National Small Business Week: Phoenix Awards

Thank you. What an incredible group of entrepreneurs from every corner of our nation. I have the distinct honor of introducing our Phoenix Award winners. Each year we present these awards to those who embody the trademark selflessness and commitment of our nation's entrepreneurs. By going above and beyond in the aftermath of a disaster to to help rebuild their communities, our three 2022 Phoenix Award winners exemplify the power of determination and resilience in the face of adversity and the drive to rebuild. The Phoenix Award for outstanding small Business disaster recovery goes to Brittany Lynn Moon, who owns the Bitty Bubbles Swim School in Panama City, Florida, A year round indoor swim school that has helped thousands of local children learn a life saving skill. Congratulations, Brittany.

My name is Brittany Moog and this is Bitty Bubbles Swim School. The purpose of Bitty Bubbles Swim School is to teach small children about water safety. I opened Bitty Bubbles in the fall of 2016. We had moved down here from St. Louis, Missouri and the job that I had loved there just wasn't readily available. So we created Biddy. After opening Biddy in Panama City, Florida, it was more successful than we could have imagined in the first year. So much so that we had to go from renting a space to scouting our own space. The build out took seven months. And then eight months after that build out, Hurricane Michael hit. Hurricane Michael was majorly devastating for our area. Immediately upon impact, it was categorized as a Category 4 hurricane. But a few months later it had been upgraded to a Category 5. It was absolutely devastating for our area and our swim school in particular took a really, really hefty blow. Several of our coaches were displaced, some of them military, so they didn't even get to come back to the area. They were just relocated. And so some of our coaches we literally never saw again after the hurricane. Many of our coaches were heavily displaced because of the lack of housing available. So much was destroyed during the hurricane that there just wasn't space for people to stay. So we had a few coaches that stayed with us through the rebuild of our facility and of the area in general. It took eight months to rebuild Biddy Bubbles. At that time, the coaches were still staying with us and a few had decided to leave the area because of lack of housing. I can't exactly recall how we heard about the SBA disaster assistance after Hurricane Michael. I just remember getting to the parking lot where they were set up and just feeling relief. How kind everybody was. It was a very interesting setup. They were in vans and set up under an awning of a partially destroyed building. But their readiness to help everybody in the community and really walk me through the paperwork and make it easy in such a chaotic time was really a relief. It's amazing how many resources come to the area and how quickly they get here, but they're not a magic wand. It doesn't happen overnight that all the businesses get to reopen. It takes time. So during that time that we were shut down, we looked for a separate place to practice from, to offer even a few lessons while the rebuild took place. We were lucky enough to find a condo about 25 minutes away from our facility that was willing to let us use their indoor pool for a period of time. And we were able to continue our lessons, at least on the small scale. Through our rebuild, we have grown to the point where we have currently 10 staff members and we service about 500 children a month. When Covid hit, we had to do complete shutdown. So it was three months where we weren't allowed to not only tend to our students, but our staff members couldn't come in as well. After the initial shock of having to shut down our business, it was time to get to work. And so the SBA started offering some really awesome opportunities. So we reached out, or better yet, our local bank reached back out to us to tell us more about the PPP loan and how it could help us kind of bridge the gap while we were doing this shutdown. If I were to talk to a business owner, new or old, and give them a piece of advice for going forward to work with SBA and things like that is have a great relationship with your banker. I am so grateful to the SBA for working with small banks because of the ease of use, especially with the PPP loan and that relationship that they created there. My banker was really key in making sure that we had the funds that we needed and all the information we needed to make the right choice for our business.

Congratulations, Brittany. The Phoenix Award for outstanding contributions to disaster recovery by a public official goes to Nick Hunter, Mayor of the city of Lake Charles in Louisiana, who helped his community through a global pandemic, three hurricanes, a winter storm and a 1,000 year flood in his first four year term. Congratulations, Mayor Hunter. The Phoenix Award for outstanding contributions to disaster recovery by a volunteer goes to Howie Kaplan, owner of the Howling Wolf in New Orleans, Louisiana, for mobilizing his small staff and team of volunteers to help feed approximately 10,000 people in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. Congratulations, Howie.