HomeTech.fm - Episode 297 - COVID-19 Government Assistance Deep Dive with Chris Williams of OneVision Resources

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, April 3rd. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, a quarantined basement, I'm Jason Griffin. Hey, we're finally on lockdown too, Jason. We're joining. Yeah, officially. That's right. So yeah, yeah. What a strange time, man. I keep saying this, but what a strange time. lockdown too jason we're joining officially yeah officially that's right so uh yeah yeah it's uh what a strange time man i keep saying this but what a strange time it is it is and the weeks

are flying by this is our third week now i think third show that we've really kind of at least on on my end here in my house that we've been uh quarantined and uh that's that's kind of crazy to think about but but speaking of that, we've got a really great interview here on this episode. We'll give a short disclaimer here. It's going to be highly relevant, I think, for everyone, especially those of you here in the US, in the States. We're going to be doing a really deep dive with Chris Williams, who's a gentleman that I work with and privileged to work with at One Vision. He's our director of people operations. And he came to our company a couple of years ago with a really diverse background, including a lot of time in politics.

And he's still very involved in politics at the local and state level, a total political junkie. And we leverage that skill a lot internally to help, you know, have him help us make sense of everything that's going on. And, of course, over the last three to four weeks with the whole COVID-19 situation and all of the various government programs and regulatory concerns being talked about, it's been super helpful to have him on staff. And we wanted to bring him on the show to help us pick apart how to make sense of all these various programs. And so, again, if you're in the U.S., this is going to be highly relevant and a fantastic interview in terms of really giving you a broad lay of the land and very practical, useful advice about how to navigate all this. I suspect if you're overseas, obviously, it's going to be a little bit less relevant, but I do suspect that there will still be some very useful information in there for you, because if I had to guess, legislation in most of the, at least certainly in the Western world, is going to look very similar. And so the names of the acts and the details of the acts are going to be different, but Chris provides a lot of sort of just framework and ways to think about these things that we hope will translate and be useful for our entire

audience. Yep, absolutely. Like you said, it was a great talk. It really helped me understand a lot of the stuff that I've seen in passing. So yeah, it was a really good overview of the tool. I said this in our back channel when we were talking. I said, this is a pretty good toolkit to have if you are a business owner or an employee kind of skewing towards the business owner side. Like I said, it's a good toolkit. And I think altogether, it seemed like a pretty good way to keep your doors open. But I kept having flashbacks to our interview last week. I think it was Chad Nichols, right? He was bullish you know the first decision you have to make is that you know you want to be in this business still in all this passes and uh yeah taking the

opportunities taking everything taking the tools that are in front of you and and to continue your business uh that's that's all a big part of it but you have to make you have to decide that you want to make that step first and i thought right right. I kept flashing back to him and thinking all the things that he's done and that he's doing to keep his business open. So, uh, yeah, absolutely. And, uh, you know, I think you said, yeah, it skews a little bit, the conversation and the legislation skews a little bit towards the business owner, but look, we're all in this together. And even if you're an employee, uh, you're working, if you're listening to the show, you're most likely working in a small to medium-sized business. And having a good handle on what the things are that your business owner, the owner of your business, is having to think about is really beneficial to everybody.

So we encourage you to stay tuned for that. We're going to keep our news segment this week pretty quick and get into the interview relatively quickly here again, Seth. But what do you say we jump into a couple of quick home tech headlines? Let's do it. AV Nation is working with a number of great organizations to produce not one, but two virtual conferences called Learn From Home Events. And a little bit about these. These are really cool, Seth. I know it sounds like you guys at Blackwire are looking at this. I know we at One Vision are looking at ways that we can get involved. They've got a lot of great companies lined up for this. And again, there's going to be two of them.

There's going to be a residential and a commercial event. We're going to talk about some of the details very quickly here on the residential side. The commercial event, if you operate in that space, is still being worked out, some of these details. But on the residential side, the quick bullet points here to know it's a two-day event. It's going to be on April 7th and April 8th. So that's coming right up by the time you're going to hear this episode. That'll be only a few days away. So be sure to keep a lookout for that. It's going to open with a keynote from Jeremy Burkhart, Origin Acoustics, very charismatic and dynamic speaker. From there, it'll go into some education sessions. There's going to be

afternoon keynote from Charlie Kendall from SnapAV, some additional online education sessions, evening keynotes, and then going into day two, there's going to be another keynote with some education sessions. So again, I'm not going to go into all of the details, but it's pretty cool how they have it laid out with keynotes followed by breakout sessions, and then breaks where you can go get your work done. It's not like a full day event where you got to be committed to the whole thing in order to leverage it. You can duck in and duck out and go get some work done. And I think this is going to be a great opportunity for anybody looking for ways to productively fill the time while things are still kind of stalled out here with COVID-19.

Definitely go to avnation.tv and check this out. Yeah, it looks like I'm looking at some of the names in here. There's some home-taken law showing up for this thing. We've got Charlie Kendall in there. We've got Brad Hintze. Both, oddly enough, are now working at SnapAV slash Control4. So they're both in the same company there. And I saw Mitch Klein.

We just had him on the show, too, from Z-Wave. So yeah, there's going to be a ton of industry insiders and people just sitting around talking. This Learn From Home stuff is really picking up the last couple of weeks. And I've seen a lot of traction. Again, we kind of joked about it last week of how many webinars can I attend? Just every day day I'm inundated by all these things, but this one looks pretty fun.

Looks, uh, it looks pretty good to go to. I know they're going to have like, they're going to base some of this stuff around education, uh, you know, presentations that would normally be given it maybe a trade show or something like that. So you can get some, some valuable information out of that too at the same time. Yeah. Yep. I was on a conference call with a bunch of folks this morning who are all looking at participating in various ways. And I think it looks like a really exciting event. They've got a lot of manufacturers lined up for these breakout sessions. So as a potential attendee, you'll have a lot of options to pick from in terms of what you want to do outside of those keynotes. And again,

definitely worth taking a look at. Head on over to our friends at avnation.tv and give it a look. Yep. Sony has announced that it'll establish an intermediate holding company called Sony Electronics Corporation's effective April 1st. The holding company will incorporate three businesses

that comprise of its electronics products and solutions segment. The company says this move will not only accelerate the integrated operation of the electronics businesses, but also aim to optimize its organization structure, talent, business portfolio, while further enhancing competitiveness and creating new business. Interesting, some reorganization. I think this has been coming for a while. I want to say I've heard of this, but it sounds like Sony could be coming back to us. It sounds like Sony is going to be nice here done with regards to their CI program. They recently put Jeff

Goldstein back in the position ahead of sales for the CIS channel. And I don't know Jeff well, but he's got a great reputation in the channel and a lot of experience previously at Sony. So excited to see what he's doing there and excited to see Sony doing this. Again, it's a bit hard with these massive conglomerate companies to really understand what moves like this mean for the average everyday news consumer in our channel. But good stuff to be aware of. And again, looks like Sony trying to position themselves to continue to do great things for the channel. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know Jeff personally. I know some that were in the team. I mean, this was like when he was in charge,

it was the golden age of like Sony. Like you wanted to go to their shows. Like they had these independent training shows that would pop up around the United States and you'd really want to go to them. And then like after he was gone, it kind of like went down after that. So I do know that like everybody's excited

that heard this news that Sony was going to kind of restructure and reorganize here in the States and that Jeff would be back i i know that it got a bunch of play and people were excited to hear that so um i do want to mention like in the hub greg posted this today i don't know if you saw this but uh kind of tangentially related uh samsung is going to be stopping stop producing lcd screens this year uh so like end of an era, Jason, we've moved away from LEDs and we're moving on to the QLED. Of course, they still have those. And then I guess you got QLED and you've got OLED. So between those two, no more LEDs from Samsung as that vendor kind of scales away. And, you know, it's kind of big news. but then again, not unforeseen, right? Like LED technology

is kind of long in the tooth. So I've only got one question on that, Seth, how are you going to fit a flat panel in your graveyard? You know, I think I'll manage, right? I actually, I have a Samsung. I mean, technically I do already have a Samsung, uh, for the graveyard, but it's a plasma and that's just never going to die. I'm never going to be able to bury it. So it's still in use. It's a 720p plasma and I still use that thing every day. There you go. It's still ticking. Yep. That's right. They don't make them like they used to. Not at all. All right. Well, that'll do it for our news. Again, a short news segment here. We wanted to preserve room for our interview, which is a pretty substantial one. So we'll get into that very shortly. All of the links and topics that we've discussed on our show here this week can be found in our

show notes at hometech.fm.com. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm.com. Yeah, and don't forget you can join us in the chat room live, usually on Wednesdays, starting at 7, 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more at hometech.fm.live. All right, Seth. Well, without any further delay, let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Chris Williams. Hey, Chris, welcome to the show.

How are you? Good. Thank you very much, guys. How are you? How are y'all doing? Yeah, we're doing well. We appreciate you coming on the show to join us. Good. Thank you very much, guys. How are you? How are y'all doing? with regards specifically to the regulatory environment and government programs and things coming out. It's enough to make your head spin. So we're looking forward to jumping into this conversation and having you help us sort of pick this apart a little bit. Before we get into that,

why don't you give our listeners just a quick high-level personal introduction, talk about your role at One Vision today, as well as some of your relevant background. Yeah, happy to do so. And for your listeners out there, you may already know this, but I work with Jason at One Vision Resources and have been there for just over two years now. I was brought in to our company specifically to really help our company think about how we scale our operations. Two years ago, we felt like we were really starting to figure out the magic formula for our company in terms of our business model. And we wanted someone internal who could help us think strategically about how quickly our company could and should grow, what direction we should grow in, what speed we should grow at, and then where do we find the talent to really stock our team with A players?

So I was brought into the company to oversee that aspect of our organization. As the days have gone by, my tenure has increased. I've slowly found myself also helping to manage the day-to-day operations of the company as well. For anyone out there in your audience who works with a startup or has done that in the past, you know everyone wears multiple hats, and that's the second hat that I get to wear, is helping with our day-to-day operations from a financial perspective, facilities perspective, etc. Prior to joining One Vision, I was and still am today fairly involved in local and state politics here in New England, where I've lived for about 19 years now. Specifically, I've worked in the state senate offices, so I've been on that side of state legislatures, helping to craft legislation, impacting all sorts of business issues. But I've also been on the other side, helping. I served as the issues, whether it be wages or hours or work conditions or economic development-related issues that help attract more companies to New England.

Thankfully, I'm a political junkie at heart. Otherwise, I would have hated my job for about 20 years. But thankfully, I'm one of those who landed in jobs throughout my career that aligned with my own personal interests. And that's very much the case here at One Vision as well. And as it relates to our topic du jour here, it's very helpful for me to have that sort of background because it helps me to really sort of cut through all of the white noise that's out there right now and focus on the legislation that's literally coming at us by the day, you know, out of Washington and out of our state legislatures and really identify what's the important legislation, what are the important parts of these pieces of legislation to pay attention to, both from an employer

perspective and an employee perspective. And then making sure not just our company, but our industry is adhering to what's coming out and paying attention to what's the most helpful parts of this assistance that's coming our way. So that's a short little background, an intro for you guys. And I'm happy to be here with you today. Thanks to the lockdown, I've got nothing else to do. So let's jump into it and let's talk some politics. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, you talked about that signal-to-noise ratio, and we hope to get that ratio up and have our listeners come away from this show really understanding, like you said,

how to cut through some of that noise and figure out what's relevant to you. So, a ton to cover. Let's jump right in. I know we wanted to start really with the CARES Act. This will go live today, the day that this show goes live. This act will go live. So, to the extent that you can, I know these are big meaty acts with a lot of different facets, but, uh, facets to them, but to the extent that you can give us kind of the short version of what the cares act is just in case anybody out there is listening and, and literally is like me, uh, can't even keep a high level one, uh, differentiated from the other. What is the cares act? What, what's the 30,000 foot view on it?

Yeah. So to start, you know, there are a few different bills that have been passed out of Congress and signed into law. This is the one that employers really want to pay attention to. So in your audience today, if you are a business owner, a leader or a manager at a company, you are already probably very aware, or at least you've heard about the CARES Act. This is the one that Congress passed to help businesses retain as many employees as possible, and to help those same businesses also try to maintain their payroll as best as possible. All of us have read the news stories, we've been online, and we've seen the economic toll that the coronavirus is taking from a

financial perspective. A lot of layoffs, furloughs happening, salary reductions. Congress is aware of this, and this is their attempt, or at least their first attempt, to try and stem the bleeding, so to speak. So the CARES Act, as you said, Jason, goes into effect today, April 3rd. And the biggest piece that employers really want to pay attention to is a component of the legislation referred to as the Paycheck Protection Program, or loosely known as the PPP or PPP. This is the piece of the legislation that allows businesses all across the country, if you are fewer than 500 employees, you are eligible to apply for a loan that will allow you to keep paying your employees without having to furlough

or lay them off at or very near the levels that you're currently paying them right now. Let me explain how that works a little bit if you'd like. So I'll use OneVision as an example here in this scenario. So OneVision, we are 43 employees, so we qualify as a company that can go to that bank as of today, and we can fill out an application through that bank, and they will submit the loan application to their own internal review committee, and they can approve for us up to two and a half times our monthly payroll. So what our bank will do is they'll say to me, all right, Chris, let's look at your payroll for 2019 and see what the average monthly payroll amounts to. And if our loan gets approved, then they can give us two and a half times what that monthly payroll average is. And that will allow me to be able to continue

paying payroll to all of our employees at OneVision for the space of 10 weeks. That's assuming- About two and a half months. Correct. I'm sorry, two and a half months. Thank you. So that is a really great opportunity for a company like ours or any other company out there who might be thinking, gosh, I don't know how my cash flow is going to let me get through the next month or the next two months. This is a temporary reprieve that any company under 500 employees can apply for. So let me pause there, Jason and Seth, and give you guys an opportunity to respond to that or ask questions. It's a loan. So this is something as a business owner, I would have to pretend I owned an integration business and I had a couple employees.

I would look at the payroll that we had for 2019, like you said. The bank would figure out what that is like two and a half times and you could qualify for that. So you'll have to pay a percentage of that back as well for interest, right? So I'm assuming these aren't 0% interest on these loans. Well, it depends. And I'll start by saying this is probably the best loan opportunity you're ever going to see out there. The reason I say that is that there is an opportunity for a company that applies for this loan to get 100% forgiveness on the loan. And not to have to pay any interest on it as well. The way in which an employer can do that is if they adhere to a couple of stipulations they applied for the loan. And as long as they don't reduce salaries more than 25%,

they would be able to qualify for 100% loan forgiveness. That includes the principal and the interest. So that is an extraordinary opportunity that literally comes once in a lifetime. That's not something that you see come from a private lender or the public government very often at all. and they keep reduction salaries at 75% of where they were when they got the loan, they can be eligible for that 100% loan forgiveness. Now, if a company doesn't stick to that, if they can't stick to it for whatever reason, they would then have to indeed pay some interest on that loan. That interest cannot be any more than 4%.

So even then, it's still a pretty good deal. And you would also have a pretty long term on that loan. I believe that my last look, it was 10 years for the term on that loan as well. So you do have some pretty friendly parameters put around this loan. Again, the intent of this from Congress was, what do we need to do right now to get immediate assistance, and how can we make this as friendly as possible to the employers out there? Right. Really interesting. One follow-up question on that specific piece of repayment. So there's this criteria that you laid out, maintaining payroll, not cutting that more than 25%. I think you said maintaining 90% of your workforce. Was that

correct? Correct. So you have these criteria. The first thing that comes to my mind, if I'm, if I'm an integrator or any small business owner for that matter is, okay, is it like a, like a cliff? Like if I go over, if I cut my payroll by 26%, do I go from not having to pay it back at all, all the way out to full repayment, still under generous terms? Or is there a sliding scale there? Or maybe we don't know. I know some of the details are still being fleshed out on this stuff. But how does that work once you get to those thresholds? Yeah, great question. So this would be more prorated or on a sliding scale. It would not be that cliff that you're referring to. As you also said, the U.S. Treasury, SBA are still putting the final details together, but they have touched on that already enough to

let us know that it would be some sort of a sliding scale that rather than all or nothing. Got it. And I have one more question on this act. Specifically, you made a comment earlier when you were explaining it and you said, you know, you going back to the one vision example, Chris, you could go to the bank today, Friday and say, hey, we want to apply for this loan. And then you made a comment, the bank could approve us. Are there circumstances under which the bank could deny you? And what would those be? Yeah, there are very few obstacles to getting approved for this loan. Literally, the biggest and single obstacle that I have found, other than you have to be under 500 employees, is just how quickly you can get your loan application submitted. The government has set aside 350 billion dollars for this loan program. That sounds like a lot of

money. However, when you start thinking about the sheer number of companies across the U.S. that have fewer than 500 employees. And by the way, keep in mind, this program also, it's not just C-Corps and S-Corps, it's LLCs, it's sole proprietors, self-employed individuals who are eligible for this. So when you start adding up all of the potential applicants, that fund of $350 billion is going to get depleted pretty quickly. So to those listeners out there, if you haven't already put your application together, I hate to say this, but stop listening and go fill out that application and then come back and listen to the rest of this podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. Or keep listening. I mean, it's a podcast. You're going to be on hold for a while. Cool. Well, that's super helpful. We can shift gears to some of these other acts in just a second. But Chris, is there anything else high level on the CARES Act? Again, I know there's probably a million different ways you could look at this thing and pick it apart, but from a high level, is there anything else you feel like is a really critical takeaway for a business owner or even an employee for that matter?

Yeah. If you're listening to this or you've been reading about this program and you're thinking, man, I just laid off three employees last week or last month, you can still qualify for this loan program and still get your loan forgiven. This law allows specifically for anyone that you laid off or furloughed on or after February 15th, you can rehire that person if they were laid off. If they're furloughed, you can bring them back onto the payroll. And by doing so, that gives you the opportunity to not only get the loan, but also get that loan forgiven at the end of the term. So that's an important thing that I want to make sure your listeners are aware of. If they're sitting there thinking, man, this sounds great. Too bad I didn't know about this three weeks ago when I laid off three employees.

Yeah, and from what I understand, I don't know if it's part of this. I don't think it's part of this. There are some enhanced, and maybe we're going to talk about those, there's some enhanced unemployment. They've basically ramped up unemployment for this as well to get, I think they doubled how much, whatever you could get back. Plus, uh, like added a flat rate of $600 on top of it. So like they've, they've done everything they've can, they've thrown everything, everything at it that they can. And as their first try goes, um, but I think we're probably going to see more of this stuff,

uh, come out and get refined over time too. Yeah. Yeah. I suspect, um, toward the end of this podcast this podcast, if we have time, we might touch specifically on what you just brought up, which is the federal boost to state unemployment benefits. So we can touch on that in a few minutes a little bit more. But to your other point that you just made, I also think that this is sort of an opening salvo by the government. I expect we're going to see a fourth, fifth and sixth piece of legislation coming out of Congress over the coming weeks and months as the economic fallout continues to take shape.

Well, let's talk about we talked about the CARES Act, and that comes out today, Friday. There's one that hits tomorrow, on April the 2nd. I guess that's tomorrow as we record this. And that's the Family First Act. Go ahead and let's talk a little bit about that and what specifically that is about. Yeah. So as we were just talking a few minutes ago, the CARES Act, which we just finished, that goes into effect today, the day that this podcast is airing. The Families First Act is actually went into effect yesterday for those people who are just now listening to this. So April 2nd is when the Families First Act went into effect. If you were to say the CARES Act, you know, is all about helping businesses be able to maintain their payroll and their staff, the Families First Act is all about the employee, really giving them a safety net or an opportunity

to take care of themselves, take care of their family, and not have to suffer too much from the financial fallout. So let me break apart the Families First Act into two different pieces. The first piece covers two weeks of sick leave. So let's say tomorrow I get sick with COVID or a member of my household gets sick. The first component of this bill allows me to take up to two weeks of sick leave to take care of myself or take care of someone in my household and still get regular pay for those two weeks. So I can take those two weeks and I can go home and do what I need to do with the assurance that I'm not going to have to go for two weeks without pay. That's a really big change across the country. Some companies have really good sick leave programs. Many don't have sick programs at all. So this is an opportunity for everyone to be on an

equal playing field when it comes to taking care of themselves or taking care of someone in their household if they are sick with COVID or they're in a lockdown, a community that's been shut down or a stay-at-home order has been issued, they can use sick leave now and get paid for it for those two weeks. The second component, and by the way, we'll come back because there's some more details on that first component, but I'm just going to touch high level for now. The second component is all about, well, what happens if you are sick for more than two weeks or you need to take care of somebody in your household for more than just two weeks. So the second component to this legislation basically

extends what's known as the Family Medical Leave Act, or the FMLA. Typically, the FMLA doesn't apply, you know, to small businesses that are fewer than 50 employees. This changes that temporarily. For the rest of this year, all of us are now subject to the FMLA. And what that does is it allows an employee, if they continue to be sick past those first two weeks, or they have someone in their household that's sick for beyond two weeks, they can now take up to 12 weeks of leave from their job, focus on their family, and still get partial pay for those weeks. So the first component of the law allows for an employee in certain circumstances to get full

pay for the first two weeks. And then for weeks number three through 12, they can get partial pay to continue taking care of their family. So that's the real high level overview of the Families First Act and the two pieces that make up that act. Let me pause there and give you guys a chance to ask questions or dive more deeply into either of those pieces. Yeah. Perfect. Because I got a couple of questions. So number one, I'm looking at the page on the departmentoflabor.gov website, and the very first sentence says, Families First Act requires certain employers to provide employees with paid sick leave. So I've got two questions on that.

I'll let you answer them, the first one before I ask the second one. Number one, is this on top of, if I'm a business owner and I've already got, let's say, an employee who's got a balance, or I've got a paid sick leave policy in place, or maybe a paid time off program in place. How do those two line up? Is this on top of any existing programs that I have, or does it kick into effect first, if that makes sense? It does. Yeah. And that's an important question from an employer's perspective. Employers who are listening to this need to be aware, they cannot force or mandate that their employee use other paid time off first. The employee has the right to first use this emergency leave

before any other earned paid time or sick time takes effect. So very important question from the employer's perspective. Got it. And would the employee have the option to, because I know you set out, there's kind of two tiers. If it extends past a couple of weeks, then you can go to two thirds pay, I think is what you said. And so getting way down in the weeds now, I think if I'm sick past two weeks, I'll frame this question from the employee's angle. If I'm sick for past two weeks and I've got a paid time off balance banked, do I have to now make a choice to use my PTO or to take the two-thirds additional benefit? Yes. Okay. And

as the employee, I have the ability to make that choice. That's right. Gotcha. Thank you for clarifying that. And my second question, zooming way up, and again, very high level, just to make sure that we're all understanding this correctly. Again, going back to that language, it requires employers to provide employees with this leave. So employers are writing the check for this. That's right. Correct. This is just a requirement on the employer and the employer has to bear the burden of that financially. The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that the employer will get reimbursed for his or her expenses. So when they're covering the cost of those wages for that sick leave for the first two weeks or for the extended leave, they will get reimbursed by the government for that. reimbursement, you know, comes from payroll taxes. So you can apply a credit for whatever you paid to that employee against your payroll taxes. And then if that same employee needs to take more time off for weeks three through 12, whatever you paid the employee for those weeks can be applied as a credit against your social security taxes that the employer pays

on behalf of that employee. And you can do that reimbursement on a quarterly basis. So at most or at worst, an employer would have to front or float the costs of providing support to that employee for up to three to four months. And before they can apply for that credit and get the reimbursement from the government. The idea behind that, I'm sorry, Seth, the idea behind that simply is to try and really minimize the impact on employers while still maximizing protection for the employee. This one sounds a little more complicated than just a straight loan that you can be forgiven for.

It's government, Seth. It's always complicated. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sitting over here scratching my head. I'm like, I don't think I've ever worked for a place that had paid sick leave. So this would be new to a lot of employees that we'd be listening to as well. Most integrators that I have worked for did, I mean, if you were sick more, if you were sick two weeks,

you may not have a job. It's the way, the way they worked here. Yeah. Very interesting stuff. Is there, I really don't have very much to add onto this other than like, this seems like a pretty good benefit for employee protection while this is going on. If you are an employer, you obviously have access, possibly have access to the loan application things we were talking about. In conjunction with this, this could be pretty helpful as like an overall program for the next couple of months. Yeah, absolutely. Let me touch on a couple of things. If I'm an employee listening to this, a few things that an employee should be thinking about. Number one, you can qualify for this if,

again, if you live in a city or a state where a stay-at-home order has been issued and you have to stay at home and you cannot work from home, then you qualify for support from this. If you are sick and you are showing symptoms of COVID and you are in the process of getting tested for it, you qualify for this program. If you have a child whose school has been shut down and you're therefore having to remain at home to take care of them and your work can't be done from home, then you qualify for this program. If you're taking care of someone who's sick and getting tested for COVID, you qualify. So again, this is a really big help for employees in terms of getting some support. Now, there are a couple things to keep in mind. Each of those things that I just shared

with you, some of them qualify you for full pay during those first two weeks. Some of them qualify you for partial pay during those first two weeks. For example, if you yourself are sick and getting tested or you're on lockdown and can't work from home, then you get the full pay. If you're simply taking care of a child whose school is shut down, then you would get partial pay in that sort of circumstance. So if you're an employee out there, you might just want to look this legislation up and go online and Google it just to make sure you know what your specific case is and what that qualifies you for. And then finally, if you're a business owner, a few things for you to keep in mind. Number one,

this is mandatory. It's not optional. So don't ignore this law thinking that it doesn't apply to you. This is mandatory for all businesses. So make sure that you're paying attention to it. Make sure that your CPA or bookkeeper is aware of it, and that they're following it to the to the guidelines that are established. Number two, you need to make sure you share this with your employees. You can't ignore it yourself, nor can you sort of hide it from your employees. It's required that you share this to them. In a typical setting, the Department of Labor would give us all a poster that we would display in our lunchroom or our lobby, but we're all working from home these days. So I recommend that you send this out as an email, or if you are on an internal workspace platform like Slack or Google Hangouts or something like that, share it out to your employees that way. That way you're making sure that you're adhering to the law. Again, you will get reimbursed. I know a lot of employers might be thinking, man, you know, why is the government putting this on my shoulders? You will get reimbursed. You'll just have to float those

expenses for up to three months. And then lastly, I'll just say there is the possibility for you to get an exemption from this. If you're thinking, man, I'm only three employees, and if even one of my employees gets sick and files for this, I'm up a creek with no help. There is an opportunity for you to file an exemption so that you don't have to follow this. However, and I'll warn you up front, that process for getting the exemption is not an easy one. So you will have to put some real effort into it. It's not like just going online and clicking a few buttons and ammo, you're exempted. You will have to put some work into it through the Department of Labor. I do have one quick question because you mentioned lockdowns a couple of times as being

part of the criteria for this. Here in Florida, we just magically had a lockdown put on top of us today. So I guess that would trigger that aspect of it. But we've been hearing this word in our field that it's been going around that we're all essential employees. We're all essential employees. We're all essential to the economy. So how do those two words, lockdown and being essential, whatever that means, play together in this situation? So in this situation, I think what you're asking is let's pretend that for this conversation that we are an essential business, the three of us.

The state's on lockdown. Yeah, we're essential and now we're on lockdown. Yeah. Yeah. And let's say, Seth, you're the business owner and I'm your employee. Let's say tomorrow I get sick and I say to you, I'm going in, I've got all the symptoms, I'm getting tested. In that case, you would still have to allow me that sick time. You would have to allow me to take that time to go get tested. It doesn't matter if I'm an essential employee or not in that case. Now, that said, there are other companies that are considered emergency service providers. And the big example of that are healthcare providers. They are exempt from this. So rather than owning an integrator company, let's say we owned a private medical

practice, and again, you're the owner. In that case, because we are an emergency service provider, we as a business would not be covered under this act. We would be exempt from it. Right. Okay. And that makes complete sense. I mean, the goal of this is to remove workers from the workforce who need to stay home, get some rest, and actually recover from what, by all accounts, can be a pretty nasty bug if you do get like the two week version of it. Um, yeah, it sounds like, so, so that's good. Um, kind of, kind of want to move on to the last thing that we want to talk about here. And that is, uh, some other loan programs,

uh, that, that I think are being offered through the, uh, SBA that we've kind of touched the base on this a little bit. Uh, I think there was a CE Pro story that we floated across the show, maybe last week or the week before that kind of touched on this. But let's go ahead and give us a broad overview of what the SBA is doing to help out, you know, our industry, integrators specifically. So there are a couple of other things. And just tell me if this is what you're thinking about or not. The first one is what's known as EIDL, or Economic Injury Disaster Loans. These are special loans that have been expanded under the CARES Act and other pieces of legislation. And these are, I sort of think of them as smaller opportunities or extra opportunities,

aside from the Paycheck Protection Program or the PPP that we spent a lot of time talking about already. When it comes to an EIDL loan, there are a few things to keep in mind. Number one, if you're a business with under 500 employees, you can apply for this. So that's a lot of us out there, a lot of integrators, you know, right off the bat, we are eligible to apply for an EIDL. And by the way, you can also be a sole proprietorship and apply for an EIDL. You don't have to be an S-corp or a C-Corp or even an LLC. Under that program, the maximum loan that you can take out is only $2 million.

So just a minute ago, I said this is sort of one of those smaller add-on type programs that's out there. The maximum for this loan is $2 million. It's also pretty different from the PPP. The PPP, as I said earlier, is like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where you can get the entire loan, the principal, and the interest forgiven. That's not the case for an EIDL loan. There is an interest rate attached to it. That is 3.75% for those who are interested, or like me, just a real nerd for this sort of stuff. And then the term of the loan. The term of the loan can be up to 30 years for one of these loans. So if you're thinking about this sort of a smaller loan, again, if you're under 500 employees, you can apply for this. And again, there will be a low interest

rate attached to it. You have up to 30 years for the term. What's really neat about this one is that the first payment on this kind of a loan isn't scheduled until a full year after the origination of the loan. So again, you can go a full year before you have to make your first payment on it. What's also nice about that sort of a loan, Seth, is that it can be used for any operating expenses that you would have otherwise been able to cover in a normal situation. So an important distinction on this one compared to the PPP

is that the PPP loan has to be used for payroll, office rent, mortgage interest payments, or utilities. The EIDL loan can be used for any of those plus other operating expenses that you might have. There really are very few limits on what you can use this loan for. Another important point, though, to make is that this loan cannot be forgiven. So the PPP, again, very special case. It could be forgiven. This one cannot be.

And it also has a personal guarantee attached to it or required. So if you're the principal of the company, you would have to put a personal guarantee on the loan if your loan is more than $200,000. If it's under $200,000, you wouldn't have to worry about that. But most people that are going to apply for this sort of loan are probably going to be applying for more than $200,000. One more thing that's neat about this one is that if you do apply for it, you can get an immediate advance from the loan of up to $10,000. And that $10,000 will land in your bank account within two to three days. So you can apply, let's say hypothetically, you apply for a million dollars. And you also say to the SBA, I really need access to $10,000 of that loan right away. While they are processing your loan, provided everything looks good, they will immediately advance you $10,000 just to sort

of hold you over for a couple of days until the rest of the loan gets approved. Let me pause there. I've been talking a lot here without you guys getting a chance to interrupt me there. So let me pause on that one to give you guys a chance to respond or ask questions of it. Yeah, yeah, no, you're good. I think you've covered, you answered my one question that I had, which was that loan advance. I was curious about that. So that's good to know. I think my only question is kind of just a follow-up to keep us going down this path,

because I'm looking at the sba.gov website, and they've got several sort of broad headings listed under the COVID-19 business guidance and loan resources. So number one, they've got the Paycheck Protection Program, which I find a little bit confusing because that's a CARES thing. So I'm curious why it's showing up in both. What's the relationship there? Sure. So the Paycheck Protection Program, the PPP, you go to your local bank in order to apply for it, and they're the ones who actually review and approve it. However, this is still administered under the umbrella of the Small Business Administration

or the SBA. Technically, again, for my fellow nerds out there, the PPP allows for what's known as a 7A loan. And again, now I'm really just getting policy wonkish on you. But it's a 7A loan under the umbrella of the SBA, which is why you would see it on this website, even though you go to your local bank to apply for it and get approval. Got it. Thank you for that. And then really quickly, because we are bumping up against our time here, but I also see a couple of other headings on this page. There's an SBA debt relief, as well as an SBA Express bridge loan. Can you

touch very briefly on what those are? Yeah. So the debt relief is basically, this is an expansion, a temporary expansion of the SBA relief programs. What it does is, and again, this relates to 7A loans. So again, just a minute ago, I got all nerdy on you and said there's this thing called 7A loans, and that's what the PPP allows you to do. So the debt relief specifically pertains to what is known as a 7A loan. And basically, for any current loans that someone has out there, if someone already had a 7A loan before the PPP was passed, then the government will cover the principal and the interest of that loan for six months. So let's say a year ago, I had applied for a 7A loan, not having any idea that COVID was coming down the pipe. The government says, for six months, we will cover your principal and interest.

The second thing that the debt relief component does is it says for any new loans under the 7a program the government will cover the principal and interest as long as that loan has been issued before september 7th of this year so when we talk about debt relief that's really what it's pertaining to it's not something that you have to apply to you a couple of questions about state unemployment. I think there was some stuff there you alluded to earlier, but the bridge loans, again, just give me the quick version on that one. Yep. So you're referring specifically to what's known as the SBA Express Loan. So the Express Loan Program is already out there. The Express Bridge Loan is an add-on to that. Basically, if you already have

a relationship with an SBA lender, then the Bridge loan gives you the opportunity to borrow up to $25,000. So it's a very, very small loan. Think of it like a micro loan. And it's really intended for really quick and small hits that a small business might encounter at this time. There's a super fast turnaround on that sort of a loan. That's why it's called Express. Literally within two to three days, you can get approval and get that money into your account. A really good example of when you might want to apply for that sort of a loan. Going back to our EIDL loans that we talked about just a minute ago. So let's say you applied for an EIDL loan of $2 million. You can get that $10,000 grant, or I'm sorry, $10,000 advance from the EIDL. But let's say

$10,000 isn't enough for you for those two or three days that you're waiting to get approval. Then you can also apply for this express bridge loan for another $25,000. So you can get that advance of $10,000 under the EIDL. And then you can say, oh, let's also set up an express bridge loan for $25,000. And now you've got yourself $35,000 to hold you over for a few days until you get approved for the larger EIDL. Got it. So lots of resources available. Definitely really appreciate you helping us pick that apart. This has given me a much better understanding of the various programs and landscape and how to make sense of it all. As we conclude our time here, again, Chris, you alluded earlier to this., some of the complexities around navigating state unemployment and all of that. We've spent, I'd say, a fair portion of our time looking at things from the business owner's perspective.

If I'm an employee, what are some things that I should be thinking about with regards to my state unemployment program? Yeah, thank you for asking and ending on that, because I think that's an important one for a lot of listeners who might find themselves facing a furlough or a layoff. First thing first, if you're an employee, keep in mind that every state is different. So you really need to think about what state you live in and look up the Department of Unemployment Insurance for your state that you live in in order to get your specific benefits as they relate to your state's unemployment. Beyond that, though, there are a few things that all of us have in common. Number one, every unemployment department in the country is getting slammed

right now. In normal circumstances, anyone would easily be able to call or go online to their state unemployment office and they would have no problem filing for benefits. That's not the case. In fact, anyone who's read the New York Times over the past couple of days will have seen articles about this. So understand that every state unemployment office is getting slammed. The reason I'm sharing that with you is that if you're going to apply online, I would highly recommend that you try to do it online rather than calling. And make sure that you go online super early in the morning. So think before 7 a.m. or after 10 p.m. when the traffic to that website will be a little easier. If you do have to do a phone call instead of applying online, and the reason you might have to do that is because you've got a unique situation of some kind,

just be prepared to hit that redial button quite a few times. Or just be prepared to keep it on hold and put it on speakerphone and put some Netflix on while you're waiting. And then finally, really important too, be aware that when you get approved, your first payment is likely going to be backed up quite a bit. In normal circumstances, if someone gets approved for unemployment, they can get their first check within 21 days. A lot of states are saying you can expect double that amount of time before you get your first check. So it's great to know that the unemployment is there. However, you're going to want to keep in mind how you're going to get by, you know, for those three to four weeks before you see your first check, if not more

than three to four weeks. And finally, I'll, if not more than three to four weeks. And finally, I'll just end on a bit of good news. I know that's a little somber to digest, but the good news is that the federal government is issuing an additional $600 on top of whatever your state unemployment benefits are. So if you live in Georgia and your unemployment is $350 a week, you can expect another $600 on top of that from the federal government. And I think they made it a little more robust too, where they, I was reading somewhere that say you qualified for $20,000 in the past, you'd be $40,000 now. I think they doubled it or something like that. I'm not sure about that that might be a state by state case basis but I will confess

from a federal perspective I'm not aware of that and it simply might just be that it might just be I'm not aware of it and somehow slipped off my radar amongst everything else I was tracking there's so much going on right now in between like having to worry about where you're going to buy your next bottle of hand sanitizer

and whether your job is going to be there or whether you're going to be able to keep your employees, the salaries coming in for your employees. Like there's so much going on. I can see how anyone, this is all really hard to keep up with. So I'm thankful that we have somebody here to come in and explain us to this. And keep, we, we've talked about this. This is just for the United States. Like there are other countries all over the world that are experiencing something like this and having different types of, uh, programs put in. Uh, so I mean, we're an international podcast, obviously, uh, the guys that are overseas are going to be like, yeah, we're, we're doing something a little bit different over here that sounds like that as well.

So it is a and of course, we get all of that news and information in. It goes in my brain and then gets swirled around and then I can't keep up with it anymore. I'm just going to go, like you said, go watch Netflix. We can we can all agree that the Tiger King is probably the most absurd thing that anybody has ever seen. I think that's pretty much where we're going to have to stay. But, Chris, thanks so much for taking your time to break that down for us all. This has been very informative for us. Thank you, Seth.

I love doing this. As Jason knows, I'm a junkie for this sort of stuff. So I was happy to do it. Thank you for the opportunity. And I'll look forward to talking to you guys again soon. Awesome. Thanks, Chris. All right. Well, again, great conversation with Chris. I really enjoyed, you know, I have so many things that I follow and government legislation is not one of them. And it was

really helpful for me to be able to speak with somebody because you go and you try to read the news articles or the government websites and, you know, you can get all of the information, but being able to sort of apply that information to your specific situation or your specific industry can be a real challenge. And I enjoyed the way Chris was able to help us kind of break that down and make that advice, make that legislation a little bit more approachable.

Yeah, well, I think I found a new friend. So after we had the interview, we were talking and we were like, hey, I don't know. We were trying to figure out what I was looking at for the calculations for the amounts of unemployment. I'm like, I know I read this somewhere. I know I heard this somewhere. I got to find it. And I've already found it. But I had to go to the text of the bill to find it. So I'm just going to send him that with the page number and say, Chris, check this out. And I'm sure he's going to geek out on that. So it should be fun. Got it. Yeah. And clarify really quickly, actually, because I know

we kind of left a loose end there in the interview. The text in the legislation, what'd you find? Well, I'm just skimming it, but it looks like they did extend the weekly benefits for the amount up to 39 weeks is what it says. So I so I think that's been extended, uh, extended, extended more than it, than it was before. And I, I, there's another, like, this is really hard to read and parse through because it's like, uh, D and then it's got a bullet point. That's number one in subsection B and then a with an eye, little eye next to it. Like it's really hard to read. Uh, so as I'm going through it, I'm trying to skim it and read it, but it's all referencing other stuff. So I'm going to give that homework back to Chris and maybe he can check it out.

He'll be all over that. Trust me. All right, cool. Well, again, that'll do it for our interview. Moving on here, pick of the week. A little bit of levity is always good in situations like this. And we are recording this on Wednesday, April 1st. Seth, Josh AI inaugurates the politically correct smart home. I saw this. In honor of the 2020 election, they're proud to offer clients a freedom of choice like never before, political mode. This new software updates,

it lets users set their Josh AI systems verbal responses to any of the nation's presidential candidates. This innovative personalization feature will surely inspire politically charged debate among family and friends. Just what we need. Adding yet another element of joyous elegance to the Josh AI experience. This is funny. There's a good video of it. And you know what?

I commend Josh AI for putting this out. Go check it out because a good video of it. And you know what? I commend Josh AI for, uh, for putting this out, go check it out. Cause a laugh is always good. And, uh, number one, at the end of the video, uh, Alex Caposolatro, the founder and CEO comes on and, and issues a very sincere, quick statement like, Hey, we know that things are really serious and dire right now. And, uh, so let's acknowledge that and let's continue to work through all of that but we wanted to make sure that we still had a little bit of fun and for anyone following the channel or follow josh ai at all you'll know that they've kind of become known uh for these april fools fools jokes um and so i was actually uh happy to see this come across my feed today i

was wondering what they were going to do this year and my hat's off to them for another good one. Yeah. Yeah. It's, and I noticed there was like Google canceled their practical jokes, but this isn't really like a practical joke. This is more of like this, this is in the vein of the things that I like to see. Like it's, it's, it's a fake product. Yeah. It's satire. Exactly. This is, this is exactly up my alley. So good on them for putting this together. It is kind of funny and creative. And, uh, like, like, like you said, it's, we are, we are facing some, some tough times here around the world and it's always good to laugh during those times. So laugh when you can. Um, and this is definitely one of those times when you can do that. Cause this is, this is pretty good, pretty, pretty well put together here. Yeah. Well, well done as always. So go give that a look. If you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or ideas for a show topic or guest, give us

a shout. We'd love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at home tech.fm or visit home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. We want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. Uh, if you, if you're not able to do that, we totally understand. And you can help support the show other ways, particularly by giving us a given, reaching out and giving us a five-star review on iTunes or a positive rating

in the podcast app of your choice. We totally understand that this day and age, it's like not patron patron pledges are probably the first thing on the budget that are, that are going to get cut by people. We would just kind of want to be aware of that and extend an offer. If you've got to cut the patron pledge, we totally get that. Just so you know, we don't kick you out of the Slack chat.

You can still get in there and talk. You're not going to get kicked out. We appreciate the support when we can get it, but we totally understand when it's got to get cut off, especially this day and age. Well said. All right. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. Again, we hope you found the show helpful and relevant no matter where you are in the world. We enjoyed putting this one together. We hope you're all staying well and safe and sane in this time of social distancing and quarantine. We'll be back next week with another episode. We appreciate you tuning in. Seth, I hope you have a great weekend. Yep. Jason, have a great weekend and I'll talk to you next week. All right. Take care.