YouSaid · the spoken record

Mama Morris

lines on the record: 22
first: 2021-02-26
most recent: 2021-02-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Excited. We're heavily involved in the state fair of Texas. We do the huge turkey legs. And I'm just really optimistic that this year we'll be able to at least see people's social distancing in areas that they can actually take the mask off and take big bites of the turkey leg. That's the stuff that I'm excited about. I'm ready for it. I can't wait to see. I just can't wait to see smiles walking around again. That's the big thing I'm looking forward to.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm really looking forward to the events. I just love the catered events, you know. There's just online is great. And that's wonderful. And I know everybody's, you know, we're used to it now. We're getting beyond the glitches and all those different things. But you know what doesn't glitch humans when we walk in contact with each other? It's just a beautiful feeling to just be able to look in someone's eyes, see their smile. You know, I miss smiles, you know, I miss just looking at people and being able to like, hey, how's it going? I miss that. And the beauty of food and, you know, so we do barbecue and we do soul food. The beauty of soul food is it makes you smile. And to be robbed of the smile is just a disgrace, you know? So I'm excited about that.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are so looking forward to having people in our studios again. The thought of hugging people that come in our door, you know, Brent talked about, you know, being like, you know your client's names. You know their family members. You ask how they are. You give them a hug. And we cannot wait for that to happen. So I am optimistic.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I've ordered mine and I'm looking forward to getting it, but I'm also looking forward to telling my kids the story behind the shoebox because I can see that resonating in some ways that other stories necessarily haven't. So it's been a super challenging year for both of you, but talk about one thing you're optimistic about as you look to the future. We'll start with Joe Ellen.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shoebox, and so they would take that shoebox and pack their lunch and use it to travel across the country. And so they knew they couldn't go to the restaurant, so they had to pack their own food. Well, what we thought was let's do that and create that same experience. We actually got true shoeboxes and we packed the lunches and we sold those lunches and it was a hit last year. And so this year we decided to take it up a notch. There was a lot of support for black-owned businesses. So what we thought about was partnering with other small businesses or other 10KSB graduates that we have partnered with. And so we have created a black owned entrepreneur shoebox lunch because back then we couldn't go to restaurants and but now we're owning restaurants. And so we wanted to show the evolution of what has happened with the African American community and highlight that through this box much. So we partner with urban hydro.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, it's been a lot to us just to see how people have supported us specifically personally. We've been supported by people all around the community when the whole incident with George Floyd happened. It really shined a light on some dark places for our country. But the beauty and the hope was the response and the reaction that people had and they started to want to give back to different communities, which was amazing. And then after that happened, you know, there was, you know, like anything, things kind of wear off and die down a little bit. And so, you know, for Black History Month, my brother and I decided, hey, we're going to do this shoebox lunch. And we did it last year. And so the shoebox lunch basically in the south, black people would travel. And there were a number of restaurants that they could no longer go to. So they would get a nice pair of shoes and sometimes it would come to really nice.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Brent, you mentioned out of the great tragedy of George Floyd and Bronna Taylor and others, that there's been a new spotlight really on black-owned businesses and there's been a little positive momentum that comes out of that awful, those awful events last year. Talk about how what that's meant to you personally and tell us the story of Shoebox lunches, which is just a really cool thing that you've done.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keep people on your team. And that's what our heart is. I'm sure she can attest to that. I mean, it weighs on you. Like it's hard to sleep at night at times and it's hard to plan and strategize because you know that one decision that you make could affect several families. You know, and it's like that burden of walking with that burden is definitely, it can weigh on you. And so, but that also for me turns into motivation. And that's where the creativity comes because I think to myself, like my dad was a big, you know, he believed in his team and he would give it all for everyone to stay on the team. And that's the heart that I now have. And no matter what, we're going to figure out how to keep everybody. But it definitely takes a toll on you.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why we get up in the morning, and it starts with our team members. So when they're hurting or when they're struggling, it hurts me. Like it hurts me. And to ever have to lay someone off, I mean, it's like a piece of you is going away, especially, you know, if they're a valuable part of the team. I mean, you're going to figure out whatever you can do.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's difficult. I think us as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we must be cut from a different cloth. We must be probably the craziest people in the world as well to take on the burden and the responsibility to say, well, you know what? I think I'm going to go ahead and take this risk. And you know what? It's okay. I'll take all the responsibility and the burden as well. I take all that. and hope that I make a profit this year. Really got to be the craziest thing in the world. But I think the thing, and Jamel can attest to this, that your heart for people is your motivation in the morning. You want to provide something that you think is going to make a difference with her yoga studio. And that's what that's.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is pretty heavy duty. And I do believe every small business owner that I've talked to here in Nepal that I'm connected with, they're exhausted, absolutely exhausted. And you care about your staff, your staff and your are like family members. And when you're exhausted, but then you also see your staff struggling. parents who are trying to work from home and school their children and many of our staff are women and several of them have had to leave full-time jobs in order to stay home with their children and to homeschool. And it's the toll it's taken on our staff and business owners, I think, is pretty heavy because we care. You can't help when you're a small business owner to not think of every single person that works for you as a family member. And those days were hard, the days that I had, the day that I had to call and tell three of my managers that they needed to go on on a employment because I couldn't.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think back to those first days in March, whenever we closed and the incredible sadness of closing your doors and you lock up and you're really not quite sure if you're going when you're going to come back or if you're going to come back. And it's been, it's not been a break, certainly since last March. I think I've worked harder this past year than I did probably the first year we were open. And it's been depressing some days. Some days you really pat yourself on the back and you say, oh my God, I can't believe we're actually doing this. And we've survived and we're still here. But it's some days it's just really devastating to think like all of the work that you put into it. And then the sense of loss. You know, I had to close two studios as a result of the shutdowns. And that was challenging because they were my first studios that I opened. So I think that on business owners, the”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That really brought some awareness to black owned businesses. So that rally from the community, really from the country, to begin to support black-owned businesses really was a saving grace for our company because people of all areas started to patronize us. And it really was, I mean, it was just amazing to see how the country pulled together. And we really benefited from that. With the PPP loan really is what kept us.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was great for us being an essential business. And early on, we didn't know what that meant when they said essential businesses. We were like, well, we didn't know if that meant restaurants or were going to be essential or not. So that was a whole learning experience. It's so funny now to see what we now understand now that we didn't when all of this, all of it first started. I mean, we were like really concerned, are we even going to be open? Once we realized that we were in essential business, we pretty much kept our staff on hand, but we were able to start providing the full time hours, just keeping everybody afloat. And it was great kind of took us through all of the summer summer months. And then again, kind of what changed for us was kind of the incidents that happened over the summer with the whole George Floyd.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't know when you're going to reopen. You don't know who's going to come back when you do reopen. So, so much of part of what we did in those early months was just trying desperately to keep our communities open so that when we do open our doors fully, we have the clients there and it's not starting over from the beginning. We use the PPP loan for that for our staff as many people as we could, even though we weren't really open. And then also looking for some tech help to get us moving into a new direction. We've continued to do that. We reopened the second week of July. Then we had another shutdown in October, November, I'm sorry, November to December. We were shut down for another three weeks when we applied for the second round, which we just got. That's going to be helpful to carry us through until you mentioned the statistic until April. I think if we're lucky, we'll be May. That money will last.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The PPP loan came in extremely handy for us. It was a bit challenging in the beginning because we were not set to reopen. So we had the money in hand for staffing, but yet our state was not able to reopen for probably about three months. We were closed March 15th and we didn't open until the first week of July. So we were kind of pushed to use that money as quickly as we could. But we got a little creative with it. I was able to bring back some staff that could work trying to get our new studio ready to open. Like I said, we were in the midst of opening a new studio. So we were able to bring staff in and continue to pay our staff, even though we didn't quite have the hours for everyone. We were running a startup. And then I was also able to use the money to hire some video help that someone to help us get our online presence up. Like Brent said, you know, keeping the community together as a small business is huge. You close your doors and you don't know that you're going to.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Saw us fighting. It's so amazing to see how people rally behind you when they see you fight. It's like they want to help. And so people would start getting family meals and family packs and just really, really supporting us. And so it was really an opportunity to go through something very tough, but to see how the community came together to try to help us stay afloat. And that was just, it was a beautiful sight to see.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the first three weeks we dropped 55% in revenue. We lost $45,000 in catering that was immediately canceled when COVID hit. I mean, it was devastating for us. You know, being blessed, the PPP loan came through for us, that's really how we survived. And then the other thing my brother and I decided to get on Facebook and Instagram. And we went live every night to just stay connected to our customer base. And then we made a decision to actually start doing delivery all around the Metroplex, all in the suburbs, everywhere. And my brother and I would actually do some of the deliveries ourselves just to say hi to some of our customers we missed. It made it easy for us to figure out where the market was because they were all at home. So we just catered to them being at home and connected with them and being at home. And when people”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, man, it's been a lot of changes. We really pride ourselves on connecting with the community. So we really love when our guests come in, we try to give it the cheers feel what we almost know everybody's name, you know, and spend time hanging around everyone and how your kids and that whole, you know, just makes people feel good, makes people feel seen. When we shut down our dining room, we went to basically take out to go only. I mean, that really makes us really have a challenge on creating the experience and the warmth we try to give and provide. So we had to figure out a way to still give that same warmth and love. And so we've had a lot of train with our staff to help them be even more engaging every day over the phone in every way that we could have a touch point with our customers. We want to make them have a really good feeling. Earlier on part of COVID.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, well, thanks for inviting us on today. Prior to COVID, I had just finished up our cohort here in Providence and was well on my way with my growth plan with a fourth studio set to open and really some record revenue numbers whenever this all happened. And we closed in March. We immediately closed the studio.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we've seen some moments of hope with people just rallying behind small businesses in general and trying to really support small businesses even through COVID, which has been great for us. Definitely a lot of challenges, a lot of pivoting that's taking place in this last year. But it really has made us grateful for so much that we took for granted, I think. And now it's making us become more creative. I think creativity is truly our way out of this situation.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the last week and a half has been a roller coaster ride. You know, we have a lot of our team members who've been affected, not having water, not having electricity. I mean, it's been absolutely difficult for them to just enjoy normal life right now We literally had team members that we have taken five gallon buckets and filled them with water for them to take home. So it's been a little bit challenging for that. And coming off of experiencing COVID, I mean, this is, you know, it's like, man, it's pile on pretty thick here in the last year. And I think we all have experienced that as well.”
2021-02-26 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · How Small Businesses Are Faring Entering Year Two of the Pandemic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT