Obtener capital para su pequeña empresa: perspectivas de SEC

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to Paychex THRIVE, a Business Podcast, where you'll hear timely insights to help you navigate marketplace dynamics and propel your business forward. Here's your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (00:19):

Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. My name is Gene Marks. Thanks so much for watching and listening. I'm speaking right now with Amy Reischauer. Amy is the Strategic Engagement Advisor, I'm hope I'm getting your title right, because it's long, for the Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Did I get all of that right, Amy?

Amy Reischauer (00:42):

Yes, except there's a late breaking update as of this morning, I'm now the Acting Deputy Director of that office.

Gene Marks (00:47):

Congratulations.

Amy Reischauer (00:48):

The 27 words you got in there, I can update a couple of them.

Gene Marks (00:51):

Congratulations. Well, that sounds like a great promotion. And is that a bottle of Jack Daniels behind you? I don't know if that's now required as part of the job, but no, congratulations. That is great.

Amy Reischauer (01:02):

Thank you.

Gene Marks (01:03):

Okay, so you just got that promotion. What does that mean? So, what is that job and tell me a little bit about the office. What does the organization do?

Amy Reischauer (01:12):

Sure, sure. Well, given that title and where I'm coming from, I do have to bore the audience very briefly with our standard disclaimer that the views I express today are my own, in my capacity as the acting deputy director and do not reflect the views of the commission, any of the commissioners or my colleagues on the staff. So, with that little boring bit put away-

Gene Marks (01:30):

By the way, for what it's worth, I have to say that too because Paychex wants no part of my views either. They want to disclaim, whatever.

Amy Reischauer (01:37):

There you go.

Gene Marks (01:38):

Yeah. So, I think we're both in the same boat. So-

Amy Reischauer (01:40):

Then I've disclaimed for the both of us. But it's interesting with the transition going on. We are relatively small office, we're a relatively new office. We're not the newest, but we were stood up in 2019.

Gene Marks (01:55):

Wow.

Amy Reischauer (01:55):

Established by Congress with this mission to advocate for small businesses and their investors. We define a lot of that very, very broadly small businesses. We consider to be anything from brand new startup mom-and-pop level, all the way up to a smaller public company. We also have a statutory mandate and a little bit of the personal passions of the team to look at some of the unique issues that face women-owned businesses, minority-owned businesses, rural businesses, and businesses affected by natural disaster. So I think of that as we've got this broad definition of small business. We've got this huge small business ecosystem, and we are really trying to reach every nook and cranny, but we really want to hear what's going on everybody everywhere and what's working or not working for everybody out there.

Gene Marks (02:46):

That is good and interesting. So, a couple questions on this. So first of all, so the Small Business Administration defines a small business as anybody with less than 500 employees. Do you stick to that definition or is it broader for you guys?

Amy Reischauer (02:57):

So, we focus more, because we are in the securities law space, we focus more on the market cap of the company.

Gene Marks (03:03):

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (03:04):

So, we say that we look at businesses with up to 250 million in market cap. So that obviously may over, it's probably a Venn diagram with some overlap and some not overlap with the SBA definition.

Gene Marks (03:16): 

Okay, that's good. Most of the small, so listen, so I travel around, I speak more than like 50 times a year or two industry groups, the most unsexy industries you've ever heard of, the corrugated containers and national distributors of steel piping and whatever, but they're like the core of American business and it's rooms full of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, they're business owners, they're privately held companies. They fit that sort of definition of yours. Are these prospects of yours? When I talk about financing to them, I tend to talk about getting a bank loan, you what I mean? Or an SBA loan or whatever. I would never bring up any type of security filings, and maybe my... Should I be?

Amy Reischauer (04:09):

No, no. I feel like the first part of any conversation we have with a lot of our audience, because we too, it might be a room full of small business owners doing stuff I don't understand. It might be smaller public companies that have heard of the SEC, but I think a lot of what we want to do is to prepare small business owners for when they might be acting in a way that triggers the SEC. We want them to know who we are. We want them to know where they're going to get to, when they might need to start worrying about it. So, as you point out, so much of small business funding comes from not capital raising from investors. We're not talking about bringing on investors and selling securities. If you're lucky enough, you've got revenues or personal savings, but there's still a lot of external resources before you take on an investor. Loans, credit, lines of credit, whatever it might be, grant money, free money. That's awesome if you can get it.

Amy Reischauer (05:07):

So, we're only looking at about 6% of small businesses that are then going to take on investors to bring on that capital. And that's where we play and that's where our roles start to get triggered. And so our goal is to let folks know if you get there and you want to start thinking about it, there's probably some stuff you need to know well in advance. Because what we hear a lot from folks who do then go on to take on investors and maybe do a seed round or even a friends and family round, they get to the point where they're like, gosh, I wish I knew more earlier about what ducks I had to get in a row or what I had to be prepared for, what kind of conversations I had to be prepared for to talk to investors. And so, that's our goal, is to give people a really advanced view of when they might be playing in our sandbox a little.

Gene Marks (05:55): 

Very, very interesting. So, give me some examples, if you can, of businesses that would need to, that you would want to be talking to that would need to access the services that you have. What are the triggers for a business that are like, oh wow, I'm going to have to get the SEC involved now-

Amy Reischauer (06:16):

So, it's funny, I can answer that question in a couple of ways. On the one hand, you've got the small businesses that are thinking, when am I ready to take on an investor? When do I have a business, a product, a model that investors are going to be interested in? And sometimes that's as simple as pointing out that, look, if it's Uncle Joe or Grandma Betty or your college roommate who might want to invest in your business, that could be a securities transaction. And so, the boring legal rule here is that every offer and sale of a security has to be either registered with the commission or you have to comply with an exemption. And so, we want folks to know that in advance. There's probably an exemption available for all those earlier stage startups who are thinking about bringing on their college buddy or their Uncle Joe. But we want them to know to ask the question, and we want them to know where to come to maybe start finding the answer to the question.

Gene Marks (07:17):

That is very interesting. So really, because so many when you read where businesses go to get their financing, the number one place where startups go is their friends and their family. Oftentimes it comes in loans, but oftentimes it comes in investments. They sell stock to them.

Amy Reischauer (07:35):

Sí.

Gene Marks (07:35):

I guess that means, I'll give you an example. I have a friend of mine who just started up a company a couple years ago, and I put some money into his company along with some other of my friends, and I'm giving away details, I don't want to send the guy to jail, but he's doing fine, it's just but, but that's an example of where if for him, he needs to be talking to an attorney and potentially making filings with the SEC because they're outside investors that are involved in his business.

Amy Reischauer (08:04):

And so, one of the things, so we have a wealth of resources that we've put out, and one of the things we, in addition to trying meet with investors everywhere, or just talk to them or hear from them, or show up at an event or have a round table, there's lots of ways we can engage with them. But we also realize that there's a lot of learning that can happen before they're paying an attorney. We're never going to recommend that they go and raise capital from investors without having counsel, because it's really key. But there's a lot of educating you can do before you're paying your counsel to teach you the basics. So, what we really try to do is we have our capital raising hub, sec.gov/capitalraising. And on there, we've tried to structure our resources in a way that it's a little bit like the 100 level, 200 level course selection. We've got some basics starting with, like I started to say before, am I even ready to raise capital with?

Gene Marks (09:03):

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (09:04):

Are my books in order? All the way through, yeah, I'm going to take on some investors, but I'm not really sure what exemptions might be right for me. It's a friends and family round. Isn't there an exemption for that? Well, that's a term that gets thrown around a lot of friends and family round, but that's not actually an exemption. You have to find an actual set of rules that let you take on friends that want to invest in your company. And they're very likely is a pathway. But the goal of the exempt pathways are if you're not going with an exemption and you're having a registered offering, there's lots of disclosure, there's lots of investor protection there. But it's a process that's not really one size fits all. Not every mom-and-pop shop is going to go through an IPO to bring on $150,000 for a new cafe and espresso machine. There are other ways that you may want to take on investors.

Amy Reischauer (09:59):

So, we just want them to know what the right pathway is. The most common, the most traditional way to bring on friends and family, if you will, to bring on investors without registering is a private placement. And if you are, I will say lucky enough, because we deal with a lot of demographics that often aren't. But if you are lucky enough to have sophisticated, relatively wealthy people in your network that are ready to invest in your company, and they're already in your network, you don't have to go out and find them. So you're not generally soliciting, which is a magic term of art, and you have potentially accredited investors, another magic term of art. If you're in that space, it's a pretty straightforward process to make sure that you're complying with the rules.

Amy Reischauer (10:50):

A lot of our materials go not just to that traditional old school private placement, but to serve companies that might not have access to those networks, might not have access to those kinds of investors. They're looking for an alternative pathway. There are a few out there, they're not as commonly used. There are a lot of requirements to navigate and keep straight. So we have resources on those as well. If you want to do crowdfunding or intrastate offering, other options that folks might need to turn to if they're not in that kind of typical-

Gene Marks (11:25):

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (11:26):

... I've got a network full of potential VC investors that I can just reach out to.

Gene Marks (11:31):

You talk about investors, and I wonder if there's a wider definition of what they are. Private placements sometimes involve straight investments, sometimes they involve debt placements as well that are convertible. Is there, if people are loaning money to you, outsiders, again, that you put together a financing deal from, but it's a loan, this is not an equity deal.

Amy Reischauer (11:57): 

Sí.

Gene Marks (11:57):

Is that something that also comes under your umbrella?

Amy Reischauer (12:02):

So, I'm going to go with a super annoying answer, it depends.

Gene Marks (12:05):

It depends. Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Reischauer (12:06):

I's a really-

Gene Marks (12:06):

I find myself saying that a lot, by the way.

Amy Reischauer (12:07): 

... important question, and it's a question we want folks asking. So, there's a whole set of case law and analysis as to what constitutes a security. True bank loans, not a security. Truly handing someone an ownership interest in your company, probably a security. When you get to that in between, it's a private loan, it's private debt, maybe I'm going to pay them back, but maybe there's some loan forgiveness there where I can convert it to equity. It's in between, on that spectrum, on that continuum where it very well could be. And so that's where we would want folks to know to ask the question and get some help answering it.

Gene Marks (12:52):

Yeah, it seems to me that the rule of thumb is that the SEC as much as it is an advocate, and I want to dig into that a little bit further, but as much as they're an advocate, the mission of the agency is to protect the investor, to protect. So, if you are giving out, if you are raising debt from individuals that are not connected to you in any way, there might be situations where they are at risk, and it might be something that the SEC does have rules and filings that need to be... So, I guess my point is that if you're listening to this, you're watching this and you're like, okay, we are thinking of raising money. Maybe it's a debt, maybe offering, maybe it's equity, but yeah, we're going to have outsiders and they could be put at some risk. If that is, that should trigger you to talk to an attorney or to talk to the agency to make sure that there aren't any filings or restrictions. Is that a fair statement to make?

Amy Reischauer (13:44):

I think it is fair. The one thing I would say, just to expand a little bit on the SEC's mission, not just our office's mission-

Gene Marks (13:49):

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (13:50):

... is absolutely investor protection, but it's also facilitating capital formation and it's fair efficient markets. And I did those out of order.

Gene Marks (13:59):

That's fine.

Amy Reischauer (13:59):

Because I wanted to talk about the investor and the capital formation prongs, because I like to think of it as it takes both the protected investor that can have a successful outcome and has a good relationship with the business. Happy investors make for more capital formation down the road.

Gene Marks (14:21):

Sí.

Amy Reischauer (14:21):

Protected investors, successful capital raise, the business can do well, the investors can get a return.

Gene Marks (14:27): 

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (14:27):

They're happy, they have returns, they can reinvest in something else. So I don't like to dismiss any of those three prongs, but you need both. You can't just have a successful business and not pay attention to your investors. You can't just pay attention to the investors if it's truly going to stifle the ability for businesses to raise capital. So that's something that we think about a lot in our office because we're the advocate for small business capital formation, but our mission is very much the businesses and their investors-

Gene Marks (14:58):

All right. Well-

Amy Reischauer (14:58):

... to make sure that that relationship is there.

Gene Marks (15:01):

Well said. Well said. So, you had mentioned earlier as well about you're an advocate. There are a lot of things that business need to know if they are raising money, but you did make some reference about connecting potential investors with it. Can you speak a little bit more like are you a resource for businesses to find capital?

Amy Reischauer (15:21):

So, we don't introduce investors and businesses. We advocate, but we don't endorse any particular business or any particular investor.

Gene Marks (15:33):

Good. Want to be clear on that.

Amy Reischauer (15:35):

We want to hear from them, we want to engage with them. We want to hear what their experience is. We want to be able to cater to it. It's that feedback from businesses and investors that informs our office's recommendation. It informs the data we look for, the research we look for, the educational materials that we build.

Gene Marks (15:57):

Good. That's fine. That is helpful. All right. Couple other things before I do want to talk about your small business summit that you recently had.

Amy Reischauer (16:05):

Nice.

Gene Marks (16:05):

But before we get into that, you, just to make sure that our audience is aware of the different types of things that you do. There's events, there's resources, there's advisory committee. Tell us about some of these things as well. So that we're aware of them.

Amy Reischauer (16:21):

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (16:24):

Sure. So, we have this mission. I think of four buckets of things that we do to fulfill that mission. We engage, we outreach, we share our resources. If folks are looking to see what kind of stuff we're doing, I encourage folks to check out either our office page, which is sec.gov/oasb, Office of the Advocate for Small Business and the capital raising hub itself that I talked about earlier. Lots of resources there that any of our events that are recorded, which is quite a few of them are available. So folks can go back and see what kind of topics we cover, see what kind of events might be coming up. And of course, all of our educational resources are available as well. Whether that's, we have interactive tools to help you, you answer a few questions and then the tool will list off some regulatory pathways, we like to call them, that might be relevant to you.

Amy Reischauer (17:12):

I don't know any accredited investors, but I would like to raise a million dollars, plug in some more factoids. And the tool will say, well, why don't you consider this pathway or that pathway? So those kinds of resources all the way up on the website. In addition to resources and the engagement with the public, we also monitor the commissions rules and regulations as they evolve. And we review what the commission is proposing to do or adopting to see what kind of an impact that it would have on small businesses and their investors. And then we try to make sure that we help bring the voice of small businesses and investors into that rulemaking process. I think lots of people may know how federal laws get made, or federal, I should say regulations get made.

Gene Marks (18:01):

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (18:01):

Not everyone does. So, we try and make sure that our target audience knows how to comment on a rulemaking, what rule-makings might be coming out that might affect them. So we do a lot of that. And then I think I mentioned earlier a little bit, the office itself puts out an annual report every year, which is, it's a pretty comprehensive snapshot of what's going on in the small business ecosystem. I think one of the things we try very hard to do is to make sure that our resources, including that annual report, are very digestible. Only so many people want to stare at an Excel spreadsheet of data, but we try to make it visual. We try to make it understandable just at a glance.

Amy Reischauer (18:43):

And so we pull that data together every year, also available on our website and should be pretty easy to find once you get there. But that data informs and culminates in recommendations that the office makes. So we are hearing from the small business community that we had five recommendations this year, but that this is a challenge. The data shows it's a challenge. Here's a suggestion for how to address that. And we do that every year. So that's another way that we advocate.

Gene Marks (19:15):

The report found, I'm reading it right now for the fiscal year, end of June 30th, 2022, companies raised $1.1 trillion in SEC registered offerings and $126 billion in IPOs, initial public offerings as well. My understanding though is that the IPO market, the initial public offering market has been trailing off a little bit or has been behind. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that, why you think that is and where you think that's going.

Amy Reischauer (19:47):

So, part of it is it's the larger IPOs and the SPACs or the special purpose acquisition company IPOs, which is a very specific kind of pathway to going public. Those were peaking for a while until a year or so ago, and then they trailed off. So, we found that with fewer larger IPOs, the smaller IPOs were representing a larger slice in terms of deal count. But the amounts they're raising are still very low, still represents a very small portion of the overall IPO market. There are any number of reasons why that might be happening, it could be three more podcasts, but one of the ways that our office looks at that is to build up that IPO pipeline to have more publicly reporting companies. You need to nurture the [inaudible 00:20:48] team. You need to have companies growing and ready to go public and able to go public, and then you need for those smaller companies to be able to stay public.

Amy Reischauer  (10:56):

So, we want to look at both what is entailed in an IPO and getting there, and then what's entailed in staying there, and whether it's ongoing reporting requirements or liquidity challenges or things that help nurture those smaller companies to get there and to stay there. So for example, one of the office's recommendations in the small cap space, in the small public company space is that there's a lot of rulemaking going on. There's a lot of disclosure that folks are assessing, and we just encourage both Congress and the commission because they're both involved in that, to consider ways to let smaller companies either delay their compliance requirements so they can watch the big companies comply, see what that looks like, or maybe it's appropriate to reduce some of the requirements so that they're scaled. Maybe they're not providing all five new things, maybe they get three or four of the five things. So looking at a way to, again, make that IPO process a little less challenging for the smaller companies and keeping them public.

Gene Marks (22:09):

So, it's a complex environment to go public, particularly if you're a smaller company, your office can only do so much. In the end, it does require legal and financial experts to navigate your way through all of this. One of the reasons... It seems like just the overall capital environment right now is challenging because of interest rates. The tech industry alone is showing that. Is that what you're finding? I'm happy that you got promoted this year, but it might be a very slow year for you when it comes to capital formation.

Amy Reischauer (22:46):

Sí.

Gene Marks (22:47):

Do you think that is the case?

Amy Reischauer (22:50):

I think it's tough. Whether it was COVID and those impacts, and now whether it's interest rates or credit tightening, generally speaking, all of those are going to be felt more by the smaller companies.

Gene Marks (23:07): 

Yes. Yeah.

Amy Reischauer (23:07): 

And a lot of them are felt more by women owned businesses or minority owned businesses. So when we're looking at the impact on the overall market, our specific target groups are probably feeling it even more. And so that's where we have to pay attention. Can we solve it right now? I don't know. I wish I could say we have to do X and Y and then everything will be perfect. Can't say that with or without the disclaimer I mentioned earlier. But our office is focused on, well, what can we do? What can we do to help folks navigate this?

Gene Marks (23:40):

Okay.

Amy Reischauer (23:40): 

As some funding sources tighten up, people are going to be looking elsewhere.

Gene Marks (23:45): 

Well, you mentioned women and minorities. I know that's a big focus for you guys. So what can you do? What's so special or unique, the challenges that are faced by women and minority businesses that you guys in particular could jump in and help them with?

Amy Reischauer (24:043):

So, a lot of what we do is educational, I think, and we try to engage with groups. Amy Reischauer personally know all the small business folks out there. But if someone wants to introduce me to a group that works with them and then that those folks work with more people, we're constantly just trying to tap in to find folks who want to hear what we do, much like this audience. So we do a lot of listening and a lot of educating. It's, the networking piece that we talked about earlier, that whole introducing investors and companies-

Gene Marks (24:43):

Certainly-

Amy Reischauer (24:44):

... it's challenging. It's repeatedly, one of the top challenges for small businesses is building that bridge between investors and companies. And there's not a ton we can do to resolve that. We can't introduce companies to investors, but we can let them know what the rules are around expanding your network. We can try to provide some of that knowledge and education that typically comes from having a network of mentors. And if you don't have necessarily that network of mentors, we can at least try and provide some of that knowledge base, some of that guidance.

Gene Marks (25:20):

Okay. Fair enough. You mentioned earlier that you guys had a summit just recently. Tell me about that and-

Amy Reischauer (25:28):

Sure.

Gene Marks (25:29):

Also, tell me what your takeaways were from the summit.

Amy Reischauer (25:31):

Sure. So, it's called the Small Business Forum. It's actually another congressional mandate, and it's hosted by the SEC, by the commission as a whole.

Gene Marks (25:40):

Okay.

Amy Reischauer (25:41):

Our office does the legwork, but it started out back in the day as an in-person at headquarters in DC. It's a unique opportunity though because it brings public sector and private sector folks together to talk about policy and to craft recommendations to improve policy. So, while we are often trying to be that gateway for folks to impact policy, this event predates our office.

Gene Marks (26:09):

Got it.

Amy Reischauer (26:09):

So, there's always been this opportunity.

Gene Marks  (26:13):

Got it.

Amy Reischauer (26:13):

In the COVID times, it shifted from that in-person event to virtual, which like so many things was a little bit of a silver lining because I think it really improved our ability to reach more affected person, more companies, more investors, more fund managers, more advocates out there. It's now, the last few years, it's been a four day virtual event. We try to do it in bite-sized chunks in the afternoon. So we do it for 90 minutes over four days. All the recordings are available on our website, but we also, we look at, we take a bite each day on a different topic, maybe a different phase in the life cycle of a small company. So day one, we started off with early stage capital. And what are the trends and strategies for folks trying to raise early stage capital?

Amy Reischauer  (27:09):

Day two, we had a session on building fertile ecosystems and what does it take to create an environment where small businesses can thrive? Silicon Valley has had their place for years, but there are other spots that are having great success building.

Gene Marks (27:27):

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (27:28):

Building really strong supportive ecosystems. So we had a conversation about what does that entail? Day three was on fund managers and this a smaller fund and emerging fund managers, which we repeatedly see as a really great way to reach areas that maybe don't typically get fund interest, whether they can write smaller checks or they're more regional, they have more access to some of the more local community. Not to mention the diversification of the capital and then the ultimate investee. And then finally on day four, we had our small cap day where we talked about, again, challenges going public and what we can do about going public, and then what it's like to be public and stay public as a small company.

Gene Marks (28:23):

Who are the businesses? You've got the private sector, you've got the financial people. These people are all looking for to help businesses, service businesses, whatever. Who are the actual businesses that attended that event? Without naming names, it's fine, but just the types of businesses-

Amy Reischauer (28:42):

... remember who was in the chat.

Gene Marks (28:44):

... that showed up. Yeah.

Amy Reischauer  (28:46):

Well, for example, on our panels, we had entrepreneurs, we had fund managers, we had council to companies, some of those. And I think the audience is similar. Sometimes it's folks who maybe haven't raised capital yet. Maybe they're thinking about raising capital. Sometimes it's folks who maybe they've done a seed round or an A round, and now they're thinking, I'm VC ready. I've hit a growth spot where I'm going to be able to pull in that money.

Gene Marks (29:17):

Sure.

Amy Reischauer (29:18):

So, it really does run the gamut. We had, I think, I want to say between five and 600 registrants for the event.

Gene Marks (29:28):

Wow.

Amy Reischauer (29:28):

So, a pretty broad swath.

Gene Marks (29:31):

Okay. From all different industries. Is there any specific industry? Is it still a tech thing or-

Amy Reischauer (29:36):

I don't know-

Gene Marks (29:37):

... representation?

Amy Reischauer (29:38):

... at least off the top of my head I don't know information by industry. I know that definitely tech is, I say tech, definitely tech is represented-

Gene Marks (29:53):

Tech got a wide definition.

Amy Reischauer (29:54):

... think of tech broadly like apps.

Gene Marks (29:56):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Reischauer (29:58):

But they're also smaller, more traditional industries represented as well.

Gene Marks (30:08):

Fair enough. Fair enough. So, all right, Amy, this is great. So just final words that you'd like to say about the office and if you're making that appeal to people that are listening or watching this.

Amy Reischauer (30:20):

Sí.

Gene Marks (30:21):

What are some of the final thoughts that you have for them as to why what you're doing is so, so important?

Amy Reischauer (30:27):

So much of what we do is powered by what we hear from the ecosystem. We want people to reach out to us. We want to hear from folks, whether they're emailing us or calling us or finding our website and exploring. We want folks to say, yeah, these are all great, but you're still not answering this question that I face all the time and I can't find resources. Everything we do is so informed by what we're hearing from the community. So I would just invite people to explore our resources, reach out to our office state, keep an eye out for events.

Gene Marks (21:03):

Perfecto.

Amy Reischauer (31:03):

Because we love to hear from folks.

Gene Marks (31:06):

That's great. And the website, again, it's sec.gov/?

Amy Reischauer (31:08):

Capital raising.

Gene Marks (31:10):

Capital raising. Okay.

Amy Reischauer (31:13):

That'll get you to our hub.

Gene Marks (31:15):

Amy Reischauer is, I have to read this because it's just, it goes on forever. The strategic, oh wait, no, wait. What is your new... Deputy?

Amy Reischauer (31:21):

The acting Deputy director.

Gene Marks (31:24):

Acting Deputy director of the Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital formation at the SEC. Again, congratulations on the promotion. Very well deserved.

Amy Reischauer (31:34):

Thank you.

Gene Marks (31:34):

You guys are doing great work. So thank you very much for what you're doing, and I hope this conversation inspires some businesses to now that they're aware of you to get more involved. So thank you.

Amy Reischauer (31:43):

Wow. Thank you. Thank you for helping to spread the word.

Gene Marks (31:46):

Sure thing. Hey, everybody you've been watching and listening to the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. My name is Gene Marks. Thank you so much for attending. Hope you learned and walk away with some good information from this conversation. I know that I did. We will see you again soon. Take care.

Gene Marks (32:00):

Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE? Please let us know. Visit payx.me/thrivetopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits, or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub at paychex.com/worx. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host, Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us. Till next time, take care.

Speaker 1 (32:37):

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