Apollo’s Story

Apollo Woods, OKC Black Eats
Oklahoma City, OK

I applied for PPP in the beginning and it was confusing. They kept changing the process. I didn’t get an email confirmation; they tell you to write this [confirmation] number down, but I didn’t because I was expecting email confirmation. So I submitted a second application, and then I get an email several weeks later that they got a duplicate application and they would delete one of them. And then I got denied.

PPP is not a program suited for a startup business. I started OKC Black Eats, a marketing and consulting company, as a hobby in 2016 and incorporated in 2018. My first year of full-time entrepreneurship was in 2019, when I left corporate America, and I filed a loss. Because I showed a loss on my Schedule C, I was automatically disqualified — I found that out from my banking friends.

I was frustrated because in my city and in my state, there is no support and intentionality to support Black-owned businesses. And I understand people being frustrated about larger companies receiving PPP loans. The disadvantage of being a small business is you don’t have a team of accountants and payroll people who could put together this application in hours. As much as PPP attempted to help Main Street local businesses, they didn’t consider that there needs to be a level of local support, and an allocation for smaller, black- and minority-owned businesses who will need more time.

I manage a black professionals group here and sit on some boards, and we said there’s not information being sent out to inform black-owned businesses in a timely manner, so we just started creating a digital resource list on grants and information on PPP. In the black community, financial redlining has always been an issue, so we’ve also been encouraging people — apply, don’t self-disqualify — to help people get over their mental roadblocks.

But I also wonder about the banking industry — if you take this loan out [and it’s not forgiven] and you can’t pay it back. What’s the impact on the bank, and what’s the impact on the individual? A lot of things are up in the air. COVID exposed underlying conditions. This has exposed how weak our economy is.

The question for our local business is: How do you prepare, knowing this pandemic and recession can last 18 months? And politicians can’t approach this pandemic with solutions thinking of how our more successful and adaptable businesses can survive, because that eliminates a whole segment of the population, from startups to black- and minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, and people who leaped out right before all this started. Urgent action is needed.