 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha and welcome to Adventures in Small Business. This program is brought to you by Think Tech Hawaii, the Small Business Development Center and the U.S. Small Business Administration. My name is Dennis Boyd and I am the Director of the West Hawaii Small Business Development Center and our office covers the entire western half of the island, the big island of Hawaii, and our office is in Kailua, Kona. My client here with me today is Donna Cavalier and she is the owner of Tiki Tan Salon in Kailua, Kona. I thought Donna would be a good candidate for this program because of the passion she has in her business. It's really inspiring and when she first came to me, I have to tell you, I thought this whole idea was a little crazy, I mean a tanning salon in Hawaii, sort of like selling ice to the Eskimos, I thought. But I'm very happy that Donna has proved me wrong both by the success of her business and by just her persuasion about how good a product she has. So welcome, Donna. Thank you for having me. Sure. Glad you're here. Can you tell us a little bit about why you decided to go into business for yourself and why did you pick this particular kind of business? Well, I wanted to go into business for myself because I wanted to work for myself. I've worked for some great people in the past, but I've also worked for some not so great people. And I wanted an opportunity to provide customer service to the fullest extent. And I felt like I could do that going into business for myself, especially with a tanning salon in Hawaii because it's the only one in Hawaii on the Big Island. And it's been very successful in other destination vacation places. For instance, Florida is the capital of tanning salons, and it's always sunny in Florida. That's so strange, too. Yeah, it's a very similar kind of place as Hawaii. And I thought there was a niche for it here. You moved to Hawaii with all the grand ideas of being on the beach every day and enjoying your lives and vacationing every day. But when you get here, you realize you have to work two or three jobs to maintain your lifestyle and getting to the beach gets less and less as time goes on. So people still want to have that nice healthy glow and enjoy their lives at the same time. You were also positioning this for the wedding party niche as well, right? Right. And we're still working on that. I've been working with a lot of the wedding planners and such for the destination weddings. It's a great benefit to them because of one, they can get rid of their tan lines or get that little glow before they have their day. But also with the body contour light that we offer, that helps them to lose that last five pounds before they have to get in that wedding dress. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, you mentioned that. And I know it's not just tanning beds. Can you just sort of give us the menu of the kind of services you provide in your business? Right. So we have the tanning beds. The great thing about them is they're very low in UVA and UVB, so it's a much safer alternative. We have red light therapy beds, which is amazing for the skin, as well as uplifting to the mood and a natural antidepressant and a mume booster. But then we have the body contour light, which is also red light therapy. It penetrates to a much deeper level than our bed, actually getting to the fat cell, and you lose fat at the speed of light. On top of that, we offer massage therapy, and then we also have Dr. Christina Satellite Office, where her nurse offers vitamin infusion, injections, and IVs. Okay. It's more of a spa kind of environment than just a tanning service. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Great. Going into business is a challenge for anybody. It's a big step going from working for somebody to being your own boss and being the place where the buck stops. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges you faced in starting your business? The biggest challenge was working with the building department. They don't give you a list to check off. It's figuring it out as you go. You have to be extremely diligent and staying on top of everything with the building department, and rules get made as you go, so it's constantly catching up and trying to do the right thing. It was a longer process than I had anticipated, and I hear that a lot with businesses in Hawaii, but the greatest thing was you were there to help guide me. When I first started, I had no idea where to even start from. I applied for the license, got the tax ID number, and then I was stumped, what do I do next? Then you came into play and were able to help me with the entire business plan, guide me through that, as well as the financial and projections for the business, clear down to the perfect loan agent to help me get the loan to start the business. That's something we do for all our clients is not only help them prepare the documents that they need to start the business, the business plan and the financial package, but also try to pick a financing source for them. That's going to be amenable to what they want to do, so thanks for the nice things you said. What about personally? That's all the logistics about getting started. Did you find it personally difficult to get in gear or to be responsible for everything? Actually no. No. I just took the ball and ran with it, which is just my personality anyways. I was so excited about everything that I was doing and it took on a personality of its own. When we first started out, it was just going to be a tanning salon and it just kept growing into more and better things, more red light therapy, the body contour light, the vitamin infusion. All of those things are about health and wellness, its mind, body, skin wellness all the way around. As far as what we started out with, what it was going to look like, it started out originally as just being kind of a basic tanning salon that you would see on the mainland, but by the time we finished it turned into a full salon and spa type of service and environment. So you can see this is what I was talking about, about the passion. Once she starts talking about her company, she gets pretty passionate about it. What do you think makes your business stand out? You talked a little bit about customer service earlier and I know you've been in the retail businesses that have had customer service kinds of important customer service components to them. What's your take on that? Where are you coming from with customer service? Customer service is really important to me. If you go to a restaurant and somebody is having a bad day, you can feel it, they want you to hurry up and get away from the table, go pay your bill, leave, they're nice about it but the love isn't there and this has given me an opportunity to really show the love to people. Everybody needs to be loved, everybody needs to feel beautiful and be told they're loved and that they're beautiful and they get that when they come into my salon. They get that from the moment they walk in the door to the moment that they leave and all the in-betweens. It's a sanctuary there. It's comfortable. It's inviting. The girls that I have working there for me are wonderful. Everybody gets that special attention. Everybody feels important when they come in. It goes above and beyond just customer service. We all have the customer service handbook but this is much more. It's more about really having empathy and compassion for people, understanding, listening to them and being there for them, helping them have a great experience while they're there. You're kind of a little oasis in downtown Caldwell, Kona. I like going there. That's the most important part I guess, letting your business you're in. Your business is relatively new and so there's the challenges of getting started in a business, just getting opening the door. What's the phase like after you open the door? How do you get customers? How did you get customers? How did you spread the word about your services and get that, well repeat customers I guess came from your customer service but what did you do? What was that like for you? A lot of it was word of mouth and me getting out in front of people. I started at one end of the city and worked my way clear to the north end. Going to all of the hotels, talking to all the concierge, wedding planners, stopping at all the salons, interacting with people, just constantly talking about the business with everybody and inviting people in for a free visit. Come just check us out. But most of it was personalized, it was very one-on-one with people. I've done some marketing, I've done a radio ad. We did the newspaper, new business thing in the Hawaii, what was that, Hawaii? Spotlight on business in West Hawaii today. But most of it's come just word of mouth, which is typical in Hawaii. Yeah, especially in our small community, coconut wireless. Did you have any reactions like my reaction, my reaction when you first broached this idea to me was like, what? What are you talking about? When you started to go out and talk about your business to potential customers and get that word of mouth going, did you have people who were like sort of giving you some pushback about what do we need that for here or anything like that? People laughing at me. Laughing at you. What, tanning in Hawaii? Are you kidding me? Yeah, it was on stop. And my answer, my response is, do you have a job? And when was the last time you went to the beach? Yeah. So that stopped a lot of people dead in their tracks where they're kind of like, oh yeah, it has been a while since I've been to the beach. But it's not just about the tanning. It's about the red light therapy. It's about feeling good. It's about having the best skin naturally that you can. Everything that my salon has to offer is natural, even the products that I have. There's natural as you can get and still have anti-aging ingredients in them. But where was I at? The pushback. Pushback. The pushback. The lack of pushback. Yeah, yeah. So everybody wants to look young. They want to look tan. They want to look healthy. Right. And then at first, too, there was a lot of girls that were coming in, women, and not telling their friends where they were getting their tan from. And then pretty soon they were running into each other in the salon. And a lot of these people were the people that were pushing back on the idea of tanning in Hawaii. Oh, the secret, the closet tanners. Oh yeah, they are. They are. But we're very confidential. Okay. Okay. Well, it sounds like you hit a nerve when you hit the ground running and really are sort of capitalizing on that pretty well. And I've got to tell you, your physical plant, your facility, is really beautiful. And that sort of adds to that sort of sanctuary kind of feeling. And I know you did, that was sort of a do-it-yourself kind of thing. Yeah, I did it. You and your partner, Brian. Yes. You decided not to call a contractor, you were going to go full steam ahead yourself to do all that stuff, huh? Yes, we did. Yeah. Is that something you regret, or would you do? No, not at all. I mean, I would probably hire a contractor the next time to be in charge of the whole build-out process. But as far as the design, that was Brian and I, our idea together. And it all came together nicely. I mean, we started with one color to work around. And everything just kept getting nicer. The front desk got nicer. The back wall got nicer. All of the accents and things that we added, the waterfall. Getting those things to the island was challenging as well. But yeah, down to the signature scent essential oils that I use every day are amazing. You can't not feel good when you're around those essential oils. Right. So environment was a really important part of your business plan. Yes. And your business off the ground, great. Was there anything in our work together? I mean, you very nicely talked about the things we did together. What were the, in the planning process, the sort of the groundwork and the logistics we had to do to get you ready? What were the things, what was your biggest barrier? And is there anything I could have done to have helped you better, feedback for me? You did awesome. I mean, you rocked the whole thing. Every little piece of information I came up with, if there was any kind of a hole in it at all, you saw it and redirected me back for more research. And that helped me be a better owner. It helped me know even more about my product. I mean, I've done a lot of research on what I have to offer, but you made me dig deeper. And that has just benefited me. I mean, when I'm walking people through, I'm giving somebody a tour. I have that research and that knowledge behind me because you sent me back to the drawing part. Great. Well, thank you. On that positive note about me, we'll take a break for a short period of time. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Choose to treat it with the help of a physical therapist. Physical therapists treat pain through movement and exercise. No warning labels required. And you get to actively participate in your care. Choose to improve your health without the risks of opioids. Choose physical therapy. My name is Stephanie Mock and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pomei Weigert. And we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs, and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on a Thursdays at 4 p.m. and we hope we'll see you next time. Welcome back to our discussion with Donna Cavalier from Tiki Tan Salon and Kailua Kona. Donna, okay, now your doors are open. Now you're on the path to success, we hope. And what do you think you're an entrepreneur now? Actual, not a wannabe entrepreneur, a real entrepreneur. What do you think are the pluses and minuses of that role? And I know there's a lot of them. I've been in those shoes. What do you think? The pluses are you get to do things the way you want to and hopefully you do them right and right by everyone. That sounds like it's really important for you because you're sort of in control of your work. Right, I mean I can build it and I did but it's hiring the right people. It's hiring the people that care enough about me and Brian and care enough about my business to project my business the way I want it projected. So knowing those people to hire is one of the skills you need to have as an entrepreneur. Having some sort of gut feeling about it. Right, especially, you know, it's really hard to hire employees and it's really hard to keep employees. And I've been really fortunate in all of my careers to have really great employees. These two that I have right now, they actually were my clients before they were my employees. So I got a chance to see who they were in their normal everyday life. And they have surprised me every day with how amazing and great they are. But then you got to treat them right, you know, and you have to respect them and be empathetic to their needs and what they're looking for and be caring, you know. So I mean, you can pretend to be and pretend to care about your employees and they feel it. They feel the difference. I know I have throughout my careers. Well that's especially important in where we live in West Hawaii where there's such a tight labor market and they don't like working for you, they can just go down the street and get a job somewhere else. Absolutely, absolutely. What are the kinds of things you do to, you know, to show your, to sort of generate that employee loyalty and, you know, respect them like you say? I truly respect them. I honestly do. I care about them. I love them. I am there for them. If they need me, they know this, you know, all they have to do is let me know. And, and I am 100% theirs. I try to take care of them. What have you done? Have you done anything in terms of, you know, their physical working experience like hours or pay or, you know, how do you work that? How do you, why does somebody want to work for you other than the fact that you are who you are rather than, you know, the guy down the street, the lady down the street? Because I am who I am. I honestly care about these people. I honestly love them. And I feel the same way about my clients that come in. You have to be grateful for the people that are in your lives and that come through your lives. And I'm grateful for every single one of them. All my clients and my employees. And when you, you can't pretend to be grateful. You either are or you aren't. And I am. And I show that to them hopefully on a daily basis. And if I'm not, let me know. I'll come back and make sure I'm, I'm, you know, treating them the way that they deserve to be treated. It's authenticity. Absolutely. It's a big deal for you. We talked a little bit about the skills you need as an entrepreneur. And I know an entrepreneur wears a lot of hats. It's where the buck stops. And you're trying to cut corners on costs frequently. What kind of skills did you bring to this phase in your life that you think were really key in your success as an entrepreneur? My past experience in the management positions I've had have helped a lot. One doing, being in property management for so long, working with financials, working with budgets. That definitely helped come into play and keeping me on track. As well as you reminding me to go back to my business plan when I'm getting too big for my bridges. Oh, you did that. Great. I did. I did. And, you know, in the restaurant, managing restaurants, that was huge because there's such a turnover in employees and getting them to stay for long periods of time and being loyal to you. You know, that was definitely beneficial in the business I'm doing now. A lot of similarities between, you know, in that kind of industry and your kind of industry. You want to have people have a nice experience so they come back because it's not something that they need to sign a contract for or anything like that. They just, as the mood strikes them, they want to go where they had a good experience. Okay. Okay, this has been quite a journey for you. You and I personally have talked about different phases of your life. And I know this is a new phase for you. What did this part of your life journey, your business journey, teach you that you would like to pass on to other people who might be considering a similar kind of big step? Help me out here. Help you out. Okay. What made you succeed that you think other people should know? Just being a go-getter. You can't stop. You know, it's a 24-hour job. I've been very fortunate to not overwork myself, which is really important in this. But I'm losing my train of thought here. Okay. Okay. Well, you're talking about personal characteristics that really make you successful as an entrepreneur. Your brain can't stop. You've always got to reinvent yourself. You've always got to come up with new ideas. You've always got to add new things, always making it better. So you're waking up at 2 in the morning? No, I don't. This is what I'm going to do? I don't do that. I take cortisol managers so I can sleep at night. Good for you. But no, you do. You always have to be on the go and you always have to have your eyes open. You can't just start a business and then fall off. You always have to be actively involved at some point. They can't be an absentee owner. I don't think so, especially in a small town like Kona. People want to see you there. I'm there almost every day. I would like to be there more than I am sometimes, but especially with the body contour light now, I'm doing all of those sessions myself, so it kind of takes me away from the front a little bit. But you do. You need to be actively involved with your employees, with your clients, with your business. It's not a part time thing. No. It's not for the week. Not for the week. I heard somebody say that owning a business is a contact sport. Absolutely. Yes, it is. Definitely. Get some bruises from it, for sure. So you're on the path to success with your business. I mean, you're relatively new. You've had a phenomenal success proving me wrong, like I said in the beginning. But in addition to the money factor, how do you define success for yourself in this business? When would you sit back and say, ah, tiki tan salon is a success? Where do you? At this point? I do. Every single day. Every single day. Every single day. The more people I make happy and having people leave my salon with a smile on their face tells me that I have been successful that day. And it's one day at a time. That's very important to me. And I've achieved that. And I strive to achieve that every single day. Great. So it's an ongoing path for you. Absolutely. It has to be. Because if you don't, then you're dropping the ball somewhere. You have to strive every day to be the best. Okay. Did you have that kind of, is that the same kind of dedication you had as an employee? Most of the time. It is different because it's my baby now. I have been fortunate enough to work for some amazing people. And I'm just going to say it, Duke from Duke's Seafood and Chatterhouse in Seattle. One of the most amazing entrepreneurs I've ever worked for in my life, as well as Greg, his general manager, who was my boss at the time. Amazing people that allowed me to be myself and to take the ball and run with it and to give the kind of customer service that I wanted to give and back me up. And that's really when I found that true passion for what it feels like to offer good customer service and really care about your clients. So do you think that whole emphasis on customer service, I know it's obviously very important for you and something you've talked a lot about here today. Is it something you find rare in our little community? I mean we're a tourist community. We have a small local population and a lot of tourists who come and go. So a lot of our businesses are geared more to that non-repeat customer. So that sort of lends itself maybe to people being more brusque. But do you feel that your brand of customer service is different than what you see out there? How do you see that in our community? There is good customer service out there. I get it all the time. Great places that I go and people are absolutely wonderful and I appreciate and value them for that. But you know, I don't think people want to really take the time to care like they should. It takes away from the business they think. It takes away from their time, work and their financials. You're spending too much time on that table or you're giving too much to this person and not to that person. You just give them all of. Across the board, huh? That's simple. It doesn't take any experience or anything else to just show the love. And I'm adamant about that. It's important. And that's what makes me successful every single day. Being grateful, showing the love and valuing and appreciating everybody that's around me. Spreading that sunshine. Absolutely. Spreading the sunshine. Perfect. Where are you going? What's your plans for the future? Where's Tiki Tan salon heading? What embellishments are you anticipating? What's going on with you? We are definitely looking at opening more salons. Really? We've been getting a lot of interest from the other side of the island. The cloudy side? Yes, the cloudy side. I have women that come over every week to use Tiki Tan salon and the things that we have to offer there. And I think that they would benefit from our services on that side. We're looking at it, but we're looking at a couple of different areas as well. So I would say within the next year, we definitely are planning to open the second salon. Wow, that's a pretty fast expansion. Well, loans permitting. We've got to come back to the office. We'll work on this again. Do you do any specials, any kind of customer things like tufers or anything like that that makes customers promotional things? That helps you to get those repeat customers that are so important? Absolutely. We did, on the radio ad last month, we were doing a two for one for new clients only. And I never know what my specials are going to be before the day I'm having them. Yeah, you come up with them? Yeah, I don't sit and ponder. Like, oh, I think I'm going to have a special next week. No, the mood strikes me and I have a special. So we were doing the two for one on the radio ad and that was for new clients only. Then I felt guilty because my regular clients, the people that come to see me all the time, they deserved something too. So at that point, I pulled up a list of all the inactive. Of course, I posted it in the salon for the active clients, but anybody that was inactive, I had my girls call everyone and offer them personally. 25% off of their next package. One, to get them back in the door. But two, it was a valued client special. So it was just showing how we value them. And it was a little more than I typically will offer on a special, but I felt that it was fair at the time. But right now, we have 20% off the contour lights, which is an amazing savings. So I'm always trying to come up with new and different things. Not too many specials because I want everybody waiting for them. So you're thinking on your feet all the time. The specials that I offer are more to show people that I value them. Yes, I get new people in and they just so happen to take advantage of the special because I have one going on. But it's me posting on Facebook and the Instagram and things like that that are letting our regular customers know that, hey, I'm giving you an opportunity to take advantage of one of our specials. Okay, great. And we have Iron Man coming up. Do you have anything coming up for that? You know, we're just started working on that this last week. And I have one of my clients actually works with Iron Man every year. So I'm going to talk to her about doing some advertising, but we just made up some flyers to put around more oriented towards the red light therapy because that is so great for muscle recovery, joint muscle pain, inflammation, circulation. And I think they'll benefit from that greatly. Yeah, there must be some muscle pain. Absolutely. I would imagine. Well, good luck. Well, thank you so much, Donna. This has been really, really delightful. You're really, as I said at the beginning of this, very passionate about what you do. And it really comes through. And I think you're really a shining star in the area of customer service and knowing what it takes to make a customer come back. And I wish you a lot of success with this business. You really have hit the ground running. You really surprised me how fast it's grown. Did it surprise you? You know, I know I knew it in my head. You knew it. It's always scary. You know, I mean, starting a new business is very scary. There's always failure and nobody wants to fail. But if you just keep on going. Yeah, and have that confidence. Absolutely. Which sounds like you have it in spades to share. Well, thank you very much for having me here today. It was great. See, you got a chance to explain all your services and it wasn't that bad. No, it was awesome. Yeah, great. So, well, I think that's about all we have to say. You know, Donna was a client of ours at the Small Business Development Center in West Hawaii. And as I said, we cover the entire half of the island, and then the western half of the island all the way from the top in Waimea down to the bottom in South Point Ka'u. And we do see clients throughout those areas. They don't have to come to our office. UNO came to our office. But so I just want to throw that out there for any other clients or any other would be want to be entrepreneurs who are interested in starting a business and, you know, sort of sharing in the confidence that you've done it has. That's it. So, thank you. You've been watching Adventures in Small Business brought to you by Think Tech Hawaii and the Small Business Development Center, SBDC. And we have offices throughout the islands. We are on, in addition to Kona, we're on Hilo. And we're also in Oahu and Maui and in Kauai. So, drop in to see us. You can make an appointment online. And we're also, the show is also sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Development Center. So, thank you.