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terri:good morning. audience:good morning. terri:i am terri denison, georgia district director for the us small business administration.it's my pleasure to open today's national small business week event here at the georgiatech research institute conference center. this year's theme for national small businessweek is "dream big, start small". our vision for today's program is a take on that verytheme. the greater economy, with all of its dynamics,trends, development projects, and innovation set the stage for business opportunities forbusinesses of all sizes, including small business.

today is about connecting small businessesto what's going on in the larger economic landscape. to set the tone for today, we are very fortunateto have giving the feature remarks, our deputy administrative for the us small business administration,douglas kramer. after his remarks, deputy administrator kramer will be joined by distinguishedpanel of economic and business development professionals who have their fingers on thepulse of the demographic and economic trends for armchair conversation about what's onthe horizon for georgia and the southeast region, and the opportunities that this presentsfor small businesses. this afternoon, we will drill down even furtherwith concurrent sessions on 3 areas that we

feel are the hot spots in the georgia andsoutheastern economy: technology and innovation, the state's growing film and tv productionindustry, and international trade activity as it will be impacted by the port of savannah,savannah harbor deepening project. i would be remiss in ending my remarks withouta few thank you's. first, a very big thank you for these folks at georgia tech, donnaennis and ayesha jones, for securing this great venue for us for today's event; [billywarden 2:20], the staff at the gtri conference center for really working with us on settingup the logistics for today. then, of course, the sba georgia-based crew,david perry, who's our georgia deputy district director, who really did the lion's shareof bringing this project together from an

idea to reality that you will experience today;regional communications director, lola kress; and mark gibson with our office of field operationsfor helping us get the word out about today's event. then, of course, the georgia districtoffice staff, many of whom you interacted with today to help you get to your seats andto check in; and for those who are back at the shop, so to speak, holding the fort downwhile we're here. now to provide remarks on behalf of this year'spresenting sponsor for national small business week, chase for business, is mr. mike passilla,who is the ceo of commerce solutions, consumer and community banking. mike:good morning, everybody.

mike:my name is mike passilla. i'm the ceo of chase commerce solutions, which effectively is thedivision of jp morgan chase that runs all of the payments business across the unitedstates for us. i could not be more thrilled to be here as a representative of the organization. i'm personally incredibly proud as i am withall my distinguished chase colleagues in the audience to be the presenting sponsor of nationalsmall business week in partnership with small business administration. this week helps everyoneshine a very appropriate light on millions of american small businesses, 4 million ofwhich we personally serve at chase and millions of others that we'd like to get to know overtime.

we're joining the sba at events all acrossthe country, like this one here in atlanta, to celebrate and to bring appropriate focusto business owners and to focus on tools and resources that they deserve. chase's supportof american small business is stronger than ever. across the country, chase serves over4 million small businesses, american small businesses, including over 60,000 here inthe state of georgia. it's never been a numbers game for us, butwe do like the combination of the scale that chase brings to bear, the ongoing investmentin technology, and our professional relationship management model that we think is a winningcombination. we try very hard to make it easy for business owners to control and managetheir finances so they can focus on what got

them into business in the first place, andthat is running and growing their respective businesses. in fact, we have some of atlanta'sbest bankers here today that will share some special offers with you over the course ofthe day. last fall, we launched a new brand, chasefor business. it is a very intentional brand, with the idea that we want to support themission of being the bank for business. we took a hard look at the fact that we haveall the financial services with jp morgan chase that business owners need: transactionaccounts, cash management, lending, credit cards, payment processing, but we realizethat we can improve on how all of those solutions, all those products work together. our focusand our main focus has been bringing the parts

of chase together to make it easier for businessowners to do business with us. beyond banking, chase is very focused on supportingthe people and the organizations that support small business. that's why we are the sponsorin national business week, and we have programs such as small business forward that help fundnon-profit incubators and accelerators across the country. you can read more about bothof those at chase.com/business. here in atlanta, jp morgan chase has a commitmentto business, and has for years. my job happens to be a global one. if you ask my wife, ispend too much time on the road, but that's another conversation. because i am a millennial,as you can tell, i try to represent all of our customers. i will not relay that messageback to her.

we have focus on making sure that atlantaand being a part of this program is so important to us, and that's why i'm proud jp morganchase is here in a big way. atlanta's one of the cities participating in our globalinitiative, our global cities initiative, which is a joint program with the brookingsinstitute that helps metro areas around the world take better advantage of their globalcommerce potential. we're actively working with the metro atlanta chamber. just todaythey released the foreign direct investment plan. together, we're reaching out to smalland minority-owned businesses so they also can become stronger importers and exporters. we're also supporting the chamber's atlantametro export challenge, where 38 local businesses

have already received grants of $5,000 inthe first round. later this summer, those same business owners will have an opportunity,and these businesses range from small ice cream makers to a developer of a cancer detectiontechnology, but those participants, 38 of them, have a chance to compete for an additional$35,000 of funding. congratulations to the sba and everyone inthe business of small business. we're proud to be a partner to this organization. as apresenting sponsor, particularly for this week, we take it to heart and we take it veryseriously. congratulations to all of you who own businesses or considering starting one.from chase, we applaud you, we thank you for making atlanta, georgia your home, and wethank you for the ingenuity, the innovation,

and the model of hard work that we can alllearn from over time. i appreciate it. terri:thank you, mike, for those remarks and for also redefining what a millennial is. i takea lot of comfort in that. thank you. now it's my pleasure to bring up, to make remarks,and to formally introduce our deputy administrator, it's my boss, our chief for sba in the southeastregion, cassius butts. oh. oops, excuse me, retake. oh, i left it out. i'm sorry. actually,before cassius comes up, we have the pleasure of having our georgia 2016 small businessperson of the year, catherine downey with catmedia. catherine:[inaudible 09:49].

terri:no chance. catherine:hi, everyone. being named the sba georgia small business person of the year is a huge,huge honor. i'm deeply grateful for this award and the recognition that comes with it. ijust got back from washington d.c. and had a wonderful time at the smithsonian and thecenters for peace. i met the administrator, maria contreras-sweet, who's just amazing- you saw her just a few minutes ago on videotape - and got to meet mark cuban and swim withthe sharks for just a minute. that was fun. before i talk about my story, i would liketo personally thank the georgia district office for all their help. if there's any of youin the audience, would you please stand up.

i know some of you are here. come on. georgiadistrict office, please stand up. thank you. i started my company 28 years ago, after myfirst child was born, with nothing more than a legal pad and an answering machine. i didn'teven have a desk. i worked at the kitchen table when my son slept. i was an expert atadvertising and i was an award-winning writer and director and producer, but i didn't knowanything about running a business. entrepreneurs like me, and many of you, were really greatat one thing. that's why we went out on our own, but we're not necessarily great businesspeople. some of us struggle and flounder and often fail because we just don't have thetools and the knowledge base to run a business and grow a business.

that's why the sba is so critical to smallbusinesses. they provide the toolbox and all the tools you need to succeed. of course,you have to have the vision and the hard work and the determination to use them. my involvementwith the sba started 16 years ago, when i utilized score to help me understand salesand how to get customers, which led me to apply for the gsa schedule. from there, ienrolled in the small business development center's fast track program and, after graduating,was assisted in completing my 8(a) and encouraged in getting other certifications, such as womanin business certifications and getting involved with the georgia tech procurement center. during my 9 years as an 8(a), i attended manyclasses and seminars held at the regional

office. i always walked away with some newpiece of information that i could apply to my business. every time i had a question aboutthe far, which, by the way, will put you to sleep if you can't sleep at night, or a difficultsituation, i always got reassuring guidance. i'm sure many of them can tell you times thati called up hysterical, not knowing how to handle a situation or a contracting officeror a teaming partner or what the heck did this acronym mean. they were always therefor me, and calmed me down first and then talked to me about the issue. in early 2012, we utilized the sbdc againfor strategic planning. we really set some lofty 3-year goals. they were instrumentalin encouraging us to protect our intellectual

property. as an innovator and entrepreneur,i have had many ideas stolen from me ... borrowed from me from other businesses. the resultof that was that we were patent pending on 3 technologies. in the fall of 2012, that's really when everything,all the strategic planning came together. we won our first huge contract with the faa,followed by 8(a) wins with the cdc, and our largest contract to date with opm. i knewi had to grow myself quickly because the person that starts a company with a legal pad andno desk isn't necessarily the person that can lead a $20 million, or our goal of $50million, company. i had to grow up as a business leader and a business person even faster thani was already growing.

i applied for and was accepted into the sbaemerging leaders program and graduated as the class valedictorian in 2014. through emergingleaders, i learned about the sba 504 program. i purchased a building, renovated and purchaseda building, which is now our atlanta headquarters. each class, each step led me to the next level.without the sba, there is no way i could have built my company from employing 2 people toemploying 35 and engaging over 500 1099s. sorry, i get emotional. from renting a small space, where we wereliterally on top of each other, to buying and renovating a 6,000-square-foot headquarterbuilding in atlanta and opening and staffing a d.c. sales office; from being a small, creativeservices company to expanded offerings of

e-learning, training, program management,human resource management, marketing and advertising, starting an entertainment division, whichis in process of producing a full-length feature film and a documentary, and launching ourcommercial division advertising agency; from going from gross revenues of under $500k toapproaching $18 million this year. each step of the way, the sba has been there,providing me with the tools i needed to be successful. thank you from the bottom of myheart. the sba is what makes small business work. the georgia district office is reallywhat helped my business work. thank you so much. terri:thank you, catherine. shame on me for almost

skipping over that story because, at the endof the day, we could talk about our programs and the services that we offer, but when youhave a business that has taken those resources and programs and put them into action andthen you see the results, that's really what our job is all about. thank you, catherine,for sharing that. now i would like to bring up sba's leader for the 8 states of the southeastregion to introduce our featured speaker today, cassius butts. cassius:good morning, everyone. cassius:good morning. cassius:this is a wonderful day. i'm so glad that

we are all together this morning because thisis a day that is not about really anyone of us, it's about you. i first want to acknowledge,again, our georgia district office, terri denison, david perry, and the whole team.let's give them a warm round of applause, let them know how we feel this morning. i think i got here maybe 7:00, 7:38, somewherearound that time. there were some folks that were here, and they were here and they werejust making certain that they were a part of this. you got here before the folks camehere to turn on the lights. if you were here, stand up. let us see. come on, just standup. you were this morning very early ... yes, miss [carolyn 17:23], stand up. who else?in the back there, stand up. there you go,

stand up. i want people to see you ... thereyou go. thank you. we want people to know that we are encouraged,we are excited, we are really looking forward to seeing the fruits of our labor becausetoday has really been about you. this is all about you today, but the best part about todayis that we have an opportunity to say thank you from a national point of view. i had tofirst able to give a special thank you to georgia tech president bud peterson for hostingthis national live event. please let him know how much we appreciate being here this morning. georgia tech is recognized not only domestically,but internationally for producing great entrepreneurs and providing a superb entrepreneurial ecosystem.we also would like to thank the national small

business week sponsors for making today possibleas well. of course, donna ennis, thank you so much. thank you. i often say it's no accident when things happen.they happen the way they're supposed to. sometimes there's no accident why we're here in regioniv. we are very proud to say, for this past fiscal year, we backed nearly $5 billion ofloans to small business. i'll tell you it really didn't happen unless you heard excitingstories like catherine's. i will tell you, catherine, that you are one of our unsungheroes. she did not tell you that, in 2014, she was a part of the emerging leaders program,where she was the valedictorian. when you have a ceo that comes back to continueto absorb the information that sba has to

offer, she is a true testament that when youput your effort where you want to be every single day and coming and letting us helpyou on the government side. you can actually be very happy with the fruits of your labor.again, catherine, thank you very much. your story was so touching. today we're really excited because we havea very special guest with us today. it is important for me because we had an opportunityto witness small business happen, but our deputy administrator is here today to do thisfirsthand. what i mean by that this is an opportunity for you to get to know him a littlebit better as well, too. i'm going to go right into some acknowledging who this great personis to us.

the deputy administrator was confirmed bysenate to this position last june, prior to that he held a variety of positions in presidentobama's administration, including 4 years in leadership at the white house. as deputyadministrator, he is responsible for managing the agency and ensuring the efficient operationof its programs. he works to make sure that the agency fulfills his promise to supportus small businesses. please help me and please give him a warm georgia peach round of applausefor our deputy administrator, mr. doug kramer. douglas:[inaudible 00:20:30]. there you go. wow! i don't know what i have left to say anymore.we had the video, we had all the remarks already. i can't keep up with catherine. that's justnot fair to me, but i will do what i can.

my name is doug kramer and, as introduced,i'm the deputy administrator for the us small business administration. on behalf of administratorcontreras-sweet and everybody who works at sba, i'm very excited to be here. this isreally our outside of d.c. kickoff of national small business week. the administrator isdoing an event in new york tonight. we've both [been 21:08] going from there, but atlantais our first stop. as we think about why we do this, i want tospend just a minute and touch on that at the top because catherine's story exemplifiesthat very clearly. it's a great story. there are a number of them throughout the countrythat are really the backbone of who we are and who our communities are, but each of them,individually, don't always get the attention

that they need or deserve. national smallbusiness week, we try to galvanize through the media, through events like this thosestories to remind people about the power of small business. i'm going to talk a littlebit about that today. it also provides an opportunity for us atsba to talk about what we do and to amplify that in a focused way, because as i'll talkabout in my remarks today, we do a whole lot of stuff, for a lack of a better term andwe do it an incredible scale, but we're not always out front on that. we're working throughour partners in the banks and our partners that run investment venture capital fundsand our partners in the federal government that give out contracts or give out researchand development grants. you don't always see

us out front doing that and may not understandall the support that is out there available to all of you who are looking to start a smallbusiness. that's a bit of what i'm going to talk about today. before i do that, i want to join everybodyelse in thanking our host here at georgia tech. this is a great room, a great facilityfor them to give us. i feel like we could launch a space shuttle from in here or somethingthe way this is all setup. thanks for sharing that. also, everybody in our local office, but specificallyto terri and david and cassius on the regional level, who have just provided extraordinaryleadership and results here in georgia and

in the entire region for our small businesses.then i want to congratulate catherine for her win this year as georgia small businessperson of the year. i think she made it clear more than i ever could. it was a richly-deservedaward for her. thanks to all of you for your participation in today's event and in yourcontribution. i want to start then with catherine becausethat's what we need to do. as much as i will end up talking about sba and what we do, whatthis week is all about is the entrepreneurs whose innovations and persistence literallymake us the envy of the world. in this role, i do get to travel around internationally,talk to people who try to do this, working in other countries.

they're desperate to figure out the secretrecipe that we have for our entrepreneurship and small business culture because they'retrying to replicate it, and they can't because it's not just a series of policies, it's notjust something the government can do. it's built into our society and our country. allwe do is try to give it the support and bring it out. for example, i think entrepreneurs are probablythe greatest source of social mobility in america today. some of america's greatestcompanies were founded by people who held steady 9 to 5 jobs or in between jobs thatthey didn't care about too much, but dreamt about spending their days doing what theytruly loved.

some of us were able to go to college becauseour parents started a gas station or a corner store. some of you may be doing a lot of thatsame thing right now. maybe you've launched an e-commerce business or a local moving companywith a truck and a couple of people with some strong backs. that's what entrepreneurshipcan offer you. if you want to stop dreaming and start doing,you first have to make the commitment that you will be investing your own labor, yourmental health at times, and your own money, but please come talk to us at the sba, becausefor reasons that we will talk about throughout this day, i think there are a number of thingsthat we're doing that can help make that dream possible for all of you.

we have offices in communities across thecountry, staff with dedicated professionals who have done this work and understand thiswork, who are willing to help, able to help through services that are completely free,whether you need help writing a business plan, finding research funding to take your dreamand get it to a proof of concept stage and then market viability, or accessing the creditunion, merely to make that first downpayment on getting your business off the ground. that'swhat sba is here for. that's how we came up very easily then with the theme for this week,in national small business week, "dream big and start small". it's more than a tagline. it really is theamerican story. you can look back in our history

and see the homesteaders who went out westwith no foundation, no idea what they were going to do, but they had this idea that theywould have the opportunity to carve a way of life for themselves and their families.it's the war time wives and the rosie the riveters who started out in a very patrioticstep of working in world war ii and then found out that they could create profitable businessesout of that experience. it's the determination of a number of african-american innovators,who overcame discrimination to pioneer advancements in agricultural chemistry, performing thefirst successful open heart surgery, and even creating the first home computer. today, as a demonstration, as to how thatis so woven into who we are in the american

experience, i find it so fascinating thatentrepreneurship has even taken over our popular culture. you see books and movies all thetime about entrepreneurs, whether it's steve jobs or mark zuckerberg or silicon valleyon hbo, which if any one you watch, is both wonderful and terrifying at the same time,which is a very apt portrayal of what it's like to start a small business. i was taken yesterday, when we were at thenational awards ceremony in washington and mark cuban was speaking. he pointed out thatshark tank is the number one rated show in the country for families to watch together.think about that. it's not spongebob, it's not some singing competition, it's entrepreneurstalking about starting a business, a viable

business, being challenged on where they'regoing to find sales and all that that families come together and watch and talk about. that'snow happening in any other country in the world. i was surprised it's happening evenin the united states, that something that substantive, something that weighty is thesort of thing that families sits down and watch together. that is how firmly taken theentrepreneurial experience, the small business adventure is in the american story. entrepreneurship allows us to provide somethingof value to society, in addition to what we get for ourselves. it does provide a betterfuture for ourselves and the people we love. if you succeed you'll become a business owner,but you'll also become a pillar of your community

in a much greater extent than almost any othertype of business, because local small businesses are the ones that sponsor little league baseballteams. they donate profits to local pta or any kind of services. they plant trees onmain street, they invest in the future of their neighborhoods, and bring people togetherin the communities that all of us call home. small businesses, and these are facts, donatemore of their funds to non-profit charitable organizations than other businesses. you alsofind that more of the money you spend in a small business ends up staying in that localcommunity. people have a misconception, in addition to these small things we do aroundcommunities, but people have a misconception that it's really, though, the big corporationsthat keep the engine of american enterprise

and the american economy going and keep americathe strongest economy in the world, but it's not necessarily the case. as we've already talked about this morning,it's actually small businesses that comprise, in the aggregate, the largest single enginein the american economy. you can find them on main street, you can find them in malls,and you're finding them more and more all the time online. no greater an authority thanfederal reserve chair janet yellen has said that it was small businesses that poweredour recovery after the great recession. they create 2 of every 3 new jobs, they employhalf of america's private sector workforce, and they produce close to half of the goodsand services that make up the united states

economy. today we're here to celebrate their contributionsand their importance, the importance of people like catherine downey, who started catmediaback in 1997, as she explained. after years of work and sacrifice she built into a companythat's been recognized by inc. 500 as one of the fastest growing private companies inamerica for 2 years. it's not easy. usually you have a spurt, you grow, and then you'reoff the list. to grow that quickly for 2 years is quite an accomplishment. she has a successful local business now, asshe explained, but she also gives back to those who are coming behind her, not onlyby sharing her story today, but also by contributing

to georgia's small business development center,where she sits on the local state advisory board to make sure that other people havethe advantage to get the same counseling that she got. she's certainly paying it back. sba has helped to create stories like thisin every zip code in america. i want to make sure that you all have a sense of the differentresources that are available to you. i'm going to run through these pretty quickly, so asnot to bore you too much, but i want to make sure that everybody is aware of the varietyof services that we offer. one of the benefits i have of being deputy administrator is iget to see all the good that the agency does. not all of this will be relevant to each ofyou, but if there's something you haven't

heard about before and you're interested about,make sure you take the opportunity today to find out about them. i've got to put out there, too, it may notbe the first instinct; although all of you decided to come here today, but it's not thefirst instinct of most people in entrepreneurship to think that the place they need to go isthe federal government. if you take a deeper look, i think you'll be surprised to see theoptions you have. i should say sba is not an oversight agency.we don't regulate, we don't do enforcement. if you don't want anything to do with thesmall business administration starting your business, that is your complete right andability to do. you don't need any license

from us to open a small business in the unitedstates, but, as catherine's already made very clear ways, there are a couple of billionreasons why that might not be a good idea. we work behind the scenes, as i said before,really to create an ecosystem for small business growth and development. we've done that formore than 60 years. as the video demonstrated before, most of the really iconic brands inthe united states today grew through some help from the small business administration,whether it's tesla or apple or qualcomm, fedex, nike, and thousands more. we put a thumb onthe scale to make sure small businesses, who otherwise might have environmental challengesto success, can be successful in starting their new enterprise.

one of the first ways that happens is overcomingthe challenges that many small businesses have in obtaining the capital that they needto start their business. that's why we partner with banks to help them make small businessloans they otherwise might be a little bit reticent about making. we assume, for sbaloans, the downside risk of about 50% to 85% of a potential default so that they will bewilling to make that loan. when president obama took office back in 2009,the economy was losing about 800,000 jobs a month, but what we've seen after the economystabilized and through the work of small businesses, is we've had 73 straight months of job creation.sba-backed business loans have supported 4.5 million jobs. last year alone, we guaranteed69,000 loans to american small businesses,

totaling more than $28 billion. although those are records by a pretty goodclip for sba, we're not happy with where that is right now because we want to make surebanks have the incentives to make small dollar loans and really hitting at those early stagesmall businesses who need that money desperately. the job market bounce back, conventional creditto small business hasn't completely, rolling at about 83% of the pre-recession levels,which is a $58 billion gap. at sba, what we've done is we're trying tofill that gap, especially in small loans. we've eliminated fees, we've automated ourloan application process for the guarantee to make sure it's easier for more banks toget that guarantee and get money flowing to

small businesses. we've added new micro-lenders,we've created new relationships with community banks and minority-owned institutions to improveour network to make sure that we are reaching those folks in communities that were previouslyunderserved by sba loans and the banks that partner with us. once small businesses have the capital theyneed, we also help them gain access to the largest customer in the world, because assoon as you turn on your lights in your business, the next thing you need is find a customer.there's no bigger customer in the world than uncle sam. by statute, federal agencies arerequired to spend about 23% of their spend with small and medium-sized businesses, butthat doesn't mean that it was happening every

year. there were several years or almost decadeswhere the federal government was falling short in that regard. i'm happy to say that over the last few years,we've hit and now far exceeded that number. last year, we did about 25.7% of spendingthroughout the federal government with small businesses. in terms you all might find alittle bit easier to comprehend, even though it's still pretty incomprehensible, that was$91 billion in spending that went specifically to small business through the federal governmentand their procurement process. we also have programs, as catherine talkedabout, to make sure that we're providing preferred access to those federal government contractingopportunities to businesses owned by women

or service disabled veterans and americansfrom disadvantaged backgrounds. it takes more than just a great idea to startyour small business. it also takes execution. at the sba, we tap into a network of peoplewho help provide the know-how in local communities, along with our in-house experts, to make surethat you have the counseling and strategic advice you need to start your business. we'vedone that to more than a million small business people every year. we do it through our smallbusiness development centers, through women's business centers, veteran outreach centers,and sba district offices. you can find all of those resources and the ones closest toyou on the sba website at sba.gov. we also work with seasoned executives throughthe score program. they mentor small businesses

in more than 800 different locations throughoutthe country. we have a boots to business program this fall. we'll have trained our fifty-thousandthdeparting veteran who's leaving the service and transitioning back home and giving themthe tools they need to start a business, if that's what they want to do for themselves. one of the one i'm excited about, and presidentobama announced in his state of the union address this year, was the startup in a dayinitiative, which is challenging state local jurisdictions to amend their processes sothat a small business owner can walk into a city building in the morning and walk outat the end of the day with every permit and license they need to start their business.when i suggest this one ... thank you.

this is one of those, when i mentioned thisto foreign leaders, they have no concept what i'm talking about. they have no way to comprehendthat system. there are even some mayors and state officials in the united states thatwe called up and said, "hey, are you ready to take the startup in a day pledge?" andthey're like, "no, we're not ready to do anything close to that." i'm happy to say here in atlanta, atlantahas taken the startup in a day pledge and has also received one of our $50,000 grants- i think we only did 6 or 7 of them nationwide - to help them get in that direction. we hopethat atlanta's really going to be a leader, not only in making this pledge, but followingthrough to make sure that small businesses

in this area can then get up and going rightaway. as i mentioned before, we have our small businessinnovation research, the sbir program, which makes sure that any federal government agencythat receives or is budgeted research and development funds has to take a certain amountof those funds and dedicate them to small businesses so they're not going to the samelarge corporations all the time. every year, we provide about $2.5 billion in seed fundsto provide those small businesses that are doing innovative, creative things. we helpthem take their idea to concept and then learn how to commercialize them. we sponsor more than 130 high tech incubatorsaround the country so that people can find

support for their businesses. that way andimportantly, we have licensed and leveraged more than 300 investment funds. this comesa little bit later for small businesses, but it's very important, that specialize in providingventure capital, specifically to small businesses. our holdings in these funds currently amountto more than $26 billion. it's a lot of money that's been activated to make sure that smalland growing businesses can get to that equity event they need in their growth arc to gofrom a really small business to the opportunity of becoming a huge one. these are a lot of ways that we can help youhelp yourselves. if anything, i just rattled off ... you're probably a little exhausted.i'm very exhausted. if anything that i just

rattled off sounds like it is appropriatefor you or someone you know, identify someone that stood up in the room before, go to ourwebsite and let us know. let me be clear, though, the success of yoursmall business will depend upon you. we can't build catherine, we've tried. the lab's alwaysscrewed up one way or the other. we run a large government agency and we run it at avery large scale. we know, at the end of the day, we can't make you a success. we're alsonot the cause of your failure. that's going to be on you. what we do do, and our wholephilosophy, is to make sure that you have all the support you need along the way. one of the things we like to talk about withsmall businesses is that one of the major

differences is what could be a fatal eventfor a small business is something that, for a large business, just puts out a timelinefor 6 weeks, [or it's 00:39:15] a little bit of a rounding error on a budgetary item, buteven small events. we talked about cyber security in d.c., yesterday, events that often costa small business $20,000 on average. those events can totally ruin your small businessif you don't have an ecosystem there to provide the support when those gaps in what you'redoing arise. whether it's linking you with a bank, ready to do business with you, whetherit's providing you with information and education that you need, to answer questions that youhave, or exposing you to a big customer that's motivated and incentivized to work with you,that's what sba does.

we're hoping to provide that opportunity forevery single entrepreneur who's willing to take that risk. that's where we get to today.that's why we're encouraging all of you to dream big and start small, and to be a differencemaker in our economy and in your communities. thank you. that's the view from 10,000 feetfrom washington, whatever you want to call it. what i think we're going to do now istransition because we've brought some people from across the local economic small businesssector and ecosystem to talk specifically about what's going on in this region. i'mgoing to leave them a discussion. i'm going to invite them up to the stage at this point,and we'll transition into all of that. thank you for your time and attention this morning.

i've done a very lengthy introduction to this,so i think i can just jump into a conversation with our group up here. what i think we will... the only ground rule i will put out is i will try to avoid the abstract and the theoreticaland try to keep everybody on a very practical path, as we talk about opportunities thatare coming up. you get to be theoretical. you're a fed, so you get to do that, that'syour job, but everybody else. i want to talk about specific opportunities that people see,specific concerns, and drive the conversation in that direction. i will provide a very quick introduction ofeach of the 5 panelists, let them talk a little bit about themselves. then, as a way of introduction,i'll give them each a question to start with,

and that would be, in just a couple of sentencesor as long as you want to go, what is the number one most exciting thing going on inthis region right now, the opportunity right now that you think is something people shouldbe aware of, if they're not already? let me start with jeff patterson, who is thedistrict director for the local sbdc, the small business development center that's locatedover at georgia state. jeff is someone who has an extensive history in the financialservices industry, including working at several community banks in the area. i'll just letjeff talk a little bit about himself and then answer my question. jeff:yeah. i've been at the sbdc for about 3 years

now, happy to be there, met a lot of interestingpeople. the sbdc, if you don't know, at least here in georgia, we have 17 offices throughoutthe state. we do toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose consulting. we are university-based here.i'm not sure about throughout the rest of the united states, but you will find an office,an sbdc office, throughout the united states. we teach the adult learners at night, or duringthe day. we do workshops to help, but our sweet spot is to help small businesses likeyours grow. that could be whatever your pain point is. access to capital is my niche. i'man old banker, so i speak banker-ese, but we do a lot of work with small businesses.the most exciting thing that i think is happening here in atlanta, outside of the film industryand a little expansion-

douglas:[inaudible 43:30]. jeff:i know, i know. douglas:you can't chew up all of them as an aside. you just choose one and leave one at leastfor the other four. jeff:all right. i'm going to go back all the way up to the headwaters here. i think there'sa lot of synergy and excitement going on here in atlanta with our women entrepreneurs, andwe want to get behind that. we do a lot of work in that space at my office. we're excitedabout that. douglas:great. i've got to enforce the rules or i'll

lose control of the whole thing. jeff:sorry. i get excited. douglas:next i'm going to turn to art slotkin. art is the director of the score chapter herein atlanta. i'll let him talk a little bit about what that is for those of you that aren'talready aware of the services they provide, but art exemplifies what score is becauseart worked for 34 years in the computer services industry, most significantly for saic, andhas now been with score since he retired, helping other folks learn the ways to starta small business. art, do you want to talk a little bit about what score does and thengive me your idea of what you think the best

opportunity is in the area right now? art:score happens to be the best kept secret that the sba has because we provide services toclients across the country. we have about 10,000 volunteers. i am a volunteer. i haveretired twice. my third job is a volunteer job. i hope i don't fail that one, too. we in score are people who provide free orlow cost services to our clients. we work as a resource partner of the sba. we are located... for example, here in atlanta, i'm responsible for the state of georgia. we have about 20offices in georgia in 6 chapters. here in downtown atlanta, as an example, we are inthe sba's office. across the country, we are

located in any of the sba offices. [in georgia 45:30], about 25% of our clients,or actually 30% of our clients are actually brought to us by the sba. we provide freementoring, that is counseling to either existing business owners or people who want to be smallbusiness owners. we provide free or low cost workshops, seminars. we provide online webinarsthat are all free. we have online templates that are all free. the most important thing we do is i like totalk about the results. last fiscal year, we follow the government fiscal, the effortsof score volunteers created 65,000 new jobs in the united states, primarily free servicesand 53,000 new companies, new small companies,

in one year alone. what we do is we help small businesses ... forall volunteers. we have a couple of volunteers here. we have ... ulrica jones is the chairof the middle ... dr. jones is the chair of the middle georgia chapter of score, makinghim one of our admins ... he's a volunteer office manager for the downtown branch. he'sthe chair-elect for the atlanta chapter of score. we have lots of volunteers in georgia,about 175, and 10,000 nationwide. douglas:next we're going to turn to lee baker, who's from the aarp of georgia, obviously a verylarge organization even in georgia. i think more than a million members here. also helpfulbecause his background prior to this, working

as a financial planner and i think ran hisown firm, so has, i think, some background understanding the challenges of being a smallbusiness owner. lee, if you want to talk a little bit about what aarp does in this spaceor any other thoughts? lee:absolutely. i've been on the job with aarp as state president for about a month and ahalf, two months. i've not had the opportunity yet to make my way across the entirety ofgeorgia, but, as many of you are aware, aarp is simply huge as it relates to small businesses.the focus, quite frankly, is on what we describe as encore entrepreneurs. the focus of aarpis of citizens across the country and across america who are 50-plus. there's a lot ofadvantages there.

i won't go too deep into that, but, as dougsaid, my background is that of a certified financial planner, and i am still in businessand, quite frankly, work with a lot of small businesses from a client perspective. it providesunique insight. we've got people who work closely with miss ennis, who have gone throughthe program, developed well, and similar stories to catherine. one of the things that i'd like to say isit's important when you have these opportunities, conferences come about that you look at allof these organizations as great resources. you may not know on an individual basis whoyou should pick up the phone and call, but i guarantee you that if you reach out to thesba, aarp, score, all of us would be more

than happy to help because there's a sayingthat a rising tide lifts all ships. that's absolutely true. douglas:then next is tisha tallman, who's from the georgia hispanic chamber of commerce, oneof the largest chapters, i think, of hispanic chambers in the country. the other servicesthey provide, specifically provide, business and leadership development and other opportunitiesfor small businesses. tisha, welcome. if you want to talk a little bit about what the georgiahispanic chamber does. tisha:... having us. is this loud enough? okay. we are the fourth largest hispanic chamberof commerce in the nation, with over 1,300

members, which i think sometimes astoundspeople, given the fact that we're still considered ... southeast. our infrastructure has existedsince ... either a lucky guess or extreme foresight on the part of our founders. nonetheless,we're a strong infrastructure that has thrived during the great recession. we do service hispanic-owned businesses. wealso service non-hispanic-owned businesses who are interested in working in the hispanicmarket or being linked up with the hispanic market. we also do international and domesticprogramming. i'm very excited to be here, and i ... our members. there are so many exciting things going onright now. instead of focusing on an industry

that might have some opportunities, i wantto focus on an area that's important to our community and certainly our state and ourcountry, and that's leadership. anyone following the politics of this particular presidentialrace, we can see that there is a gap in leadership generally. specifically for our community, the hispaniccommunity, we have an extreme leadership gap. while we lead in economic contribution, givenour numbers, we're the sixth hispanic market in the nation and the fourth fastest-growingin the nation, we lag behind on the leadership aspect. there's only one georgia general assemblymember. there are only 4 judges out of 1,400 across the entire state.

we recognize that leadership void and we trulybelieve that the leaders in our business community are going to drive leadership ... our community,specifically in the hispanic community and in the broader community. as we continue tobe one of the fastest-growing entrepreneurial segments, as well as one of the fastest-growingpopulations in general, we really do need to step up and fill those leadership voids. we're focusing on leadership that stems fromthe business community, works on leadership skills within their particular industry, butthey also gives a call to lead ... for the betterment of all of us ... leadership inthis country is going to be driven by business owners.

douglas:great. thanks so much. just to set the table, and i'll get to you in a second, todd, buti want to setup everything here. of the 5 members of the panel, the way we look at this,we've got the sbdc and score chapters, which is closely ingrained with sba and our programming,outreach partners that help us do all of that, but you can't help but do that, as i thinka couple of them mentioned, without getting into the other community organizations thatare out there working with different segments because the small business area goes throughall of that. we have the diversity of that by the hispanic chamber and the aarp. then we have todd here who's from the federalreserve. he is ... what are you todd? you're

vice-president in the research departmentat the federal reserve bank here in atlanta, which means todd can then give us the longterm view and probably even a short term view about what the fed thinks is happening inthe economy, what the environment is like, what existing small businesses should be preparedto think about over the next few years, and what people who might get into business wantto do. again, i probably should have set it up at the beginning, but i think we have folksfrom at least 3 very distinct different backgrounds that i think will lend to a good conversationhere. todd, if you want to talk a little bit about what you're up to. todd:thank you so much. can you all hear me? okay,

great. todd greene, federal reserve bank ofatlanta. many of you know that the fed is responsible for our nation's monetary policies.it's something that most impacts small businesses. the group that i am responsible for at thefederal reserve bank of atlanta, and we look across the 6 southeastern states, we focuson main street issues. our group focus is on issues like small business and entrepreneurs... housing, neighborhood revitalization, and [light 54:20] issues, for example. wealso look at issues like workforce development and human capital ... segments of the populationwho may have ... we also look at finance issues. we have abroad portfolio about how we're addressing things, but specifically within the contextof small business ... look at a couple of

things. we work with organizations ... tryto understand where there challenges are with respect to ... also, look to take informationback, to hear from you and to hear from people like terri and cassius, who have done an incrediblejob of sharing with us some of those challenges related to small business. we, in turn, cantake that back in consideration ... policies that we're responsible for developing. the one issue that i think that i would justreally want to ... is an opportunity that i think is really incredible. we had a lotof lack of investment around ... fantastic opportunities for small businesses. the airportis going to get over $6 billion worth of investment. if you were not trying to figure out opportunitiesthat are associated with the atlanta airport,

one of the largest economic engines in thesoutheast, i would encourage you to do that. i know we're on live tape. in new orleans,they also have a very large infrastructure project through the airport. there are somany different opportunities there. i'll just leave it at that. i think that's one rightin this region. douglas:you left it at that right before you would have taken my ... i'm going to answer my ownquestion as well, but i think what's going on in savannah, with the port over there,which i know there's a session on that this afternoon, is a huge opportunity. i thinkone of the things i've found since i've been in this position is i know that i did notcompletely understand and respect the role

that global supply chains, supply chains runby very large manufacturers and very large companies, provide just great opportunitiesfor small businesses. as i look at what's happening over in savannahand all the increased trade and just the operations and everything else, i can't help but thinkthat there will be ... in the same way you talked about the airport, there will be morethan enough to go around and a number of opportunities that a lot of small businesses would writeit off because, "oh, that's such a big thing. i don't play in that space," but the varietyof different opportunities you find with big infrastructure projects like that providesa really good opportunity. todd, i'm also going to pivot off of somethingelse you said, to go to the first general

question - i'll pitch this to jeff and toart, but then anybody else can jump in - and that is getting a sense of the environmentright now coming out of the recession. on the one hand, there are certain standardsthat have recovered. the stock market looks promising, the employment numbers look promising,but there are still a lot of other indicators that are lagging, some on income and wages,some other reports out there. the washington post has written a story on not all housingmarkets have come back after the recession. with what you all are saying, jeff and art,and the people that you are counseling and the way that you might compare what you thinkfolks are doing now, whether it's small businesses or banks or whatever, compared to pre-recessionor now, on the one hand, do you think the

environment is back? do you think the environment'schanged? what do you think the lasting impact of the great recession is for people who eitherare trying to start or have a small business? jeff:i think the general consensus of the folks we see, they're cautiously optimistic. creditis coming back. the access to capital is coming back. i think we're dealing, though, witha lot smarter clients now. i think they look around and see the environment a little bitwiser now, if you will. we've come through, and those businesses that have survived arefit now. they're lean, they're efficient. i think we're poised for a good stretch hereto see our entrepreneurs grow. art:similarly, we're seeing optimism, but if you

look at a micro point of view, which the stateof growing. if you look at a macro point of view, the state is growing. in a micro pointof view, there are depressed areas of the state, for example in columbus, the cut backof the army by 29% caused a significant impact on the small business. nevertheless, we'reseeing an increase in the number of clients. we're also seeing quite a few ... coming outof the military, as georgia is very heavily involved in the military in both the bootsto business program and the ... in columbus, we had a warrior transition program ... warriors.we're seeing a lot of soldiers going through those programs. overall, our services are up by about 3% thisyear and ... quite a bit of optimism as a

result of the improving economy. i think georgia'sdoing about 50% better than the rest of the country. we're growing at what? 3%. we'rebetter off in georgia. douglas:todd, i think it's ... todd:yeah. just to reflect on that from a national perspective, still seeing some weakness inthe small business ... small firms are really just still recovering from the recession ... firmsreally take it on the chin during the ... look at employment. thank you. when we look atemployment levels, at the height of the recession, this is mid-2009, small firms lost about 11%of their employees; whereas larger firms lost around 7%. larger firms have recovered andhave experienced gains. small firms are still

lagging. there are opportunities there. the other challenge is we're seeing fewerfirm starts. fewer firms are starting, and that is actually hurting the economic opportunityfor our country. here's the good news: profitability is up - the firms that we engage have reportedthat they are more profitable - and revenue growth is up. we keep hearing about this financial pictureabout access to credit. by and large, we are finding that firms are obtaining credit, smallfirms are obtaining credit ... shout out to donna and ayesha, my former georgia tech colleagues.i know that wasn't part of the program, but i've got to do it.

tisha:i can just add, too, doug. douglas:go ahead. tisha:from a chamber perspective, one of the things that was so incredibly important for us toconsult with our members about during the great recession was flexibility. we have aheavy end of construction companies, and, of course, georgia was hit the most ... hitbecause of the construction industry ... we have construction industry folks. we alsohad it folks. of course, the it folks were really thriving during that ... have an incredibleamount of growth post-recession as well. they're some of the really high growing industry ... onthe construction side, the flexibility, we

came incredibly ... there wasn't work in someareas. folks were going into consulting. we had some individuals, because of their countriesof origin, because of their ... proficiency in more than one language, were able to goto places like panama, where there was construction going on ... had some flexibility with themembership ... but then we have the flexibility from the stand ... during the great recession, there were opportunitiesstill in the federal government with recovery and re-investment, but there weren't at thestate level. those who were certified and had the ability to work with the federal governmentwere finding other opportunities there. now some of that is coming back on the state level.flexibility has been the key ... our membership

in various industries. while some folks weren'table to survive in, for example, the construction industry during the great recession, somefolks held on to what they could, given their position ... are now back to a more ... wecertainly have seen a lot of businesses ... and some businesses thrive based on making adjustmentswithin their company. douglas:lee, i'm going to turn to you with a question next. i might actually suggest [inaudible01:03:56]- tisha:this way? douglas:seat where you're looking out this way and then we can put the microphone over there.now that we're all up here, i think we realized,

but i think you've got it. lee, let me askyou this. we find a lot with small businesses, small business formation, that it often doestake a community of people or a group of people in some places where it happens better thanothers. that's why i think you see this incubator movement, where you have small businessesside-by-side, rubbing off on each other. i'm going to put this question to you, buttisha also i'm sure has a lot to say about this because, on the one hand, we have foundthat different immigrant communities in the united states have a level of entrepreneurshipthat exceeds the average and you get communities where that happens. it certainly is the casewith a lot of hispanic communities. as aarp is trying to do that with encore entrepreneursand create opportunities for that, what is

aarp doing? what are you seeing that is workingfor encore entrepreneurs, folks who need that support or push to do that? what's the environmentlike for that? lee:i think the environment is pretty healthy. we've done partnerships both with the sba,with score, art, we've done tele-town halls, where we reach out to ... again, here in thestate of georgia, with more than a million members, those people with score, and provideopportunities that you might not normally have, where if you say, "hey, listen, i wantto talk to a "expert"," you've got the opportunity to dial into the phone, ask those questionsthat you might not normally have the access to, so that if you're wondering about whereyou can go to get funding, get some ideas

about different things, we're making thatavailable to people. one of the things that i like to touch on- again, a disclaimer, i'm a [rambler 01:05:42] right from georgia tech, so i love this place- is you mentioned the term "ecosystem". getting into a healthy ecosystem is vital to yoursurvival. i don't want any of you out there to make your ecosystem too narrow. don't makeit too narrow. now i want to make sure that we understandand explain the difference between saying, "hey, i've got a narrow focus," in terms ofthe market or whatever type of business you're in, but realize that the person you're sittingnext to, who might be in a totally different field can help you thrive in your business.don't be shy. we're going to pick on donna

again. go up to donna. if you have not metdonna, take the opportunity. donna may be here until about 10:00 tonight, but i wantall of you to go up to her, introduce yourself, and make it available because there are peoplehere and resources that can help you get where you need. it's incredibly important that wedo that. from an aarp perspective, we're going to continueto work with these different groups. again, jeff and i were talking earlier about someof our shared history because there are those times where we go through things like thegreat recession. it was particularly hard on banking and finance. he lived through it,i live through it. in my house, my wife worked in the banking environment. you make thoseconnections. a background in commercial lending,

it doesn't matter what kind of business youare. at some point, you want to talk to a guy like jeff. the experience that he bringsin that area is vital. before we got up here on stage, we talkedabout ways that we can continue to work together and do more things together. that's incrediblyimportant. don't miss this opportunity. douglas:certainly from a macro-economic level, the american population is aging. there will bemore older americans and all that. have you found specific areas where encore entrepreneurshave taken advantage of that macro opportunity in areas where they seem to be getting moretraction than other areas or anything like that?

lee:i'd say, on an anecdotal level, it is interesting that there are aging entrepreneurs takingadvantage of the fact that we are aging. there's a great quote by wayne gretzky that says somethingto the effect of, "good hockey players skate to where the puck is; great hockey playersskate to where the puck is going to be." there are some simple things from a demographicstandpoint that tell you where opportunities are going to be. there was a war about 70 years ago. [folk01:08:25] came home from the war, celebrated. then we had a whole bunch of kids. those kidshave grown up. their hair has gotten grey. they're beginning to retire. there's opportunitythere. you've got millions upon millions of

people that have spent the last 40-plus yearsin the work environment. what are those people going to do? we've not seen that in this countrybefore, not at this magnitude. we are living longer. i think about my mother, who was born in 1915.she passed away in 2010. that population of people that are growing and living to be 90and 100 years old is huge. what does that mean? we talk to people all the time aboutcaregiving. we need more people who are professional caregivers because we've got a much largerpopulation that's aging. i experienced firsthand the ravages of dementia and alzheimer's. again,growing population. it's increasing across all demographics.

interestingly enough, i read some researchthat indicates the incidence of alzheimer's is higher in african-american and latino population.also, oddly, even though it's diagnosed later in the disease process, it tends to indicatethat you live longer in this disease cycle. what does it mean? you've got a large populationof people who are being engaged and, in many instances, ravaged by a disease that are livinglonger. what are the possibilities to interact? there's a lot of work and a lot of opportunity,but again, one of the things we're seeing, if it's transportation of seniors, if it'scaregiving, those sorts of things, it's a huge opportunity there that will only continueto expand for at least the next 20 years. jeff:let me just say one thing to dovetail off

of what you just said. we see a lot of ... weall know that boomers are transferring trillions of dollars to someone else, but i think alittle research we did showed that majority of those trillion of dollars are in smallbusinesses. they're going to sell their small businesses. mostly, what we find is happeningboomer-to-boomer. these guys have those skills that you talked about they've learned andthen they have a little bit of capital on the side. they know that they're going totake control of their own destiny, really. there's opportunities there, boomer-to-boomerand selling a business is a big niche, i think. douglas:very good. art, did you- art:our perspectives are a little bit different

because our average client is in their 30s.in the state of georgia, for example, our clients tend to be ... 71% of our clients[inaudible 01:11:06] hispanic and asian and african-americans. we're seeing a younger... if you will. we're also seeing people who are primarily going into the servicesbusinesses. about two-thirds of our clients are pure startups, a third being existing... we see the growth of small business, the growthof services businesses, and one of the most exciting things for me, being a georgia techengineer, is we're seeing a lot of technology startups. we're seeing more of that in atlantathan we are elsewhere in the state. quite a growth of our client base across the state.

douglas:good. a take on that, tisha, and talk specifically about, in the hispanic community, what arethe unique challenges or opportunities you think those folks give to each other? tisha:right. let me start with a little piece of data. in 2015, there was a report that cameout that georgia, along with 6 other south atlantic states ... the second largest divisionof hispanic-owned businesses, of 963,000 hispanic-owned businesses. they broke those down into 2 categories.the largest category of the hispanic-owned businesses were third generation or greater.the second largest category were ... not us-born, had been in the country for 10 years or moreand prefer to speak spanish ... incredibly

significant ... who we service and who ourmembership is. in the hispanic immigrant environment in particular,there are opportunities and ... some of the impediments are generally for hispanic entrepreneursas well as immigrant hispanic entrepreneurs ... talk about some of the opportunities first. naturally, with the demographic shift in thispart of the region and in georgia, in particular, with the exponential rise of our hispanic... certainly opportunities to ... grow in segment ... the demographic shift, there areopportunities. there are also opportunities with the global environment because we'reincreasingly doing ... other countries. as latin america continues ... focal point,and president obama had most recently made

it a focal point with future trade opportunities,the more opportunities that open up in south america, latin america, the more opportunitiesthere will be for our members, who are proficient in spanish ... culture, who that might betheir country of origin to do business in the global arena, but there are also quitea few impediments. resources is a huge impediment ... struggleto be able to provide the information and resources to our members that are necessary,fighting against this fast growth that's happening. like i said before, our economic contributionis leading everything else. we're trying to get resources as fast as possible. sba andsbdc and score have been amazing partnerships in that. indeed, we can't service withoutthese amazing ... taken upon himself to come

and do some in-house consulting with our membersand is constantly full ... helped with some of our outreach on radio and ... we also face other impediments. there wasa struggle in the city of atlanta that has recently been resolved under the leadershipof caesar mitchell, where hispanic entrepreneurs weren't allowed to bid on certain contractsthrough minority business entrepreneurship, even though it was a legal mandate. thereare those types of legal impediments that have also impacted our hispanic business community.there are also laws in various jurisdiction that have impeded individuals from gettingbusiness licenses because of immigration status. while we continue to have this increase indemographics and this increased opportunity

for individuals like our hispanic immigrantentrepreneurs, there continue to be impediments legally and resource-wise that slow down thatinevitable growth that we're seeing. douglas:very good. i want to switch the subject here a bit and go to another important issue thati think, over the next 10 years, will start to be even more important to small businesses,and that is the idea of exporting. i don't think a lot of small businesses get into thebusiness thinking that they're going to create a small business that prioritizes exporting,but i think we're seeing more and more all the time that small businesses are doing thatearlier than they expected. we're seeing evidence that supports this isnot a flash in the pan. it suggests the [trans-pacific

01:16:46] partnership deal that's now beingconsidered by congress for the first time as a small and medium-sized enterprise chapterto it. we know that 98% of all american businesses that export are small business. i always just like to think about it thisway: who would have imagined, even 10 years ago, but definitely 20 years ago, that a smallbusiness would be able to plug in immediately to a marketing tool like google that goesaround the world or facebook, or plug into a payment system like paypal, that would allowthem to get payment from anywhere in the world, let alone the shipping systems like fedexand ups that get their services out there. when you think what a business needs to export,there's all of that infrastructure that's

been built up on open platforms that any smallbusiness can use. i select the anecdote, last year's national small business of the year,which just lost its crown yesterday, i guess, and we named a new one, was missouri starquilt company, which was quilting company out of missouri. it's hard to imagine somethingthat is more localized and less prone to exporting than that, but they had a couple of millennialchildren who came back and saw that their mother was this quilter. they put her on youtube,she got popular around the world, and they do all these business overseas, shipping to70 countries or so. there are very good anecdotes. there's a lotof evidence out there suggesting this really is the wave for small businesses, and theseopportunities are not just fictional, but

i'd like from all of your perspectives totalk about what your experience has been. have you seen that this is a real opportunitythat's bearing fruit for folks? if so, how do you go about best positioning yourselfto take advantage of that opportunity? art:jointly, with the sbdc, score export workshop ... out of the sba office downtown. we'reseeing a number of small businesses that are doing export business, even if they don'tintend to do export business. what's happening is because when you setup a website ... nowhave access to the whole world. your website, you have to be careful about the name youchoose because there are other countries where people are using similar names. all of thetechnology that is available to you exposes

you to the whole world. there is increasingamount of small businesses that are doing exporting when they might not have intended.then there are other businesses that are in fact starting up with the export as theirprimary focus. jeff:our research shows that if you're doing business, just locally doing your thing, you can getabout 20% lift in your sales by going global. that's pretty significant, particularly inthe past recession months, they would come through. the other thing to remember is thesbdc, at least here in georgia, has a whole division of guys that know where the rocksin the road are, so to speak, doing business overseas. we've got 3 or 4 people in thatdivision. they're happy to help anytime. give

us a call. douglas:jeff, i sensed in the room, when you said a 20% lift to your small business, there wasexcitement. when you say go global, what do you think the practical thing to make surethat you're online with international access, or are there other steps that need to be takento make sure that you can ship and receive payment overseas? jeff:obviously, you need to do that. again, i'm not an expert in that field, but just doingbusiness ... knowing where to do business, i think, is the main thing. when i engagedthe international guys that we have, they

know where to go, what partners are overseasthat will not take advantage of you, so to speak. just knowing who the players are andwho to call is a huge advantage. douglas:very good. thanks. tisha:it's extremely viable. we've had plenty of members, in particular in the it industry,that export their services. we've had some start here, go to latin america, some startin latin america, open up an office here. that's an industry that's incredibly viableto export your service. we do see offices in various places. law firms are doing thesame thing. we have a law firm in mexico that works here and they work there. it's justextremely viable for the small businesses.

it's not extremely, depending on the industry,capital-intensive. there are amazing amount of resources surrounding it. we do have one individual within our membershipwho's an expert, who goes to metro atlanta chamber and georgia chamber and, of course,speaks at our chamber as well, who does import/exports. he's a broker and has a facility right bythe airport. we have a number of businesses that work out of the port and have large numberof containers going in and out with their latin food distribution business. incredibly viable. you just have to connectup with the right resources. of course, as art stated here, score's an amazing resource,but there are plenty of experts within the

business community that can point you to theright direction. jeff:a mentor would work good there, too, again, just logistically how to get stuff to theport, off the port, on the ship, to the other side. find yourself a mentor that's alreadydoing work in that space and they will help you. douglas:i also want to highlight something you said that is a bit counterintuitive, where yousaid it's not particularly capital-intensive to do it. i think a lot of people get overwhelmedby the whole idea of, "going international is this whole other thing. that's a big leap,and i'm not ready to do it." you've leapt,

if i'm using the right past tense to the verbthere. all you need to do, in forming your business and get up and running. i've heardthis time and time again, the marginal cost of just targeting international sales of doingthat is not that big of an effort, even though it opens up. it's so much of a greater marketthat way. any other thoughts on exporting, anything you folks want to share? lee:i'd just toss out that even if you are not thinking about exporting a particular productor importing a particular product, think about opportunities to, again, i don't want to overuseit, but be a part of that ecosystem. as we deepen the port in savannah, we're going tohave ships coming in. once they get off of

the ships, how do you get whatever productit is from the ship to atlanta? i've done some work with someone who is focusedon trucking. trucks are going to have to backup down to savannah. they're going to load thosecontainers and get them up here to atlanta. there's opportunities. again, if it's logistics,you have to be involved in logistics to go global. maybe, again, it's not products, butyou're an expert in supply chain. there's opportunities there, but look at those opportunitiesand see where you fit in. todd:i'll just speak to this that remember i think, just to provide a little bit of balance here,that exporting certainly adds to the marginal revenue. it is something that should be pursued.the best number of businesses probably aren't

going to be in that situation. we have anincredible market here. i do know that our economy is performing currently a lot betterthan most other economies globally, diversifying and thinking about not being dependent upona particular country. for example, if you were dependent upon brazil, if you exporteda lot of your product to brazil then you might be in a bit of trouble at the moment becausethat economy is suffering. we have a lot more stability here. there'sa lot more volatility abroad. this is a suggestion that you shouldn't do it, that perhaps youshould think about diversifying your eggs. douglas:that's definitely good advice. i think, art, maybe you mentioned this before, because weare here and this is a regional conversation,

and we'll talk a little bit about the veryheavy presence of military work in the state and a number of veterans that are in the state,i want to take at least a couple of minutes to talk about that. we're seeing it's a veryimportant initiative for the federal government right now to make sure that that transitionhappens well for veterans. i mentioned before that some time this fall,we'll hit 50,000 veterans that have gone through our boots to business training program. again,from on the ground and experiences that you all have had, when it comes to working withveterans, helping them find opportunities or the particular advantage on the one handthat they provide, or unique challenges that they may have. i'd be interested to hear fromany of you that are working directly with

folks in this area, any lessons you've learnedfrom that. we are just starting to collect some dataon the follow on studies from boots to business. what we've found so far has been pretty encouragingabout their ultimate success in forming businesses. we're trying to figure out why that happens.i'd be interested to hear from all of you about what any experiences you have had inthose areas. art:as i mentioned earlier, we had both boots to business and a program we called the warriortransition program. the warrior transition program was for wounded warriors at fort benning.we provided a 5-session training at no cost to the wounded warriors. that program, thankgod, has ended because the number of wounded

warriors has diminished. when we work with the military, we see a lotof new startups, both from the officer corps and the enlisted corps. i was just rummagingthrough our database yesterday to see what clients have talked to us last week. one ofthem was a soldier who was getting out of fort benning. he's already contacted othercompany that he wants to offer a service. he came to score to get expertise on how tostart his company. the service people, when they get out of service,they tend to disperse across the country, so we have difficulty following them as anindividual, where other clients, they'll stay locally, but we do follow them as much aswe can. they end up working with other score

chapters around the country. we've had great success both in savannah andat fort benning and at the areas offering boots ... our atlanta chapter that didn'tparticipate in boots to business is now starting up a program for veterans of their own. wehave a new chapter up in gainesville, and the american legion would like to have usdo a program for veterans. there's a great interest in doing this. with the militaryexperience ... small business owners. jeff:let me speak to that, too. there's a couple of things. we've already mentioned the leadershipgap. i think what we find is when our veterans come back, they got that covered. the otherthing is the execution piece, they can execute.

it's a really easy task for us to help coachthose guys and gals. we like the veterans, and have some successes there. douglas:as art mentioned, when i was talking about our exit studies, [inaudible 01:29:07] oneof our challenges exactly, but where we do training for boots to business is usuallystill when they ... before they have transitioned, they transition out everywhere and may losethat tie, that connection. any thoughts other than using our existing score network andsbdc network? any thoughts or experiences on that, or just make sure that they're pluggedin, not just boots to business, but they learn about score, they learn about sbdc's [crosstalk01:29:33]?

art:yeah, we try to give them contacts in their local community. because we have 800 locationsaround the country, we have people in most locations. we also do email mentoring andincreasing ... email is decreasing and skype is increasing. we are contacting these people,trying to stay in touch, and offer them services. i could give you some anecdotal experience.i was at a meeting and in walks in an officer ... it turns out he's getting out of the army.he's an army doctor. he wants to learn how to start a business. we're seeing those kindsof experiences as well as a young sergeant who's getting out and wants to start a servicebusiness. douglas:great. we're getting towards the end of our

time here, so i'm going to put one more questionout and force all of you to answer it, whether you want to or not. this might be somewhatin the spirit of ... this week is the kentucky derby; although we're not condoning better,there's a little bit of that in the air. we also cannot take any responsibility for anyadvice that's given here, if you follow up on that advice and lose all your money. with those disclaimers, i'll ask you this:if you were starting your own business in the next month, based on what you see, becausei think we've got a pretty good view of folks up here who see the landscape regionally andsee all the different things that are going on, if you were given $50,000, $100,000, andthen told, "go start a small business and

make as much money as you can with this,"what industry, what business, what opportunity would you think you would walk straight toand start knocking on doors to make that happen in this region right now? todd already saidthe airport, so i'm taking that offline, unless he's got specific ideas at the airport thatneed businesses. since i surprised all of you with that, i'll take volunteers beforei start putting you through the ring [crosstalk 01:31:32]. todd:i'm going to be like a famous politician; i'm not going to answer that question, i'mgoing to answer a different question. that's all politicians, by the way. the nature ofthe beast. there are 3 things that i definitely

want to leave you with that are on our mindsat the fed. one, and i used to be a small business owner,but managing cash flow, that has shown up as the number one concern of running a smallbusiness. i think that that is going to continue to be an issue. i would just make sure that... it's one thing to know your product and to produce it well, it's another thing tomanage your cash flow. i'd definitely brush up on that. the other aspect that we're beginning to geta better understanding on in some of our surveys is online lending. we are seeing a prevalencein online lending. our surveys are telling us that business owners are not very happywith that as opposed to other types of lending,

with respect to the terms, the repayment terms,as well as the interest rate. i think this is a big trend as a small business. a lotof small and new businesses are turning to that at an increasing level, but having somelevel of understanding about what that really means. quick and easy doesn't always meanthe long term best thing. then the last thing is that, this is trueof smaller businesses regardless of the age, and when we look at this, it's the personalfinancial well being of the business owner, making sure it's very much connected to thesuccess of your business, your ability to obtain credit. a lot of the shocks that we've seen in oureconomy, particularly in some of our communities,

where unemployment is 40% and 50%, then havingthat wherewithal to withstand that on our personal balance sheets and how we continueto manage through these shocks is really going to be very critical to our own ability tobe successful as a small business owner. i know that wasn't a specific [crosstalk 01:33:39]. douglas:that's all very helpful, very helpful perspective. todd:those are 3 things from the fed. thank you. douglas:any other horse, or you're sticking with the airport? does anybody else want to do thatas well? todd:$6 billion to $8 billion is a lot of money.

douglas:it's very big horse. todd:i think i'm going to stick with that. douglas:tisha, i think you [inaudible 01:33:51]. tisha:i think the entertainment industry. it continues to boom. there are a lot of incentives beingprovided by economic development agencies in order to continue to bring those opportunitieshere. in fact, our annual gala that's going to be in a few weeks, that is our focus, theentertainment industry. i think just an immediate opportunity, quick turnaround on investment,there's incredible amount of opportunity ... specifically right here in the state of georgia.

i also want to note a longer, more sustainableapproach would be anything that you have an expertise in ... oh, i tell people every daythere's always opportunity for talent in this country. if you've got the talent combinedwith the passion and the expertise, the sky's the limit. there is a huge opportunity inthis country for creativity and innovation, and we see it every single day. douglas:art? art:to follow up on my colleague from the fed, i won't answer that question, but i'll answeranother question, which is no matter what business you're starting or in, use technology.if you're not connected to the internet, if

you don't use social media, if you don't knowwhat whatsapp is, if you don't use facebook, you're nowhere. you've got to start usingtechnologies. every business, whether it's a barber shop or a restaurant or a high techbusiness, you've got to get on technology. it's not difficult. you could start with thesbdc or score. we will help you. we have workshops, but ... douglas:great. thanks. jeff:a quick answer there. you've got to hang out where your customers are hanging out. that'sthe beauty of social media. if i had some money to invest, i would go to those wherethe lines are blurred a little with tech and

medical. we've seen a big success. we're all gettingolder; you've already said that. we've seen a big success with a couple of our guys thatgot out in the grey areas of both of those and made some good strides there. their patentsare pending. they're going to make these devices that really work that help us be more mobile.that's where i'd put my money. douglas:great. thanks. lee, any thoughts on that? lee:yeah. first of all, let me thank todd for the unpaid commercial, make sure that youfind somebody to work with that will help you get your money right. that having beensaid, i'm right there where if i were to invent

something or think of a place where i'd go,i'd want to go to the intersection of technology and aging, because, again, here in atlanta,we talk about ecosystems and, again, yeah, i'm a georgia tech nerd, but, again, lotsof opportunity, lots of support from a technological perspective: experience, tools, if it's manufacturing,printing, 3d printing, those sorts of things. look at opportunities and try to find thatintersection of technology and aging. again, i think things in that area will be absolutelyhuge, again, for the next several decades. douglas:good. with that, i think we're going to draw this part to a close. i think the whole purposeof this morning is to talk about doing the gospel of small business and set you out tothe world to remind people of its importance,

remind people about the resources out there. i think this conversation has done a verygood job of demonstrating the way in which that is a very active, ongoing thing in thisregion right now. hopefully, out of the great contributions we had from these panelists,you got at least a handful of ideas that will allow you to change the way you're doing thingsor to go out and start something in a new way. my thanks to all of you for your participationhere today because i think it's something that was, hopefully, rewarding for everybody.please join me in a round of applause. before i turn back around, we did intentionallyavoid ... i very much wanted to ask questions

about the savannah harbor i mentioned beforeand the entertainment industry, which seems to be working here in a way that it's not... a lot of states were chasing that money. georgia's about the only one, and then vancouver,i think, that made it work. this is an unfinished story because i avoided those because i thinkthere'll be very good conversations on those and other subjects this afternoon. cassius:thank you. thank you, deputy administrator kramer. what a great panel. do you all agree?i actually could not have scripted those last few comments better to prepare us for thisafternoon because we're getting ready to head into the afternoon sessions.

as, hopefully, you all know, we have 3 concurrentbreakouts. one on expanded exporting opportunities as a result of the savannah harbor project.we've got someone here from the port authority to speak on that, as well as rick martin fromthe georgia sbdc and a great panel he's put together. we have a terrific panel on innovationand how to take your product from concept to commercialization. kevin [mowbley 01:39:22],who's one of our grade a firms; i don't know where kevin is. ian thomas' group has helpedus assemble an incredible cast of experts in this area that will tell you step-by-stephow you do that and even where the money is going to come from. then, finally, and this will take place inthis room, judiffier pearson with the georgia

small business development center is becomean expert on doing business with the motion picture industry. she's going to lead a trainingand then a panel discussion on that. as i said, the motion picture industry breakoutwill take place here. in room b and c, which is right next door, the technology commercializationbreakout. then in room a, which is right behind where you registered this morning, that willbe the exporting training. for those of you who are in export or innovation,when you pick up your lunch, you can take it in and sit down and eat it there. for thoseof you who are in here, you cannot bring your lunches in here, unfortunately. you'll haveto find a place out in the hallway to eat. then we'll reassemble here as soon as everybodycan grab a lunch.

everybody got a yellow card when you camein. we have plenty of lunches. don't worry about it. we did that just so we wouldn'thave a riot over food. please go get a lunch. enjoy your lunch. we'll see you in the breakoutsthis afternoon. male:a pleasure to meet you, man. male:a pleasure to meet you as well. we'll be sure to stay in touch. male:yeah, please do. male:thanks. male:i'll ...

judiffier:welcome to small business opportunities in film and entertainment. i believe the classwas built as hollywood of the south. as we progress through the program today, anyonewho hasn't kept up with the activities and events over the last 3 to 5 years in the filmindustry here in georgia, you'll definitely understand why we call it hollywood of thesouth. i will do a nice intro for you all, to catcheveryone up to speed on what the landscape looks like, here in the state of georgia.even though we're talking about film primarily, i am incorporating music, tv and digital tothis discussion. i have 3 panelists that will be joining us in the second part of this.we get the band together because we get together

quite a bit for panels like this. some ofthem have been to athens with me, and to uga, and some go all over atlanta with me. this is a smaller portion of our panelistgroup, but they are very well-respected, very versed in their individual areas of expertise.once i go through the overview, i'm going to let each of them introduce themselves forabout a minute or 2. tell you who they are, what they're up to, in the industry. that'llframe the discussion because you'll actually have the opportunity to speak to them andask questions. get clarification on anything it is, that you need clarification on. i want to frame the conversation again, withthe activity in georgia, with the 4 areas

that we're talking about; film, tv, music,digital media. digital media also includes gaming, for those of you who don't know. digitalmedia also encompasses the platforms now, that we consume content. that's anything witha screen. think of it that way. this is a flyer that i do have some copies of, today.if you would like to take some with you. i'll take them out and put them out before yougo, and you can grab one. you can also grab business cards and brochures about the smallbusiness development center. what it is that, we do. my name is judiffier pearson. i've been withthe sbdc for almost 4 years now. the area of expertise that i focus on is, film andentertainment businesses or what we call,

entertainment adjacent businesses. all ofmy clients are not creatives. some of them, like nelson who you'll meet shortly, they'resuppliers to creatives and to production companies. we want to make sure we cover the scope ofbusiness opportunities available in this market and beyond. outside of entertainment adjacent companies,like all sbdc consultants, i do see clients outside of this industry. about 50% of myclients are trucking companies and they have assisted living homes and all kinds of businesses,you name it. what i found is that, we also in the sbdc, had to learn how to retool someof our consulting skills and offerings, and tailor it to this market.

the entertainment and entertainment adjacentcompanies, they run businesses just like any other industry. it's very important to understandthe nuances of those businesses. heard the word earlier in a couple of the sessions aboutecosystems. the film industry, music, tv, digital media, they are very much, their ownlittle ecosystems. they're oftentimes, very self-contained with subject matter expertsand suppliers and content creators. then what we call, above-the-line people who tend towork with the same groups of people quite frequently because they build relationships.you can almost think of them as covenant relationships. it's very important that the players thatare part of the ecosystem, that they each know what they're doing. anybody who's everbeen on a production set, knows that incompetence,

errors, mistakes can be quite costly. jimcan speak to that in a minute, when he talks about what he does in the market. with thisflyer, i have some fiscal year 2015 statistics up here. i'm going to break them down a littlebit. for film and television productions shot ingeorgia, we've calculated that number at about 248 unique, different productions. then we'vegot a direct spend of $1.7 billion, which translates into a economic impact of over6 billion. how many of you have heard those stats? the 6 billion, 6.1? i will tell you, when i first started withthe sbdc in 2013, that number was something ... i started in 2012. in 2013, when i reallystarted looking at this market, that number

was something like 3 billion. in 3 years,that number in economic impact, has doubled to over 6 billion. that's a huge, huge deal.what's spurring all of this activity? primarily, it's the georgia television, film, televisionand digital media tax credit. how many of you are familiar with that tax credit already? basically, we're going to go through someof the steps of, what the production incentives are. there are incentives for production companies,to shoot here in georgia. that translate to savings on these production budgets, bottomline. the beauty of those tax credits is, they areresealable on the market. i think right now, it's about $0.85 on $1. for georgia taxpayers,that can benefit from that tax credit, perhaps

being held by a production company that doesn'tfile taxes in the state of georgia. they don't have a direct need for it, but another taxpayermay. that's the beauty of what the tax credit is starting to promote or significantly promotingalready, in the state of georgia. one thing i want to jump ahead with is, nextyear, we've already heard a lot of talk about there being a music tax credit. it's quitesimilar to this film, television and digital media one. i think that is a perfect setupand a perfect storm for many, many more opportunities and what we call, a creative economy herein georgia. keep your eyes and ears out for more information on the music tax credit that'llbe introduced, i believe, next year in 2017. i gave you fiscal year 2015 numbers for thoseindustries. i just wanted you all to see a

little bit of 2014, which breaks down thenumbers a little bit more, with all the creative economies in georgia. those will be some thati didn't even specifically talk about. if you look up here, it'll give you the breakdownby jobs, wages, the number of people self-employed, the total earnings, the revenue. then yousee that $48 billion economic impact. that's why, in the opening session you heard aboutentertainment being one of the trending industries that you really need to pay attention to.there are so many opportunities for you to be part of it. if your company has goods andservices, that will makes sense in terms of creating value for this ecosystem. here's the breakdown of the tax credit. itstarts at a 20% break on the tax credit, for

qualified expenses for a production budget.the minimum budget has to be $500,000 in a calendar year. that could be a combinationof projects or a single project. the budget has to be at a minimum of 500,000. of thatmoney spent in the state of georgia, they can get 20% tax credit on that. if you'veever been to the movies, and at the end of the project you stay and watch the credits,and at the very end you see the peach. it means that, that project was filmed in georgia.for productions that put that peach at the end of that project, they get 30%. it's another10% uplift. now they've moved from 20% to 30% just by helping to promote georgia inthe industry, and it works quite well. very few films have i seen in the last year,that haven't had ... maybe because i'm going

to see the movies that were shot here. i don'tknow. very few don't have that peach at the end. now, my children wait very patientlywhen we go to the movie theaters. they wait for the peach and they know why mommy is sittingthere, watching all the credit. i also look for clients sometimes, in the credits, justto get that extra rush to see that they're doing some great, amazing things. they getto see the fruit of their labor. i like to just really pay attention to what's goingon in the market professionally, with people i know, people i want to get to know, peoplei've heard about. just watching their names scroll, is quite, quite fulfilling. now, you see this 40% hanging out there. youheard a little bit about savannah and chatham

county earlier? unless something has changedin very recent weeks, they have used some of their own local dollars, to add another10% on top of the 30%, for productions that shoot in their locality. that's awesome. ithink they do have a time limit on it. when i first heard about this additional 10%, theywere doing that to promote workforce development in the savannah and chatham county area. also,to create their own branding, messaging and their own ecosystem or cluster. i'm goingto talk a little bit about film and entertainment clusters in a moment, when we start to talkabout business opportunities to be on the lookout for, or to actually go in and createfor yourself, if you've been paying a lot of attention to the market.

there are 4 cs that we're going to probablytalk about, in and out of this discussion, that i want to frame an outline for you. theyare, content, cash flow, craft, and corporate vehicles. for people who are on the outside,looking in wondering, "i don't even understand how this industry works. how the businessworks." i was looking at a jay leno clip about a week ago, and it was a flashback to a princeinterview that he had done. they were talking about, at the time mariah carey striking this$20 million deal with her record label. prince must have made a face and jay said, "what?"prince was like, "oh, you're feeling that? you think $20 million is a big deal?" theygo through this discussion. i found it quite interesting when jay leno said, "i don't understandhow that works. i don't understand the music

industry. forgive me, if i'm coming acrossas ignorant, but 20 million sounded like a good deal to me." i'm not going to go through the details ofthat. definitely go google it. it's quite interesting interview to hear prince breakdown the mathematics of royalties and so forth, for the music industry. a lot of people in certain aspects of theentertainment industry, don't always understand every aspect of it. it's really importantto understand that target marketing, who you're trying to go after, in terms of supplyingyour goods and services. is it a good fit for them? how does it work for you? is itwin-win? those are the kind of things that

the sbdc, we try to make sure we discuss withestablished businesses and larger companies who are already successful at what they'redoing, but they want to expand their target market into something, entertainment adjacent. those are the kind of discussions that wehave to make sure that they understand, is this going to be a easy retooling and crossoverfor you, or is this something that's so different, you're going to have to make quite a bit ofan investment and building capability, and capacity and so forth? let's start with content. most of us get it.content is the stuff that we consume, that we pay for, that we engage in, through allthose different media forums that i talked

about; film, tv, music. back in the day, i'mnot going to date myself, but i remember my uncles having 8-tracks that stood in the corner.we had cassettes and albums, 45s and 33s. then we moved over into cds. speaker 1:cassettes. judiffier:yeah, i said cassettes. then we moved over into cds. now the thing is streaming and downloading.we're in a very digital age, but that content is the same. it's, how to we get our product,which is the music, the tv show, the movie, the game? how do we get it to market? whenwe're talking about that content cycle, someone has to create it, someone is developing itfurther.

maybe if wendy and i have a opportunity duringour panel time, i got a chance to sit in on some development meetings with her team, acouple of months ago, which was quite fascinating to see how much time and energy and investmentis just put into development. those are the things that consumers never see that part.that's why, now i have whole new appreciation when i hear industry experts and professionalsand different people talk about development hell. it's a process between creation andgetting it to market. just even producing it and then getting it to market. after that, development which, in my particularslide, my development includes production for some other reasons, for when i'm consultingwith my clients. the production process is

the actual making of it. is it studio timefor the song that's being created? is it being on set for the film that is being produced?i think you all call it principal photography. wendy:principal photography. judiffier:the time that it's actually being shot and filmed, not the post-production, which couldbe part of that. i'm trying to think of 2 or 3 case studies that i was walking someclients through, recently. bessie. do you all remember queen latifah's project, bessie?how many of you know it took 22 years to make that movie? wendy:22.

judiffier:22 years to make that movie. some things move quite swiftly, some things sit on the shelf,we got to come back to it, for whatever reason. that story is another fascinating story. theywon ... what kind of award did they win for wendy:a primetime emmy. judiffier:they won a primetime emmy, so it's well worth the wait. that's an example of something beingin the development process for a very long time. for this slide, we're talking aboutthe development in terms of the business planning and execution, the production, the post-production,just getting it made. once we do that, it has to show somewhere.every movie that's made, every tv show that's

produced, doesn't see the light of day. thosethat are, in 2016, we don't consume them on the same type of platforms we did, not even5 or 10 years ago. it used to be a time when getting a movie made, the goal was to getit into a theater. then we started hearing about stuff called straight to dvd. now wehear stuff about netflix originals. give me some more. amazon. wendy:amazon. judiffier:hulu. that's more of a platform, like apple tv kind of thing. the distribution processis quite diverse now. it's not just, you go to a movie theater and you have a window oftime when it's going to be in the theater,

which if we're looking at the ecosystem ofbusinesses, movie theaters, several of them are still alive and well, several of themare not. it's like when netflix, i believe it was,came on the scene, what happened with blockbuster. you have to figure out, "does it make senseto stay in the same format, the same location that we were, 25 years ago?" we had a heyday,we had a golden age. do you have to learn how to twist and pivot and be nimble? i wouldsay, in a very innovative age. daniel pink calls this, the age of synthesis and the ageof design. it's a very creative age that we're in right now. it's still being driven by theinformation highway. you've got this digital age meeting a very creative age. it meansthat you've got to be flexible. it means that

you can't be resistant to change. change isgoing to happen with or without you. the more innovative and nimble that you are in yourbusiness processes, your target marketing, the development of your goods and services.it makes sense, "can we remain a movie theater or do we need to create another platform?" i was having a discussion about walt disneyacquiring a little ... i don't know how little it would be considered now, but maker studios.if anybody's into the digital media landscape, maker studio started off as a youtube network.i believe disney bought it for $500 million. these were some really young millennials.i don't even know if they were using the term millennials when they started this companya few years ago.

they started these web series with youtubechannels, and then they started acquiring other people's youtube channels being partof their network. they just started building content and leveraging advertisement sales,and a lot of really cool things that they did. they were running a company on youtubeand got bought by what? walt disney. i think that's absolutely amazing. that can only happenin a digital age, where digital meets creativity. as we move through this cycle of developmentto distribution, how are we going to consume the content? you've got publicity and you'vegot exhibition, you've got creation. this distribution piece though. most people thinkabout the exhibition. they know where they want it to play, but they're not thinkingabout the distribution, the brokerage between,

"that's where i want to play it, but is thatwhere it's really going to end up playing?" that's a whole boot camp of classes, sometimes. actually, we're working on a distributionclass in the sbdc, because distribution, wanting it on netflix and hulu or hbo or showtimeor abc or any number of things that, i could give you a list of. do you have the relationships?is your product a good fit for that particular outlet's target market? their new direction,if they've got a new target market strategy. do they have a need for it? is there a demandfor more content? do they already have a supplier in the pipeline, totally filling that? youhave to wait your turn for a little bit. any number of factors go into, how the distributionstrategy and agreements determine, whether

or not there's going to be exhibition in theway that a creative or a production company sees that playing out. we call that, havingprojects in the can, and they just stay in the can. they're not being monetized. i meetfar too many filmmakers in that particular predicament. they've had projects completedin the can, for 3 years, 5 years. some of them, 10. can you imagine? this is just anexaggerated example. can you imagine if there was a project finished, in the can, 15 yearsago, maybe even 10? let's just say you've got simple props in this content, like a cellphone.what would that look like? anybody remember ... what was his name? hedid a hollywood show for robert townsend? do you remember the scene where the charactergets out of prison, and he's been in prison

since the 70s or 60s or something? it's maybe,like the 80s. he put the clothes back on, that he had on when he went into prison? thoseplatforms with the goldfish in the hill. it's this example of a age gone by. time is ofthe essence, which is why we spend a lot of time talking about distribution strategy.for production companies specifically, and creatives, early on it should be part of thebusiness plan before principal photography ever starts. that's just a little titbit there,of how we get into the consulting with our clients. this cash flow cycle, let's talk about thisfor a second because this is really important segue into what we're talking about. someonehas to finance it, right? where does the money

come from? if i've got a budget and maybeit's a lower budget, 50,000, 75,000, 100,000. if i'm the filmmaker, do i finance it myselfor am i on the landscape of this business ecosystem and i bring in investors? is thisinventor like spike lee's first project, i believe it was his grandmother. i don't know.she might have had some interest involved. it could have been a gift. on today's landscape, is it money from familyand friends? is it your money or is it other people's money? once we start having a conversationabout investors, that's a really strong financial game that we start to talk about, becauseit's important that they make their money back. the business people, whether they arecreatives or not, they figure out how to pay

back their shareholders. that's important. somebody puts the money into this project.here's a piece that very many people are familiar with, now because we spend a lot of time ingeorgia right now, talking about workforce development. we read quite a bit in the localmagazines and trade articles. we hear about it on the news all the time. we have quitea few of our educational and government entities, rallying around workforce development. that'sfor the crews who get the projects made. we'll go through a whole list of what some of thecrews are. that's hair, make-up, cinematographers, carpenters. wendy:dry-cleaning.

judiffier:no, not dry-cleaning. we're going to come to them. just the people who work on the set.your average production in georgia that's qualifying for the tax credit, especiallyyour larger budgets, is usually 100 to 200 people on set at any given time. which iswhy you'll hear terms like, "how many crews deep, is georgia?" are there enough professionalsfor a full set, to service how many productions? 30? if you've got 100 people on 30 differentproductions, is that where we still are? has it moved up to we can service 80 at a time,200 at a time? when you hear those numbers for workforce development, that's what they'retalking about. do we have enough trained and qualified georgia residents who can take advantageof the jobs that these productions bring to

our state or develop in our state, if they'realready local? a lot of people get that piece. this is thepiece that i'm most passionate about, when we started talking about suppliers and vendors.it flies under the radar. when wendy was talking about dry-cleaners, carpenters, car rentalcompanies. i'm going to give you 3 case studies to see how much money was spent in georgia,on a small, medium and large production budget. it might be mind-blowing to some of you andit might just be, "oh, i knew that because i've been keeping abreast of what's goingon." this is the important part about recycling these dollars in georgia, with our own companies. after the money goes out during productionfor crew, for suppliers, then we start spending

money or making certain deals or having acash transfer with distribution, exhibition, retailers. there's still no revenue made atthis stage. the money is still going out of the production, from that initial investment.the money starts to come back in, as they get licensing agreements, as they get consumersbuying the product, if it's a download, if it's a album. if we're going into more liveentertainment stuff, which is not the scope of this. even stuff like concert tours andpromotions, that kind of thing. a live performance is a type of service or good that's deliveredout there and consumed. those ticket sales will be, how that revenue stream is working. until someone is going to consume it or thebroker in between, so that's a network or

if it's a digital network. if they're goingto pay for the licensing windows or whatever, that's when the money is starting to be made,not while you're doing the workforce development stuff with your crews. not while you're payingsuppliers for the pizza, for the catering, for the cupcakes, for the starbucks coffee,for the lumber and the timber, and you name it. we'll go through a list of what some ofthat stuff is. really quickly, this craft to company spectrum.this is one of the target markets that the sbdc serves. people who've been working onthese sets for years, especially if they're department heads and they see the invoices.they start to see "how much money i'm influencing someone to spend at this particular vendorlocation or in this particular shooting location."

a lot of craft people figure out, "i couldbe running a company and have a second stream of revenue, not just my set hours. why can'tmy company be a supplier? why can't i transition or retire out of this, and move into somethingmore business oriented, and go back and serve the ecosystem that i'm very well familiarwith?" they know what's supposed to be on the invoices,they're familiar with the pricing, they know the performance of products. some craft peopleare some of the best people that could be entrepreneurs in this part of the ecosystem,in the production world because they already know what's needed. they already know wherethey've been getting it from, so they've already got intel on who their competitors would be.i call them ebiz pathway. craft to company

is one of the pathways that we serve. i havequite a few of those clients. then the corporate vehicles. this is veryspecific to production companies, even though it does sometimes, apply to the craft to companythat i just talked about. there's a dynamic that a lot of people don't always understand,especially emerging production companies and how they set these vehicles up. we call themnested llcs. there could be a production company ... mind if i use your company? wendy:go ahead. judiffier:wendy is the principal at auburn avenue films. she may have a slate of 20 projects in thepipeline. depending on what those projects

are, those projects may be their own self-containedcompanies, especially if she's got partners on that specific project. that doesn't meanthose partners have a stake in auburn avenue films. they just have a stake in the contentor the intellectual property that's part of that nested llc. does that make sense? that's quite common in the entertainment industry,for every project to be its own company. llc is usually, the business entity of choicefor a number of reasons. in nested llc, the project is nested into an llc specific forthat project. then a parent company could have several of those under their umbrellaor they just may have 1 every year, depending on how big their productions are and how busythey are. any questions on that, before i

move forward because this is where i wantto make sure i don't lose you. that, as we jump into conversation and we're just chattingit up, i want to make sure you all on the same page. everybody good with that? those are those 4 cs. now, another terminologythat you might hear which is really important, especially when we're talking about the ebizpathway of vendors and suppliers. they're not necessarily creatives at all. they mayjust be people who do great business, and they supply goods and services to productioncompanies. this could be a transportation company, it could be an equipment rental company,a lighting rental company, a caterer. it could be any number of things that may or may notbe creatives. they're definitely not on the

production set, to stay. they deliver goodsand services, and then they're done, once they finish that piece of the supply chainthat they're a part of. how that looks, depends on sometimes, if you'reserving an indie production or a studio film. i'm going to break this down, just in somereally basic terms because there are nuances to this. if you're thinking about large studioslike sony. help me out, wendy. wendy:pinewood, universal. judiffier:marvel, disney. their production budgets, especially for marvel. we've been shootingquite ... i live in fayette county, about 5 minutes from pinewood. there's always activityover there. i believe marvel and disney, least

from the beginning ... wendy:they're one in same now. judiffier:i'm sorry? wendy:marvel is owned by disney. judiffier:yes, yes. i believe, they leased for 3 years out the gate, 3 or 4 years because they knewthey had several productions that they wanted to shoot there. with that said, those budgetsare usually $100 million or more. if you're supplying goods and services to budgets ofthat size, that could be quite a good thing for you. we're going to show you some statsup here.

if you're working with indie projects which,there are some indie projects that are pretty sizeable too, that can be in the millions.indie projects go all the way down the scale as well. if they're really green productioncompanies and really small indie projects, it may or may not be a viable client for you,to provide goods and services to them. then, if we're talking about a $10 millionindie project depending on what your goods and services are, that could be quite fittingfor you and for this target market strategy that you might have. the idea is, you havestudios that a lot of them aren't here in georgia. we know disney is not permanentlyheadquartered here. you've got quite a few that are still ... california is still home,new york is still home, but they shoot here

quite frequently. they have studio-backedfinancing, studio-backed executives. they've got this pipeline that's well-established,a well-oiled machine for the most part. being able to get in on that kind of a supply chaincan be quite fruitful for a small business. with the indie productions, you have to navigatethat differently because you have fewer teams and large studio companies making the decisions.you've got smaller filmmakers who are wearing 2 and 3 hats sometimes, or you might havea smaller group of investors that are above-the-line, with your key creative team that are makingall the decisions. when jim talks, he'll be talking about unit production managers andline producers and how they make decisions on how the budget is going to look like, inthe first place. then, who they're going to

spend the money with. especially with the indie kind of projectsor smaller budget projects, my recommendation is, to get to know people like jim. i wantto know who the jim is, on every project that i'm targeting, or who the group of jims are.it could be a team of you. it's important to know people like that. you might know thedirector, but if jims are going to be making the decisions or influencing them, then wewant to know. we want them to know who we are. we want to engage with them and connectwith them. we'll talk about that, in a little bit. i talked about the pathways. those are the4 that we serve in the sbdc. our largest pathway

is suppliers and vendors. those are the businessesthat look more closely like what we've traditionally served. then we do have these creatives. wehave these attorneys who have law firms that are wanting to get into entertainment lawor strengthen that part of their practice. cpa firms that are wanting to add productionaccounting, which is an entirely different animal from gap-type accounting practices. project to pipeline, those are usually creativesthat are so focused on the project. i need them to get a bigger macro view and be focusedon the pipeline. i want to make sure that they've got a plan for revenue, for the next3 to 5 years for their firm, and not this 1 project that's become this baby, this passionproject that's not producing revenue yet.

it's only producing a certain amount of revenuethat we know, is not sustainable beyond a 9-month window. i want them to be businesspeople. that's what we spend time with, for that particular pathway. then we talked about the craft to company.those are the 4 pathways that i typically see, that come through our office. i didn'tmention it earlier. my office is actually on the clayton state university campus. weare the university of georgia small business development center. it's a group of 16 offices.some of the uga centers are actually at partner schools or contract schools. my school happensto be one of them. most of the metro atlanta offices, georgiastate, kennesaw state, they all have sbdcs.

i welcome you all to visit me there at claytonstate. if you fit one of these pathways and you want to take advantage of our consultingservices and our educational services. there's no cost for our consulting. i sit down anddo these business planning sessions, these financial planning sessions, strategic initiativesthat's at no cost to any people and any of these pathways. for my clients who are established companieswith their own offices, i spend quiet a time on the field. i go to them. it's not alwayseasy, pulling 2, 3 hours away from where you are. if we can cut the travel time and i canmeet you there halfway, we do that as well. that's part of, when they were talking earlierthis morning about sbdcs and scores, we're

the partners who are the arms and legs ofthe sba, to deliver these extended value created services for you. there are 16 different offices throughoutthe state. if you just happened to travel here from some faraway place in the outskirtsof georgia, there is an sbdc, probably much closer to you, than where i am. definitelygo to our website at georgia, spelled out, sbdc.org. you can see a full listing of allof the resource centers available on our network. this is just a chart that we can email toyou, if you would like it. that column on the far left, those are some very typicalservices that we lend to any business in the sbdc. those columns and rows that you seeto the right, have become more of what i see

for my entertainment adjacent companies. yes,they may need access to capital, but after they get funding and financing, they're stilltrying to figure out how to grow their companies with going from 2 employees to 5. from 5 to10, from 10 to 25. that's a process. for those that are already at 10 and 15 and25, experiencing growing pains, we do a lot of hr reassessment and training and developmentsystems, and apprenticeship models and leadership development for their executives who camein, entry-level, 10 years ago. now they happen to run divisions. how do you get your teamready for what the new part and the new leg of the journey looks like? we spend quitea bit of time of that. you heard them talking about social mediaearlier. what's the digital marketing strategy

for us? does it make sense? is that even whereour clients are? you'll see a lot of marketing, a lot of organization, leadership development,branding stuff that sbdc does provide services in those hard and soft skills that you willneed, as you journey through this whole entrepreneurial process. until we're talking about exiting and exitstrategies for retirement or selling, most companies tend to run the gamut of this, ifthey have long-term relationships with us. long-term for us can be many, many years.i have clients who were clients of the sbdc, before i came. when they came on board withme, i just picked up on the leg of the journey that they were on at that time, and we growtogether. you're more than welcome to join

our team and help us, let us help you on yourjourney of growth. this is something that i promised you, thati wanted to frame the conversation of dollars being spent in georgia. that economic impact,the directs spend, is what we can actually calculate on the tax returns, on the deductionsheets, on the pnls. that's the direct spend. the economic impact is how it churns throughoutthe state. if you've got people on payroll, that's direct spend. did they move here? arethey paying taxes here? are they eating here? are they doing life, live, work, play, here?every time they're spending dollars, that's economic churn as a result of their employmentwith that production company, if that makes sense.

you see a little, small gamut. i have 4 pagesof excel spreadsheets, of just business opportunities and products and services that are routinelyneeded for film, television, music and digital media. i will say, those 4 pages are heavyfilm. i could probably add 5 or 10 more pages if i just spent time going through the otherparts of the ecosystem that i shared with you. where we're talking about car rentals,catering, dry-cleaning, hardware, hair and make-up, special effects. let's look at ... these are some numbers thatwere published i believe, in atlanta business chronicle, a few months ago. this one to thefar left, this was considered a small budget. it was a $6 million film. do you see how muchthey spent on car rentals? $49,000. lumber

$88,000. anyone ever heard of a company in tucker calledcofer brothers? cofer brothers has beautifully carved a niche for providing lumber to productioncompanies. they really, really honed in on that, right in the middle of recession, whenmost companies like theirs were going under because the housing market was crashing orhad crashed. they were already in a gain, but someone had the foresight to pay attentionto where their revenue streams were coming from, by industry and client category. theirfeature on a short video that's about 5 minutes. if you go to georgia.org. on their homepage,if it hasn't moved in the far right bottom corner, there's a little video box right there.you can watch that little video and it's showcasing

companies in georgia. it's about 3 years old.some of the numbers are little bit off because i've already showed you what fiscal year 15looks like. some of the numbers are smaller than what we're actually doing now, but coferbrothers is featured there and they tell you a little bit about their story. i would suspect that cofer brothers fulfilledquite a bit, if not all of that 88,000. i don't know that for a fact, but knowing thatthey are the preferred game in town, in a lot of people's eyes who make those decisions.do you agree, jim? jim:yeah. judiffier:i'm going to let jim go into detail about

anything you want to ... jim:just using cofer brothers for example. home depot, they said, "we sell wood as well."they built the actual facility on pinewood studio. they're into that business, tryingto compete as well, as another vendor in the area of hardwood and lumber as well. judiffier:if you put in context, what jim is saying. home deport is not a small business, by anystretch of the imagination. cofer brothers is a competitor for that particular item.that's awesome, when a small business can create that kind of value in the marketplace.that's what we're talking about. being able

to match, what you provide, with opportunity.timing is also really ... that's a really important factor. you don't want to be toolate in the game and the market is saturated. pay attention to where the gaps are, now.if you already know that there are certain gaps in the marketplace and you're primedand positioned to fill them, that's a great time to start developing a strategy on howto do that. let's move to this second case study. thiswas deemed, a medium production. it's called need for speed. $15 million production. catering,$466,000. would you all say, that's a lot of money spent on that line item? lumber again,$285,000. here's an interesting thing though, that you see on all of them. you see thatother? it's not defined here, what that is,

but that's another $2.8 million spent by thatproduction, somewhere. hopefully, it was georgia companies. hopefully. there are still, quite a bit of revenue thatwe don't get to take advantage of, because if production companies have already had relationshipsin other states, which many of them have, they've got vendor relationships or supplierrelationships in other states too. it's nothing for them sometimes, to import that here. meaning,they will bring in the goods and services across the state line and pay for it therebecause they haven't identified the supplier or vendor here, that they deem prepared enoughto replace the relationships that they already have established.

there again, there may not be gaps that youcan see with the surface, cursory view of what's going on. find out where these suppliersare. if production companies are spending twice as much money than necessary sometimes,because they're paying a lot in shipping or a lot in delivery, could you come in and createmore value because you're right here? nelson can tell you a little bit about that, in alittle bit, if you will. let me do this last one here. this was marvel's,ant-man. you see the production budget, we would call that a large budget, $106 million.lumber, 11 million, wardrobe, dry-cleaning $488,000. that's almost $0.5 million on clothesand clothing related services. car rentals, 1.48 million. you see that other, that 8.6?now, what i do know about some of these productions,

they're very heavy on special effects andpost-production. if you start to be part of the ongoing conversation, georgia doesn'thave a really strong post-production community yet. wendy can talk to you a little bit about,where and how that works. if you're in the post-production game, i will say that's anarea of opportunity to be paying attention to. editing, audio, sound effects, color grading.all the kind of stuff that happens after the principal photography is done. they're spendingmillions and millions of dollars, outside of the state of georgia, quite frankly, onpost-production. wendy and i, we're optimistic. there will soon be a post-production community,here in georgia that can handle these kind

of productions. it's just a matter, who theplayers are going to be and who's going to be the first to market and be able to deliver,the way they would get those goods and services in other places. this is just another little list, i won'tgo through it. this is still partial. payroll services, florists, electrical and grip, recycling,waste management, security services. all of those are line items for a production, small,medium and large. this is those 4 pages of other stuff that i haven't even talked toyou all about. i just wanted you all to see the landscape of what's going on, right herein your backyard. are you going to be part of the game? are you going to be on the sidelines,watching it? are you even going to have a

position to play, once this continues to grow?in 3 years, remember i told you those stats went from $3 billion in economic impact, to6, over 6. definitely, this is a growing industry. mepersonally, i'm a champion for as many georgia companies as possible, being part of thisecosystem, benefiting, not just from the revenue, but net profits. we want those financialsto be strong. not just the money flowing through your company. we want you to be personallybenefiting from it, through wages and job creation and community revitalization. whenwe have this conversation about community revitalization, which i'm going to join thepanel now, just mosey on over and have a seat. i want them now, each to tell you who theyare, what they do. i want to talk about 1,

maybe 2, very specific areas in georgia. actually,in metro atlanta, where there is significant opportunity right now. it's a matter of peopleseeing it, making the investment and being on the front-end of that wave. we're going to start here, with wendy. thennelson and then jim. wendy:hello, my name is wendy eley jackson. i'm one of the principals of auburn avenue films.we are a service television and motion picture company. we have only been around as thisparticular company. i've actually run another company for over 15 years, but as things havechanged and georgia has grown, we've retooled it. affection for the city of atlanta becausei'm a native, we have actually called at auburn

avenue films. currently, we are filming 1documentary, which most people think documentaries are cheap, but this one [inaudible 00:47:43]about $1.5 million. being presented by pbs. we'll know by next week, in hbo, as an hbodoc. then we've got about 7 other projects. 3 motionpictures and 4 television series that are in development, 2 with hbo and 1 with fx.we'll talk about, what development really is and how much i'm graying up, under thiswella hair color as a result of. judiffier:very briefly tell them, what your documentary is about? wendy:we're doing a documentary on atlanta's first

african american mayor, maynard jackson. it'snot the typical look that you can read in wikipedia, about maynard. it is the man becomingthe politician that created the game changer. now, i have to just do this shameless plug.we found, a video was posted to youtube that, on may 2, 1992 maynard jackson actually wasthe first person to start the atlanta motion picture and television commission. most peoplethink this is new to atlanta, but at that time in 1992, georgia was making about $300million in economic impact. what he was able to forecast ... this is in1992. mind you, he passed away in the year 2003. his statement was that, georgia wouldbecome the third largest motion picture television state. that he felt like, it was an opportunityfor economic growth and labor force. all of

this is being seen in 1992. another reason why we're making this documentaryis that, he was a man that could see beyond the time that he lived. those types of individualsare very, very different. my question, and i'm actually doing the marion barry story,which is a completely different story and it's scripted. the trend that you will learnabout maynard was, his first love was for god, his second was for his family, but hedied building this city. a lot of the reason, the love that you love. if you're not fromhere, you'll learn through the documentary, what drew you here was a vision that he startedhaving in 1968, when he ran for senate. how he truly became a part of the fabric of thiscity, to build every area for economic development

which is why we're all here. judiffier:for those of you who don't know, our airport is named ... wendy:hartsfield-jackson. judiffier:hartsfield-jackson, after our mayor, maynard jackson. the other principal for auburn avenuefilms, she didn't tell you, is maynard jackson iii, who's sitting down here. wendy:my husband. judiffier:it's wonderful, when legacy and heritage can

meet business opportunity as well. for them,this is more of a labor of love because it's a documentary, which is going to be used i'msure, in a lot of educational settings. for it to be part of the slate of projects forauburn avenue films is quite impressive, it's quite impressive. wendy:i will say, one of our huge mantras that we want to ... we do collaborative storytelling.this particular, it is a motion picture, it is a feature film. we brought on a man bythe name of sam pollard. whoever saw slavery by another name or spike lee's, when the leveesbroke, 4 little girls, the election of barack obama for hbo. he's had more primetime emmiesfor documentaries, than anyone else. we're

excited that he's actually telling that story. judiffier:nelson. nelson's also featured in the georgia trend magazine for 2016-2017. i'm quite proudof his accomplishments and being one of our success stories. pick up a copy of that, ifyou don't have one. he's going to give you some first-hand information now. nelson:i'm living, breathing proof that you can be a goofball and still be a success. i havea small business, affectionately known as the engineer guy. i was thinking about this,as i was pulling into this building that, 2003, got started. the way i used to tellpeople how to find us was that, "if you're

on 14th street and you go west and your brakesfail, you would get our building." this is really home for me. i'm very happy to be backin this area of town. we are almost 13 years old and we sell, asi put it, stuff. if you want to make a mold of something, if you need to make a plasticreproduction of something, you would come to us and you would buy those liquid plasticsand those liquid [rubbers 00:52:43] and so on. i got dragged, almost kicking and screaming,by a guy ... this was 6, 07, something like that, who was an indie film producer on avery small scale. if you [inaudible 00:53:03] zombie movie, matt was the guy you'd go toand he [inaudible 00:53:09]. can everybody

hear me all right? speaker 2:it's going in and out. judiffier:out. nelson:i must've gotten that microphone. okay, is this better? all right, here we go. matt saidsomething on the order of, "man, you need to get in the movie industry." i told himhe was nuts. why would i do that? as it turns out, he was right. our business grew and grew.we moved out of the building on the end of the street, into 2700 square feet, over onfarmer drive. that lasted for 3 years. then we moved down by the airport, into 5000 squarefeet. that lasted for, maybe 5 years. this

past year, we moved to into 15,000 squarefeet and actually, it is the same building. while we were still in 5000 square feet, wegot introduced to this stuff called make-up. in this particular town, there's, i'm suremake-up places all over, but you don't see the places where you can buy the kind of materialsthat they use in the studio. again, dragged, kicking. do i look like somebody who wouldsell make-up? no. fortunately, there are much better looking people who work there, thani. thank goodness for that. i got dragged into that, kicking and screaming and thankgoodness they were correct. we identified what these people needed and we started bringingit in. today we're very fortunate to be one of, i believe, a grand total of 3 in the unitedstates, what are known as kryolan prozones.

we have got a veritable boatload of make-upin this place and we're very, very happy to be in a supporting role for the industry.our next big move is hair. i know just as much about hair, as i do make-up. again, thankgoodness we've got people. it's working for us. i now have, i lost count, maybe 14 peopleworking there. our business is continuing to grow. our biggest challenge is trying tokeep up. i'm sure we'll talk about that. it's been a lot of fun, it's been a lot of headache.i would encourage you to get involved, but only if you're willing to give up sleep. therewill be times. anyway, thank you. jim:good afternoon. my name is jim tripp and i'm a line producer, a upm, a unit productionmanager and a, just production guy. i started

in this business some 40 years ago, in radio.as a result of that, they gave me my own dance show. i was the don cornelius of pittsburgh,pennsylvania. i was in a pbs station at the time, wqed. i said "hey, i like this television.what's going on here?" as a result of that, i got involved in the training program andbecame part of the mister rogers' lighting crew. you all remember mister rogers, right?that was my first television job, working on mister rogers' neighborhood along withmichael keaton who is batman. as a result of leaving pittsburgh, i had got bitten bythe sitcom bug, so i ventured out west and i worked on shows, moesha, sinbad show, eve. then i ended up going back to pittsburgh.i started warner cable system there. then

made another pit stop in washington d.c.,whmm, where i was in charge of production of the pbs station at howard university. theni went back to los angeles, started working on some other programs and other people likebill duke and steve harvey. then steve harvey brought me here to atlanta,when he came here to start his radio show. i was one of the producers within his productioncompany and i produced the "still trippin" for him, his dvd. while being here in atlanta,we did a show for bet which was basically his radio show. then bet says, "well, if youstay here, move here, what we'll do is, give you an opportunity to produce some of ourshows." working with bet, i produced a show called "let's stay together." i've done severalpilots for them. then, also being here in

town, i'm the production manager for the rickeysmiley show. i've worked on a number of other projects with him, roger bobb at bobbcat films. then at some point within those 4 years ofgoing back and forth, i made a decision to move here. i've been living here now, forabout 4 years, being a transplant from all these other cities that i talked about, tobe a part of this booming industry. the numbers keep changing. earlier, judiffier said 6 million.somebody told me it was 7 billion. i don't know, but it keeps growing, is the point thati'm making. i think that's why we're all here today. judiffier:jim, can you talk to them a little bit about,

what a line producer and a unit productionmanager, what they do? why small business owners need to be connected to people likeyou? jim:okay, a line producer ... a line producer and a upm, depending on the budget, couldbe interchangeable, could be the same person. the larger the budget, the duties split. thenthere'll be a line producer as well as a upm. basically what the line producer does is,manage the line item budget, the day-to-day operations of that particular project or show.that person basically, hires everyone except the cast, the writers and the execs. whata line producer will actually do is, sit down and read a script and then break down a script.then determine whether we're going to shoot

this on film or tape, 4 cameras, 2 cameras.whether we're going to go on locations or we're going to go ahead and do it in a studioand those kind of things. script the programming. that's why you alwayssay "script is king" because everything is referenced then, in a script. it's day's,it's night, it's raining, it's not raining. she ran in the door or she rode in on a horse.then, once you identify all these particulars in the script, which, what a line producerthen would do is, go out and hire the various department heads which are referred to, thekeys. from make-up, lighting, the grip department, the wardrobe department, sound departmentand what have you. then, once you get all these people together,then what you do is come to an agreement which

is basically, time and money, based on a budget.you come up with a budget and say "okay, to facilitate this vision that somebody wrote,what is it going to take for us to do that? how much time is it going to require? canwe get it done, if we're doing a tv show? what makes an episode? can we get it donein a week?" if we're doing a feature film, is this a 15 or a 20-day shoot? do we shouldmonday through fridays?" maybe, based on us getting certain locations, when the storesare closed or something like that. now we may have to shoot wednesday through sundays.then monday, tuesdays are the off days or what have you. the script dictates, what it is that we do.then you assemble a group of people. i always

admit that, i'm not the sharpest knife inthe drawer. what i want to do is, gather all these people around me that are expertisein their areas, whether it's in lighting, whether it's in wardrobe, transportation andwhat have you. then we all sit around and come up with a plan that we can all agreeto. say "yes, we can do this on time and on budget. then, this is the game plan on doingthat." then, that's when you get a production schedule, production design, budgets and whathave you. judiffier:there are 2 things i want you to hit on, jim. if you wouldn't mind, share the story withthem, about the security firm that you hired. it was a small business, you had given a shot.share that story. then there's one more thing

i'd like to ask you. jim:what it is, i knew this guy who was just starting out his company. i'm always trying to givesomebody a chance or an opportunity to do something. i said, "let's hire this one guyand his company." then what happened was, that particular morning, one of his guys didn'tshow up or something, so he had to do a double shift. the executive producer who was alsothe director, happened to come to the set. he noticed the guy sleeping. we had all thesetrucks out there, all this equipment out there and everything. he just walks up to the guy. he calls me andsays, "who's this dude? he's asleep. they

could've stole the cameras." the cameras arevalued at 2, $300,000 and what have you. then it was my job, after hiring somebody, nowi'm going to fire somebody. when i'm trying to give you a chance or give you an opportunity,but you can't be sleeping on a job. especially having someone for me, to be responsible forsomebody else. that's what happens in this business a line producer. our production manager,you want to give people chances and opportunities and what have you, but if you don't do yourjob, then we have a problem. another situation similar to that. there wasan executive producer. he was actually the manager of one of the stars of the show. hewent to go get something from the catering area, craft service area. the caterer wentoff on him, "you can't have that. this is

just for the crew." she said that, based onthe way he looked. he came to me and he said "hey, fire this person. she don't know whoi am." it's your job to know who people were. this person is on the set everyday, but justbecause he didn't look a certain way, you can't just take it upon yourself and denythis person some food, where he felt that he was paying for, anyway. you got to knowyour surroundings and know who you're actually working with. judiffier:that's a great story. we had a conversation, a few weeks ago and then we can all probablychime in on this because now i'm going to start talking about specific opportunitiesthat i've noticed in certain geographic territories,

with all the new sound stages popping up.then some sound stages that have been there for a while. let me just make a clarificationpoint here. when we talk about sound stages, most of the sound stages in georgia are notalso production companies. a tyler perry studios is an anomaly in terms of the rest of thesound stages in georgia. sound stages, think of them like rental companies or leasing companies.they lease the facilities and amenities to production companies that create the content. tyler perry studios happens to be one that,they create the content and they have their own facilities. i think triple horse mightbe one other that's a similar setup. pinewood, they don't make the movies. they lease theirfacilities out to other companies that do.

mailing avenue, eagle rock ... jim:screen gems. judiffier:screen gems. those are sound stages. they do not do the content creation and the jobcreation along the lines of what we're talking about, in our conversations. they're key inthe ecosystem, but it's important for businesses and even people in the workforce to know thedifference because they tend to gravitate towards the name that they hear a lot, screengems. eagle rock, not tyler perry studio, but the ones that are just leasing, they wouldnot be the go-to companies in the conversation that we're having.

with that said, we had a conversation about... weren't you part of the game? bringing the game to the east coast from the west coast?that was a production that, i believe kelsey grammer's company had, for quite a while.then it went off the air for a while and then bet brought it back to life. then it startedshooting in georgia and stayed here until it went off air. jim:yeah, the game was one of the first shows to actually start shooting at screen gems.when we first came to town, we were looking to put this show like a turner. then the producersbasically said, "well, this isn't a studio-based show. we need to go to different locationsand different other atmospheres and all, to

actually produce the vehicle." then we wentover to screen gems at the time. screen gems was still boarded-up and there was grass growingthrough the asphalt. they hadn't even started any type of production. they assured bet atthe time that, they can have this facility up and going in 6, 7 months, which they did.then they went there and produced the game out of screen gems for several seasons. judiffier:here's the interesting thing about what we're talking about. he told you a little bit about,what screen gems was looking like. for those of you native to the atlanta area, you'vebeen here long enough. screen gems is located in the old lakewood, where they had the auctioni believe.

wendy:lakewood fairgrounds. judiffier:the amphitheater's on the opposite side, where they still have the music festivals and concertsand so forth. behind there, if you all are remember a long time ago, it used to looklike an old kind of latin village or something. almost like going to "it's a small world 2".if you could fuse those 2 views. i remember being a little girl and it being closed mostof the time. i'm born and raised in atlanta. joe. speaker 3:[circus 01:07:52]. judiffier:i don't really know.

jim:it was a amusement park at one point, too. they had a roller coaster there. judiffier:it had a heyday. for over a decade, it was vacant. he's talking about the the grass growingthrough the asphalt and that kind of thing. screen gems was located ... think of the anchorsin that area. you've got atlanta metropolitan college, atlanta technical college, you'vegot i-75, i-85 in terms of some infrastructure. you do have a marta bus line, you've got avery old community. jim and i had a conversation about production budgets and how much moneyis spent outside of that community because there's no starbucks over there. there's noequipment rental company there. if you think

about, if something happens on the set unexpectedly,how much downtime is there, travelling somewhere far? jim:it's a lot. judiffier:talk about that, jim. jim:i worked out of screen gems for several years and i had to bring additional people on board,like pas or runners and what have you. for instance, our talent will stay in buckhead,at the intercon or something like that, where in turn that we had to then send transportationto pick them up and bring them to the set. then if one of the producers, one of the writersor one of the talent wanted something to eat,

then i had to send a pa to camp creek marketplaceto actually get food or something like that because there was nothing in those availableareas. then when somebody yell for, "hey, i needa pa on the set to do something," i said, "they're down at captain d's right now, gettingsome food for somebody." there was nothing really, in the immediate area. that's what happens when you have to startadding extra people to your crew. for us to be working out at that particular facility,we basically had runners. your job was to run and go get this lunch and that lunch,go pick this up at this place, go to home depot and get this and what have you becausethere weren't a lot of things in those areas.

since then, i don't know if you've noticedover all the construction, but they're building studios and stages all over town right now.shannon mall, doraville, there was a gm plan out there. they're building up there. 85,jimmy carter and what have you. they said, "if you build it, they will come." it lookslike the people are coming because there's production everyday. today's tuesday. thereare 12 productions being shot right now as we speak, in the city. there's only 6 proppeople here in town. that's the one thing ... now what is happened, 4 or 5 years ago,it was okay based on the number of productions because there was only 2 or 3 productionsat the time. now when it's 10, 12 and eventually 15 and20, the shortage is people. there's going

to be people, vendor. it's about being inthe people industry. there's not enough people now, to deal with the supply and demand ofall the work that has come into town. judiffier:if i were a supplier, knowing that i have certain goods and services that were transferableto this market, i would get a map and pinpoint where the key sound stages are. i would drivethrough those neighborhoods and those communities, and pay attention and spend time on thosestreets, which i actually do, quite a bit in southwest atlanta. i'll tell you aboutthat in a second. i would do that to see where the gaps are,in the marketplace. how proximity can be saving money for production companies. conveniencesaves money. nelson, when i bring him into

the conversation in a few seconds, i wantyou to share about the length that you go to, for your customers. where proximity becomesalmost the opposite of it. he'll talk about travelling across state lines sometimes, tobe able to get something fast and bring it back to a production company. you're not far from screen gems, not as farfrom pinewood. you have a nice south-side proximity. you definitely are on the same,i know, with a lot of the film and tv activity that's going on. talk about the centralityof your location, pros and cons of that. how you adjust as a supplier. nelson:being that we're by the airport, [depending

01:12:41] upon traffic, we can be at justabout any studio, well within the hour. of course, with the exception being 4:00 in theafternoon when you can't get across the street in an hour. at any rate, our location waschosen because of the ease that we were able to get wherever we needed to be. this waseven pre-movie. it's just so simple, to be able to jump on the freeway. we are only 10minutes south of lakewood. we are about 35 minutes from fayetteville's pinewood. as thesenew studios come online, so far the one that's the furthest away that we are currently serving,remains pinewood. everything else is actually closer than that. that works out pretty well. the thing about it, and when i know we'regoing to end up talking at great length about

this. what will separate one company fromthe next is, its ability to come through on what they say, they will do. when we say that,this is in our wheelhouse, then it's on us, to perform. fortunately in most cases, we'reable to do that. when we say that we can deliver, we can generally deliver, but just like anybodyelse, you're going to make a mistake. when you make a mistake, it's what you do withit. you suggested that, we could drive acrossstate lines sometimes, to acquire important goods for productions. i don't always tellthe production, what it is that i'm doing in order to make this happen because thatdoesn't matter. all that matters is that, they got it when they needed it. how you getthere, irrelevant. just get there. the big

takeaway from that, and again, i know we'regoing to harp on this is that, this is an industry that is largely comprised of peoplewho count on you to do what you say you are going to do because they have these thingscalled schedules. jim, you can speak to this at far greater length than i. what does aday's delay cost? jim:thousands of dollars. just to piggyback on his story. mic works, mine doesn't. it flashesin my mind. we said that, we were building a stage, an actual stage in a warehouse. itwas supposed to be ready at a certain day and a certain time. part of the stage wasbeing around these products called cheeseboros, which are couplings to put the pipe and allthat together.

the person didn't care about, there were nomore cheeseboros in town or what have you. i used them all up and borrowed them fromevery other show that was shooting. i contracted a guy from dallas, texas to drive non-stop,all night to have these cheeseboros in here, so i could finish the stage because i toldthem it would be ready by friday 9am. he didn't know that, and he probably still doesn't knowit. the mere fact was, you have to promise to get the job done. whatever it takes, atthat point. you got to be on time, you got to be professional, but you've got to getthe job done. we have a lot of different variables sometimes. judiffier:what nelson and jim really are speaking to

is, operational tweaks on the fly. being nimble,being innovative and not being stuck in a mold and in a model that has worked for yourcompany for the last 10 years. if you're wanting to serve an entertainment-related market,creating value for them means delivering, whatever it takes. being open 3am, when yourdoors normally close at 9pm. i use example quite frequently. if someone'sshooting a civil war scene and they've been shooting battles shots all day or all evening.call time is 8am the next morning, to start back. maybe they're shooting out a sequenceand the uniforms need to be cleaned. some dry-cleaner is going to have to be workingaround the clock, or dry-cleaners, to get these costumes back in the condition whereit would look like, for call time the next

morning for whatever scene that they're shooting,where we don't want mud and blood and rips. we need it to look like, they just got dressedup that day for the morning. that's an example of a dry-cleaner who will have to have a differentoperational strategy than the one they would serve in the neighborhood, open 8am to 5pmor something like that. i want to shift gears a little bit becausewe're about to close out this particular session. this small business opportunities and filmand entertainment is usually a 3 to 4-hour program, where we actually can really getinto the nitty-gritty of it. it feeds another program called becoming a camera-ready vendorthat i created for the sbdc a couple of years ago.

we're scratching the surface. once we starttalking about, what does a line producer or upm look for, in vendors? how do they createtheir preferred vendor list? what does that mean, to be on one? does a certification matteror not? how do you network and build relationships with these people? how do you need to staff?do you need dedicated people in your firm who only do studio accounts? we get into awhole lot more. we're scratching the surface about, what could be. once we know what couldbe and what we're going after in terms of journey management, that's when the sbdc canpartner with you, to help you map out some of those moving pieces. both nelson and wendy are graduates of anexecutive development and business development

program that we have for growth, called growsmart.what i would like for them to do is, to take the last 5 minutes or so of this session,and talk about their experience with growsmart. particularly wendy is both, creative and businessperson because of the nature of her company. nelson has already told you. his company'scalled, the engineer guy, so you get an idea he doesn't consider himself a creative, he'sa businessman at heart. he's working in creative environments. you took growsmart back in 2012,you took growsmart last summer, 2015. i'd like for them to talk about the time thatthey took, to work on their businesses. not just in it, but on their businesses and howthey maintained that discipline, moving forward and take advantage of the sbdc services. let'sstart with wendy, and then we'll close with

nelson. wendy:i was introduced [inaudible 01:20:09] of course, through judiffier. i had run a company priorto that, for about 16 years. i started off with sony studios, but as an entrepreneur,i had run my own business for about 16 years. saw huge successes, but during the recession,i saw huge losses. did not really understand how to recover, how to retool, what were thebenchmarks i needed to be seeing? what sbdc was able to do is, to help me to understandthat i did not have a plan. i may thought i have. one of the great things that you learnthrough sbdc and building businesses the correct way is that, you go from being self-employedto really being a business owner.

it's like mcdonald's. mcdonald's doesn't workbecause it's the best burger in the world. mcdonald's works because no matter, it createsa system. sbdc helps you to create that system for your business and allows you to structureit. no matter what happens. 15 years ago, with my film company, now i'm in the position,i can actually sell my business to someone else, to be able to acquire it because i understandwhat core values. what do core values mean? you hear corporations talk about that, allthe time. how do i go from a 1% increase to a 4%? what happens when i see my businessplateau? how do i get it out of that plateau? what are the importances of marketing andpr and human resources and maybe, have the correct staff?

sbdc has allowed, even ... i need to sharethis with you. allowed us to grow from .. remember, auburn avenue films grew from january of lastyear, to where we are now, over $100,000 excel from ... i took the program in august? tomove it really, really fast, but it allows me to go back and forth between building.we're concentrating on, not just creating content, but now being in the game as a studioprovider of space. screen gems, it's a huge warehouse and productionoffices and things of that nature. if i didn't have that infrastructure in terms of businessbecause i went to college, but i don't have an mba like this one over here. it gave mefinance 101 through 401 really, really quickly. it's very intense, they last all day. i can'tsay that, i understand now, i'm at peace of

how to take my company from where i am now,to a guaranteed retirement. judiffier:just to piggyback real quick, before nelson starts to talk. i remember being a businessowner for 10 years, before i went and got my mba. in my mind, i thought my mba wouldprepare me to be a better business owner, a better small business owner. it wasn't clearto me at that time of enrollment that, mbas, we're doing case studies and we're studyinga whole lot more of corporate structuring and operations. we're not really talking aboutsmall business development in mba programs. i remember the conversation where one of mypeers asked one day, "what's a dmb number?" i remember the professor stumbling over itand i thought, "okay, i get it now. that's

why i'm still struggling with a few thingsbecause everything wasn't easily transferable from big business to small." i did learn strategythough, i learned strategy. while i was at georgia state's pmba program,i heard about the sbdc. several years later, is when i came to work for the sbdc. i willtell you, growsmart is the program i wish i had, when i started my first salon, my firstpublishing company, my second salon. when i did a merger and my business partner andi weren't really clear on what a merger needed to look like. then, when the divestment startedhappening because we realized we weren't culturally, a good fit. her firm wasn't running like myfirm. her leadership style wasn't like mine. i learned to appreciate things in context.as we became facilitators of growsmart and

consultants, which is actually where i metnelson. my first day on the job with the sbdc, was one of the last sessions of his growsmartprogram. i think it was session 4 out of 5. we spent 2 great weeks together and then wejust never parted. we became strategic business soulmates. would you call it that, nelson? nelson:joined at the hip. judiffier:we are joined at the hip. he's taught me so much in terms of being a better consultantand helping his company grow. i won't give you the whole spoiler of his success storyin georgia trend, but i think you were at 1. something million, when we met. then youdid, what, 3. something, last year, 3.9, 3.1?

nelson:i don't remember which 1 point it was, but it was either 1.2 or 1.7. then it was 2.2,2.6. judiffier:that was in a 2 to 3-year period, he started almost doubling. i won't share all your story,but when he came up to me at eagle rock. we did a event at eagle rock studios, a few weeksago. he gave me his milestone for the first quarter 2016. i will just say, he was knockingout in 1 quarter, what used to take a year. i'm your biggest fan. i can't pat myself onthe back, a little bit but. we work well together, we work well together. jim and i work welltogether because we have decided to co-craft this journey together. the accountabilitythat i'm able to give to them, i get my reward

seeing them succeed and seeing them applythese strategies and grow. just take a few minutes and tell us, and talk about growsmart. nelson:i do not need to talk about growsmart, i really do not, because you folks have done it justice.i want to put the little foundation underneath growsmart. how many folks in this room consideryourselves to be entrepreneurs? okay, so if you raised your hand, chances are good, you'vegot this crazy idea that you want to work for yourself. okay. do you have another crazyidea that says somewhere up here that, someday you want to hire people? don't, i'm kidding. no, here's the thing. don't, for a second,ever stop learning. that's the big thing here

because you can get buried. i don't care whatbusiness it is, you can get buried in it. it happens to me. i get on the forklift andi just disappear. i'm a very happy person on a forklift because i don't have to thinkabout all the other stuff. that's how you get trapped. don't do that. you have to havea plan. you have to work the plan. all the while, if you want to play in this movie business,you're going to have to be nimble. it's weird, but you have to do it both ways. this is the big thing. between the sbdc andthe other organizations that you heard about, just today, you've got a team of people whocan help you get where you need to go. wendy:for free.

nelson:for free. judiffier:i do give homework. we, all of the consultants do, so be ready. nelson:that's all i have to say about it. wendy:i have, just something. are there any content creators in here? people that want to createcontent? okay. i want to just make sure i get you guys cards because there's somethingthat you have to realize. we've been talking about georgia labor force. if you're on thatcontent creative side, you have to join me in my bicoastal ways, and you have to understandthat those decisions, when they get to him,

the decisions of what they want to do, havealready been made. that's not made here. that's made in los angeles and new york. judiffier:in closing. i would like to say that, the youtube video that she talked about, it'sstill online was about maynard jackson predicting that we'd be number 3 in the market. georgiais number 3 in the market. we have been for quite some time. for those of you in business, i invite youto come visit us at the sbdc. if there are some specific projects or areas of improvementthat you would like us to partner with you on, we'd be more than happy to serve you.i'm at the clayton state office. i do have

cards and brochures about all of our offices,so i'll give you that if you would like that, before you leave today. again, thank you for joining us. we've enjoyedbeing with you. i have one question right here. yes. speaker 4:[inaudible 01:29:16] judiffier:okay. speaker 4:[inaudible 01:29:20] judiffier:content, yeah. wendy:right. judiffier talked about platforms. there's

so many platforms and those platforms needcontent. i'll give you an example. bet is not a 24-hour network. that means they havepaid programming. there's a guy named robert rosenheim that builds, and especially on sundays,religious programming. probably, you can wake up and you can see lifetime. they have paidprograms. that means, they don't have programming around the clock. there are so many vehicles now, that need,they're looking for content. i'm serving on 2 film festivals now. here's the thing. i'mhere to tell you, as a person that started off as an executive assistant to the executivevice president of sony, to being vice president of movies in miniseries for sony. there'sa lot of bad contact. the best thing for you

content creators, and we can talk about thisa little bit as a sidebar conversation is, make sure you understand story and structureand things because that helps to develop budgets. we're doing something now, that's a periodpiece for 1921. if i were to hand that script over to him, he's got to say, "i've got totake this, all the way back into 1921." that's costuming, that's cars, that's sign, it'severything. judiffier:what you have just uncovered is, the need for another class. wendy:that's another class. judiffier:jim and wendy. i think that will be a awesome

class on budgeting and script development.based on the script, what the budget looks like, that kind of thing. even the network.we talked about a distribution class being in the works. we have more to come for you.this is just the tip of the iceberg. stay connected with us on georgiasbdc.org. that'sg-e-o-r-g-i-a, and then the letters s-b-d-c.org. over the next few weeks, we'll be adding moretraining and development programs. connect with us at any time. we'd love to see youand have you in our audience. thank you. wendy:thank you.