I am back from an early summer vacation trip to Japan visiting my son on the tail end of his junior year in Japan. It is always good to get away and get some perspective.
The economy is on everyone's mind. While we are going in to some stormy waters, it is time to think "surf" and remember that entrepreneurs are the experts at dealing with rough water. Entrepreneurs deal with it every day, it's who they are. Translating from ocean to business, now is the time to get creative.
Guerilla Web Marketing - One huge strategy is to get guerilla with your web strategy to reach existing customers as well as get new ones to generate sales. There are a lot of things that you can do that do not cost any money or very little. We have talented people on Maui who can help with this including Bob and Josh Sommers who are doing another one of their workshops on August 6th. But you do not have to wait. There are lots of helpful short videos at
http://recognizedexpert.com.Think Local, Act Global - With the lower U.S. dollar, American goods and services are a bargain to many overseas. Web technology and services, plus the U.S. Government have evolved to make selling overseas much easier than it was even five years ago. To learn more there is a
Import/Export workshop TOMORROW, 8 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 23rd at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center organized by Hawaii's Foreign Trade Zone #9. To register and learn more go to
http://ftz9.org. You can also listen to a podcast interview with Greg Barber at
CoolProjectsMaui.comMoney for Innovation - If you can come up with a realistic, economical plan and assemble a credible team including advisers and strategic partners, you can get investment capital in Hawaii thanks to the hard work of our venture capital community and Hawaii's Act 221 Investment Tax Credits. A Hawaii Tax Department Study in October '07 found that 287 Hawaii companies between '02-'06 received investment of $821.6 million in equity investment. These companies in turn spent over $1 billion in Hawaii including $500 million in payroll, costing only $195.6 million in credits as of the end of '05. You can learn more about this by listening to an interview with Bill Spencer of the Hawaii Venture Capital Association at
http://CoolProjectsMaui.com. There is also a one page overview of Hawaii's Innovation Tax Incentives at
http://MauiEnterpriseForum.net/act221.htm with links for more information including the Hawaii Venture Capital Association's website
http://hvca.org which has lots of useful information and videos of their monthly lunch speakers.
Maui Tech Ohana Lunch August 6th - If you have never been to a TechOhana lunch, here is an opportunity to meet some entrepreneurs working on the technology aspect of innovation. The featured company is Cross Fiber a spin off of Trex Hawaii. For more information and to register go to
http://techohana.com.
These are just a few of the many things happening that make me very optimistic about the future. Please feel free to contact me to discuss any of these topics and let me know how your summer is coming along.
David Fisher
Maui Center Direct
Hawaii SBDC Network
