We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful John Puakea. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with John below.

John, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I really do enjoy being a business owner, it’s not so much the owning a business part that I enjoy its being part of a business that I truly have passion for, working with a small team to come up with ideas, solutions and be creative with, leaning on each other when it’s needed and feeding off of each other is really fun so yes, I truly enjoy it.

Every once in a while, I think about what it would be like to punch in and out on a clock, be done for the day and take a vacation to get away from work and not think about at all. the simplicity of that sounds nice every once in a while, I think that type of life or lifestyle is great for a lot of people, it brings security and has its type of freedom. a couple of years ago I was dropping of a 6man canoe to be shipped at the dock and when I backed the 44ft canoe into a small space one of the workers said wow! you did that easily, do you want a job? for a minute I though, that would be a very easy and fun job, I could come in and leave every day and not take it home with me.

The truth is those thoughts don’t last very long for me. I enjoy being able to be creative, come up with new ideas, try to be innovative and creating better and new ways of doing things in the industry that I am part of. They say if you love what you do you never work a day in your life and I agree, although I believe you can also never have a day off as well, finding the balance when you do what you love for a living is where the real work is for me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

When I was young I really wanted to travel, growing up in Hawaii and in the ocean, I took to paddling and surfing at a young age. My days revolved around when I was going to get on or into the water, going to school or working was always something I felt was in the way, I knew that I needed it those things but they weren’t the most important things to me. as I started competing in paddling I realized that if I made certain teams, I would be able to travel so I put my energy into training and being the best I could be (which luckily, I enjoyed) and that would be my avenue for traveling. I took a job building paddles for a clocal canoe builder and it gave me somewhat of a chance to see what the industry was like, which I questioned for sure but it also gave me some freedom to peruse the dream of competing abroad trying for the Olympics etc.

While chasing that dream I got an injury which took me out of competition for a few years. during this time, I still wanted to be involved in the sport so I started coaching things like high school paddling and Olympic development, I enjoyed but the pay wasn’t great so I would build canoes and kayaks on the side to support my coaching all of the while never thinking I would own a canoe business. When training for high level events and trying to achive hard goals it teaches you discipline, if you want to be successful that is, so I feel that discipline carried over to my work ethic. Having passion for what you do and discipline can be a good combination. Things are always going to get hard in business and so is waking up every morning at 5am to train when you don’t feel like it some days, so I feel that helps me push through things at times.

After many years of this lifestyle, I decided to design some of my own canoes and kayaks, as they got popular more and more people wanted them so it slowly took its own course and grew into Puakea Designs. In the beginning it was all about having the fastest canoe, team riders and winning races, I feel that came from all of the competitive paddling and coaching that I did but a few years into it I started to realize that what most people really wanted was the feeling they were getting from being on the water and being active, so we come up with the slogan “it’s about lifestyle” for the brand. I love the innovative side of things and to really nerd out on how to make something move faster and better through the water but the most important thing about what we do is that we have a chance to get people on the water doing something that’s really fun and it makes their day and life better, when you go for a paddle in the morning your day is better, when you paddle at the end of the day I feel it releases things from that day and your evening is better, I always say your day is better whenever you get on the water and so is everyone’s around you.

What I feel sets us apart from others is when looking at what we do as company is more about making lives better and not just about competing, so we started to look at what everyone paddling is really looking for no matter what brand they are with and that is improving on something they love to do, I have been teaching and coaching for so long and have also been lucky enough to learn from some of the best so teaching comes pretty natural to me at this point, so we started doing a lot more paddling clinics and 3-5 day training camps. by doing this we are not just building a brand, we are able to reach out to everyone in the community and offer them something that not only helps them in their daily lives, but we can also help them improve in something they truly love. our main focus is how do we get more people on the water and give them the things it takes to have fun, go fast, be safe and improve their quality of life. I don’t look at it as how do we get more customers or make more money I look to look at it in the way of, what can we do for the paddling community and how do we make people’s lives a little better. There’s a lot of stress in daily life and if we can get more people on the water, we might be able to help with that,

Right now, we have a small team that is very passionate about what we are doing. I feel we are pushing the innovative side of the sport as far as deigns go and I also feel we are the leaders in education as well. we are able bringing people together at these camps where they meet new people make friends, connections and just have a really good time. Thats something that feels really nice to be able to offer.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

When we started doing educational videos about our canoes, we talked about the different designs we had and how they performed in different conditions, at the time we didn’t have the best canoe on the market for really big water, meaning anything really over 8-10ft so I talked about where are designs excelled and mentioned one of our competitors canoes as the canoe to buy if you’re going to be in really big water, I think it shocked a lot of people but they looked at us as trying to get people into the right canoe for them and a brand that they could trust, I feel it was scary but worked out really well for us

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is a challenge, I hired someone in the beginning to run our social who was pretty good at the trends and what people enjoyed watching, educational videos, fun pictures and stories, things like that, I feel social media is always changing a little and if you’re running or starting your business having the right people doing it and not trying to do it yourself is key.

Contact Info:

• Website: Puakeadesigns.com
• Instagram: Puakea designs
• Facebook: puakea designs
• Youtube: puakea designs

Image Credits
Sarah Craig