“business is nothing but a series of decisions which can make or break the business.”

Interview by Mike Sullivan of Sully’s Blog

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Steve Monas is the co-author of Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible.  Steve is a business and entertainment entrepreneur living on the island of Kauai.  He has devised and operated several highly successful start-ups in the internet, publishing, video, music and film industries over the past 15 years including ScourEvents.com, a local event listing search engine. Steve has strong marketing and ecommerce expertise, serving as a marketing consultant for such institutions and businesses as Pepperdine University; partnering with the Graziado School of Business & Management’s business program.

Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible is a valuable resource for those looking to start a new business with limited resources.  It contains a set of practical resources to empower entrepreneurs to  make impactful decisions within limit financial constraints.  It’s an up-to-date reference on all the major issues start-up and home-based business entrepreneurs face.

MO:
Steve, The Startup Bible is highly rated on Amazon.com as reviewed by several readers.  It’s obviously based on the learnings from your own experiences and is what helps make it so valuable to readers.  What made you decide to capture this in a book to share with other entrepreneurs?

Steve:
I had the original manuscript written in 2002. It was basically looking how the internet and communication is changing the way we do business. Entrepreneurs are the innovators. They have the strength to push humanity to its greatness. But most businesses fail within the first year. This could be for numerous reasons. Most people just think that if you tell everyone that you are now self employed, it will work itself out. That isn’t true. Its a lot of hard work. The book, if anything, will give you the understanding of what to expect when getting into a new venture. We cover most of the things that any business might need to know, and grow.

MO:
The book has a focus on outsourcing, which differentiates it from other business startup books.  Why is outsourcing so important?  How can business owners let go and trust the work to be done with quality?

Steve:
Most books out there are cheerleading books for the Author. Really no value, except make you feel good. Maybe motivate you. Richard and I joke that the only people that make money from those books are the authors and publishers. Outsourcing (not offshoring, is your question) allows the entrepreneur to focus on what they do best, and allow others do what they are good at. Example is this: Richard and I have an agreement. We collaborate on the book, he writes it, and I focus on growing the business side. I am good at being a resourceful shoestring entrepreneur. He is good at writing, designing, and an articulate speaker.

The hardest part for business owners, is to let go and trust the work to be done by others. Even with my Taxi business here on Kauai or my web development projects that I had to outsource. You do your best to find quality people, and you might get a couple of bad apples. In the long run, you will make better hiring decisions. If you’re on elance.com, you will look at ratings, feedback, and earnings that show that these contractors are serious about getting work from this site. From Craigslist or general inquiry, I had gone through a few taxi drivers in the first couple of months. From my current drivers, I realized that I would rather hire people and train them from scratch. This has worked out better, and now they are dispatching the phone calls amongst themselves. I grow the business by building relationships with other companies that need transportation services.

MO:
The product description for your book states “business is nothing but a series of decisions which can make or break the business.”   In your experience, is making good decisions a trait that people are born with, or can they be taught and develop the skills needed to make successful decisions on a continual basis?

Steve:
Some people could be naturally born with leaderships skills. We see this in Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg. When opportunity met preparation, they were ready. I believe that the trait can be learned through a series of making decisions and experience. You might not have the product or service as the above mentioned, but once you find something that you are passionate about, and want to make it succeed, you will do your best to make the best decisions. Stick to business, not your ego. Think things through. Read books on leadership to add to your better decision making. Read how others have tried or failed, and why that happened. Most importantly, learn from your mistakes or bad decisions. Everyone makes bad decisions sometimes, but the ultimate bad decision, is to make the same bad decision over and over again.

MO:
You have other ventures in development as well, including ScourEvents.com.  What is the vision for ScourEvents.com and how far are you from reaching that vision?

Steve:
ScourEvents has been in development for almost 3 years. I believe that I finally found a web development company that has been steadily working in the background to get this site re-launched within the next couple of months. ScourEvents is a “local events search engine”. Any user will be able to login with their facebook account, or just search randomly for events. But not only will you be able to find events (sports, theater, movies, concerts, restaurants) purchase tickets (or reserve a table), get recommendations, read / post reviews, like, but also listen to the artist, purchase the music or gear and find a way to get to the event or stay around the town where the event is. Revenue will come from various sources, but mostly affiliate programs. I hope to get this site to these functionalities, by the end of this year.

MO:
Yet another venture you have is Pono Taxi in Kauai, which offers traditional taxi services as well as various tours of the island.  Tell me about how this business came about?

Steve:
I randomly picked an island and moved. Never been here before. It was a song by Ziggy Marley and parts of the movie “Curious case of Benjamin Button”. As I settled onto this island, I started to keep going with the flow. One day I was looking through businesses for sale on Craigslist, and found a taxi cab for sale. You can’t just buy a meter, and put it into a car. You have to buy someone else out. Since then, I have now 3 taxis, and looking at building more relationships with companies that need transportation, outside of just internet marketing or waiting at the airport. We are specializing in Pre-arranged airport pickups, and 4 hour customized sightseeing land tours. The tours is actually a niche market, that really doesn’t exist anywhere else, as we have a tour meter rate on this island. In the next couple of months, I plan to be on more websites that need this type of transportation when guests are booking stuff online, to non-medical emergency transportation. I might be able to take this concept to every state, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. The market is there.

MO:
You have several business ventures in place at the same time.  Do you find it difficult to manage them all, especially while in the startup phase of one or more businesses?  How do you keep from losing sight of the ongoing needs of one business while you focus on getting another off the ground?

Steve:
I remember answering this question from my experience waiting tables while going to college. I had to know if table 1 was on coffee, table 2 was getting their drinks prepared, table 3 just sat down and needed to be greeted, table 4 was on their main dish, table 5 had just paid their bill, and table six needed silverware placed on that table. Same goes with businesses or new ventures. I will test out a lot of things, and stick with things that are working. But again, I am not alone. I use the concepts in my book. I stick with what I know best, and outsource the rest. With Fast Agency, the website sells internet marketing packages that is done by an offshoring BPO internet marketing firm that has proven to work, Shoestring Publishing has stories submitted that I publish and distribute to our audience, while the book is being updated by Richard. ScourEvents is being developed by a web development firm that understands exactly where it will need to go, with weekly skype meetings. The Taxi business is being run by the drivers, I just do the paperwork. In each case, I am allowing smart people to do their smart things, and stepping into the background.
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