As a kid fearless enough to catch snakes for people for $20 per snake, calm enough to ride on his bicycle with a snake on it, and audacious enough to sell those same snakes to the local pet store for $40, it was no wonder that Sean Jensen would grow up to be a Marine. And as a kid entrepreneurial enough to think that scheme up, it was no wonder that he’d eventually become the CEO of his own company, Polu Kai Services, at a mere 29 years old. Polu Kai Services, a global environmental and construction solutions company, has now made three consecutive appearances in Inc. Magazine’s list of 500 fastest-growing private businesses in the United States, and was named one of the top veteran companies in the DC Metro area by Washington Business Journal in 2015.

Polu Kai Services: Revenge of the Good Guys

After leaving the Marines, Jensen became a hard and loyal worker. However, when it was time for him to receive his well-earned bonus, his boss declined to give it to him. “Instead of going to war with this guy in court, I started my own company and got all the clients that I’d sold for him,” says Jensen. Money was a challenge. The banks weren’t loaning to him, but he took what was left of his 401k and opened a bank account with it, telling the banker that one day there would be a million dollars in there. The banker thought he was crazy. “But I meant it,” says Jensen.

Jensen’s way of doing business is simple. “Do a good job, and keep doing a good job, and document your good job,” he says. “Then use that to get to the next level.”

Don’t Be Greedy

The owners of other companies the same size as Polu Kai could pay themselves a million dollars a year, but Jensen’s salary is $185,000. “I put it back into the company, and I keep it there,” he says. He uses it to invest in his employees, sending them to training and schools. “My employees are the greatest investment I have as a business,” Jensen says.

Connecting His Roots to His Future

When Jensen and his two younger siblings were abandoned in the foster care system when Jensen was six years old, they were moved from New York City to Florida and adopted, receiving new names. Jensen searched for his birth mother, but it wasn’t until he was 22 years old that he received a letter from his adoptive mother that contained all the things that transferred through the adoption with him. “I was able to locate my birth certificate and a couple other items that had my original name, and I did the research and found my grandfather, which led to my mother, which led to me finding out that I was native Hawaiian,” Jensen says. In fact, his family had been native to the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1775. “Polu is blue, Kai is ocean,” he says. “If you’re going to be native Hawaiian, why not name it native Hawaiian?”

Helping Veterans Transition into Civilian Life

Jensen is the author of Sergeant to CEO: A Foster Kid’s Lessons in Family, Fidelity, and Financial Success, a book and story that has touched many lives, as evident by his online community of over 28 thousand followers. “I ended up writing it to give back, let people know that you can be a foster kid and survive, and you can join the military and transition out and survive, and you can start a small business and survive,” he says. The books talks about planning and preparing for the transition to civilian life. “If there’s anything I’d like to solve, it’s better preparing troops as they transition out of the military,” he says. That includes career veterans who mistakenly think they can just retire, and the one-tour veterans who come out with injuries and PTSD into a world where civilians don’t understand them. Many of them think they will just go live with their parents until they get back on their feet. “The parents don’t want you back in the house,” he says. “The military’s not there to budget your life anymore. You’ve got to budget your own life.” It’s tremendous shell shock.

Advice for New Business Owners

“If you’re going to start a business, make it sustainable,” Jensen advises. “It takes time.” Lucky for him, his superpower is patience. Lucky for you, you can be patient, too. “Take those swings, take those hits, but patience,” he says.

On the Horizon

Jensen would like to start his own nonprofit. He donates to several nonprofits now, including veterans groups, children’s homes, and food banks, and going one step further to make his own nonprofit would be nice. “[It] is going to take some time to put that together,” he says. Patience.

Contact Information

You can find Jensen at his Sergeant to CEO Facebook page. “My advice is free, what you do with it is your own deal,” says Jensen.

 

When you’re an artist and went to college for art but make more money bartending, what do you do? Buy your own pub, of course! At least, that’s what you do if you are Kevin Bednarz.

Bednarz always knew he wanted to have his own business. When he was a child, before he knew what a 9-to-5 job was, he put a transistor radio in a cardboard box and started charging other kids 25 cents to turn it on. He wrote on the box ‘will play music but maybe not your song.’ Although he ended up having to give the money back to his disgruntled music customers, the desire to have his own business stayed with him. “I think the biggest thing in everything I do is being creative, whether it’s coming up with a new menu, new event, or new artwork,” says Bednarz.

Bednarz started working at Ashburn Pub as a bartender and manager in 2004. By 2008, he was a 45% owner along with the original owner. When the original owner offered to let him buy the other half, there was no way he was going to turn it down. He went home and told his partner, and she asked how much it was and where he would get the money. He had no idea. “But I didn’t let it stop me. I came up with some very creative financing. I couldn’t get a small business loan, I didn’t have a lot of cash, so I had to finagle and get very creative,” he says.

Ashburn Pub’s Secret Cocktail of Success

Service and staff are the key ingredients to Ashburn Pub’s success. Bednarz has a very low turnover rate among his staff. He contends that most people will work for money but they’ll die for recognition and appreciation. “I think they stay because we reward them and it’s a family atmosphere,” he says. “We treat each other right.”

And in turn, his staff treats the customers right. Just like Cheers where everybody knows your name, long-term staff get to know the customers by name, as well as their drink orders and the cars they drive. They can greet you by name and have your drink to you before you take off your coat.

The other drinks in the mix to make it a success are cleanliness, functionality, and relevance. When a lady goes to the bathroom, it had better be clean. Cockroaches in the bathroom equal cockroaches in the kitchen, but a cared-for bathroom equals a cared-for kitchen. Things have to be in functional working order. A wobbly bar stool here and there is no big thing, but make sure the jukebox is working so he doesn’t have to pull out that cardboard box and transistor radio. After all, it will play some music but it won’t be your music. Make sure the ink is fresh and the checks are printing. Be relevant with tech and social media.

“There’s so many options, especially around here, where people can go,” says Bednarz. “So if they took the time to get in their car, take twenty bucks out of the ATM, drive here, come in, and sit down and eat, don’t take it for granted.”

Social Media Relevance

Speaking of relevance, use social media to your advantage. Talk to those idols that you wouldn’t normally be able to, and talk to your customers as well. Each summer, Ashburn Pub does crab legs. Bednarz once decided to do a contest to trade engagement from the community for free crab legs every Sunday for the summer. The payoff was fantastic and helped bring Sundays from being their slowest day to their best day. “And that was the catalyst, and now we’re doing brunch, and $2 mimosas, and we’re going to do lobster tails soon, so that one little piece of content steamrolled,” says Bednarz.

What’s the Password?

One day, you go to Ashburn Pub and it’s the normal neighborhood pub you know and love. The next day, lights and decor have transformed the place, you needed to have a special password to get in, a witch doctor gave you a coconut drink, and you left looking like a sugar skull. What just happened? A pop-up party! Ashburn Pub does themed pop-up parties every two months. “Now we’re starting to gain momentum, where now I’m teasing that we’re doing another one coming up, and my phone’s blowing up,” says Bednarz. If you want in on the fun, you better get your hands on the password.

On the Horizon — Alexa, Order Me Ashburn’s Special

Art is Bednarz’s passion, but there must be a practical side, too. He can’t sit in the studio all day. “Sometimes I feel like I’m jumping back and forth, which is dangerous,” he says. “So my big goal this year is to really keep the pub momentum going and keep doing new things while spending a certain amount of time each week doing art, and I think that’s going to be super important.” And how long does it take him to make one of his masterpieces? “Forty-seven years,” says Bednarz. It’s a skill set that he’s work on his whole life.

Other goals on the horizon are to keep having fun pop-up parties and fantastic food, and to stay relevant with the current tech. In another few years, everyone’s going to have an Alexa. Bednarz wants the Ashburn Pub’s specials on Alexa every morning. He wants customers to be able to have Alexa order them food from the pub. “Being relevant, that’s what I want to do this year,” Bednarz says.

Contact Information

You can find Ashburn Pub on their website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can find Kevin Bednarz at his website.