i would like to welcome you. this is the small business week's 15th anniversary. san francisco hosts the largest small business in san francisco. 15 years ago we started with a small reception at city hall and a couple of classes at the chamber of commerce with the small business administration. now we have grown to a full week of activity with this wonderful evening and our business organization hosting mixers. make sure you attend those and workshops throughout the week. i would like to acknowledge our small business commissioners who are in the room tonight. we have our small business commission president stephen adams, vice president mark dwight and commissioners william ortiz an and and irene. they are your representatives in city hall. please stand. [applause.] thank you to our sponsors and hosts committee members. each year we partner to work hard to support and engage small businesses. this is 100% sponsor funded. please take a moment to visit our sponsors at the table and i would like to make a special acknowledgment to the bank of america, inspire sf is comcast business, inspire sf catering partnerlicacyna. the city view san francisco municipal transportation agency and wells fargo. we have many more. you can find everybody out and hopefully you have been meeting and talking to them. also, in our printed program. this event would not be possible without the host organizations and all of the staff of our host organizations. please stand up. (applause). so again, this evening would not be possible without our inspire sf sponsor. i would like to welcome comcast, enterprise sales manager. comcast has been a to be sponsor of the event. please welcome donna to the stage. [applause.] >> thank you, regina. good evening. i am donna ragsdale, enterprise sales manager for comcast business focused on san francisco and the peninsula. it is our great pleasure to be a sponsor, one of the presenting sponsors for this event. we participated in this event almost since the inception 15 years ago. we will continue that mission because we believe in helping small businesses grow. we are focused on providing the most innovative solutions, award-winning products and superior customer service so your business can run without hiccups. one thing people don't know about comcast is that we started off as a small business. in 1963, the founder of our company, ralph roberts, bought a very small cable company. that company had 1200 subscribers. ralph and his team had a vision and a goal to grow so he sent people out and they were pulling cable through fields, along fences to provide service to connecting communities and from there we have grown organically and also through acquisition of other cable providers. today we are a technology company. we provide high-speed internet for small business and enterprise organizations as well as several national organizations. we provide voice services and products to suit any size business needs. we have a new product called smart office. please before you leave stop by the booth and we will demo that product. we have other products that are fantastic for backup. we have connection pro so if your internet goes down your service wouldn't go down. we have wi-fi pro which is a great tool that including marketing analysis that costs less than a dollar per day. you can help drive people to your business. so today i want to say that i am very proud to say we have 22 million customers. we have grown from 1200 to 22 million and we are the number one internet service provider in the united states. no applause? (applause). thank you. thank you for being here. we really appreciate being partners withinspire sf, and weep lope that you -- o we hope you enjoy the evening. i want to bring regina back to the stage. thank you so much. >> thank you, donna. thank you, comcast for your continued support. now, i am pleased to welcome the new president and c.e.o. of the san francisco chamber of commerce. rodney is a fourth generation from san francisco. he has an extensive civic background including serving on the planning commission for eight years. rodney's time on the planning commission he demonstrated the understanding and needs and challenges of small business. i am excited he is bringing that to the san francisco chamber of commerce and here today as he introduces an amazing panel of businesses. rodney, welcome to the stage. [applause.] >> thank you and welcome to small business week. [applause.] as mentioned, i am rodney. i am the president of the chamber of commerce. my entire background is in small business and running a wax museum at fisherman's wharf for 50 years. anyone that can keep the wax museum alive for 50 years must know about marketing sales. i am excited to talk about pros and cons of small business. we know how difficult and challenging and rewarding that is. control of your time and challenge of seasonal help and figuring out the seasonality of each of the businesses here. i am going to introduce or panellests. first is the great introduction. robin fisher the founder of smitten ice cream. it was founded in 20007. it is the freshest most flavor full ice cream ever known. she bega bebegan immersing -- ss the focus on the shelf life and invented a machine to infect turning -- to use liquid nitrogen. she put it on the map with her first custom built trademark on the radio flyer wagon and started selling the ice cream on the streets in san francisco and built a difficult like following. then it was the first shop in hayes valley in 2011. with seven shops and in los angeles she is the freshest if not the best ice cream on earth and featured from wood and wine to forbes, tech crunch. she is sitting the bar for the perfect scoop. please help me welcome robin. [applause.] >> number two. jay foster, chef and c.e.o. come on up. director of black rabbit hospitality. not only stylist he creates businesses that revolve around hospitality entertainment and specializes in seasoned experiences and taste full design. his businesses include blue jaycjaycafe, little skillet ands been blessed as the founder and represents full food. welcome jay. >> thank you. (applause). >> our third panelist is heidi gibson. i love this. commander in cheese. the american grilled cheese kitchen. welcome, heidi. she has lived in the bay area for over 25 years. splits her time between working in tech as she builds software for small businesses and owns and operates the american grilled cheese kitchen. she took five years off to open the local restaurant chain the american grilled cheese which she owns with her husband. she published two cookbooks and is on the board of the center. a nonprofit that has coached hundreds of business owners how to start and grow their dream businesses. she has a bachelors and fashionters in engineering -- batch -- bachelors and masters. >> co-founder of assembly hall. ron worked in corporate retail for more than 15 years. he has worked on various merchandising development roles for bay area taylors like gap, levis, pottery barn. he has worked in action sports and played roles for paul frank. he met his wife while working for the gap. they have had various roles at banana republic. after years of chasing gigs between san francisco and orange county they would take their expertise in retail stores, product development and open the business in san francisco. they have a second store on fillmore street. please help me welcome ron. [applause.] >> we were backstage and ron and his wife trisha have the baby that is now the shop baby. it is important to have a shop baby. that is with retail seeing how families operate. my background in family business is appreciated by a lot of customers that enjoy the store. a couple questions then we will open up to questions and answers and dialogue. question one owning a small business is hard. what keeps you inspired day in and out? maybe we will start down the line with robin. >> sure, you guys keep me inspired. it is a pleasure to sit in one of my stores and just listen and hear the joy and that is what keeps me going every day. i receive people to my team. people are everything. thanthank you for helping keep s alive. >> what keeps you inspired? >> mostly my bills keep me inspired. you know, it has got to be the people. your passion, what you love. otherwise, you know, you are in my position where it is all about the bills. it is your passion and for me it is food and cooking. >> commander in cheese. >> i will add that our employees are a big part of our inspiration. we have a number of folks with us for a very long time for seven or eight year -- seven or eight years. watching their lives evolve and being part of them being able to stay in the bay area is a big reward for us. >> i am the same with everyone on the panel. people drive us and inspire us with our store. business transactions are great. they pay bills, keep the lights on. it is the human transaction to know the customers, who they are, what they are shopping for and when they are regulars. harlow is, too. >> we live in this beautiful city full of big business and small business and art and culture. if you had to give any advice and each of you have different businesses. three out of four are food related. what separates san francisco? if you had to give advice to somebody thinking about a business, wants to live their dream, are afraid, what advice would you give them about opening or running a small business in san francisco? >> robin sounded like she wanted to answer that question. what tip to give to people wanting to open a business in san francisco? san francisco is a very unique place and it is from a food perspective filled with people who love food. that is part of what you are all about. can i pass? >> i have noticed san francisco seems to reward authenticity. no yourself, be yourself and do research and try to understand how can you be a little different than everything else out there and be unique and authentic in what you do. that goes a long way. then carry that through everything you do. to a restaurant it is not just the food is unique. you outsource the design and the food and hospitality and everything needs to work together to create the unique experience. same in a retail store or any other business. figure out what that is that you can hang your hat on and own. just commit to it. >> i do agree. i kind of fell into like a snowball of what became smitten. it is how it was evolving and getting to the next milestone to see if it would work, and i think that authenticity is implicit in all of our businesses. you can tell, i think. san franciscans can tell that is a good business model. it is apparent it is a fake that i think it is what yo you have o love what you do. i started by myself. there was a long climb to figure out how to make it work. the thing i learned that san francisco or non-san francisco is important is rather than worrying not dropping any balls, figuring out which balls are rubber and which are glass. drop the rubber ones. >> one other thing i think i would throw on there is that every small business is part of a community. definitely to a restaurant. people think we compete with some restaurant across town, we don't. we don't compete with the restaurant across the street. it is part of the whole community to get to know your community. if you are a retail business get to know everybody around you because it is critical to success. if you are service get to know other people doing the same businesses because you are part of the whole community. it can reinforce itself to help you succeed and grow. >> we talk success. it is easy to build a store but more unique to build the story. we are small and unique and carry things you can't find at-largery tails. we found our niche. we worked with one brand and it evolved from that. customers are more invested in the product we carry. we found our niche there and we bring it through everything you do. touching on the whole competing and things. i believe in not competition but co-option. bring something unique to the table and something different. when we opened the store on fillmore our good friends are brookland circus. we hit them every month to ask what the neighborhood was like, what customers do they get? at the end of the day if a customer is shopping for a specific look or price point, we send them that way. if their price points are out of range, they would send people to our store. it is about knowing the community and thousand you can leverage best -- how you can leverage best practices and strength. >> on the authenticity. i agree san francisco and customers demand that. when it comes to making or purchasing your products, how important are ingredients and sourcing local or knowing the story behind ingredients and where that machinery came from? i am sure customers ask you that. >> it is critical. our goal is to turn-out a fresh product. we are making everything in the morning for what is eaten that day. local matters because it tastes better and we can get it that day. we know where everything comes from. i started this because i felt like ice cream was an industrial product and i wanted it to be fresh. we are manufacturing our machinery in california. it is like local, local, local, local. that footprint is so much lighter than on any other ice cream company that i am aware of except in italy. they love italians to come to smitten. it is the only ice cream they eat in the u.s. they taste the difference in the freshness. >> that is great. ingredients are huge when it comes to food in san francisco. it is a special community and people have a high standard for what they like, what they like to wear, eat, do every day. being part of the community and authentic in yourself and your business helps you identify what community you can serve and what community that you are going to respond to and identify with. ingredients are everything. >> for us to be completely honest what we found was that across three different stores in san francisco the customer interest in the story in sourcing ingredients varied. in one location it was common for people to ask where the chicken come from. our downtown locations which are faster turnaround don't get a lot of those questions. i think it is just a faster turnaround audience. we source what we can locally but honestly not every product that we need is made locally. our philosophy beyond that is that we try to work with organizations that have philosophies that we can support. we work with a farmer owned cooperative in oregon that support the local communities. we choose products to stand up and be proud of. we can't always do local everything we do. >> our ingredients are different, t-shirts and things like that. 50 to 65% are local designers based in san francisco. some are still manufactured in san francisco. we have a great community. some of the designers we carry. judith is hanging out at the shop doing her own reserve to see what people are looking at. it is great she is there to talk to the customers. you see this interaction with the brands we carry. there is a more sense of investment. they can talk to the people behind the brand. we have a good friend peter one of the local guys. he will be in the store dropping off product and shipping things out and picking things up. he will help out customers, also. customers love to put the face behind the brand. we do our small production. there is a cost associated with it. it can't be expensive. we are fortunate to partner with the brands we carry and the way of producing to cut the costs. we would love to make our own things, too, to keep it local. if you need me or trisha, we are there 95% of the time. local we are one of the few businesses where you will meet the people behind the brand in the store. stick around. >> this is about scaling your business. each of you have more than one location. i know when i was offering my small business, you know, you are busy doing everything and jack of all trades. for me i had to dedicate time to think about growth, think about sourcing vendors and getting professional help because i kind of got caught up into i think i can do that. you have to reach out. thathat is a a big learning curo reach out to friends or a bank. i am curious if that is deliberate for you. did you have a network within your college group to depend on, actant or attorney or did you have to go out and recognize that you need help and you couldn't do it yourself? >> i happen to know most folks up here started businesses with partners, too. i think that is an interesting topic in apri in in april of it. it was helpful to divide and conquer. when we were contemplating opening a second location, one person for the primary to free up the time for the second person to scout the locations and manage the locations. once we got to the point where we couldn't do everything. that was a moment where we had to give up control and realize we had to hire people to run the stores for us, which was and is an ongoing challenge to give up that control annual trust other people to carry your brand and vision. >> that is the hard part. what do you decide to give up and give to somebody else and trust somebody else to do? when do you trust somebody else to do something they do it as good as you are? unless it is an accountant or lawyer or some initials that you just don't have. that is probably the most important point about scales is paying the right people that have those letters behind their names to do it in the right way. >> if you don't find that person the first time it does not mean you fail. >> fails is going to happen. -o happen. >> just a quick context. i started with a machine i made in the basement on a radio flier wagon selling ice cream on the street illegally. >> that was me. my goal was to do it legally it was 2009 and i didn't have any money. it cost so much money to do a food truck and there are only so many permits. ir was like i am going to use twitter and go to the park and go here is the fresh ice cream. find me before the cons find me. that is what i did the first year. it was amazing because so many community members. i said here is my story. >> did that work with the cops? story for later. the small business association and i had a health inspector who took me under his wings. i said i want to do this but the law is not, it doesn't work for entrepreneurs who don't have private equity money before them and that is not most of us. they actually like i had -- they knew i was doing what i was doing because it was my only option and they helped me figure it out. a guy i had monthly meetings where i was like coming in and being transparent. i went to the courthouse and told my story and built my first location in heys valley. it needed city approval. i sat in that parking lot just giving away ice cream to open my first store. i felt so lucky i could break the rules and tell people to break the rules because i couldn't follow the rules and they helped me. i think that that like the outreached hand helped me in the recession help me start a accident is something i am grateful for. i am grateful for the community that gathered because they cared about the food i was bringing to the city. i couldn't figure out at that time how to do it through the storefront. i couldn't do it without the various steer departments. i had no retail food background. i had no idea what to do. they held my hand. >> there is a there. people don't realize how many people want you to succeed. the city wants you to succeed, all of these organizations want you to succeed. people in your neighborhood want you to succeed and asking for help will take you a long way. we consciously strip mined the resources we could find. we took classes and we went to score and renaissance center and everywhere to get help. we went to every city department and found that people are helpful and supportive in doing the outreach was helpful to head offish shoes down the road. >> it took us 7 years to open the second store. a reason for that we were ready three years later. she was pregnant at the time. it was dealing with cost negotiations and it wasn't the deal. we focused on the pregnancy. after that i was still in the corporate world and getting the second shop up and going was something we wanted to do. also out of necessity. we felt we were strong on fillmore street. we can take this and really get a new audience. finding the location was different and fun. when we opened the first store we were scrappy. we went to the workshops and things like that. i will be transparent. when we got married we had a monetary fund from wedding activities. maybe buy a house or property. then it was let's make retail experience different. we invested ourselves in the store. when we opened up the second shop, the public route we did the loan and did some crowd funding there. >> we had the renaissance and we will put it foe better use. there were things to do ourselves. we also had to look and say we are not pros in this particular field of growing the business. take a step back and find the right people to help us get there. >> it is understanding what you are good and strong at and what can you do to find the people in the right place to help you get there. i want to open up to questions. this is an important piece. it is delivery of food to the last question. do you see the home deliveries, delivery services, posts as a threat and are you taking advantage of that? that is something that is a creative innovation we don't want to make. just as when someone wanted to help you. how do we live together with that? an important piece is all of us recognize the city streets, sidewalks, we want people out and about engaging on our neighborhood commercial districts and getting sunshine and ice cream. there is a fine balance. maybe you can talk about delivery services and how that will impact your businesses. >> i think delivery service is an aspect of a much larger component with a huge effect on all businesses such as technology in general. in san francisco we are blessed because we are in the middle of everything and everything is happening so fact from the pos to the delivery systems and changing how we do businesses and changing business models to changing everything. i don't have any predictions in terms of my restaurant business. there is good and bad to everything. how it continues to grow. it will continue to grow in a balanced way. the trick is to take advantage of those systems and ride those waves when they are there and you can ride them. they are going up and down. it is really interesting. there is a lot of interesting parts from it. the hardest is how it makes sense monetarily because you have to do a lot of to go business in order for those to go companies to end up benefiting you on are your bottom line unless your concept is made for that. >> increasingly restaurants engineer menus through that business. >> some restaurants will do different menu items or different recipes. you have the cost challenge because the cost structure is different. you have to look at how do i make money. the service is different. >> it used to be in san francisco it was about dining and enjoying a dining experience. there is a lot of though now because of delivery and technology. people don't want to sit down at a restaurant for three hours. they want the food and to get it done. >> the delivery platform takes 20 to 30% margin. if your margin is reasonable, it may take away the entire margin. i know friends who run businesses. the sales increased but profit decreased. >> mostly marketing for you or exposes you to different audiences. there is always that cost benefit, you know. >> it changes your business model. iit can generate cash but it is hard to generate profit. the challenge is how do we take an objective look at this and make it work for us? >> on the food side, i want to understand how it affects you. >> that is a good question. we are not with the delivery services. maybe the elephant in the room is small retail business how does e-commerce take away market share. it makes us do what we want to do from a store supper h perspective more. you can see a lot of brands. they are opening stores, and we see pennie pen jc penneys and ss closing. we are trying to creep ate an experience around -- create an experience around the store. we don't build stores, we build stories. we emulate that. we are inspired because of the brands. there is something about customer service and walking in to the store and asking about the product, how does it fit, where is it made from? we are on the phone so much it is nice to walk into the store and put your phone down and listen to the people behind the shop and have those conversations. i think that is important. >> i am not afraid of the guys taking market share. we are doing something different. if you look at fillmore street from the top, it is like they took neiman marcus and plopped the brands. the department stores are realizing there is something to be said about small human connection type of experiences that they want to tap into. i don't think stores are going anywhere. it is the experiences going to change. having confidence highway you create that for the customer. >> ice cream is about the experience and augustsing to gat -- pausing to gather and being consumed by the moment. part of what is fascinating for our category is over the last year, year and a half, we have seen in our stores 10 to 20% of the business is delivery. this is ice cream. one of the things as a entrepreneur, it is our job to figure out how to evolve and adapt. that is something that challenges us and makes us grow. there is not an option. this is what is happening with the audience we have. we put our thinking hats on to make sure we turn it on. >> thank you for participating. there may be a few questions. adam who organized this event, give adam a big hand. [applause.] >> he put small business week together for the last nine years and deserves a big hand for all of his efforts here. thank you, adam. [applause.] >> if you have any questions. >> i have a question. happy to see three of the four panelists have businesses on fillmore street. i am the executive director of the fillmore on the street. you are awesome marketers. you do amazing pop ups to keep customers? i love the used co-op petition. jay you had havana night. that is another reason to come to your place. maybe talk about the experience to bring in customers in and leverage for each other. that is all about creating experiences. pop ups are popular right now. it is high reward am ever al --h reward and small investment. you can hashtag all day and follow brands, it is all about getting people to your store. one of the ways we did that is through pop ups. it is a great way for somebody with an up and coming brand, a different type of service. find a store that promotes you. a pop-up is kathleen wynne. i-- a pop up brings it in and yu are able to share it. we have customers. we have been in business for eight years. we have customers that are verb loyal and we hope to build the interaction with them. pop ups are great. it is great to diverse fr divere audience and create new experiences. a lot of the brands started as pop ups. we have a long term relationship and have longer plans for them at the store and things like that. a pop up is from a rooftop perspective is a temporary type of event that you have at the store where that person or brand is there for a temporary amount of time and they pop-up for the weekend or a certain amount of days and offer something different and create new market share for each other. >> question here. >> paula madison of power marketing. what is your biggest challenge doing business in san francisco and how are you guys tackling it? >> that is easy. the people. i think it is not just us. it is like maybe everybody in the city is trying to find people that can come and fill she is and play a role especially if your business is doing well and you are trying to grow the business. it is challenging to try to find people that can be, you know, employees from day do day on almost any level. in san francisco we have four full-time people whose job is to hire people. they are constantly interviewing and doing job fairs. going almost anywhere just to try to get people to come and work. for me. >> what we can do about that. i agree. there is constant hiring is endless. how can you invest in employees you have and try to motivate them to stay with you? we have gone to some alternative hiring sources. we work with the ark in san francisco which is nonprofit placing learning disabled adults and longest tenured employees have come from nontraditional hiring backgrounds. there is more investment upfront. i think we have that moment here. >> the work force that is one of the challenging things finding did right people to help run the business. one of the things we like to do is you know and we take this from the corporate world. it is a retail store come in and clock out. we try our best to convey to the people working at the store. we empower them to have ownership they have a sense of achieving something for the store in that same goal. trisha is good at finding people and leveraging strength and what they are interested in the field. we are fortunate but people working for us worked for old never reef -- old navy. we are glad we can say we have the right person at the right place and at the right time. the other thing, san francisco is in our own little bubble. people say you have a store in the city. i can't believe you are doing that. is it the hard, tough. san francisco is when i use the term transient town? a lot of people move in and out, new customers all of the time. you continue to keep that audience. we are still dealing with that learning to understand the audience and who you are indicating to. it does change. eight years if we are learning every day. wwe are still plowing away at what we do. >> next year we will do family business we cannot just small business week. >> we have time for one more question. >> hello. thank you for coming to the panel. my question is how to use the online world. you use twitter to let people know you are selling ice cream. how did everyone incorporate the internet to marketing strategy? >> for me that is huge. just like everything else, technology related in san francisco. the social media/marketing world is changing is so rapidly. i don't consider myself to be too old, you know, when my kid gets did phone and is showing me how to do the million things you can do withins tak with the ins. it is a huge part of the business, much larger than i original leanned. it is leveraging that for events. so many people absorb so much information daily that it is just 15 seconds or 20 seconds what is going on in the world and city around them you almost have to keep this constant flow of what is happening with you angyour business to make sure people stay engaged. i mean if you are not online for a week sometimes we can see a direct effect in sales from people. if we are posting every day our specials and what we are cooking that is awesome. people want to see that and it ends up affecting the bottom line in a huge way. especially in events, engaging the community and anything that happens or you want to happen with your business outside the four walls, in the streets, we are lucky to be here there are a lot of festivals, jazzfest is coming up. it is easy to engage the community in the 7 or 10 block radiradius. >> it is full-time. you cannot it is versus 10 years ago you cannot be absent from it. >> not your baby photos any more. >> insider information. as mentioned in th the intro. i have a huge job with the restaurant and work at a larger tech company in building products for small accidents. we looked at the impact of social media and the listing sites. if you are on trip adviser with a facebook pace and look at the impact you can look at on-line books for appointments or sales and it is critical. just having a facebook page has on average we will have 2.4 times more traffic and five times your appointments. yelp and each of these things will compound your growth. it is nonnegotiable to succeed anywhere in the u.s. to do digital marketing and social media. if you don't have the time for it, outsource and pay someone else. there are fantastic services. if that is not what you want to spend all-time doing it, get someone else to do it. >> it is true. social media and e-commerce. we started our shop as truly brick and mortar. that is what we know. to this day we are still in that challenge of trying to build an e-commerce platform with a great reach. you can only do so much with leveraging influence and hashtags. be authentic. we are trying our best to grow from ecommerce standpoint. yeah, we will look into leveraging that and stepping out. >> you are a good multitasker. >> one question here. >> i am a business banker with wells fargo. i want your outlook on the banking side what opportunities on ways to use banking, different parts of the business life cycle just starting up or middle. what do you look for in partnering with banks? >> you don't see the fine business maker in all aspects of your business. >> needs to send payments or merchants services. how do you utilize that? from commercial loans to stuff like payroll. >> if i think for me a lot of it can be pretty obvious. there is like the general day-to-day tools that a bank will let you have for your business. i think a lot of it depends on the size of the business for a larger business there is access to capital and a lot of sort of higher level money situations that you need from the bank. as a smaller business it is more of the convenience. like being able to move money around convenient leann d conver home. forgetting to do it after you fell asleep at night from your phone and stuff like that. now there are so many kinds of banks that make it easier. it is easier to do payroll because you can wire everybody the money and not have the checks printed especially with a smaller business. i think for a company like wells fargo, it is easier for the small businesses to use. it is easier on you. >> i have an interesting point. we now have -- we are not tiny and not big. i feel like we are in between. it started off where we chose the bank because it was the one closest to most of our stores. now we should talk. the things that are troubling us now are the things that we need to go from two locations to 10 locations. we are at 6 or 7 right now. things like positive pay, check scanning, night drop, service charges too high. we have a lot of fraud. people are trying to be me e-mailing my controller to get her to cut checks. we are big enough that people are trying to figure things out. that is scary. there aren't that many for a small business. not that much protection around your banks. i would say focusing on a small business scale is important. i think it is critical to make it with the limited g&a. i don't have the whole finance team. there is a lot of those little triggers to have it for me and not three full-time jobs. >> how useful it was to have a personal relationship with our banker. i wouldn't have expected that before we got into the business. >> growing especially when you are at the point to grow. before you start making investments, reach out to make the relationship with the banker to understand the options is helpful. >> there is banking and financing like two different worlds. >> i am encouraged to hear throughout the hour services out there. folks like the small business commission joining us that can help guide you, some financial services out there. i think you have to ask, sort of be active and proactive. it is not coming to you. that question came to you. you have to be proactive. thank you for coming. the council of district merchants is here. thank you. san francisco chamber of commerce does 250 elents like this throughout the year. there are three members here from the staff. they will be able to answer the questions. this is small business week. i am looking forward to seeing you at other events. thank you very much. [applause.]

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