Surveying Small Business Owners with Laurie McCabe

In this episode of the R&B Show, Laurie, Rieva, and Brian discuss results from the SMB Group’s study, “The Impact of Covid-19 on small and midsize businesses.” Very insightful!

Survey Highlights from Laurie McCabe:

• At the end of March, most people were just beginning to understand the seriousness of COVID-19, but they didn’t have a chance to process through it and what it would mean to their business.
• We did a survey at the end of 2019 and 64% of SMBs were optimistic about revenue growth. Three months later, everything got turned upside down.
• In our survey, 43% of small businesses had already closed temporarily, but they planned to reopen. This group is the one that is facing the greatest challenge. The businesses that didn’t have to close, the ones that are getting by somehow, are probably in better shape.
• Corporations want to help small business owners. They are giving out grants, deferring payments, and extending loan terms. Small business owners should be scouring the Internet to see what programs are available to them.
• We sliced it and diced the survey by 16 industries and at least two-thirds of the companies surveyed said that COVID-19 is negatively impacting their business. The only industry with much lower numbers was life sciences (e.g. pharmaceutical companies). Only 38% of those companies surveyed felt there was a negative impact.