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good afternoon i'm jake ward i'm the president of the connected commerce council thank you for joining us today we have an opportunity um today to hear from a number of iowa small businesses as well as some organizations that represent iowa small businesses as and most importantly perhaps uh auditor rob sand is joining us in just a moment to talk about the way that small businesses in iowa are working with state and local governments to make it through this time of crisis before we get started let me give you a little context on this discussion we all know whether you're a small business or a small business organization or work for a small business these are not normal times that the kova 19 pandemic has rattled much of the tenants of our economy but they've also forced us to make decisions that perhaps were a long time coming that we've invested in digital tools that we've gone online that we've found customers in new places and been resilient in the face of crises and because of that we are preparing i think now to build forward to be more resourceful as we uh recover from this this pandemic there are a number of decisions that we're all going to have to make as individual businesses and a lot of support and uh and sort of community service we're gonna have to do for each other as we get back on our feet and we'll cover a lot of that ground today before we get started um i want to give a couple of of links and thank yous uh first the technology association of iowa and the greater des moines partnership for co-hosting this event with the connected commerce council today you'll hear from their representatives in just a few minutes i also want to direct everybody to connectcouncil.org for some more information about the research that you're going to hear cited a number of times during this discussion as well as resources that 3c has pulled together over the past few months that help small businesses identify funding opportunities grants and loans as well as partnerships that uh some small businesses have utilized during this this time of crisis so let's jump right into it um state auditor rob sands is kind enough to join us this morning and what is a very busy week uh i understand please take it from here oh i think you're on mute yep we knew it would happen to somebody it's always me you can count on it being me just about every single time i'm on a zoom i forget to unmute myself when i'm getting started so uh i keep saying this is uh you know not as good as in person way better than phone calls but that's the one hiccup that gets me every single time um but jake thanks thanks for thanks for the introduction and thank you everyone for being here and thank you to our organizers for having me you know um if you think back to 100 years ago in march we were all looking around and all of a sudden things changed and i can i'm just going to tell you what happened for me it was that thursday when they did two things they canceled march madness and they canceled the rest of the nba season and those things both happened after five o'clock and so i remember i was home and my wife and i were talking about it after the kids were in bed and she's like wow this is this is really serious this is not a drill and then the next morning you know got up went to work and at noon we got a text from our babysitter that our four-year-old had a fever of 102. and that moment for me um was a real wake-up it was a scary moment um because all of a sudden in addition to this acknowledgement that we have something really serious going on in our world and in our country all of a sudden we had something real potentially really serious going on in our family um he recovered didn't seem to get um develop a cough or anything like that none of the rest of us got sick but it really was a very serious moment where the magnitude of what we were about to enter in terms of this pandemic became very clear to me and i was raised up in northeast iowa and decorah in the in the household that my family raised me in it was always one of an unspoken message and that message was always how can i help right how can i help what can i do uh that is a good thing to do so we had a culture of helping that i think is reflective of the way a lot of iowans grew up uh we were sandbagging on fifth avenue in decorah when floodwaters rose my mom was uh a regular volunteer and board member for habitat for humanity my dad volunteered at a free clinic in town a big piece of that to me to our family was was faith driven but a lot of it just seemed to be also this is just what people do it's what good people do and and when you talk about the intersection of technology and small business and how technology is impacting small businesses in this pandemic boy is there another piece of that story that hits the nail on the head there too so as i'm asking myself that question in these first couple of weeks of this pandemic i was on a bike ride and the idea dawned on me that could put together a fund that people could contribute to that then uh individuals in need who maybe had just lost their jobs because we were having skyrocketing unemployment uh could could apply to to get funds to simply go partake at a small business at a restaurant to get a cooked meal a warm meal from their favorite local restaurant because you know we were seeing a lot of people becoming employed but also a lot of restaurant business just taking a nose dive and small businesses at the end of the day it's not a business it's somebody's livelihood right it's someone's attempt to sort of author their own life and write their own way they're also the weavers of social fabric town around our state uh when you look at a town one of the things that really stick out are what's the local restaurant that people like what's the local business uh that people uh are really proud of um what's the local bar uh that everybody likes to go to it's the places that are unique it's the small businesses that really weave our social fabric and give us character as a place and a sense of place and i wanted to do something to try to help those folks because it was very clear that this struggle was starting and it was going to last a long time and so what did we do put together an organization this is outside the official office this is me as a concerned citizen we just called it iowans helping iowans and this is what it was this was bottom line this technology allowed a concerned citizen to boost small businesses while also boosting struggling iowans and this was it we just put it out on social media technology we said hey everyone we are going to collect money that we will then provide to unemployed iowans when they send in a receipt showing that they have um recently bought themselves or their family a meal at a restaurant in their town anywhere in iowa and that was it so we had social media for spreading the word and we had um venmo in paypal for collecting and then distributing money and then we had our smartphones in our wallets uh and as well as email for people sending us the materials necessary to verify that they were unemployed and verify that they had recently purchased a meal and we were off to the races um tens of thousands of dollars raised and distributed across the state and uh i think we went over 600 meals purchased with those meals being up to forty dollars each in value uh and we even expanded it beyond just unemployed individuals to also having first responders front line workers uh qualify to actually get those meals so it was a really successful program and here's the thing we have all learned particularly small businesses have learned that we've got to be agile that we've got to be nimble in this pandemic we didn't incorporate this it was not a non-profit nobody could deduct their donations we didn't open up bank accounts right the reason we didn't do those things is because it was time to fix this it was time to act now and there isn't time there wasn't time in a pandemic to say oh well we'll get this rolling in three weeks right i mean people are unemployed now is having it in three weeks good sure but we can just get it going right now and so that's what we did we went from deciding how this was going to work to actually deploying dollars in a couple of days probably 48 hours and so those were hundreds of meals and tens of thousands of dollars that ended up getting distributed around the state to a variety of small business owners in iowa again at the end of the day bottom line technology just helped a concerned citizen boost small businesses across the state as well as give kind of a pick-me-up and a boost to struggling iowans and so those small businesses i think have just done such a great job showing resiliency throughout this pandemic i remember a place that i know i think it's in indianola but down in southern iowa that switched to mask making because they knew that that was something that they could do uh that people would still be interested in and still be busy with i'm sure they're not the only one but getting quarantined procedures in place social distancing sanitation uh mandates all these hurdles that have come up for small businesses and yet everyone has had to adapt and it's really been wonderful to see them taking the lead on just doing the right thing i remember here in des moines i can't see them from my from my window a little bit too far away but exile brewing downtown prior to any closures or orders said hey look we're a family here at exile our customers are a family we don't think we should be doing in in-house dining anymore and so we're switching to all takeout they did it on their own right uh they were nimble they they went out and they tried to adapt to the circumstances that we are all facing ourselves and we also wanted to support that here in our office on the official side too one of the things is that we did was send out an advisory to all public entities across the state pointing out to them that it was an appropriate use of public funds to remind people to participate in to shop at to patronize their local small businesses right as long as they weren't picking one out in particular reminding people that your local businesses are struggling and putting money into advertising the idea of making sure you're still getting takeout and that sort of thing is a good use of those funds uh obviously a lot of small businesses did struggle some have gone out of business but a lot of them also have applied for the relief that's been available the small business relief grant program is another one um that really came in and for some small businesses made the difference of course there it's been a lifeline for folks but there's also been problems with it and so our office is involved currently still in investigating uh and auditing that program but it's just been a lot of stories continued success stories of adaptation through technology staying in touch with customers over social media inventing new opportunities for customers to become customers in different ways through social media communicating with employees over video conferencing updating information as simple as what your store hours are going to be whether or not you have outdoor seating what your what your social distancing or masking expectations are going to be right it's been hard for even those of us those small businesses that might not have uh customers physically coming in our operations at the auditor's office i'm in the office today there's two other rooms here i'm the only one here the vast majority of our office has been working remotely since march and it hasn't been without its hiccups but we have learned and we have adapted right we have video conferencing tools like the one that we're using right now uh that have made this incredibly helpful through the use of technology uh we've had online shared documentation portfolios that have also made a difference lots of different things that we're trying to do to just sort of keep in touch with people and make sure like i said at the beginning even though this isn't as good as being in person it's a whole lot better than a phone call just being able to connect to people even though you're not in the right room or in the same room is still something for a lot of iowans in this situation has been a difference maker in a lot of ways so you know obviously government offices at the state and the federal level and the city level are going to continue to have a significant role to play in supporting small businesses and trying to make sure that we're able to build back better but we've also got to give them credit and so credit to all of you out there all of you small business owners and operators and employees who have been very good at navigating this pandemic and adapting at the end of the day and being agile and nimble in the way that you find ways to serve people to be a weaver of that social fabric and at the same time make sure that you are covering your expenses and hopefully in these times eking by a little bit as well so kudos to you i'm really grateful to be a part of the conversation today about that resiliency and about the way technology is impacting how all of us but especially small businesses are responding to this pandemic it's not going away uh anytime soon it's always uh going to be something that we are going to live with and adapt to and i don't mean specifically necessarily the virus but the experience right there will be things that we take away from this practices procedures that we are going to keep doing that we are going to put into our tool kit and that we won't take out because we'll discover they're useful even after a lot of the dust is settled around this i'm really confident in iowa's small businesses again seeing so many of you adapt out there has just really been inspiring i thank you for the work that you do and again happy to be here today thanks thank you very much if you don't mind if you have a few minutes i'd love to follow up on a couple of points that you made for our viewers um i think you've probably seen this but the the conference council recently put out a pretty significant uh report based on 7 000 um small business responses over a four month period and what we were looking to measure is exactly what you were talking about the traits that have enabled resilience and that allow for that agility right not just in the time of covey but in a time of crisis what is what is the thing that allows highway small businesses during a flood to respond accordingly or floridians during a hurricane or california's during wildfires what is the thing about american small businesses and we found was two things the first one didn't surprise me at all and it doesn't surprise you either is that the resilience comes from perseverance comes from a place of perseverance that it leads small business operators and their employees to start small businesses in the first place right it's this this desire to control and to contribute to your community and to be part of a larger team that and give something back but the second was that there is well we started calling it digital safety net that the more tools and resources that you plug into as fundamental to your business the less um harm can be done to you by momentary or even protracted fights against kobe 19. and that's that's what you're alluding to is the the agility of restaurants to you know integrate a crm that allows them to go to curbside pickup or retailers on main street that now do e-commerce that agility is made possible by these these digital services and so i wonder what role you think the federal and state and even local to some degree government has in expanding that safety net in reducing the barriers to adoption of constant contact in google docs and facebook ads and various ways to sell and meet customers and service your your existing customers yeah i i think that's a good question and um the the report was really interesting i was really glad to see that you all put it together the piece that i saw in it that was not surprising to me was that iowa has a higher than average um percentage of our uh less tech dependent or less tech central right that means they are a little bit more vulnerable to something like a pandemic obvi usly in one big way we're better off because we are less tourism-centric and more agriculture and insurance-centric so those are good things because we don't unlike new york city or los angeles our economy doesn't depend on a huge volumes of people coming to visit maybe once every four years for the caucuses if they keep doing that but but uh to answer your question more directly i think a huge piece of it is just leadership you've got to have people in office who are open-minded about technology or who are um who are technology uh apostles who are out there trying to spread the good news about how these tools can actually make life easier for people a couple of really amazing examples that i can pull just from my experience here so i started the job january 2019 we used to we used to literally for every single audit that we issued we would print bind and then mail a copy of every audit to our client somewhere in iowa and if it was a county audit in the county had five people on the board of supervisors we would put five copies with according uh the the same amount of postage necessary to get it there i came in here and said no we're we're sending everyone pdfs and what the crazy thing about this is this isn't even new like how was that in 2019 our office just started doing this people said well what if they want to have it in their hands great they have a printer they can print it we're not going to do it anymore that practice is is crazy number one we want to have people's email addresses so we can reach them but number two the amount of time that we are putting into printing binding hand bound with you know employees time and then and then mailing with postage is just an incredible amount of time uh our early estimates were that we were gonna save fifteen thousand dollars a year doing this we actually ended up saving a lot closer to thirty thousand dollars a year by eliminating that practice um another another great example our office in conducting special investigations into public corruption historically if we are looking at bank records and we wanted to get them into an excel spreadsheet with literally hand enter each transaction off the records so we would someone would be sitting at their computer they would look over here to the to the bank record and then they would look here and enter that item onto their spreadsheet um we don't do that anymore we purchased software that does it automatically that flags that flags entries that are not entirely clear to the software to make sure that you can do a comparison when you need to but it's something that just has really uh made our work a lot easier made our work a lot straightforward we have got to have people in office number one to just appreciate technology but also are trying to push the public sector into it because as we do that i think it becomes much more accustomed uh for everyone else great example of that too that is happening elsewhere in state government uh i like to hunt took both of those deer this year for the first time when you report your deer to dnr you can do it via text message it is a lot quicker um than having to call it in it's less clumsy it allows you to pick it up you know do something else if you get interrupted and then finish the process later you don't have to be online you can do it from anything um but that innovation too is something that just brings a lot of people right ordinary iowans out there who might still have a uh might not have a smartphone now they can report via text message it gives them another opportunity to take a few steps deeper into technology and a few steps further away from slower ways of doing things that also just means that when they're having those interactions with the government it's going to make them that much more it might be only marginally but that much more um open-minded about doing it with private companies that they're interacting with as well so i think the biggest issue for government is that we need to be an early adopter honestly we need to be out there in front trying to make sure that we are incorporating technology into the way that government does business so that people see it and expect it in the private sector just as much wonderful okay thank you very much for your time today i'm sure you have bigger fish to pry on another zoom call coming up but i wanted to echo your sentiment that iowa and businesses taking care of iowans and continuing to help um access to funds is certainly important but standing up for our for each other in our communities is really what has uh helped get us through this to date and will continue to be the road to recovery thank you for taking the time today absolutely thank you okay now let's uh let's go ahead and jump into uh sort of the the larger issue at a a more granular level and talk to some iowa small businesses um mark and joe are you guys there yeah anytime technology works for me i i'm i'm always impressed why don't i have mark why don't i have you introduce yourself real quick to the viewers and then we'll we'll jump into it joe just one second mark go ahead sure uh my name is mark pitchik and uh thank you again jake for having me take part in this but uh we're located in in dubuque iowa in the northeast part of the state and we manufacture a line of retractable safety gates for pets and kids called retractorgate so uh helps keep you helps keep your pets or kids in or out of areas that you want around your home wonderful and joe yeah so joe henry i'm a latino activist community activist realtor self-employed for the past 20 years involved in a lot of different things in my community many self-employed people so thank you for allowing me to be here well thank you both for making the time we really appreciate it as you just heard state auditor stan speak to the issues of sort of iowa-wide support from small businesses within communities as well the state's activity to be a leader on technology i wonder if you could each tell us a little bit about how your business has changed since march how the pandemic has shifted your focus your um your sort of approach to business and i mean the anxiety that you probably likely have about where we go from here uh and we'll get into the good news in just a moment but let's let's level set that first joe do you want to kick us off sure yeah clearly for my business i've gone from the brick and mortar address here on the south side of des moines to the digital address online google business address to promote uh my real estate which has been very helpful because we know that during this pandemic uh the the safest way to find somebody to find a business is to go online to google uh that person so that's been very helpful uh in real estate that's a very important thing i do have to say that for my latino community you know many of our small businesses still need to uh to do that heavy lifting getting those addresses online that digital community is something that is taking a lot needs to take a lot of work yeah well um you know our business model we're very fortunate that we were really poised for what this pandemic has handed us even beforehand we've gone through plenty of our own challenges but you know some of the things that have helped us has been you know we source locally we manufacture ourselves we're a small team and we mostly ship products out so we're taking orders online we use google ads and other uh electronic tools and technologies extensively to help us get in front of customers which has been a great benefit uh for us for many years uh but in a situation like this it's pretty much indispensable when you can't get out and get in front of customers and the model is really turned upside down on its head from what's traditional you know the way that we've kind of put our business model together in the first place has been just something that we've continued to really amplify and we've had to make changes internally um we've been you know more careful uh you know more uh procedures and policies that we've you know enacted to keep our our ourselves safe um but um overall um you know we've been fortunate that our business has continued to stay fairly strong i guess there's you know a lot more folks that are staying home and they need uh gates to keep their pets and their kids away from you know other areas so um but without the without the tools and the technologies it would be almost impossible so mark you're what uh we would classify the digital driver you're one of those small businesses that has incorporate incorporated um online sales online ads digital resources those those tools and services that enable efficiency right that give you agility so that if uh in the instance where you can't have a brick and mortar presence or you can't go to a trade show or you can't be in front of um what might be your retail outlet you don't see a huge dip in business right that is that is the defining factor of digital drivers um so congratulations on that but also i think there's a lot to be learned from that in corporations so did you you mentioned that you've gone through tough times that you've had sort of transitional moments in the history of your business i wonder without getting too much into the weeds on what those were how they informed the decisions you made in adopting those tools and thinking about their resiliency yeah yeah well when it when everything started to kind of melt down uh earlier this year um i think everybody was very afraid they weren't sure what was going to happen um people shutting you know businesses shutting down um you know fearful for what was going to happen to your job when i think that the technologies kind of stepped in and helped really uh preserve a lot of jobs it didn't fix everybody's problems but it helped a lot of people continue to be able to work from home so we utilized that some and the other things that i think played into our our favor were the value aspect so you know the made in america um the local aspect of our business and and how we um sell and and distribute and um just that just that overall value concept which is really not that new to us but it was something that we really started to um you know i guess take more advantage of joe you mentioned that among your uh sort of the latino community with which you are an activist and leader you're seeing small businesses that need to adopt these tools and services that need to take on a more digital presence in order to be resilient and agile in times of crisis can you tell us a little bit about that challenge and or specifically what's stopping folks from adopting what's the barrier to entry sure i mean the barrier to entry is the the lack of information on the how to how to go online how to promote how to have the drop down menu for a restaurant how to order online for pickup simple things like that can really hold a small business hostage a restaurant a taco stand you know small businesses in general within the community what we've seen is when we look at some very popular restaurants here in central iowa they were prepared for the pandemic they already had in place the mechanisms online to order online to provide updates on on what they would provide if people should decide to walk in those simple type of things though cost money there's mechanisms both hardware and software uh information on that how to provide that you know so so that has held hostage many uh small business owners within the latino community and other communities of color so information on how to do that is important you know what mark in his business has prepared for you know i applaud that effort you know of course in real estate we had a lot of those mechanisms already in place before the pandemic to handle transactions but for small business owners especially in the latino community where many of our community members are have small businesses that type of technology that know-how needs to be communicated because if it doesn't happen it's going to drive those businesses out of business so um we do need with what was said by uh mr rob sands uh you know information out there on how to get that done simple things like even getting a driver's license you know it can take weeks before somebody can either get a renew or a new one having a driver's license not now especially in preparing to vote is a must happen and it must happen right away so increasing the ability to speed up that technology on a government level and providing information to small businesses uh uh in the private sector is definitely a must right now joe it's not going to surprise you that during the digitally driven research that i mentioned earlier with mr sand at 63 percent of iowans who reported sort of a barrier to adoption for digital tools and technology said it was education that it was information and education deficit they weren't sure how to use it they weren't sure how to get it they weren't sure how to plug in whether it's amazon sales or shopify or crm that they could use to manage you know the customer base of of a local restaurant they just weren't sure there was a real information deficit the other um the other barrier was cost or perceived cost was the idea that spending another 23 dollars a month for a particular tool set was not value additive at the time now it is it also wasn't going to surprise you that neither of those barriers stands up to copic right there there's a lot of i wish i had i'd really like to have we will in the future going on inside iowa and and other states that are as diversified as iowa in terms of the economy manufacturing and agriculture and sort of the services industry and so i i bring this up only to say that one of our recommendations was that there should be an increase in public-private partnerships between state federal and even local governments that are helping small businesses find these tools and adopt them more aggressively they overcome that education um barrier to adoption so that we are more resilient in the face of crisis and i wanted to ask you what you thought of that clearly we need that public-private partnership right now you know in this pandemic you know we have people who are driving by small business locations not knowing if they can go in not knowing how to communicate not being able to make an order or a purchase not being able to reach a contractor because they're not visible they're not visible online on the internet so building that building up that community online providing that access to consumers is very important the technology is already out there uh as you know mark has shown with his business uh in in many others so how do we share that how do we provide that drilling down to a city level where city inspectors also become those who are educators and other government officials i mean this is not rocket science so how do we get it out there i mean many of our many small businesses with the latino community are barely making it right now because they don't know how to promote themselves other than you know encouraging customers to come to their door or to call them on the phone but that's not going to be enough so we do nee i agree with you we need those partnerships we need them right away because uh the latino community as with the immigrant community and others play a very significant part in fueling the economies across iowa and every county so if we don't get them online in a way that provides an immediate transaction of service and business that's going to hurt all the iowans so we need to be thinking about that we also found joe that uh in addition to underserved underrepresented communities there's also there's a real cohort the older small business operators get it's not a huge surprise but small business operators in their 60s and over are seeing a real um lag time in terms of adoption uh mark why don't i leave you with uh give us the final word on this and give some best practices for those small businesses on the line right now watching and thinking about what they should do in terms of adoption what they should do in terms of integration of tools to create agility in their business sure well i i think curiosity is really where all all good things start so um you know a lot of business owners out there are probably not uh hat aware of some of these tools but i think a forum like this is a good start and other uh businesses mentoring other businesses and i'm i'm hoping that you know the things that we're sharing today and the experiences of what we've done at smart attract you know will inspire other companies to be able to step up and and do some of the same things even if they're in uh you know very uh uncomfortable ways and getting out of your comfort comfort zone so i i think the best practices really are um you know thinking about your basic business model and how you've done it in the past but now incorporating and pivoting to using new tools and technologies that will accomplish similar or maybe the same things but in different and unique ways so you know the perfect example of us that we utilize extensively is you know google ads and when we were first starting off we didn't have a team of you know 20 sales people that can go out to constant um you know sales events or trade shows or or travel the country and do that we we had to get into people's homes without getting into people's homes and so when you go to google and you go and you search um and and there's plenty of other examples pinterest is great about that too um so you know think about the kinds of avenues that that you can use as a business to get in front of other customers whether it's local or or further out and uh just start to piece that together and take advantage of things like what we're doing today there's other events that are sponsored by technology leaders where you can come into your local library and take and participate in learning about some of these tools so you know check those things out and that's a good place to start and and people want to help people i think that's that's that is a big theme and if you can get you know connected with others like-minded people um there's a lot of help out there but you just taken the first few steps to get to it wonderful thank you we i i really struck a chord that you just said one of our recommendations mark was that when evaluating which tools and services a small business should adopt they should start at the end right they should start about what job do i hate doing what is the thing that i can automate what are the the inefficiencies that i'm dealing with that i need to overcome and then work backwards from there that not every tool is for every business and not every um tool is created equal and and one thing that whether it's you know a big tech or a midsize tech or an enterprise tool that you don't even know who made it when you first discover it it can all be useful depending on on what you need gentlemen thank you very much for your time i really appreciate it mark you mentioned um tech leaders i'd like to actually flip over to our next panel and talk to some of those tech leaders from iowa we have the technology association of iowa brian waller has joined us and mike caldwell is the ex executive director of entrepreneurial innovators at the greater des moines partnership that's a mouthful thank you gentlemen for joining us today i really appreciate it um i've done brief introductions but if you could tell us a little bit brian about the tech association of iowa sure thanks jake uh brian waller president of the technology association of iowa uh we are really the voice of iowa's technology industry and technology community uh we're a member-based trade association so we represent iowa technology companies uh and information technology professionals here in iowa wonderful mike hi mike caldwell with the greater wine partnership we're a regional chamber of commerce and economic development group in based in des moines but representing a 10 county area around central iowa you guys are silicon prairie that's that's what i'm hearing is that uh in the in the effort to turn iowa uh into the nexus of all good things tech throughout the midwest i've got the two guys on the line so we heard a little bit about what's happening at the state level in terms of investment and prioritization we've heard from a couple of iowa and small businesses and how they've um navigated the pandemic and what to do with their businesses and the tools that they adopt let me let me ask you guys what are you seeing from your member companies what are you seeing in terms of the iowa ecosystem and and any takeaways you have from the last six months mike when we start with you oh sure so i work mostly with startup companies uh that have high growth potential those companies trying to grow nationally internationally but starting at basically the ground zero some of our startups have benefited greatly uh from what's happened during covet 19 others have been uh severely impacted by it both have had to go through pivots if you will so for those that were for example a company that does a lot of live event management of volunteers well there aren't any live events so they've turned back to their non-profit routes and are spending more time with traditional non-profit we've got some companies that are in many tech companies are providing digital tools so tools for you know the insurance broker how do i reach my customers digitally so they're they're seeing a big uptick with it so you know the impact is on both sides and i would say that uh there's been a tremendous amount of sharing of resources amongst those startups on what's working and what's not one of the highlights of our member service uh throughout this process and i'm not sure if i said this at the top but the commerce council is also a membership trade association but more at an international level and we have a little over 12 000 u.s small businesses and in uh sort of the great american tradition once a week we get together for a happy hour and during that happy hour our members talk to each other about what's working right whether it be on the zoom or in the chat function where are you going for resources what best practices have you adapted and one of the real points of pride for us was that small businesses were saved from these conversations you know they were able to pivot they were able to adjust trim their sales a little bit and find a way to get through the early stages and to uh brian what are you what are you seeing out there sure um well if i look at some of our larger companies as you can imagine information technology professionals and those that see themselves as technologists we're really prepared to go virtual and live in this environment i think about a couple of industries specifically healthcare here in iowa the adoption of telemedicine now on a personal level my wife is a family doctor and the adoption rate of people doing telemedicine now has just been has just exploded you think about in manufacturing and the way they're using artificial intelligence now for contract tracing i don't think that's going anywhere and rob talked a little bit about it that is about the digitization of government you use the example of texting a picture not a picture texting when you shoot a deer here to the dnr rather than sending in all the paperwork i think there's a really uh there's a mode of people wanting to adapt at that level when you talk about small businesses as it pertains to the technology association of iowa but for a large part they're really thriving during this time because they're service providers for instance if you are uh someone who does contract work for large companies whether that be cyber security or app development or pen testing or things like that you're seeing large companies kind of holding off on those big hires and are actually utilizing these service providers in increased rates so they're doing a lot of wonderful things when you talk about retail if you're a development shop that does mobile application or web development well a lot of our small businesses to mike point are turning to to do e-commerce and having them help each other out of that kind of process so by and large we've seen some really really engaging things i think from a k-12 educational level uh we look 10 years down the road and we see a lot of k-12 students learning virtually right now and so we think the adoption into the technology field will be a lot more aggressive now with an easier entrance with people um at a younger age probably not opting out of this career path so early so i don't want to seem so optimistic and dreamy but from where we stand currently there's a lot of positive things to hang our hat on that's all right i'll bring you down right now the uh from from a tech perspective from a from a i've worked in technology for a long time and 10 12 years ago we started hearing the idea of digital transformation that yes the digitization of government and records and sort of the minutia that we work with but more importantly the decisions would be made by software driven prioritization right that the things that we do every day would look like this that you wouldn't need as much office space that you could transmit documents and then encrypted you wouldn't need the same security protocols and so on and for 10 to 12 years that all sounded good and for a lot of technology companies it became standard practice but not for restaurants not for farms not for local mom-and-pop shops and i have been um surprised probably not the wrong one i've been uh encouraged by the speed with which the digital transformation has happened in the united states over the past seven months as these businesses were forced um not without casualties and i don't mean to make this sound like it's it's a good thing but it ultimately will lead to a better place for the american economy for the way small businesses operate and for entrepreneurialism and sort of that innovative spirit that drives most small businesses to begin and to run and persevere through tough times in the first place and so it doesn't surprise me that you guys are both seeing an upside to this for technology companies my uh question i feel like perhaps our joint responsibility across three of us is making sure that our tech members are servicing non-tech clients right that we are supporting local restaurants bookstores uh education hubs and i'm wondering if you're seeing um if you see a clear avenue that we should be encouraging folks or for those on the on the line watching right now if we could we have advice for them on how to contact service providers to start thinking about this adoption brian i rambled a lot did any of that make any sense no can you expand on that not joking uh yeah you know i think this really the rubber meets the road here is this is a really difficult environment for business development it's a really difficult environment to start relationships in new projects without that basis of that human connection and so i know from a service provider side they are begging to get with restaurants small business owners to help create technology solutions and i think that's really the focus is to create technology solutions and i there are technology associations of any state in every one state i would say reach out to those folks reach out to mike caldwell and the greater des moines partnership because they have members there or that are really ready to ask and i think people if you're a small business owner you've adopted that this is the new reality and you just got to do some outreach i think either mike or i are really good places to start here in the state of iowa that's great mike give thoughts on that well i think that you know building a network is is hard and brian touched on that but we're seeing uh traditional uh if you will rules and environments being completely smashed so in the venture capital world the idea of investing in a company without ever meeting the founders in person was just a non-starter right it would be laughed at yet you've seen some of the biggest vcs in the nation both on both coasts um doing multiple deals without ever having physically met the people at all you also see some upside and something i would encourage people to take advantage of is you know people are practicing different uh you know if you will approach mechanisms you might not be able to get a vc on the phone uh back in the old days of pre-covet because they were flying around the country now they're more likely to take your call because they've got the time they're also seeing that because they can do business remote only they don't need to limit themselves to the old rule was well if we can't fly there in one hop we're not going uh and i'm seeing that not just at the venture capital world level but i'm seeing it in in the buy sell world of people selling their products online probably one of the most popular seminars we put on early on was how to sell remote and we were fortunate because one of our local companies has been selling remote only very high priced software uh for 15 years and who really knows how to do it and the interesting thing is are people that know how to do this and there's people you can learn from so i know brian's got resources on his website we've got a lot on ours but uh don't assume that the old rules all apply i think it's time to you know try things that they're gonna make you uncomfortable but some of them may work that's great advice mike um let me switch gears just a little bit as as we talk about sort of the old rules of we'll go back here for the old rules of of marketplaces and economies there was sort of a natural inclination towards dominant market players and upstarts and who can disrupt what markets etc now increasingly as it comes to technology what we see is vertical integration right you see small businesses large large businesses alike using many of the same tools and and mostly i'm talking about things like google and i'm talking about facebook ads and instagram ads and amazon as a as a marketplace or shopify even ebay and that the traditional way that markets have worked in the past doesn't really apply to software driven marketplaces and yet we're seeing a lot of attention paid to these larger american technology companies i don't know if you've seen the news today but google got sued by the department of justice this morning as a case spending against facebook amazon's of the crosshairs of the judiciary committee and yet those three companies that i just list off top of my head are responsible for billions of dollars of r d that have gone into small businesses that have led to growth and billions more in american economic growth and so i'm i'm i spent most of my time trying to explain to policymakers far too often at a state and federal level that this is just how this economy works this is how a digital economy works there are no winners and losers only people that are playing or not and now we all need to work together to figure out where you fit in that stack like that jenga stack and i'm wondering if you could speak just how your members are using larger tools enterprise quality tools that are built by other companies to support their their mission at first um so i i look at it like do you kind of point it out it takes a village and so you can't say one side is bad and one is not as you know here in the state ohio we've got a lot of data centers that can be highly contested about whether that was a good thing for iowa or not but i can tell you um from our enterprise level members they're actually they're utilizing and leveraging those technologies because they're competing on a global level and so they need some some big thinkers and some people that are working on a global level so you think about a lot of the cloud migration that's happening right now here in the state of iowa with our companies happening through aws and some of those larger providers but i don't want to leave out some of the small businesses here in iowa that provide some of those same services like uh here in des moines there's a light edge solutions or in volta odyssey or rapids that does cloud computing and data storage and things like that and so i think it takes a village and so i think our members are competing at a global level so they want the best they don't care where they're coming from or how big they are they want the best to secure their data and have a really a cloud migration and cloud experience make your thoughts on th t sorry i knew what's going to happen one of the things we talked to a lot of our small businesses about is you have to be online and we were talking about this before covet your your market is global and especially the more focused an area you're in whether it's hand crafted items and you're using etsy in other marketplaces or whether it's extremely unique technology uh that you're talking about mostly in chat rooms with with like-minded individuals you've got to be online and the idea of having a storefront there's nothing wrong with having a storefront but we're past the time when you can depend on your storefront to be all of your business whether you're a restaurant whether you're a retailer you have to have that online capability to compete uh back to these large structures and large businesses you know i remember in the 80s and early 90s japan was going to take over the world right if you guys are old enough to remember that conversation they were going to take over the world they were dominating everything in the 80s and then it was and that's china and then it's the next country and it's the next country these things will change and while google's very dominant there's another search engine out there called duckduckgo of all things right that's growing very very fast right now and they're growing because they don't store your data not saying one's right one's wrong but people are making choices so uh to brian's point about light edge there are a lot more players than the top three or four big ones and we're not you know we're not restricted we have to be there some people feel that amazon hits that border you know it's a good question if they do or don't but to tear it all down it's not going to solve anything i'd like to remind people that um these are not public utilities in fact they're companies that are less than 25 years old you don't have a basic right to be able to sell your products on amazon right you don't have a basic right to to search uh items but what i what i would add to that is that these are american companies that have built a technology that that restores i'm not to get to adam smith about it all but that restores the true nature of capitalism that if you have a better product that you can sell at a lower price and a higher quality you can sell it to anybody now you can reach them anywhere in the world you're not confined by uh your geographic border or how far you can ship something or who hears you from word of mouth which not for nothing as a native of northern maine is something that iowans need to embrace right like this is you're not los angeles you're not even chicago you're silicon prairie and that that growth trajectory because you can sell to anybody you can sell anything to anybody through online tools and services is the key to economic development in a diversified marketplace on top of manufacturing agriculture that's the end of my soapbox um gentlemen thank you very much for joining us today i really appreciate the time uh this has been a rapid hour of conversation we covered a lot of ground um i suspect that we will learn more in the next three months uh in addition to what we've already learned in the last seven and uh hopefully next time we have this conversation we'll be talking about all the things that we learned and how we've built this resilience into our businesses and that covet is behind us but we're prepared for the next crisis um so thank you very much for your time and i'll talk to you both soon uh speaking of which that that concludes our time today uh thank you again to everybody who joined us thank you to the speakers thank you to our co-hosts if you get a moment go to connectedcouncil.org check out the research that i mentioned digital driven digitally driven there's some good uh information in there there's a state-by-state breakdown so that you can localize it there's also recommendations on things that you can and should do with your small businesses to improve your virginity and resilience in the face of covet-19 crises thank you very much for your time and uh until next time thank you