Honoka'a Elementary Career Day with Alan Akina

Aloha, Honokaa Dragons! Good to see you, and I'm thankful that I could be here at your career day. My name is Alan Akina, and I'm the CEO and the founder of a company called 101 Financial. This is a company that I started over 16 years ago in my little apartment on the North Shore of Oahu, and, and what 101 Financial does is we help families, we help people like your parents To be able to take care of their money, so it's like school about money for adults. And I absolutely love what I do. My company started very, very small, and now it's grown to all over the country. We have over 30,000 families that we've helped out, and about 1,000 instructors that teach our courses. And it's it's fun, and it's something I absolutely love to do. Something I was interested. I was interested in money. As a young kid, probably your age, I grew up in a very similar situation to many of you, in a small town on the North Shore of Oahu called Kahuku. But I think that really got me going, and all the things that I experienced as a kid really helped me to start the company that I have today. And so I'm what you call a business owner or an entrepreneur, which is a great field to go in if that's something you are considering, having your own business. I encourage— I know all of you, when you grow up and become adults, or maybe before you become an adult, you all have an idea or will have an idea that'll be worth a million dollars. It's going to be right here. And that idea will come from the education that you have and the life experiences that you go through. And you'll start to figure out solutions to problems that you see in your community. And that's what entrepreneurs do. They find Solutions to problems. So if you think about a problem out there that you're facing, or you see that's that many many people are facing, if you come up with a solution, there's a business around that. Having a successful business allowed me to do many things from writing a book. This book became a number one bestseller on Amazon to having my own TV show on KHON. When I was a little kid like you, I always watched the KHON News when they would do the Shaka. And I always wanted to be on the news. And today I have my own news segment. It also allowed me to travel all over the country. I've been to New York many times, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., California, Las Vegas. I mean, there's so many places that I've been and I've been to every single island too many times to count. And that's what a successful business allows you to do is to be able to do these special things. I remember growing up, we never had a house. We always rented. We had apartments and we rented and moved around quite a bit. And, and today, because of the business that I'm in allowed me to have multiple houses. And I have houses in Hawaii, and this is a picture of my Hawaii house in Kahuku. And I have a house on the mainland in a place called Alpine, Utah. This is my house here. Also being able to buy investment properties and become a landlord and rent out to other people that need a place to live. And so Having a successful business can allow you to do many things as an entrepreneur, and I see some of you out there will be great entrepreneurs and you'll be very, very successful. Your family and your school will be very proud of you, and I'll be proud of you as well. Good luck to you in your career day and everything you do in the future. God bless you and aloha.