Latest / Hawaii Travel Podcast by Hawaii’s Best: Plan a Better Hawaii Vacation / Explore Hawaii Like a Local with Shaka Guide - Hawaii's Best Tour Guide App
Transcript
- 0:00Andrew Fowers: But then also giving people this self guided tool where they can also live that for a week, you know, in terms of being able to see and explore and kind of explore like a local Andrew fowers is the owner and co founder of Shaka guide. Chaka Khan is a location based audio tour that uses GPS to guide you to exciting places on any of the four major islands. So we're talking Hawaii, a wahoo, Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii. Shaka, God automates this audio tour with turn by turn directions. And so meaning all you got to do is download the app. And it uses GPS to guide you to some amazing places and amazing turn by turn locations along the way. So this is something that if you're planning on coming to Hawaii, you're not gonna want to miss you're gonna want to download this app because it is incredible. So stay tuned. Liz cue that intro.
- 0:58Hawaii's Best: Hello, welcome to Hawaii's Best podcast. Learn the story behind Hawaii's Best experiences, influencers and businesses. Discover everything that makes Hawaii the Aloha state. And now your host, Brian Murphy.
- 1:14Bryan Murphy: Hello again and welcome to Hawaii's Best I'm your host Brian and here in Hawaii's Best we explore Hawaii's Best experiences businesses in influencers and we hear the story from the people behind them each episode we helped to educate and highlight Hawaiian culture. So you can have the best experience possible on your next day on Hawaii. And you can experience true Aloha and everything that makes Hawaii the Aloha state.
- 1:38Bryan Murphy: Thanks again for joining us today, I want to encourage you to hit that subscribe button so you stay up to date on all of our episodes and drop an honest review below that helps other people be able to find this conversation about Hawaii and be able to help their experiences and help them plan their next Hawaiian vacation. So really want to just thank you for considering to do that.
- 2:03Bryan Murphy: Everything that we talked about in this episode can be found in our show notes at live Hawaii's best.com forward slash Episode 014. And we're gonna have links below on all that you're gonna want to stay tuned to the end of this episode because I'll be sharing my key takeaways from my conversation with Andrew. But I'll just tell you this right up front, what I love about Shaka guide is you don't have to rely on somebody else to experience Hawaii like a local you have it in right on your smartphone. So you download the app and you experience Hawaii. Like a local you experience all the places yes, some of the most popular places that you can think of when you think of Hawaii, but also some of those off the beaten path type of places that are totally okay to go to that chakra guide helps guide you towards. But I want to let Andrew tell more about what Shaka guide is all about. So let's go ahead and let's talk story with Andrew flowers.
- 3:10Bryan Murphy: All right, Andrew, thank you so much for coming on Hawaii's Best today and hanging out with me.
- 3:13Bryan Murphy: How are you doing today? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
- 3:17Unknown: Thank you so much, Brian for having me. It's really exciting. My name is Andrew sours. And I'm the co founder and CEO of Shaka guide.
- 3:27Bryan Murphy: That's awesome.
- 3:27Bryan Murphy: What is Shaka guy.
- 3:29Unknown: If the listeners haven't heard of it basically Shaka guide. If for example, let's say there's a couples or a family that's traveling on vacation. You know, they want the freedom to sightsee while still learning about the area.
- 3:43Unknown: But the problem is they don't want to spend all day with an expensive tour guide. So we've created an app that basically tells Audio Stories based on location, giving the vacationers these travelers the freedom to explore on their own, with all the benefits of a tour just without the tour guide. So that's a one liner of what Shaka guide is. Of course I can can go into some more detail there for you.
- 4:11Bryan Murphy: That's great, man.
- 4:11Bryan Murphy: I can't wait to unpack some of that in the details. But how did you get into this? How did this all start?
- 4:18Unknown: So interesting. Wow.
- 4:18Unknown: It's It's been a long journey.
- 4:21Unknown: I'll give you the shorter version of it. But when I first came to Hawaii, I lived on the North Shore. I was a student at the Brigham Young University of Hawaii. And basically, I was a tour guide for the Polynesian culture center. I also lived on a highway right next to the beach there and every day I would see, you know two types of customers that would are travelers for that matter, and there'd be the travelers with a tour guide and they would get all this cool like local stuff and they'd stop at cool local spots. And then there's like everyone else that just drives the island and like mystery is so much cool stuff because they don't know where to go or they don't know, even some of the backstory about some of these places in Hawaii. And so there I was like in college as a as a junior. Now I was like, You know what? I'm gonna solve this problem. And what I did is I made an audio CD. This was back in 2009. Yeah. And I was like, this is gonna revolutionize tourism in Hawaii, right? So I bought a whole bunch of CDs, I actually entered a business plan competition, my college, I got some money, I ordered like 1500 CDs. And I think I sold a handful. And you know, most of that was to my family, and my mom, like, who shows sympathy on me. And so those seeds didn't go anywhere. And and I was really disappointed, like, wow, you know, what's going on here. But we didn't give up, you know, we actually entered the business plan competition the second year. But this time, I had come across a technology to incorporate the GPS functionality with an audio narration. This was very early iPhone, this is iPhone two, and very early. And this was actually with Garmin GPS. So I know that's kind of
- 6:16Bryan Murphy: cool, I usually go to Best Buy, I gotta get one of those.
- 6:20Unknown: Yeah, I know, like, this is how like, this is the early days of location based stuff, I was through a garment.
- 6:26Unknown: And so we ended up making a tour, that same audio circle, I haven't probably remade it with this Garmin thing. And then we actually eventually started selling it to the car rental companies who rented Garmin smart. So all of a sudden, overnight, we had, you know, hundreds of 1000s of different users, multiple islands, and in three languages. So we are selling eventually to all seven car rentals. And we ran that for about eight or nine years. And we just have this small little business doing this GPS audio tour type of thing with the Garmin. But then of course, the Garmin is very clear nowadays, they just don't exist anymore, or they're they're a dying breed of technology. So about three, four years ago, we decided to innovate on that, that the next generation is iPhone and Android. And so we went ahead and developed an app to basically create that same experience, but way more in depth, because now we're tracking the location, there's so much more stories that we can tell. So we basically developed an app, it was started by my wife and I as a co founder, we started actually in our house.
- 7:34Unknown: And we were on this full time for a year, before we actually released our first app, it was difficult when we first launched, you know, didn't really get a lot of downloads, and we were really disappointed.
- 7:47Unknown: But we continue to stick with it because we believe that the future of tourism, and the future of travel is not with a human led tour guide that the future of travel is where people can have the freedom to explore on their own, with all the benefits of a tour guide. And so we saw this trend really early on. And our goal was to remake that trend not only in Hawaii, but actually as we grow to other destinations as well. And so we proceeded to do you know, one tour two tours, little by little now we're up to 21 tours on four islands, we have the most comprehensive location based audio tour in Hawaii. Today, we have the most insane coverage.
- 8:33Unknown: For example, our road to Hana tour has over 135 audio narration points, over four hours of audio content that basically takes them the total of 10 hours of driving time for basically 10 bucks. So in terms of comparison to the quality, we have in depth research on the Hawaiian culture, what are some things to do also sensitive things like safety, as well as things not to do, you know, respecting the island and picking up after yourself. So we have a super like comprehensive audio narration for 10 bucks, that basically gives these visitors the experience of a tour without the tour guide.
- 9:21Unknown: Yeah, that's kind of how it started. And now we're just continuing to grow. And we're really thankful for the attraction and the reviews.
- 9:32Unknown: Today, we have over 9005 star reviews on the App Store combined with all of our apps, Android and iPhone, and it's just something that it's reshaping the way that people see Hawaii, and I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud to be a part of that, in sharing these islands that I care very much about.
- 9:52Bryan Murphy: There's so much there to unpack and, man, I think I wanted to go back a little bit and talk Where did this entrepreneur wheel drive.
- 9:59Bryan Murphy: Where did that maybe stem Enya was that modeled for you growing up, my mom was a school teacher and my dad was a, like entrepreneur slash.
- 10:12Unknown: He's had a couple of things. He had some sales. He did some sales. He also was a dairy farmer growing up. And so I will say that I did take a lot of it from my dad. Yeah. And also, I have to give a lot of credit to my wife, Rita, you know, it was her kind of courageousness, both of us together that we kind of joined together and said, you know, let's do this. Let's reshape an industry. And so it's kind of was both her and me together.
- 10:38Unknown: Yeah, with that shared vision.
- 10:42Unknown: But I would say I really gave birth to that dream. In college, though, thanks to some classes I took. I had some great entrepreneurial classes, we had kind of a business class, were supposed to start your own business. And I started to get a feel for that. I was like, this is really exciting. Of course, I will say I weigh underestimated how difficult it is. We had a grind for many, many years before we really started to see some glimmers of hope. And so entrepreneurship is not for the light hearted. But yeah, I would say starting college and just been doing it ever since.
- 11:21Bryan Murphy: So was there a pivot in college like you probably had something you enter college with a certain goal in mind? It sounds like there was this pivot? What were you wanting to get into? or?
- 11:32Unknown: Yeah, interesting. So if you look at my LinkedIn bio, I have this really, really deep into the bio, where I was an internal auditor, I actually studied accounting, I was on track to be an auditor at Deloitte and Touche out of college, I ended up passing the CPA exam a year after college.
- 11:50Unknown: So I was on track to be a CPA and be an auditor. But at that same time, I started to dabble in entrepreneurship, starting my own business. And so I just kind of say, that's fine, you know, don't quit your day job type of thing. And, and so I kind of ran that on the side for a bit. But then it really came to a decision point where I had a couple partners in this early business with a CD. And it really came at a point where I either had to buy them out and stick with my guns and grow this business. Or I had to bail and go be an auditor. So you know, really difficult decision point in my life, we had actually moved out of the dorms, we were living in a hotel, we had everything in the back of our trunk of our car. And it was kind of like it was a make it or break it moment. So through, you know, prayer and some careful consideration, we decided to go for it and basically pass up the auditor opportunity. And we went all in on it. And three years later, before we had our first paycheck. So it was a very long haul. But I will say that it was, of course the best decision of my life, because it allowed us to go on this amazing journey of exploration and self discovery and some really gut wrenching challenges. But I will say that I've grown a ton from it.
- 13:18Bryan Murphy: I love that those early days. I know you mentioned that you you believe in the product. But what was it that kept you driving? I mean, to attribute 9000 positive reviews today, what do you think attributed to the success of shocker guide,
- 13:34Unknown: we have an insane level of quality control for detail.
- 13:39Unknown: And, you know, if you think about a normal tour guide, if you've ever had a tour guy that's had a bad day, it really sucks. You know that you go you go around this on the in a little mini bus with this guy or girl and it's just kind of man, he's not on his game. And you're just kind of like, he's just going on and on or, or maybe some of this stuff isn't factual isn't isn't correct. He's just kind of BS and a lot of that stuff. And so we decided that if we're going to do a tour, it's going to be the best dang tour, like ever. And this tour is going to be the best tour every day. Because it's recorded consistent, right? It's this consistent quality, just like just in I love audio, the audio form of storytime. So I said, we're gonna make a tour, and he's gonna have the best tour day ever, every day for every tour. And of course, that led to a lot of research, primary sources, secondary sources, looking in to more detail about much of the Hawaiian culture and really making sure we represent it correctly. So any local here could listen to and say, heck, yeah, like that represents my culture, and they would be proud of it. And so we have that quality and you'll get a sense for the Listen to it, we do try to be true to that authenticity in the product. And that really shines forth. And I will say that that's the primary reason that we've been able to grow.
- 15:09Unknown: We've done very little marketing. This is actually my first podcast I've ever been on.
- 15:15Unknown: But we just focus on making great products and the customers tell their friends and they tell their friends. And that's kind of how we've grown from here.
- 15:24Bryan Murphy: That's incredible.
- 15:24Bryan Murphy: Now what what was the first guy that you started out? With? What I assume it'd be the wahoo? Guy?
- 15:29Unknown: Yeah, correct. Yeah, we started with a circle Island, a wahoo. Tour, okay, because I, we live in a wahoo. Right now, you know, that tour had over nine revisions, it took over six to seven months total, to write and make, I have driven the circle Island towards testing each of the GPS points, I can't tell you how many times. So what happens is when customers are driving, it will tell them where to stop or some cool beaches to check out. It's so accurate that it will say turn now or look to your left. And you will actually see that on your left or on your right. And so it's this insane level of quality and detail, that accuracy, that people are like blown away, because they're driving their own vehicle. But it's seriously like there's someone in the car with them.
- 16:20Unknown: And that's what we're trying to create is this. You know, Uncle Shaka guys in the, in the car with taking them around and you know, telling them
- 16:32Bryan Murphy: all about this island. That's awesome. All these recordings. Did you do all the recordings? or How did that work?
- 16:38Unknown: So we have a voice talent named gray. Okay, he grew up in Hawaii, he used to be actually a radio host for this one of the Hawaii local. So he just he also kind of gets the whole vibe and you can kind of get a sense for his style as well. You listen to it, he's an older guy now but he really is full of life and aloha just welcoming people helping them feel comfortable as they as they travel on site.
- 17:04Bryan Murphy: All the research that you guys have done into this and all the diligence and all the respect for the culture is really incredible. If someone's coming to LA who did is had one week they had seven days. What are the must sees in your opinion?
- 18:14Unknown: Oh, man, see? Cuz like I know everything about
- 18:19Bryan Murphy: every Island. So if you go back before you're in San Diego, right, like, for a while, who and if you have the shocker guide then Okay, what would be like, Okay, you got to make sure you hit these points the first time for a while,
- 18:32Unknown: like oh, to a wahoo I would actually say go to another island first. Oh, okay, I live in a wahoo. A wahoo is getting like a little bit more crowded.
- 18:40Unknown: It's a little bit more for shopping and for resort destination. But there is some really fun cool stuff on a lawn.
- 18:47Unknown: So I'll give you my top. One thing to do on a wahoo. This is true for trending right now. But there is an art district in downtown Kakaako. This is near in between kind of Honolulu and Waikiki. It's an old refurbished construction area that they've made into this beautiful art murals. And so this is street art. They have hundreds of them all over the walls as you're kind of driving through the area. So what we've done just recently is we actually partnered with Vicki bike, they do a bike sharing thing in downtown right, so we have a street art audio tour of the art murals, that's incredible, you can actually put your headphones in, get on a bike and we will actually take you around and actually tell you the backstories of the motivations for these artists and some of those deeper meanings that you just don't get from seeing at face value. And so this is just launched about a month ago. It's free right now for everyone. All you have to do is download the shock guide a wahoo app. It's free until the end of the year so I would definitely check it out. It's a lot of fun. It only takes about 45 minutes
- 19:56Bryan Murphy: that's great way to go. No Okay, so if you shouldn't go to a wahoo your very first time what Island man
- 20:02Unknown: I don't know I feel like big islands kind of getting a cold shoulder nowadays because the lava is kind of like dead right now. There's there's no flowing lava. And so there's not a lot of people going to Big Island I would say big on has a ton of really cool stuff to offer. It's also a lot less crowded nowadays. Because people aren't going so basically download the shock that we have five different driving tours with peace out that island and five different sections with different loops. And I would say by far the coolest one is the North Island jungle adventure.
- 20:36Unknown: That one takes for sure a half day, but it goes to all the cool stuff in terms of Waimea. It goes out to IPO and it goes actually goes on this back row.
- 20:49Unknown: The mamalahoa Highway takes you to three lava tubes and like no one knows about and there are these lava tubes like off the beaten path, you seriously have to take the tour, because otherwise you won't find them, then it's that like, hard to know where to go. But it's just there's so much cool stories there that it has the jungle hamakua coast, all that stuff is really cool. So I don't know, that would be one of my favorites on Big Island, when you're creating a guide, are you kind of heading that up and go into the spots and like and doing the research and all that?
- 21:21Unknown: Yeah. So originally, when we first started, I was doing all this. So as going to these places, checking them out for myself, you know, talking to the people there, then we actually started to hire some people to help just because we there's too much to cover just with me and my wife alone. So yeah, we now have a great team that works with us, Mike Chen has been really helpful in helping out with our core creation for over a year. Now, he's also done a lot of the tour testing, because once we actually make the tour, we actually have to test it, and making sure that each point is like, super, super accurate. And the only way to do that is drive the island a ton of time. And that's what we do. But yeah, we have a lot of people that help out with our company now, just in order in terms of the technology side. And in terms of the content side, we also have some people help out with some of the marketing as well.
- 22:15Bryan Murphy: Was it your intent to stay on island? Or did you have plans to move off after college? To be honest,
- 22:21Unknown: after college, I wanted to pursue entrepreneurship. But as I stayed, I've been on Island now 16 years. And the more you live here, the more I feel part of this place. I am a transplant but I still feel very much connected to this place and wanting to make sure that we properly represent it, and making sure that our content is culturally appropriate. But I don't know it wasn't my intention originally. But after staying here for so long, raising my family here and like I just actually got off the mountain. I went on an overnight backpacking trip yesterday, out on white night to the Coachella trail. It was a seven mile trail. I slept in my hammock overnight, got rained on, woke up the next morning and hiked out all by myself I. So I really personally love this place. I love to connect with this place.
- 23:17Unknown: I myself try to stay active and in living Hawaii, just like the living this dream. But then also giving people this self guided tool where they can also live that for a week, you know, in terms of being able to see and explore and kind of explore like a local in their own regard. So
- 23:39Bryan Murphy: yeah, someone's coming to the islands for the first time. What are some of the things that you would want them to know as far as etiquette, maybe some things to do some things not to do?
- 23:48Unknown: Yeah, good point. In terms of etiquette, there's a couple pet peeves I have, like, people tend to stack rocks a lot. When they're going on hiking trails, they will stack rocks. Also, if you go to Big Island people will make they'll put white rocks on the black lava. And they'll like basically, it's like rock graffiti that is highly disrespectful, the stacking of the rocks is symbolic of a prayer to your ancestors here in Hawaii, and also ruins the natural landscape. So in our tour, we tell people not to do that rock graffiti art with the white coral. And then also not to stack rocks. And then also just like picking up after yourself. Like I was like driving on the road to Hana. And there was a local there. And I told them what we were doing.
- 24:35Unknown: And she's like, for crying out loud, tell people to take a trash bag with them in their car. Like, why can't people just throw it on trash? She's like, I was walking the road because she's walking with her dog. And like, there was like a dirty diaper like thrown off the side of the road. And it's just like, Come on people like so.
- 24:53Unknown: Something that we try to emphasize is just mallamma I know it's like respecting that land. Do that in every way as I leave no trace only take memories. That's all that we want. And we want to remind people to do when they're traveling.
- 25:09Bryan Murphy: That's great.
- 25:09Bryan Murphy: Andrew, what does the future of Shaka guy look like? From your perspective?
- 25:14Unknown: Yeah, so the future of Shaka guide is connecting stories with places not only changing the way people see Hawaii, but see the world. So we are in the process of expanding we want you know, we get requests all the time of people from Scotland and Ireland and Australia and Italy and like Tasmania, people who all around the world come to Hawaii and the experience shock a guy while on Iran and then they want that back in there. Correct. So I have I have people all the time that are reaching out for a partnership or if they can use our app and can we do this in my home city. And so we're in the process right now of creating a platform of sorts to allow other tour creators are passionate storytellers, who, you know, they want to tell their story about their hometown in the same type of way and authenticity that Shaka does. And so we're opening that tool to other people where they can go in and share their stories with other people. And through the same type of location based audio medium that, you know, we look at podcasting as this huge revolution. My feeling is the next generation of podcasts is connecting those stories. With a place it takes on a whole different meeting. When you hear a story in front of a place, no longer is it just this thing that you imagine your head, it's right in front of you. And if we can do that with places all around the world, I will be a very happy man. I've been doing this for over 12 years in this industry. I started with a CD.
- 26:50Unknown: We've basically finished Hawaii and now we're we have these goals to to offer this tool and other places as well.
- 27:00Bryan Murphy: I love that it there's kind of this umbrella company, if you will of this. I really totally believe that.
- 27:06Bryan Murphy: Audio is now it is the future I can just imagine. Hey, you know, Alexa, hey, Siri, tell me about this place. Yeah, essentially. That's kind of what Shaka got is. That's what you're doing?
- 27:17Unknown: Yes, yes. Totally.
- 27:19Bryan Murphy: Okay, kind of left field question. If you had to delete all but three apps from your smartphone, which ones would you keep?
- 27:25Unknown: So I would keep there.
- 27:25Unknown: I have a family chat service that's called Meili, where it's like a small group chat thing with my family. So I have brothers and sisters all over the United States. And this is the way that we communicate. The second one would be iTunes Connect, which basically has all of our our app history in terms of installs and revenues. I'm checking that frequently, just checking on, on soccer guys. And then the last one is actually called the gospel library app.
- 27:57Unknown: So I'm a Christian, I believe in and religion, and specifically, I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And there's this app where it has basically all of our scriptures there, including the Bible. And so I read it daily. And it's really important to me, so I think those would be the top three, for sure. I love that.
- 28:17Unknown: Thank
- 28:19Bryan Murphy: you so much, Andrew, how can people find shaaka guide and get connected with you and your company?
- 28:26Unknown: Yes, thank you. So me and Brian, were talking, you know, before we started this, and we are actually doing a promotion, actually with with Brian, where we are offering one free tour to every single customer who comes to looking at the show notes. So if you click that link from the show notes, you will get one free tour for a wahoo. And that's just complimentary of, you know, something that we want to provide as kind of a little promo. So that will be the South Shore tour of La which takes people around a Noma Bay and Kailua area. So if you click that link for the show notes, you can get that. There's also going to be a link for the Viki street art tour. You can click that as well. And that is also going to take you to the free tour for Vicki. So yeah, that's the fastest way is click the show notes. We have four different apps, one for each island. So we have Shaka guide, Allahu Maui. Big Island and Koi.
- 29:24Unknown: So yeah, definitely check out Shaka guide. You can also go to our website shopping guide.com Yeah, super stoked to meet you and look forward to maybe having some further conversations.
- 29:38Unknown: We'll follow up.
- 29:40Bryan Murphy: I love that.
- 29:40Bryan Murphy: Andrew, thank you so much for what you're doing and your inspiration and doing all that research. And it sounds like it's changing someone's experience on the islands. And that is incredible. Because a lot of us are about that freedom. And when you're talking about that tour guide, I kind of liken it to you go to Disneyland. I don't know if anyone has been listening A lot of you guys have but you go on Jungle Cruise. And you either you have the best Jungle Cruise experience, junk critters doesn't change out. The elephants are still there. The hippos are still there. But it's the tour guide that makes or breaks that Jungle Cruise. And what you're doing is you are giving people a consistent, excellent experience no matter what place they are an island.
- 30:25Bryan Murphy: And I just think that is incredible. So just thank you so much for all your hard work and for pushing through and for following this dream. And thank you so much for coming on Hawaii's Best today.
- 30:38Unknown: Yeah, thank you.
- 30:39Bryan Murphy: Well, thanks again. And I just want to say thank you to Andrew for his time and all the work that he and his team put into this amazing app.
- 30:45Bryan Murphy: I'm sure after hearing our conversation together that the amount of research that Andrew has done is probably mine.
- 30:53Bryan Murphy: boggling to you. And to think that all this is in within the app. So for me, my biggest takeaway was that the Shaka guide app allows this sense of freedom, right? When you go and you want to explore new places, for me, I don't know if you're like me, but for me, I don't want to have to rely on somebody else. I just want to get out there with my family. And I want to just go ahead and get out there and create those memories.
- 31:20Bryan Murphy: I don't want to have to wait for like a bus tour or like, get back on the bus at 1230. No, I just want to get out there with my family. And I want to go out and I want to explore these places on our own. And Shaka guide allows you to do that. So again, I want to just say thank you to Andrew for all the work that he and his team have done.
- 31:43Bryan Murphy: Go to live Hawaii's best.com forward slash Episode 014. And you can download Shaka guide right there and like Andrew said, there's a special promotion going on, just for Hawaii's Best listener. So thanks again, Andrew for that.
- 31:57Bryan Murphy: And until next time, guys be well. Aloha.
- 32:04Hawaii's Best: Thanks for listening to Hawaii's Best podcasts. Stay up to date on future episodes, be sure to hit the subscribe button and follow us on Instagram at Hawaii's Best