Recommendation to receive and file a presentation from CSULB College of Business Administration on the "Long Beach Small Business Monitor" survey.
We've read item 2224. I'm sorry. I'm. We're going. I'm 24. I'm sorry. Communication from Councilmember Pearce recommendation receive and file a presentation from Colby College of Business Administration on the Long Beach Small Business Monitor survey. Councilman Pierce, did you have an opening comments? Yes. I want to first thank Scott very, very much for waiting until 10:00 tonight. Super appreciate it. Scott and I had a great phone conversation recently about small business protections, and they've done a lot of great work in monitoring out of Cal State, Long Beach. And there's a lot of work that I think we can do in the city to ensure that we're protecting and supporting our small businesses. But before we get to some of those items in future months, we thought it would be great to hear from Cal State and also hear about the future surveys that you guys are working on. So thank you very much, Scott. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you. It's been a long night, so I'll be very brief. I come from College of Business. I'm a professor in the Department of Marketing, and we do a survey of Long Beach small businesses. Once a year. We've been doing this survey since 2012, and I'm here to report on the latest results of that survey for you guys. I'm just going to get right to the results. You have the report sitting in front of you. What we found in this past year was a decline in expectations about the future, and the decline is significant. So there is some increasing concern among small business owners here in Long Beach right now. We also found that. There's a far fewer small business owners who feel that you're going to see a increase in their revenues over the last year. So there is growing concern about the future among the small business owners here in Long Beach. And so what we wanted to do is want to find out why and then work with the Economic Development Commission to try to figure out some solutions to these problems. So what we uncovered was a significant increase in the past year in concern about access to capital and financing and cash for business and and the ability to find and retain new customers. This is something new. We haven't seen this before. So we can attribute these increased feelings of concern to an overall feeling of declining expectations. And so these two areas are extremely important for small businesses, first, in terms of adequate cash flow and access to capital. When a business doesn't have that, what they tend to do is begin to cut back on things in the business, which reduces the quality of the product or service that they're offering. And when that happens, they begin to lose customers and it turns into a spiral and the business eventually goes out of business. And so it's very important for businesses to be able to have adequate capital in order to be able to acquire new customers and provide high quality services. The second area finding and keeping customers really has to do with the way citizens in Long Beach today are finding small businesses. Most of them are today are using their cell phones and computers to find small businesses. And many of the businesses today in our survey, you'll see many of the business owners today feel they don't have the time, the expertize, the financial resources to do this kind of outreach and marketing. And as a result, they're at a significant disadvantage to online stores and larger companies that have a better opportunity and more more resources. This is a significant problem. So if a small business today doesn't understand this issue and doesn't incorporate it into their business plans, then they're probably not going to be that successful. There's a little bit of a shakeout going on. Some businesses that are able to utilize these kinds of services are going to be the ones that are going to be successful. And so one of the things that we try to do at the university is to try to match up our resources, our students and our faculty with small businesses to help them in this particular area. Because without this support, they're not going to be able to find new customers, and they're not going to be able to create relationships with customers that are needed to maintain their businesses today. And that's the short of it. I want to be really short because it's been a very long night. And I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. I want to just add I just want to thank the partner college business and the survey. I've been following this survey since you launched it and I always find it. I read it every year. I appreciate the the publication you put out. It's got the data on it. And I think it's really good data for the city. And so I just wanted to personally just thank you for, for that work and and for your department, but also the entire college of business in the work they do on this issue. So thank you. Councilman Pearce. To City. Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I want to thank you as well. I'm a fairly new small business owner. We're coming up on our one year anniversary. And I just turned over at turn to council member Pearce and said, I wish my husband was watching this right now because it's fascinating. And, you know, so much of what you said rings true to me in a way now than it would have just even a few years ago, because we're going through it. So thank you very much. I look forward to reading the full survey myself and sharing it with my husband and business owners in our community. You have something else, Councilor Pearce? Just wanted to say two things. One is I want to think a staff John, I know we've been talking about how we can kind of wrap our hands around small businesses and of a retro role. We've had three businesses triple the rents. And so when we talk about access to capital, I think we had the conversation around, well, what's that capital for? Is it only product? Is it rent? Is it what is that? So I really look forward to seeing the next survey and partnering with some of your students, hopefully in the future with some of our small businesses . So thanks for staying the long night. Appreciate it. Thank you. And with that, we don't have public comment on this item. I'm saying so, members, please go ahead and cast your votes.