 Aloha and welcome to this special edition of Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We've got a special edition today because we have a very special guest. Normally we broadcast on Thursdays at two o'clock in the downtown studios of Think Tech Hawaii and Pioneer Plaza. But today we've got a special broadcast because we've got a dignitary from the Small Business Administration visiting us here in Hawaii this week, Yolanda Swift, who's the Deputy National O'Budsman for the Small Business Administration. She's got a full calendar, she's got a lot of events going on, she's traveling to the different neighboring islands, but she cut some time out of her calendar to visit with us today to give us a little bit of an update on the SBA at the national level and maybe a little bit of background on herself, which is an interesting story all by itself. But Yolanda, it's great to have you on the show today. I'm very happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Oh, pleasure of course. But you just got in from, are you adjusting to the time zone changes yet or? I am slowly adjusting to the time zone changes. I've traveled from the East Coast, so yes, it's a bit of an adjustment. Actually, you do quite a bit of traveling, don't you? Yes, we do. I do, on behalf of the Small Business Administration, actually cover all of the United States and the territories. Big territory, big area. But before we get into all the details and all the interesting things you're doing with the SBA, can you share with us a little bit about your background and how did you get involved with the SBA? How did it all start? Well, it all started a number of years ago. I am an attorney by trade. I'm not a recovering, but I'm actually currently an acting and practicing attorney. And being involved with work with the federal government really started for me when I was in law school. I'm originally from Ohio. I am a buck. I currently living in Washington, D.C., so I am a mid-westerner. And while I was in law school at the University of Cincinnati, I had an opportunity, I was given an opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C., to do an internship at the Department of Justice. And that was a tremendous opportunity which I'd always like to inform other people about those possibilities of seeking out those internships with the federal government. It really turned out to be a blessing for me because I was fortunately able to work at justice, return to law school for my final year, and I decided that I was very interested in public service and working with the public. And from there, when I graduated, I then moved to New York, pursued a master's in law and worked in the banking sector for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That's a trivia question. What's the difference between a law degree, I guess, a JD and a master's of law? Is there a difference in that? The difference is for the attorney after a JD, it's reversed in the legal profession for the degree denominations. You get your Juris Doctorate first after the three years in law school, and then that one additional year I specialized in banking and finance. Many get their LLM in the regulatory area, banking and finance, or in taxation. There are other specialties. Many also have an opportunity to pursue that joint degree in the business area, which I took many of the business courses and concentrated in banking and finance law and regulatory law. And that led me then into working for the FDIC, becoming more familiar with commercial lending, loans made to small businesses. I moved from the FDIC in New York to actually work for Nations Bank, Bank of America, the Bank of America was a successor, and while I was at Nations Bank in Maryland, I was counsel to the small business group, the business individuals who developed loan products and made loans to small businesses. This is a tremendous amount of very good experience that actually leads you to what you're doing today. Yes, yes. Amazing. It leads me to that because what I learned from that experience is, one, it is very difficult for small businesses all over this country to develop, to thrive, and most importantly to have access to the capital that they need to be able to go on and be successful. And because small businesses, unlike large businesses, they do not have access to tremendous resources, many are privately held companies, and so therefore they don't issue public stock to try to raise funds. So it's always a challenge, and fortunately what the banks and the small business administration try to do in helping get the capital is to help the small businesses develop a business plan and other tools that they need to be successful. Right. They try to build that bridge and fill that puka, if you will, that the big businesses have, but maybe the small businesses don't. And that's particularly relevant here in Hawaii, but the majority of our businesses I think it's 97 or 98% are all small businesses in Hawaii. Yes. And for me it's a remarkable journey because at the FDIC and then in the corporate world when I worked in the corporate sector, I've done and assisted as counsel on multi-million dollar deals, trillion dollar deals with large insurance companies, institutions, and I see the various opportunities for corporations. But what I also realized is and saw through my journey is that the small businesses really are the core and the key in the local communities in terms of developing jobs as well as developing training and skills development opportunities for local people. Can you imagine what would happen if the small businesses all shut down? It would decimate the economy. It would decimate the economy, it would decimate communities as well because I am a member of the community as we all are where I've seen the opportunities that are created for young people to obtain skills through working at the local McDonald's and many of those are franchise owned by small businesses. For example, the local food stores, chains, the local department stores and others where the fundamental basic skills are developed and supplies and goods are provided. We no longer live in societies where everyone goes down to the downtown area to buy all their goods and services, but we want those things available to us out in our various communities and that's where small businesses come in. It's vital to the economy and that's why the SBA is such an important function for the country is to provide that type of support and resource. So now you went from, I guess, a private sector and you ended up with the SBA? I went from the public sector with government during, as I said, my internship and then into a public sector job as an attorney, then went out into private sector for a while and then back into the federal government with the Small Business Administration. And I've been with the Small Business Administration since 1998. From 1998 until 2010, I was actually an attorney in the legal division, in the finance group, developing the loan programs and the policies and procedures around loan programs. And in doing that, I also had many colleagues in the legal division that worked on other aspects of how the small business provides services. And I saw the regulations that we developed at our agency to try to assist small businesses, but I also know that there are so many other regulations developed by federal agencies as well as state and local governments. And all of these regulations impact small businesses and the small businesses need to comply. It's really an overwhelming sometime matrix of compliance requirements just for a small business to get off the ground and survive and thrive. Well, and that's something that we might come back to maybe after the break, but we're going to talk a little bit more. We just had a round table yesterday and compliance was one of the big issues and the amount of time required to try and maintain compliance became very clear during that. And I want to talk a little bit about that, but now you've got a pretty senior level position with the SBA as the deputy national ombudsman. Can you describe what that is? What does that mean? Yes. And I do feel very privileged to have this opportunity since 2010 to work for and on behalf of small businesses as the deputy national ombudsman. The office of the national ombudsman was created in 1996 under a law known as the brief of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act. And at that time in 1996, it was realized that large businesses have a number of different avenues and advocates to speak on their behalf at the state and local and federal level when laws are being created. Small businesses, unfortunately, do not have extra time to get to engage and get involved and give up front input about regulations. And sometimes they don't have the money for that. They don't have the money as well. And often you'll find that small businesses do not have many trade organizations that work on their behalf. The cost of being involved with those is often overwhelming. So it was recognized that there was a need and the ombudsman's office was created to assist small businesses after these regulations are created in laws to assist small businesses in understanding how to navigate through the maze of laws and regulations. But also, and just as important, is we are allowed to hear from small businesses how these laws are burdensome to them, how the laws are being enforced against them, and many of the fines, fees, penalties, application fees that were created. It was just not considered what the excessive impact would be. We've got so many different agencies and areas of the government that have their own missions. And sometimes they layer on top of each other, and they don't always look at the unintended consequence of having the overlapping requirements, and they're not always in sync. Absolutely. And that is where our office comes in, because we have the ability to liaise with all of the federal regulatory agencies, and we do have specific senior level partners at those agencies to which we can forward comments on specific cases for specific small businesses, as well as deal with global issues that may be effect regulatory issues that are affecting larger groups or the entire sphere of small businesses. And that's powerful. To have that type of voice with these senior level positions in these other agencies is very valuable. It's very valuable, and we really want to make the position effective, because we do expect results. We have regular input with the federal agencies, we meet with them regularly, and in fact, we issue an annual report to Congress to keep Congress informed on how the various federal agencies are working to assist small businesses, and keeping the small businesses in mind when they're developing compliance assistance programs, developing educational tools for small businesses, and just to keep them in mind. One other important thing that we have, one authority we have under the Small Business Act in my office is that we actually can appoint, we have a board, a 50-person board for business owners around the countries, our members of our regulatory fairness boards. We have 10 regions, each region has five small business owners as board members, and those individuals are so vitally important to myself and others in our office. We hear on a regular basis from our board members, and I have the pleasure of sitting right now with one of our board members, you, Reg Baker, here representing the small businesses in the state of Hawaii and all of the islands, and most importantly, because of your expertise in accounting as a CPA, we've heard your voice on a number of issues that affect small businesses around the country. That's right, and I've served on the American Institute of CPAs at a national level, so I do have that little bit of that national perspective, and full disclosure, I've been on the board for regulatory fairness with the SBA for a couple years now, I'm chair of the ninth region, which is pretty much Western United States, and I've had the pleasure of working with Yolanda for the two years, and she's very effective at what she does. Now, what I want to do is come back after the break, we've got to take a short one-minute break, we'll come right back, and I want to dig into a little bit more about the SBA and how these things work and what other types of product services is offered. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker, my guest today is Yolanda Swift, we're talking about the SBA at a national level, we're going to take a one-minute break, and we'll see you right back here. Hi, I'm Chris Leetham with The Economy and You, and I'd like to invite you each week to come watch my show each Wednesday at 3pm. Aloha, my name is Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman, welcome. We are co-hosts of a show called Keys to Success, which is live on the ThinkTech Live Network series, weekly on Thursdays at 11am. We're looking forward to seeing you then. Aloha! Aloha, I'm Richard Emory, host of Condo Insider, a weekly Thursday show at 3 o'clock that goes all summer long talking about issues living in a condo association. Each week we bring experts to talk about the rights and obligations of owners and boards of directors to successfully run their condominium. It's a great educational show, answers a lot of questions, we hope you'll visit us sometime. Aloha! Welcome back, this is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker, it's a special edition, we've got a national dignitary from the small business administration visiting us this week. Yolanda, it's great to have you here, you're welcome to come back anytime, it's great to have you here and have this exchange and it's good to have this leverage in Washington, D.C. that can help us get some things done. So now you're at the SBA, you've got this senior level position as Deputy O'Budsman at the national level, you've got this regulatory review board that's kind of helping throughout the nation, boots on the ground type of activity, but you travel a lot and you actually participate in some of the different activities going on as evidenced by you being here today as well as nationally. So we had an event yesterday. Yes we did because one of the mechanisms our office uses to inform small businesses about how we're available to help is to go around the country and conduct outreach events, round tables, regulatory fairness hearings and other type of public events, town halls that give small businesses an opportunity to come in and meet and sit down and talk with us about their concerns and issues. And yes we did have a regulatory fairness round table yesterday at the Small Business Administration District Office here in Honolulu and thank you very much, Reg, for assisting co-chairing that round table. We was very well attended by our resource partners as well as small business owners because that is what is important. We cannot do our work in Washington without hearing from the small businesses and without also hearing from and working with our congressional representatives and our other federal agencies. And that's a point I just wanted to emphasize is that the district office that had Jane Sawyer there, we also had a regional advocate there, Yvonne. You were there, I was there, but we also had representatives from the Department of Labor from the congressional and the senatorial. We had a lot of people that were there really for one purpose and that was to hear the issues that the small business community in Hawaii had concerns about. And so think about this, I mean small businesses could have gone to this and they would have had direct access to some very senior level people that can make some change happen. And that is true. And one of our challenges, Reg, in bringing up the fact that we had all of these resources there yesterday, it is a constant challenge for our office, the office of the National Ombudsman to reach out and be able to reach out into the business community and actually get feedback and hear from the small businesses. And so we realize businesses, people are busy during the day and they're not often available to come. So we're using this mechanism today with this broadcast to try to reach out to numbers of small businesses around the country. And thank you very much for the opportunity. Our federal agency partners also are trying out to reach out through various mechanisms and mediums, webinars, seminars, visiting roundtables, having meetings with various trade organizations to try to get the word out that we're here to try to assist. And if somebody did have a comment or an observation or a complaint, the process of submitting that for somebody to take a look at is actually a pretty simple process. Can you walk us through that just for a minute? Yes. And not only do we have these events to raise awareness, but we also want to let and assure small businesses that we will work on specific issues and concerns. And we do that through the comment mechanism. An individual small business or a trade organization on behalf of small businesses can complete our comment form online at our website site address. It's www.sba.gov backslash ombudsman. Or if you just go to the public SBA website and search for the Office of the National Ombudsman or put in the search word ombudsman, it will bring you to our webpage where an individual commenter will find the comment form, can complete that comment form online and send it back to us electronically. We will receive it in our database. We will review the comment, get as much information as possible, and forward that on immediately to the federal agency and expect the federal agency to respond in writing within 30 days. And this is probably a violation of a federal rule somewhere. But this is only a one-page form. That's correct. It's a very simple form with only a half a dozen or so fields that need to be filled out. Yes. Usually, when I look at these forms, they're five, ten pages long, but this is a single page form. So it's really simple. Yes. And that is as a result of another innovative process within the federal government. The Paperwork Reduction Act has encouraged all federal agencies to reduce the burdens and the time involved for citizens to engage with the federal government. So as a result, we have that one-page form and we ask for very simple information. It is a confidential process. We are an impartial liaison to get the ball rolling with the federal agency and we're working to get results on behalf of small businesses, not just pile up statistics or gather information, but actually to take that information and work with the federal agency to get a result. And may I talk a little bit about some of the types of results that we often obtain for small businesses? Absolutely. Many small businesses who are dealing with a federal agency and have federal contracts, for example, right to our office if they're having some issue in getting paid on a timely basis from the federal agency or the prime contractor or we have small businesses often inundated with IRS cases, IRS questions, tax issues, fines, levies, penalties. We work with the Internal Revenue Service frequently and the taxpayer advocate to help negotiate and work with the small business to get those fines and penalties in a payment status and installment plan. There are various types of programs that have been developed to assist. OSHA. We work with OSHA and the Department of Labor. That's a big one. For example. Yes. And that federal agency, OSHA has created a consultation program to come out and work with and this is a free program to come out and work with small businesses and consult with them on their occupational safety issues. So anything at a federal level that could be causing some issue for a small business, they can go fill out this one page form, they can send it on and I've submitted a few and I can tell you that the Washington office is very responsive. They usually give me an acknowledgement of receipt within 24 hours and it's very quick in getting the form. Takes a little bit more time to have it work through the system to move in a direction of resolution but it is very responsive and I get the impression that the Washington office takes this very seriously. They really jump on this stuff. Yes, we do. We take it seriously because the individuals who work in the office of the National Ombudsman are very personally committed to assisting small businesses and we also document and report regularly to our representatives in the House and Senate so that we can work in concert with them to get these laws and regulations changed and also to make sure that the other federal agencies are just as committed to working with and on behalf of small businesses. Being able to grade them and their efforts kind of give you a little bit of leverage too. Yes and I encourage your viewers and other small businesses in the area to take a look, visit the SBA.Ombudsman website and you'll see in our annual report that we generate annually. We do. We grade pretty specifically and relatively sternly our federal agencies on how responsive they are to the needs of small businesses. Yes, well I'm glad that you're doing that because somebody needs to hold them accountable and have them, you know, just be aware that there may be some room for improvement in some areas, you know, and that's good. And I have to say, most of our small business, I would say our small business advocates at federal agencies, they're all working very diligently and very concerned about assisting the small businesses because they recognize how many jobs are involved with the vitality and the sustainability of these small businesses. Now that's an interesting point and I don't want to put you on the spot, but at a national level, how many jobs in the economy are a direct, I guess, from the small business community? I've heard different numbers, but it's about half. Yes, I've heard numbers anywhere from half to at some points even higher in the 60 and 70 percent tile of the numbers of businesses and new jobs created through small businesses. And as I mentioned earlier, there are so many types of small businesses that typically people do not recognize. For example, franchises, the franchises and the franchisees, franchiseors. We have a number of people individuals who are involved in consulting and they have small consulting firms. Those are small businesses, those are small businesses actually higher individuals and they actually often use and employ other small businesses. So yes, we do have quite a nexus involved with what we do. Yes, it's huge. And the reason why I think just to complete the definition of employment, the small business sector is one part of the economy, 50, 60 percent. But the other part is made up of not only the large businesses, but also the government workers and the workforce that's employed by the government, as well as the Department of Defense and the military and that sort of thing. So if you look at all just private sector jobs, I think that percentage actually goes up quite a bit higher. It goes up exponentially and also because of the relationship between those larger private sector entities and the smaller companies on government contracts, we often find that while a large company may be awarded a government contract with a federal government agency, let's just say the Department of Defense or one of the military branches, often those larger entities or mid-sized companies then contract with and subcontract with the smaller companies. I wish we had more time. Believe it or not, we have gone through the entire 30 minute show. We got to wrap up here. The small businesses are a significant part of our economy and the SBA is there to support those small businesses to make sure that they're healthy and they continue to grow. So I can't say enough that this is a very important function, you know, probably in my opinion one of the best government agencies that we've got to help the small business community. Yes, and thank you very much for being our liaison, partnering with us on behalf of small businesses in Hawaii and in the western part of the United States. Very good. Thank you much. Thank you. All right. This is Reg Baker, business in Hawaii. We broadcast live every Thursday at 2 o'clock. This was a special edition because of our guests from Washington, D.C. But I hope to see you next week. Until then, aloha.