STUDIO CITY, Calif. – Shelley Burbo has been a successful aesthetician for 20 years. Her business, Skin-Ology in Studio City, has a five-star rating on Yelp.
She even has a few celebrity clients. But none of that matters right now because she has no money and the business she's put her heart and soul into is on the brink of closing for good.
“It's been devastating. I've been up at night. You know, there's physical symptoms. It's really emotional for me. And not knowing where I'm going to get help if I'm going to get help. It’s all just heartbreaking for me to think that I may have to go back to zero,” Burbo said.
She's applied for every possible source of emergency funding currently available. Eight weeks after having shut down due to stay at home orders, she has not received a penny from any of them.
“You hear, ‘we're going to provide this, and we're going to provide that,' and most of it came back to me that I was denied benefits,” she said.
She's applied for the PPP, EIDL, EDD, and still hasn’t gotten her IRS stimulus check. The SBA ran out of the $350 billion allotted for the PPP loan program just 13 days after its establishment.
The PPP has just re-opened with an additional $321 billion in funding from Congress. But Shelley hasn’t gotten any of the new round of PPP funds. She says there is a catch to getting that money.
“When the funds are released, you have a certain amount of time that you need to start using these funds. And if businesses are not operable, it's not helpful to businesses like mine,” she said.
Burbo finally heard that she will be eligible to get $167 a week from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance as a sole proprietor, and eventually she will get the additional $600 from EDD. But she hasn’t gotten any of that money yet. And as a single mother and sole proprietor of her business, she says her monthly bills and expenses are probably four times the amount of unemployment money she will get.
After completely depleting her savings account, she had run out of options and she was forced to do something she never thought she would have to do; ask for help from friends and clients.
She started a GoFundMe.
“It's very difficult for me to reach out for help," said Burbo. "Anybody that knows me know it's I'm very independent, and I'm always the warrior woman.”
She's looking at potentially opening in phase three of the state's four-phase reopening plan. That's in the fall, but without loans or any kind of revenue coming in, it doesn't seem likely.
“I can't see myself still being in business in four months. At this rate with no assistance. I need help. I need help.”
More information is available about the Paycheck Protection Program.