- It's no secret that main street America
has been hard hit by the pandemic.
Millions of small businesses are on the brink of closing.
We want to do our part to help keep their doors open,
so today we're launching
a new campaign called Back to Business.
(upbeat jazzy music)
♪ Back to business ♪
- I love you so much, Jessie, back to business.
All season we'll be highlighting small businesses
from coast to coast and figuring out the best ways
to support them and help them thrive.
So, I mean, wouldn't you say this is so necessary now.
- This, I mean that's.
- I know a lot of people that are out of work.
- This is, I mean, this is so powerful,
and so, it really describes what America is to me,
small businesses because it's so community driven.
and it's so gives a lot of people opportunity to
to work, to take care of their families.
And we also feel connected to the business,
the small businesses.
So I know America has a big corporation in itself,
but small businesses are the key to us thriving,
and I'm so glad you're doing,
I really honor you for doing that.
- Oh no, that's-- - Back to business.
- See, he's got, it's so catchy.
Jessie's writing hits over there.
Well we are, we are very excited to do this
because connection is important.
That's the key to our show,
and it feels good to give back and to help people.
It feels good for you,
and it also feels good when someone does that
for you when you're having a hard time.
So this is, this is why we're kicking this campaign off,
and we're doing it with a friend of the show
who you may remember from last season, here you go.
This wonderful man gave all of his employees raises.
Now they're each guaranteed to make at least $70,000 a year.
And that's not all,
he actually cut his own $1.1 million salary
to match his employees pay,
that, nobody does that.
- Nobody does that, right?
To see it first hand,
to see somebody that is unquestionably deserving
of a living wage, deserving of being able
to have health, a balanced lifestyle,
and enough resources to be able
to just live a good normal life.
You know, she's somebody who inspired me
because I saw she wasn't being provided that
when she unquestionably deserves to have it.
- Wow, I'll work for you.
(laughs) Well since that taping,
Dan's business was tested like never before.
The pandemic nearly wiped him out.
But a funny thing happened,
Dan's investment in his employees not only saved
his company in Seattle,
it had a ripple effect helping save businesses
across this whole country,
which in turn helped other businesses
that helped other businesses and so on and so forth.
The best domino effect ever.
Here to share this incredible story is
Gravity Payments, CEO, Dan Price, y'all.
(audience cheers)
Hi, what's up man, how are you doing?
- It's great to see you.
I'm doing all right.
- It's great to see you with my one eye Dan.
Well, we'll get to how you've helped
so many other businesses,
but first, when I last saw you,
your company was doing amazing.
So explain what your business does,
and what happened this year.
- Yeah, so basically we're a credit card processing company
and point of sale company.
And the way I got the idea for the business was, you know,
small businesses have so many stresses that they face,
trying to make payroll and paying so much just
to get paid on a credit card, overpaying
that didn't make sense,
and not having to figure out how to do all the different,
like tech and stuff.
So we said, we're gonna make sure to take stress away
from small businesses by figuring all that out for them.
Giving them all the apps that they need
to accept credit cards, to accept any type of payment.
And so the business was going super well.
I was super excited, and then the pandemic hit,
and we were devastated, our business evaporated.
We lost 56% of our business,
and we had three months to survive.
- So what did you tell your employees
when all of this was happening?
- Well, you know, I was thinking like, wow,
maybe this whole idea that I came up
with doesn't work, right?
I've had tons of critics who said this wasn't gonna work,
you're going to fail, and I'm thinking,
wow, maybe they're right.
And I was really honest with my employees.
I told them that we get three months to survive,
and we're gonna be out of business.
But the crazy thing was the employees came up
with an idea that was literally wild,
it blew me away.
I'd never heard it, heard of anything like it before,
and it was actually Jose who was on your show.
And as you know,
I just have the best employees
'cause you met two of them, Rosita and Jose.
And Jose brought me this idea and he said,
"Why don't we have an anonymous spreadsheet
"where basically no one knows what anybody else is doing.
"But people volunteer pay cuts
"because our employees said we can't have people
"losing their job, their income,
"and their health insurance during a pandemic."
And so Jose came to me with this idea and said,
"Why don't we see if we can all,
"you know, we won't know,
"like, I don't know what anyone else does,
"so there's no pressure and we'll figure out like,
"can we add up enough?
"Can we raise enough money to save the company?"
- I mean, did you think that it would actually work?
- I thought there was no chance,
and I got it back and it blew me away.
I was crying.
I bawled my eyes out when I saw it
because our employees on average volunteered
30% pay cuts, on average.
We even had one guy who said,
I want to work completely for free
because my family can live off of my wife's income.
And we had just everybody,
but even some people wrote they can only give a 5% pay cut.
They wrote that it was everything,
absolutely every penny they could do
because maybe their partner had just lost their job,
or they had just signed up for a mortgage or whatnot.
And so whether it was 5%, 30%, or 100%,
we had 98% of the employees.
And I think it just goes to show you that in the same way,
the pandemic and the bad economy can spread,
generosity, charity, trying to do good for other people,
just like this can spread too,
and we can be that change and spread it,
and we can solve a lot of the problems
we're facing right now, all over the country.
- If you think outside of yourself, yes.
Continue to do that.
So Dan, earlier we said this had a ripple effect.
So what happened next?
It wasn't just your company.
- Yeah, because our whole purpose of being in business is
to speak out for the little guy small business owner
that has all this stress.
And so we said,
we can have more of a difference right now
during the next 16 months,
during one of the time we're overcoming a pandemic
and trying to get these businesses back open
and back profitable,
we can make a bigger difference in the next 16 months
than we can in our entire 16 year history
of the company combined.
So even though it's scary, we got to go for it.
And our employees started working basically
around the clock, trying to get all
these small business owners open.
And it was like a situation
where they're getting them all these
pay by phone apps, pay from the car apps.
We came up with this app
where coffee shops can actually do order ahead
the same way the big companies out there can,
your mom and pop businesses can.
And also our employees stepped up
and helped all these businesses get ready
and apply for PPP loans,
so they could keep their business viable that way.
But what I really want to emphasize
that I saw was it was our employees going above and beyond,
and doing things that they're really not even supposed
to do, whatever it took just to get these
American main street community, small businesses reopened.
(audience claps) - Let's meet some
of those business owners right now.
Please welcome Sammy in Seattle and Janice in Illinois.
How y'all doing, ladies? (audience claps)
I wanna ask you,
I'll start with, Sammy, I'll start with you.
Tell us about your business and what you faced this year.
- Yeah, so I own a small cafe called the Fat Hen
in Seattle, Washington with my partner Cody,
and we're teeny tiny, intimate little space,
but you know, when COVID hit immediately,
of course we closed our doors,
and my partner and I decided we were gonna sell off all
of our, all of our food and items
and donate those proceeds to our amazing staff.
And we just didn't know what was going to happen, you know?
- Yeah, wow, well, Janice, how about you?
- Yeah, so I own Adore Bridal,
it is a bridal store in Morton, Illinois.
Owned it for, I started it nine years ago,
actually today is our nine year birthday of Adore.
(audience claps)
But the thing is, is that really what we do is,
I mean, every bride is different, right?
And every dress is different,
and it's all about finding how they fit together.
You know, the personality of the bride, the dress,
and just how it all comes together
in one beautiful puzzle piece.
We're not just a place
that you're just gonna come shopping,
but it's really about putting that puzzle together.
And it's an awesome feeling and we love what we do,
and then COVID happened.
And you get that notice that you're closed.
And I just remember like, just driving home,
and my husband's first question to me is
what are we gonna do?
And I mean, the tears just start.
'Cause the reality is is I don't,
I don't know, like, is it over?
Did we just lose everything in one moment?
Because if a bride can't come in and try on,
so lots of prayer, lots of talking, lots of crying,
lots of not sleeping, which led to the next day,
that moment that you have to sit with your staff
who you love and who are relying on you and say,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry guys,
but I don't know how long this is gonna last,
so I have to let you go.
- Yeah, and Sammy and Janice, your Dan's clients, right?
So I mean, his employees went way beyond the call
of duty to help y'all out.
So what did they do for you Sammy?
- Yeah, so I mean,
as we started to reopen and try to figure things out,
we weren't set up with online ordering or delivery
or to go, that wasn't something that we previously did.
And it was amazing because Austin, our rep stepped in
and helped us get online ordering and delivery
and all of these things that we needed going so fast.
And I am so not tech savvy.
That is the last thing that I am.
You can ask all of my staff,
I'm constantly needing help there.
And he was so like patient and there for me and in it.
And he also,
when we were just my husband and I,
stepped in to do delivery for us for free,
which, that's just beyond what his calling is, you know?
This is not something that people in payment processing do.
And it just floored me.
I was shocked, you know.
- Usually with people in payment processing,
you're avoiding the phone call.
You're like, "Oh yeah, the check's in the mail."
Yeah, that's amazing.
So Janice, why don't you share with us
how they helped you?
- Yeah, so, I mean, I'm pretty reliant
on brides walking in my doors,
brides actually putting on dresses.
So I'm over here, if they can't come in and do it,
I got to get dresses to them.
So I'm the idea person.
I had this crazy idea, and I said,
"Well, I mean, I got the idea, but how
"in the world is it gonna come together
"to actually be something?"
So my team took some of it,
but my first phone call was to Emily, with Gravity.
And I said, "Hey, this is what I want to do,
"but I don't know how to actually do that."
So I want to get dresses to people,
but like a tech side of it,
credit card payments, forms to fill out,
all of the things, what in the world.
And so she's just like, "Janice, I love it."
She just immediately, there was no hesitation.
It was like, let's make this happen and let's do it fast.
So whole new business model in two days,
within two days, we were shipping boxes
of bridal gowns out to brides all across the country.
And I'm telling you, it saved my business.
That was above and beyond for me.
- I mean, God dang, you must be so proud of your employees.
- I am so proud,
and they weren't just hire tirelessly
to get thousands of small businesses
across the United States reopen.
I mean, they really deserve all the credit.
And in fact, they worked so hard on it,
we were able to recover as a business,
get back to break even,
and we paid back all of the pay cuts
to all the employees that they've given.
And so it's just such a wonderful--
- That's amazing.
(audience claps)