most people just often have never heard of a micro business [Music] my name is danielle smith and i am the ceo of soundbat we are husband and wife team we run austin's first cut-to-order cheese shop [Music] we like to think of lost republic as representing the california spirit being independent being a little bit different [Music] in the 21st century alone we've had three major economic shocks dot com bus the great recession of 2008 and we're in the midst of the economic upheaval of covet 19. tracing back the impact of micro businesses we can see that communities that had a higher than average number of ventures withstood these shocks far better in communities that did not [Music] ventures are directly associated with helping drop unemployment rates this effect held through covet 19 communities when they had more ventures would start seeing a decline in low income job loss the ventures helped buffer and mitigate against the effects of over 19.
doing that little bit of payroll that i do makes me so happy because i know i'm circulating money in our communities and our homes and our families i make sure that i'm not just hiring transplants or just coming in and out all my employees and everybody who's around me is part of the community we also found that communities with a higher than average number of ventures also had higher levels of prosperity and when we look at prosperity we're looking at a combination of effects whether it be migration patterns whether it be lack of poverty whether it be graduation rates many of these businesses are the lifelines in their communities for jobs creating incomes for others [Music] our study of micro businesses also helped us understand the unique needs of macro businesses when i started i really didn't know what i was doing i did everything i did the bookkeeping i did everything if you don't have access to capital how do you fund your ideas how do you finance your ideas a lot of clients that we work with need help with cash flow management just making sure you have enough to cover the expenses of the business i don't know what i'm how i'm going to make any money what i'm going to do but all i know is i'm going to create this community migrant businesses are everywhere for having a positive impact across all borders across all ethnicities across all economic classes all of our data and insights are publicly available and we want to arm policy makers so that they can make the decisions and help these ventures their communities take more root and thrive further we want to get americans back to work businesses need to be ready so they can employ them and so our hope is to tailor our gift to serve the community and change it for the better