 Welcome to the Adventures in Small Business, a collaborative effort by the U.S. Small Business Administration Hawaii District Office, the Hawaii Small Business Development Center, the Mink Center for Business and Leadership, and the Veterans Business Outreach Center of the Pacific to showcase the stories of local entrepreneurs and small businesses. I'm Colleen McAluni from the Patsy T. Mink Center for Business and Leadership, and today with me I have Byron Gru from T-Chest, Hawaii, and Susan Usugi from Central Pacific Bank. Welcome, and thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I want to start out today with Byron and explaining to us about how long you've been in business. We have, we're starting our second cycle now. We started in 1995, so we're celebrating our 20, almost 25th year in business. Congratulations. That's fantastic. Excellent. And why did you start your business? I think entrepreneurism runs in my family. My mom and dad had restaurants. They opened up some Chinese restaurants. My dad was actually the first person to bring a Hong Kong dim sum cart to the islands. Yeah, he started a restaurant in the culture plaza called Fatsy Lao. The long story short is why we got into tea was we saw that nobody was doing it. At the time, tea was similar to wine in the sense that it was described in two colors, green and black. And yet there was questions being asked in the restaurant business, okay, what happened to coffee is happening to wine. What's the next step? And we saw an opportunity. Oh, that's fantastic. So you found a niche. That's excellent. And so, okay, so that's why you started your business. And what makes Tea Chest Hawaii unique? Well, I think what makes us really unique is we know the product very intimately. And what I mean by that is not only do we know it as a crop, but we know it as an ingredient. We know it as a finished product. And I think what really makes our company special is that we really have an understanding about how to create flavor. So our motto for Tea Chest Hawaii and I think what makes us unique is that we have a palette and a skill set for refined taste, but also to deliver a distinct sense of place. Like when I'm creating products, I really think about, you know, the strawberry guava that I used to pick, you know, in Wahila Ridge in St. Louis, the fresh mango I used to eat in Manoa Valley, those kinds of memories. Right. Yeah, so we want to capture the flavors of Hawaii in our product. And what would be your most popular products? Oh, by far, well, we want best iced tea in America. So our passion fruit iced tea is a winner and it served around the state in a lot of restaurants. And then our mango peach is probably our number one tea bag product. Excellent. So we've got a couple of those here. That's fantastic. Thank you. And Susan, let's see. So what is your connection, say, to your relationship with the Tea Chest Hawaii? Well, Byron and his wife Zatomi are friends, first of all. It's a small community. So Byron actually went to the same high school as my husband, Iolani. He's a Iolani graduate. But I got to know Byron through his participation in the SBA Emerging Leaders. He's a customer of Central Pacific Bank. And we participate, CBB will participate as a panelist on Banker Night. And that's Emerging Leaders is an SBA program for businesses who are in existence, have been established and want to take their business to the next level. It's almost a year long, almost like getting your MBA in business, small business. So the way that we participate is we work with the business owners, help them go through their financial statements, understand their financial statements, talk about what the bank does and how we can assist. So I got to know Byron through his participation there. And because he's a customer, we've worked together since then. Oh, excellent. She made a good point that Emerging Leaders program is really like a crash course master's program. I never went to grad school, but boy, I really felt like I was getting fine-tuned going through that. Oh, that's fantastic and great to hear. It is an excellent program. And then for full disclosure, I wanted everybody to know Susan's link to the Patsy Teemake Center for Business and Leadership. Yes. Patsy Teemake Center for Business and Leadership is a women's business center. It's supported by the SBA, but also through the community. And it offers great programs for entrepreneurs who want to start their business, business owners who want to grow their business, and also for leadership. We have a great Leadership Alliance program for women who are in management roles in their companies. And we're going into our fourth cohort soon. Very successful program in helping women become strong leaders in our community. Oh, that's great. Thank you so much. And we truly appreciate all the service that you provide for us. Thank you and support. So let's see. So Susan, why is it important to shop local? Oh, it's important to shop local because small business is really a driver in our community. They employ over 50% of our local workforce. And we want to support small business so that we have a thriving economy and we have thriving communities. Fantastic. And so let's see. So Byron, you must support through your tea purchase, local restaurants, local farmers, other local businesses. Can you explain how that works for their Teaches to Hawaii? Sure, sure. A lot of people haven't really heard of the name Teaches to Hawaii because it's more used in the trade, B2B channels. So some of our products here are consumer facing, but they really don't know the name Teaches to Hawaii. But the bulk of our business comes from supporting the hospitality industry in Hawaii. So we work with all the top chefs in the state, even visiting chefs when they come into town. We also work with some of the top-end hotels. So we really enjoy our partnerships in hospitality and food service. Oh, that's wonderful support of the local economy for sure. And let's see. So you shared your local partners, how important those relationships are to you. And so Susan, what resources are available to small business owners from Central Pacific Bank per se? Yeah, within our community, there's a lot of resources that are free or very reasonably priced. And I think Byron is a great example of someone who's really taken advantage of that. We talked about the SBA Emerging Leaders program. We also have programs like Shop Small Hawaii, which the PASI team makes Center for Business and Leadership. Beerheads, your organization provides a lot of very reasonably priced classes. The SBA and the Small Business Development Center will help business owners either write or improve on their business plan. And so there's a lot of resources out there that can help business owners. The bank is there to help support that. So once taking advantage of those resources and then also working with your banker, that combination for an entrepreneur or a business owner can really help you advance your business. Oh, fantastic. And then, let's see, so that's Small Business Resources. And then, how does SBA become a vital partner in providing resources to small businesses? I understand it's the classes and workshops, but can you speak a little bit to the financials? Yeah, great. Access to capital is probably a high priority on every small business owner's list. We need capital to grow. And so I think by understanding your financial statements, understanding the cycle of your cash flow, if we can help our customers and our business owners understand that they can understand how to use their financial statement to make decisions. A financial statement will tell you a story of what happened in the past. And so using that story and understanding what happened, why, how it impacted the business, and then using that information to make decisions going forward and working on projections going forward, can put a business in a position where they can gain access to capital. Right. So those are the two things that we find at the Mink Center are the number one priority for small businesses or future business people asking about is understanding the finance piece and also where they can get the financing. So that's really important to know. So let's see. So Byron, how did you first get involved in the emerging leaders program at the SVA? Good question. I'm not sure. Probably my banker told me I should do it. So they would have an easier time explaining my financials to me. Right, understood. And do you remember what some of the key takeaways were for you for the program? It was huge. I think relationships are very important to us. They help us grow. They help us put perspective on things. And so I did emerging leaders six years ago. I had to actually look it up. But I still stay in touch with my cohort, my group. We meet a couple times a year just to catch up, see how each other is doing. And I think from an entrepreneur's point of view, just to put maybe a touchy feely spin on it, we live in a really small town. So as you're developing your business, as you're developing new products, for me, I tend to be a little guarded. I tend to hold things really close to the vest. So to have other people who understand business, who are willing to keep things confidential and really give me an honest, straightforward answer of what they're thinking, what they're feeling about, an idea that I have, including my banker, it gives me, I think, more wisdom, more confidence to make a go or no go decision. But yeah, emerging leaders has been really helpful to our business. Oh, that's fantastic. So the strength of the cohort is, I think, a lot of times is not valued as strongly as it should be, because it's especially where entrepreneurs are concerned. Entrepreneurs can be very isolated because they're so focused on their business and being able to have a network and a supportive network to reach out to where you feel comfortable and where you feel like you can be honest about your business also is extremely helpful. And that's great. I'm so glad that you were able to find that support at Emerging Leaders. OK, excellent. And Colleen, I wanted to add to working with the SBA. The SBA has their small business loan program. And that's a way for business owners who might be just new in their business or maybe not quite there to meet all the bank's strict requirements. But the SBA will guarantee the loan up to a certain percentage, which will allow the bank to then make the loan. And so that's a great resource for business owners to be aware of. And Central Pacific Bank does the most amount of small business administration loans in Hawaii. And so we're very proud of that, because in terms of the number of loans that we do, it's allowed us to help many more businesses with that extra SBA support. Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for that. So let's see. Oh, I know. We can bring up some accelerators also and how important they are. So I believe, were you a part of the Mana Up business accelerator? We were in cohort number one last year at the beginning of 2018. And there were 10 of us. Oh, congratulations. And that was nice, too, because not only were we business owners, but we were also, many of us were in the food sector. So we really got a chance to talk about the nitty-gritty of the market and what's going on and how to do things. Oh, fantastic. And ramping your business up. Yeah. And then maybe later in the show, I'll even show you one of the fruits that has come out of that collaboration. That's exciting. Wonderful. And so Susan, how do resources like Mana Up help your business customers? It gives them access to maybe markets that they have not had before, that extra support in opening it up, because the mission of the accelerators to really take these products, Hawaii-made products, to the world. And it's tough to do that by yourself, but with the support and the access that Mana Up provides, it helps give a leg up to our business owners in Hawaii. Can I share something? Of course. The other thing, too, that the accelerator does. So for instance, with Mana Up, and before that, my experience with emerging leaders, you use the word priority. Priority, we never have enough time as business owners. And so for instance, I may want to do something, but it always gets shoved to the back burner. And by just jumping into an accelerator or I went to Mana simply because I had a really great experience at emerging leaders. And so I found value there. Basically what it did is actually scheduled time. It carved out time to focus on the business, rather than the product or the customer or the service or the finances. It focused about, OK, what's the next step for the business? Where are we going to be five years from now? 25 years from now? Things like that. Put you out of the day-to-day operations and allows you to think of your future and big picture thinking. Yeah, I'll almost use the word forced because you have to do your homework and come to the table with something. Right. Otherwise it wouldn't get done. The core keeps you accountable. Very much so. Thank you for sharing that part. That's important. Great, we're going to take a break now and we will be back soon with Byron Gu from Teach Us Hawaii and Susan Nutsugi from Central Pacific Bank. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation, and world, and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Aloha and welcome to At the Crossroads. I'm your host, Keisha King. I'm live at five every Wednesday where we have entertaining and educational conversations that are real and relevant, both here in Hawaii and across the globe. I'll see you at the Crossroads. Aloha. Welcome back to Adventures in Small Business. Today I have Byron Gu from T-Chest Hawaii and Susan Utsugi from Central Pacific Bank. And today we are talking about entrepreneurs and how they grow their business. And Byron's working on a special thing for us right now. We're going to sample one of his new products. But first, I want to ask Susan about the relationship between T-Chest Hawaii and Central Pacific Bank and have Byron chime in about the services that Central Pacific Bank has been able to offer him. Well, at Central Pacific Bank we're very relationship focused. We want to know our clients, what they do, what drives them, not just their business itself, but also them. And we do that through having conversations going out, seeing their business, seeing what's going on. And so through that, the more we know about our customer, the more we can help. Because we have so many products and services, we want to make sure that we're very relevant to Byron, his company, and his family. Fantastic. Yeah, my relationship with the CPB and we've gone through a couple of different business bankers now has been fantastic. And it's not because of Susan and I have a personal relationship, but they have been there. They have been very caring about the business, very supportive about what we're doing. I'm not the best banking customer, because I'm risk or debt adverse. But we do need it for working capital and what have you. And I was trying to think about how our line of credit that we have with CPB has helped us. We're constantly out there trying to get new accounts and grow the business, grow the market. One of our kuleana, we believe, is to grow the industry of agriculture in Hawaii, because tea is an ag product at its basis. And so we're continually trying to drive the top line. But having that line of credit in place really gives us the confidence to do that. I was just talking to our CPA, and we were looking at the finances. And we actually are going to try and rework some of our P&Ls to get even more granular information. And I said, that would really help because sometimes when you see numbers and they don't make sense, really, you don't have confidence to go out there and talk to the customer and to reach for the next step and what have you. So having a credit line with CPB and partners like that just really gives us confidence to do the business and make it grow. Fantastic. That's essential, definitely. OK, great. So Byron's going to share one of his new products with us. But first, maybe why don't you discuss some of these that are up here up front and tell us what those are first. Well, long story short, we actually started thinking we were going to be the Spiegel catalog or Sears rollback of tea. We were going to sell other people's products simply because, like I said, there was nothing available in the market. And that project bombed terribly. We had to put a time frame on it. We were thinking about mail-out catalogs. Can you imagine that? I don't even know what that is anymore, given the internet and what have you. But long story short, it forced us. That failure forced us inside the package and turned us into manufacturers. And so we started with iced tea. And then, of course, restaurants asked us, well, can you make a better tea bag? And they said, OK, I'll try. And so we came out with this line here, Hawaiian natural, Hawaiian natural tea. And these are certified organic tea bags here. And then we also do loose tea. And our line of loose tea is called island essence. And I call it the Tommy Bahama of loose tea, very island resort kind of feel. But one of the other cohort members in Mana Up last year was Dylan Butterboff with Manoa chocolate. And so Dylan and I have been in constant contact with each other and what have you. And I don't know if people know how chocolate is made, but it comes from the cacao pod. And I wish I had brought one to show you. But the cacao pod, Hawaii is the only state in the US that can grow it, that has the right climate to grow it. So that has caused sort of a bubble up burgeoning chocolate industry to start in Hawaii. So a lot of craft chocolate companies, I shouldn't say a lot, but a few really good craft chocolate, artisanal chocolate companies are starting in Hawaii, one of which is Manoa chocolate. Now they have this byproduct. The pod is actually opened up. There's little cacao beans in it. The beans are fermented and roasted. And then the pod, the bean is split. And the shell comes off. And then they use the inside, which is the nib to make chocolate, kind of like a mac nut. You crack the mac nut and you give it to the shell and you use the nut. Well, now they've got all of this cacao shell sitting around, and it's really nice. It's aromatic. It's chocolatey, but it doesn't have calories. It doesn't have all the oil and cholesterol. And Billen gave me some when I started playing with it. And also I got to give a shout out to Kylie and Judah Chan over at Kahuku Farms, because they have an acre of cacao on their property too. And we just started experimenting with it. And this is a first. I don't know how many firsts have happened with ink tech kawaii, but this is actually the first time I'm bringing this out in public. And so we're going to try this cacao tea that we're making. Some other companies, some tea companies in the past have tried to do chocolate tea. But they used the nibs or carabs. And so you would make a product or a cup of chocolate tea, and then you'd get this film. The sheen kind of sitting on it, and I don't know. That didn't appeal to me. But this cacao, we're using the shell. And we took our skill set as tea makers, and we blended it with some black tea and some other ingredients. And I would love to get your feedback. Well, we would love to taste it. So, Colleen, this is what it looks like. I wish we could kind of maybe I should have spilled some on the table and look at this. It's got a little close up of that. I have a little on my paper here. And what is the yellow piece in it? The yellow is a miracle blossoms. Kind of see how beautiful that is. And this is only sold as a loose leaf right now? It's only sold as a loose leaf product. It smells delicious. It smells delicious. Duty-free shoppers has come on board. Even without tasting the product, they heard about the idea. They came on board and said, if you give us a six months exclusive, we'll launch it. And so it's going to hit the market in June with duty-free shoppers. So it'll be available at the airports and what have you. And they also are bringing in their global buyers. They have a global buyer summit in June. And so hopefully maybe it'll grow some legs. And yeah, we can export some cacao tea. Fantastic. It tastes delicious. And it's definitely not overpowering, but you definitely get that flavor of the chocolate. Oh, that's wonderful. Only in white. Very clean tasting. Smells really good too. Congratulations. This is wonderful. And I'm sure that process that probably touches your creative side. And I don't know if that's something that you have in your past or not. But you're able to create a new product like this must be very fulfilling. Yeah, it comes second nature to me. But I guess it is a skill set. I like to look at things that, I don't know, outside the box and see what we can create and make. So it's going to be in two flavors, actually. So this is called cacao colada, which is a pineapple. I don't know if you can see pineapple and coconut. And then we're also going to have a lilicoy cacao. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you for making your reveal here on Think Tech Adventures in Small Business. We really appreciate that. That's fantastic. All right, so what I wanted to talk about really quick as we wrap up is Shop Small Hawaii. So Shop Small Hawaii, as if any of you have seen the show before, we talk about this at the end, Shop Small Hawaii is an initiative that was started, well actually started from Small Business Saturday that was started in 2011 by American Express. And the SBA, the Small Business Administration, got involved in that a year later. And the Patsy Timings Center started with the SBA partners, Shop Small Hawaii. And this is a website that small businesses can go to. And I know that Teach Us Hawaii is registered on Shop Small Hawaii. And Shop Small Hawaii is also, I want you to know, Signature Sponsor is Central Pacific Bank, so we thank them very much. But it's a website that small businesses and entrepreneurs can go to to register. And we support them throughout the year, not only on Small Business Saturday, which is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We support them throughout the year with promotions via social media, via workshops and promotions. So we have promotions going on throughout the year and then it culminates with Small Business Saturday, usually with a consumer contest. So giving them, trying to draw in the consumers and pairing them with the entrepreneurs and the businesses. So it's up and coming, it's growing, we have over 100 small businesses registered now with Shop Small Hawaii. And I urge any small businesses to please register and sign up with us. And let's see, I'd like to ask Susan if she has any final words to impart about entrepreneurs and Central Pacific Bank and... Well, I just want to commend all of the small business owners out there. It's not an easy job. You wear so many hats and I have such high respect in regards for our small business owners. They are a great contributor to our economy. They provide jobs and they really make Hawaii the special place that it is. It's great that we can see local products like Byron's that are really, it's a vertical from the ground up, literally, from growing the cacao to retelling the tea and sending it out to the world to join a little bit of Hawaii. So thank you so much, Colleen, for your support of Small Business. Oh, thank you so much. And Byron, do you have any last minute or final things to say about Teaches to Hawaii and anything else we can look forward to hearing or seeing from you? Well, I think we continue to grow online. We continue to make new products and we continue to, something that is really a passion project that I have is seeing if we can develop our agricultural industry to get closer to food independence and what have you. Our little piece is with cacao and tea. So we're growing tea, SBA. I was fortunate enough to get an SBA grant and we have tea growing now on five different islands. You see a picture there. Those are actually other farmers and we're teaching them how to grow, how to pick, how to process tea. And so the university was doing it for 15 years but the industry wasn't growing and we did a one-page white paper, what we would do, I was fortunate enough that Department of Ag picked it up, they supported the project. And so we now have hands, we've planted about 10 acres around the state and we have 100 something thousand plants and we're testing where it can grow and we have a farm on Maui growing tea at 4,000 feet elevation and we're already gonna start exporting that to Japan. Oh, that's exciting. I know we could have a number of shows just speaking about that and supporting the agriculture and having that vertical integration but thank you so much for your support of agriculture in Hawaii, definitely. Thanks for the high-step grant and helping us export product. Fantastic, thank you for mentioning that as well. Definitely, all right. This is the end of our show today. Thank you to Susan and Byron, appreciate your being here with us and thank you to Think Tech Hawaii and we look forward to seeing you next time.