Aloha, my name is Borys Rasin. I’m an immigrant from Ukraine who came to Hawaii in 2015 with no money, no connections, and no knowledge of English. Today, I own and run several multi-million-dollar businesses: Best Flooring Honolulu – a flooring store, and Nroro – a brand under which we sell flooring, wall paneling, moldings, and a variety of other products.
On this channel, I share my journey and provide advice to help business owners like myself avoid the mistakes I made in the past. I firmly believe that it’s better to learn from others’ mistakes rather than spending time and resources making the same errors yourself. If you agree with my views, please follow my channel and like this video to help me create more content like this.
This is the second video dedicated to one of the biggest challenges the business owners face in Hawaii – labor force. In my previous video I’ve shared some of the conditions that make the Hawaii labor market one of the hardest places to run a business. In this video I will share problems that those conditions create. Here are 10 problems that most business owners face in Hawaii:
Hard to find reliable people. (1) Because Hawaii is such a party place, a lot of the time employees party too much, and not show up, or come late, or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. (2) Since it’s so easy to find another one or start earning money doing side hassling, employees can quit at any time without a prior notice.
Hard to Get Long-Term Commitment. (1) A lot of people that I was interviewing don’t see Hawaii as a life-long home. That is why they are looking for something temporary to pay the bills until they move to the next place when they are tired of Hawaii. (2) Especially, during the first year or work, the chance of employees quitting is super high, since they are under the impression of missing out on life, while they are working.
Hard to get Qualified Labor. (1) Due to the workforce leakage to other states, low work immigration, and low engagement of local people, finding specialists takes a lot of time, money and energy. (2) Worth mentioning low interest in career and hard grinding jobs, due to the wish for a chill and relaxed life leading to skilled candidates to choose low stress, low qualification jobs. (3) Availability of a high number of remote jobs doesn’t help at all, this creates another leak for qualified candidates.
Hard to find full time workers. (1) Even after finding a qualified candidate, motivating him to work full time is super hard. Since most want to spend more time outdoors in Hawaii, instead of working hard in the store or on a jobsite. (2) A lot of employees prefer to work a minimum number of hours, just enough to pay the bills.
Hard to get a lot of candidates to choose from. (1) There are some businesses that get a lot of resumes, because the job is outdoor, simple, fun, and gets tips. I know for a fact that my friend Alex, who owns a small restaurant, gets a high number of candidates almost everyday. From his words, even when he doesn’t have a “for hire” sign, there are still a couple of people who walk in to ask if he has open positions. But it’s worth mentioning, that even though he gets a high number of candidates, the quality of candidates and the period that work after being hired is super low for both. My friend Nathan, who owns a surf school and store, confirms this with his experience as well. Since his job opening looks super fun and makes good money, a lot of candidates ask to apply, but most of them are inadequate or quit in a couple of weeks. At the same time, the number of applicants can be completely different depending on the niche, for example for my business, even when advertising for the least skill based job opening, I get at best 1-2 resumes per day, and trust me – they are terrible. But,
High staff turnover. Ease of quitting the job, high number of job openings, unwillingness to work full time, and other factors mentioned above, are causing a high staff turnover as a result. A lot of employees are quitting due to personal reasons and some are fired due to inadequate behavior, but now you need to hire more people to close open positions. Rarely in Hawaii I see businesses with a stable team, unless it’s a very small one with 1-3 employees that have been doing the same task for decades.
Hard to gather a solid team. High staff turnover leads to the next problem – inability to create a stable team, since all the time you have people that come and go. And as you know, the core of good business is a solid team that makes sure that everything works like a well-coordinated mechanism.
High expenses on educating staff. Due to the high staff turnover, you need to teach how to do their duties to every new employee that is coming into your business. You need to teach them how to use your software or tools, how to communicate with customers or with other team members, how your business operates and what the business goals are, etc. And this happens everytime when one employee leaves and the next one joins the team.
Resignation without notice. I’m not sure if it’s a general trend, or something I’m experiencing as a part of the “easy to quit your job” thing, but multiple times I’ve been in a situation, when my most reliable employees, how I was thinking, would quit without any notice. And this occurred on multiple occasions. The most recent story that I had was that I hired a personal assistant. She was working real hard for over a month – answering calls, talking to customers, accepting orders and doing her duties. I was so happy with the quality of her work, that after only one month I was thinking about increasing her salary and increasing her powers. I’ve even asked what she was thinking about it, and she was super excited. In a couple of days she asked if she could take a day off, I’ve said that of course, since I was so happy with her work and tried to help her as much as I could. She was absent for one day, then she asked to extend for another 3 days, then for another week, and then she disappeared without any explanation. I was shocked to say the least, I’ve tried to contact her a number of times to at least make sure that she was ok – no answer. Half a year later I’ve found out from my friend that he knows her, and that she works at our mutual friend’s business. This happened to me on multiple occasions, not as critical, but with a similar pattern, when I won’t give a prior notice, and employees would just not come to work the next day. At some point I got a feeling that I was doing something wrong, but I’ve heard the same stories from other business owners on the island, so this is an island trend.
Important addition #1. Most people that came to Hawaii, and are reliable, hard working, and goal oriented, will end up working with you either to learn your trade, or to earn enough money to start their own business. Here is my latest experience from a week ago, that supports this and previous thoughts. My latest personal assistant worked for me for 3 weeks. Super happy with her results and how fast she was grasping all aspects of the duties that she was responsible for. 3 weeks down the road she asks to take time off to resolve issues with her primary job, from her words she was overwhelmed with the amount of pressure she was experiencing from both jobs she was doing. I’m here to help – sure take the time you need to sort things out. In a couple of days I get a call from her to extend this time for more days, I agree. And after that call – she disappears into thin air. Since we are friends on Facebook, I found out from her social profile that instead of sorting things out with her job, she was opening her own business. To be totally honest, I’m super stoked for her, however she is another example of how employees quit without prior notice or even notification of quitting.
Now when you know what to expect – you are prepared! If you are at the phase of deciding what business to start in Hawaii, it’s crucially important to take in consideration everything mentioned above and make proper adjustments. Everything I said may sound grumpy, but it’s not that bad, since Hawaii has a lot of advantages for opening a business as well. I will share more about that in one of my next videos. By the way, from everything I’ve mentioned, is there something that I missed or something you disagree with? Please, let me know your opinion in the comments below. I read all of them and would love to hear your feedback.
Here we are – ten problems that Hawaii business owners face when starting or running business in Hawaii. In my next video, I will share 10 bullet-proof solutions that can solve labor force problems. Please like this video and subscribe to my channel. My goal for today is to gain one new subscriber, and you can help me achieve that right now.
See you in my next video. Have an amazing, sunny day. Mahalo!
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