 ThinkTechAway, civil engagement lives here. Welcome to Out of the Comfort Zone. I'm your host, Arby Kelly, and you are watching ThinkTech on Spectromosi 16. Now today we're going to start off with a body language tip. I don't know about you, but I sometimes get nervous on camera or when I'm talking to a big crowd, and those nerves can just totally derail your entire experience. So one thing you can do to actually make yourself calm down is to rub what's called your vagus nerve, and that is actually right here at the base of your throat. And if you're watching and you rub this and you do it slowly and firmly, you'll notice it actually calms yourself down, which is super handy when you're about to go on camera or about to go on stage. And you'll see this happening, not always just the rub, but men will sometimes adjust their collar or adjust their tie. Women will sometimes kind of toy with their jewelry or play with their jewelry here. And those three things are nervous gestures that if you see someone else doing them, it's a good cue. They're nervous, but if you're nervous, you can try that to calm yourself down. Now today we've got a really cool guest that I'm very excited to have on the show, and I've actually never met this guest before. This guest was actually introduced to me by Pam Chambers, who met her and said, she's fabulous. You've got to have her on the show. You've got to make it happen. So here today for the first time, and meeting me for the first time, is Rose Wong. Hi, Rose. Hi, thank you. Can you shake? Yeah, nice to meet you. Of course. So can you help me understand exactly what do you do? So first off, I'm a student. I'm a sophomore student at the Shedler College of Business. I'll be triple measuring in marketing, entrepreneurship, and finance. Wow, that is a big deal. And then I own two jewelry businesses. So the first one is called Kaloha Ocean Gems. It's a local jewelry business. I started when I was 16 years old. It's around four years ago. And then the second jewelry business is called Rose Gold Gems, which I just launched two weeks ago actually. And so that one focuses on affordable, fine luxury jewelry. And I just got an office for the two businesses, and I'm thinking of opening up a marketing firm within the office too. I'm also the president of Hawaii Student Entrepreneurs, which is a Shedler Club at UH Manoa dedicated, helping students successfully start and run their own businesses. I think you ran out of fingers there. I know. That is so cool. I just shortened it too. That is so cool. So you're triple majoring. Triple major. And a sophomore. Sophomore. And running two businesses, and thinking of opening a third business there. And you're also the president of the Entrepreneurship Club. And it's easy to see why you're the president when you take into account everything before that. Can you help me understand how this all started for you? So my jewelry business started because I was working at Magnolia in Kahala, and I saw the jewelry pieces there, and I just wanted to make it. So I started making it. I started selling it immediately. And so I got my first part-time job when I was 14 years old. Since 14 and 16, I had around eight jobs, because I was never satisfied. Back then, minimum wage was about $7, I think it was. And I didn't understand why I was getting so paid so little, but I was working a lot. I didn't like the long hours. And so I wanted to do something on my own, so I began making jewelry. I remember going to Ben Franklin and first, putting in the first $50. And I thought that was so much to me. But I didn't know that it would later turn into a huge business that would later pay for my rent, my tuition, everything else, my own house, my offices. So since then, I started selling in the store at Magnolia, and that's where I first began. And then I started selling with Aloha Pearls. I started selling online at Crafters around the island, Crafters on the other Hawaiian islands. And then from there, I started Rolls Gold Jewelry, because, so Kalauya Ocean Jump's just a 40-carat gold fill and sterling silver, so it's more on the affordable side. But I wanted to scale up and do more with the luxury jewelry. So that's why I started Rolls Gold Jewelry. Now, I've heard the statistic that most businesses fail within three years. And so here you are, super young, super capable, evidently, and you've already got two and you're working on a third business. Can you tell me what you think the difference has been for you to help you keep moving forward? The difference has been, honestly, a lot of networking. There's a lot of jewelry artists in Hawaii, such a big popular market. And so it is hard to compete. But I think because I kept striving to meet people, kept striving to make these connections, that's something that allowed me to succeed in such an overpopulated market. I think another thing is that I just kept going. So I mean, a lot of people have told me, oh, it's just jewelry. And I actually doubted myself a few times, too. And when I was, so for example, I went on a national program, the Woman's Business Enterprise National Council, the Student Entrepreneur Program in Vegas. And we were doing a pitch competition. And instead of pitching my jewelry business, I was doing a new tech idea, because I didn't think jewelry was big enough. But the same time that was going on, there was a big national business conference fair and where senior executives from the Fortune 500 business attended. And I had a jewelry booth there, and I ended up selling out in one day. And then the next day I went on and I pitched this tech app when I should have been pitching my jewelry business, because it's a fully operational and fully scalable business. And I didn't realize that until then. So I think not doubting my small business helped a lot, and then it helps to go into this bigger thing, which is rose gold. Yeah. That's incredible. And I know, I'm a business owner myself, and I know all of our viewers are all either, maybe they've got a small hobby business, maybe they're putting in hours at work, but all of us, we feel that doubt that what we're doing, is it really worth it? Is it worth putting out there? Yeah. So was there anything you had to do to help get over that doubt, to start believing in yourself? I guess it was that event in Vegas where I truly realized the potential of my business, and I realized that it was a product that people wanted. And there wasn't really anything that I specifically did, but I just kept going. And I just didn't stop. Yeah. And that's powerful. So often we think, oh, this is too hard. I'm going to stop, and we've left money on the table, we've left potential on the table. Definitely. So I'm curious, are you still the only person making your jewelry? I have a little factory sometimes at home. I have come from a family of 12. So sometimes I have my sisters and my brothers helping me in reform, like a full factory line, so in polishing, someone hammering. Right now, I am the only one making it, but I'm working to hire employees, hire interns. And since I just got a new office space, then that'll be much easier than just doing it all my own. That is impressive. Yeah. So we're going to switch gears a little bit. I'm curious, can you tell me more about why you decided on this triple major, and how do you see that impacting your future business? I decided to do triple major, so I'm not in the Shedler College of Business yet, since I'm only a sophomore. I'll be going into junior year. But I decided to triple major because those are the three parts of business that I'm super interested in. I was originally going to do just marketing and then entrepreneurship, where my businesses came in. So when I first got into college, I didn't think that I was going to continue on with my business. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was originally a psychology major. And then my business started to blow up, so I decided that I might as well do something with that, so marketing. And then I added on entrepreneurship and then finance. I feel like it's just a really good topic to know about, especially for a business. And it's really confusing for me because I'm not a big numbers or finance person. I'm good at selling, but I'm not good at making all the formulas and the Excel sheets, but I want to learn. And I think that it's all tied in together, and it'll all help me improve my business. And it's a good, how do I say it? It's something good to have in my pocket just in case I don't pursue my businesses, but the three majors. That makes sense. And already, we've got another tip for you viewers. One, don't give up. But two, just like you're doing with finance, how you don't feel like it's a strength of yours, but you're going to figure it out anyway. I think that's great business advice. If you see something where you have a weakness in your company or in your potential, go out and try and fix it. Find out what resources you have that you can use to actually make this work. Exactly. And college is a great resource. I'm also curious about how you see your business changing in the future. So you started with one jewelry company. You've added a luxury jewelry company on top of that. You're opening up a marketing company. Where else do you see your businesses going in the future? Well, Kalohe right now is mostly local. I do have a few clients internationally. I have some clients in Australia, New Zealand, France. But Kalohe, I didn't think Kalohe would be able to scale because it's such a popular thing in Hawaii right now. And so I started Rosego because Rosego is easier to scale since it's affordable luxury jewelry. And it's fine, solid 14-carat gold diamonds and gemstones. And so that one I want to expand. And whenever people ask me after college if I wanted to continue on with Kalohe, it was never really an option because I didn't think that I could scale that business. So I started Rosego Gems. And this one I think I could scale. So right now we just launched a waiver website up. We're working with influencers. And we're doing a super strong focus on being a digitally native brand. I'm not sure if you've heard of the brand movement watches. No, I haven't. So we're employing the same kind of digitally native focus that they are. So they are affordable luxury watches. And by year three, they were able to hit $60 million because of their strong Instagram campaign. Wow. And Instagram has proven to be a super big driver in business. For Kalohe, four rolls gold. And for any business, especially today in such a technology driven generation. And that makes sense because your product is so visual. People see it. They see models wearing it. They think, oh, I love that. Oh, I would love to wear that. So now I'm curious, are you wearing your jewelry today? I am. I can't wear anything besides my pieces. I bet not. I bet you're always asked, oh, are you wearing your own jewelry? So do you want to tell me about any of your pieces? Sure. So this one. So everything is made of 14 karat solid gold fill. And then this is a pistachio pearl. And then what am I wearing? Which earrings? And then so all of my pieces, they're just designed in my studio right now. My sisters help out a lot with the designs. So everything is from Kalohe. There are a few rings that are from Rolls Gold. So these are the solid 14 karat pieces with diamonds over there. And then I work a lot with natural stones too. So this one is ruby. This is citron. And these are part of my new collection that I'm actually have a pop up with Lululemon Waikiki on Wednesday. So this is all part of the new collection that nobody's seen before. Oh, exciting. Yeah, so that'll be on sale on Wednesday at Lululemon. That is awesome. So switching gears a little bit again, with you as the president of the Entrepreneurship Club at Shidler, how are you surrounded by other entrepreneurs who are as driven as you are? Definitely, that's why I joined. I think the best thing that someone could do is surround them with the right people. And within the club, I joined because I was going to all these networking events and I was being inspired and motivated by these speakers. There's a lot of other small business owners also that are also students. And so we kind of work together and help each other out. We motivate each other, inspire each other. We help each other find ways to sell pop ups, events. And I think it's really great when different artists can come together with their different passions and they're given the opportunity to do something about what they love to do and just create a big project together. So do you create a lot of projects with these other entrepreneurs? Yeah, definitely. So I started a new program called Third Thursday, where every third Thursday of the month we sell on campus, right in the middle of campus. I usually rally about five different student run businesses and it's our kind of way of fundraising too because all the other clubs, they do like car washes or food fundraisers, but we're the entrepreneurs' clubs. So I figured it's a good way for us to be entrepreneurial and still fundraise money for our club. That is fascinating. So is this open for anyone to join? What are some of the particulars for people wanting to get involved? You have to be a student to be in the club, but we do a lot of networking events. We bring in a lot of speakers, so we're actually bringing in Pam for one of our events next semester. We do a lot of workshops. We just did a workshop on how to sell on Amazon. We do different company tours. So we did a company tour of the ABC Store headquarters to figure out how to actually get your product into the ABC Store. So those are the basics, the workshops, company tours, and speaking events. Awesome. So everyone can get involved. Everyone can get involved. That is really cool. Now viewers, we are going to take a very short break. It's gonna be just a commercial break, but when you come back, you'll be watching Out of the Comfort Zone on Think Tech on Spectrum LC 16 with Arby Kelly and Rose Wong. See you in a minute. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. Hi, my name is Bill Sharpe, host of Asian Review, coming to you from Honolulu, Hawaii, right here in the center of the Pacific Ocean. Asian Review is the oldest of the 35 or so shows broadcast by Think Tech, Hawaii. We've been in production since 2009. Our goal is to provide you, the viewer, with information, breaking information about events in Asia, Asia being anything from Hawaii west to Pakistan, from the Russian Far East south to Australia and New Zealand. We hope to see you every Monday afternoon at 5 p.m. Welcome back to Out of the Comfort Zone on Think Tech on Spectrum LC 16. I'm your host, Arby Kelly, and I'm here with fabulous entrepreneur and student, Rose Wong. Thank you, Rose. I'm so glad you're still here. Definitely. Well, I realized after I said that, how silly that sounded. I drove her away. She left the studio. But anyway, I was wondering if your jewelry, is it just for women, or do you also have something for men? I do carry a line for men's jewelry. I was actually working with Henry Capone and together we created this piece. So I used his guitar strings and then I put pearls on the end of it. And so it's kind of a unisex piece. So his fans can word, his girl fans, his guy fans. I also do a lot of the stretchy bracelets with the natural stones, lava beads, wood beads for men. I do some necklaces for men. So we include everyone. Include everyone. And how do you come up with the inspiration for your jewelry? So my jewelry in creating and editing is the only way I am creative. That's why I'm going into marketing. A lot of it comes from taking ideas from things that I like in life, like beaches or surfing, and then kind of putting that into jewelry. A lot of it is just when I sit and just come up with ideas. And a lot of it is from my friends too. And they're like, oh, they draw out a design and they ask me to make it. A lot of it is from my sisters coming up with specific unique designs. So a lot of it does actually come from other people. I'm very motivated and inspired by those around me. Do you take requests? I do take personal requests, yes. I can do customs. Awesome. Definitely. And how can people find more about you? Do you have websites? How do people find you? So I'm online. I have two websites, Kolohe Ocean Gems and Rose Gold Gems. The Kolohe website, I have to update it because it was back when I made it when I was 16 years old. And so there's a lot of change that needs to happen, yeah. And then the Rose Gold Gems, you can definitely see the change. It looks a lot better than the Kolohe Gems. I'm also on Instagram, Kolohe Ocean Gems. I do pop-ups at Salt Cacaco every third Saturday. And so my Instagram, website, and Facebook is where you can find me. And if someone in our audience is watching and wondering if they would be a good fit for you and your business, what exactly are you looking for as you're looking for employees in your business? Well, right now with the office space that we got, it's one of the artist's lofts. And so what I want to essentially do is make it into a creative working space. So I have my office and I have my manufacturing factory in the back and then the open room will be open for pop-up events, first Friday events, photo studio, showcase, retail space, whatever we want to create it. So right now I'm looking for marketing interns. I'm looking for two people to teach how to actually make the jewelry and so they can come into my office and create the jewelry there. And so what I would look for in an individual is creativity, definitely. Ability to be open to learning and to creating pieces. You can't be scared of using a torch. I get burned a lot. Yeah. Just someone that's creative and open to learning. New things, yeah. If you had the choice between, say there's two different people. One of them is very open and very creative, but maybe not as consistent. And the other person is very open, not so creative, but very consistent. Which of the two would be a better fit for you? That's a good question. I would say the creative, but not consistent, yeah. Yeah, cause you can teach consistency. You can't really teach creativity, yeah. All right, so viewers, if you're watching and you have always been super creative, but you've been struggling with it and maybe you're looking for something where you can build your creativity, create a business and learn how to have a successful business, go check out Will's. She gave you her website. Will you give those again? Just so we can hear it again. Yeah, so it's www.KaloheOceanJumps. I know it's hard to remember and it's really long, so that I came up with the name when I was 16 years old. I wasn't thinking about the three-syllable business rule. And no one's gonna remember Kalohe, especially people from the mainland. And half the people don't even know what it means. It means a little rascal, by the way, yeah. Oh, good, thank you for telling me, I was wondering. But it seems like you've been successful in spite of any of the rules you've broken along the way. I would say I've done a pretty good job, yeah. I would say too. You walked in and you started telling me things and I was like, wow, wow, wow, wow. This is very, very impressive. Thank you. Where do you see yourself, not just your business, but yourself going in five years? Oh, that's a tough question. I didn't think that I would be a business major just a year ago. I thought I was gonna be a psychology major. I definitely still wanna be running my businesses, so my original major was gonna be psychology and then my original major was gonna be marketing. And so I'm either gonna still be running my jewelry businesses or doing a marketing job because with marketing, I still get that creativity of creating things digitally instead of jewelry pieces. And I really like having that creative mind. I'm good at it, I'm good at Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and I could spend hours on my laptop editing a logo for someone. So it seems like that's, you're always gonna have that creative outbent and it's always gonna be profitable. Just the shape it takes might change in the future. Yeah, definitely. And I think that's typical. Even people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, a lot of us, we don't know where we'll be five years from now, 10 years from now, sometimes even a week from now. So I think you're definitely on the right track here. However things change as they move forward. Can I ask how old you are? So I just turned 20, March 20th. That is so exciting, happy birthday. Thank you. All right, I've got, this has suddenly brought a lot home to me. I'm turning 24 this year. And I'm like, okay, okay. Maybe that I could do a little bit more in my business. Maybe I could do a little bit more to educate myself. Yeah. And I think we do, we have all the time in our life. So can I ask what really made you decide to make your business successful? I mean, all of us have thought about starting businesses. And I remember when I was 14, I started selling, I had my own chickens and I had this little free range farm. But when it didn't go well, I shut it down and I turned to something else. What were some of the early challenges you faced as you created your business, such as 16? Early challenges, I would say I'm a pretty optimistic person and I never really see my challenges as challenges or as failures. But I guess the biggest obstacle was doing it all my own, maybe. Yeah, I always, whenever I enter business pitch competitions, everyone always asks me, what was your biggest challenge? Oh, so you hear this all the time. Yeah, and I always have a hard time answering because I've been so blessed and so lucky that I haven't had any big challenges or outfalls within my business. A lot of it has been successes. Were there any people who helped teach you along the way or helped guide you? Definitely, so my first manager at Magnolia, she helped me get it. Obviously I didn't know what licensing I needed to get, so she helped me do the GE license, the LLC license. I later partnered with Aloha Pearls, which is one of the biggest pro distributors in Hawaii. And he taught me about where to get my wholesale material. He taught me about different clients, different outlets. I got to participate in the Made in Hawaii show because of his company. So I definitely had mentors that have helped the process of my successes and have helped minimize the outfall, the downfalls, yeah. Those mentors make all the difference. Definitely. Can I ask, where will people see you in the next few months? What events do you have coming up? Yeah, so like I said, we have the one at Lululemon on tomorrow actually, five to nine in Waikiki. And then we also have an event at UH on campus Thursday, which is 10 to two. And then we're also sponsoring Miss Kakaako. And she's holding a spring fest fundraiser on Saturday at South Kakaako. And that one is three to nine. So there's a lot of performances. All the proceeds are going to a local charity of her choosing. So it's gonna be a super fun event. So we have three coming up this week. So you guys can't miss those. Oh, good. Good. Well, I know there are a lot of older people watching this, but we also have a lot of teenagers and kids who are watching this as it goes live or maybe they're watching the replay. But for them, they face a lot of discouragement when they're creating their businesses. They're afraid of bias. They're afraid of failure. They're afraid of bankruptcy. What advice would you give them to help them as they begin creating their businesses? I would say that the first step is just showing up. And once you begin manifesting something inside of your head and thinking of that success and having that motivation, then it becomes coming real. It becomes real, becomes something not just in your head. And I find that a way to help with that is to consistently surround myself with people who are challenging myself, who motivate me and inspire me. And another good way to do that is I love lists and I constantly make lists for my daily lists. I have my weekly list, my monthly list. And I think by creating this list of small things that I have to accomplish during my day, during my week, once you can cultivate, the cultivation of small wins will lead to bigger successes. So start yourself off small. Start yourself off just getting the licensing for it. And that's still on the road to success. That's something small that you can start with. And take advantage of your resources. Being in school, there's a lot of resources. And if I hadn't joined the Entrepreneurs Club at UH, I wouldn't have gone to go to these national programs. I wouldn't have got to met all the people that I met. I wouldn't have met Pam. I wouldn't be here right now. I wouldn't have participated in one business plan competitions. And I would say just take advantage of your resources. They're there. There's people that want to help you. And I think a lot of it, especially in Hawaii, is it's not what you know. It's really about who you know. And having a good network and a good connection will definitely help your business succeed. So it sounds like you had to take advantage of your network and build your network. But were there any times you had to cut people off or get rid of people or get them out of your life? Yes, definitely. So my first time I tried to hire someone, I had a big jewelry order for one of my bigger jewelry clients. And I hired her and her two friends for, paid them $15 an hour, which I thought was pretty generous. And then at the end of the order, I offered her a position with my company because she was good at it. And so I gave her two options. I said, you can either get paid $15 an hour consistently, but it's not as much as you can be making. Or you can get paid how I get paid for whatever piece you sell. It's less consistent, but it's a lot more money. And so of course she chose that because it's more money. And then after about a month, after about a month, something happened and she demanded to repartner and rebrand an equal ownership. And she demanded 50% of my company and she wanted to be an equal partner and she wanted to change my name and everything. And I was like, I've been working on this for four years. You've been here for a month. And no. Yeah. Basically. That must have been tough. Do you find yourself often having to have those difficult conversations or make those choices? I think some of it was my fault too for not, I guess, setting a contract before. I had to learn that to your backs. Yeah. So I learned the hard way, but it's good that I learned. And so when I'm hiring these employees now, I'm definitely gonna have a contract written up. That's a good lesson. That's one I had to learn too. And it's an ugly, ugly lesson to learn. But once you know it, it's so valuable. Yeah. It helps a lot. Definitely. But one minute left, is there anything else you would like to say to our viewers? I guess if there was one thing that you should take away is to constantly motivate yourself, constantly inspire yourself. It sounds really cliche, but it's helped my business. And write those goals down. Because once you start to write them down, they begin to manifest into something that's real. And a lot of what limits people is our environment. Especially people in Hawaii, we live in paradise. We begin to become content with our lives. But I think one should always be challenging themselves and looking for the next thing to overcome and to achieve. And if there's one thing that you should remember from this episode is just keep motivating yourself. Thank you, Rose. That's very powerful. And you being here today has actually helped motivate me. So thank you. Awesome. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. Thank you, viewers. And we will see you next Tuesday at 1 PM to watch Out of the Comfort Zone on Thig Tech on Spectrum OSI 16. See you then.