Small businesses across the USA are benefitting from free expert advice on how to access vital support funds, thanks to the quick thinking of our US colleagues.

For a large number of our US trade shows, many attendees and exhibitors are in the small business category. In late March, as pressures were mounting with COVID-19, Jordan Tuchband, Industry President for the JIS jewelry events, noticed a lot of posts in his Facebook industry groups from smaller businesses seeking advice from their peers on the various economic support programs recently made available by the US Federal Government, primarily the CARES Act.

“I immediately reached out to Hervé Sedky, President, RX Global Americas, to see if he had any connections with subject matter experts around the CARES Act” says Jordan. “Herve put me in touch with our RELX General Counsel, Allison Young, and the external law firm Duane Morris LLP who was already working with RX Global around COVID-19 related matters and was heavily engaged with helping businesses understand the various economic stimulus programs. Duane Morris agreed to partner with us on a free webinar on ‘Navigating the CARES Act for Small Businesses’ using the content they already had to hand.”

48 hours, 723 live participants

During that Monday call (April 6th) it became apparent that the US team needed to get the webinar out as fast as possible because there is only a finite amount of funding available for the programs. With Passover beginning on the Wednesday evening, and many people taking Friday off for Good Friday/Easter they settled on Wednesday, April 8th at 11am EST as the target.

“Despite there being only 48 hours from the initial call with Duane Morris to the launch of the webinar, we had over 1,200 people register” says Jordan. “This turned into 723 participants on the day, across every B2B sector covered from our Norwalk office, from eye care and jewelry to hardware and buildings & construction.”

The feedback, adds Jordan, has been overwhelmingly positive.  “For the question, “On a scale of 1 to 5, how likely are you to recommend this to a friend or colleague” (5 being the best), 82 out of the 94 initial respondents scored it as a 4 or 5.”

The team are now making the webinar available free of charge to all RX Global’ US customers. “Everybody who registered was automatically sent a copy of the recording, a PDF of the presentation, as well as a few additional links recommended by Duane Morris that provided further information on what was covered in the webinar” explains Jordan. “The recorded webinar is now being uploaded to our YouTube channel so show teams can post it on their websites, enabling direct customer access.”

Jordan is already in talks with Duane Morris to do more webinars over the next few weeks.  “Based on what is happening in the world right now and the overwhelmingly positive response to this, it is abundantly clear that our attendees and many exhibitors are in major need of help in any way they can get it.”