YouSaid · the spoken record

David G. McCullough

lines on the record
15
first
2018-03-23
most recent
2018-03-23
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “We talk all the time about what it is that small businesses contribute to their communities, but it doesn't get more tangible than that. It's one thing to look at the statistics even from our own work and from our own surveys and to say that small businesses employ people who might otherwise not be able to find employment, but they really truly invest in their people. I was in the room with Jeff when he shared the story, and he wasn't alone. The other business owners around the table all had similar stories where they had picked people who otherwise probably would not have gotten a shot at that job or even been fully employable. And they had invested in them and given them a chance and spent time training them, mentoring them, thinking about their futures, helping them plot a path forward and helping them think about what that looked like, and on the other side of it these business owners had some really tremendous success.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “I just love seeing people grow like that and to see that the transformation with her and hear her now interacting with people on the phone trying to get them licensed and talking to the state about Alabama, the Security Regulatory Board. You wouldn't know she was a 20 year old. You wouldn't know that somebody's told her in the past that she couldn't do anything. She'll stand up and she'll stand her ground. And I love it. And I just want to do that more. I want to do that more and more and more because it's empowering when you see people do that to know that you had a role in that.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “And I read hers afterwards, and she said that she just, you know, she could see herself being the go-to assistant, the one that was always reliable and people knew she was capable of doing her job and that they depended on her. And about seven months later, I called her into my office to give her her business cards because now she's the compliance manager for our company. At 20 years old. And I put that vision in front of her. And I said, hey, I want you to read this for me. Credit, I mean, I just saw her tear up and started crying, and I started crying with her. I'm that gum”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “A young lady that came to work for me at the time she was 19 years old, about a year out of high school, and I was needing a part-time assistant receptionist there for my office because we were still early growth stage. And you can talk to her and you could tell that she had never really been encouraged in her life. And when I'd say, hey, what's your plan for the future? Well, I don't know. I don't think I can do anything. And that was the response I got. About two or three months later, we had a manager's meeting at the office, and I said, okay, I want everybody to write out your vision of where you see yourself a year from now. Just take five minutes and just start writing.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “So there's one story from the focus groups, Amanda, that really stood out. Jeff McDowell owns a security services firm in Birmingham, Alabama. Let's listen to what he had to say when you asked him about the value of being a small business owner.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Original growth opportunity was I wanted to go into wholesale and I wanted to do everything from a little coffee shop that wanted to sell meat pies and didn't have the capacity to make them maybe all the way up to grocery stores. And to sell retail I have to be inspected by our county health department and that's fine and I've done that to sell wholesale though at any level even if I sell 10 meat pies to a coffee shop a block away I have to be inspected by the USDA and that involves months of paperwork. I can't produce anything except on the schedule that they allow me to. I struggle to find a way around that and for the moment I've given up and I've changed my growth opportunity to go into more different kinds of retail instead.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “But I do find onerous in the marketplace is the fire department comes in and all of a sudden there was a regulation that changed and I have to spend $25,000 or the Department of Sanitation decided no, you can't put your container here, you have to put it there, $500. Or Department of Health comes in and something shifted. We didn't know about it and they're heavy fines. And versus supporting us in that sometimes with the fire department, if you correct something within 30 days or 60 days, you know there's no fee. More of that helping versus punitive would make a difference. So Steve, politicians change, rules change, what can be done about these issues that Marjorie and Danny are talking about.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Every time a new mayor comes in, a new governor comes in, every four years stuff's going to change. They held up a million dollar check for four months. There was a new rule that came out that nobody translated down, but nobody inside knew how to do it yet because it just came out. So here you go. A check is being held for a million dollars that I can't get because I have to now go get trained on this process that they said is required on that particular contract”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “I do work in 18 states, and I have to deal with 18 different processes and 18 different registration systems and a thousand different procurement systems. And just the management of that is entirely too much red tape. We call it death by a million cuts in our business, just kind of figuring out how to do business in every single state. There is 60% increases in minimum wage, their death blows. Their death blows to a business. As someone who lives in the community that I think the minimum wage was designed to improve, there's a very large part of me that is championing the effect that it could have on the community. As a business owner, there's a part of me that is terrified and feels as though we are bearing that burden.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Is a disconnect, I believe, between the educational system at the higher level and what we need. So we have chosen to do. It's we're going to bring in the folks that we believe have the capability to do it and we're going to train them ourselves. And so I think the higher education organizations haven't figured out that what we need is people now. They have tremendous training programs. And if you go through them, you come out with just tremendous knowledge. But you're looking at a minimum of two years at costs of tens of thousands of dollars. It's just not feasible.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “So let's turn to the other barrier to growth, the third one. That has to do with training. Here's another small business owner who took matters into his own hands to deal with training shortfalls. Tomas Santos Alejandro is president of Advent Services, a computer security services company in Panama City, Florida.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “One month this year, we made $10,000. The next month we made $350,000. A traditional bank is going to look at that and go, okay, so there's something wrong here. Traditional banks don't have what I think of it as an innovative capital strategy for small businesses, for entrepreneurs. We need money differently and in different ways than other businesses. I went to my bank. I had a $2.2 million per year signed contract with the Centers for Disease Control. They would not lend me a dime. Now my credit was good. And the government would still not relax for 15 days and I had to put out $100,000. And so I went to my 401k, and unfortunately I had that in it. Plus, I pulled it all out and dumped it in.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Staffing is the number one thing keeping us from growing. Like we can write a winning proposal. We can compete. We've got the past performance to win the work. I cannot find engineers and analysts. For government contracting, it's so prescribed. I mean, I have people in 15 different states, so they can even be anywhere, Alaska, like all hire them, but they have to be qualified. What we do is so niche that they have to have the right clearance, the right experience, know that defense system. So it's so specific. So if I could crack that nut, it would be a game changer.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “It's an interesting question, Jake. You know, look, you're right, we had over a thousand respondents to our survey. We met with over 100 of the small business owners in roundtable formats. And you heard it in the clips earlier. There's so much enthusiasm from these small business owners. It was palpable at the summit itself. One of the most unifying themes that we heard from small business owners is they just have too much to do. Their own time is their greatest constraint, and the complexity is one of the biggest issues they face, whether from a regulatory perspective or otherwise. And so when you think about a small business owner today, and that was consistent with what we heard from, again, the survey and the focus groups, they are not only the small business owner, they are also the CFO. They are the head of compliance. They are the general counsel, they are the chief marketing officer. And so one unifying theme across a variety”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “It's been hard. This particular period in history we've seen very strong growth in the corporate side and much smaller growth than normal unsmall businesses. They've had a tougher time getting credit and they've had a tougher time dealing with the amount of regulations that have been running through the economy.”

    2018-03-23 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · In Their Own Words: 10,000 Small Businesses on Challenges to Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT