Help Me With Sign Hawaii Banking Business Plan Template

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[Music] Aloha welcome to adventures and small business my name is Victoria and this is a collaboration between Small Business Administration and its partners where we talk about small businesses in Hawaii today we have a guest from the V Bock of the Pacific Dennis Kwok hey hi Dennis hey nice to be here thank you for being here so I'm looking forward to talk more about how to start a business in Hawaii but Before we jump into that can you tell us a little bit more about yourself oh yeah sure I'm the director of the veterans business Outreach Center this program is an SBA program we've been here for about three years now a prior part to me taking the job as a director was actually a business advisor with the Small Business Development Center here in Hawaii for about seven years yeah and you know I've been in economic development for about 10 years and I just really love in I enjoy working with small businesses and entrepreneurs and helping them start and grow their businesses nice - sure so can you tell us more about V Bock of the Pacific what what does it do oh well yeah we're a program like I said we get a grant from the Small Business Administration we're in our house under the University of Hawaii at Hilo and although you know that's our sponsor I mean that's our host my office is actually a Manoa Innovation Center above the University of Hawaii Manoa and we work primarily with military installations providing workshops and trainings called the boosting business program where we showcase we do two-day workshops and military installations across the islands we also cover Guam in American Samoa when we're not doing workshops you do one-on-one business consultations for veterans and military families so you have a lot of experience and spa thing so you're the best person to talk about how to start a business in Hawaii I guess I don't know so how do I start a business in Hawaii oh wow that's a kind of a that's a simple question but I kind of a long answer but first you have to determine what kind of how you want to start that business most people think starting a business is about creating a business there's other avenues that you can take one of them is obviously purchasing a business and the other which is kind of popular in Hawaii is taking over a business from your family member or from an employer creating a business a new business is everyone's idea of starting a business so if you choose an avenue you have to do two diligence and make sure that your you know idea or your business model makes sense that's how you start a business so that's how you get it down on paper you got to first determine the Avenue you want to take uh-huh what about franchising franchising is definitely one of them and I forgot to mention that yeah it's definitely another one it's you know franchising has a lot of benefits and one of the benefits is that there's already a built in process and people like that they can actually work on the craft of the business and the process is already in place there's huge market potential because you have like a corporate backer for marketing and you know it's a proven business model and one of the risk going back to creating a new business is that when you create a new business basically the biggest risk is that it's not a proven business model so with you know risk there comes a reward but on the flip side the risk is quite big mm-hmm the downsides of franchising is that you have to pay royalties you have to pay franchise fee right for sure we have to have some money you start of course yeah I mean there's a lot of yeah downsides of starting a franchise too but if you have a good franchise or you have a good franchise model it definitely helps you start the business especially if you're new to creating in any business but you're right franchise fees can be any big and as well as the world disa so depending on you know what your profit margins are giving royalties even though they seem little whether it's two or three percent that really dips into your profit margins at the end of the year yeah there are a lot of different ways to start a business and one is not better than the other it really depends on your goals of course of course and you know buying a business in which you know we talk about I'm gonna go it's a it's a good way to actually start a business as well if you feel like you can buy a business and improve on the existing business model that's a great way to actually you don't grow that business add up just your where when you buy a business you have to do due diligence you have to make sure that the business isn't good standing as ultimately you're gonna inherit the good and the bad of that business the bad being you know whether they have you know late payments they're not in you know it's standing with the state or you know you know they have problems with their vendors but good being that you know they already have an existing client base and hopefully you can build on that I would always say that when you're buying a business you know you look at their tax returns or three years and the best way to get that is having the owners issue what's called a 45 or 64 which is an IRS form that kind of is the profit and loss statements of that business to the potential buyer I'm very important have good advisors yeah oh yeah I think so yeah and it's a you know a lot of people when they start a new business they kind of want to remain kind of you know under the radar they don't want other people to steal their idea but I always think that's kind of a paranoia and I don't think that's a good way to actually you know go into researching about a business you know because having feedback is a you know really good validation for your idea I always say if your business is great sooner or later somebody will copy you so you just have to accept that if your business idea is not great you're safe yeah that's true no need to worry nothing to worry I mean there's always gonna be people trying to emulate you but you should take that in you know good stride and try to improve on what we already built oh great so the most popular one is actually the new biz creation right yeah so let's say I have an idea how do I know I got it right how do I know my business idea has potential the first thing you need to do like we were talking about is you need to do some vetting to make sure that that idea resonates with your potential customers there's really nothing better than getting validation from your potential customers and making sure I mean them saying a yeah it's a great product it's a great idea and when I say potential customers I'm not talking about your aunt and your uncle's people that might really purchase your product or service I also think that your idea has to relate to some kind of friction or a bottleneck and when I say that I mean like your idea has to have some kind of value proposition where it helps it helps you know basically or improve somebody's like yeah there's got to be something that it makes a situation better for it's either you solving a problem or you're providing a solution to someone's need of course yeah and if you look at all the great businesses that's been built in the past ten years it's always about addressing issues where there's bottleneck or where there is friction you know and you talk about you know how the companies or like industry changing companies like uber you know they saw a kind of a friction or bottleneck and transportation logistics and they kind of change that around in technology you know but I always think that if you have some kind of value proposition where it matters to your potential customer I think that is a great business idea mm-hmm there are so many businesses out there already how to be unique and if that is a good high yeah it's definitely hard and being unique is you can come in all different kinds of you know factors I mean it could be unique in products and service and it could be also unique in location it could be unique in you know price points do I mean you might have the exact same product as somebody else but you know you're at a better price point you know you're gonna have that edge and that's gonna be your niche so I mean I don't think one is greater than the other but you definitely have to be different if you just are among the crowd you standout and in this competitive environment you definitely need to stand out so you mentioned market research and that you have to talk to your customers to validate your idea do you have any idea how how can I do market research my business idea yeah I mean when you talk about market research you know we're talking about understanding your customer base I always found the census has a lot of great data especially when your class honing in on you know what the population size I is the demographics and Geographics our new your potential customers and we're talking about industry data I always like ibisworld I don't know what Ibis stands for it I know it's an acronym or something is IB is but they put out very comprehensive industry reports where you can really do some research on the industry and whether that industry has legs whether it's an upward tick or in a downward tick and I would always advise clients that it's hard to be a superstar in a downward spiraling industry you know I mean certain industries just have you know a downward path and no matter how good of a businessperson you are if you're fighting against that kind of momentum of a downward industry it's very hard to kind of come back and thrive in that industry it's like retail business well yeah like you know I mean we hear every day that retail is dying and you know a lot of times point fingers at Amazon I mean that's retail too but yeah traditional brick-and-mortar retail it's you know it's seen better days and I think that you know retail will it'll always be there I don't think it'll thrive like it did you know 20 30 years ago it'll definitely it will definitely change that's why that's why she had too much Teresa at Jefferson yeah and we should mention that to get IBISWorld report you can actually contact Reebok yeah because we have X Y a so if you're a veteran or a you know military spouse and you're thinking about starting a business and let's say you want to do like TRUCKING or let's say food and beverage it's a great way to actually just reach out to us and say hey you know I want to know more about this industry does it have legs we can provide you a pretty comprehensive report yeah for free yeah yeah that's industry research and then market research is talking to customers doing surveys do you suggest specific ways talking to customers yeah I mean surveys seems to work and you know we were talking about that you know getting in touch with your potential customers it's a great way to actually just get some honest feedback and we call that like primary market research is when you actually are on the floor talking to potential customers whether that be you know on the street or you know getting a survey done what about focus group focus group is another great example sure yeah there's definitely a lot of ways you can do you know online marketing or online surveys but I always thought like that you know personal is to face with a potential customer and has the has the most potential and the most honest feedback but what we see actually in real life a lot of small business owners skipped us even though we think it's very important yeah and do you know why do you think that I don't know I think it's just a people are a little bit hesitant to share their ideas um and it's really about like oh I don't want my idea to be stolen you know I want my idea to be protected once you start selling and once you start manufacturing or you know you you know Mikey start marking your business and if it's a great business people are like we said they're gonna try to emulate you and that's you know you can take that you know as a pride point you know rather than you know trying to push that back because any great idea is it gonna be copied in some fashion yeah I agree yeah yeah so we talked about validating your idea market research what about economics of a business what are the key things to consider in terms of economics well you know I think everybody goes into business for some kind of financial game you know if you're not doing that then you probably shouldn't go into business but you should be aware of like economic model that makes sense for your business there's some key levers that you should really pay attention to and we teach this in boosting business but one of the key levers is revenue streams you know or no sources of revenue that is probably the biggest just because you might have one product or one you know service but you ultimately have to build on that it's very hard to kind of thrive in this business if you just have one product one service we were currently working with the food and beverage a restaurant recently and you know the primary source was actually you know selling food but you know they found a market where you know a lot of customers were coming in and these customers their market base water you know tourists from overseas and they wanted some kind of like a gift that they could take away with them so they started selling little trinkets keychains t-shirts and you know this is a great example of how they added a revenue source and now that accounts for lead like 12 or 13 percent of their total annual sales which is you know something that they didn't just they didn't really recognize an opportunity but you know having these kind of little revenue streams can really bolster company's financials second lever I believe is obviously you can take one without the other but it's really margins and margins and volume but yeah I mean you got to have some kind of margins from each sale if you're making just a $1 out of you know ten thousand you know 1,000 units you know it's not as much as obviously you know making a little bit more so you gotta be kind of cognizant about you know your margins and your volumes like give him time frame that's all I make yeah thank you so we gotta take a short break and we will be back in one minute hey hello everyone and welcome to the thing takeaway studio my name is Andrew laning I'm the host matters Hawaii we air here every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Hawaii time trying to bring you issues about security that you may not know issues they can protect your family take yourself take our community protect our companies the folks we work with please join us and hope you can maybe get a little different perspective on how to live a little safer Aloha Aloha I'm Mellie James host of let's mana up Tuesdays every other Tuesday from 11 to 11:30 this show is meant to dive into stories of local product entrepreneurs and how they're growing their companies from right here in Hawaii I'm so thrilled to have our show kicked off and so please join us on Tuesdays at 11 o'clock as we've talked to local entrepreneurs and hear their stories [Music] Aloha welcome back to adventures in small business my name is Victoria and today I'm talking to Dennis Kwok from the V back of the Pacific and we're talking about how to start a business in Hawaii yes welcome back thanks oh we talked about market research and we talked about business model and economics what about legal entities I feel like it's a big question for a lot of small business owners yeah of course yeah it's one of those big questions that we always get asked you know what kind of legal entity should I have well you know then knowing that they have to have a legal entity is a good starting point there's a lot to choose from their sole proprietorships there's different kinds of partnerships general partnerships limited partnerships limited liability partnerships but it seems like the most popular one for small businesses is what's called a limited liability company a limited liability companies is recognized by the state but the IRS doesn't recognize it so they'll have to kind of choose a different entity for filing with the IRS but every state has a limited liability company option one of the great things about limited liability companies is that it gets funneled into your it's a straight run throu h so basically it gets funneled into your personal access when you file but it's actually considered two separate entities and that's eight oh it's kind of a you know separating those entities your personal and your business and which kind of provides a lot of protection for that individual that is the owner of that limited liability but LLC's or limited liability company seems to be the most popular I just want to say that you know because we're not attorneys we don't really give legal advice but from what I've seen limited liability companies yeah yeah what about corporations yeah of course corporations is a big one you know see corpse but you know we don't because we really deal with small businesses and small businesses you know it's a it's a big it's a big portion of Hawaii's bump is unwise businesses but it also is you could be a small business and have you know 100 employees or 90 employees and there's a lot of small businesses that are C corporations but I'm talking really more about starting out when you're starting out I think it an LLC is probably the better way to go and then C corporations you know one of the you know one of the good things is you are offered more protection that's a c-corporation and you can it's much easier to raise money or raise equity and a C Corp but the flip side of that of raising money is that you know you're gonna have what's called double taxation are you gonna get taxed on the corporate level and you're gonna get taxed on the individual level so a lot of people are kind of swayed away from that because of the double taxation and it's much easier to go from an LLC to C corporation rather than going from C so just start with a little seen and as you grow maybe switch to yeah I would always say yeah LLC is the best way to start just because you want to make sure that you know you're giving the freedom to kind of move about your monies and if after the year or two you feel like your company has legs it's got financial legs and it's doing well and you can kind of migrate toward filing as an S corporation an LLC with a step and an S corp and S corporation is basically putting yourself off as an employee that's that business and that kind of you know mitigate some of the kind of tax obligations that you might have or you know your business here once again this is not illegal it's just that experience yeah what and what were you seen exactly have all the clients that and would you say I need to hire a lawyer to register a business or no you know you could hire an attorney and I always think it's to speak to an attorney I don't think it's necessary I can if you can Hawaii Hawaii gov it's a kind of a fairly easy process to register a business so I would say that you know you can try a gander it trying to do it yourself if you kind of run into troubles you don't understand what kind of questions they're asking maybe seek assistance from a resource partner or an attorney and they can provide you some good advice that's what I really like about Hawaii I think is pretty cheap to start a business especially LLC and pretty easy it's all online there's just Department of Commerce and then IRS and if anyone needs help we have SBA SBDC V Bock Women's Business Center so a lot of resources to support a small business owner so I totally agree with you yeah it's an it's good to have a lawyer but not a necessity in terms of registering a business yeah and some other legal issues like contract and maybe patents or trademarks oh yeah that might need some assistance from illegal yeah I mean if contracts definitely you want to make sure yourself you're protected as well as your business and as well or like intellectual property like patent senator the things like trademarks you should definitely seek advisement from an attorney or from an IP attorney that could be expensive but again we have business law core oh yeah yeah we do yeah so you know we partner up not we but economic these Women's Business Center and the Small Business Development Center and as well as us we runner up with business law war and business law quarter has been an invaluable resource where they kind of offer legal advice for free and it happens like every week right yes every other week duck in here great so we talked about legal entities now another important topic is how do i finance my so most small business owners you don't have enough money you find us this startup so where do I go what do I do well I think it really depends on the type of business that you want to start and the owner the type of person you are in terms of you know kind of a financial backing you you know each different um each is it's hard to kind of say this is the best path to go forward but we've seen people most successful ones are that utilize a lot of different sources of financing options the first and primary is owner savings that seems to be biggest and it really should be you know the biggest just because it's hard to start a business and leverage and a new business and try to get financing for that but where's financing is it I guess people do use credit cards and I have kind of a love-hate with credit cards it's good when you start out but if you can if you know you can pay that back before the increase your APR then definitely use credit cards and of course small business loans is definitely an option banks are weary about giving small business loans to startups but it definitely does happen and people can utilize you know lending institutions and of course SBA loan program a lot of options but the best would be just to save money yeah I would use something right here and the reason I say that is because you know paying back a loan when you're starting out can be cumbersome for a small business so it's good to have combination of everything you know the only personal savings some loan may be not the bulk of it but some loans I can come in from a term loan or line of credit and maybe some equity injection from you know some friends and families and using some credit card - you know finance your business but kind of a mix of financing is probably the most risk-averse mm-hmm so here again depends on your goals I guess if you're okay with losing some of it well you can go with investors route because sometimes they want part of your company a lot of times they want a part of your company yeah business loan you really have full control of your business but you have to start paying back the loan right away yeah so there are pros and cons and depends on yeah that's on the business owners goals and also depends on you know you know what kind of industry you're in you know certain industries are more susceptible to raising equity or raising your investors monies especially if you're in like biotech or technology but some industries like food and beverage you usually you know owners you know put in a lot of money of their money and they get some financing for the banks mm-hmm what about crowdfunding crowdfunding is a an idea but you're not gonna get the bulk of the money from con funding and it'syou know if crowdfunding is really about exposure as well as raising a little bit of money but I think the acid of marketing and exposure has a greater impact than actually raising money but there are some ridiculous campaigns that went out on how funding sites as done tremendously well and I think those are kind of one offs I'm done like a standard-bearer yeah there are a lot of maybe I don't for sure yeah sure okay so crowdfunding yeah we can consider but probably very small businesses not gonna bring the book yeah and it like you know crowdfunding casts a wider net you know you can eat out on the web so you know you have a wider net you know they're investing maybe if the $75 at a time but it's not really substantial to I guess you know getting loan and you're kind of on the behest of these people that you don't know and you don't know you know you don't know where that money's coming from too so you know a lot of people are kind of have a love/hate relationship with yeah but that could be also a good market research opportunity to see how people are reacting to your idea definitely I definitely agree with that like we are talking about it's a marketing effort and to see kind of you know elation points for your business idea hey um so business planning and business plan how do I start writing a business plan what are the must-have sections for a lot of people this is kind of a difficult topic and intimidating do you have any advice if there's a business plan I'm learning on well I think a lot of the things that go through your mind when you're starting a business has to be put down because you know you mine works in a million miles an hour so the best way to do it is actually putting it down on paper and the business plan is kind of that form there is no real right format there's a lot of great software out there like life coming in but you know it's the must-haves of the business plan is an executive summary you know you gotta have financials you got have marketing you got of all those things basically kind of and I know you'd give me the signal that I got to stop but there's that definitely a lot of things that but you know you should you should check out people can check out the economic development organization like the SBDC and VBox and the Women's Business Center or the Maine Center for business and leadership to kind of their business plan together and it will definitely help and what I personally really like is business model canvas yeah I think that's a good first step because it's all in one page so start with that and then move on to business plan there are templates on SBA website and then again we can help you yeah through the process so thank you so much I know you have an announcement yeah I do well I want to say that you know National Veterans Mall Business Week is coming up on November 4th the 8th it's kind of a great week where we celebrate their an entrepreneurship and small business owners and I would love for everybody to get involved and we're gonna do our third annual small business veteran Small Business Awards here in Hawaii and it's going to be on November 8th location is yet to be determined but when we decide that please check us out on our website and you know hit us up and I hope everybody could nominate some veteran owners as well as a new veteran businesses and veteran advocates for the awards looking forward this should be a fun event it definitely is I'm Yours we have a lot of fun yeah so thank you so much Dennis for sharing your wisdom thank you and thank you for watching please follow us on social media look for V bak of the Pacific on Facebook and Twitter and follow our YouTube channel Hawaii small business I'll see you next Thursday eleven o'clock and adventures in small business stay tuned and thank you for watching Aloha [Music] [Music]