Earlier this month I sat down for a conversation with four top executives from leading companies that together have served millions of small businesses through the Covid pandemic.
As we begin to emerge from what historians will look back on as a time of great challenges and economic upheaval, I wanted to better understand what small businesses have learned from the experience, and what lessons will be applied for the future. Here are the biggest takeaways from the discussion (which I’ve edited for clarity) with René Lacerte, chief executive and co-founder of accounts payable processor Bill.com; Stephen Markwell, who is the head of treasury services product strategy for commercial banking at JP Morgan; Dean Henry the executive vice-president of global business financing and supplier payments at American Express and Rodney Fong; the president & chief executive at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.
The biggest 2020 issue wasn’t Covid – it was the uncertainty created by Covid
Rene Lacerte The year you had social unrest, you had the fires, the hurricanes, you had the political environment. All of this uncertainty actually created a challenge for business to know what’s coming and that uncertainty is just hard to react to. And it still is challenging. I think people are moving through it. Businesses have adapted and they’ve come out of the lows of the pandemic. They’re still cautious, but they’re moving forward.
Even with uncertainty, many businesses did better than expected
Dean Henry One of the customers that we have is a guy named Luke Holden. He’s the CEO of Luke’s Lobster. Luke has 30 restaurants in the US and in Japan and he quickly pivoted his business to optimize. He’s selling lobster meat and seafood delicacies to his customer base on social media digitally. I personally credit a lot of the success of small business to taking advantage of the e-commerce and payment flexibility that the entire industry and ecosystem has provided.
Racial equality will be a focus
Stephen Markwell The pandemic has really exacerbated racial inequalities, and especially amongst historically underserved small businesses. I think businesses around the world are thinking about how we change that and how do we drive for equality. We’ve committed billions to help advance racial equality with one of the programs adding 15,000 loans to small businesses that are in the Black and Latinx communities.
Rodney Fong For those new entrepreneurs that we’re talking about, especially in communities of color that maybe it’s their first venture, I think we have an opportunity to really help them out. We don’t know exactly how that is but we should learn along with them and create that opportunity. And so, at least the Chamber of Commerce, we’re going to try our best to do that, to support those new entrepreneurs. And it’s going to be different.