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>> I would like to thank you all for joining us.  Those of you who have joined already.  Thanks you for being here or on time.  We can see quite a lot of people joining at a fast rate.  So we are going to take our time for another minute while people join us and get ready.  I will move on to our accommodations slide.  I will leave this up for people to take a look at.
We have accommodations for those who are hard of hearing.  Those entered in using the accommodations can cut and paste the ‑‑ the link that's there.  We will be publishing that in the feed shortly.  And you can cut and paste it into your browsers to access the caption service.
You can ‑‑ turn on live captions and subtitles if you like in teams by following the instructions on the screen there.
And you can also request a transcript after the event using that email address which we will give at the end and will also be available in the slide deck which will also be shared with you after the event.  So you have all of this information.
So I will leave this stand for a minute as we let others join us.
[Short break].
>> And like I said, that link is available in the feature feed, if you want to access that, you can ‑‑ you can find the ‑‑ the live Q&A feed in the upper right‑hand corner of your screen.  It is a double speech bubble with a question mark.  Click on that.  The middle feed is the ‑‑ in your case I think it's the featured feed is where you will see this and you can cut and paste that link into your browser.  Thank you for your patience as we get going.
I'm now going to hand things over to our Executive Director of the economic development and tourism division of the Office of the Governor to Adriana Cruz.  Over to you.
>> Cruz: Thank you, Kelly.  I will make sure that I'm unmuted.  And good afternoon, everyone.  Thank you for joining us today.  I'm Adriana Cruz, the Executive Director of the economic development and tourism office in the office of Governor Greg Abbott.  We are so happy that you joined us today.  On behalf of Governor Abbott and the entire team at the economic development and tourism office, I want to thank you and welcome you for joining us and for taking time out of your day to join us for this 10th governor's small business webinar.
Our team started organizing these webinars back in April.  And the goal is to ‑‑ to support small business owners and provide business owners from across the state, provide you timely information and relevant information that small businesses need to navigate these challenging times.
Our office, in the past, has organized in‑person events and we usually host about 15 of those events a year.  In the past four months, we've done 10 of the small business webinars already and about 11,000 small business owners and resource providers have joined us.
So I want to thank those of you who have joined us in the past.  And who continue to join these events.  And ask wonderful questions that really help a lot of your small business colleagues throughout the state.
Texas small businesses are the backbone of our economy.  And we want to thank you for everything that you're doing to keep our economy going.  We know that Texas small businesses are ‑‑ are continuing to face challenging times right now.  And, please know, that the team at the Economic Development and Tourism Office is here for you and here to support you.  We have a great program for you today.  Some wonderful speaker goes lined up.  We're going to focus on business continuity, on resiliency and on business strategies for an evolving future.
So with that, I'll turn it back over to our emcee for today, Kelly Spillane, who is the small business advocate in the Governor's Office.  Kelly?
>> Spillane: Great, thank you, Adriana.  Today's panelists are Liza Heyman from Facebook, she looks after small business policies and programs.  Alexis Gallivan from BEI, she leads a small business marketing and engagement work.  We also have Jaime Martinez, from the small business development center, which is part of UTSA, they have a special new COVID business recovery accelerator, he's going to tell you about that, he's the senior project manager there.  Also Elsa Ramos the legal counsel to Commissioner Demerson, the Commissioner for employers at the Texas Workforce Commission.  All of these panelists are here to answer your questions during the live Q&A and we will kick off the event by talking to them about some general questions that we think that you would all be interested in.
But before we kick off with those questions, I will talk about our live Q&A and how it works.  We will open it up as we get towards the end of the general questions, the frequently asked questions.  You can type your question in the feed.  But do have a look in the featured feed to see if any questions have been published for you to look at.  If you like those questions or want to hear the answer to them, like them.  You can click a little button and like them.
The questions that get the most likes will be prioritized and also if you do ask a question, keep an eye on it in the feed because we have a whole team of people back stage, if you like, who are lined up to answer those questions that go into that feed.
So we're going to answer a lot more questions directly in the feed.  So do keep an eye on it and we will answer a smaller subset of them live.
We don't get to answer all of the questions because we simply get so many, but we do our best.  And if you don't get your question answered today, all of the contact information for the panelists and ourselves will be given to you at the end.  Like I said already, this deck is going to be shared with you or a link to this deck so you can get all of this information after the fact.
Okay?
So I'm going to start our questions by talking to Facebook and I have two questions for Liza Heyman.  So Liza, I'll kick off with that first one.  Some small businesses may be wondering how best to use the digital tools available to them.  Tell us how Facebook helps small businesses become more efficient online?
>> Absolutely, Kelly, thank you for that question.  You know, when we saw that the crisis was going to hit small businesses in such a dramatic way, we knew we had to act quickly.  And what we did immediately was we created what we call the Facebook Business Resource Hub.  So this is really a one‑stop site where you know you can find first actions that business owners can take immediately during this time.
You will find resilience tool kits.  These are sector by sector guide, if you are in retail, restaurant, ecommerce, we have specific guides tailored to you to either help you get online or help you get your online business running smoothly.  The third one which I want to talk a little bit about today, free trainings and products on how to keep your business moving forward or how to optimize the Facebook platform.
These are all linked to our Resource Hub, but I just want to make sure everyone on the call knows we have a full online training hub that's called Facebook Blueprint.  What this is, it's a free library of tutorials to bring your business online and to develop your digital marketing knowledge.
So if you are just starting out in your journey of bringing your business online, there's courses you can benefit from.  Like the Essential Guide to Facebook Ads or How to Create a Facebook Page and Grow Your Business.  But, you know, many of you have already built some businesses already thriving online.  There's opportunities for you to go even deeper.  Like mapping out your customer journey as that might have changed given pandemic or how to create a content calendar.  So you can keep ‑‑ I want to make sure that you all know these are easy accessible guides.  There's about 15 new guides that we just added to the library.  Since the pandemic hit.  That we find really relevant.  They are all free.  They are available on our Resource Hub and we also will be sharing a link with you guys that just shares that growing library of ‑‑ of trainings as well.
>> Spillane: Great, Liza, thank you so much.  My camera is not working, sorry about that.
>> Heyman: No problem.
>> Spillane: Strange.  That's a little bizarre.  Okay.  Look, I'll go ‑‑ I have the second question there.  Sorry, I got distracted.  I also wanted to say that the links to the guides that Liza was talking about will be available on our second to the last slide.  Again, shared with you through the deck after the fact.  So don't worry about that right now.
The second question is:  Because of COVID‑19, many small businesses have had to completely change their way of operating.  What solutions does Facebook have to support this transition?
>> Heyman: Right.  So when the pandemic hit, as I said, we worked really quickly to develop some new products that we were hearing from the small businesses on our platform, would be really helpful for them to ‑‑ to, one, help them adapt.  Help them better communicate with their customers more efficiently in real‑time and to give people tangible ways to actually support the businesses that they love so much in their community.
So I'm going to quickly run through a couple of really exciting product solutions we rolled out and we can absolutely share more information through the Q&A session.  These are all listed in our Business Resource Hub with how‑to guides on how to get started.
So one that was really exciting, we launched right away, we created a digital gift card.  So that people in your area can be able to purchase directly from your business on Facebook.
Fundraising was a big product that we used for non‑profits, as many of you might have seen on Facebook.  But we made fundraising available to business owners to create a personal fundraiser.  For their businesses.  And asked customers to support them during times in which they might not be able to have their doors open.
We are making it possible for businesses to announce temporary service changes in real‑time.
So you might have changes that are happening constantly in terms of delivery hours, if you are planning to be open.
So your ‑‑ your community will know on Facebook what your business hours are and if they are searching for you on Facebook, that will also pop up.
Another thing that I will note is for those using instagram, these gift cards, ordering food, and donate buttons are now able to be linked directly to your instagram profile and also can be featured on your Facebook page.
And, lastly, which is a really exciting product, is our Facebook and instagram shops.
So we know that it's not easy to set up an online shop on your own.  And that's why we launched instagram Shops and Facebook Shops so that you can create a single online store for your customers that's available through your profile.
So you can set this store up to have any type of products that you like.  You can customize the look and feel and people can find the shop through your profile, click through, make a payment without ever having to leave the app.  So that is a big deal for businesses that are looking to really quickly stand up an online shop.  There's more in‑depth descriptions about these products on our Resource Hub.  We will be sharing that link.  We are constantly learning from businesses about what they need.
We are doing our best to hear from you guys to learn and understand how we can shift our products and make these available to anybody who is looking to optimize their online presence.  Hopefully that's helpful, Kelly.
>> Spillane: Very helpful, thank you so much, Liza.  It's great to hear about all of those resources and especially the free training, which will help people up their game basically online.  Because as we know, as a result of this crisis, it's really been emphasized how important it is to be excellent online, to communicate effectively with your customers and with new customers.  And, also, to consider whether there is an ecommerce revenue source that you can access by being online.  So we really want to help your thinking with this today.
And I am now going to move along and I'm going to talk to Alexis Gallivan from eBay with that in mind.  eBay is an ecommerce platform.  Welcome, Alexis, there are so many ecommerce platforms out there, how does a small business choose which is best for them?  In doing so, maybe just let us know about what's unique and special about eBay.
>> Uh‑huh.  Thank you so much, Kelly, thank you to the Governor's Office for inviting me to take part in this meaningful event today.  This is part of my job, what I do, I'm actually also a small business owner myself, so I can really relate to all of you out there.  I have the same sleepless nights, the same frenetic brainstorms during the day, how do we pivot, adapt in uncertain times, uncertain future.  I really relate to you.  I so appreciate that you are here today, trying to get scrappy like entrepreneurs do and figure out what's next for your business.
Next slide.  Awesome.  So ecommerce has obviously exploded.  eBay was one of the pioneers, we got started 25 years ago.  But of course since then lots and lots of other companies have recognized the potential in that industry and come on board and launched marketplaces of their own.  Which is fantastic, we are biased towards eBay, but you should be selling on every single platform you can possibly get your hands on.  But it's really, really important as you either kind of begin that process or kind of expand your presence online, that you do so in a really kind of careful, discerning way.
Because while there are lots and lots of options out there, not all platforms are created equally.
Each of them have their own strengths, their own areas of expertise, niche markets, so it's really really important that you look under the hood, really kind of explore and get a feel for the platform and figure out what works best for your business.  Because we're all like snowflakes.  All of our businesses are different and have different needs and kind of market potential.
So I would say if I were coming into this space, you know, for the first time, knowing what I know now, what I would suggest that you look for is a few kind of key things.
First and foremost, I cannot urge this strongly enough, really try to get a sense of how the platform engages with its sellers.  Are they customers, are they competitors, are they partners?  What kind of policies does the platform have in place to actually support and lift up their sellers?
Are these policies clear?  Is there fair enforcement when something goes wrong?  Are there protections in place?  If something goes wrong with the buyer, do they have your back?
And most importantly, do they compete?  Are they going to actually prioritize their products over yours or are they going to do their best to really connect you to consumers?
Secondly, reach.  How many customers are coming through these so to speak doors every single day.  At eBay we have 180 million of them every day coming to our platform, looking for that something special.  And also with regard to reach, it's not just about the number of people that come in through those doors, but also kind of the expanse of range of what they are actually looking for.  eBay is super, super unique in that we've got something for everybody.  As my mom would say, a lid for every pot.  We have unmatched variety in terms of the inventory that we offer from vintage Jordans and Rolls Royce cars to kind of everyday commodities like iPhones, iWatches, clothing, all of that stuff.  You have lots and lots of buyers coming in and looking for lots and lots of different kinds of products.  Flexibility, some marketplaces are really good for beginners, some you don't even want to think about until you have a really, really advanced sophisticated understanding of ecommerce because some of them are very, very complicated and you can get into trouble very quickly if you don't really understand the game so to speak.
Partly what I love about eBay, it's very, very flexible.  We have tiny mom and pop businesses and then we have massive brands.  And lots millions of businesses in between.  We offer value and opportunity for all of that, full range of business.  And we really kind of give you the tools and the opportunity to kind of grow at your own pace on your own terms.
Of course, pricing is something really, really important.  You want to look closely at the fees.  Not only what they are, but what are the fee structures, how do they invoice, eBay has really transparent pricing structures so you know exactly what you are getting into.  We have all sorts of kind of optional features that you can kind of upgrade your listings to kind of reach more audiences or add extra features to kind of make them stand out.  But kind of the baseline pricing is very, very reasonable and certainly competitive, if not lower than a lot of the other marketplaces out there.
Then finally, what kind of tools do they offer?  How do you actually, you know, once you start on the platform, you need help, training, you need that support.  What kind of tools do they offer in terms of shipping or accounting or business analysis.  I'm happy to say that eBay has all of that in spades.  Lots of marketing analysis and shipping tools.  Everything that you will need to really kind of get started and grow in the platform.
>> Spillane: Super, thank you for.  That it's a great suite of opportunities I suppose for small businesses.  I love the flexibility that's there for very, very small businesses and allows them to scale, too.  Because you can handle big businesses.  I love that flexibility and I love the free training as well, the free support that you offer businesses to get going.
So the second question for you, Alexis, is eBay has many programs and tools to my point to help businesses make the most of their platform.  Can you talk about the ones that are most helpful let's say to a beginner, a small business that's new to ecommerce.
>> Yes, absolutely.  Go to the next slide.  I mentioned briefly a moment ago, we got started 25 years ago, small businesses have been central to our kind of business model and our kind of vision since Day 1.  That certainly remains true today.
So we try to do everything that we can to make sure that businesses feel welcome on the platform and that they can quickly and easily kind of access the tools on the information that they need to get started with us and to really grow.
So first things first, I would invite everyone to go to eBay.com/smallbusiness.  It's really kind of straightforward one‑stop‑shop if you will.  Gives you kind of all of the greatest hits of what you will need in order to kind of get started on eBay, all sorts of links to learning materials, podcasts, community groups, you name it.  It's on there.  That's a great place to start.
On that page, you will also see a link to something that we've just recently launched called eBay Seller School.  In the early stages of development, but already packed with really, really fantastic, engaging learning content.
So we will be sharing the link with that as well, but that's SellerSchool.eBay.com.  What we have done there is essentially surveyed the massive kind of, you know, internet universe out there.  Pulled together all of the volumes and volumes of eBay learning content that exists, both on our own platforms, YouTube and elsewhere.  And tried to figure out what is it that small businesses need now.
And so what do they need, when do they need it and what sequence is it best for them to learn it?  So we have taken all of that guesswork out of the equation for small businesses, organized that content, made sure that it's totally up to date, super polished and put it all on Seller School.  You will find videos, articles, interactive lessons with fun little kind of interactive elements.  So definitely check that out.  SellerSchool.eBay.com.
Finally, I would really urge everyone, this is kind of a selling point back to that earlier slide, one thing that's super, super unique about eBay is that it was actually created to be kind of an ‑‑ a community, online community.  Our founder was one of the very first people to kind of recognize in the internet this chance to really connect human beings and to create this whole new form of ecommerce in the process.
And to this day, we have a ‑‑ a deeply devoted, dynamic, loyal base of sellers across the world.  Who not only are super excited about eBay and have truly changed their lives on eBay, by the way it's enabled them to build their businesses, but sellers who derive great joy, true joy in helping other sellers succeed.  We have a really, really interactive tight knit community.  A variety of kind of online forums for those communities to come together, to chat.  Yeah, sometimes to complain, sometimes to troubleshoot, to inspire each other, to encourage each other.
And they love when new sellers come on board, because that's the opportunity to kind of evangelize, so to speak, tell them how great it is that they are on the platform and what awaits them.  Those are the three top hits of places that I would encourage new sellers to explore as they are getting started on eBay.
>> Spillane: Thank you, Alexis, each of the links that Alexis referred to will be available to you in the slide deck after the event.  Don't worry too much about it.  Also, if anybody has questions for Alexis or Liza, you can put them into the live feed because we are now opening the live Q&A feed right now.  And like I said, if you do ask a question, look out for an answer appearing in that feed because we have a team of people, experts, back stage, if you like, to answer those questions as best they can in the live Q&A feed and then some of the questions that we feel will be broadly relevant are going to be published, you will see those in the featured feed and my colleague, Jarvis, will field those to the panelists in the second half of this event which will happen shortly.
So go ahead and start typing in your questions.  And we will quite soon be starting that live Q&A piece of the event.  But before we go to that, I have two more questions.
I'm going to address this next question to Elsa Ramos, from the Texas Workforce Commission.
Thank you for joining us again, Elsa.
So Elsa, if I bring my employees back, but have to lay them off again, do they have to file a new claim?  And will my business be charged for benefits?
>> Ramos: Very good question.  And the answer is going to depend on how long they went back to work before continuing to make payment requests.
So the answer from our website and the guidance from our [indiscernible] division is this:  If your employees made their last payment request no more than two weeks from the new layoff ‑‑ you know, some of our businesses are starting and stopping or the reduction in hours.  If it's been two weeks or less from their most recent payment request, they can just make the new payment request and report any wages or earnings and the fact that they have now been newly separated again.  If it's been more than two weeks since your employees made a payment request, they are going to have to what I call reawaken their claims.  They won't have to start from the very beginning.  But there is an extra step to go online or call in and reach out to reawaken that claim.
Because of that, to avoid that in the future, our director of unemployment insurance division, our director has basically said if you are asking for unemployment benefits, make your payment requests every two weeks.  If you go back to work, that's great.
Just report your earnings.  And if you are back at full‑time work, you are going to be making too much money so you won't get any unemployment benefits.  But make your payment requests every two weeks, such that if you end up being temporarily laid off again, you don't have to reawaken the claim.  You can just keep making your payment requests, but this time say zero earnings instead of your full earnings.  That will be the easiest way to keep those benefits coming when you need them without delay.
The second part, will my business be charged for benefits?  If the job separation or reduction in hours that we're talking about here resulted from the COVID‑19 natural disaster and you are a taxed employer, you are a tax paying employer, you are supposed to be protected from charge‑back.  Reimbursing employers, if we are anybody listening who is a governmental employer or a non‑profit who is a reimbursing employer, there is some relief for you.  But you don't have the same protection as taxed employers.
So like Kelly said at the end, if you have any questions if you are a reimbursing employer, what relief might be available for you, just email us and we can get that information to you.
>> Spillane: That's great, Elsa, thank you so much.  There will be information about accessing people in the TWC, Texas Workforce Commission on the second to the last slide and again available in the deck afterwards.  Also Elsa is standing by to participate in the live Q&A feed.  So if you have workforce related questions or challenges that you are facing, type them into that Q&A feed and it will either be answered by our team of experts or Elsa herself live.  Finally the last question for this portion of the webinar is going to be to Jaime Martinez who is from the UTSA small business development center.  He is leading part of their new SBDC COVID‑19 recovery accelerator.  It's great to have him here today.  We're going to basically give him an opportunity to talk about the excel length new services that ‑‑ excellent new services this organization is going to be able to operate now as a result of new funding from the Small Business Association.  My question is the Small Business Association has given additional funding to help SBDCs better everybody ‑‑ serve the small business community.  Tell us about the new services that they offer the community.
>> Thank you, thank you, Kelly, thank you for your team.  I'm happy to participate as well as my colleagues answering questions here in the chat.  Mr. [indiscernible] in reference to assistance that we provide.  So yes as Kelly was mentioning, a part of the CARES Act that was issued a few short months ago, the SBA received additional funding to create a specialty program within our network of small business development centers to stand up an accelerator program to be able to answer the, you know, questions that the small to medium sized businesses, not just here in Texas, but around the United States, so here in Texas we have over 20 offices that are part of the SBDC network in most of the major cities.  We essentially can attend to the 254 counties in the State of Texas.  I am a part of the Southwest Texas border network.  So we do take care of 79 counties that are in our region.
So we have been around the ‑‑ the small business development center program has been around for about 40 years, providing one‑on‑one, no cost, technical business consulting, business advise, to small and medium sized businesses.
So what's the difference?  What do we do now that's different from 40 years ‑‑ well, we are responding and in it for the long haul for, you know, to those questions that you may have that you are not looking to make an appointment for.  Especially right now the topic is loan forgiveness on the Paycheck Protection Program.  Kelly put up the cities that we're in.  But our call center that we have set up with an advisor standing by, Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 p.m. and also you can reach us, the contact phone number is (210)458‑2272 or you can email us at businessrecovery@UTSA.edu to be able to get your questions answered.  Yes, we realized that the SBA trying to get your ... Paycheck Protection Program, loan forgiveness information, application statuses, thing like that.  Although we are not able to answer questions from the application status for the loan, we can get into great detail on if you should accept those monies and how to utilize those funds.  Kelly, if you show the next slide, we will be able to get into the services that we offer.
As I mentioned, if you call into our call center at the (210)458‑2272, you are able to ‑‑ you will get the call answered by an operator, we will take a little bit of information from you.  And then we will connect your call with an advisor.
All right?  And so with that ‑‑ what that advisor will be able to do is really give you the time ‑‑ do is really give you the time necessary to answer your calls on the Paycheck Protection Program.  Asking for loan forgiveness.
Right now the ‑‑ what we are up to date on is that the Paycheck Protection Program, the deadline to apply for that is August the 8th.  If there are ‑‑ there are some financial institutions that are no longer accepting applications, give us a call, we can try to find you a ‑‑ a lender or an alternative type of lender that typically doesn't do these types of loans that can be able to help you find a funding that you need for your business as the deadline is August the 8th.
The economic injury disaster loan, still open and available.  Unfortunately the funding has run out for the advance grant.  All right.  There are other SBA and non‑SBA loan programs.  For example, microloans.  There is a loan ‑‑ funding institution here, microloan funding institution here in Texas.  There's one called [indiscernible].  There's another one called people fund.  Lift fund.  Those other types of lending opportunities are available to you all.
We just don't answer questions on funding.  We can also talk about employer resources.
So I know we have somebody here from the Texas Workforce Commission.  We can answer those types of questions as far as, you know, unemployment, you know, furloughing your employees, the families first coronavirus response act, we can respond to those types of questions.  We have an HR advisor standing by.  Cyber security.
Implement that extra level of secure, you know ‑‑ security in your business.  We have advisors standing by in reference to that.
Workplace safety.  How to bring your employees back safe into your workplace.  Not only employees, but also to basically protect your customers as well.
So that is what we do.  If you are not in our market, that's not a problem.
We would be happy to ‑‑ after we answer your questions, if there's anything that you takeaway from what we discuss here today, it is that please give us a call, please email us so we can ‑‑ one, answer your questions and then communicate, get you in touch with your local small business development center.
So as I mentioned, we are in it for the long haul to be a account to help you good it that relief that you need, recover and provide from resiliency through this particular COVID pandemic.  Thank you for your time and I will be here to answer your questions.
>> Thank you, Jaime, that's fantastic, it's going to be great for small businesses to be able to have access now to this increased capacity to get someone to take a call and to be able to get emails answered.  We are really excited to help raise awareness of this.
We have the email address and phone number on the second to the last slide.  Again, you all can access that when you get access to the deck after the event.  So don't worry if you didn't catch it when he said it there.  Thank you, Jaime.
I'm going to now move to the next phase of the event, which is our live Q&A.  I know that you've been typing questions in.  And we've been seeing that.  Some of them have been answered directly in the live feed.  So if you did type a question, double check that you didn't get an answer or that you did.  And in any case, look at the questions that were featured and like them if you would like to see them answered.  I am now going to hand over to my colleague, Jarvis Brewer, who is going to handle the live Q&A.  Over to you, Jarvis.
>> Brewer: Thank you, Kelly, hello, everyone, welcome to the live portion of this event.  A ton of questions were coming in.  We're going to get through as many as we can within the last half hour or so of this event.
This first question I'm going to relay to you, Alexis, we're getting a lot related to ecommerce, a lot of questions related to ecommerce.  This first question comes from Susan.  My company sells human resource consulting such as outplacement, training, career development and coaching services to organizations.
Is there an opportunity for selling services rather than products?
>> Great question, Susan, sadly for us the answer is no.  We are a strictly product based marketplace.  Maybe Facebook.
>> Spillane: Actually, can I suggest that Liza jumps in there, Facebook is a great platform for many opportunities for services.  Over to you, Liza.
>> Heyman: Yeah.  We are actually seeing great success for people that are sole proprietors that are offering services and building community on Facebook.  Facebook is most well suited for people who are trying to build community and I think, you know, this could be a great opportunity for you to continue to build your brand and, of course, you can use our products and tools to sell your services, they do not have to be product‑based.
>> Brewer: Perfect, thank you so much for that.  This next question is again related to ecommerce.  As a business owners, what can I do to protect my intellectual property when conducting business through ecommerce.  So again I'm going to relay this one to Alexis.
>> Well, a lot of that happens kind of off any ecommerce platform that make sure that you have a good lawyer.  Who will have the right kind of protections in place for you.  So that if you do see any kind of infringements down the road, that you have kind of the protections in place in order to pursue that.  And make it right.
We do have a very robust team of folks on eBay who are constantly on the lookout for fraudulent products.  That may or may not apply in this instance, that you are referring to.
But if in my opinion were to try to kind of pass off a product as yours that wasn't yours, you could certainly bring that to our attention and we would address that immediately.
>> Brewer: Thank you, Alexis.  This next question goes back to the CARES Act.  The question is if I receive PPP funds but my business has not responded enough to hire back to the level required for forgiveness, what is best to do?  Also, Jaime, if you have any input feel free to jump in.
>> if I understand that correctly, I have PPP funds, I was able to put my people back to work or on paid leave, now the funds have exhausted and again because of the starts and stops or wherever we are in Texas, we are not able to put our people back to work.  You as an employer do what you need to do based on your business needs.  If you are able to bring back some of your staff, but not all of them.  Know that even under the CARES Act, the $600 per week is gone, the state unemployment benefits are still available.  Under the CARES act the initial 26 weeks of Texas unemployment benefits got expanded with an extra 13 weeks.  Then Texas triggered extended benefits, the possibility ‑‑ hopefully your people will not be out of work that long.  But again if we go through certain phases of opening and closing or some limited openings and you find some of your employees who are not able to work, they do have the unemployment benefits there available and we discussed with my FAQ if COVID is a reason, for your employees not working, then you are not going to be charged back for those benefits.
But again do what your business needs basically require you to do under this, you know, crisis circumstances.
>> Yes.  So Elsa, I mean, I'm glad that you are here, because that's the other side of what we do and we have an advisor that does specialize in ‑‑ in the workforce part of the Paycheck Protection Program.  So in regards to the CARES act.  For the person who asked the question, I would ‑‑ you can visit our website, TXSBDC.org/businessrecovery under employer resources.  So you are able to find through our website that leads directly to SBA, because again we are an SBA program, the frequently asked questions.  When it comes to specifically that ‑‑ your question.  You are protected under the Safe Harbor Act that is recognized for the PPP.  So, yeah, it could be that they just don't feel safe to come back to work and that could be a reason.
It could be that they have found other employment somewhere.  But did count them in the original application for the Paycheck Protection Program.  You know or they just completely, you know, fell off the face of the earth for whatever reason.  But you do have to document it.
Now, obviously, 60% of the funding currently has to be expended on payroll that you received.
So that person leaving or not coming back, you are protected, but you need to document all of that.  You need to document that you have given a full‑fledged bona fide offer.  Whether by email, some kind of recorded telephone conversation, make sure that you have somebody else there.  This is just an example of somebody else that ‑‑ another client that we have dealt with.  But all that has to be documented and, you know, the attempts that you made to reach out to that particular person.
Now, you can also ‑‑ it's also included ‑‑ not very well known, recently something updated in the FAQs for in ‑‑ in the SBA and also for the Treasury Department has some great frequently asked questions when it comes to the PPP.  If you have to terminate somebody, but it was ‑‑ for cause, it was obviously a legitimate reason, you of course have to document it, show the attempts at correcting the action, whatever it was, and you will ‑‑ also the Safe Harbor Act will also, you know ‑‑ won't harm you ‑‑ protect you when you are asking for loan forgiveness.
So you know we can go on and on, but that's a huge part of it.  That's something that has been affecting a lot of businesses and that's quite a bit of a lot of the questions that we do get often when they call through our call center.
>> Jarvis: Thank you, Jaime, important to note the documentation aspect of that.  With that, we will move forward.  This next question I believe can be answered by either eBay, Facebook or the SBDC.  But I'm going to relay it specifically to eBay.  The question is:  Can anyone provide marketing/sales resources for small businesses?
>> I'm sorry, can any provide marketing what services?
>> Provide marketing or sales resources.
>> Marketing or sales resources.  Yes, absolutely, that's a key part.  Because once you put your products up on a marketplace, hopefully people find their way to it organically and buy lots of those products.  But normally you have to do the heavy lifting yourself.  Get out there into the world and let them know these great products are available.
So if you were to go to that Seller School platform that I mentioned earlier, we do have some marketing resources there.  There are a lot of ‑‑ kind of levers that you can pull, both incited platform and outside.  So inside, there are a variety of kind of features that you could add to your listing that will basically increase the search results.  Kind of ranking.  We give you a number of best practices to use for example in your photographs.  You need photographs of your products with white background because if they don't have white backgrounds, they are not going to show up in the Google shopping searches.  So a variety of little things that you can tweak in your listings that will make sure that you get a much broader exposure to a much broader audience.
And like I mentioned, there are a variety of other kind of marketing tools that you can use.  Some are free.  Some are kind of ‑‑ are charged additional fee to use on the platform.
Outside of the platform, we also give you a lot of guidance on how to market your eBay products in stores through Facebook or instagram, for example.  We work really well, with these other platforms, there's lots of ways to kind of pull your audiences in the direction of your eBay store as well.
>> Yes, I would like to add to that.  Alexis, we are familiar with our ‑‑ our advisors are familiar, great information that you provided.  If it is a business that you are looking to get started in, I mean, preCOVID, you know, we were helping businesses either start up or expand in a variety of ways.  So if ‑‑ depending on the product or services that you are looking at, at selling, whether on eBay or Facebook and you want to develop a business plan, you know, more market research to see if there's a ‑‑ you know, what the need is for that particular product, you know, give us a call, reach out to us at the TXSBDC.org/businessrecovery and we can get you in touch with an advisor who can help you develop a business plan, market analysis research on this particular product that you are looking at selling.  Best practices.
>> Wonderful, thank you so much, Alexis and Jaime.  Liza, did you have something to add?
>> Heyman: Yeah, I was going to quickly add, digital marketing is what we do at Facebook.  So I want to make sure that folks know that they should really utilize our Facebook Blueprint curriculum and that is the beauty of our platform, that is the beauty of ads.  You can get highly customizable on how you are marketing to your audience, but age, by gender, by location.  So making sure that you are using your marketing dollars, you know, as efficiently as possible.
So please make sure to use those resources and we're excited to be able to support you the best way we can.
>> Jarvis: Thank you, Liza.  I will stick with you two this next question, it is specifically asking about social media channels in advertising.
So the question is:  Is Facebook or other social media channels, we will only focus on Facebook ‑‑ offering free COVID advertising credits for small businesses?  If so, please tell us how we can register.
>> Heyman: I'm glad that you asked that.  So as soon as COVID hit and businesses were shut‑down, we did announce 100 million‑dollar grant program that included direct cash support and ad credits to small businesses across the country.  This was specifically in areas that we have operations.  So data centers, offices.  That funding was already deployed and we are really excited about the fact that we were able to get that support into small businesses' hands.
But there is a new opportunity to apply for some of this grant money.  Specifically for black‑owned businesses.  Owned and operated in honor of the black business fund.
So we are about to launch the application.  So you guys are getting kind of the first inside scoop.  But this will be about $100 million and it will be $75 million in grants of cash and then $25 million in ad credits.
So it will go out in smaller amounts, obviously, to businesses.  But I'm going to share the link now to the page that kind of goes through the criteria of who is eligible.  And quickly, you know, you have to be between one and 50 employees, so no sole proprietors here.  You have to have been in business for over a year.  You have to make sure that this money is going to be helpful for the experiences of ‑‑ and challenges of COVID.
But you do not have to be an expert on how to use digital tools or Facebook to apply.
So this is really meant for folks who might just be getting started bringing their business online.  I'm going to share this link in the Q&A, if that's the right thing to do.  Is that the right place to put it?
>> Jarvis: Absolutely.
>> Heyman: Wonderful.
>> Jarvis: While you're typing that link, I just received another question directly and the question is:  Can we use or can we sell PPE through these platforms, this may also be a question for you, Alexis, with eBay?
>> That's a good question.  I know that there were, you know ‑‑ we're in new territory and I think that, you know, we are doing our best to make sure that prices are regulated in terms of PPE equipment.  Let me check back with the team and see what the new policies are.
But I'm happy to follow‑up with that answer.
>> Jarvis: Perfect.
All right.  So I'll move forward with the next question.  This is a PPP question.  Somewhat hypothetical.  I'm going to relay it to you, Jaime, but I know in advance that you may not have the answer to it because it is somewhat hypothetical.
All right.  One second.  It moved on me.
Okay.
So the question is:  If your company has already received a PPP, when the new funding is approved by congress, can we file for that, too?  For example, when, if, congress agrees that we can be reimbursed for COVID‑19 expenses?  So the question I'll reiterate is if new funding comes into play in the future, can we apply to that, too?
>> Martinez: Yeah.  No, you know, Jarvis, thank you for the person who asked that, I mean, we ‑‑ all my colleagues, you know, throughout Texas, throughout ‑‑ we have over a thousand offices throughout the United States, we are all paying attention to the negotiations going on, on The Hill right now.
What will the Paycheck Protection Program look like, you know, in the future.  And, yes, the hope is that, you know, that all businesses will be able to apply for another Paycheck Protection Program loan.  It would be great.  I mean, you know, not every business is operating at 100%.  And some had to ‑‑ some were at 90, 80%, a client of mine who had a gymnastics business, in business for about 20 years, up until about a month ago, she was operating about 80 something percent and as the positive COVID cases started to rise, she had to close again.  Not completely.  But close.  And had to, you know, be a little bit nor innovative, start offering, you know, online services.
So she is going to be very much in need, very soon, because she got PPP funding in the second round.  So she's still utilizing those moneys right now.  But I can only perceive that she will need another round, you know, following the next couple of months because she's not operating at 100%.  So we hope, we really do hope.  You know, also as you mentioned, your question is hypothetical.
You know, if ‑‑ I've heard a few different amounts, but let's just say I've heard up to 150,000 as low as 80,000, 100,000, that the loans could be PPP loans could be completely forgiven if your loan was under a certain amount of money.  There was a threshold.  That's also under negotiation.
So it is ‑‑ it's something that we're closely monitoring.  And I would continue to visit our website because we do update it because these things do change often.  Again SBA just put out another FAQ yesterday.  To clarify a lot of details.  So visit our website at the TXSBDC.org/business recovery to, you know ‑‑ to get updated on that incomes, Treasury Department, SBA, they usually keep their websites pretty up to date.  It's a good question.  Trust me, we are all very hopeful and I want nothing more than our clients to keep people employed and keep generating economic impact to the state and of course the [indiscernible] but we'll see, we'll see.
>> Jarvis: Absolutely, thank you so much for that Jaime.  We all are kind of going through all of this together with a lot of unknowns.  You mentioned that TXSBDC.org website.  Great resource to get the most up‑to‑date information.  Moving forward, next question.  This question is related to small towns here in Texas.
I'm going to relay this one to our ecommerce folks.  The question is will small businesses in small towns truly benefit from creating an online presence?  And will it be effective enough to save jobs?  I'm going to start with Facebook on this.
And with Liza.
>> Heyman: Absolutely.  I really truly believe, no matter the size of the town, the size of the business, pivoting to online is really going to be beneficial.  You know, as things are shifting and as you are looking to reach people maybe outside of your small town, expand your customer base, these tools are really important.  Just to get started to understand how they work and it's, you know, the trends that we are seeing even from small churches and tiny towns using live streaming to get in touch with their congregation or, you know, tiny mom and pop shops that are selling cup cakes that are using instagram DM to facilitate deliveries to homes.
I think we've heard tons and tons of stories about how businesses are going to have to get scrappy and creative.  As we know, this is not a short term situation that we are in.  We are expected to be in a situation that's a little uncertain for some time now.
That's from our perspective.  We are seeing small to medium sized businesses in all parts of the country learn how to pivot and move towards digital and the benefits of doing that.  But, of course, interested to hear from others as well.
>> Can I jump in there.  I just want to ask Alexis to speak because I know I'm not sure the program still runs, but eBay ran an amazing program there recently called the retail revival program.  Focused on just small towns, Main Street, brick and mortar.  It's great to hear about Facebook.  But let's hear also about eBay's view on that.
>> Yeah, thank you, Kelly.  I say heck yeah.  That's my answer to that question.
Again, it goes back to why at least we exist at eBay.  To democratize market access, to democratize market opportunity, does not need to be limited to these metropolitan centers.  We all need to have access to opportunities to kind of build really, really sustainable livelihoods, that's what eBay does.  In fact we have a whole policy team dedicated to trying to figure out where are our sellers and what kind of impact is the platform making on their lives, their businesses, their communities?  And it was about a year ago, give or take, that they did a ‑‑ kind of a really comprehensive research study and found that ‑‑ that eBay businesses in rural and in kind of economically distressed areas, were starting at ‑‑ at higher rates and growing at faster rates than eBay ‑‑ excuse me, than businesses in general across the national average.  So that was very, very encouraging for us to see.
We also hear stories about sellers who have disabilities, so they may work in ‑‑ live in New York City, you know, kind of one of the biggest markets in the world.  But they are kind of ‑‑ their physical impairments prevent them from being able to go into an office or warehouse and actually have kind of a 9:00 to 5:00 job.  eBay enables them to actually access the markets and bring their products to a world of customers.
I say absolutely yes.  Of course, nothing in life is guaranteed with business you all very much are familiar or aware of the fact that everything kind of takes hard work.  So you kind of need to learn how to work these platforms, how to take advantage of all of the different tools and kind of opportunities they offer.  But absolutely the answer is a Resounding, unequivocal yes.  That ecommerce in general, I would say eBay specifically, offers immense opportunity for people who are outside these kind of concentrated financial centers. 
>> Jarvis: That's wonderful, thank you so much for that, just keep in mind the internet doesn't have the boundaries that a small town does so wonderful news.
Another question was submitted to me directly.  The question is:  Are there B 2 B sections in any of these platforms.  Can a small business have an opportunity to sell to other businesses?  I'm going to start ‑‑ go right back to you, Alexis.  See if there are any B 2 B opportunities with eBay.
>> Yes.  That's something that we are developing further.  We have a lot of different kind of volume discounts and ways that businesses can attract other businesses.  We have a whole vertical dedicated kind of business and industrial, so we see a lot of those kinds of customers or sellers in that category.  So the answer is yes.
I think that the majority of our sellers are B 2 C [Dogs barking] there must be a mailman here or something.  Absolutely that capability in the marketplace.
>> Jarvis: Thank you.  So I'm going to do kind of a rapid fire as we are in these final moments of the event, this next question I'm going to go back to you, Elsa, related to unemployment benefits.  This question comes from Jennifer.  The question is:  Do UI benefits cover employees' reduced pay rather than reduced hours?  And will businesses' unemployment rates be affected?
Let me know if you need me to repeat that.  [overlapping speakers]
>> A reduction in pay is not considered a job separation for unemployment purposes.  So if you have someone that was at $20 an hour, you said hey we need to tighten our belts, not getting as much business, $15 an hour, you are still going to work your 40 hours or whatever your customary schedule was, this is not a job separation.  You are not considered unemployed.
If it's just a reduction in pay.
However, employers beware, if you reduce your employees, it's legal, as long as you bring them down to minimum wage, if you reduce your employee's pay by 20% or more and they stay with you, that's fine, not a job separation for unemployment.  If they quit you, they are going to have good cause connected with the work for quitting.  Under that scenario there would be a job separation if they quit.
So short answer, a change in pay without a reduction in hours or a reduction in the work is not going to be a job separation.  And back to my original answer, if you are doing this, because of the COVID‑19 and you are a taxed employer, then you are supposed to be protected from charge.
>> Jarvis: Along those lines, this next question I'm going to relay to Jaime, also related to the PPP.  The question is if one receives the PPP funds while continued operating, can it be used only for payroll?  If it is now exhausted, will this be acceptable for forgiveness?
>> Martinez: First and foremost, Jarvis and obviously the person who asked the question, yeah, the Paycheck Protection Program, yes, is an economic incentive, you know, product to be able to keep your employees on payroll.
So, yes, although you are required to at least expand 60% of it for ‑‑ for on payroll expenses, you know, to have your loan forgiven, you can use 70, you can use 90, 100% of it on payroll expenses, yes, 100% of it.  You can use on payroll expenses.  And, you know, if everything ‑‑ everything that you have, if you have documented when the money came in, you documented when the money came out, you know, who it was to, who it specifically was for.  Remember it doesn't just have to cover salary and wages.  It can also cover cash payroll expenses.  As well.
So like tips and bonuses and things like that, if that's a part of your everyday business.  So, you know, make sure that you document everything.  But yeah 100% of it can be utilized for, you know, for payroll.  Yes.
>> Jarvis: Thank you, very much, Jaime.  With that, we are in the last seconds of this event.  I want to not only thank Jaime and the SBDC, but also Alexis with eBay also with the TWC and Liza with Facebook.  We went through a lot of information.  However, we did not go through everyone's questions.  We only had an hour.  However, in the next slides, Kelly will share the slides where you can reach out to our respective organizations and contact us with follow‑up information.  So thank you all and with that I'll hand it over to you, Kelly.
>> Spillane: Great, thank you, Jarvis, thank you to our team back stage for answering as many questions as you did.  That was powerful work.
Thank you, thank you.
And again to echo Jarvis, thank you to your great panelists, it's an honor to have you all here to help us with this webinar.  So this slide just shows where to access information for the office of the governor's staff who run this webinar, there's an email there.  And links to various important resources and our events.  And then this last slide is probably the most interesting for today, this is information to all of the resources referred to by our panelists and it's also including the email and phone number for the UTSA COVID business recovery center, which is really important.
Again, you are going to receive an email in the next day or two, which first of all, we will ask you to complete a survey.  We would love you to do that.  We would love to hear what you think of this, what you think about how we could do things differently or better or topics that you would like to hear about in the future because we will be running many more webinars before the year end.
So do look after this email, it has the survey link and then the links to the slides, the recording of this event and also the transcript if anybody is interested in that.
And so with that, I'm going to wrap things up.  And I would just like to say thank you for joining us.  Small businesses are really, really, really, really important in Texas.  They are the backbone of the Texas economy.  They, you know, represent the life and soul of our towns, cities, so many are family businesses, so we want to help in any way that we can.  Thank you for joining us.  From.
Our messaging really today was to help you all potentially get online for the first time or improve what you are doing online, increase your communications, learn about the free resources and training to really help you up your game online.  If you didn't get your questions answered today, between the last slide and this slide there are links and emails that you can reach out to help get answers.
I am going to just double check if Adriana Cruz is here.  She sometimes is able to stay on.  And I was going to give her an opportunity to say some parting remarks, if she has a moment.
>> Cruz: I'm here, I'm here, Kelly.  Just very quickly, thanks to our speakers for joining us today and thank you to our small business owners for the questions and for your participation.  Really sharing all of this information we hope will help you, will help all of the other small business owners across the state.  So thank you for joining us and please keep in touch and check out our website for the next webinar.
>> Spillane: That's great.  So we are concluding the event, look out for our email, do respond to the survey and do join us again in the future.  Thank you.  
[End of webinar].