especially leverage these technologies to be able to differentiate themselves from their competitors you know certainly one of the things that we saw even prior to this pandemic that according to small business trends 87 of customers started their search for what sort of product or service they want online so you have to be able to reach customers where they are and during this pandemic we've all seen as we're demonstrating right now on this zoom call that digital tools are allowing us to continue to do our jobs in a different way uh it's one of the things that has really highlighted this pandemic that people have figured this out whether it's in business or in education people have gone to those digital tools to be able to make up for the fact that we can't spend as much time as we'd like to being social being there uh being with people uh because we're trying to slow the spread of the virus so uh thank you for you know putting in those forms so we can talk about how those things are impacting small business and really leveraging another aspect of these digital tools which is networking being able to talk with other people about what they're doing that's working and share those ideas i will tell you just again as we're going through this pandemic uh we've had a number of these types of calls with my colleagues around the country to be able to share those best practices of what's going on in other states and get those good ideas small business can do the same thing to be able to network with each other find out what people are doing and what's working and be able to adapt those to their particular industry so your your role here is really important jake and bringing people together to be able to leverage the power of the new technologies and processes that are out there and then to make sure that that information is getting disseminated across the state and this is really again critical not only for our small businesses but for our entire state because small business is what drives new job growth that's a truism that is that has been around this country for a long long time and so small business are the ones who finds those innovations and really takes advantage of them where bigger companies have a harder time doing that just because the bureaucracy goes on in a big company and for our my standpoint as the you know what i see from the state of nebraska you know our vision has been to grow nebraska to be able to help create that environment where we can grow this state and create more job opportunities for our young people to be able to keep them here in the state and of course technology is a key part of being able to make that happen we have 3 500 tech companies here one estimate had over a seven billion dollar impact on our overall state's economy and one of the things we've been trying to do is really foster the ability for technology companies to be able to find the talent they need here in the state of nebraska we've created a talent pipeline starting in seventh and eighth grade where we created our developing youth talent initiative which encourages small businesses or private businesses to work with school districts in a local area develop curriculum starting in seventh and eighth grade so that kids can see what those careers are like when you look at the survey data out there after friends and parents experiences is what drives a young person's uh career choice and so we want to make sure young people are getting exposed to those career opportunities and i t early on our developing new talent initiative for example has been used by holman media and kearney where they set up coding classes for uh young people starting in the seventh and eighth grade also by vista vista beam wireless and gearing doing same sort of thing you know letting young people see what these industries are like and get some hands-on experience and then the idea is to be able to take that into a career academy in high school so you can get further you know hands-on experience i know the papillion-la vista high school for example has a great career academy facebook for example is one of the companies who has helped donate to that to be able to make that happen and facebook has also worked with the spring view plat or springfield platteview schools as well and granted them money to be able to work on their stem and i.t programs but we see this investment here and what we want to do is and continue that on through high school into those post-secondary education and you can do that either through a start in high school with a registered apprenticeship program a youth registered apprenticeship program uh or then take that into a registered depression program after high school so you can learn while you earn whether it's two-year degrees or four-year degrees and of course one of the things that we just passed here in this most recent legislative session was our career scholarship program to allow our institutions of higher education to be able to give those full-ride scholarships to our young people targeting those high demand fields like it so that we can make sure our future leaders have that education to continue to grow the state you know we are known uh as a silicon prairie here in fact uh uh even uh microsoft ceo satya nadella said that he was here talking about recognizing that special character that we got here in nebraska nebraskans are well educated they've got a great work ethic and we certainly have some of the technology leaders here such as amazon and facebook and google they're investing in our state as well as some of our homegold leaders like you know my own company td ameritrade developing that talent and what we want to do is make sure we continue to develop that talent so that our companies have that expertise to be able to grow and then find ways that we can continue to be innovative here in our state uh we are also continuing to invest for example in rural broadband uh not only do we have a rural broadband rural broadband task force that i signed into existence in 2019 but as far as our karzak money we are dedicating about 40 million dollars we've actually been able to stream about 30 million dollars to rural broadband companies to be able to get that connectivity for that last mile and then we've been a leader in some of the other areas like uh senator wishard's build from 2018 which was lb 989 which allowed for uh car companies to be able to pilot uh vehicle you know driverless driverless vehicles here in our state so again let people know that nebraska is ahead of the technology curve you can be innovative here you can be creative and you're going to be rewarded for it and of course you know when you see great uh nebraska companies like huddle being innovative in the technology space and being a world leader you know that we've got this the right stuff here in nebraska to be able to make that happen and to allow our companies to grow and this is again one of the ways that we continue to hold on to our young people here in the state so i appreciate it again jake what you're doing here to help connect these small businesses these are the ones that are going to create the jobs and these are the ones where innovation is going to come from and we need to make sure that they have access to all those digital tools and resources to be able to continue to innovate and make sure that nebraska stays on the cutting edge of that silicon prairie so that we can continue to grow those high demand tech jobs here in our state so with that thank you governor and see if you had anything else that you want to hit upon thank you governor i really appreciate it um audio me or you uh the there is a sort of remarkable thing that we that we identified in the research that we did as i mentioned we engage with about 7 000 small businesses throughout the country including several hundred in nebraska and certainly you're very uh right in the frontier spirit that is the work ethic of nebraskans right and one of the things that we see in states like iowa nebraska kansas is high tech companies are fine during the pandemic right the the i.t training the high-tech investment that frontier of tech is actually doing quite well it's the small business mom-and-pop restaurants bookstores that are feeling the real pinch because they're unable to have normal everyday experiences with the way that they sell things largely in services but that the small businesses in nebraska and other places that were able to integrate online sales sort of full stack service providers have been able to weather the storm more effectively we call that the digital safety net it's the idea that if you're a driver a company that has incorporated those even if you're a lawn care company if you do your your booking in your sales through quickbooks you're more likely to have weathered this with a reduction in revenue that's in the single digits instead of 30 and 40 i wonder what role you see governors and governments at a state level playing in a public private partnership that can lower the education barrier to entry for those small businesses to adopt those tools and expand the safety net yeah so one of the things that we actually did with our i think thanks for that jake because one of the things we did for that uh did with our karzak money is that we had grants to small businesses to work with gallup so they could examine what their business model is and look how to adjust for it in the new pandemic so it wasn't specifically again related to technology per se but of course everything that we do is going to have some sort of technology component but it was just looking at okay i'm a small business what do i need to do to adopt my current business model to be able to adjust for the fact that uh you know we are going to be able to have that same face-to-face interaction we've had in the past so we actually uh did about a million dollars in grants for small businesses to be able to send their people to uh gallup to be able to get some of that training to be able to help educate them and you know we want to continue to look for ways to be innovative to help small businesses do that because as i said they're the ones that are going to drive all the new businesses our new the new jobs and the majority of the new jobs that we have here in our country with the um last question i'll let you get back to doing the people's work i promise the uh the uh diversification of states like nebraska where you have manufacturing agriculture and sort of this emerging high-tech sector what we see a lot of in our research is that um there's a there's a lag in some of the those businesses in terms of the adoption of tools and so it'll probably not come as a surprise that you had an above average lag in small business adoption but it should come as very good news that the percentage of those businesses nebraska surveyed far exceeded the national average in terms of who was going to use these tools and services and who was looking forward to adopting online advertising or cloud computing or online sales to me as somebody who who supports those small businesses and wants to give them access to the tools that they need to succeed that is the iron that we need to strike while it's hot with programs and and with funding through cares act as well and i'm i'm i'm curious if you're seeing that if you're hearing those success stories from because we're going to talk to a couple of chambers in just a second with brian and dave and if you're seeing that reported back from from um you know the communities that you visit and from the small business uh owners that you you meet every day yeah so i guess what i've seen at jake is a couple of things one you know obviously again one of the things we've done with our karzak money is we've had grants that were really targeted small businesses uh people who were employing you know anywhere between one and fifty people were kind of our first priority that when we were talking about uh karezak money because we knew that they were gonna have a tough time with this pandemic and one of the great success stories i think we see here in nebraska you mentioned how small business here is adapting adopting those digital tools faster than maybe other parts of the country we saw the same thing with regards to the ppp program that paycheck protection program that the small business administration offered we saw that we had one of the highest rates of uptake of that of any state in the country and i think that's one of the reasons why you know our small business has done relatively well here in nebraska you know we do have the the lowest unemployment rate the country and have had for the last couple months at three and a half percent um and i think that's because uh you know our small businesses have great relationships with their community bankers to be able to take advantage of that and so we saw that benefit here in nebraska i think again you've got the same opportunity jake with regard to getting the word out about leveraging the digital resources that are out there for small business because we do have a relatively tight community you know this is not california where there's gobs and gobs of people in nebraska you know those connections to get to somebody is pretty sure it's usually one or two people and that's one of the things that you know as a small state we've got to be nimble and take advantage of the fact that we can be faster to market than some of those bigger states ike california that we can network our small businesses together faster than say someplace in california where just the size is going to be a problem so we can take advantage of that here so people can see what kind of tools they have available whether it's going to be the digital resources or the loans that were coming from the small business administration or just again a chance to be able to get connected with their colleagues to share best practices and ideas i think that's if you know if that's going to be our competitive advantage in nebraska we've got to take advantage of it all right i appreciate it very much governor thank you for your time uh and for your leadership supporting small businesses we appreciate it very much my pleasure jay thanks for having me on thank you uh and let's let's hear a little bit about that network effect uh throughout nebraska we'll hear first from brian sloan from the nebraska chamber of commerce brian no i think this is i think it's a good lead into the conversation i think i find when the pandemic's over that nebraska is going to have fared probably better than most any other state in the in the country and it really relates i always three areas i always give credit one the governor before he's off he's done a pretty phenomenal job of of giving us clear and rational leadership throughout this process to our health care providers have been phenomenal and continue to be phenomenal and three the ppp loans that he discussed and what our bankers did we have this culture in nebraska of coming together and and and doing big things and and i think we saw the best of it they're seeing the best of it through this pandemic and the small business community was the same way we had businesses overnight uh transfer to a digital workplace and and that as you guys know is easier said than done but the speed and the adeptness in which i saw our small businesses across the state make that transition virtually overnight um was actually a pretty big shock to me um and and it is it has changed our world in in many ways um a couple things i want to highlight in terms of where we go as a state and why digital platforms are so key to what we're doing um one you mentioned it before the three industries which have the greatest potential growth in technology capabilities happen to be our three largest industries agriculture manufacturing and transportation and that is a big chunk of our gdp and so you look at the next five to ten years in this state i can very easily see this state being a technology leader and a leader in technology innovation and technology companies because the very industries that are going to advance the fastest are are what we do best and so we are having lots of discussions about creating technology hubs and and how we can accelerate the move to digital platforms and 5g applications and artificial intelligence and you name it um and we've got organizations like the blueprint nebraska group and and the nebraska tech collaborative really working with us trying to to help us put those things in place the second thing that i would say is the pandemic is and the digital platforms have taught us all that we can work and live any place we want to and in a world where you can live and work any place you want to um you start taking a different look at your life and and i think that's happened across the country um you know i've lived in cities around the world but when you really look at your life and say where do i want to live and work and the fact that i can now run a global company we've we've demonstrated it from anywhere um including in my pajamas in my living room if i have to um you can live and work any way you want to and that's the other piece of nebraska is there is no and we're biased obviously but there is no quality of life even comparable to to what we have here and so so now in addition to all this innovation we have the ability to build companies in a place uh that has has great great amenities and great lifestyle and so for nebraska this is this is a a big deal and so i'm looking for the next five years in nebraska and the move to digital platforms and having technology hubs as as driving the state forward with some growth that is going to be exponential you're talking to somebody you're talking to somebody brian that two years ago left washington dc for charleston south carolina and i'm never going back it's a better way to live yeah so i'm on the i'm on the cycle of berlin to washington dc to baltimore to omaha and uh as soon as i get my wife to move to scott's bluff there will be yeah i've spent a little time in omaha it wouldn't be a bad place to settle down i can imagine a new uh under recruitment campaign brought to you by the chamber in the state work from your pajamas in our living room but but it's absolutely true um and so and digital platforms are what give companies the ability to do that and and when in my prior life i was a lawyer and and you know when i started practicing law in the stone age you had to be in a new york or washington firm really to have this on scope to do a lot of things you don't anymore um and in a world where scale and scope isn't the determinator but the quality of what you provide and your digital capability um that's that's a game changer for businesses in states like nebraska yeah i don't want to get too much on my soapbox here before i throw it over to david but the one of the things that i've been talking about for several years is that in a world that is interconnected in the vertically integrated digital economy it's sort of true capitalism right your your sales is dictated by your price and the quality and your service no longer by your geographic limitations that applies to our quality of life it applies to the customer service and everything that we can do around it and if you can work and live in nebraska and make a product and deliver it at the same price as somebody who lives in new york you're going to have an inherent advantage both for quality of life but also cost of life and so it is sort of the redistribution of of the workforce throughout the country as the byproduct of sort of this digital transformation we've been talking about for 10 years that happened in six months there's nothing good that's going to come out of this but that's the best we can hope for um so david are you using context in that context for our small businesses i don't want to candy coat this our small businesses are really struggling right now uh with the pandemic but what we're talking about is when we do get to the end of this and we will the opportunities for our small businesses in nebraska are going to be absolutely phenomenal the common denominator of all small businesses and all the tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands i've met over my career is sort of perseverance and a desire to have uh a managed self-destiny right control over what you do we don't want to work for other people that's why we start businesses in the first place and when we grind through trying times like this even if it puts us out of business and there is hardship there's always community there's the support of people that are like-minded and that perseverance doesn't go away um with that in mind let me um let me throw it over to david brown the ceo of the greater omaha chamber david are you seeing that same sort of thing among your members sort of the digital transformation that's that's maybe bullying people's spirits are we too soon to to look at that as a positive what do you think well um first thanks for uh having me here i appreciate the council for letting me speak today and i'd be remiss too if i didn't thank the governor for his leadership throughout all of this and brian i really appreciate the partnership that the state chamber and the omaha chamber have together and so thank you both of you for for your leadership you know jake i'm going to actually speak to this issue about sort of resilience and what's happened over the last um several months as we've seen nebraska fare much better than most other states and omaha fare much better than most communities and again it is it's about our small businesses who are being really resilient you know the the coronavirus and the economic downturn that came as a result of that um really turned business not just in our state but around the country on its ear um experiences over the past several months have demonstrated that nebraskans can not only survive but thrive in challenging times and from wearing mass to adapting to social distancing and keeping businesses open even when their doors needed to remain closed we figured it out you know we we have persevered and i have to tell you how proud i am of seeing how we've all come together to combat this common enemy but what's really interesting is that the discussion about survival just didn't last very long because pretty quickly once we started realizing that we can function this way our members and our leadership start thinking about how do we accelerate uh process to recovery and so we're grateful for how technology intel and tech companies have helped businesses in omaha and across the state do just that i mean just think about how we're communicating today and every day uh seven months ago i didn't even know what a virtual conference was i certainly didn't know how to get into one and i certainly probably would never have planned a meeting like this around one yet today all of us have learned how to lead our businesses keep in touch with family and friends virtual via some virtual conference platform now i suppose we shouldn't be surprised if the tech community has helped solve many of the challenges the pandemic created for the economy and for businesses after all high-tech startups now growing in the midwest have kind of made their mark by providing tech solutions to difficult problems but i would tell you that the the lack of knowledge about what some of these advancements were in this just in this vertical conference platform space left us all of us thinking about what else are we missing what other technology is out there that is being developed by these tech startups in response to pain points in businesses that we don't even know is there that could help us make our businesses even more effective and more competitive over time now we know though that these digital tools as fun as they have been probably for the innovators to create they don't exist in the abstract i mean the fact that we're able to keep our businesses operating during these times reflects the real impact i think that technology has in our economy for example omaha was recently identified by visual capital.com as having the highest rate of open small businesses in the country as compared to a year ago that means about only about 13 percent only about 13 percent of our omaha-based companies are remain closed and it makes the best in the country now that still means we got a lot of work to do we got 13 to bring back and we got more to create and this doesn't just happen without the foresight of businesses and government as we've heard this morning both this afternoon putting both infrastructure in the ground and tech companies continue to innovate and customers being willing to buy that innovation and cause implementation but by following the health guidelines and incorporating technology into everyday business activities i think our omaha small business community is helping to lead the state's economic comeback which as the governor said is pretty remarkable considering the fact that we're only about a half a percentage point more in unemployment right now than we were about a year ago now how did we do this in omaha we started out by realizing that our members need an economic recovery plan so we developed a we rise plan which is of course hosted on our website i don't believe it's ever been printed so it is totally a virtual document it's updated regularly and curated every day with important information for business leaders about how do you reopen safely and profitably and that took really the first couple of months to get that figured out but then as i mentioned earlier very quickly our board and exec committee and business leaders transitioned into how do we accelerate out of this recession so we created some thrive 2020 task forces to develop that acceleration plan for our community we looked at six key areas public policy economic growth small business entrepreneurship talent and diversity as lenses for our analysis and we identified specific projects that we are undertaking to remove barriers to growth and economic success i'm going to give you a little bit of an insight into some of the things that we came up with in public policy i don't think either the governor or brian would be surprised that lb 1107 was at the top of the list we had to make sure we provided much needed incentives property tax relief and state support for the largest economic development projects the state has ever seen unmc's next project which we think will be somewhere around two and a half billion dollars in investment and north of 8 500 new high-paying jobs we also knew that we needed to aggressively increase the backlog of economic development projects so we initiated a targeted branding and public relations initiative to open doors to potential clients it's had remarkable success we've gone from a five to seven year average of about 18 new prospects a month for economic development had dropped down to six uh new prospects in the month of june and the month of september it was back up to 26. i'd like to say our marketing was a result uh that that was all result of our marketing but the good news is more and more people are seeing good news about nebraska and about omaha and we think it helps us build backlog small businesses recognize in order for customers to be comfortable shopping in person again we needed to build their confidence since about 70 percent of our economy is driven by consumer spending we needed to make sure people knew they could shop in confidence safely uh in person and so we partnered with with the national safety council nebraska chapter to roll out be safe nebraska which again is all online programs showing businesses how they can prove their customers and their employees at their safe places to work and to buy stuff entrepreneurship was all about creating confidence in those individuals this is the one that's really intriguing to me we wanted to figure out if we could actually drive interest to those folks who might now be wondering if it's the right time for them to get out and start a new business so we created uh this thing called seven days to think like a founder all online and discovered more than 400 people with an urge to innovate and those 400 people now are the folks we're working with to try and match them with startups and actually match them with innovation that we can now take back to the market marketplace very intriguing way to use tech technology in talent we recognize that there was a pool of people who were unemployed due to colbit who could represent the answer to many of our the talent needs of our businesses now and in the future so we're working with metro community college to engage as many of our regional unemployed as we can in training programs that were funded by the state of nebraska stimulus funds again governor thank you for that support and then finally we recognized that the diversity of our population is an asset moving forward and that enabled 276 of our local business leaders to sign the we will pledge outlining outcomes of the strategy to eliminate racism now i know that that's a long litany and you wonder maybe why i threw it out there but you have to think about it each of these initiatives were discussed developed and implemented without a single person-to-person meeting they're all done in formats like this now if we could continue to do it person-to-person means we probably would have but i would contend that it's this use of technology to keep our businesses thriving and our community is able to combat problems and provide services that will be the big aha moment when historians look back on 2020. first they'll be shaking their heads about why is it that nebraska led th way to recovery out of all of this why did they do such a good job but they're also going to shake their heads at the sheer volume of crises we've all had to deal with in the last year and they'll undoubtedly see in the future how we've utilized technology now so i think technology has made a huge difference for this state um i appreciate the work that you folks are doing and um i know that in the future we're going to continue using technology as much as we can to be even more efficient and effective solving problems in this state thank you david i appreciate that it is um it is a a finding right a brick in the road to recovery i suppose that we now know that access to technology whether it be zoom or virtual document sharing or online marketplaces like shopify and amazon is a silver bullet for small businesses in crisis and it doesn't have to be a global pandemic that is that crisis it could be wildfires in california or floods in iowa or hurricanes in florida right every small business is afflicted by some form of usually geographically located crises at some point or even a personal one right a fire within a bookstore on main street how do you stay open if you don't have access to your inventory and your your storefront now we know and um that's not it's not a silver lining because this is real bad but it is something that we can lay out in front of us as as a path forward um so thank you for your leadership and for your contribution today fellas uh feel free to hop in uh and ask questions of the small businesses that we're lucky enough to have with us uh for this discussion of how sort of the policies that the governor was talking about and the programs that you guys have initiated uh are are having an effect in the leadership um that's happening from small business small business so why don't i uh no introduction i'm going to give you is going to be as good as your own so kelly why don't we start with you um tell us a little bit about yourself and your business and then laura and then uh thank you thank you for the connected commerce council for inviting me and thank you for the leadership of the governor as a uh a kid born and raised on a farm here in northeast nebraska and eventually becoming an entrepreneur in the state and getting to um grow a small business it's uh it's nice to hear some of the things that the governor had to say so we appreciate that um datavision is a technology provider focused on small business we are we we've we have an integrated security practice where we focus on helping businesses integrate technology and move their business forward in this new digital world that we're in um and we've been in business since about 2001. kelly are you uh let me let me just jump to this because i can't help but pick up on these breadcrumbs you are both a small business that is adjusting in pandemic world but also a small business that helps small business adjust in a pandemic world uh that's the context of yeah okay so we're gonna we're gonna come back to that just a second uh laura schwonsky or there you are okay sorry i'm losing focus on the zoom a little bit here jake thank you to uh the governor and to the chambers for all you have been doing and for inviting me to attend today i am in a unique position with clarence partners and that not only has technology and digital platforms transformed the business that i've had for 23 years but it has allowed me to work with my clients across the state of nebraska and truthfully the upper midwest on finding ways to not only survive but thrive and grow and i think there's a big component of that as a nebraskan myself who had to leave not dissimilar to brian go to major metropolitan areas couldn't pay me enough i absolutely love this state the spirit of nebraskans we're behind each other we have a unique entrepreneurial focus and we believe that helping one another isn't something that's different it's just something that we should do and that has been a big part of why clarence partners and others i think across the state have not only been able to look at the pandemic as the point in history that we're not only living in we're helping to write but how do we write the chapter in such a way that we're remembered as making a difference so claret partners is a strategy and sustainability firm we work with a lot of groups across the across the midwest agriculture health career education small businesses in the midst of change and an industry in the nonprofit sector which employs about 13 percent of nebraskans that not a lot of folks have been talking about and how that environment was impacted digitally not only with their programs but also how they receive funding and fundraising so thrilled to be here today thank you laura sally elliott i thank you so much for inviting me to be on the panel and thank you governor for your leadership and we really appreciate the commerce as well uh so i'm a real estate agent in nebraska or an omaha area and a designer and fortunately there were some things in place that we were able to keep using dot loop is a way that our contracts get back and forth to our clients we've been using that and i'm thankful for uh my broker at berkshire hathaway home services ambassador for implementing that way back when he's always embraced uh technology and that's really helped and as far as design goes i use a lot of zoom meetings i'm talking to clients i work with new construction clients and some of the uh the showrooms have been closed so we've had to do virtual meetings to show well here's your tile and here's your appliances and what do you think of this toilet so many different avenues we just didn't think that we'd have to do and on the real estate front virtual tours are huge face time i can still go into a property and get on face time with people coming in from out of state they can see the house you walk them through show them areas that you know there might be a concern about and we are seeing a huge influx of people coming to nebraska we're short on listings we need housing builders can't build fast enough right now we have a lot of influx people from california minnesota from chicago they're just coming to areas that you know fortunately governor ricketts has done a great job managing through all that and keeping our state you know relatively open and small business friendly wonderful thank you um this is it's a a unique opportunity to have three small businesses that also serve small businesses and so your your duality of insight is particularly valuable so why don't i when i sort of ask this open-ended question what is the thing what is the technology or the experience or the use of technology and your business has leveraged over the past seven months that if i asked you two years ago you would have thought i was speaking a different language right what is what is the what is the tech or the application that you're using that that would surprise you uh let's go into reverse order selling do you have a i can vamp for another few minutes according to think about it sure no i could no i think zoom is probably the best thing uh we've been able to still have again meetings with clients mastermind groups within the brokerage meeting with the builder and the clients i i just never used it before so it was a learning curve definitely what would you say if i told you zoom's been around for 10 years i wouldn't have known that right it's it's a sort of remarkable thing um an aside we're involved pretty heavily in sort of the antitrust conversation because i feel like it disrupts access to google and facebook and amazon tools and services that small businesses need it's a little bit like a jenga stack right and so when people say well you know google's got this dominant market share and i was like do you use hangout do you use the google no use zoom it's basically kleenex for video conferencing now right it's like the way that we all communicate that's it aside uh lord what's the what's the thing that would surprise you um what most surprised me is i used to drive about 20 000 miles a year in nebraska iowa south dakota and from a digital platform standpoint yes zoom has been a big part of my life the last nine months and it'll continue to be a portion of it for i think the foreseeable future but because i work with such a diverse group microsoft meetings google platforms google documents they're truly not any one isn't any one platform that i can say i use the most but it's more looking at what is the best facing with the vertical market that i'm working with so microsoft google and zoom have all had great meeting spaces like this that have been utilized sometimes much to my dismay 7 8 9 10 hours a day but you meet with people when they can meet and that is the other piece of this that's been fascinating is we can actually meet with a farmer or rancher at eight or nine o'clock at night when they need to talk about how they can retool their family business so that they can survive and then turn around and have a seven or eight o'clock meeting with a healthcare provider that's moving to telehealth utilizing whichever platforms based on the firewalls that they're working with are important so antitrust all that jazz aside all of them have a place and nebraskans are using them so digital platforms and online meetings would probably be the biggest impact in my business as well as those they serve when we as part of our research and sort of an ongoing assessment tool that we're building we recommend to small businesses that they don't gravitate towards any one tool they think about the thing that they hate doing the most and try to find a way to automate it i think about the way that they work and try to make it more efficient and then they try to apply a technology to solve a specific problem and if they can do those three things they're going to find what we call a small stack right they can build their own i.t department on somebody else's r d and then it really it comes together technology's definitely saving my car that's right the i i wonder would you have been able to do that 9 p.m call with the farmer and then not having to drive home uh driven home that night to turn around and do a call first thing in the morning with the tele health service i can say i'm i'm definitely not using i-80 at 10 11 12 o'clock at night like i used to which is ultimately safer for probably everybody oh but it is truly it's given wings i've got one client in particular that had to move a hundred percent of their programs online and they deal a lot with uh individuals that have comorbidities specifically cancer with covin that is a huge problem they can't come into facilities to do the kind of survivorship work that they've been doing so we've transitioned everything online for them and we've had we had a rancher in chapel nebraska a gal from sioux falls we had someone from new york another from santa fe washington state omaha and lincoln participating in these online events with the time to heal and the rancher said hey i don't have to worry about taking a shower i can just come in right off the ranch and participate in this meeting and no one's going to think that what i think is the smell of money is offensive which changes the way people are thinking about things and we've included a whole lot more so in a world in time when diversity and inclusion are so critical nebraskans are finding ways to do that um utilizing digital technologies platforms are amazing and they're not going away this is our new normal i agree i agree the transformation is complete kelly how about you you know our business has uh operated since the beginning in in pretty much a digital workplace i mean it's it's the method we proactively support our customers so um we were kind of a unique situation where um it was our office is really just you know a place to have a desk and some walls and an internet connection so moving to a work from home environment um wasn't a big shift from a technology standpoint but more or less just a cultural shift and how our employees collaborate and keep connected to each other so i i just i think it's important to note that our industries had these tools available like you mentioned for a long time it's just the importance of them has gone from maybe a a nice to have scenario to more of a i'm i need to have it now so um it's it's it's been an interesting shift towards that digital uh workplace um forced upon us all unfortunately so yeah we say um from a vitamin to bread and water right from nice to have absolutely essential yeah you mentioned connections whether it be between businesses and employees and i wonder because we heard a little bit from the chamber as well as the governor that um i think one of the most valuable things that 3c has done during this pandemic is every week we hold a happy hour for several hundred of our members and during that virtual happy hour best practices are shared war stories are are sort of shared communally and that i think we've saved several dozen businesses from the information that they've cleaned from each other i'm wondering if there's if you guys are seeing that if you're experiencing it if you're working with whether it's virtual or if you're lucky enough to be able to do it in person um some of the community building that's going on around small businesses even more so than we may have seen prepayment pandemic uh laura i've got two right now we have one that is unfortunately exiting the market their parent companies pulling out of nebraska but they had services that needed to be provided here and we were able to partner two businesses together and have a seamless transition uh and all of that was done virtually up until yesterday when we actually did a walkthrough of their space so we can figure out how to transfer leases and whatnot and keep everyone whole the thing that was really critical with that is we were able to do digital interviewing with their staff from across nebraska to try to find as many of the jobs within the other entity because it's very important that as small businesses are looking at our new normal you know what is this new post pandemic going to look like how we are really using each other's resources i know the governor had talked a lot about degrees that are technology and those really high-end things we've gone a step further with a lot of our small businesses and have worked with a lot of the college of arts and science grads who have some of those critical thinking skills and the writing skills and various other types of things that small businesses oftentimes are desperately in need of in particular i'm seeing that with family transition where we may have an older generation that isn't as tech savvy needing some assistance we've been able to pair people to do team teaching and team learning online as well as finding means to create jobs where they may not have had traditional sources so that sustainability part is a lot of what clarendon partners has transitioned to doing probably more of this year than even the strategy work we have done in the past is it's really how do we find that what does 2022 look like because our reality is we're probably going to have some of this through 2021 so what can we be doing to position ourselves so we don't only survive but we're ready to thrive and about 85 percent of the people i work with jake have had to make some of that transition and our family-owned businesses have really stepped up their game and it's been very cool to watch again it goes back to that heart in nebraskans i think that's right i i i'm also seeing you know here in charleston it's it's a it's a tourist town right like a lot of people come here for the food and the music and the beach and nobody was coming from from march which we've sort of opened up a little bit which is the best study in the world but it is what it is but people were supporting their local restaurants by actively doing takeout and curbside and the we were sort of going door-to-door teaching people how to use crm so that they could manage their lists and then that led to a collective of restaurant groups that were getting together and finding ways to subsidize the wait staff that weren't going to be cashing checks and um sort of automating th pvp loan process and that has kept a lot of a lot of the city alive sally are you seeing any of that sort of collective spirit i would imagine um you know sort of in your industry you've got a lot of different trades a lot of different stakeholders a lot of different people coming to the table to build homes to sell homes to bring those markets together how are how are they pulling that together right well and it's this is such a relational business and a home is the biggest investment that most people ever make in their lives it's uh so we just have to keep in contact with with our clients and our business partners we have done drop buys uh to support local businesses buying gift cards and candles and just dropping them off on their front porch and to keep connected and then we'll always you know can facetime them as well and just being relational in this time is so important and in that instagram and facebook keeps relations as well with insta stories people like to see a new construction home from its inception to the end and keep that energy going uh staging the homes that we're going to sell make sure that they look beautiful and inviting and sell quickly and then helping them with their financing too whether it is new construction or just general mortgage with their interest rate so low what does that look like how does that change their their life what's their buying power now uh compared to a year ago you know who would have thought that we'd be in this space i know everyone in my industry thought well it's going to be like 2008 you know 2009 will have this big slow down and that didn't happen whatsoever and lakeside properties golf properties where the the golf courses were not doing so well really a year ago and now you can't even you can't find a house that's available on a golf course anymore and again like the sand pits around here are like our ocean what are you gonna do if you're working from home and you got up really early to do east coast calls you might as well go play nine now i i know the feeling uh kelly what do you what are you seeing out there in terms of support for the small small business community yeah i think there's there's two uh components to that um i think for us internally there's an internal component like i mentioned earlier around the the ability for our employees to collaborate and i think ever it's affected everybody is such a wide spectrum from a mental standpoint that we just need to make sure that we're um staying in touch with some of the people that are maybe struggling a little bit more with being not being in front of people as much and you know directly direct contact with as much and help them find ways to be more connected to other people in our organization so i think that's the internal aspect the external facing aspect is just really reaching out to our our businesses our customers and and and helping them you know as much as we can with being available and proactively you know thinking of different ways that we can help them through this and just trying to communicate more and more as much as we can let me um let me ask one more sort of open question before i let everybody go we'll start with kelly uh best practices one word of advice to the small businesses on the line uh we're also going to capture this and be able to use it as a resource for the thousands of small businesses that are members of 3c what is your word of advice to small businesses that are that weathered the first few months of this storm and are sort of preparing to um take the next step to plan for 2021 to think about how to accelerate in 2022 how do we how do we get there best practice yeah um that's a that's a that's a big question um i think look at the look at where where the opportunity is and try to find ways to you know we've at least our industry has had a hard time with talent shortage um getting people into the technology industry just enough people to facilitate um all of the jobs that are available and i think this this opens the door for us to be able to look in maybe more rural areas where people um weren't maybe wanting to move to you know for example lincoln air omaha and maybe you want to work remotely and have that ability to work you know from wherever they're at so i mean that's the opportunity that i think of for us in this situation um but i'm sure there's opportunities for small businesses in that same light laura word of advice for the small businesses on the line well i think one of the key mantras that i try to work by myself for my company is that the difference between change and transformation is that change happens all the time the transformation is how we respond to that change and if we are willing to risk our own significance and think a little differently than we have in the past just think of the amazing things that you can do and we are positioned to do great things i have to believe every generation has those moments in their their life where they look back on my grandparents and great grandparents it was the depression world war ii bay of pigs we all have those moments i thought our generation was 9 11. i think it's now 911 and the pandemic how we choose to deal with this transformative time in the history of the world gives us the ability to really take flight and make things happen and i just encourage small business owners we are going to be the change and that we are going to be the people to put the thumbprint on how this pandemic defines the globe so let's take it and run with it because we got nowhere to go but apps we might as well work together and again using that nebraska spirit i think we have the ability to lead the world it's great i love it sally definitely yeah well similarly to that thought just change makes you grow and if you're sitting in comfort you're not going to learn you don't want to learn you you have to be able to embrace that change and go for it if you haven't embraced technologies like instagram or facebook and honestly i'm not very good at those but i'm learning them every day and i have team members that help with that and i put more on their plate with with those types of technologies and they've done an excellent job keeping everybody informed and reaching out that's another thing uh call people just say how how are you doing that's really important and i i have seen some couple tragedies along the way with that with isolation and nobody wants to be isolated just take that moment and say how how's it going i think it's incredibly important having a good message to leave us on as we as we tout sort of the ability of technology to keep us connected and to make our lives more efficient and to sort of replace 20 000 miles a year or in my case 160 000 uh air miles it's great but we also need to remember to pick up the phone and to see people whenever we can and to maintain those connections in a in a more uh real way virtual isn't everything i think that's what we need to remember guys thank you very much for your time today and for sharing your stories and your expertise with us uh my thanks to the governor to brian david for uh their time as well and to everybody who joined us today i hope this was helpful visit connectedcouncil.org for more information on the research that i mentioned earlier as well as a fund finder page that we put together which will enable you to apply for loans and grant programs as well as identify opportunities to sort of bridge from today's tomorrow as we know it will be a brighter day it can't get much worse than a global pandemic right we uh we have found that perseverance and that spirit and uh because we are small business owners and operators and entrepreneurs at heart i i've got our my money bet on us uh so thank you everybody for your time and uh we'll see you again soon thank you thank you thank you