KAPOLEI, Hawaii — Past and present graduates of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement’s KūHana Accelerator program, CNHA representatives, state officials, and Spectrum representatives gathered at a special event on Tuesday to celebrate accomplishments — the graduation of the KūHana program’s cohort #14 and five years of the program helping local entrepreneurs fulfill their passions.
It was also an opportunity for graduates to connect with local business leaders and resources that could help them take their businesses to the next step.
The KūHana Accelerator program assists local and Native Hawaiian entrepreneurs operating throughout the state and contributing to the local economy who could use an extra hand.
It’s an eight-week class that helps entrepreneurs develop a business plan so they can pursue the funding needed to take their business to the next level.
Kūhiō Lewis, CEO of the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, initially started KūHana and brought on board Max Mukai, CNHA director of business development.
Mukai currently runs the KūHana program. Its start was based on the economic challenges facing the local community.
“The concept was how do we help raise income for families because we have a lot of entrepreneurs,” said Lewis. “They just need help fine-tuning their ideas and creating a business model that can work in this economy, one that’s grounded in our local values.”
Lewis says 22 entrepreneurs are celebrating their graduation. They had two cohorts this year, 14 over five years.
When asked how many have graduated throughout the program’s entirety, “It’s well over 400,” said Lewis.
“I want to say with this graduation, it’s probably closer to 450 businesses we’ve been able to support,” he said.
Other CNHA programs are indirectly involved, such as the Pop-up Mākeke that’s helped fund hundreds of businesses.
“You factor that all in, CNHA as a whole, has probably helped over 800 businesses at this point,” he added.
After going through the acceleration program, many graduates become successful in contributing to the local economy, says Lewis.
At graduation, the entrepreneurs are guided to the next step.
“We don’t just train them, fine-tune their business plans, work with their brands,” he said. “Now we’re helping them connect to resources and make sure they’re successful into the future.”
Though there are many challenges facing entrepreneurs, the biggest is access to capital, says Lewis, accessing money to scale their business or to grow it. He says they just have to keep going.
“The biggest word of advice is to not give up,” said Lewis. “Just keep going. Chase that passion. I mean, I’m a living testament to that. The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement has been knocked down many times, but we just keep going. And that’s probably the most profound thing—today we’ve grown tremendously. Resilience is the key, in my opinion, to success.”
Hawaii State Senator Jarret Keohokalole attended the event together with other senate and district representatives to support CNHA’s efforts to develop business, workforce and entrepreneurship opportunities for the Native Hawaiian people and to celebrate the accomplishment of KūHana’s graduates.
“Many of the sectors that are popular are very competitive,” said Keohokalole. “The thing that I think Kūhiō has been very good at doing is trying to break this negative perception that people have, this “rock” mentality that somebody from the outside is always going to be better or superior or is always going to be more well suited to take leadership or initiative on things. So this is sort of proving that our community can develop solutions and can foster economic sustainability.”
Keohokalole also spoke of graduates having to overcome the doubters, whether they are family, friends, loved ones, competitors, or investors.
“The fact that they are here is proof that they’ve been able to do that. It’s something I’ve had a little experience in as a legislator having to run for office,” said Keohokalole. “But you can’t be an entrepreneur without having really thick skin and being able to deflect the negativity that comes from people that will eventually enter your orbit and say, ‘It can’t be done’ or ‘You can’t do it.’”
The types of businesses KūHana works with are the ones that have done the groundwork. As CNHA director of business development and overseeing the accelerator program, Mukai says, “These are the folks that have some sort of plan to grow. They only know where they’re going because they’ve put in the work and seen how far they’ve come. They want to get to the next level.”
Mukai shares an example of a home baker, someone who has made $10,000 selling $3 cookies. “That’s plenty of iterations to figure out. You’re getting a lot of orders in, you’re growing your business, you’re learning how to buy the ingredients, so all these are coming in to play. So now, I’m building up my customer base, I’m learning how to market, where do I go next?” shared Mukai.
“Today we’re celebrating the five years of KūHana and specifically the cohorts 13 and 14 that happened this year, and then we invited our friends who are also resource providers so we have some lending opportunities for some of these folks to connect with, and of course ongoing technical assistance that people can tap into. Regular business always needs to keep growing, keep finding help, keep learning,” said Mukai.
Born and raised in Hilo, Nikki Savella is a 2022 graduate of the KūHana program. She started her bakery Cupcakes, BOOM! in 2014 and was eight years into the business by the time she encountered the acceleration program.
“I always say that I graduated from ‘YouTube University’ because I have no business background. It’s all grit, grace, hustle and faith. And just trusting that this is where I’m supposed to be and by the grace of God, I’m still in business today,” said Savella.
She said back then, Spectrum offered graduates the opportunity to run a 30-second commercial spot for three months for free.
At first, she wasn’t sure if that was the route she wanted to take.
She felt many people watched a little TV.
“But I said, this opportunity has been given to me for a reason, so I just took it,” said Savella. “I think I’m the only one in my cohort that took advantage of the opportunity because they gave the spot to us for free but we had to produce it, so it was still an investment for me. But I had two friends who helped put it together and I feel like they nailed it. It exponentially grew my business that holiday season and I’ve used that commercial till today on social media platforms. My business mission is God, family and community and I think you can see that in everything I do.”
While in the cohort, Savella started a new business, BOOM! Wahine and leads 80-plus business owners across the state sharing community, resources and education, “… and really just to make sure we’re all not going nuts, going crazy in this small business life.”
Wyatt Ferreira, president of Haku Systems, a company he started earlier this year, is also a KūHana graduate.
The company is an IT professional systems provider specializing in network cabling, data center design, networking design and “skiff” building. “Skiff” is an acronym for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.
Ferreira explains that when starting a new business, there are a lot of things business owners want to implement but that it’s a challenge to get them from their thoughts onto paper.
“The program helped me focus to get ideas in my head onto paper, to put numbers to it, to strategize, to form a plan of action,” said Ferreira. “This program forces you to do that. You put in the hours, you put in the work and by the end it—at times it can get grueling because it’s all after hours, you still have your regular job—but if you put in the work, it’s so rewarding by the end of it to have a 30-page business plan outlining all the ideas you had in your head and just seeing it on paper ... it was a huge accomplishment for me.”
Ferreira echoes Senator Keohokalole when he said, “A lot of the federal contracting actually goes out to the Mainland. And being a Kamehameha Schools graduate, being a University of Hawaii graduate, it was important to me to start a company where we can keep a lot of the federal contracting dollars here, hire local engineers and keep the business here in Hawaii.”
Ferreira also notes the collaborative aspect of the program. Though participants come from different business ventures, he has learned from everyone whether they’re in retail, wholesale marketing, online e-commerce or other fields. “I highly encourage anybody in a new business to join this program. It’s been awesome.”
This is Spectrum’s third year partnering with CNHA and its KūHana Acceleration program. Akili Jones, local sales manager of Spectrum Reach Hawaii, says they are offering graduates three months of free advertising valued at $1,500.
“We’re also giving away two grand prizes today,” said Jones. “Two of the cohort members will receive a free fully produced commercial with a production team.”
Lewis said, “It’s been a great partnership with Spectrum. It’s allowed us to really accelerate even the programs so that while we’re helping accelerate businesses.”
Sarah Yamanaka covers news and events for Spectrum News Hawaii. She can be reached at sarah.yamanaka@charter.com.
Editor’s note: The article was updated to reflect the attendance of state officials. (October 13, 2024)