The problem we are all watching is that they are just too big to get anything done without a boatload of needless bureaucracy?
Todays post is from Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.
Have you applied for your loans from any of the Government/SBA programs that are intended to help small business and their employees during the COVID-19 Pandemic?
If you have, you probably have the same tales of woe as 100% of other small business that have done the same thing. Hey, we will invest whatever time it takes in order to protect our associates and our businesses.
At SafeSourcing Inc. small though we are, we have applied for the following relief programs.
- The Paycheck Protection Plan through Bank of America and supported through the SBA.
- We have applied for the Federal Reserve backed program through the SBA sponsored AZ-00065-Arizona COVID-19 disaster loan program.
- We have also applied for the small $10K Disaster Fund Grant through the SBA.
Personally, I have waited on an open phone line to the SBA where I was caller # 964 and waited it out in order to be told they can not give me an update. I also have a loan application number and they have no way to look it up. I have also waited on the phone for 2 hours with my Banks data collection company Itralinks. In that process, I started as caller # 177, waited until I was number one, pressed start and became caller # 176. I waited again and at the same time became caller # 175. Not only can’t they handle the volume, their application has zero instructions for the user. If we did not own a document management system at SafeSourcing, I never would have figured this out.
I believe that President Trump said that we can’t make the cure worse than the disease when referring to COVID-19. In the same light, we can’t make the small business solutions proposed by the government increase the level of pain small business are suffering. The question now is how many small businesses have failed already because they had to wait to long for the Band-Aid cure that these programs are to begin with. I’m guessing the numbers are in the millions.
It’s time that someone moved beyond sound bite answers and got their act together.
We look forward to your experience and comments.
