 Hello and welcome to The Art of Thinking Smart. This is a program that was originally developed by David Chang at Wealth Bridge, and I've been hosting it for some time. I'm Michael North, and in this program we try to interview some of the leaders of Honolulu's business and social and cultural and political communities to discover what are their secrets of success, what makes it possible for them to do the work that they do, both from a personal and a professional standpoint. So we're interested in their story and what they're doing, but we're actually trying to get behind the scenes to understand who they are and why they're doing it, and that's The Art of Thinking Smart. So today our guest is Antonio Trincal, who is originally from Portugal, but he's living now in Honolulu and running an exciting young company called You Can Event. Now, I want you to think about You Can Event for a moment and think, what could that possibly be? And now we're going to ask Antonio, what is that You Can Event? Hello Michael, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here on your show. So basically You Can Event is an online community where brands can easily identify vendors when organizing an event. So for example, if you want to do an event for Think Tech Hawaii, you can find entertainers catering venues and easily you can do your event. So why wouldn't I go to an event organizer and event management company that bundles all of that together? Yeah, because basically, most of the times those event agencies are just working with a few number of vendors, and with us you can find all the vendors available in Honolulu. Okay, and you put together your own virtual team based on the recommendations that come from your system. Exactly, so our customer, in a comfortable way, he just typed, I want to do an event in Honolulu for 200 people and I might need catering venue and entertainer. And our wide network of vendors, they get back with a lot of proposals and we have a local event planner to help you in operations, management and advertising for your event. So do you have a kind of an eBay auction kind of thing where you hear from several different vendors? Yeah, I like to say like we are kind of like Uber, so the customer just send the request and then the vendors get back with proposals, with bids. Okay, so Uber for parties, Uber for conventions, Uber for business meetings, Uber for weddings. Right now we are not focusing on that market, but soon we will be. I think that will be called like You Can Marry. Oh, so you can, all of that. You can, exactly. Okay, that's your brand. Exactly. So how did you get into this? You just like to party and you want to help your friends to party better? So as you said, I'm originally from Portugal and on the Latin-European culture, we have a lot of pleasure on the art of restoration and tourism and events. And since I was a young boy, around my 15 years old, I work on the bartending industry, nightlife industry, and then I belong to a non-profit organization called Azituna. And I did a lot of... Say that word again. Yeah, okay, Azituna. Azituna. Yeah, it's similar than tuna, the fish, but it's called Azituna. And basically we did a lot of international tours. We played all over the theaters in Europe. And so every time that we were playing on those theaters or organizing international tours or doing events on the nightlife industry, we had this question. How should we do an event? Where should we find the vendors? How can we negotiate with vendors easily to do an event? So that's how it came. Yeah, especially in a big city like Lisbon, for example, there's so many options. And unless you produced an event successfully before you really don't know where to start. Exactly. And you could end up spending a lot of money for somebody else to advise you on how to do it. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, okay. So this is outsourcing and pushing the expertise out to the edges so that people can access the knowledge and contacts that they want, as opposed to getting it from single sources. So you said you were a bartender. You were like a Tom Cruise in cocktail? Yeah, yeah, so... I want to see a trick or two. Yeah, if I have a shaker here, I would like to do it. I could do it with a piece of paper. If we do this again, we have to bring some shakers. Yeah, so basically I love the cocktail culture. I have a friend that we worked together, called Antonio as well, and we worked together for a lot of years and we had a great pleasure on the art of the cocktail production. So what was it that turned the crank in you about being a bartender? Exactly. There must have been something that helped you to get girls? Yeah. I'm sure that didn't hurt. Yeah, it's perfect. We can give a lot of different pleasures to women. There must be something deeper to sustain the interest. Yeah, so the thing is that I always had a real passion about the entertainment industry. So since I was a young boy, I was like the guy that was like the actor on the school was singing a lot of songs with my colleagues. So I always had a passion for entertainment industry. So when I got into the nightlife industry, I saw that I had a good way to build relationships with people because when you are serving on a bar, you tie strong relationships with your customers, with the people that surround you. And at the same point, creating a personal experience for the people that you are talking to. The way that you talk, the way that you do your cocktail, the way that you create your own show is perfect to bring you soft skills in terms of entertainment and selling as well. So would it be safe to say that you have the soul and the heart of a networker, of a relationship builder, and it really turns you on to see people come together? Yeah, it's like my real pleasure, it's I live together people. That's why we are doing You Can Event. I worry a lot about people. I'm the guy that if I'm going to a restaurant, the person that I really care about is the guy that is serving the food. A lot of times, and like a lot of people that know me, knows that, that I'm going to the restaurant and I steal the bartender or the employees and I bring them to our party saying, oh no, now we have to join the party with us. Now we have to drink with us. Yeah, exactly. Somewhere in there there's a feeling like people are not connected enough. People are missing opportunities. There's energy that is left unmatched and you feel like you can be the spark plug that brings people together. I have a nice vision about that. I always say to my team members and co-founder that I came from the future and in the future I am known as the god of celebration. So I gather a lot of people. So a person that gathers the entire world with celebration and events. So I always use this metaphor about what we want to achieve and so we want to really connect people and we believe that in a world full of technology having personal relationships and connections with real people physically on site, it's the future to ensure the humankind. So we're not going to go completely virtual and just live as a simulation in a... No, I don't believe because we human beings we have two sides on our brain like the side that is disruptive and wants to create massive evolution but on the same point we care about keeping the nature as we know, right? For example, you can see that now we are caring a lot about the environment and the foods and the organic foods. You go to the supermarket and you see a lot of those things and I believe that the people that are doing that is because we know that we have to stop in some way the massive growth that the earth is facing. So in a sense you're using the tools of cyberspace to bring people together better in human space. Exactly. So the easiness of technology can empower the real connection, the physical connection. Okay, so there's this young bartender who's just mixing drinks and smiling and having your time with people and introducing and somewhere there must have been a seed like when you were 18 when you were doing that, 20 years old. Exactly. Somewhere the seed got planted in young Antonio Trencal maybe from your father, your mother, a mentor, a teacher. What's your earliest recollection of the energy that became your can event? Yes, so I have like one important moment on my life that was created by my father that basically he offered me like a trip when I, on my 18 years old birthday and I traveled to New York City with him, you know. And when I arrived in the United States the feeling that I had was okay everything that I see in the movies it's real, you know. So that whole Tom Cruise thing was actually real. Yeah, you know. And when I felt that the movie thing what happened on the movies is real in the United States I felt that I can be the actor of the movie, you know. So when I felt that I decided that I will have to do something really big to the world. So you followed a very interesting path from your beginnings in Lisbon. I think a few years ago you started working with an incubator type company that made some investments. You went to one of these entrepreneurial kind of gatherings where you get to pitch and you won that or you got some recognition from that and then you bounced through to an event in New York you got more visibility from that and can you describe the progression that you made? Exactly, so before answering that question our objective since the beginning used to be a quarter in the United States because we have the biggest event cities in the world on Alulu, Los Angeles, New York City are the main hubs of events and entertainment in the world. And so on the beginning of our journey in Lisbon our startup was incubated on Startup Lisboa that is a really famous incubator in Europe, one of the best. And we had a lot of events on the week and I had to do a lot of networking, a lot of pitch sessions and that allowed me to connect with companies with customers like Microsoft, Primark, Merike and many more. Interesting. How do you experience with Microsoft, for example? Yes, so Microsoft we just partnered with them to do a big event on their headquarters and we have done like, it's called a tech meetup where we gather a lot of companies from Portugal to meet disruptive ideas that are being done by the startups in Portugal. So Microsoft headquarters, they have everything for us. Microsoft has a headquarters in Lisbon? In Lisbon, yes. For just Iberia or for all of Europe? No, it's for the Iberia. So Portugal and Spain? Yes, exactly. Oh, that must have been fantastic. Exactly, perfect. Wow. So then you got spotted by Blue Startups which is one of the elite incubators, I think in America, if not in the world. Top 20? Yeah, really. It's amazing for such a small city and out in the middle of the Pacific where nobody notices us on a global picture. It's amazing that there's such talent and they spotted you and we're going to go into a little bit of the details of that on the other side of this break with Antonio Trigal. Thank you. Aloha, my name is Raya Salter and I'm the host of Power Up Hawaii and you can see live from 1 to 130 every Tuesday at thinktechhawaii.com and then later on YouTube. I am an energy attorney, clean energy advocate and community outreach specialist and on Power Up Hawaii we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean, renewable and just energy future? To do that we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum from clean energy technology folks to community groups to politicians to regulators to the utility. Please join us Tuesdays at 1 o'clock for Power Up Hawaii. Victories for Veterans. Go to DAV.org. And we're back with Antonio Trigal and we're talking a little bit more about Blue Startups and Honolulu. Antonio, you're a long way from Lisbon. I'm sure you heard about Hawaii and Honolulu and you thought about Mai Tais and grass skirts and sand and sun and so on. Did you ever think that you were going to come here and organize a company? That is a curious question. So first, Hawaii was a dream for me. Since I was a young boy, being here, it's a dream. And second, I believe that Hawaii, Texas and Hawaii as a hub for entrepreneurs is perfect to build your culture. So the first reason that we decided to come to Honolulu was because I wanted to build a culture on our team. The values, the mission, the higher purpose. And Hawaii, it's the best place for that because of the hollow spirit, you know. So I believe that in the future a lot of good companies will come to Hawaii to build a culture to define the values because this is really important on your team. And after that, of course, they will move to San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City because of the market industry. But on the first stage, building the culture, developing your product, build an MVP, Honolulu is one of the best places. And it's a gateway to Asia, too. Exactly. The biggest markets. Exactly. So I want to break from this subject completely and look at a piece of video that came from about five years ago in an earlier stage of the company. Can we bring up that video? It's an event video from Lisbon. So talk us through. What are we looking at here? So that's our nonprofit organization where I met my co-founder. Azay Tuna. Azay Tuna. And we organize a lot of events. This event is called SELTA. SELTA is one of the biggest events in Europe. It brings more than 10,000 people on the weekend and involves all the Portuguese scene and student community. So it's really big. We bring a lot of famous artists. You will see further on the video. The theater, the music, the lighting, the audio visuals. It's really, really, really engaging. You organize all aspects of this. The ticket program. Precisely this festival. I organize with my co-founder, João. Here you can see the theater. I organize with my co-founder, João. And like I said, it's a huge event. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's a big event. You will see the theater further. I'm familiar with the management and I know what it takes to make something like this happen. Yeah, exactly. You see the theater? What theater is this? It's called Teatro Circo. It's in Braga. It's really, really big. I think that won a reward for being one of the best theaters in the world. It's similar to one theater in Paris. So that kind of represents the apex of what you guys want to help people to coordinate. Exactly. Pretty much everything that people do is going to be smaller than that. Exactly. It could be a really small event, but even a small one needs a bunch of different aspects. Of course. So let's go back a little bit further. We were talking about what it takes for Antonio to be Antonio, and I expected that somebody who started out as a bartender and has kind of freelanced his way through incubators and so on would be kind of a non-linear thinker, but you're not, right? Can you tell us about your day and how it begins and how it ends and how you manage it? So my daily basis is built on this sentence. I want to be the best. So I have strong methods during my day to keep my fresh mind and my body healthy. So every day in the morning I wake up at 6.30. I drink a glass of water with apple cider vinegar and a little bit of pink Himalayan salt to keep the body detoxified. And then I go further and I drink, right now here in Anululu, a cup of Hawaiian spirulina. It's algae. It's really, really cool. And then I have my breakfast. Usually I eat things without gluten because gluten hurts a lot. I eat things like coconuts and a lot of healthy things. And then I move forward with my daily meeting with my team. I speak with my team. I share the objectives for the team. I try always to heal it healthy as much as I can. And then on the end of the day I do sports. So between 6 to 8 p.m. I try to do my daily sports. We have lots of options here because it's always summertime here. It's perfect. So do you keep track of things on a piece of paper or on an app? I'm developing a method that basically I do these three things. So every Sunday I grab a piece of paper, white paper, and I write down a cross. And I write three themes of my life. You can event my professional area. Yeah, so exactly. So you can event then my personal life, personal, and then sports. And then I do the weekly preparation of everything. So I just define like, okay for you can event, I will do this, this, this, the follow up for this customer, the meeting with that customer, whatever. And then for personal, I have to talk with my father, with my mother, with my friends. I have to... With your six girlfriends. Yeah. Try to keep track of them. Yeah, from Portugal in episode. Yeah, so and then the sports. So I want to practice everyday sports and I want to do that. After doing that preparation, I put everything on my calendar because we are not productive with to-do lists. We are productive with everything scheduled. And the final piece of this puzzle is that every day I have like on my laptop sticky notes, okay? And every day I do the history of my day. So I talk with that customer and he said that he's not able right now to meet with me or I close the deal or I will have an interview and all of those records I type on the sticky notes. Okay. And when I'm closing the meeting, I can compare my brainstorming. Yeah. My schedule of tasks and then the follow up of those tasks. So that leads into the next day. I don't miss anything. Yeah. It's perfect. I don't know if we can catch this on the monitor here. This is Antonio's technique. You see, there's U-CAN event. There's the personal. There's the sports. And there's a calendar that ties them all together. And at the end you do the wrap up of how it all worked out relative to how you planned. This technique I learned from Darren Hardy is a big international mentor. And I just learned from him. He fought to us. And it's perfect. Okay. That's very useful. I'm sure everybody will have their own variation on that. And I'm able to speak with anyone in the show if they want to ask me how do I manage that. Right. So talk a little bit about blue startups and what the experience has been like. I spoke with Chanoa yesterday. I asked her to refer to us one of their best young companies who like to be on the art of thinking smart. And she came back in half an hour and said Antonio is ready. So what has been your experience just across the street here? Yeah. So it's been amazing. You know, like all the workshops, all the mentors, like you sharing every day, you're practicing every day like your company, getting your pitch more accurate, going to customers, managing your team is so intense. But at the same point, so valuable that this was our best decision. So you're part of what they call the ninth cohort, which means there's a group of companies, a variable number, 6, 8, or companies or so. And this is the ninth wave of those companies over the past few years. And I think we have here a slide that tells us about an upcoming event on July the 7th, where you can come and meet Antonio Trincal and his brothers and sisters in the ninth cohort. And out of that, well, Guy Kawasaki, who is one of the gods of the Apple universe, will be there as a speaker, very excited to see him again. And it's an amazing person who has such a global vision. So I want to encourage everybody to come, if you can, and see that event with Antonio and Guy Kawasaki. And just understand a little bit more about Blue Startups, because they're always bringing in new people, right? They're always like six months or less away from bringing, starting a new cohort. And they're always looking for great new ideas. So let's say we're 10 years in the future and U-CAN event has accomplished everything that you want to accomplish. What will that final vision look like for you? Doing an event on Mars. Oh, okay. We will be the first brand of doing an event. That's too bad David Bowie has gone, if we could take him. Yeah. No, but basically, we have to win all the industry sectors of our industry. So sporting entertainment, events, corporate events, wedding, bartending, nightlife industry, everything. Wow. So are you going to do an Olympics or something like that? The Oscars, Victoria's Secret Show, Super Bowl, that's our vision. We will be the platform for doing all the events in the world, but in terms of branding and awareness and creating, beautiful experiences, we want to do those events. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I'm looking forward to going. You will see. We have Antonio's name and contact email here if you're interested in being in touch with him more and go to ucanevent.com to see the whole program in action. Exactly. So I want to thank everyone very much for tuning into this Art of Thinking Smart and until next time, from Think Tech Hawaii in Honolulu, Aloha.