Expert Connexions: The Legal Impact of a Pandemic

Expert Connexions Covid-19

To help clients address legal questions sparked by the Coronavirus (COVID-19), Foster Swift law firm quickly established a Coronavirus Task Force. Attorney John Mashni joined us for our Expert Connexions series to share important information from this task force in a live interview on Facebook.

Mashni discusses adhering to emergency orders, recent tax changes, managing contracts with clients, understanding employment law and cyber-security risks. Learn more as we work to help you manage your business during this ever-changing time.

You can also access more resources from the Foster Swift task force here: https://bit.ly/2QHhToH

Transcript:

Julie: Called expert connexions. I’m Julie Holton, the founder and principal strategist of mConnexions marketing agency. I launched this special series last Sunday because at mConnexions we work with a variety of clients and individuals all of whom all of us are experiencing some challenges and changes due to coronavirus. So we launched this special series so we could reach out and help in the best way we know how by connecting you to experts who can help. We are so glad you are joining us. We’ve had thousands of people tuning in since the series started on Sunday. This is definitely a time when we need to gather information from sources that we can trust and so our next guest today is a partner, a trusted partner from mConnexions, John Mashni is a business attorney at Foster Swift and a member of the firm’s coronavirus task force. Today we’re going to discuss some of the legal considerations businesses face as a result of the coronavirus. John thanks so much for taking time to join me this morning.

John: Good to be here from my basement bunker barely.

Julie: I know you’re we were just saying we’re all in the same boat. Some of us in living rooms, some people locked away in bedrooms. Anywhere that we can connect.

John: Yeah good to be here, thanks.

Julie: Yeah thank you for joining us. I know you’ve been really busy especially with this new I mean who knew a couple weeks ago that we’d have a coronavirus task force. So I want to start by asking you what do you think are some important considerations business owners and managers need to keep in mind as they’re facing this pandemic?

John: Well I think you know okay obviously, a lot of people are in a situation where they don’t have very much information and they’re having to make very difficult decisions you know without really knowing what’s gonna happen. I think the first thing we’ve talked about as a group and we’ve talked about with clients and even internally is, are we communicating? Are we finding good sources of information? Not just good, but the right sources right? A lot of information is out there. You can’t always rely on everything that you read or you might read something but you do not fully understand what’s happening. So the first thing is having good sources of information. The second one is are you communicating right? Are you communicating with your internal organization? The people in your organization right sometimes that’s the place where you sometimes forget about, hey we need to figure out is everyone okay here. Even if they’re not sick with this virus, it’s stressful. There’s anxiety, people are really worried. So what can we do to alleviate some of that and that’s I think that’s a really big thing that everyone needs to be thinking about you know at all times and then communicating outside with clients and customers and other important people to the organization. It’s really important to have a strategy and even when you know I know this is a large part of what you do right it’s important to have the right channels right. A lot of times if you think about the things that you do with helping people build social-media followings and email lists and how you communicate you know right now this is the perfect example of why you need to pay attention to those things even when there isn’t this kind of emergency type of situation.

Julie: Absolutely we’ve been talking with a lot of businesses who had been thinking about getting an email platform to use and hadn’t yet started using something, but great example you know like you said John if needing to reach the masses all at once with some way to communicate that and so email and we’re seeing email open rates in some cases as high as eighty percent. Which as you know is unheard of normally that’s around ten percent you know 15 percent, so I’m glad you mentioned that. I’m also glad you mentioned John talking personally
with employees and internal communications because that’s something I know that our mConnexions team has been doing is holding those internal meetings so that we can all check on each other to make sure we’re doing okay. I’m glad you mentioned that because it’s really important, the internal communications for businesses as well. So there’s no doubt there are a lot of legal issues to touch on so can you talk about what some of those legal issues that businesses are facing with coronavirus?

John: So yeah absolutely I think when it comes to the legal side of things there’s a lot to work through and I think every single individual or organization is probably going to have a different set of circumstances but I’ll just touch on the things I think we’ve noticed the most. One is contracts. People are worried about whether my contracts are enforceable? Do I have to fulfill some of these obligations? Do people have to fulfill their obligations to us? Those are big issues. A lot of people are worried about whether I can pay or am I gonna get paid? Those types of things that’s a really big question that we’re getting. There’s also lots of employment questions right. So hey what do I do I can’t afford these employees or I have to keep them working or can I even stay open right and then there’s also the compliance piece, hey you know there’s been a lot of issues with the governor putting out executive orders. Limiting what can be open, what can’t be open, and how do you comply with all of these various emergency orders and then the regular law and then as you’ve seen the federal Congress right they’ve signed into law this big tax package. They’re gonna distribute money. There’s also the IRS coming in and saying hey you know they’re gonna give some relief to taxpayers. So how do you comply with all of these various new laws that are being passed, new regulations that are being or new kinds of guidance that’s being provided? So I think as a kind of general picture I think it comes down to right how do you stay in business? How do you make sure that your operations continue and that you don’t go out of business? Number two, you know what obligations do you have to follow in terms of you know people who have obligations to us and what obligations do we have to other people, and then three how do you comply with all these new rules that are popping up?

Julie: It’s a lot.

John: Yes.

Julie: I can see why you’re so busy. You know I want to talk to you about we have so many people working from home and a lot of businesses have scrambled to try to make that a reality for their employees to be able to work you know dial in remotely and so imagine that with this, I know mConnexions is a virtual agency so this is something that that we’re somewhat familiar with, but as we have people working remotely there are more potential security risks. So yeah talk about and even for some businesses I would imagine some data privacy issues. So what are you seeing in regards to that?

John: So I think this is a great you know great topic and I something I deal with quite a bit and to me it’s great and I think I love the trend of being you know having people being able to work remotely, but this is kind of thrusting that into you know the spotlight and really I think a lot of people weren’t, some people were very prepared like yourself where you have a remote team, and that’s all you do. Other businesses are really trying to rush into hey how do we have everybody work remotely because we but there might be some rule this past or some emergency order that says we can’t even be open at this point in time. So my advice on when it comes to those things is you certainly have to look at the technology and make sure that you have the right IT vendor or internal IT staff and they’re probably some of the busiest people right now working and trying to figure out hey how do we keep everybody working so we can have that business continuity that we need. Here’s some things to think about though as you’re trying to make sure everyone can work remotely. As soon as we kind of change things quickly there’s opportunities right, but there’s also dangers and some of those dangers you know we look at in terms of cyber security, data privacy. What does this mean? Well there’s a slew of laws out there that govern how your information can be used and when you take information from your customers, from your clients, the information that you gather as an organization. What happens if that information essentially falls into the wrong hands or someone breaks into your kind of systems from an IT perspective and it gets unauthorized access? I think this is where you still have to pay very close attention to cyber security. Are you giving the appropriate level of access to people? Is there anyone who understands – are you training people so that they can use that technology right because certainly I’m sure before the coronavirus there were many so-called bad guys who =out there trying to steal information. This might be the perfect time or the perfect storm where all the bad guys can be thinking hey more and more people are going online, let’s just push even harder in terms of phishing emails, in terms of business compromises, in terms of ransomware right. People are already stressed, there’s a high level of anxiety and what we know about many cyber-attacks is that they often occur when these types of when there’s some distraction to the specific person. They’re not paying as close attention to an email or they’re not paying as close attention to how they’re going about their you know using their you know IT equipment whether it’s a computer cell phone those kinds of things. So I think you can’t really neglect making sure that you’re following proper protocol. Now I know that’s probably the last thing on many people’s minds right like hey are we surviving, but when it comes to cyber security the main thing I would say to people is pay attention to how your systems are operating. If something is maybe not making sense, you know talk to your IT department or some IT vendor and have them help you learn what’s going on. When we look at someone that we call a cyber security incident or a breach, that’s when there’s a third party that has access to your information and it’s not authorized. In those cases, there are legal obligations that you have to follow and they sometimes can result in hey some of our information is leaked out, sometimes it can result in ransomware being put on your systems like an employee’s computer or on a server something you know potentially even worse than that. That can shut down your whole business immediately right and if you don’t even have a physical location that’s open and now everyone’s working remotely. The dangers are even higher right of it’s not necessarily the virus that’s taking out your business it’s kind of these you know downstream effects of the virus. The biggest thing I would say there is if you do have some type of business compromised with cyber security or privacy make sure you reach out to a lawyer first probably. There’s reasons to do that make sure you can have privileges attached privileged to any type of communications and then make sure you immediately talk to your IT vendor about what’s going on and try to figure this out. So there’s very little you know obviously every situation is gonna be different but those are kind of two first steps to make sure you know what’s going on. Hopefully that helps. I know this is kind of a broad topic, but I think you know the thing I would say is don’t forget about cybersecurity now that we’re trying to get everyone working at home as fast as possible.

Julie: And John I know cybersecurity is one of your specialty areas so you have a lot of information available on your website, fosterswift.com. So I think it’d be a great resource for people, especially businesses now to take a look at those resources. It’s better to arm yourself with information and kind of put some of those security plans in place that you may not have you likely didn’t have in place before because it wasn’t as big of an issue or maybe now you’re having different technology issues and John I know too one thing that you said to our team or to you know to me as we’ve been talking is, for everyone who’s watching even if you’re not a business owner and in a management position to be able to control these things the potential like the biggest threat potential when it comes to cybersecurity is the human users so it’s regular people like me, regular employees that are working for an organization. You just click on one wrong email or you think your boss is emailing and it’s and it’s not your boss you know those phishing scams that are out there. So it’s really the regular people so to speak that need to be aware of these dangers, you know we are the stop gate.

John: Yeah and let me add to that a little bit. I think that’s exactly right. It’s regular people, it’s also people that are very high up in an organization. Owners right, people who are you know c-level executives right. They usually have access to very valuable information right. People who are in HR employment, people who deal with employment issues, they contain or they have access to very valuable information. People that have lists with w2s for example or a list of social security numbers with names and addresses and birthdays all sorts of personal financial information. If you like, look at like hey who’s actually paying the people who work at the company right. Those are really targets. If you look at accountants, lawyers, people who work in HR, specifically HR firms, they have a lot of personal information and they’re targets. So now you say okay, those people are target’s and when do these attacks typically happen? Well let me give you some examples. Typically, Friday afternoons like today’s Friday right, so three or four hours when people are kind of winding down and like I think we were saying earlier it’s good that it’s Friday right, we need a break. Well there’s that natural kind of relaxation, but that’s typically when a lot of these attacks are started and when they occur. Now if you add to it they also occur right when people are about to go on vacation because people are mentally kind of checking out. So now you add the anxiety that just everybody has just you know it’s hard to understand like what you know next week is gonna look like let alone this afternoon. So it’s a really dangerous time I think for people, especially if they figure out okay I’m gonna be okay or I have food you know for a foreseeable time and now I can just you know start doing some emails and start paying attention to work, but they don’t they’re not being fully engaged in what they’re doing, they’re not fully paying attention, or maybe they get an email from someone who’s a supervisor or a boss asking for something that maybe is a little bit unusual like hey can you send me that W2 report or can you send me you know hey we got a we got a very typical example would be a wire transfer. Hey we need someone to wire money right and we just need you to send it to a different bank this time you know where it actually – Right now, with everything going on it might sound like oh you know normally they don’t ask for it this way, but it’s not business as normal right so. Exactly, I think that and I think this I’m really glad that we’re talking about this because this is a big deal you know. When we talk about individuals you know sometimes it’s very you know common where someone’s hey I need money can you send me money? That’s I mean it’s just very common especially right now and then you look at businesses exact same thing right. You might be paying a bill to a vendor and it might be for several thousand dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they say hey can you send it to a different address or a different Bank right or here’s a different routing number for the wire transfer. All of that stuff might seem completely reasonable at this time. However, those are the exact things that the bad guys or fraudsters, whatever you want to call them, will rely on to trick people and you can’t forget that. You know even before this happened these things are very common and we probably deal with them a few times a month where someone says hey this happened we wired money you know what do we do now and many times the answer is you gotta move quick. You know prevention is so much easier than trying to solve it after it’s happened.

Julie: And you know John, it reminds me of something that Stephanie Barnhill said earlier this week, we were talking about tips and tech for working from home and she said over-communicate, now more than ever. Don’t feel like you’re bugging your boss or you’re bugging your supervisor especially if you get something that seems out of place. An email or request, ask.

John: Yes.

Julie: The kids are running around or the dogs are barking and you think you’re firing off that last email of the day and then something pops in, the last thing you need is to be dealing with another disaster on top of this.

John: Yes, you’re exactly right. Everyone’s distracted. I’m in my basement I can hear my kids upstairs you know it’s just, that’s how it is. So you’re exactly right to over-communicate and if you have any doubts about some piece of information that you receive an email, you know and I hate to say this even phone calls. There’s people who ‘ve received wire transfer requests or changes to wire transfer information or payment information and there’s been a phone number they call the phone number someone answers and says yes this is the right information. I mean these schemes are so sophisticated. It ends up it was all a scheme to defraud you out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. So don’t I mean it’s okay to be careful right, even though there’s where everyone’s in this kind of state of anxiety, even though it’s in some cases some businesses are on life support they’re just trying to figure out how to survive. It’s okay to take an extra five minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes, figure something out right. It’s not something so urgent where it is actually mission critical to send an email or kind of overlook some maybe red flag that you think that hey this seems suspicious. Make sure you follow through on it. I know a lot of people that this is a new message for them right and the way I describe it is, you don’t really start to pay attention to these things until it happens to you and then everything you know you’re suspicious of everything. So one of the things we try to do is just educate people on hey this is going to happen at some point to everybody and then how do we teach you to respond when it does happen and that’s where like I said we have very we’ve dealt with it before and there’s lots of great vendors out there that have dealt with this before whether it’s from legal from IT perspective, even from like marketing and PR right. You have to have good communication and have systems of communication already in place so that you can figure out okay how we communicate this to whoever we need to communicate it.

Julie: I want to actually talk about communications and messaging next. A quick reminder anyone tuning in, thank you for your comments. Feel free to post questions if you have them for John and we’ll make sure that we ask them before we go so thank you to Amber and Stephanie who are commenting. John let’s talk about communications a little bit because I know you and I were talking earlier and my team’s been dealing with a lot of the messaging, the external and internal messaging from a marketing and PR standpoint, but your communications that you’re dealing with are more related to kind of this crisis management and disaster planning. So can you talk from your aspect about communications?

John: Sure absolutely. I think the biggest questions people need answered are that you’re there and that there’s some type of consistent communication on updating on what’s happening I think even if you don’t have all the information even if you can’t sit down and say I know exactly what I’m going to do you know three weeks from now, one week from now, three months from now, you still have a certain amount of information and you can communicate that to the relevant people whatever it is. Even if it’s we’re here or here’s our hours, here we’re open right or we’re available or we’re not available and here’s why right. Those kinds of things you can’t overlook how important it is to just number one communicate something right whatever it is. Just communicate something like here’s what we know here’s our stance. I think this is also a great opportunity, even though there’s some emergency you know side of this it’s also you know you can’t neglect that this is a great opportunity to earn trust and really build trust with people. When they know hey how do you react under pressure? Many times people don’t know how we react when there are kind of adverse circumstances and this is an opportunity to show our customers, our clients, especially the people who work for us, our employees hey how do we react when there’s you know when bad stuff happens? What do you do? So I think there’s this emergency kind of aspect. There’s also letting people know when you’re available. I think for us as a law firm we’ve you know we’re having conversations about hey uh you know people need to know that we’re available to help. People need to know what kind of legal issues are out there right. Whether it’s compliance, whether it’s employment law, whether it’s tax law, whether it’s cybersecurity like we talked about or contracts kind of a corporate issue. People need to know that you’re available and that you’re open and these are the kind of things that you’re helping people with. So it’s important even though it’s a tough time I think what’s amazing is we can do stuff like this like hey we can go on Facebook, we can stream, we can get information out there and people hopefully will if they want to watch it I don’t know you know how people feel, but I think that there’s so many great avenues to communicate we have to make sure that we’re – even if you feel like I don’t even know what to say right there are things you can say to give people comfort consistent communication and let people know you know where you’re at even though we don’t have all the information.

Julie: I know recording video is a way to also be able to connect with people. They can see your facial reactions, they can make the eye contact, they can like you said building trust is so key. I saw this morning the video that Marriott Hotels put out with their CEO and if any businesses are watching, this is a great example of what to do. It’s very personal, you can see on his face, you can hear in his voice that this is something that’s impacting him personally and he talks about caring for his staff, caring for you, knowing everyone around the world and really being united in this. So many key points that are made, but also at the same time letting us know that hotels are in some areas are closed and staff and some of their staff have been affected and are sick from the virus and things like that, that are not comforting to hear not good things you know news to share, but yet he’s doing it in a way that’s very transparent and makes it feel like you’re connecting and so John that’s one of the things you were saying is make sure that you are connected even if you don’t have a lot to say or even if things aren’t looking really great right now. I think this is a good opportunity in our messaging to be united and we’re seeing a lot of that with some of the local you know Lansing restaurants that have had to close or switch up their services and obviously they’re going through a tough time with servers and bartenders not being able to work and in that sort of thing so. Certainly being able to communicate that and talk about it and have transparency. That’s one of the things I talked about with my team is I may not always like the news that I’m going to share, but I’m gonna be fully transparent in that and keep you in the loop and let you know what’s going on and kind of expect the same in return and also understand that if something’s pulling you away from work right now, if you need to you know take time for your family, or take time in whatever way that might be just communicating that message.

John: Yeah and there’s some really great examples I hadn’t seen the Marriot example, but I think there’s just so many really good examples right now. People are really doing a good job with the communication side of things, just being open, transparent you know and I think a lot of people can learn from that. The other thing and I don’t know how much if you want to cover this, but I think once you figure out survival and hey I can either stay in business alright you know personally I feel like I’m comfortable in terms of okay I can make it through today or the weekend right or the next couple weeks. I think this is a great opportunity to think about how you can reinvent your business, yourself individually you know and I heard one person say it’s the time to invest, not retreat. Right now once you figure out how to survive all of these you know all of these circumstances really give you I think some insight into the future and where it’s headed. So for example we talked about remote working right. The ability to work anywhere. If your team can’t work anywhere and respond and really thrive in a situation like this I think it’s a red flag that you got to figure out okay, why is that? What’s holding us from getting there and not just right now like today you know March 20 or whatever day it is right, but hey in the next few months, the next few years, what’s holding us back from getting there? I think a lot of people have looked at this and we’re not thinking about hey where do I need to really change like what trends you know are really converging right here and what is the future look like all of the technology that we’re using to communicate all of you know when we look at our devices, when we look at the trends, it’s all converging and it’s all been here for a while there just hasn’t been a reason why people want to meet virtually right as much right and it certainly it’s there and it’s been around, but now it’s there might be reasons you know the next few years, the next decade, where people might prefer to have a relationship right over you know through a screen rather than meeting in person right. So how do you respond to that as a business owner? How do you respond to that as a business? How do you respond to that as an individual? I was talking with my wife just earlier this week and basically saying you know an underrated skill in the next 10 years is gonna be how do you build a relationship with someone without ever seeing them in person and if you think about that, that’s gonna be a real skill to have and in many cases we don’t think about that, but that’s if you are looking at the trends and looking at it. It’s gonna you know you and I are basically staring at screens right now, but we’re talking, we’re having a conversation and how do you do that on a personal level? How do you do that from a business perspective? It’s really this is a trend that you can’t ignore and it’s not going away and if you once you figure out the survival, once you figure out okay continuity of your business, and compliance with all these different orders that are coming out. Then you can say okay let’s take a moment where it’s quiet where I can just think about things and how do we reinvent to respond to some of this craziness that’s going on, not just respond today, but respond you know going forward.

Julie: Long term yeah what new services are we gonna see come out of this? I mean we already saw Netflix come up with the what are they calling it the Netflix party where you can now you know watch with other people and it syncs up your Netflix you can have a movie night across the miles. I mean things like that, but I think you know of course that’s more kind of a fun aspect for us, but we can see businesses start to generate some of these apps that could be potential revenue makers and even just like you said seeing businesses switch up their services. How do they offer services? What do they offer? Yeah some of the silver linings and opportunities that we’re gonna see come from this.

John: What about this too? Think about how many businesses have a just their whole business model is they charge per event or per service, I mean lawyers that’s how can we quickly do things, but look at some businesses have a subscription model right where it’s just a monthly payment right and I think about how Disney shifted right from being completely focused on their big movies and going to theaters and you know not long ago they launched their online streaming platform to compete with the Netflix’s and Hulu’s and all the other different streaming platforms, Disney Plus. Well today I look at that and I think my kids are watching Disney Plus right because they can’t go to the movie theater. It’s so interesting to me that now you know not and care you know don’t recall how many subscribers they have to that but any business can think that way. So how do you reinvent yourself before something like this happens in the future and you could probably even launch something relatively soon if you’re thinking about it and it depends on what the specific business is, but there are aspects to that where you can say hey how can I be prepared for something like this? If hey our doors can’t open, we’ll how can we be in business in the future?

Julie: All of those services to keep us company. John before we kind of start to wrap things up here I do want to touch on even just briefly, on employment and some of them and there have been a number of bills that have been a lot of information about different potential bills and then we’ve seen some new laws go into effect. So what are some of the most important things right now for employers dealing with employees?

John: So I think there’s a like okay so clearly this is I think to me the issue that I’ve heard the most about. There are certainly all either all these other issues we talked about have we’ve had discussions about them, but the employment issues are the ones that I personally have been asked the most about and my advice with employment is there are a lot of changes that have happened very quickly. There were just changes to FMLA and there’s a period of time where you have to make some decisions on what you’re gonna do. There are changes to unemployment right. So this is where people need to get very specific advice about hey what can I do right now and how do I take care of my employees, but also do the right things so that the business can stay in business so that at some point you know down the line they can you know re-energize and refocus and reopen. When it comes to them employees I would say be very careful right. There are rules that you have to follow in terms of hey if you’re thinking do I need to terminate some staff or some employees right. Don’t do that without talking to someone first. There are programs now that are available. There might be specific advantages to putting someone on leave versus like termination. So don’t necessarily just think oh I gotta fire everybody and then this is what you know then that’ll fix everything no that might actually make it worse. So you know, get specific advice. We have our Foster Swift coronavirus task force webpage. If you just go to fosterswift.com there’s a big section on employment, there’s frequently asked questions and things are changing like I mentioned. There’s different relief to different people it’s not just necessarily for big businesses or small businesses or you know a lot of times and I saw someone basically there’s lots of different federal bills out there and I know that I think I believe they just passed something last night or recently or if not recently it will be passed soon where they’re gonna potentially be using federal funds. To me the bottom line is look at our website, we are having all the updates there so if people have specific questions they can go on there, but get specific advice before you say hey I’m going to make some drastic employment change within an organization. Think about it right. Also think about how this affects the whole organization right in terms of you know can I reopen at some point or there’s so many different factual kinds of differences that we’ve noticed. So it just makes sense you know reach out, look at the some of the documents that we’ve put out there, and then have a conversation and just have you know say hey here’s my situation, here’s what’s going on, here’s my goal, here’s what I want to do you know what’s the best way to accomplish that? I think that’s really the best advice that I could give when we’re talking about employment because every situation is so different and depending on the size of the employer, depending on the type of workers that you have right. Whether they’re exempt or non-exempt you really have to talk with someone that understands those issues specifically and I wish I could give you know every situation and say hey here’s what you should do, but it’s and it’s changing all the time so you might be hearing this and then tomorrow it might be completely different.

Julie: And I know that with your marketing department and some of your attorneys have worked on several new articles that are going to be posted even before noon today so yeah fosterswift.com. Your website is being updated regularly so that’s a great again a great resource for people to use as they’re navigating through this and then of course contacting you directly John. What’s the best way to reach you? I imagine through email?

John: Through email yeah. [email protected].

Julie: John anything else that you want to highlight before we before we go here today. Oh we do have one question so let me just, Amber is asking, what if you are self-employed? I’ve heard there is some relief coming.

John: You know I think and this is where I’m not sure what’s in the federal bill that was either just passed or about to pass where they were talking about sending you know actual you know checks to people and I don’t and I haven’t looked at it yet but I think that there’s relief from that perspective. I’m not sure what other type of relief there would be in terms of you know specifically, but that goes back to my advice of look at the page that we have up. I’m sure there’ll be all the updates and everything there. Especially if you’re self-employed cause it’s really different right and a lot of times if you look at some of the proposals that were made it was if your income drops by a certain amount right or certain percentage or has dropped so if you’re self-employed you can’t really show that right you know it’s not like you’re getting a check and you can say hey my checks lower it’s like hey you might lose a client right or you might lose a source of income. So it’s really difficult to show that’s why you know it’s hard to just say one proposal is gonna help everybody, but again check our site and we’ll definitely have updates on there.

Julie: Definitely, check fosterswift.com. We’re also working next week, we’re gonna have a whole lineup of more experts and John I know we’re talking about having an employment attorney from Foster Swift join me next week. Also the Small Business Development Center, Amber would be a great resource as well for those who are self-employed or 1099. I know that’s another issue here where again John we’re looking at contract workers who you know go contract to contract and right now those contracts may not be may not be coming so again Amber thanks for that question. Definitely fosterswift.com. John anything else before we wrap up here that you want to highlight to the audience?

John: I’ll just say this nothing not specifically legal related, but just something I’ve been thinking about and just noticing is it’s amazing the things that you notice that you miss now that they’re gone right. So some sense of gratitude is just like wow right. If you think about being grateful like everyone to me it’s like every job, every role is important, if you think you know things that are taken away right, you can’t go out to a restaurant, you know you can’t go to a sporting event. Those roles are important and it’s there’s some level of grace that people need to have when they’re dealing with everybody because everybody’s really stressed out, everybody feels this anxiety and the other thing I would say is just being grateful for you know there are so many support systems out there. There are people that are really taking action. There are people that are trying to spread what we believe is the right information and trying to help people and we’re all in it together. I think that’s kind of the last thing that I think about is hey we’re trying to figure out what’s going on from our end, you’re trying to figure out what’s going on your side of things, we’re trying to share information. We’re all doing the same thing. So there is an element to me of thinking about hey let’s be kind right. Let’s not let the situation dictate how we treat people. Let you know the right way to treat people, dictate how we treat people. I think that’s important to remember and be grateful for the you know organizations that we have that are trying really hard. You know this is a really difficult time for people and you can say whatever you want about hey let’s enforce this agreement or let you know force people to do certain things, but ultimately you know these are still people and they’re dealing with a stressful time just like everybody else.

Julie: Gratitude, I really like that John. And thank you again so much for offering your insights today. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you’ve got another task force meeting coming up this morning so John Mashni from Foster Swift thank you.

John: Yeah thanks. Thanks so much Julie. Great to chat as always and I’m sure we’ll be in touch at some point soon.

Julie: Thanks John okay and so for everyone else um later today at mConnexions we’re gonna continue to connect you with trusted experts like John Mashni. At one o’clock today Nora Luke, she’s the founder of corporate to calling. She’s gonna join us to talk about looking for opportunities. Looking for opportunities, silver linings even while all of this is going on. I think that’ll be a great way to kind of wrap up our Friday afternoon, so that’s at 1 o’clock today. We have a full lineup of experts who will be joining us next week so look for that announcement coming later today and also check out our video tab. We’ve had some really incredible experts join us all week long. We will have 10 videos in total on that video tab so whether you’re dealing with financial anxiety, concerns about health and wellness, or if you’re looking for information on how you should be cleaning right now. All of these topics we’ve been talking with experts about all week long, so check out those interviews and we’d love to have you join the conversation right here on Facebook. We’ll see you back here today at 1 o’clock.

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