Picnic at Eve Anderson’s Magnum PI house
Rant about PBN letter to the editor
Money as captial and sweat as capital
The lame things about physical inventory
80 days and football 2 a days
greatergoodradio.com updates
registration and benefits
free aftershows
calendar, KKEA AM schedule and upcoming shows
aftershow page
wimpy updates and customization
June Jones update
Transcript:
Evan Leong: Today is August 7, 2005, it is Sunday and this is Evan’s Journal coming out of Greater Good Radio, Hawaii. It is 11:19 tonight and this would be the last thing I do before I go to bed.
And I have a lot of things actually to go through tonight and today was a really good day, we ended up going to a picnic at Eve Anderson’s place and that’s an area in Waimanalo, Hawaii where Magnum PI was filmed. So if you look at the Magnum PI and he does that little donut in his Ferrari on the lawn and then he goes into the house in that area, that’s Eve Anderson’s estate. So it’s a really I mean it’s really a cool estate, you go in to the gates and it’s really odd kind of architecture. In fact it doesn’t even look like it’s been updated in the outside part of the house but we never go in the inside part so it doesn’t really matter. There’s tennis court in there and then there is a whole huge area to do your barbeque with electricity and everything and then there is another large area where there is a place to play I mean you can play baseball or whatever and then also there is another area for a volley ball court and then when you go through the back part of the house, there is almost like a public restroom where there is stalls as well as place to shower off. It’s right on the beach so the really cool part about it, is that when you go through the gate and you end up in the beach, it’s almost like it’s own private cove where they have the rocks I don’t know if it’s a rock like a manmade kind of reef like structure or barrier so that it blocks I guess the waves coming through and then it’s really cool for the kids to be able to play over there. It’s nice sandy area. So we stayed there from about I don’t know 11:30 to about 3 o’clock and it was super nice. So it was just a really cool day. I was so tired after playing out there with a buddy and the other kids that man I took a two-hour nap and I was just wiped out but here I am back at work again because here is a lot of stuff to do.
(00:02:19)
Anyways, I have this PBN, Pacific Business News in front of me I was able to go through last week’s one through here and I must start off the day this one with a little rant because it’s unbelievable to me. If you flip to the back part of PBN in page 34, there is a little area on the bottom, that’s called ‘letters to the editor’ and there is a letter here saying, ‘get Maui visitors to spend more but promise not to stay forever’. So, I mean it’s just ridiculous it says Maui County Planning Director Mike Foley was correct, PBN June 24, when he said, Maui’s infrastructure must be improved before we ask for more visitors. My business in the Lahaina relies primarily on visitors.
Okay now listen to this part this person is a business owner, ‘an increasing number of them say they won’t return to Maui, the most frequent complaints are traffic jams, expensive parking, crowded beaches and lack of restrooms. They sometimes add that San Costco, Kmart, Wal-Mart and Home Depot near the Airport makes Maui look too much like home. Maui should require visitors to spend more money on their vacation and promise not to move here’.
Okay now what the hell is this guy talking about? You are going to require visitors to spend more money on vacation and promise not to move here. Okay, why don’t you just also require them that when they come on their trip to shop at your place of business and then all other businesses that are alike you that are kind of similar, they should close down, they should have to be closed down so that you could do more business. I mean that’s ridiculous, do you think that people when they come here and they fall in love with this place, they don’t want to move here. Well, it doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever so I thought that I would share that with you folks today.
(00:04:07)
Next thing on the agenda, money as capital and sweat as capital and the point of this whole thing is that you can either take money and put it in as capital and build up your staff, ramp up your operations, hire people and so on or you sweat equity as capital and you actually go out and do it yourself. The interesting thing I guess about this kind of process is that podcasting is supposed to be inexpensive and the way that we have chosen to do it, I guess it’s expensive compared to what podcasters would do but inexpensive compared to what broadcasting would do. I think we spend — I think up to date just for even this equipment something like two or three thousand and then there is air time that we purchase it’s thousands more for that and web work that’s being done continuously daily that’s thousands for that. So all in all there has been a decent amount of capital expenditure but then the sweat equity in terms of this has been pretty enormous and it’s just something I think that people need to realize and deal with that in the beginning stages of your business, you are not only going to put in money but you are going to bust your ass working and I swear I have not worked this hard in a long time. But hopefully it’s worth it and hopefully people are getting value out of this and we are going to see real soon.
(0:05:45)
The thing that came up today is physical inventory because other businesses that we run have physical inventory involved and that physical inventory comes from a foreign country. So what that means is, if you cannot get payment terms for your inventory you got to pay upfront which means you pay upfront, you waited for them to produce it then they ship it takes few weeks to get here then you got to clear it and if it’s food items coming into United States now you need to pass through about the FDA’s Bio terrorism act and that takes forever sometimes if you know for some reason they want to inspect you or whatever they want to do. So that takes longer too and then you got to get your products into the warehouse sorted and everything and then they are ready to sell. So once you are ready to sell your product you know let’s say you have a certain amount of inventory in there because it took you six or eight weeks to get it in, you sell your inventory and then if you offer a net thirty which is you know payment terms to your customers, you could be talking about six months to get your money back. So you actually have to cover six months worth of inventory just to run your business and if your business is doing a descent amount of business you know that’s quite a bit. What that means is that if you grow and this is the kind of where this all thing came from is in the PBN and I talked about the fastest growing fifty companies and then once you continue to grow a lot of times you have a tax I mean not the tax but a capital crunch where you need money to grow because in order to sell more, if you are dealing with physical inventory you need more physical inventory if the business cycle is six months you are talking about quite a bit of money. So, I am looking at some of these companies in here that I think the first company had something like 600% growth. How do you sustain something like 600% growth? I mean I can’t imagine that — I can’t imagine having to have six times the amount of inventory currently, I mean in one year, that’s massive. I know that when we first started our other business then we had massive growth in one month and that was just an incredible crunch we had to go out and get loans and then we got the business plan going and got some more loans, but I can’t imagine how you can sustain that kind of growth. It’s just mind-boggling but for those of the people who are and doing it successfully, I think that’s cool deal. So, that’s why I was switching out to intellectual property and copy write type of materials or digital content because if our sales go up by six times or ten times you know we have server issues and may be some administrative issues but I won’t to have to have six times to ten times to monitor inventory. So that’s something to think about as you know you are designing your business or if you have a current business, how you can work that through?
(00:08:53)
We are currently 80 days now into our plan. So, 80 days ago sitting at the same computer trying to workout a business plan of some sort for entrepreneurship class for my executive MBA to finish up the terms I could graduate it was second till the last project that I had and turns out that I started writing it on the day that it was due, it’s kind of funny because my friends in class were calling me and asking me where I was and it ended up being that at the end of the class I didn’t make it and he gave the cell phone to the teacher and I had to talk to the teacher about what should I do turn this thing in how fast or should I finish it up and make it better and then turn it in late you know what’s going to be the harsh penalty. So, we went through it in this negotiation, everything is negotiation and ended up turning it in a day or two late. The only problem is that we needed to have financials put together and I was having a tough time with the cash flow statement because I will be honest with you, I am not really upto speed on how the cash flow statement works and how to put that together myself without the accountant. So I had to turn that in and actually ended up in paper went in without the cash flow statement just some basic start up cost for me and breakeven analysis in this, in the budget but I didn’t have that part. So I believed the grade was little bit hurt and due to that but I think the true test is going to be what are we going to accomplish after this thing is done because we are 80 days into it meaning two and a half months. Two and a half months now we are getting ready to launch which means we will be about what is that if we did in May, June July, August, just a tad bit over three months, may be three and a half months from writing that plan to having a fully functional website up in running to having air time on AM radio station and then also having backlog of an inventory of interviews so that we can make sure that we have a cushion in order to broadcast all this kind of stuff. And man it’s been a sprint. This thing has been an absolute sprint, that’s why I put down 80 days in football in two a days because I swear this feels like football two a days. Everyday I don’t know if you had, if you played football ever or if you are a girl and your boyfriend or husband ever played football, I tell you what I played starting left bench on the football team but none the less I had to go through the same pain of the two a days and two a days is where you practice twice a day for a whole a week. So, you have to go into intense practices and then you get a rest. I mean you basically eat and take a nap or if you are hanging out with your friends then you’re ready to die and your legs feel like they are going to fall off and your arms sure like they are going to fall off and it’s just brutal and that’s kind of what I feel like because it seems like every time we are getting or making progress and we are getting there then I got to re-tweak it and change it but that’s the addicting part of doing all these types of startup businesses when everything is moving super fast and you can move and change on a dime, it’s addicting. So, once you get through that two a days though you are in condition and you are ready for the season and hopefully for us that is coming soon.
(00:12:22)
I put down here for greatergoodradio.com updates on registration and benefits, I just sent a email to the web programmer and I swear the thing was about if I had to type it out on in word, it would be like two and a half pages. It was a ton of stuff to change I mean everything from moving boxes around, info-boxes and things like that, to deleting things and where it’s going to meet up and yeah it’s a trip man, it’s a trip.
(00:12:54)
You know we definitely want to have registration area and the registration is going to be optional but it will offer people to have more seamless downloads and make it easier for them.
(00:13:05)
There is other benefits they’ll offer probably give them some free after shows to get started.
(00:13:11)
And we are going to add in the calendar, so it talks about what interviews are up in coming, what interviews are already done and they are going to be released on certain dates and in area where people can post up questions for the future interviews so that we can ask those to the interviewees as we are doing it.
(00:13:29)
Now we are going to have a special dedicated after show page. For the after shows and get more descriptions on that.
(00:13:36)
And then also we are customizing that wimpy player, so wimpy is that, data flash based player that you see on the top right of the greatergoodradio.com site and we are customizing that so that it shows only the most recent files and then in different categories it will show the most recent files for that category. And believe it or not that does take a lot quite a bit of programming in order to do so I mean it is a ton of stuff and hopefully it all pays off. I mean proofs in the putting so we are going to see real soon.
(00:14:13)
June Jones update, interesting thing about this June Jones interview that we thought about. I haven’t actually tried to contact him yet because I am trying to figure out what’s the best way to do it and since they are going right into their first game against the number one ranked team in the nation USC, I mean they are working around the clock. So cool thing is Michael Bennett had an idea to talk to Bobby who has the show in the morning, ‘Talk radio show’ and find out what’s the best way to go ahead and get in touch with June Jones. And I think that’s really good because Michael’s being real proactive in order to get us these you know just make be helpful and tomorrow is going to be the day where we go in and hear the first finished show that Michael is doing and hopefully we will have that for you guys soon and will be able to share it with everyone. So, well actually what will happen is if on Monday if everything is good, everything sounds good and everyone agrees that that’s the way it goes, we will post that stuff up probably by the end of the week because we need to figure out how to write the descriptions and the template area for the interviewees, basically all are going to be in the same lay outs just with different information and we got to figure that out pretty soon. So if you see it up close in the next week or so then you know what happened and if not I will update you tomorrow anyway. So that’s it for Evan’s Journal today, it is Sunday night 11:35 and I am going to sleep. I will talk to you tomorrow.
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