 Back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. It's a 12 o'clock clock. We're talking about business, talking about business in Hawaii. There better be business in Hawaii. The alternative of not having business in Hawaii is pretty bleak. The title of our show is now is a time for special trust in business. This is Ann Freitas from the Better Business Bureau. Hi, Rosanne. So nice to see your smile and face. Thanks, Jay. Great to see you. I have some comments I want to make to sort of set the stage on this. So we're trying to reopen, okay? And things get in the way. We go forward. We go backward. It's not a straight line. It's more like a wiggly line, a sine curve up and down. And it's going to be that way, I'm sorry. But ultimately, we need to get the economy going again. And how do you do that? You know, I've been thinking about that since COVID began. I'm sure you have, too. How do you make a business community when it has deteriorated the way it has? So the first thing is government has to provide incentives or at least take away roadblocks. You know, the old bureaucratic thing really has to go away. We have to insist on that. If you want a formal corporation, you should be able to do it in about 10 minutes. And if you want to get things done, get permits and the like, they can't make you wait months. We're trying to rebuild an economy. So we have to recognize that the business community needs to sort of start. Many of them need to sort of start at the beginning. And we have to aid them. We have to assist them. Because the business community has been damaged. And that means that entrepreneurs and owners and investors have been damaged in all kinds, all sizes of business. Everybody is like operating in fear, in fear of further decline, in fear of COVID, in fear of government, you know, and bureaucracy, in fear of change, a negative change. So how do you get people to, you know, feel more confident? I was telling Roseanne before the show, I was practicing law, I would tell my clients want to start a business that the business itself, the corporation, the LLC, the partnership was, it was the hub of a wheel. And it had spokes out to the, you know, the outside of the wheel. And those spokes all went to individuals and staff, professionals, buyers, sellers, consultants, government, for that matter. And the hub, the corporation, the LLC, the entrepreneur, they have to have relationships on every one of those spokes had had an understanding and agreement and magic word trust. So how do you get people who are trying to restart an economy to trust each other? How do you get those spokes organized so that each one works, that the relationship is robust and straightforward and trustworthy? And then, you know, then you have a market that has trust in it. And you have a community that has trust in the market. And the ultimate point here is that business requires people to take risks. They are not going to take risks if they are afraid and untrusting. We have to bring back trust. That's my opening statement for you, Rosanne. Go from there. Thanks, Jay. I think you nailed it right there. We're living in uncertain times and any time we have this uncertainty, which is kind of a many, many issues. It's COVID-19. It's the economic crisis. There's been so much in 2020. And through it all, once we become so uncertain, we begin to lack trust. Because we're not sure, are we getting all the correct information, what's going to happen in our future? And so we're not sure who to trust at this point. And that's kind of, I think, what we're going to see, especially as we start to open. You and I have been here. We've been watching the news. We know this reopening is not without its controversy, without people living in fear of what's going to happen. However, for any business, trust is going to be imperative. Right now, I know money is an issue and so many other things, but at the center of that business and the core of that business is going to be the trust. And their customers are going to look to that business and they're going to look to say, can I trust you during this time? And the business needs to look at itself, because we know that trust is a component of two things. And I'm going to refer to the Stephen M. R. Covey book, The Speed of Trust. And it is a great book. And it talks about the two things in trust. And one is character, your morals, your integrity. And the other is competence. And so that's what we're, and that's the skill set that these businesses bring. So when we're looking to hire a business, we're going to look, do they have the moral character? Is this a business that I can trust with my money? And also, can they do what they say they're going to do? And I think that's where a business is going to have to start to look inward. Are they living those values? Are they doing what's right for the customer? Because ultimately, if you put the customer first, you will be successful in business. You will earn that customer's trust. So from there, we can equate trust to the bottom line. And that's really what that book, The Speed of Trust, is about is when people trust you, transactions happen faster. People make purchases. So you can equate that to the bottom line, because when you're on trust, where the people will take longer to get a sale, or more unlikely, you won't get a sale. So we're going to talk about how important that is to be the center of the business is that trust model. Got some slides. Yes, got the first slide about the Stephen M.R. Covey book, so that people can see that one. And it talks a little bit about those two competencies that we just described and how important those are. So during this time at the Better Business Bureau, we're here in the stories, right? And what we can tell everybody is you need to live by that code. And we have these eight standards. And for some people, they may think, okay, they're pretty easy standards. They are, but not all businesses live by them, because if they did, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. So what we're going to talk about is they have to build trust. Part of building trust is they have to be transparent. They have to be honest. They have to tell the truth. They have to advertise honestly. They got to safeguard the privacy of their customers, their employees, and their vendors. And they got to embody all of that integrity. And it seems simple on the surface until you break it down and the business doesn't do it. So I'd like to give you one example here. And this is not a business who didn't do it. This is a business who did do it. And it was during a time, we're going to go way back here, okay, back to 1982. And we're going to talk about Johnson and Johnson and the Tylenol cap, except the Tylenol capsule issue. And if some of you may remember, at the time they, the capsules were filled with cyanide in the city of Chicago. Seven people died. Not by Johnson and Johnson though. Oh, let me step that back. Thank you. Somebody slipped in the cyanide and people were dying because they didn't know and Johnson and Johnson didn't know it was sabotage. It was sabotage. So yes. Thank you, Jake. It was, they were sabotaged and Johnson and Johnson did not know this. Obviously they found out as people died and they were able to trace it to these capsules. What happened next? Because at this point, everybody's thinking Johnson and Johnson and the Tylenol product is not going to survive. So what they do next really saved the product because they put the people first. And that's what the chairman of board talked about. He put, he gave them two things. Put people first and figure out how to handle people and then how can we safeguard, how can we save the product? And they did all the right things. They went to the media. They were on 60 minutes. They let everybody know. They recalled every single product back, not just in Chicago, not just in Illinois, everywhere. And then they went to work to make it safer. So when they returned that product to the market, people started trusting them again. And within a year, they had that market back to the level it had been prior to the sabotage. They didn't sabotage their own product. It wasn't their fault, but they took charge of it and they ran with it and they were as transparent, honest, as you can expect a business to be at that point. And that's what businesses need to understand. Things happen. They can't hide behind it. They've got to talk about it. I think you and I both know right now with COVID-19 and with the restaurants, some are having to close and they'll close for a few days. And then some will tell you why they're closing and some won't. I really think it's best in their interest just to say if they've had a case of COVID-19 that they share that. Because again, it's helping build the trust in the community that the community can trust when something goes wrong that they're going to tell them that. You talk about restaurants. We have a restaurant show and we bring restaurant tours on and restaurants are having a lot of trouble these days. And sometimes we get into a discussion of you think you're going to make it. Is this going to work for you or are you going to go belly up? And the truth, when the restaurateur says, I'm not sure. I may not make it, but I'm going to try really hard. That is a much more effective answer than no problem. Oh, we got it all under control. We're just doing fine. And don't worry about us for a minute. You know that's not really true because nobody knows how long this is going to last. And so sometimes when you make a statement against your own interest, it builds credibility and that is in your interest. Very important. And one other thing I like to comment on your Johnson and Johnson story is this, is that often you have public relations and advertising firms that try to create an image for you in the marketplace. And sometimes that image is not accurate. Sometimes that image is puffing. And sometimes it's way puffing, even at the boundaries of puffing. And you've got to avoid that now. You've got to be honest. You've got to tell it like it is. This is a time when if you do that, and if you let the PR professional or the advertising professional overstate your claims, you're going to hurt yourself more than help yourself. So you've got to manage the PR professional. You've got to manage the advertiser. It ultimately stops with you, the entrepreneur. Exactly. And it really goes back to honoring that promise. Even the promise, not just saying that, okay, I'm going to fulfill this obligation, but what does your brand say about you? Does it show that, oh, we can cure all this and do all this, but you really can't? So you really agree with you right there, the PR firms, advertiser. Everybody needs to look. They need to make sure that whatever that brand looks like, whatever is going on, that you represent the true nature of your business. You need to be transparent about what you can do, what you can't do. It all builds back to that credibility. And once you start to erode any one of those things, whether you misrepresent your company or you're not quite transparent on things that are going on, you start to erode the trust that the consumer has in your business. And so it's really important, especially now, right now, people are going to look for a business that's doing it right. And that is putting people first and not that bottom line. Because right now, we're all hurting. And I, you mentioned the restaurant people who were, who discuss, yeah, we're going to do our best and we're going to try to stay open. My hat's off to them because this is a scary time and they are running an operation like they've never run it before. And they are doing the best to support their community, not only by selling food, but a lot of them are donating food to other people who don't have it. So we actually probably, one thing I think we all need to take away from this is we need to look to those businesses that have done the right thing during this time. We need to look at shopping local. We need to keep the money here in Hawaii because we do have a long road to come out of. And yes, we probably will be hurt more than most of the other states because of our dependence on tourism. And if we've got to help ourselves, and that starts with each individual person here, and we can shop local and we can support our local businesses. Yeah, and Harrington, what you say though is the thought that it's little different. It's different now. It's in terms of building trust. Before, you know, you didn't have to have the same view of it because it had a way of, you know, going down the road all by itself. But now you have to work at it. Now you have to spend special time and attention to building that trust. And I suggest to you that doing that is something that we all have to do. All the businesses have to do that for an indefinite period of time, even forever. That the whole business, what do you want to call it, culture in Hawaii has to accept what you're saying and reflect new efforts at building trust. Exactly. I mean, when you stop and think about why did you tourists like to come here? Besides the beauty of the island, the island is incredibly beautiful. It's what we call that aloha spirit, right? It's people being kind, people reaching out and embracing. And you don't see it as much in other places as you do here in Hawaii. And I think businesses, if we look at the aloha spirit, we can equate that to what we see in businesses because it is about trust. It's about developing that relationship and helping people being kind and doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. And I think we're going moving forward. Trust should have always been center of a business, but it's sometimes you're right. We forget we just keep moving along, going at the pace until something like this happens. And then it really highlights how that integrity of a business. I mean, we think of integrity in just the people, but the business is an entity that reflects that. And it should reflect the integrity of the owners. And the owners need to think about that. How do I want my company to be run? And how do I want it to be perceived? And make sure that how your goals and your values line up with the way your business is being run. Yeah, let's talk about tourism, and of course, there's two aspects to it. One is bringing tourists here, selling Hawaii as a destination. And the other is selling them things while they are here, whatever it be. And I think that your principle of trust applies in both places. I think in the past, you would sell Hawaii and glitz, got a lot of glitz going and these fancy ads that cost a lot of money and playing them on television everywhere in the world. And it wasn't entirely accurate. If I were in that, I would actually be more candid now, more transparent, because I know that people are questioning whether those ads are true. They're questioning whether they should really do that. If I get an ad for, and I do, for some trip in Europe or something, wait a minute, there are wrinkles in this. It ain't like it used to be. Sailing a cruise ship, a cruise boat down the Danube may not be exactly the way it was. They better tell me what's really happening. They got to give me the wrinkles. The same thing when they get here. You've got to tell them about the risks. You've got to tell them you're going to take care of them. You're going to make them safe. I mean, there's a different program now. It's a very different program. And we have to let them know what the expectation is. I mean, they first have to know that they have to do the testing before they get here within that 72-hour timeframe, or they will still be doing the 14-day quarantine. But even if they do the test and they get here, it's not business as usual. Of course, we're going to try to encourage that aloha spirit, but we also have limitations. Our restaurants are at half capacity. Some tourist attractions will not reopen this year and won't open until next year. So we have to make sure that people coming here understand that times have changed. And I think from the tourism side, yes, they have to be very transparent. What has happened here? It's not the same. We still have that aloha spirit, but things have changed. And we can't have 30,000 arrivals a day at this point until we can make sure that everybody is safer than we are right now. And so I think for the tourism industry and those companies that are in that industry, they really need to be transparent to people coming in, but also to the local community and let people know what they're doing to safeguard everybody as far as the physical aspect of it, from the hand washing, hand sanitizing, to the social distancing, the mask wearing from that side of it. But also, when we look at the restaurants now, they've been asked to do take information for contact tracing. Well, now they're getting, they're taking on this responsibility of getting people's personal information that they wouldn't normally get. So the businesses also need to stop and think about how are they safeguarding that information? What are they doing with that information? And when are they destroying that information? And let people who come in, especially if they have that question, they need to know that you're not selling this information to anybody else, it's just being used for contact tracing. They also need to know that it's not just a piece of paper laying somewhere in a basket that everybody has access to, that you do have that information secured. And then how long you're going to keep it? And I think this state is requiring 28 days. Don't keep the information any longer than you need, especially if you told the consumer, I'm going to destroy it as soon as it's required. So again, there's a lot going on with this tourism opening up that business is different. And we just need, as a business owner, you need that transparency, you need to let people know what's happening. And it's okay to say, yeah, this is not normal, but this is what we have to do right now. And I think people will appreciate that. And you spoke about new systems, new technologies. If I'm traveling, in fact, whatever I'm doing, if I see that a given business is adopting new technologies that will help solve a problem for them and for me, I'm impressed. I have greater confidence. I have greater trust. It means they're not just trying to do a flyby. They're just, they're not conning me. They really want my business and they're willing to invest in it. But I want to ask you about one other aspect of all of this, and that's pricing. You know, I think in the past, how I leveraged off, it's good weather and this, you know, huge infrastructure of hotels and restaurants and shopping and what have you. Now we have to sort of start again in order to make people feel comfortable. Before, we could, we could charge in many places, many companies, many activities, what the market would bear. And, you know, for me, as a local person, I would see those prices and I would say, holy moly, that is way farther than cost. That is really taking advantage. But, you know, they're tourists and they got money burning all in their pocket. So that's the way it works. It seems to me that the concept of pricing now, it really deserves some additional thinking going forward. They try to rebuild an economy, especially a tourist economy. You never want to let this tourist think that you're, you know, you're charging too much, that you're gouging him or her. And so I just like to get your thoughts about that. Because I think that's part of establishing the trust relationship that we need to establish. So when it comes to that pricing, it's going to come down to as it always has, right, the supply and the demand. And as this moves forward and people are less hesitant to jump on those, those higher prices, like they used to, because they're not sure and they're not trustworthy, the market will correct itself because the hotels will have to adjust to get the consumer in. So it is, it is something that they will need to look at. And we all know it is not cheap to come to Hawaii or do a vacation here. And there's a lot of costs associated with that. And I think it'll be interesting for all of us to watch and to see what the consumers do as they come back. For them, is it because they've been locked down so long, are they willing to pay the price? Or not. And then the hotels and all of the tourist industries will have to make that adjustment quickly to survive. Because we know that they have already been shut down for seven months. And so going back in, I think we're going to probably look at some, some different pricing going on, especially in different areas. I would be real curious to look at the neighbor islands who have such a heavy reliance on tourism and how their plans are to let all of the tourist back and how that looks on the price line. Yeah. The conundrum is that you've been taking a loss for six months or more. Your, your, your resources are seriously depleted or gone. You're running a business. You want to attract new business. So you need money and therefore you want to get the highest possible price you can get. But on the other side, you want to attract the business and make people believe in you and believe that you're not gouging them and the, and, and you know, giving them a bargain of sorts or making them feel they're getting a bargain. And that may mean going underwater. It may mean, you know, throwing more money into it, just to, you know, attract people. This is a problem for a business person. And I don't, I don't, I don't claim to know how you solve that problem. It just seems to me that one of the options is actually to throw more money in, take a loss in order to attract business and make, and make customers or potential customers feel that you're, you know, you're, you're doing your best to give them a good deal. You're right. And, and the sad part of that, it's going to come down to that, that cash flow and the capital that these businesses have. Can they do that financially? Your bigger companies, they have a lot more resources and a lot more options on that side. And so for them, yeah, I think they have that opportunity. The ones I think that will struggle here will be the small mama pop shops that we have so many of here and that we love. I mean, we love those local stores, but they're not rolling the capital. There's not a lot of money rolling towards them to help them survive this. So they have to make that decision based on, does it make sense to lose more money at this point? Or do I just stay close for a little longer? These are really tough decisions that these businesses are going to have to make. And it's agonizing for them. I mean, it's their whole livelihoods. And we're going, it's sad to watch what's happening to small business right now. And it's deterioration is so caustic. I mean, for example, so the older folks who have run the business, the family business for a long time, it means that's the end of the business finished. You can't go back. It means that they're kids who might stay around for the business. They're discouraged and they don't have a place to work. And so they leave town. And so we've had an enormous exodus of the workforce leaving town. This is a big problem. And going back to my opening remarks, government has got to get on this. Government has got to help these small businesses in any way it can, whether by funding them or giving them tax breaks or avoiding some of the bureaucracy that's attached to doing business in Hawaii, which is a really bad reputation about bureaucracy. But let me ask you one other thing. You know, you mentioned, Roseanne, that you've got to adapt. And the market to some extent adapts by itself. In other words, if you charge too much, you don't provide service. If you send the wrong message and people have the bad perception of your operation, you'll go out of business. But and so, you know, that'll be self-correcting, but that's painful. And so I'm thinking, I'm thinking that there's got to be a way to get a lead on that in advance. A survey, for example, lots of surveys to people asking them what they want, what they can afford, how they feel about the emerging new economy or some part of it. Wouldn't that give us all a leading indicator on what needs to be changed and fixed and softened, so to speak, to improve the speed, to increase the speed at which we can recover and build trust? I think we're hearing from the consumer most definitely, but give us an idea of where they're at right now and where their comfort level is of spending money, first of all, and also getting back out into somewhere besides their home. I know there have been a lot of surveys here on Hawaii. I know the Hawaii Chamber, the Hawaii State Chamber, they've been involved in a lot of stuff, you hero. So we have a lot of information going out, and I have to say those organizations have done a really good job in trying to get behind small business and help. But you're right. It would be good to have more of the information from the actual consumer what is it you need and what is it you want. I think it's not going back to the way it was. It will always be something new, as we call it, that new normal. And the word kind of pivot, we've heard so much for the last seven months, but it really is a term that people need to look at. They need to look at that business model. And how can they pivot that? I mean, we sell a lot of businesses here, sell Hawaii, right? We sell that, come here and see our beautiful island. But there's also opportunities there where we could sell Hawaii without having them come here. And that is through our local products here, as well as that Hawaii experience, that Aloha experience that they can have on the mainland without actually having to come here right now. So I think it's the creative mind that takes that innovation idea and runs with it. Because Hawaii, whether you're here or not, people get excited just hearing the word Hawaii. So we need to look at that bright spot and move that forward. That's totally true and totally appropriate in our time. People who have been here have come away with a wonderful, romantic image of Hawaii. And that's lifelong for most people. They always want to come back. They want to enjoy reminiscing in their youth and the beauty of the islands and so forth. And there's something to be done there. There's an opportunity there. The other opportunity, it seems to me, is that just as we have Zoom and other remote technologies, it seems to me that tourism and business in general should be exploring the corners of new technology, websites, registrations, communication. If the doctors can talk on Zoom, then why can't everybody talk on Zoom about everything? And of course that would change the way we do business. But it would also be a statement that Hawaii is at the frontier. Hawaii knows how to do this. We adapt. Where can I learn about this stuff for them? It seems to me that it would be good to have somebody available to consult with business or some place where business could read up on it and connect up on it, be the hub and connect up with various spokes on the wheel. Not only for customers, but for everything a business needs to build the trust. And that's where we come in. So we are that resource. And through this time, Jay, we got very busy and we started webinars. And we ran webinars twice a week and then once a week all the way through the end of August. We've taken a little break because we realized people were getting a lot of Zoom fatigue. But we were doing different topics from trust to the PPP loan, to marketing during this time, to leadership, to innovation. So we will keep continuing that. So businesses need help. They can look to us at the Better Business Bureau. We also, if they go to our page, they can look us up at bbb.org. Also, you can look for great businesses there. But we also have some really good content there. And we will continue to keep doing that because our goal is here to be that resource for businesses and to help them stay afloat because we are about small business at the Better Business Bureau. Hi, Roseanne. You know, you and I have had a number of shows over the past six months and I am eternally impressed with what you're doing and the value you are adding to our community both in business and in general. So thank you for coming on the show and I hope we can do this again soon. Roseanne Freitas, the Better Business Bureau here at Hawaii. Thank you. Thank you, Jay.