Inspiring Entrepreneurs: Episode 1
Sara Munro: Hi, good morning everyone. And welcome welcome all of our Vermont small businesses. This is the first episode of inspiring entrepreneurs, the live show and podcast. We're here for you, where you are listening and where you are with starting and growing your small business by introducing you to some of the people and the resources to help you with your business so that you aren't by yourself as you're working for yourself.
My name is Sara Munro. I'm the coordinator of the Community Navigator Pilot Program at the Vermont Small Business Development Center. Before I introduce our guest, I want to say hello to all of our audience members who are listening to us live on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and also those If you're live, please ask questions.
And if you're watching the replay, please add questions to the comments section with the hashtag replay. And we'll be sure [00:01:00] to follow up with you, your questions. And of course we want to say hello to all of our podcast listeners too, because this is becoming a podcast. This series is sponsored by a grant from the small business administration.
And we just want to say that the views expressed and resources presented aren't necessarily those of the SBA. And so now let's get started. I want to introduce our very first guest and Emily McDonnell from the Vermont attorney general's office consumer assistance program. Hello Emily.
Emily McDonnell: Hi Sara. Thank you so much for having me I'm, so honored to be the first guest
Sara Munro:
It's exciting. This is something we've wanted to do for a while to introduce people to the The names, the faces behind the agencies and the resources so that it's a little more approachable. I mean, especially your, your department. You're, you're with the Vermont Attorney General's office. And yet your program is very one on one.
Yeah, absolutely. And so your title is business advocate. So why don't you tell us about the work that you do?
Emily McDonnell: Yeah, absolutely. You're, you're so right, by the way, it's, it's so important. I think when we're trying to navigate, I think any resource for small businesses, but especially sort of these like, Big state agencies.
One of the things that I really always tried to do is make it seem as small as can be, which is that you can pick up the phone and just actually talk to me. And it seems scary to access the attorney general's office, maybe, but maybe hopefully not so scary to pick up the phone and give me a call.
And so my, my job at the attorney general's office is. The small business advocate and I work in the consumer assistance program. So every day I get to help small businesses with their consumer related problems. I mediate complaints for small businesses. I help with scam education resources.
And to be honest with you, Sara, one of the biggest parts of my job is just helping getting people to Businesses in the right place because as we know navigating really any resource, but especially when you need to contact what's the right state agency, if you need an employment form, or if you're trying to figure out the answer to your question, but maybe it's not online, one of the, the resources that I get to provide in my job is sort of acting as a like a referral, like air traffic control, almost.
to some other resources in the state that might not be as approachable or like common knowledge, anything like that. Yeah. And I, and I, one of the, I think the best parts of my job is I get to work with businesses on compliance as well. There's all of these sort of rules and regulations and it can be kind of scary.
And so I get to either work with businesses directly to help them find answers. If it's something that the attorney general's office does, or if someone's just trying to say, Hey, I want to make sure I'm like crossing my T's and dotting my I's. How do I do this? Getting to work with businesses in that way.
So it's kind of a wide range of things, but that's, that's the overview of what I do.
Sara Munro: Sure. So let's unpack a few terms that you used there. You used words consumer and Compliance. Yes. So what does it mean when a business is a consumer? What, what does that mean?
Emily McDonnell: So one of the reasons why I love our state of Vermont is because in the state of Vermont, Businesses, small businesses which we know the majority of businesses here are small businesses and the majority of small businesses are very small.
And they're protected in our they're protected as consumers under Vermont law, which is so crucial and important. Because [00:05:00] we know that small businesses are really vulnerable to All of the same problems that us as individual consumers are vulnerable to and because small businesses are protected as consumers, it really allows us to help them in the same way that we could help an individual the word consumer even when I started this role, I think having a good understanding, it's not always Thank you.
So the really overly simple example that I give that I always say I wish all of my work was as simple as this, my job would probably be easier. But if you're a small business and you need to buy paper towels for your bathroom or for your kitchen, For any aspect of your business and you go to paper towels dot com and you buy 50 rolls of paper and you get 25, but you're charged for 50 that's you being a consumer in a, in a transaction and you're being taken advantage of.
And so that's where our office can, can help. And again, It's a very simple example, but that's kind of the one that I like to give. So you're a consumer when you're, when you're purchasing something, not for, for resale basically.
Sara Munro: Okay. And use the word compliance. So for people who may not be familiar with that term or, or may not speak English as a first language, or maybe younger, we work with a lot of young people, even high school students.
What does compliance mean? I mean, rules, regulations, what, what does all that mean?
Emily McDonnell: Compliance is like following the rules and following the laws. And so I think an example is if we have a new law that, that gets created, a new rule, something that businesses need to follow. Compliance is making sure you understand the law and, and making sure that you can act in accordance.
And I think one of the reasons why my position was created about seven years ago, I think, is because we really wanted to bridge that gap between like the attorney general's office is creating this rule and businesses have to follow it. That's really scary. And there are so many different there might be new rules that come up, you might not know.
One of the reasons why my job was created is to really bridge that gap is to not say business, you have to do this. And if you don't X, Y, Z thing will happen. It's to say, Hey, can we check in to make sure that you have all the information that you need, that you're aware of this, that how you can be compliant, how you can follow the rules.
And if you have questions, ask them and you can ask them to me. And, and we want to be able to help. Help businesses. We call it a culture of compliance. We want to create this space where businesses can feel like they can come and ask me questions about something.
Sara Munro: That's great. And I'll put a little plug in for this series.
Coming up, we are going to talk to people from Vermont law and graduate school, we'll be talking to people from center for [00:08:00] women enterprise. And especially this month of March, we're recording this in March of 2020. There are new rules out. And so our friends from Vermont law, we're going to talk about some compliance issues around business entities and setting those up through the secretary of state's office and our friends from center for women in enterprise are going to talk about some new federal rules to that small businesses need to file.
So there's a lot. And like you said, you're, you. Part of your job is just helping direct people to the right people?
Emily McDonnell: Yeah, totally. With all different state agencies and federal agencies, you just sort of listed some things. Some of, some of it doesn't have to necessarily do with our office or I wouldn't be able to answer those specific questions, but it's, Hey, let's chat with someone at the secretary of states or, or let me make sure you're getting to the right website so that you can take a look and read that. That’s really how we want to create that sort of. That culture of compliance and really an open, like understanding and relationship.
And I want to be able to answer people's questions, really when they have them.
Sara Munro: It sounds like your job is really one on one. To say that Emily does exactly this every time isn't really, isn't really the case.
Emily McDonnell: that's, that's so true. So, so many we always sort of joke in our office because it seems like every situation that I have that comes up that we're trying to problem solve, it's always different.
And I, and I always say that there's never other members of my office in the consumer assistance program, they're helping individuals. They're helping people who maybe have home improvement issues or auto issues or propane issues. And those are all can be individual in general, but really what we've noticed in, in, in our office is that these small business issues tend to be extremely specific and always different.
Which really makes sense, I think. So I kind of, I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel every time, but that's also one of, I think the best parts of my job I really enjoy.
Sara Munro: Well, if you were to talk about trends or some common problems that you see, or we can even talk about what are some things that you're looking out for businesses and things that businesses should be thinking about now.
Emily McDonnell: Yeah, we can get into it. And I'll say it's National Consumer Protection Week this week, which is exciting. And we just released We just had a press release go out on Monday and it included our top 10 most common complaints. And it also included our first ever, the Consumer Assistance Program's first ever annual report.
And so that's exciting for us. We've never done something like that before and you can find that on our website. And the great thing is that that includes a lot of trends and a lot of data and a lot of information. So I will talk a little bit about it. And if folks want to learn more that's a great resource.
Sara Munro: We'll be sure to, we'll be sure to get that and we'll post it in the show notes for this, which will come up on our website and also in the descriptions on YouTube.
Emily McDonnell: So I'd love to talk about some complaints that we have or some trends that we have with small businesses who have complaints against other businesses.
And one of the services that we offer And the consumer assistance program is a letter mediation service. So Sara, if you were, if you bought 50 rolls of paper towels for your business and you only got 25, you can come right to me. You file a complaint. You said you can say paper towels.
com only gave me 25 rolls. And I would like my money back whatever it may be. And I get to take your complaint and send it to the business. And we really engage in a mediation and that's a big chunk of, of what we do. And so when we get all of these complaints in we're, we're tracking what's the biggest issue for small businesses?
What are businesses contacting me about saying, I need help with this/ I need help. This year we had two sort of top complaint categories that we saw again and again, and that's banking credit and finance complaints, and that's entertainment related complaints. Banking, credit and finance.
Think about your credit card processing equipment, merchant services. A huge part of running a small business and we see a lot of problems with that. And with entertainment, that's your website, that's your Facebook page, that's different services online during the pandemic. Every business had to really get online and we've seen pretty consistently some problems pop up for small businesses in that way.
And then we have things like commercial contracting. So you hire a contract to do work on your business. Retail related complaints. That's that paper towel scenario. I was giving commercial vehicles. You buy a car for your business and something happens. These are consumer complaints that we also see for individuals, but those are some of the top ones for businesses.
It can be difficult to say, here's how we can avoid these things from happening. It's hard to it can be really hard to have sort of some practical tools to say, yeah, engage with this business. And here's how, here's how to not lose money. Because there's two parties going on and it can be difficult, but some of the general suggestions we give and what I give to businesses is review that contract. It can be hard. There's fine print. You don't want to do it. It's a million pages long, but really you want to make sure what you're getting into, especially with those banking credit and finance complaints.
A lot of times businesses will contact me because they are buying some credit card processing equipment. So like something that you put on your storefront and they're sort of like a subscription and all of a sudden, oh my goodness, I'm in a three year long contract and I had no idea.
And I don't want to be, I don't want to pay a hundred dollars a month for the next three years. And so really reviewing that contract, looking for the fine print is super important. Working with reputable businesses. This is something that you and I talk about a lot, Sara, but we really want to create a community with other small businesses too.
So reach out to your small business friends, say, Hey, have you, have you worked with this? What do you use to process credit card payments? And do you like it? And can you connect with someone? I can't tell you often the problem. And, this is sometimes where I, A lot of times I will have a small business who's like, I'm being overcharged and it's clear and I can't get in contact with anyone at the business.
I just keep getting redirected and it's wasting time. And these businesses can't afford to sit on the phone for five hours. And so one of the ways that I step in. Is okay. Let's have the attorney general's office contact this business and see if we can get a response. And sometimes it is something as easy as that.
But those are some general things. I think working with reputable, reputable businesses. Really knowing what you're getting into. Read that contract, read reviews. Google business. Tell you how often I'll work with the business and we'll say, okay, something fishy is going on with this business.
Let's just look it up really quickly. And you see the reviews and it's really reflective of the situation that they're going through.
Sara Munro: With the caution that, sometimes TikTok university and YouTube university or Yelp reviews. Sometimes that, that could be a misrepresentation too.
So it's really important to reach out to people like you, people at the law school, people at SBA. There's so many of us. around here to help people out. And that's part of the series is to introduce you to folks like Emily. As you're thinking about, as you're talking about this, it seems like high expertise level that you have.
So what's the cost?
Emily McDonnell: Oh, it's free. Thank you, Sara. My goodness. Yes. Our services are a hundred percent free to everyone. Any small business in Vermont no matter how big or how small please, please contact our office and we really, really want to help you. And we help nonprofits.
I help farmers. I help folks who maybe have like a resale business on, on, on like Facebook or eBay or another platform. Even if you're not registered as a business in the state of Vermont, but you're engaging in a small business practice or you're on your way to getting registered, you're trying to start your business, whatever it may be, we really want to make it clear like we, if you're a consumer and you have a problem, We will help you.
And it's completely.
Sara Munro: That's great. And let's also shout out to our sole proprietors to those solo preneurs, as we like to call them the solo entrepreneurs, which make up about 90 percent of our businesses. And, and many of them aren't registered as businesses. These are folks who are working side hustles and they can still come to you.
Emily McDonnell: Absolutely. Yes. And something I want to say, Sara, is that I think I work with a lot of solo entrepreneurs because this is not a legal service. I'm not an attorney. I can't give legal advice. There are certainly situations where business comes to me and I say, you need to go contact Vermont law school.
Or I really think that you maybe need to speak to an attorney because this is a legal issue. Having said that. So many of the folks who contact me don't have time, money, capacity, whatever it may be to call up a lawyer. And sort of try to get their problem solved that way. And so we want to make it clear that not a legal service.
We're not replacing legal assistance in any way. We're going to try to help you solve your problem. And I think a lot of times it can just be really frustrating to try to solve your problem on your own. If you're a solo entrepreneur, you don't have time for that. And so we definitely want to encourage folks to, to reach out.
Yeah. If they need it.
Sara Munro: And you're setting up perfectly for episode two when Nicole Kalorin is going to talk to us about how the law school works with with small businesses for free too. It's such a
Emily McDonnell: great service. And I, and really, and truly, I, we, we feel a lot of, a lot of times we'll, I'll help a business with a particular situation and I'll say, And you should go talk to Nicole and her amazing, and her amazing team.
I'm referring lots of folks that way, yeah.
Sara Munro: Exactly, exactly. So, but let's stay focused on today. Are there any other things about Consumer Protection Week or what the Vermont Attorney General's office is doing this year that you'd like to close out the show with?
Emily McDonnell: I would love to just touch on scams really quickly if that's okay.
Sara Munro: Yes, please.
Emily McDonnell: And we can, we can sort of end on this. Scams, which again is a sort of like big scary topic, is maybe something that folks might know my office for more because a lot of times you might hear in the news we put out scam reports and the idea of scams is sort of really present right now because so many people are impacted by this issue.
Something that I cannot emphasize enough is that small businesses Are impacted by scams. And if you think that you're too small of a business for a scammer to try and get money from you or your personal information, really, we want to push that anyone, if you have a phone, if you have an email, if you have a physical mailing address anywhere, you can be vulnerable to a scam.
And I work with small businesses who may have experienced a scam or an attempted scam. And I would love to just push really quickly what we, what we saw this year in 2023 a couple of really repeat types of scams. That's would be a fake order of goods and services. This happens a lot to the micro businesses that we see, which is you're a small seller and someone contacts you and they say, I want to place an order for X, Y, Z thing.
But, I'm gonna send you a check, but could you send me back some money? Or my Venmo is broken, or there might be some sort of attempt for you to send them money and for them to send you money, or maybe it's a third party situation. We get a lot of fake order of goods and services, so we want businesses to really work to ensure that the customers that you're working with are legitimate.
If something seems fishy, pause. Stop. Think about it. Hop on the phone if you can. Use dual authentication. We say that in a really general term, which is like, if, if someone is emailing you and it's from an email that you don't recognize, like, Go give them a call as well. Try to check in and see if you can verify the legitimacy of a person.
So you have fake orders of goods and services is one imposter scams for businesses is really, really where we see money get lost as well. That's Sara, you and I are working together in a business. Let's say you're the owner of the business and I am the secretary, I am the office admin, I am the finance person, and a scammer is going to take your email signature, an email that looks stupid, Just like yours and just one letter off maybe and they're going to say, Hey, Emily I really need you to send this payment to X, Y, Z place.
It's urgent. Please do it right away. Or I need you to update my direct deposit information so I can get my paycheck. I have a new bank account, so wire my direct deposit to X, Y, Z account. These seem simple, but they really are where we see impact for businesses. So again, dual authentication.
Sara, if you're emailing me about anything finance related, you want me to send you any money or send money anywhere? I want to hop on the phone with you to double check. I want to walk down the hallway to our office and say, Hey, did you send that? Is this your email or anything like that?
Sara Munro: I've heard the electric company scam calls from electric companies. And busy office managers just think, Oh, we missed the check. Didn't reach or something. Are you hearing that?
Emily McDonnell: Yeah, and when it's when it's a utility company, that's actually a hacked or hijacked phone is the third most popular scam that we have.
So this is an example of like an electric company getting their phone hijacked. So it looks like, Oh, the electric company is calling you. It really looks that way. And that's a real problem for small businesses because. If you don't have electricity in your business, you're not running your business.
And so one of the things we need to know is know your vulnerabilities. That is going to put you in a heightened state. If you're getting a call and someone is saying the electricity is going to be turned off in your business. Today, please pay XYZ amount. That's going to make us want to act really quickly.
And so one of the things that we really emphasize is really slow down. If someone is asking you for money urgently, quickly, immediately, any of these things that we really encourage businesses to slow down. We encourage education. If you have employees, you are only as strong as your weakest link.
So who's fielding those calls? Who runs the inbox? Let's make sure we have the conversation, understand what scams are coming up for, for small businesses. And yeah, we really want to work on, on protecting businesses. And if you have questions about scams, if you get a really funky email and you're not sure what's going on, email me, call me.
I will, I will help. In that way. And if for some reason you find yourself the victim of a scam, if you've lost money, you think you've lost personal information, like your EIN number account numbers, anything like that please report it to our office and we will help get you in the right place for other federal agencies to report that as well.
Sara Munro: Great. Now you talked about the first and the third, did we skip over a second? Or do you want to touch on that?
Emily McDonnell: Fake order of goods and services. That's number one for for 2023. The imposter of a business personnel is number two. So that's that fake email. And number three is having a hacked or hijacked phone.
So someone's, It's calling, representing your business, essentially the top three. Yeah.
Sara Munro: And it comes through as text too. I've been getting a lot of texts, your order, verify your order. It's the UPS it's UPS or yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Emily McDonnell: The shipping carrier and they want you to click. And again, these are all things.
In my office, I work with businesses and that's sort of my mini little my like sub department, but we, we know that these scams impact us as individuals all the time. And I think we're thinking about that more. And something we really want to emphasize is that in the way that we maybe think about, oh, I could be scammed as an individual on Craigslist or Facebook.
from getting a text on my phone that really applies to your business and to small businesses. Unfortunately, there are bad actors out there who are trying to get your money or your personal information from your small business. So I would just encourage people to, to think in that way and to think about how you would protect your business.
In the same way that we think about, Oh, I'm not clicking on that link. I know that this is a scam or you might be has for me. I'm like, if anyone calls me now on my cell phone and I don't have them as a contact, I'm like, I'm not picking that up.
Sara Munro: My carrier, every phone that comes through on my carrier that says suspected spam.
Yeah. Yeah. We really want that.
Emily McDonnell: We want that to carry over for small businesses too. And just to know your business is not too small to be scammed. Any business can be a victim of a scam.
Sara Munro: Yeah. I love that. Your, your business is not too small to be scammed. So yeah. I hear it
Emily McDonnell: all. People will say on the phone, I had no idea that this could have even happened to my business.
Or I don't know, why would a business want to scam me? I don't have a million dollars in the bank that they're trying to take out scams and really can come out from all different angles. Yeah. And if people want to learn more about scams, I'd be impacting their business.
You can take a look at our website. The federal trade commission has a website. Amazing information and resources. You can send resources to your business. You can put up like informational pamphlets around the office for your employees. I would really recommend that folks check out our office for Vermont scams and check out the federal trade commission for like cyber security for small businesses.
I mean, they have everything there.
Sara Munro: Yeah. Yeah, well, that's great. Well, that leads to our last question of the day is that how do people find all of this information? So what is the actual website address? We'll say it for our folks watching the video, but we'll also put them into the show notes and certainly folks who are listening on the podcast.
Emily McDonnell: Yeah, absolutely. So for any of the resources that I just mentioned, how to file a complaint with our office, how to get information on scams, even some compliance information, if you have any questions like that, go ahead to our website, which is
It's a pretty friendly website, I would say and then if you have any questions, anything like that, my email, which I'm sure we'll, we'll get out to everyone is ago. At vermont.gov. And so I would absolutely recommend to take a look at that, save it like on your browser. It's one of those things that you don't think that you need until you really need.
So I, I hope that folks remember that I can be a resource to folks in the Attorney General's office, can be a resource to businesses. We have like a, a helpline and anybody can call that at any time and it's. 800 649 2424. It's all over our website. So yeah, please call if, if you need any help or you have questions from what you heard today, happy to assist.
Sara Munro: Great. And we'll be sure to put all of that information into our show notes so that folks can find you. And thank you so much, Emily. Thank you for being here for today. And thank you here for being here for Vermont Small Businesses every day. And we want to thank everybody for joining us today and for listening and watching, and we'll see you next week.
Emily McDonnell: Thank you so much, Sara. Thanks. Bye.
