It seems like ever since I returned to Kauai, I’ve watched business after business close up shop. Many of the local businesses still operating are still struggling more than ever. These businesses are family owned and operated and have been gone through multiple generations. When asked why sales are so poor, they always cite outside sources; Costco, Wal-mart, K-mart, Safeway, the economy, etc. How can they compete with these big box stores with huge national [...]

Being that today is Mother’s day, I came up with an idea for a way for a flower shop business to increase their yearly revenues. Offer a subscription service targeted at men that reserve flowers for them for all important dates. Standard package would include, Valentines Day, Mothers Day, for additional fees birthdays, anniversaries, etc. The payment is a yearly subscription and will guarantee that there will be a flower arrangement available for each subscriber [...]

Them: So what do you do again? Me: My partners and I run a website where we teach people how to play the ukulele online. We have around 7500 registered members now and get like 20k uniques a month. Not great but it’s a pretty good start considering we started with $300 and spent no money on advertising. Them: Oh wow, so all those people pay to use your site? Me: No, we give away [...]

I get a kick out of hearing local businesses complaining about negative reviews on blogs or sites like yelp.com. The game has changed my friends. The internet is like a megaphone for word of mouth marketing. It’s word of mouth marketing on steroids, or on HGH, or both. Good or bad, your customers now have a voice and the power to let others know if you suck or if their experience with your company was [...]

I’m currently reading ‘Predictably Irrational‘ by Dan Ariely and am finding it fascinating. The book makes the case that while we like to believe that we are very rational creatures that make decisions based on past experiences and learned behaviors, many of our daily decisions are influenced by shared irrational though patterns. More so, we are so much more irrational than we think, that we are predictably irrational, meaning if we know what to look [...]

Though I haven’t had one yet, I can imagine growing a business is very similar to raising a child. Not so much in the physical pain experienced by the mother at birth, but in the sense of the commitment and dedication required to grow and nurture both. There an initial excitement when they’re brand new. You find yourself staring at it saying to yourself, “wow, I made that!” You devote countless, often thankless hours in [...]

I’ve met with many entrepreneurs and one of the first questions I almost always ask them is, ‘What is the goal of your company? What are you trying to accomplish with your business?” It shocks me when people respond with, “The goals is to make money.” Let’s get one thing straight, if the sole goal of your company is to make money for yourself, you will fail. In business, no matter what business you are [...]

I decided it was a good time to start up the blog again. This is not my first attempt at blogging, I had an older one which was very unfocused and was filled with a bunch of garbage posts that nobody (including myself) cared about. This new blog has but one purpose; to help me become a better entrepreneur and business owner. I’ll be sharing my experiences, the good and the bad, as I work [...]