 Welcome to this week's episode of Adventures in Small Business. I'm Jane Sawyer with the U.S. Small Business Administration. Thanks for joining us today. This program is a collaborative effort, thanks to ThinkTech with the SBA, the Hawaii Small Business Development Center Network, the MINK Center for Business and Leadership, and the Veterans Business Outreach Center of the Pacific. Thanks for joining us as we talk about small businesses in Hawaii, their success stories, the resources, their strategies that help create that success. And I'm happy today to have with me a guest who's been involved with small businesses in our community for many, many, many years and taken on a lot of different roles in helping those small businesses grow. Please welcome Julie Purcell. She is the principal, the owner, the founder of 21st Century Business Consulting, and a great well-known coach, mentor, teacher, trainer, facilitator. So welcome to the program, Julie. Thank you for having me here today, Jane. And Julie has been involved with SBA in one of our very, very special programs. It's for entrepreneurial CEOs, small business owners who are ready to scale up and take their business to the next level. The program is called Emerging Leaders. And Julie, can you tell us a little bit about the program since you've been involved, since we were able to bring it, this program, hosted by SBA to Hawaii? Well, our contractor is Interize out of Boston. And the woman who started this had put together a curriculum that was working really well for of all things food trucks in Boston. Food trucks. Yes. And she was approached by a group of people who said, you're having amazing success. We're going to suggest that this is something that you can adapt for other kinds of businesses that want to grow. And she put together a group of advisors. And the first thing they did was try it on half a dozen businesses in Boston. And it went gangbusters. So in 2005, she pitched the SBA. And she said, I think that this is something that could help people all over the country. Now Hawaii was not part of it until a few years later. But at that point, it was taking place in more than 20 cities across the country. And this program, the Emerging Leaders program that SBA has deployed across the country through their district offices, is not a startup program. But it's almost like an accelerator program for a number of different types of business. But we have some real eligibility or some different criteria than a lot of people would look to because we're dealing with people who've been in businesses for a while. And the business owner or the executive, the operating officer, can you tell us a little bit more about who gets into this class? Well, the first thing they do is vet the business. They want to make sure that this is somebody who wants to grow. Almost everybody starts a business with the idea that they've got something that they love to do and they do it very well. But maybe the other pieces don't necessarily fall into place. So we qualify them by making sure that they've been in business for at least three years, that they're already billing at least $350,000 annually, yes. And that the individual is the CEO of the company and wants to grow it. Additionally, they have to have at least one employee. After that, it's a series of interviews to make sure that there's a commitment because here's the thing that's really incredible. This is free. The SBA is actually paying for each person to have a seat at the table. Well, that's great, except that free frequently has no value. Right. You get what you pay for as the saying goes. This is a mini MBA class and you can pay thousands of dollars for it. Loosely, the value of this might be $10,000. $10,000 per student or enrollee, okay. So we want to make sure, as we vet them, that they are going to go the full seven or eight months required because it's every single week. Right. And that's a critical piece of it. And when we finally got to bring this program to Hawaii, because initially, I mean, it's been eight years, but initially when I was kind of pitching SBA to bring the program, they were like, well, maybe you're businesses, you have really small businesses in Hawaii. Maybe you won't have people who are ready for this, who will want to do this. And I just kind of said, you know, I think we have small businesses here who are primed for this. And I bet you that we'll see some great results from the Hawaii program. And thankfully we have, but SBA does go out on a limb. We invest in 15 to 18 students for each cohort. And we found that that takes a lot of vetting. I remember some of those conversations and those interviews to commit people as like, I'm telling SBA that you're a good investment for this money. So I need you to come to class. I need you to be working on your business. I need you to be meeting with your CEO groups, all of those things. And if you don't think you can commit, I need to go to the next applicant. And I know that you and my deputy, Mark, Mark Spain, are really into that process. And it does take some time to select the class. What are some of your experiences in going through that process over the last seven to eight years? Well, the first year was kind of all over the place, as you might imagine for a startup. And we had a lot of people who thought, oh, this sounds good. This sounds like a nice way for me to get an SBA loan. What we discovered was that there are quite a few people out there who wanted to be in partnership with us to send their best and brightest. And so here's a perfect example. Susan Nutsugi from Central Pacific Bank said, listen, I would love for some of my commercial loan officers to be able to talk to their people about it. So she invited me to come talk to them at a lunch. And wow, does that work great? All of a sudden, they can go back to somebody and say, you know, I think I have a program for you that could really jumpstart your business, because I know you want to get to that next level, whatever that is. And everybody has a different idea about what it is. Maybe they want to start franchising, or maybe they want to have a neighbor island office, or maybe they want to go Pacific Rim. But it doesn't matter. We're not the people who set those goals for them. We say, you tell us what you want to do, and we'll help you get there. And so this program will address all of those things, so out of all those 15 to 18 students, they all identify and may have different goals that they set and then plan how to accomplish it. And you take them through any number of different kind of disciplinary pieces of business management to understand and really know their business. So they're making some more fact-based information decisions. It is. It's a mini MBA program is what it is. So we start out with the idea that they are going to create a series of growth goals. And what we ask them to do during the seven or eight months that they're in class is create a growth plan for the company. So they start out, their first module is simply looking at the kind of goals that they might want to have. And sometimes they decide, well, maybe franchising is not what I want to do. Maybe I just want to increase my business where I'm planted right now. And others will take off and say, you know, I think franchising is a great idea. We have one student that now has several franchises throughout the state and is thinking that it may be time for her to even move to another state. Oh my goodness. And that's over, I mean, that's terrific. I mean, a number of different franchises going out of the state of Hawaii. I'm assuming she's now grown to be on all islands. Wow. And then this has been over the course of how many years that she's developed this. She is, she was in the class three years ago. Three years ago. Can you give us some other examples of other, I mean, maybe that are not related to expanding some other growth plans or ideas without giving us any proprietary information? Well, one of my favorite stories was a woman who owns a small manufacturing company. And when she originally came in, she thought, oh, what I need to do is figure out how to sell more units. I don't want to raise my price. It's already a good price and there's no price resistance. I just need to get more of it out there. And she thought, well, I want to go to the big box stories. And she started investigating that and decided that that was not the way she wanted to go. As it turned out, she now has completed an entire arrangement with a co-packer in Japan and has literally doubled the size of her business. But the doubling is taking place in Japan, where there is very little price resistance. They love her product. And it's a made in Hawaii product as well. So that's another wonderful story. We'll have to bring that entrepreneur on the program, too, to just tell a little bit more about how that all evolved. I'm sure she would love to do it. And not everybody is involved in a product. One of my favorite stories was very early on. We also worked for many years and continued to work with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. A lot of what Gene Horseman wanted to do was to target minority populations that didn't have the ability to pay for an education that would allow them that next rung. So more than half of the people who come into this program have been identified as people in minority situation where they are women-owned businesses or they are in hub zones. And the first few years that we did that, we followed that religiously as we were recruiting. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs was a terrific group to work with, and they were able to bring us people that probably would not have otherwise had the ability to use a program like this. And we've had some shining stars from that group. And it's really been wonderful to watch their progress. One of the interesting things with this program is that we follow those entrepreneurs, and they report back continually on what their growth is. Have they created jobs? Have they gotten contracts? Have they realized a capital infusion? What are they doing with their business? So we're really getting good results. And I don't know. You might want to share some of those numbers if you have those. I do. And one of the things I love about Hawaii, I go back to a comment because all the instructors come together once a year, usually to discuss any new best practices or see if there's any new resources that we can offer. And the way we teach is facilitated training. So it's not me standing up there lecturing people. It's me saying, what do you want to accomplish? And how can I help you get there? But I do remember meeting somebody from, well, let's just call it a nameless city. Who said, Hawaii, do you do business there? You just sort of check people in and out of hotels and go surfing, don't you? And I was so surprised. Having worked in Hawaii now for 43 years, all I could think was, OK, this person has never been to Hawaii, so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I decided that one of the things I wanted to do was to track what was happening here. All of the information that goes back, you mentioned that enterized tracks what happens. And they ask specifically, how much have you grown in terms of revenue and how many new hires have you had? And I wanted to be able to compare that to what was happening nationally. So I tell you what, we're going to have to take a quick break. And all of you are going to have to come back to find out what those numbers really are and how well Hawaii really compares. Go away, nerd wallet, with your studies. I'm Jay Fidel, Think Tech. Think Tech loves energy. I'm the host of Mina, Marco and Me, which is Mina Morita, former chair of the PUC, former legislator, and Energy Dynamics, a consulting organization in energy. Marco Mangostorf is the CEO of Provision Solar in Hilo. Every two weeks, we talk about energy, everything about energy. Come around and watch us. We're on at noon on Mondays, every two weeks on Think Tech. Aloha. Are you tired of sleep walking through life? Are you dreaming of a healthier, wealthier, happier you? You're not alone. And that's why thousands of people tune in each week to watch RB Kelly on Out of the Comfort Zone, Tuesdays at 1 p.m. Make a change, get the help you need and stop sucking at life. The army, we're going to go live. Oh! Hello, it's 1 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon and I'm your host, RB Kelly. Welcome to Out of the Comfort Zone. Hear about some of those results we're seeing with our small businesses here. So Julie, we've had, this class meets every two weeks, physically on location in Honolulu. We have had small business owners from across the state. Now how we manage to accommodate that. So I mean, we are pulling information from our island economies and things like that, but tell us a little bit about who those folks have been and how they've managed this class. Well, one of the things that we did immediately was to make sure that everybody from a neighbor island would have access as well. So we've had people from Maui, we've had people from Kauai, we've had people come over from the big island. They have to pay their own airfare. So it's not as easy as if I were standing there Skyping with them every other week. But they have done it around a schedule that allows them to conduct business in Honolulu and then they'll fly out again. But the thing that has always interested me is that Hawaii is considered to be a difficult place to do business. And in fact, I believe that Honolulu was listed 51st worst place to do business out of, I don't know, 60 metropolitan areas. And yet I go back to the first year that we were doing business and an unnamed Eastern city had posted that they were poised to have three new hires and add a quarter million dollars in revenue. And I was pretty sure at that time, and I remember saying it to her, I think Angel Iwohi did this by herself in about three months in the class. And I thought, I need to figure out what we're doing. It turned out that that class during the seven months had 16 new hires and more than $3 million in new revenue. And I thought, I'm gonna- In seven months. Yes, I'm gonna continue to track that and see where it falls. Well, there's a report that comes out from Enterize every year. And they'll say, well, we are generating revenue and creating new hires at four times the rate of the private sector or six times. It turns out that Hawaii, which is by the way the 47th largest metropolitan area in the country, comes in in the top 10 every year. Yes. We are creating new hires at eight to 10 times the private sector. And it is multi-million dollars in new revenue. And it is multi-million dollars that go into the tax base. I am so proud of what these people are able to achieve. And I was thinking about that wonderful quote. I'm sorry, I can't remember whose it is. But essentially, it's amazing what you can accomplish when no one needs to get credit for it. And they're getting such great results. They're working really hard at it and it just kind of brings these groups together. We still have some of the earlier groups. Oh, yes. During the session, they meet in class and then they have CEO meetings in the alternate weeks where they discuss and do peer mentoring and discuss their issues. Sometimes you group those CEOs by areas, sometimes a little bit by industry or like business, though we're careful because we talk about a lot of confidential information in that class. And everybody discusses their finances or their marketing plans or their competition in a little bit different manner, but it is all exchanged. And then that confidentiality is an important thing and we make sure everybody's honoring it. But some of those groups are still meeting years after the class is over. It turns out that that willingness to share becomes one of the most important things that happens. The very first night, I ask everybody to share their biggest challenge. And it turns out that almost everybody has been operating in a silo. They're not even aware that there are other CEOs out there that have exactly the same problem. That ability to share that information or even talk to someone who understands it is really vital to their success. And it's also interesting that sometimes they find someone who has had that same problem found a great solution, affordably applied it, tested it, and it can work for them as well. They share successes and oftentimes they also share adversity and stories and methods process to overcome that. So they're a great support for each other through this. They find a new ohana in so many ways. They do. One of the things that I enjoy most is watching someone come in and reinvent their business. Perhaps the one that I have enjoyed most is Noel Alana Doudwa, Kalaka Nui, and she took over a trucking company. Her mother was actually the first woman with a commercial driver's license on the island. She inherited mom's truck and grew the company. And one day she got a call, she was getting ready to send out the trucks and she got a call and the guy said, I'm sorry, we don't have anybody to do demolition today so there won't be anything to pick up. She said, I'll find somebody to do demolition and created a whole new segment of her company. And then at one. Seizing opportunity. Exactly, she is an entrepreneur that looks classically at whatever the barrier is and sees an opportunity. And she has done that time and again. And when I look at success stories, she's one of the first that I look at. And when somebody else comes in and they tell me, I'm having these challenges, I'm thinking here's an opportunity, here's an opportunity, here's an opportunity. And I love being able to bring back the people who've already been through it. Austin Nikoa, who was in our very first class, has mentored half a dozen people who are in the construction industry. And he has done such an incredible job of helping people achieve things that they didn't even know were possible. One of the other teaching models that is incorporated into this course is bringing in community experts, business experts from a number of different fields, sometimes related to the modules, sometimes that have been through the class and experienced some growth in that area themselves. So finance management, analyzing financial statements. So we introduce them to a family of CPAs. We introduce them to a number of bankers. We, other business consultants, people in marketing. So they are building not only a peer group for issues, but they're getting in contact with experts to see who they can use as legal advisors or financial advisors, establishing relationships and stronger relationships. The bankers who come in are often like, wow, this is a tremendous, this company has even more potential than they realize. So maybe you can speak to that for a minute or two. Even if they don't realize it at the time, I tell them, be sure to get this expert's card because something's gonna click somewhere down the line and you're gonna say, I need to talk to that person. Many of them don't have a group of resources. Some people come in experiencing financial analysis for the first time and that's always surprised me. I assume that if someone's been in business for three years, they can probably read their own financial statements and it turns out not to be true. So we spend quite a bit of time with experts so that they can say, oh, I've created a financial dashboard and it tells me that I need to spend more time doing this or more time doing that. And there's somebody I can call, not just a resource, I want them to think of it as a safety net. I think it's great for entrepreneurs who kind of go with their gut or have that instinct that, along with the entrepreneurial spirit, but to have the facts and really understand and be able to use that to make better decisions and to guide their business, to really see what they need to do. The business plan, the growth plan, those things are all tremendous. Now we have a cycle for this class and we're gonna be wrapping up in a couple minutes so I wanted to at least let the viewers know if they're interested or know somebody to refer to this class, they should probably get in touch with SBA. When's the cycle? When do you look at applications? When do you? The next class will be posting applications in January of 2019 and the interviews will begin in March and probably the first class will be in April. And usually we run right up through the last week in October, sometimes into November, weather permitting. Weather permitting, yes we, there are a number of those things that influence that class, but it takes about 100 hours of your time. You do, we usually have the classes at the SBA so it's a convenient location. We usually meet Wednesday evening so we don't interfere with most businesses so it's a very doable curriculum, class time and very supportive environment to be in. We ask that you commit to coming to all the classes so you'll get the most benefit, interact with your peers and you put in your parking and your sweat equity and get great results for your small business. So this is the SBA Emerging Leaders Program offered every year through the Hawaii District Office and Julie Purcell, our facilitator extraordinaire and Interize, so great program, check it out, you can find it by calling the SBA at 808-541-299-0 or by going or emailing us your interest and we'll notify you when we roll out the applications. You could go to HawaiiGeneral at SBA.gov and just drop us a line to say, hey, I wanna be an emerging leader too. So thanks for joining us at Adventures in Small Business. Give us a call and we'll have an adventure with you. Thanks so much, aloha.