7 Principles I Learned Launching Inc. 76th Fastest Growing Company

Have you ever wanted to help start a business that would one day employ lots of people and generate enough revenue to be placed on Inc. list of fastest growing companies?

As an entrepreneur, this has been a desire of mine for a long time! Because of the tireless work of Ryan Wilmot, Todd Westerlund, Nikolay Mahlyanov, Mike Giblin and their teams...this dream has been fulfilled :-) I just found out that Kukui Corp has made the Inc. 5000 list as the 76th fastest growing private company in the nation with a 3,943% growth rate. Kukui Corp is a software company that I helped my friend launch back in the fall of 2010. He continues to successfully lead the organization that now has offices across the US and European Union. The photo below was taken the day we moved out of Ryan's house into our first office in the Silicon Valley.

Before I continue, I want to acknowledge that I am only a small part of an incredible team that has made Kukui a success. There are almost a hundred people that go to work each day to serve our clients and build this business. A big thanks also goes out to our founding employees as well as our advisors. I listed these folks by name down in the comments section, plus links to their profiles, if you are interested in personally congratulating them.

The reason I wrote this post is because I've learned so much during the last several years, and wanted to share seven principles I discovered while I was the President at Kukui, and continue to apply today at Gorilla Branders. First, it is vital to be defined by something more significant in life than your current job. I suggest that you find a business partner you can trust. Focus on generating revenue through sales rather than relying on loans or an investment. Truly be a partner to your clients. Be generous with your employees. Consider the timing in your staff recruitment. Finally, live your brand! My hope is that you can break these seven principles into goals and apply them. Below is a great 1 minute video from Dan Sullivan on goal setting.

1st DON'T LET YOUR JOB DEFINE YOU.

Most of my entrepreneurial ventures have ended abruptly. During the spring of 2013, I had a clear vision for Kukui and was working an average of twelve hours a day because I was on a mission, consumed with our company goals. However, several months before that time we had recruited Todd Westerlund (Kukui's current CEO) who was better equipped to succeed at my job. Ryan (Kukui's founder) could see the situation objectively, and understood the company would have a better chance to thrive if we empowered Todd and I stepped out of the way. The hard truth that I had to realize is that our company had outgrown my current abilities and our mission was too important to let me continue learning on the job. Ryan and Todd were gracious in the transition, and set me up to leave with my head held high as a minority shareholder making an "early exit". I loved the people I worked with as much as our clients loved the product we created. But I moved on without losing my identity because I'm defined by my faith, my family and my character...I'm not defined by my current job. My goal at work is to enjoy the journey and as you can see below, I try to focus on laughing as much as possible.

2nd FIND A TRUSTWORTHY PARTNER.

In my life outside of work, I love being married and building a family with my bride. In my career, I like to find a partner that will work alongside me to chase a dream and develop a profitable business. I look for someone with a "genius brain" that needs a "loud mouth" to tell others about the amazing product they created or services they provide. I have never done a venture on my own! I have found that success is fun to share with others, and temporary failure is a burden one shouldn't carry alone. In the case of Kukui, Ryan Wilmot created a SaaS product that I could confidently sell. Before Kukui, I spent four years promoting Take No Glory's music and concerts (my wife, Johnna, is the singer and songwriter of that band). At Gorilla, I partnered with Raymond St. Martin who is a genius brand strategist. Johnna, Ryan and Raymond are not my only partners, but they have certainly had the most significant impact on my career. I also want to mention that Sergio Paliychuk, Lance Howard and Andy Van Valer are three other men that have partnered with me at both Kukui and Gorilla during the last several years. All of these friends have been vital in what I have set out to achieve in my carrier. Andy has been a mentor to me for almost fifteen years, and we recently did a podcast with Aaron Hinde discussing his experience as a founding employee at Borland, Starfish, Lightsurf and Netflix.

3rd SELL. DON'T SEEK AN INVESTMENT OR A LOAN. JUST SELL.

During the first couple of years at Kukui, our clients paid our bills because we focused on sales. Ryan did everything he could to help me focus on generating revenue. He created a short powerpoint pitch deck explaining what he thought the SaaS product would do for our target market. We created a one-page contract, and charged more money than our established competitors. We put the presentation and contract on an iPad and walked in on our target clients offices without an appointment. I got their attention and sold them the dream saying something like this: "We are creating one software product that will replace several other software products you are currently paying for. We are not just another vendor. We will be your partner. We will build this product for you. We will listen to you and make improvements based on your feedback. Trust me." And Kukui's clients did trust us and that is how we started the business. Eventually, Kukui took on an investment from our largest client so we could scale more quickly. At Gorilla, we are debt-free because we focus on consistent sales. I didn't invest my personal money into Gorilla, nor did I get a loan or investment from anyone. We don't even have a line of credit. It sure would have been easier to launch Gorilla with access to cash, but I have found time and time again that there are enough prospects willing to trust you so that you can build a debt-free business that is funded by the money you collect for the services or products you deliver. If you are interested in taking a look, the video below is a podcast that Aaron Hinde and I did with his friend, Kevin Donahue, on sales and direct response marketing.

4th BE YOUR CUSTOMER'S PARTNER. DON'T BE A VENDOR.

When I tell a prospect that I want to be their partner, it becomes the foundation of our relationship. They can expect me to put them and their business needs at an equal or higher level than my own. I expect them to have understanding with me and my employees when we make mistakes. There is a lot more to it, but that is really the core: creating fair win-win agreements and having mercy with one another when things don't go as originally planned. Many of my most precious relationships are with my past clients. As I put their business first, and as they have had grace with me, we created a unique bond. I am so grateful for the first few initial Kukui clients that helped us make a great product and it's really cool to see that they are still using our product today: Chris Price from Saratoga Shell, Henry and Lisa Carter from Water Star Motors and Kevin Donohoe from Pacific Motor Services. Below is Kukui's first testimonial video we created with some of our initial clients.

5th BE GENEROUS TO EMPLOYEES WITH EQUITY AND BONUSES.

Ryan Wilmot taught me that if someone is willing to take a huge risk building a business with you, it's important to share the reward with them. He taught me this by his actions when he brought me on as Kukui Corp's first employee and provided me (and my family) an ability to be compensated when our company was successful. We did this for our employees as well. And now I have been able to do this for my team at Gorilla. Regardless if it is equity (long-term compensation) and/or bonuses (short-term compensation), the goal is to make the people around you feel a sense of responsibility and hope because they are building their own company with you. If you are interested in taking a look, the video below is a podcast that Aaron Hinde, Jarrell Hall and I did with Mike Bledsoe on hiring and team building.

6th RECRUIT THE RIGHT PEOPLE DURING THE RIGHT TIME.

My wife and I got married thirteen years ago and now we have two sons that are 2 and 6 years old. I'm a proud daddy. My little boys have an incredible friendship with each other as well as my bride and myself. We are a family. Often, founding employees feel like a family. It's relational. It's emotional. But it doesn't last forever. I often feel like my founding employees are like my siblings or cousins. This makes recruitment wonderful in the beginning, but it is really hard to fire "your family" if the company outgrows them or if you run into cash flow issues and decide to keep a more recent hire and layoff someone that has been with you since the beginning. At both Kukui and Gorilla, less than half of the original founding employees are still part of the staff today. Both organizations attracted entrepreneurial minded people that got passionate about the idea of what the business might become and they were willing to work for a reduced wage if they had something to gain when we were successful. At first, a start-up is an exciting and chaotic movement that needs flexible people to form a team and launch a product or service. After the initial start-up phase, a company often becomes more of a trustworthy and dependable monument that needs specialists to understand their job description and do their work at a reasonable wage. This is why recruiting the right type of people during the right phase of your company is so vital to your success. Below is the photo from our second Kukui office at Santana Row where we really started to experience that transition from movement to monument.

7th LIVE YOUR BRAND.

When I was at Kukui, I wore real kukui nuts around my neck looking like I just arrived in a Hawaiian airport. Our company values were L.E.A.D. and I was consumed with being Loving, Enthusiastic, Amazing and Disciplined. I was "that Kukui guy". Today, I wear a Gorilla Branders t-shirts, wear a certain type of glasses and trim my beard to look similar to our logo. I am the "Chief Gorilla" and I do all I can to live out our brand.

About Gorilla Branders: We have delivered world class branding and marketing to about fifty different clients including Hoverboard, Trent Dilfer, Absolut, Mariel Hemingway, Comba, Adam Wainwright as well as dozens of SMBs and startups. We also launched media portals for NFL and MLB players in partnership with Pro Athletes Outreach and Nike. We have also been able to serve world-changing charities like Natural High, Big League Impact and our neighbors at Community Bridges (read about that here https://bit.ly/gorillabridges)

About Kukui: We provide businesses a custom marketing platform that integrates with each organization’s Point of Sale (POS) system. This empowers each of our clients with quantitative data showing their return on investment, the number of new clients based on their POS system, statistics revealing their customer retention rate, and areas to improve their business through the tracking of phone calls, appointment forms, and feedback from customer reviews.

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