Sender One Climbing

Hi, my name is Alice Kao. I am the co founder and CEO of Senderone Climbing. And here we are in my Santa Ana location, actually our first location. I've been climbing for about 12 years and I started climbing through a very tough time in my life and climbing helped me get through it. I built this place because I wanted to give climbing to other people and have climbing help people that can help me. We have two locations just like this. This really big. This place is 25,000 square feet, 50 foot in height. And then we just recently opened a smaller footprint, a smaller bouldering only facility. I'm a small business owner and I think nobody would have expected to open a gym like this and be closed for a year. We were closed three times between March 2020 and 2021 and I'll never forget it. We closed for the first time in March 15th. On Tuesday the next week, we furloughed 135 people and kept 24. How did I know to turn to the SBA? Well, at first I didn't. I actually called my banker. She was one of the first people I called. I told her that, you know, I needed to do everything I could to keep as much cash in the business as possible. So the first thing I thought of was asking her to see if we can defer some loan payments. I didn't know any funding was available at first, and then my bankers told me about it. I think when we first closed in March and April, nobody knew what was happening and it was just a really scary time. I think it was around April and May when the PPP first became available. My banker immediately told me to apply for this and she helped me get through the application process. She also told me about the eidl. The one thing a lot of people don't talk about, but it really helped my business was the forgiveness aspect for the 7As. So we had the payment forgiveness for two rounds of payment forgiveness and that helped me tremendously. People wanted to come here to feel a sense of community and they wanted to be able to come back to their jobs. We did a lot of remodels and repairs and things that we've been wanting to do for years because normally our business is closed, is open 362 days a year. When I had questions, when I didn't know how to get through, there's a lot of paperwork and administration and I really appreciate that. Everybody I've talked to at the SBA have been extremely helpful and I know they are really committed to helping small.

Businesses it's our pleasure to highlight sender Juan and Alice for this year's National Small Business Week Virtual Summit. She's the epitome of this year's theme of resilience and renewal, and we're just so glad that she resides in our district in Orange County, California.

The SBA helped me in many ways. It helped me start my business. I couldn't have done this. I mean, I didn't just start a website business, started a business with millions of dollars of capital improvements. So without my first 7A, I wouldn't have been able to do this. Without the pandemic funding, I wouldn't have been able to keep my employees on. I wouldn't have been able to do the upgrades that I did to help me reopen my business. What I'm hoping will come out of my relationship with the SBA is some future 7A funding. I have another location opening in 2023, so I'm hoping to get another loan from the S.

Sam.