 Aloha and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. I'm Dayla and Yanagita, standing in for Reg today. We are broadcasting live from the Think Tech Studios in Pioneer Plaza in gorgeous downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we are on www.thinktechhawaii.com. If you'd like to subscribe to our programs or get on our mailing list, please go to thinktechhawaii.com and sign up. The theme of Hawaiian business is to share stories of businesses and people in Hawaii, sharing about how they made it work despite the changes that we all hear about. Today, we are honored to have Jane Sawyer, District Director of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Hawaii District Office in the studio with us today. Jane, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the invitation. It's always a pleasure to be here. We are definitely honored. So why don't we start by you telling us about the SBA and the programs that you've created for to support small businesses in Hawaii? SBA, the U.S. Small Business Administration, has been here for quite some time now, Dalen. And we're pretty well known, I think, most of the time throughout the community because SBA is a federal program, independent federal agency that works with small businesses to help them very simply start, grow, prosper, and help us create jobs and keep the economy flowing because we know the backbone of our economy across the United States is small businesses. So, and Hawaii's definitely a small business state way out here in the middle of the Pacific, but it's very unique in its characteristics, but we have national programs that we're pushing very strongly and basically they're in the area of capital access, government contracting, and then consulting, training, and technical assistance because all of those things are necessary components for a successful small business. Fantastic. Well, we are fortunate that we have a resource here in Hawaii like yourself to provide us those support. I understand that you recently returned from a trip and that you gathered a lot of great information, national, local updates. Why don't you share that with us? Tell us about your trip. It's a very interesting year. Of course, we are all very aware that we have a new administration in Washington, D.C. And since we are a federal program, we respond very frequently to some of the changes there. Our strengths will stay the same and hopefully become even stronger or even more robust depending on some of the changes we see in the program. So, we had our annual leadership meeting that brought together all the district directors and the deputies from 68 different districts. So, Hawaii is a large district geographically because we have all of Hawaiian islands. We also include the territory of American Samoa, the territory of Guam, and then our compact affiliated nations in the Pacific Islands. So, we do a lot of work throughout those areas. So, we go back once a year altogether and share best practices, talks about what's working in our areas, some of the challenges we're facing, get answers and new ideas. So, it was a very, very beneficial conference and we were fortunate to meet with our new leadership. And I'm happy to say that with our 25th administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration, we're very happy to have Linda McMahon who was appointed and approved by Congress. She is a former entrepreneur herself. She's been a CEO of an international business so she knows what it takes to start a business, struggle with the business, and the focus it takes and the determination to make it a success. So, Linda and Vince McMahon built WWE Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment. So, I think a lot of people will recognize that name and some of the personalities and stars and a lot of people grew up with that as one of their primary entertainment and a favorite sport. That's true. But so, she's bringing some of those things, ideas and in talking about really being efficient, effective and accountable for what we're doing. So, I think that speaks well of how we're moving forward and growing our programs here in Hawaiian across the country as well. Any hot topics for national development? Well, we're looking at how do we still streamline our lending programs, both the 7A programs, how do we keep our 504 programs going strong, trying to listen a lot with our lending community to say what can we do even better? Of course, we're seeing banking change so much. As we look at new tools, we look at electronic banking, we look at lenders being in global marketplace, lenders being all over the place or access to capital and different financing programs being available on a global basis that we're seeing our lending change as well. So, we're doing pretty well and the banks are coming on pretty strong this year. We're seeing a big push as we go into the last quarter because it's very competitive here. We have seen a little bit of change though in some of the banks, the size of loans that they're making. So, this year we're seeing an increase in the loan size and maybe somewhat a smaller number of loans being made in Hawaii. We're seeing several national lenders having a bigger presence here and making more loans locally as well. So, some of those digital portals must be working so to speak. So, but we're watching in the next couple months as we go into the end of the fiscal year to see where we'll end up and also to see what new tweaks and twists we might see in our lending programs to help us get more money out to small businesses. Very nice. Any other exciting tidbits from your trip that came up? You know, it was an exciting trip to be meeting with the new appointees, with people who are coming out as the new leaders, the regional administrators. So, along with Mrs. McMahon, we do have a new regional administrator who reports to this area and I report to in California. Michael Vellante is based in Southern California. He's head of Region 9, so I'm sure we'll see him here in Hawaii as well. As a matter of fact, he was at our leadership meeting and he stayed on in Washington, D.C. because I stayed in the Capitol both to visit with some of the leadership in the art organization but also to join the Chamber of Commerce and Senator Hirono for Hawaii on the Hill. So, there were many, many small businesses and medium-sized businesses that were there to promote business in Hawaii, promote their products and the Chamber did an excellent job of putting together high-profile events, a great taste of Hawaii show where they featured food and beverages and products from Hawaii and just really put, it's one of the favorite tickets in D.C., I'm told and it was packed and we, of course, showed up the very best of the Aloha State. We had Kalua Rum there, they were showing my ties. They had Hawaiian Chip Company, Maui Brewing, who just took the top national award for small businesses. So, Hawaii was out there showing what great business we have here, not just the great surf and turf and everything going on with visitors but it was also a great time to highlight what we do in Hawaii because the economy is buzzing along, our employment scene is working pretty well, tourism is strong right now. So, it was a wonderful program that they put together and I thank the Chamber and thank Senator Hirono for that opportunity to be there with our small business owners. Sounds like an amazing event. Sounded like a lot of fun too. It was a lot of fun and I think we really impressed our new administrator. So, before he even got to Hawaii to meet people and meet the leaders in our community, he had a chance to meet with several of the mayors and discuss things that we want, you know, the rest of the country to be aware of out here. Well, we're fortunate that we had great representation out on the hill and I'm sure that's gonna bring some great, great opportunities back to Hawaii. Tell me about events coming up for the 2017 lending calendar. Okay. What do you got going on? Well, actually, as we are, we're talking about coming into the last quarter of our fiscal year, so we're really, with the banks, put a big push to get out and talk with small business people about the programs, to help them kind of get a foothold, see what they need to do to say get the financing that they need to expand, start a business, you know, diversify, maybe open another outlet because we'll see where we do all of those things. SBA provides a guarantee for the lenders so if they're starting off in maybe a little riskier direction or maybe they don't have the normal underwriting that they would require for a loan, that we can add a little extra oomph to their financing program so that the bank can say yes and give them a loan to help them grow. We're almost at about 200 loans right now that's a little bit lower than we were last year. We'd like to see it pump up a little bit. So we're going out into the community and out to many of the different banks. We have what we call a resource day at the bank and one of our banking specialists will go out and meet one-on-one, a confidential 30-minute consultation to talk about. Whatever the small business may be interested in to help them grow or expand. It can be financing, it could be contracting, it could be refinancing or repackaging a loan that they're looking at. We have special products for exporting. We have products that, as I said, would help a startup. We have working capital loans as line of credit for different types of business contracting loans. So as specialized and as different as small business may be, our loan packages may be as well. We'd say go take a look online at our website, www.sba.gov, backslash hi for the Hawaii district office and you can look at one of a recent loan reports, see who's lending, how much they're lending, how many loans they've made, things like that. You can even find success stories there that will talk about some of the businesses we've have helped and how they've used their funding or go to one of our resource days, come into one of our workshops at our office. There's a calendar that would be on that website and they can go ahead and look at that and see if there's anything that appeals to them that may be something, a question that they've been keeping in the back of their mind and just looking at how can we answer this question without leaving any victims or spilling our secrets or things like that. So it's easy to come in and get some help from the SBA or any of our resource partners in the community as well. We work with the University of Hawaii, we work with the YWCA, we work with SCORE, so lots of free resources to help small businesses move to the next level. Fantastic. Jane, we're gonna go to a break shortly but we will be back. You are tuning in to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We all play a role in keeping our community safe. Every day we move in and out of each other's busy lives. It's easy to take for granted all the little moments that make up our everyday. Some are good, others not so much. But that's life. It's when something doesn't seem quite right that it's time to pay attention. Because only you know what's not supposed to be in your everyday. So protect your everyday. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. Aloha and Richard Concepcion, the host of Hispanic Hawaii. You can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational and also we'll tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think Tech Hawaii, Aloha. Living in this crazy world. So caught up in the confusion. Nothing is making sense for me. And this is Business in Hawaii. I'm Daylan Yanagita sitting in for Reg Baker. My guest today is Jane Sawyer of the U.S. Small Business Administration. She's the district director. So welcome back everyone. Jane, you are mentioning some of the events that will be going on. And I know that there are a number of events on different themes. Would you share more of those with us? Sure, their big push right now of course is finishing out lending year. So we will be having several of those different resource days. I think there's one that's, we're looking at Kona, Hilo and Maui for several different banks. And just to check with us on when we'll be there over the next two months. But we'll be out in across Oahu as well. We just got back from Kauai. But that gives us the opportunity to meet with different lenders and then also with different prospective borrowers to talk about what's going on or what kind of trends. And one of the things we've noticed this year is people are business owners are being a little bit more aggressive in some cases. You know, something that obviously they've been thinking about. They've been looking for loans that are a little bit bigger than what our average loan has normally been. So that they are doing build-outs or retrofits or renovations on facilities. Maybe starting a new outlet or second restaurant, or adding additional ovens and things like that. We've seen the kind of customers that we're working with are, you know, from all sorts of industries. We've seen retail shops open up, new restaurants, new new branches of restaurants. We've seen lots of professional offices expand or get new equipment in this year as well. So dentists, we're gonna have Hawaii Smiling for sure. Lots of dentists and a couple of different clinics. Surgical clinics have opened up. We've seen breweries. I think I've already said restaurants, pizza, you know. A few health food outlets as well. So we're happy we do franchises quite frequently too. So there are a few different steps when you just really work with your banker and finding what's the best way to approach it. Or, you know, come to one of our sessions and we can help you shop with the different banks. Because most of the banks will do SBA loans and I always encourage a small business owner to ask your talking to your lender. Be prepared when you go in. Know that he's gonna ask for information. They are going to check your credit. They're going to want to know things like how much you want, what you want to use the proceeds for. They're gonna want to look at your tax returns. You're going to probably want to look at your credit score. But definitely be prepared when you go to talk to them. And shop around. A lot of times it's very, very important to be prepared when you go in and sometimes to have that relationship with the bank. But also know that there may be a reason that they wouldn't be able to give you a loan or give you a second loan. And yes, people do get multiple loans or that can aggregate to a larger amount. So start with something reasonable, particularly if you're a new or small business owner. And that's a good way to get your foot in the door and get started. Then establish your track record, do what you say you're going to do with your business. And usually that's going to propel you to greater and faster success as well. So it's always a good thing to do. SBA created another tool to help people who, you know, sometimes, no, I don't want to go talk to a bank or first. I even think maybe it'll just turn me down. If you don't go and see a resource partner such as a small business development center network or get into the women's business center to have them look and help you with your plan, which they do for free, by the way. And they love doing that because that's one of their targets and goals that we give them is to help small businesses get more money. But you can go online to a program that we've established called LINK. And it is a digital matchmaker. And you can put in information about your business, what you're looking for, how much money you're looking for, what you want to use the proceeds for, the area that you live throughout our district. And the SBA will hook you up with a bank who is willing to discuss alone with you because they're looking for either your industry, your area of expertise. They want to service the area that you live or the place where you're building your business. And you may have a couple of banks contact you to discuss what is your proposal instead of you have to chase after the banks, the banks may come to you. And that's called LINK, L-I-N-C. And you can find that at SBA.gov as well. Fantastic resources. So say for a person who never owned a business before, doesn't even know where to start. Is there a mentoring program or anything like that where a brand new small business owner wants to hear someone's horror stories to help them build success from the beginning? I think that there are those where you can hear horror stories and hopefully it will just kind of help you not make such costly mistakes and make you consider carefully what you're jumping into. And I do recommend that a new or small business owner or even somebody who maybe has, maybe has had business experience but they're going to start a new business that they consider talking to a trained consulting professional. There are many, there's SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives is what it originally stood for. But really they are volunteer consultants who work with SBA to help small businesses. They share their wisdom, they share their experience and they will do free consulting. They offer training classes that are very, very affordable at the SBA office. But they're one of our arms that will help get out there and talk to small businesses one on one. Sometimes they'll come to you, they'll come to your business and it's just a great way to get a second pair of eyes or accept and particularly experienced eyes on your business to say maybe you should reconsider this or are you sure you want to take this route? Tell me why that's gonna work. Let's review those numbers. All those things that really will help you either verify, confirm or help you adjust your plan. You can find that with our Women's Business Center, the Patsy Mink Center for Business and Leadership, a great program. It's a partnership with the YWCA here in downtown Honolulu but they do training classes all over the place. But most of them are here in their center. They work with one-on-one consulting, they have a Launch My Business course, they have a Launch My Non-Profit class. They also house the Business Legal course so that if you need some legal advice you can come in and talk to attorneys. I think it's every other week so you can just look them up online or Google Patsy Mink Center. And find them and see what's going on there. But again, it's free consulting. They can help you put together your business plan, they can review your business plan. And then another one of our programs is the Hawaii Small Business Development Center Network. And that's a partnership with UH. There is an office on each one of the islands. And they again do training, mentoring and consulting, technical assistance for businesses and it's free. You can find them by, again, Google Hawaii Small Business Development Center Network. You can find them affiliated with UH. And they're a great program. They've been around for about 25 years now. Maybe a little longer than that. So, but excellent consulting, great track record of helping small businesses get started and grow. I'm sure there are a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs that didn't know that there are so many resources out there to help them navigate opening up their brand new business. That's fantastic. And a lot of people think that we only help people that are starting new businesses, but we actually have programs at work with small businesses pretty much at any point in the life cycle of the business. Whether it is funding for a new operation, whether it is getting government contracts so that you can really build a robust bottom line by working with Uncle Sam, who is the biggest customer in the world. So our government contracting and business development programs involve special certifications for different types of businesses. So it can be socially and economically disadvantaged businesses who want to do more businesses with the government. Right now we're sitting at about 93 certified firms and we help them, it can be in the trades, it can be in IT, it can be in management, all different kinds of businesses. There are graphics entrepreneurs, resellers, all different kinds of businesses that then have contacts with all the buying officers throughout the Pacific region. So it opens a lot of doors of opportunity for anything that's going on with the federal government. Fantastic. Before the show we were talking a little bit and you were talking about an interesting trend that you're seeing happening with the lenders. Tell our viewers about that. Well I think as we see banking and financing change so much and we see so many new tools out there and we are hearing a lot about changes in banking and digital formats and things we're seeing that banks are changing the way they interface with small businesses. And we are seeing a lot more of the national lenders, I think maybe through programs like Link and through internet access and other referral systems are finding other banks that are lending on the national scene. So we right now have a good number of banks that are participating with SBA lending in Hawaii that are from off island. So it's kind of changed the scene and I think it's also contributed to maybe that higher size loan that we're seeing go through SBA. And so we are seeing more people more small business owners than shop around a little bit or get connected with different lenders. I don't know if it may be from an alma mater program or from a different vendor that they're buying from if they're making purchase of large goods because some of our loans are specifically for larger pieces of equipment and things like that. So it may be a different financial arrangement. But we see people who are determined to get a business started looking at different ways to reach out and find the lending tools that they need. So we're encouraging people to learn about our programs, come in for an orientation so that they can learn specifically what tools are there to help them from our people and even to go and talk to your bank or get to know your banker because as a small business owner or somebody who's getting into small business that's gonna be a big asset for you if you do develop that relationship and you learn some of the language of financing that will make a difference. Get a good CPA, develop a relationship with your branch manager or your business banking officer it will make a difference for you going forward. Fantastic, Jane, I wanna thank you so much for spending time with us today. We are out of time so that brings us to the close of our show, Business in Hawaii. I'm Dalen Yanagita sitting in for Reg Baker and I've been talking with Jane Sawyer from the US Small Business Administration Honolulu, the Hawaii District Office and thank you so much for joining us. You can join us every week on Thursday at 2 p.m. right here at thinktechhawaii.com.