 Aloha, and welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Byron Riddle, and we are broadcasting live from the Think Tech Studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in, we are at www.thinktechhawaii.com. You may also subscribe to our programs and get our emailing list at that site as well. The theme of business in Hawaii is, the theme of business is Hawaii, and share with you stories of local business by local people. Our guests will share with us how they are able to build successes in our sometimes challenging business environment. In the Think Tech studio with me today is Jean-Paul Gideon, president of JPG Hawaii. Jean-Paul, welcome to the whole show. Aloha, thanks for having me here. Super excited. So, basically, you're here today, so let's talk about you first of all. Why don't you tell us more about yourself, and then we'll talk more about your company and what you do. Okay, well my name is Jean-Paul Gideon, president and CEO of JPG Hawaii and JPG Media. Born and raised in Hawaii, grew up in Hawaii Kai. I've got three brothers. Two of them are in the business with me. And so far, we've had a good ride and went to all the public school route from Kamiluiki, New Valley, Kaiser and KCC. I think so far it's turned out a pretty good product. Excellent. So what made you decide to go into business for yourself? Super interesting story. So I grew up in Hawaii Kai, like I said, on the golf course of Queensgate. So our backyard was the golf course, and we would go and play on the golf course and it was so fun. 1988, Nintendo was popping. So we said, Mom, can we get a Nintendo? She's like, yeah, quiet yourself. So my brother and I looked around like, this is expensive, how are we going to do it? We have no jobs. One day we're playing on the golf course and we saw a bunch of these golf balls at the pond where the golfers lose it. And we looked, we said, oh my goodness, we could get those balls for free, clean them up and sell them right back to the golfers who lost them. So we did. We got those golf balls, we started selling them to the golfers who sit up right at the green or the tee off. They would buy it. That was our first taste of financial freedom. So we bought the Nintendo, we bought the games, and then got really addicted to playing video games. That's a fantastic story. Yeah. So why don't you tell me about JPEG and what JPEG is all about? So JPEG, it started out as a clothing company actually called Ideal. In 2001, surfing and skateboarding just graduated from Kaiser High School. And I just wanted to go surfing with my friends, make music and designs and create art. A short time after that, two years into the business, Roy's restaurant said, hey, I need 1,400 custom shirts. I know you guys don't do that because you have your own clothing brand, but can you do it for us? A light bulb went off. I'm like, oh my goodness, we can make custom graphics and shirts for people because they like what we do. A little bit of money off a lot of companies. JPEG was born. And now we're full service design, printing, graphic installation and video production company. Video production as well. Yeah, video production. You may have seen some of our stuff. YouTube. I'm familiar with some of your stuff. Yes. Instagram and Facebook. So how did you decide to partner with your brothers? That's an interesting story as well. Super interesting. A lot of people are saying, how can you work with your brother or your family? This is not typical. Absolutely not. But when we first started, we were printing t-shirts in our kitchen in Hawaii Kai. So my mom was helping me. We're both night owls. So like 2 AM, we're printing t-shirts in the kitchen. And eventually I'm like, I knew I got a pair. She wasn't taking any money. So the closest person to me was Brandon. Brandon Gideon, my youngest brother, my younger brother. I brought him into the business and said, hey, I've got an order for $1,300 worth of stickers. We bought a sticker-making machine. We made those stickers. That was our first job. And it paid for the machine. And Brandon and I made a little money. You know what? This is good. We've always had businesses together. Now we can get more serious. It was just proximity and its necessity and trust. So let me, how do you actually manage the family relationships and the work relationships? I mean, that's got to be a challenge in and of itself. It is. Let's just say it's never a dull moment. But we did do a lot of fighting as kids. So we all know each other's boundaries and our strengths. Now we use those and we said, well, if we can all work together and be free to control our destiny, let's do it. And luckily, even though it's not perfect, we definitely manage it well. I love working with my brothers. So let me move on a little bit. When you're in doing this, what would you tell someone to look for if they were actually looking for a business partner or to create their own business? I would say two things. I see this all the time. And as a young entrepreneur, I am just seeing opportunity everywhere. Sometimes I want to go and do everything, but I got to bring it back and focus it. So I always say this, if you find a pain point or a need or, you know, you hear people say, oh, you know, I wish I had someone so I wish I could get video for my business. I see it so popular. So so many small businesses in Hawaii would like to tell the story. You know, you see people of family businesses, you know, luckily the second generation comes in and they're on social media, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube. And now you've got these older businesses, which are now skyrocketed up because they took advantage of that. So you see like video production or a need. If you can have a need and we could fulfill that need, whether it's us or someone, that's an opportunity. And if you like it, try it. If it doesn't work, try something else. So what is it that really inspires you then? Where do you, where do you get this inspiration from? Oh, right here. This is the, this is when it's three letters. D, A, D, my dad growing up, my dad is always entrepreneur. He would open all the different hotels around the world with the Regency Hotel chain. So what is now the Marriott in Waikiki? He was assistant general manager in Waikiki. Before that, it was Jakarta. Before that, it was Fiji. Before that, it was Australia and London and Germany. We've been all over the world and he landed in Hawaii. Started a car transportation business. Then he had rental properties. He said, well, I got the people living in my rental properties from New Zealand. Why don't I start a tour business to take them around town? Well, I have the tour business here. Why don't I have a little airline to fly the neighbor islands? And he just saw opportunity. He always told me, Don Paul, be your own boss. Be the landlord. He told me that when I was young. I was five and a half. I love that. And from then he always would tell me, Be the boss. Be the landlord. And it just drilled in me. And I just loved it. So everything that you do, what do you say is your greatest success? Oh my goodness. My greatest success. That's a loaded question. I can tell you what I feel right now. My daughter Sophie, she just turned 13 months. Hi Sophie. And my wife. I thought right now I'm 36. I was thinking I was going to work really hard. I was going to be an old dad and probably not play sports, but be able to provide enough money for them. The greatest success is meeting my wife Holly. Immediately. I had the same friends, but we didn't know each other. Immediately fell in love. We have a daughter. And I'm looking at my daughter and I'm like, Oh my goodness. Now I understand why people, my grandparents are so happy. My parents. This is a challenge. Believe me, I haven't had sleep in a year. But that right there, I'm going to make sure I do my best to make a mark on the world. And if it's not through me, it's going to be easier. Yeah. So you want her to get into the business and follow through with you after? Although I would love it. I just want her to do what she wants to do. And you know, whether it's art or making pottery or paintings or being a CEO, go for it. I'm going to support her all the way. Well, your wife Holly is pretty talented too. So yeah, that's pretty nice. She's got a lot of opportunities. Let's go with something else then. What would you say was your biggest failure? I could tell you right now. I was told something that from guys who did some business in the past where if you don't have it in writing, contract, you don't have it in writing. You don't have it. And even if you do, trust would verify. I could say I've done some business arrangements that didn't work out so well where I should have crossed my T's, docked my eyes, and my lowercase J's. Yeah. So how do you overcome failures? What steps do you take to move on? Don't look back. Looking back, looking forward for opportunity. There's so much out there. And with the internet, it's just crazy. Sometimes I can't sleep. It's so much opportunity. But you got to bring it back. You know what I mean? I do. I know exactly what you mean. And I watch think tech. And I see what these guys are doing. I'm like, wow, they had success, like Rusty and Tennis or Juno with Colt Pancake House family business. Right. All the way. It's all over. Right. Tune into these. So I'm going to switch up a little bit now. Let's go ahead. I know you brought some slides and some examples of some of your work. Absolutely. So let's go ahead and get into some of that. Yeah. First, I want to talk about some of the, so we're a full service design, printing, video production, advertising company. Just say, what is that? What do you do? It's so much. Well, first of all, a lot of 3D signage. Whether you're doing signs for your business, it's storefront signage or for the one you're seeing on the screen right now. This is at Cycle City, down off Nimitz. They needed a big mural for the wall. It looks like it's metal, like shiny metal. It's actually formed plastic. It's hollow inside and it's light. Easy to do. But we've been able to work with a lot of companies that, growing up in Hawaii, these are just iconic brands. JN, Cycle City, Velocity. And as we've progressed, I like what we do in the malls. And you've had experience in this too. Wall wraps. You're going through the mall and you're seeing these larger-than-life images. You're just saying, what the heck do you make that? Because we're used to seeing small printers, right? That print paper. You see these massive walls and you're just like, oh my goodness, I want to do that. That's something cool that we have right now. Yes, I know. And you're proud to do it because you see your art and your work out there. I mean, one of the things that I always alluded to is you may not know it was my work, but I know you've seen it. Absolutely. And I see some of my stuff still out there 10, 15 years later. So, yes. That's a pride in there, right? It is. It really is. And it's nice to see that it's held up so well. Quality. Quality always. You get what you pay for. Don't forget it. You do get what you pay for. So, don't go cheap. So, let's move on to some of the other slides. What else do you have? Cool. We have been blessed with the sun in Hawaii. We've also been blessed with the sun. So, we do tents, outdoor tents, and event displays. We just got finished at the food lodging hospitality trade show at the Blaisdell. We've done about 20 different booths in there. On the screen now, you'll see some of the alcohol brands that we support, the Absolutes, the Malibus, the Avions, Jamesons. Just a lot of things we've done throughout the years. We found that companies wanted to work with JPEG because we understand their brand guidelines. We have their logos, and they said, hey, can you do our signage? We would do that. Oh, I have an event coming up. Can you do a table cover and a backdrop and some retractable banners? Yeah, we could do that. So, we would always test things on ourselves when we would do trade shows or any sort of thing that we did. And if it's good, and people are asking for it, we release it. Something really cool is the different brands we've been able to work with. Growing up, everyone wants to work with McDonald's. Whether you're supplying something, well, at least me in the world, I want to work with McDonald's. So, we do... You've definitely seen our work. Every single McDonald's. Look at the window graphics. JPEG has touched those. I didn't even know you did those. I've seen them all over the place. You see those big trailers that have those cool billboards on them with the French fries or the burgers. We do those. Polynesian cultural center buses. We do those. You see the displays inside Walmart. We've been blessed enough to do the Walmart ones. Recently, it was Avengers. We just installed Toy Story 4. Next, coming up. Four shadowing. It has to do with the lion. And he might be a king. So, why don't you tell us... How many employees do you have? Currently, we have 12. At the beginning of the year, it was four. Full-time. We had subcontractors and stuff. But now, there's just more demand. So, ramping up right now. We're looking for a few good people. So, we're almost getting ready for a break here. So, but I wanted to just kind of let you talk about something. Go ahead and tell me something more about some of the things that you do. So, something I'm really passionate about. You know, the topic of the show is business in Hawaii. And then, I wanted to talk about entrepreneurship in Hawaii. Growing up. Growing my own business at a very young age. I've been fortunate to grow... Or to be invited to be part of what's called Entrepreneurs' Organization. In Hawaii, it's called EO Hawaii. You can go to EO. EO Hawaii.org. And it's a global network of over 14,000 entrepreneurs. The minimum requirements to get in is a million dollars in annual sales. So, you're now... You've got to be a founder or, you know, controlling interest in that company. So, I thought I was going to come in and it was going to be something else. But what it really turned out to be is a peer-to-peer learning and experience sharing. Juno, who was on the show, Juno Chung, co-op pancake house. He was just in my office yesterday. He was sharing some of the things he does in his company to really organize the workflow and keep everyone accountable. I was like, oh my goodness, this is it. So, you get to learn from a lot of the major CEOs in town who are part of the club and now, part of my friends. I learned from them. I learned from experience. And we help out the younger generation what's called our GSEA is the Global Student Entrepreneurs' Award. Every year, we choose one college student that has a minimum amount of sales and they compete in the global competition. So, Hawaii is a region. You compete in Hawaii. Then you'll go to the U.S. and then you compete globally. You can win a scholarship and all the support you need from the mentors at the club. Fabulous. So, it's almost like a mentoring. You have people you can rely on on one-to-one and then you're actually continuing that down to the next generation. Absolutely. RealHawaii.org and it's an entrepreneur's organization. It's super, super beneficial. Yeah, mentally and networking-wise is great too, but it's got a real cool thing. It's a no-solicitation policy. We're members together. I'm not pitching you to buy what I'm selling. I mean, you could buy it, but I love that no one is pitching each other. It's this real connection. It's not just business all the time. That's very important. So important, yeah. So, what would you say is the secret of your success? I mean, going to it, I mean, what is it that makes you successful? Marcus Lamona said this. He's on the TV show, hit TV show The Profit. There's the people, the process, and the product. I seriously think our service, personally in our company, all of us, we want to be at work. We like each other. We have fun. So, like, the culture is there. Plus, we all strive for excellence. You know, we want to be successful in what we're doing and the customer. It's all about the customer. All about your employees too. Don't get me wrong. The end is about the customer fulfilling their needs, what they need in a good way, solving those problems. Okay, let's stop there. We've got to take a quick break. So, we'll be right back. Please join us, and we're going to take this short break. And this is Business in Hawaii. See you back here shortly. Thank you. Hey, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studio. My name is Andrew Lanning. I'm the host of Security Matters Hawaii. We air here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time, trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know, issues that can protect your family, protect yourself, protect our community, protect our companies, the folks we work with. Please join us, and I hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer. Aloha. Aloha, y'all. My name is Mitch Ewan. I'm from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, and I'm the host of Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy. We're on every Wednesday at 4 o'clock, and we hope that we have interesting guests who talk to us about various energy things that are happening in Hawaii all the way from PV to windmills to hydrogen. Most of my heart, electric buses and electric vehicles. So please dial in every Wednesday at 4 o'clock on Hawaii, the State of Clean Energy. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii. With us today is Jean-Paul Gideon, president of JPEG Hawaii. So Jean-Paul, I mean, we've been talking about a lot of the stuff that you do. You know, you're into doing a lot of the print, but you also mentioned doing some advertising. Why don't you show us some examples and tell us more about that? Absolutely. I'd love to help with that. So as we know, billboards are restricted in Hawaii. Thank goodness, because we can see the mountains, we can see the ocean. It's a beautiful thing. We found companies still want to advertise and be seen with out-of-home advertising. So being inspired by where do people go, we expanded into an out-of-home advertising division of our company called JPEG Media. That's JPGmedia.com. See what we do. One part that we do is we've partnered with Time Supermarket. So all of the 23 locations throughout the state, and we offer supermarket advertising. One thing you'll see here on the screen, that's a grocery divider. Traditionally, you just separate your groceries with it. And that was a great thing. We wanted to innovate on that a little bit. So what I brought here with me is actually, it's a sample that I designed. Went ahead and, oh, there we go. There we go. So I designed this, got it custom manufactured and patented, not only in the U.S., but Australia, Japan, European Union, Canada. And the great thing about this, I mean, everyone's at the checkout. You're spending three to five minutes there. We made a design where you can slide your ad out and change it out. As simple as you're changing out the prices in the supermarket, and then you could just slide your ad right back in. That's fantastic. Super fantastic. I love it. So right now we have Realtors, Dentists, National Guard participates in this, Events. I love that. And they're saying, hey, we really like advertising there, but can we have some other way that we can track it, like for restaurants? I said, perfect. We've got receipt advertising. So on the back of the receipts, you can go ahead and put your poop on or some, anything, an advertisement you want or a recruitment. A lot of people use it for recruiting for employees or say Jack in the Box advertises with us. You can get free curly fries or Jamba Juice or premier auto detailing. So a lot of things that you want that direct response and trackable component. And you can target your area by geography. I want to be in Kahala. Kahala Times there. I want to be in town. We've got a King Street Times. So you really can geotarget where you want to hit. Communities within a three to five mile radius. If you're a business in that area, that's where your business is really coming from, the local people there. That's fabulous because that's exactly what I was going to ask you. It really depends on where the individual is or the store or the market or where if it is, and they can go just to that one location. They don't have to go to everything. So being in a supermarket, are you in several supermarkets or are you still growing that? I'm assuming this is a fairly new part of your business. Yeah, pretty new. So we have all 23 times supermarkets right now and we're actually looking to get into more. So if there's anyone out there watching, join with us. What we do, we actually bring the value. We provide these for free to the store and then the store is going to go ahead and get the value by they can put their own graphic in there or revenue from the sales. We'll share the revenue with them. It's a win-win. So we come to clean up the checkout lane and we can make some money and we can make some money and have fun time. Everyone's looking to make a little extra to the bottom line, right? Absolutely. I want to talk about something too. The supermarket is one component, but the shopping mall. The shopping mall advertising has been really great for us. Born and raised in Hawaii, we would go to Kokomarina. We'd go to Hawaii Town Center. I said, I could just get one mall, you know, one supermarket where we used to go. Kokomarina, that was actually my first job was at Subway. Kokomarina. Now we've partnered with the mall. So advertising there and it's very successful. I probably saw you there when I was on my way to Sandy's back. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, this is all fantastic and very interesting. So if someone were to want to advertise, they could contact you at... Just go to jpegmedia.com. That's jpgmedia.com. It'll give you access to everything. All of our advertising. You want to see everything we do. The main one, our company is JPEG Hawaii. JpgHawaii.com. And so, you know, who are... Can you name some of your clientele or who do you work with? Are you working primarily with larger companies, smaller companies, mom and pops? Who do you go to or how do they find you? It's cool. A lot of people find us on Instagram. Really? Yeah, we're on Instagram and Facebook. So for... We have two different accounts. Our printing and design side is JPEG Hawaii. The advertising is JPEG Media. Two separate accounts. So you'll get the national agencies reaching out because they're searching for something. We use hashtags a lot. We go ahead and we comment on things that those agencies are doing so we engage with them. And a tip I'd like to give for anyone looking to start a business or they want to do some sort of cause is to really get involved in the conversation. I know we've talked a lot about what we do, but I want to give advice. Practical that what other people could do. You have an idea. Maybe you are selling honey. One of our neighbors sells honey. Hawaiian honey. Get your domain name, Hawaiianhoney.com if you have it. Make that domain name. Match up with your Instagram profile and your Facebook profile and your YouTube channel. Get involved. Search the hashtag honey. And then you'll see all the honey suppliers from all over the world and all the growers and the farmers and the keepers engage with them, talk with them. See what organizations are part of. Is there a global honey organization? Talk to them. And then you start building your following and as you can see people will reach out to you that you never knew existed. That's one great thing about Think Tech Hawaii. I would watch it. I did not ever think I'd be on the show, but I watch it all the time. That's fabulous. That's a great tidbit too. And I'm sure anyone that's out there that needs to have an idea, that's a fantastic. And at least it gives them the roots. I mean there's a lot more that you need to do but that's a great start. So how much does hustling play into your success and into your business? We hustled golf balls. We started out selling golf balls and that was just the hustle. And hustle is a good word. Not the word of hustling to pull something over on someone, but the hard work and the grind. I think that's what really separates it. I love to work Saturday and Sunday. I love to work late because I don't get bothered by everything else going on in the world. But anyone who's done anything great has worked super hard at it. The overnight success is 20 years in the making. Exactly. That's really what it is. It's not just boom. They worked hard behind the scenes, multiple jobs doing other things to become successful in what they wanted. I'm still on that journey too though. I haven't reached the top. Only halfway to Olympus right now. And you got your brothers to help you out. That's wonderful. Absolutely. Let me ask you this. If you weren't working at JPEG, what do you think you would be doing? We'd be along the same lines of what we're doing right now. Talking to people, helping inspire others. But throughout our whole company, what we do is all about art. We're designing, we're printing, we're making signs and advertising. That's all art. I really like to do pop art. I'm sorry. I'll take other people's logos. Or the Mickey Mouse head. And I merge the two together. And now we've got Mickey Mouse and some Playboy ears. I love doing these mashups. Just taking things and changing them. I love making music, writing rhymes, rapping, freestyling. It's really how I express myself creatively. Okay, so what do you think was your biggest hurdle or challenge in owning a business? This is a tip for everyone listening out there. Find the right professionals to work with. Get a good CPA. If you had someone doing our taxes, it wasn't so good. Pay a lot of fees. Good CPA. Get a good lawyer who has a relevant information and is a professional in the area that you need. Ours is real estate and advertising. Get that. Build the team behind you. Build the right people. And pay the price. Pay the cost. Don't go cheap. Because you're going to get those cheap results. Yeah. Be legit. Sign up with the companies. Stay HCE compliant on eHawaii.gov. If you want to work in Hawaii, be legit. Sign up with the government. Go to Sam.gov. Get your DUNS number. There's all these behind the scenes things no one knows about. Workers calm. Do it. Be legit. All right. Well, we've got a few more minutes here. So is there anything you would like to close with? Any other tidbits or knowledgements? Yeah. I'm going to throw this in there. You may see this on the road. And I love to see our vehicles on the road. So we have a vehicle advertising. I know we want to talk about. So what you see on the screen right now, it's a local dentist. They do a corporate sponsorship. We get them on the vehicles and they do the route seven days a week. Great way to get out there. I'd say what I like to say is advertising out of home is a help. It's a driver to help get you online. So if you see something in the grocery store, hopefully it sparks you to want to go online to Instagram or YouTube and find out more about the company. Everything works. And everything works together. So don't focus on just one thing. Expand what you're looking at and you'll find a success. And with that, thank you very much. We're out of time. Thank you to Jean-Paul for joining us. And a big thank you to the production staff and everyone here at the studio. If you would like to be a guest on the show, please email your information to shows at hawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 p.m. We look forward to seeing you here next week. Thank you very much. Thanks.