Alan Akina, a BYU-Hawaii basketball player from 1991-95, told School of Business students in the September 18 entrepreneurship lecture how he was inspired to start several businesses while still a full-time student at the university. He also shared some of the keys to the success he has enjoyed since then and encouraged the students to begin developing networks with professors and peers.
Akina, who said he still considers himself a BYU-Hawaii student because he has one class left to graduate, recalled that as a biology major he didn't take any business classes, but he still decided to start a tee shirt business with the help of a fellow student. "It was a nice little venture that we learned from," he said, "but we didn"t make any money."
Next, as a newly-married student in TVA he started selling long-distance phone services, "and within eight months I had gotten my income up to over $8,000 a month. At that time I decided to pursue this full time, and I left school."
In the ensuing years Akina worked for a number of companies and said he was "able to make a lot of money, but more importantly, I was able to gain a lot of business experience, and meet a lot of other business people from across the country. When I look back on my days at BYU-Hawaii, I've really come to appreciate the things that you get here. There's no place like it."
One BYU-Hawaii experience that made a strong impression on him was persevering until he could complete basketball head coach Ken Wagner's "two-mile death run in under 12 minutes. It made me tough: If you don't pass that two miles, you don't play. It's the same in business and life."
"Since 1995 five of the six ventures I've done all went well, and some of them are still continuing today," said Akina, who is now president of 101 Financial, "a wealth development company" in Hawaii and Puerto Rico that helps middle-income people pay off 30-year mortgages in as little as eight years.
"I feel like it was incubated right here at BYU-Hawaii," Akina said, noting he has talked about 101 Financial at previous BYU-Hawaii business conferences. "When we started five years ago, we had five agents. Today, we have about 170 agents who work for us. We help people organize their entire financial lives to get out of debt quickly. Debt is a huge, huge problem. Once we do that, we help them become wealthy by investing in real estate."
Akina added that the "venture started small, out of my condo at Turtle Bay. In fact, it still is there. We're a multi-million-dollar company that's basically run off of my laptop [computer]." In fact, 101 Financial was recently recognized as the fifth-fastest growing small business in Hawaii and Pacific Business News named Akina among its "40 under [age] 40" business leaders.
In spite of the recognition, Akina stressed, "You cannot sit still...once you're making money. We're trying to stay on top of the market by creating new markets." For example, he said he's developing "201 Financial and 301 programs...that will keep our company growing well into the future."
"Once you start a business, dig deep and look for other opportunities that may come about from your existing business," he continued. But in doing so, he stressed again, "You've got to do a business that will generate revenue right away. You need the money to keep going." Akina said it's also important to provide value to keep customers consuming your product or services at higher margins, relative to the competition.
He listed five keys he follows to help do this:
- "You've got to get along with people."
- "You've got to learn how to sell. Get some sales skills. That's a tough thing to do for some people. You have to sell to your consumers, you have to sell your vision to your employees, and you have to sell your vision to your investors. You have to sell your philosophy to your team, if you're a coach, and you have to sell to your kids. Everything has some sales in it."
- "Always keep learning. Do not stop, even after you go on and get a master's degree."
- "Treat everyone fairly.
- "Stay focused on your goals, principles and whatever you have to do in life."
Asked about taking on partners, Akina advised, "Try to do it on your own, if you can. The partner thing, I think, has a higher divorce rate than marriages. Partnerships can be kind of tricky, especially if all of the partners aren"t contributing an equal amount."
Akina also wished the students good luck with their own future ventures, and encouraged them "to network with everybody that you meet here at BYU-Hawaii. You never know what will happen later on, when your paths will cross again."