Ep. 42 - The Failure To Protect: A conversation with Brittain Ladd on small business, ecommerce and supply chain disruption,

They say small businesses are the backbone of America. But what no one understood until the pandemic, was how under resourced, unprepared, uninformed and unconnected most American small businesses were from America's global supply chain.  What is a supply chain? As our guest Brittain Ladd, a supply chain expert shares, it's the process to grow cotton, the get the cotton to a mill for processing, to find the manufacturer, to get a distributer and to sell the t-shirt you just made. For us, it's a whole lot more. It's the marketing, the networks, the relationships with a bank and the availability of willing customers that want to shop with a small business versus a giant with cheaper products like Walmart.  Small businesses thought 2020 was going to be "The Year of the Small Business Dragon." 2020 is turning out to be an exhausting failure on so many levels. Except for a few innovative small businesses that have take this moment to pivot, learn and drive to create 100% online operations, sales and direct to consumer JUST LIKE AMAZON. Brittain explains how the pandemic exposed in full color the already broken supply chain. He shares insightful strategies designed for small businesses so they fight to survive into the future of retail. Brittain has graciously offered to provide a complimentary thirty minute consulting call for any small local business that want ideas on how to stay open and prepared for the future post COVID-19 at https://brittainladd.com. Connect with Brittain on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittainladd. ---- Follow our show on http://www.instagram.com/honestfieldguide or at http://www.twitter.com/thehonestfield. We would love your dollars to keep going! We can take a donation to support our podcast here and we will shout you our when you do it on an upcoming podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/support. Text The Honest Field Guide at ‪(312) 445-0903‬ Send us a voice message and we will record it on an upcoming episode: https://anchor.fm/the-honest-field-guide/message. The podcast is recorded and produced by Birk Creative: Designing visual identities and multichannel strategies to help brands establish, grow, scale, exit and keep up with the pace of change. Visit birkcreative.com. Music found on this episode is available on Apple here https://music.apple.com/us/artist/utah-carol/137984081 and provided courtesy Utah Carol (ASCAP). All content ©Birkdesign Inc. This podcast represents the personal views of JinJa Birkenbeuel, Birk Creative and its employees.