 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Aloha and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts from the Think Tech studios and beautiful downtown Halalulu and the Pioneer Plaza every Thursday at 2 o'clock. We spend about 30 minutes discussing and interviewing successful individuals and companies in Hawaii. There are challenges of doing business in Hawaii like there are in most places in the country. But there are successes here that have gotten around some of the challenges, some of the regulatory environment, some of the taxes and they have made made successes out of it. We also have organizations that help support small business in Hawaii and today we've probably got the premier small business organization that supports small business in Hawaii, the Small Business Administration. Jane Sawyer has been a guest in the past. She had her own show for a while. She's constantly out in the public and I want to welcome Jane Sawyer who is the district director for the SBA here in Hawaii. Jane, welcome back to the show. It's good to see you. It's good to be here, Reg. Thank you. It's always great to have you. You have such a great story to tell and I know for some people they already know about the SBA but why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what the SBA does here locally. Okay. The US Small Business Administration is an independent federal agency and we work with small businesses, all kinds of small businesses across the country but my district includes Hawaii and Pacific region so we're in American Samoa, we're in Guam, some of the Pacific affiliated islands as well. Which is one of the biggest geographical districts in the country. Heck of a lot of water but it's one of the biggest and most culturally diverse anywhere in the country and it is a very challenging environment to run a small business and run it successfully but it's also we are a small business area that's what keeps it interesting and keeps our culture alive, it keeps our communities going but SBA helps those businesses get started, grow, create jobs, prosper and we do that by providing capital access, assistance with government contracting and then consulting training and technical assistance and so that small businesses can kind of grow beyond their wildest dreams. You know and you touched on it but we've got a very large percentage of all businesses at Hawaii as defined as small business at last I heard it's what like 97 percent? It's 97 98 percent depending on whose definition you're using. You've got different definitions out there but no matter how you slice and dice it there's an awful lot of small businesses and those small businesses provide most of the employment. Yes yes both the current employment, net new jobs, self-employment so it's a really big influencer on what happens in our state economy and a lot of people even you know have several different jobs or may have work as an employee and then also have a small business on the side kind of dealing with cost of living here and then cost of doing business as well. You know you just hit the nail on the head I mean sometimes you got to do what you got to do in order to make it work here at Hawaii and a lot of small businesses and a lot of employees have to wear multiple hats and have different sources of income to make it work here. Yes you know I think I was just reading in today's paper that we've got one of the highest, the highest mortgage debt to income ratios in the country it's four to one you know and on a mainland the average nationwide is about two to one so for every hundred thousand dollars in income two to one is two hundred thousand in mortgage debt but we're at four hundred thousand you know and it's that's tough when you've got that kind of debt just to have a place to live on top of everything else you've got to have that diversity yes which is also a good reason why we got to keep small business healthy in Hawaii you know and that's definitely so we try to have as much influence as we can on that by offering a wide range of programs because we help small business owners and entrepreneurs the CEOs of these companies every step of the way so from getting started or pre-business when they're just kind of thinking about their idea looking at what I can do how why I want to do this why I'm going to invest my time and my own personal treasure as well as looking for other people to potentially invest what am I going to do and how am I going to sustain that make it better and provide a product and service that people are going to want and you know so basically from soup to nuts I mean you're you're able to help people determine whether or not that having a small business is right for them and if they decide to then you can help them and coach them through that process and then after they're up and running you can actually help them go to the next level right a lot of people you know and starting out one of the things they really need is a little bit of training technical assistance to see that they're really approaching it objectively that you know the business startup idea is truly feasible and we can help people who are looking at purchasing a franchise buying an existing business starting from scratch how do you do a feasibility study how do I put a business plan together I'm thinking I know what it's going to take to do this or I've worked in this industry so much I can do it all but the greatest chef may not run the best restaurant he may not really have a handle on so many things that need to go in there you know handling employees the hiring the firing the pay scale dealing with the bankers and the attorneys and so yes accountants they're definitely the worst no but so it's it's a complex issue and and even if you're artistry and as a chef for your design work or your creativity as say an architect or designer whatever is is going to carry the day you still need to have those business skills behind you and studies have shown that that experience in training technical assistance putting that work into developing the skills is going to help propel that business to greater success absolutely and and knowing that maybe you need these skills for the business to be successful maybe you don't quite have them that that can lead you to go out and find somebody who does and you've got training programs that help people identify what's missing and how to complement and hire people on to do that right um we have several different areas and looked at um you know funding and helping create um partners in the community who can help you we work very closely with the University of Hawaii through the small business development center network we have a network here in Hawaii we have a network in American Samoa and one with the University of Guam in the Pacific so but these organizations they have trained consultants who work free confidential consulting for small businesses um they've worked with companies consistently continuing counseling as the business grows they help them develop financing proposals both for investors for bank loans from anywhere from you know several thousand for working capital they'll help evaluate their financials train them in how to analyze their financials because so many small business owners don't pay attention to the money piece i bet you see that a lot with your customers that or they've ignored one piece of it that has a critical impact they help some businesses one for example one one small business had been a going concern good good employees but even with a lot of solid work weren't understanding why they weren't really seeing that money in the bank they helped evaluate their financials their results and their projections and help them find money they were kind of misplacing inside their organization they ended up being able to buy a building to expand to get the latest equipment so now they're running a state of the art shop that they own and are making money and keeping money in the bank that's a success story that's a real success story with our hawaii small business development center network well and you know these spdc small business development centers are actually their physical locations they're they're they're all around hawaii and then they're also on guam and american samoa and so there's there's physical locations that people can actually make appointments and go in and meet with them right you know they will meet with you at their location for example on a wahoo we have the center is located at the minoa innovation center they've got very talented consultants there who can meet you will come out to your place of business and evaluate we've also got the women's business center which is the patsy mink center uh for business and leadership right downtown and they also go out in the community and work with us and a lot of different training i think they're even starting to launch my business program for newer businesses and pre-business coming up in the next week but that's been a terrific program too both in teaching leadership skills business skills getting started taking your business to the next step so perfect and even though they are a women's business center they will train men you know um they will train partners going into business so that you really both have the same perspective and what you need to know to get your business going and off to the right start and sometimes it can be an eye opening experience i mean a lot of people don't realize how complicated and how many moving parts i mean just think of all the rules and regulations licensing departmental labor taxation um there's all kinds of issues not just product related but just regulatory related and people don't realize how complicated you can get right and very very often you know it's i mean they can come in um bite-sized pieces so to speak you can get your business started and you don't have to have employees at that point but when you do get to the point where you need to hire employees there's a whole another set of rules that you need to take a look at so people should be looking and once you make the commitment to get into business or you're even a serial entrepreneur his path may that path may take you in different directions you need to keep an eye on your industry an eye on business internally an eye on the market all around you so it's great to establish these consulting relationships so you have somebody else who's helping advise you exactly it's always nice to have a second set of eyes it's got some experience i mean you may as you you know the analogy is that you may be the best chef in the world and even cook the best meal but it's good to have somebody that you are comfortable talking to to help you know just educate you on some of the things that you don't know and and that can happen any stage of the business as i said we have a special class has been getting tremendous results it's called our emerging leaders initiative and we're recruiting right now for that for our 2018 cohort this program is for existing businesses and for the ceo really to make sure that they have the right kind of tools for decision-making and fact-based decision-making not just i feel this way today or my friend told me but looking at examining and analyzing assessing their own business operation so they can say okay if i'm if i'm here at point a and i need to get to point c what's that path going to look like and when you know i i need money i need people how are we going to plan to get there what do i need to do it's a great series it is it is and i've been involved with that uh emerging leaders uh group the whole cohorts and and have been able to speak to them a little bit and get involved in in evaluating some of the business plans and it's an impressive group of people and it's competitive yes yes you know not you don't take everybody into the program there's a process that you vet them a little bit and and you got to apply and then get accepted to it you know it's a great program yeah how long is it it's it runs for about 13 weeks the class um meets every other every other week and we bring in experts from the community there is some homework to do but you get out of the the class the course what you put into it we have ceo meetings on the off weeks we try and do industry groups but you are really using your business as a case study and the whole goal the objective of the course is to put together a plan so that you're going to take your business to the next level and we keep track of this will be our seventh or eighth year that we have been doing this in hawaii and we've had some very very impressive results out of the class each year we survey the graduates to see how they're doing and they've been developing are growing their business at kind of like four times the rate of their peers in the private sector and what's really neat jane is it the camaraderie that develops among this group as they go through the program they really become a sounding board as the companies grow and expand and they can talk to each other and they collaborate going forward it's a great program and we're going to have to go on break here in just a second but you are you got a cohort coming up so is there a way for somebody to find out more information about our office there it would be just to call us at five four one two nine nine zero and any of the staff will be able to help you with the information there's a one page application form to fill out and then there'll be some interviews and some discussion what your goals are what you want to accomplish you need to be the ceo or ceo of the company you need to be willing to come to all the classes you need to have at least one employee besides yourself and we look at an income range because we want you to be you know serious about doing this so your annual revenues have to hit at least that 350 to 400 thousand dollar level on up to several million and we'll consider all of that we look at we've had bakers and contractors and architects we've had people engineers come in from the big island every other week for this class so they've really invested we've had um food producers from the neighbor islands coming in so papa lock was part of that i see them on tv they've done very well they're doing very well um terry exalton from sultan ventures and accelerate u h we've had biren grew from the t-chest we've had papa lock we've had ali e construction mike chun was in one of our first core courts diamond head electric so the list it's about we get about 15 to 16 students every year so we have a good group of about 90 really strong ceos who are part of our network now let's take our break and then we come right back and we're gonna get right back into this but this is business in hawaii with reg baker we're here today with jane soyer who is the district director for the sba here in the pacific region so we'll be right back in about 60 seconds this guy looks familiar he calls himself the ultra fan but that doesn't explain all this he planned this party planned the snacks he even planned to coordinate colored shirts but he didn't plan to have a good time now you wouldn't do this in your own house so don't do it in your team's house know your limits and plan ahead so that everyone can have a good time nothing is making welcome back this is reg baker business in hawaii we're here this week talking with jane soyer who is the district director for the small business administration here in hawaii and guam and american samoa so it's a huge area a lot of water is jane explained which means a lot of travel time when she goes around to these different places so it's a tough job but i know you're doing really really well at it thank you one of the um you know and i i know that the sba doesn't make loans there's no big pot of cash over there that the sba passes out but you do get involved in helping with the funding process can you explain that a little bit sure um we've been out of the direct loan business for a while now but we do work with most well all of our local banks many credit unions to provide capital to small businesses and the way that that works we've got a couple of different types of loan programs and you know it used to be a lot of red tape take forever to do but it's not quite like that anymore it can be very fast a lot of it can be done electronically it depends on what you're looking for what type of loan you need but all the banks will participate in our guaranteed loan program so what that means we help the bank mitigate the risk of working with the smaller business whether it's a riskier type of business a newer business a new project for a business maybe um a business owner doesn't meet all the specific underwriting criteria that a bank will have they can appeal to sba for a guarantee on that loan so we can guarantee anywhere from 50 to 90 percent depending on the type of loan we can do lines of credit we do um working capital loans we do um acquisition loans all different kinds of things and anywhere from you know a few thousand dollars all the way to several million you know and the importance of that can't be overstated i mean it's a lot of times businesses particularly when they're just starting out um are not proven right you know they don't have a lot of history and so the banks tend to be a little leery of that because they their primary interest is making sure they get repaid so that they can make more loans down the road to other people and if there's a little bit of a higher risk in there that they're maybe they're comfortable with that's where they come to you and you the sba can take a look at it and give the banks some comfort that they're providing a guarantee that that money will be paid back right and so and most of the banks here um do most of the decision making they make the decision on the loan so we usually encourage a small business owner who's considering this to do some prep work and know before he goes into the bank kind of what he's looking for what he's looking at um we recommend you establish you know um a relationship with a banker at your bank of choice and that you can use one of our resource partners the women's business center mink center um the hawaii spdc check out score some of these other programs or even go to an sba resource day we send one of our lending specialists out to the banks in the community and to meet for a confidential one-on-one 30 minute no obligation kind of meet up to talk about how do i get financing or what do i need to do to get a loan um we'll talk sba we can just tell you what you need to do or how to put together a proposal for the bank just to help you feel more comfortable to go in and make that ask and present your business in a favorable light so you want to help predispose the bank to say yes right and having that relationship with the bank before you really need to ask for the money is one of the key components right you know they kind of joke about you don't go to the bank when you need the money you go to the bank before you need it so you can build that relationship and then ask for it when you've got a plan and it can show what you need it for right and that's that's the other thing about taking some training and technical assistance as you get into business so you understand your financial reports and you understand you know when you look and read you know your statements and even as you make projections of where you're going to need the money before you need the money um or what perhaps those projections are telling you in terms of your potential for growth um so you're making the decision at the right point because you at some point in the life of your small business you will need money that's nice to have that set up before you get to that point now we've talked a lot about the training and some of the different programs we talked about you know as some of the facilitation you can do to help businesses get loans but there's a big piece of what you do that is exciting to me and I really like the awards program that the SBA gets involved in and and you and can you just give us a little history I mean they've been doing this for a long time right right I think that you know along with our our mission of helping small businesses start and grow we also want to increase public awareness of the contributions that small businesses make to our economy I think they too often get a bad rap or a left holding the bag for anything that might be economically uncomfortable you know but small businesses really are big contributors not only to our local economies but the national economies and then also to um just the quality of life anywhere because that's what makes our communities vibrant so one one of the programs I've always just loved at SBA is the annual SBA awards that have become part of National Small Business Week so for over 45 years we've had National Small Business Week and here in Hawaii for probably more than 35 years SBA has been recognizing and honoring the top small businesses from across the state it's a pretty rigorous program for qualification and even more so making you know for an award or an honor in for a small business but we recognize a small business person of the year from each of the islands and from those candidates we select a small business person of the year for the state of Hawaii they have to be nominated for this right it's not as if the SBA just goes out and finds these people I mean there's got to be people in the community that actually will nominate and you ask for these nominations yes we look at several several criteria it's actually a really long involved process it puts me put a lot of resources you participated almost as long as I have so um and been a winner on several occasions for our advocacy awards so we recognize small business owners we recognize a young entrepreneur we recognize small business exporters because they bring so much and bring more revenue more funding into our economy um we recognize family owned businesses but the nominations are generated out in the community by business organizations many many bankers because we do for the small business awards we ask you know we're looking for staying power we're looking for innovativeness of the product or services we're looking at increases in sales and annual revenues how they use that money and where they're investing reinvesting that money so we're looking for growth in that area um we're looking at um you know growth and employees and job job creation sometimes you know we find out some of the wonderful things that people are doing to train their employees to make their employees more valuable to kind of build that ohana feeling and we've just had tremendous stories we've even and with our program some of our key awards compete at a regional level and national level and I'm really proud to say that we've had a lot of you know people are always surprised that you know from this little sand and surf island out here that we have some terrific small business winners we've had three three national small business persons in the year I mean that means number one in the entire in the country yeah last year we had um Garrett Marrero and his lovely wife Melanie the the owners of Maui Brewing who swept the national title and uh we've also had um Tan Lam now with uh he had uh ballet sandwich and bakery and now he owns La Tour he's grown that from a little business uh he was once the young entrepreneur of the year when he started with a little bakery and a sandwich shop in Chinatown and now he has the beautiful bakery and all those wonderful breads and and pastries that you'll find at Whole Foods and and everywhere across the state uh you know and we've been very fortunate to take a number one spot a number of different types but we've also had a lot of people go in and end up in the lat in the top three or four too yes you know for a a state our size we've got very good reputation representation at the national level I think it just shows the caliber of the local entrepreneurs and the local businesses um because they do they continually overcoming adversity you know the changes in the fluctuations in our economy looking at some of you know the cost of doing business here just makes them so resilient and uh it's been just a really a great place to hear wonderful stories we'll be starting to come out with uh this year's award winners very soon we we take them from the nomination process then we have a team of about 12 judges who go in there and objectively score the nominations and we have to pass them through clearances so no it's not an easy process it's very challenging because you're reading about people who've done some amazing things against uh all odds and and trying to figure out which one is better than another but they're all good it's tough yeah this this year's small business person of the year for the state of hawaii has overcome much of adversity himself um in starting businesses and not necessarily at the best time having some of them you know fail picking himself up and starting again he's a veteran but he's also um picked up uh underutilized land and turn it into a very very productive business it's go veterans you know so i think people will be really enthused to hear his story now we've got about less than a minute left okay so um but we've got some luncheons it's going to be recognizing these winners and they're on different islands and so could you just quickly tell us we have we work with the chambers of commerce and other organizations um across the state we'll be starting out with our winners on uh the count on kawaii on april 19th we moved to maui on april 26th and they'll be doing that's just before national small business week which comes up the 29th of april to may 4th our statewide our annual statewide lunch and we'll bring in all the winners together we'll be here in hawaii we put that on with hawaii business magazine our media sponsor may 4th at the hawaii prince so mark your calendars save the date so the last couple weeks of april and the first week of may there's going to be a lot of activity and then we'll go back to the big island um on later in may to wrap up with the winners over there so we've got some great stories to tell so hopefully watch for hawaii business and watch for our our website we'll be coming out we're starting to tweet some of these stories and information links about our winners very soon all right jane it was i wish we had more time it's always a pleasure to have you on the show we we need to make this a more regular event i'd like to do that so but you've got a you've got a trip coming up you're heading to washington yeah this afternoon yes so i'm going to let you go so you can catch your plane and you won't be late and we'll catch you when you get back great this is business in hawaii with reg baker we broadcast live every thursday from two to two thirty uh from the think tech studios in downtown hololulu thank you to the think tech staff for doing a great job as always and until next week aloha