 Hey everyone, I'm Scott Shagayoka, GoDaddy's Entrepreneur-in-Residence. I'm here in San Francisco calling in from my home as we are in a shelter-in-place order here in California. This week I wanna talk about economic resiliency. What can we learn from the past about how small businesses can rebuild after hardship? Or what about the worldwide effect that the 2008 economic and housing crisis had? Or major floods like the one that devastated parts of Iowa in 2008. Or category five hurricane Irma that left people homeless with thousands of businesses left to pick up the pieces for themselves. There is some really interesting and new data that suggests a link between the quantity of micro and small businesses in a community and that community's ability to bounce back. So we're gonna speak to researchers who are part of a recently released multi-year study by GoDaddy called Adventure Forward. And we're specifically going to look at the data that shows micro-business' impact on the American economy. We're also gonna talk to individuals who have been through economic hardship themselves and have come out on the other side. What can we learn from these stories and from the data that help us look towards life post COVID-19? Thanks so much for joining me Robert and it's great to talk to you. I understand you worked with Venture Forward which is a multi-year body of research that looked at data from 20 million online ventures and 30,000 zip codes across the country. Can you tell me more about what Venture Forward is? What we studied with Venture Forward was the effect of this unmeasured population of everyday entrepreneurs where the ventures that they're managing oftentimes don't show up in traditional government measures of economic health and vitality. And with GoDaddy's unique perspective, we have this window into this population that has allowed us to really study the relationship between the creation of and the successful development of these ventures and broader economic outcomes that policymakers and members of the academic community really care about. Can you also explain to me what a venture is? A venture is a distinct website or idea that an individual is trying to create a digital identity around. And the analysis and data that we're looking at, we distinguish those commercial entities from those non-commercial entities to help to explain what's happening within each of the markets that we've been looking at. So this week we're focusing on economic resiliency. And I was wondering if you could tell me more about the connection between ventures and community economic recovery. Does the Venture Forward data suggest that there's a link between the two? In the counties where we saw the highest amount of economic recovery from the recession, there was twice the amount of active and highly active ventures in those counties. It was the density of ventures that we really saw that was making the difference between those counties that performed really well post the recession and those that didn't. One thing that anybody could take from this data is the understanding that what they do matters. There's an opportunity for people to consume this information and reach out to the politicians and policymakers who can do something about it, whether that's creating tax policies or educational programs to help them. Thanks so much for your time, Robert. Great, Scott, thanks a lot for the opportunity to talk about this. So now given what we know about the data, what is it like to actually go through an economic disaster and recover from it? Next up, we'll talk to Scott Swenson. He's from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which experienced a really devastating flood back in 2008. For those who don't know, could you tell us a little bit about the 2008 flood in Iowa? At the time that flood was the fifth largest disaster in US history, so for a city besides the Cedar Rapids it was just devastating. If you can imagine, thriving through town and seeing nothing but the tops of building. Could you talk a little bit about how small businesses in particular were impacted by the flood? Overall, the damages for the city were about $6 billion between private residential houses. There were about 7,000 houses that were flooded. We had over a thousand businesses that were flooded. What were some of the things you saw with the rebuild? How did these small businesses, how did these community members after a day of devastation get through this? We saw business owners working with each other to help the recovery. So in a lot of cases, it was a business that might be a competitor that had now turned into being a supplier for another business. I love that move from the spirit of hyper competitiveness to a spirit of collaboration. I think that's a really powerful message and something we're seeing already with the response to COVID-19. What were some of the factors that helped small businesses recover more quickly than others? Businesses that engage their team, their staff and we're highly committed to them from the very start were probably first in line. We saw a lot of people increase their capabilities within days after the crisis had. Restaurants became curbside overnight. Retailers that weren't doing any commerce suddenly developed a way to travel together a system and they're making some permanent improvements to their business mom. In some ways, we had a blank canvas to work with and something new and creative really emerged that we didn't have before. How did small businesses fare? Were they able to survive? So the statistics we had going into it was that after three years, we should expect 55% failure rate because of the business networks and all the things that we did. We were able to see 82% survival rate after after three years. That's beautiful. That gives me hope. Well, Scott, I really appreciate your time. I hope we see a similar positive recovery with what's going on with the COVID-19 crisis. Thank you. So next up, I'm going to speak to Amber and Kibwe. They're a couple I know through my work with GoDaddy series Made in America and they run a vegan popsicle company with their kids in Atlanta. They first hand experience of what it's like to go through an unexpected disaster. Hurricane Irma was a storm that hit on 9-11, 2017 and it hit primarily the coast of Florida in southern Georgia, but it came up through Atlanta and we were actually one of 13 houses that were totally destroyed in our county. And the power had gone out and we didn't want to lose the inventory. And so we said, instead of wasting them, let's go out and have like the Oprah effect and essentially and pass out popsicles and make people happy. And we left with instruments. Our next door neighbor had called us and told us that we got hit by a storm. We ended up losing everything in the house and having to evacuate immediately and never looked back at that point. We were at a neighbor's house up the street who was experiencing a power being out as well. And he immediately was like, y'all can stay tonight here. As tragic as the event was with the storm hitting us, we saw the good in it and it wasn't immediate. It was, I don't think we ever had any trauma like that in our lives or in our adult lives where something has impacted us so great. What would you tell small businesses right now? What I will say is that it's okay to feel uncomfortable at times and sometimes even the feeling of defeat. Find ways to reinvent yourself. So if our product is primarily a person-a-person product, how can this product now become an online product? You know, how can we further that? You have to be uncomfortable to get there and then once you're there, you can't be scared to leap. And so we're leaping right now. I just really wanna thank you both for your time and thanks for sharing so vulnerably about, you know, your experience with being affected with Hurricane Irma and everything that you're going through right now with COVID-19. I have deep belief that she will get through this. And you'll say, you know, we did get through that and we got through much stronger. Of course, our current crisis is unlike anything we've ever experienced before. It's different from the 2008 economic crisis. It's like a natural disaster, but it's happening to everyone everywhere and there's really no end in sight. But I think there's something that we can learn hopefully from the past that we can take into our future. And it's the unknown. But if there's anything I've learned about being an entrepreneur, it's that we can handle the unknown. So if you want to learn more about this study, just click the link below. And if you need any resources at all or any information, go to openwestand.org. We're gonna get through this together and thanks so much for joining me.