We Owned Our Market, and Culture Was the Real Secret
- 2 hours ago
- 13 min read
We had the only non-stop route. We had fair prices. But the thing that built real loyalty, broke a competitor when they tried, and convinced Alaska Airlines to pay us to remove our company from the market — was something we didn’t even know to build for the first decade.
Twenty-five years.
That is how long John and I owned and operated Hawaiian Vacations. Twenty-five years of carrying Alaskans to the islands. Twenty-five years of growth, hard decisions, learning experiences, and the eventual sale of the company to Alaska Airlines.
In all of that time, there is one thing I am more proud of than anything else.
It is not the routes. It is not the planes. It is not the financials, although those mattered a great deal.
| It is the culture we intentionally nurtured.
I want to be honest about something before we go further, though. We did not nurture our culture deliberately from day one. We were close to ten years into the business before we even recognized that we needed to define our culture on purpose, and longer than that before we learned how to do it well. That gap — between starting the business and starting the culture work — is the part of the story most owner-operators relate to. If you have been running your company for years and you are only now realizing the culture has been forming on its own, you are in good company. You are where we were.
This week, I want to walk you through what we built once we did know — and why I believe culture is the single most underestimated lever in a successful business.
Part 1: Why We Owned Our Market — Honestly
Let me start with the part most business writing skips past.
For most of the twenty-five years we owned Hawaiian Vacations, we offered the only non-stop air service between Alaska and Hawaii. If a customer didn’t fly with us, they had to connect — through Seattle, San Francisco, or Los Angeles — or they had to pick somewhere else to go entirely. Mexico. Disneyland. A different vacation altogether. Or they could skip the trip and put the money toward a new TV or a car.
We owned the market in part because no one else offered the route.
I will not pretend otherwise. The position we held wasn’t won in a daily fight for share. It was, in a real sense, structural. And it would have been easy — and it is the temptation a lot of operators in a similar position give in to — to act like a monopoly. To get sloppy on price. To stop investing in service. To take customers for granted because they didn’t have another non-stop option.
We made a habit of not doing that.
We priced fairly. We invested in the experience as if a competitor were going to walk through the door tomorrow. We took our commitment to the community in Alaska and in Hawaii seriously, in writing and in practice. And a couple of times over those twenty-five years, another airline did try to come into the market. They never lasted long. We beat them on service. We beat them on prices. We beat them on the relationships we had built with travel agents, with vendors, with the communities at both ends of the route. Most of that — almost all of it, in fact — stemmed from the culture we eventually built inside the company.
That is the lesson worth lingering on. Owning a market without a direct competitor is temporary because the moment someone shows up, every habit you developed during the easy years gets tested in a single quarter. The companies that survive that moment are the ones that ran their easy years like they were hard.
When the implicit message of your operation is the numbers matter more than the experience, accountability ends up tied to whoever is shouting the loudest that day. I have written more about how that pattern takes root and how to undo it in Building a Culture of Accountability Starts with Your Values.
If a real competitor walked into your market tomorrow morning, what about your business today would survive the test?
Part 2: WERQ — The Cornerstone of Our Culture
The cornerstone we eventually built our culture on was a four-letter ethic. We called it WERQ.
W is for Win-Win. The team atmosphere at HVI was based on the assumption that cooperation is an imperative — if the company succeeds, all involved will win. The concept extended outward, too: to our guests, our vendors, our community. We treated those relationships as a shared upside, not a transaction to optimize. And we celebrated the wins. Out loud. By name. The big ones and the small ones. A culture that doesn’t mark its wins ends up only marking its losses, and that is a slow erosion of every reason a person might want to keep doing the work.
E is for Efficiency. A commitment to using the right technology wherever it earned its place. We made a massive investment in a then-groundbreaking online reservations system — two years to develop and implement. Before that, every booking went through an agent on a phone keying data into our in-house system. The investment wasn’t a luxury. It was the price of operating at the scale we needed to operate at, and of giving our team the tools to do the work without constant friction. Efficiency is what frees a culture to focus on the work that actually requires people, instead of the work that should have been automated three years ago.
R is for Responsibility. This is the leg most owner-operators get wrong, because they read the word responsibility and they hear control. They are not the same. We had no time clocks at Hawaiian Vacations. People were expected to act responsibly without somebody watching over their shoulder, and they did, because the rest of the culture made it possible for them to. Responsibility also meant something we said out loud: when we made a mistake, we admitted it, apologized, and took action to fix it. That applied to the company as a whole, and to every individual in it. It applied financially — to our employees, our customers, and our vendors.
Q is for Quality. A consistent commitment to delighting our guests. We had a working definition of a successful trip — what we called the Valuable Final Product. It was this: a tan, happy guest stepping off the airplane back in Anchorage, ready to go to Hawaii again. That sentence ran the company. Every process could be evaluated against it. If something didn’t move us toward the tan, happy, returning guest, we either fixed it or stopped doing it.
You will call yours something else. The point isn’t the acronym. The point is having an explicit cornerstone the team can name when they are tested — and being willing to do the work to get there, even if you are starting in year ten instead of year one.
If you want the framework we used to anchor a culture from the cornerstone outward, the 6 Principles Free Training is where to start.
Part 3: The Six Elements Every Culture Needs
WERQ was the cornerstone. But a cornerstone, on its own, doesn’t hold a building up. There are six elements every functioning culture needs — and the gap between businesses that have a culture and businesses that have a vibe is almost always one of these six being missing.
Clear values and a clear mission. The values, the beliefs, the guiding principles — written down, spoken often, understood by everyone in the building. Long-term goals aligned with those values. If your team cannot tell me what your company stands for in one sentence, in their own words, the values are not yet doing the work they need to do.
Leadership alignment. Leaders embody the culture in their actions and in their decisions. The way leadership communicates — the tone, the cadence, the willingness to be honest under pressure — sets the temperature for everyone else. The team will reproduce what they observe, not what they are told.
Open communication. People can raise ideas, name concerns, push back on something they think is wrong, without fear of retaliation. The day that stops being true is the day you stop hearing the most important information about your business.
Employee engagement and empowerment. A real sense of ownership and pride in the mission. Opportunities to contribute meaningfully — not just to execute. The culture itself drives engagement, collaboration, and accountability when these elements are present together.
Adaptability. A culture that can flex as the company grows and as the environment changes. Cultures that cannot adapt either calcify or fracture, depending on the kind of pressure that arrives. The strongest cultures hold their core principles steady while letting the practices around them evolve.
Accountability. Clear expectations and accountability systems aligned with the cultural values. Policies and procedures that reinforce the culture rather than contradict it. The role of formal rules in shaping day-to-day behavior is real — and ignoring it is one of the most common failure modes for owner-operators who think culture is purely an emotional thing.
If the measurement piece of accountability is where you keep stalling, Why Measuring Performance is Critical to Success walks through the rhythm we used at HVI — daily, weekly, quarterly — and how to install it without overwhelming the team.
These six elements are interlocking. Strong values without leadership alignment produces cynicism. Open communication without accountability produces noise. Engagement without adaptability produces resistance the moment the company has to change. The work of culture is keeping all six in a working state at the same time, and adjusting as the business demands more from each of them.
Part 4: A Different Industry, Same Principle
I want to share an example from a completely different industry, because culture is portable in a way that owner-operators tend to underestimate.
Jigsaw Health is a nutritional supplement company. Their tagline is It’s Fun to Feel Good. The thing I love about them — the thing every owner-operator should sit with — is that they don’t have a Customer Service team. They have a Customer Happiness Team. That is not branding. That is the way the team is named, defined, hired against, and trained.
Their stated beliefs include this line, in their own words: " We believe in 'out-hugging' our competition. The phrasing is theirs. The principle is the same one we used at Hawaiian Vacations: Quality is what you commit to, every day, in the way you treat the people who pay you. Jigsaw built their culture around making customers happy, not around handling complaints. Same principle, different industry, different size, different decade.
A supplements company and a charter airline can land in the same place from very different starting points, because culture is not industry-specific. It is owner-specific. It comes from the leadership, the values, and the deliberate choices made over time about how the company will behave.
The throughline of all of these structures is documentation — the unglamorous work of writing down how the company actually operates so the standard outlives any one person in the room. I have made the case for that practice, in detail, in The Power of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s).
Part 5: What the Culture Actually Built — and Why Alaska Airlines Bought Us
The reason I keep coming back to culture is what it actually produced over the years we tended it.
It produced a team that took genuine ownership of the guest experience and stayed long enough to compound. It produced loyalty — customers who could have flown a connection through Seattle, picked Mexico, picked Disneyland, picked a new car — and chose us, again, the next time they were ready to travel. It produced resilience — the times a competitor entered the market, we beat them not with discounting or aggressive tactics, but with the way we showed up for the people who had been with us all along. The culture did that work for us.
And, eventually, it produced our exit.
People assume Alaska Airlines came knocking at our door. They didn’t. We approached them. And when they evaluated us, they were not buying our routes for the sake of operating them. They bought us to buy the market. They wanted that Alaska-to-Hawaii business for themselves, and the reason they were willing to pay for the company instead of simply launching a competing service was the customer loyalty we had built. They knew it would be an expensive battle to win the market from us by force.
It was cheaper to buy the market than to win the market.
After the deal closed, Alaska Airlines shut Hawaiian Vacations down. That had been their plan. They didn’t want our brand on the route. They wanted the route, and the loyalty that came with it, transferred to them.
I want owner-operators to sit with what that means. The price Alaska Airlines paid us was, in a real sense, the price of the culture we had built — translated into customer loyalty, translated into market position, translated into a number on a wire transfer. The product, the planes, the routes, the operations — those were the vehicle. The culture was the cargo. And the cargo was what the buyer was paying for.
For the version of this argument focused on what culture protects when you scale — and the questions to ask before you grow past it — see Expanding Without Compromising Quality Starts with Culture and Curiosity.
If the culture you have today is one you inherited rather than designed — one that grew under pressure rather than under intention — that is not a permanent condition. We were a decade in before we knew we needed to do the work. The work compounded from the point we started, not from the point we should have started. None of it has to be perfect. It has to be started, and then maintained.
THIS WEEK’S EXERCISE
Name Your Guiding Principles
Take ninety quiet minutes this week and work through these prompts in writing. There is no right or wrong, and your principles may shift over time. The point is to name them clearly enough that the team can hold you to them.
What four to six words capture the cornerstone of the culture you want this company to have? Could every member of your team repeat them back tomorrow?
Of the six elements every culture needs — clear values, leadership alignment, open communication, engagement, adaptability, accountability — which one is the strongest in your business right now? Which one is the weakest? What would it take this quarter to move the weakest one up by one notch?
Who, on your team, currently embodies the culture you want most fully? What is one thing they do that the rest of the team should be doing? How are you reinforcing it publicly?
When was the last time your company celebrated a win out loud, by name, in front of the team? If the answer is “I’m not sure,” that is a Win-Win leg of the cornerstone that needs more attention than you’ve been giving it.
What is one decision you would make differently this month if you were running the company strictly against the values you say you hold? What is stopping you from making that decision now?
The cornerstone gets named in writing. The six elements get tended to, one at a time. The behavior gets celebrated when it shows up and corrected when it doesn’t. That is the work. Year after year, that is what builds a market position nobody else can take from you.
EXPERT SPOTLIGHT
Some people have a remarkable ability to help others see what has been holding them back all along. Lin Schussler-Williams is one of those people.
Lin is a Pattern Breaker, Super Connector, and Possibility Instigator who helps individuals move beyond the subconscious patterns that keep them stuck and into deeper connection with themselves, their work, and the people around them.
Breaking Patterns That No Longer Serve You
Through The Lucid Sequence, Lin guides people through a powerful process rooted in neuroscience and quantum principles. This work helps uncover and release limiting subconscious programming—much of which was formed long ago and may not even reflect who they truly are today.
The result is greater clarity, stronger alignment, and the ability to move forward with more ease and confidence.
Supporting Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurs
Lin works with coaches, healers, consultants, podcasters, and solopreneurs—people who are deeply committed to making a meaningful difference but sometimes feel as though an unseen force keeps getting in the way.
Her work helps them remove those invisible obstacles so they can create the results they are capable of achieving.
Building Communities Centered on Genuine Connection
In addition to her transformational work, Lin is the founder and co-founder of several collaborative communities designed to foster authentic relationships and support:
Bridge Collective — a networking platform that integrates with LinkedIn and Zoom to help professionals build meaningful connections without cold outreach or awkward sales pitches
Author and Thought Leader
Lin is also the author of 9 Little Words to Change Your Results, a practical guide to shifting mindset and creating better outcomes.
A Mission Rooted in Ease and Flow
At the heart of Lin’s work is a simple but profound belief: life and business do not need to feel like a constant struggle.
She helps people live and lead from clarity, presence, and flow—creating deeper connections and more meaningful results along the way.
Connect with Lin
If you are ready to uncover what may be holding you back and step into greater alignment and possibility, Lin would love to connect - Meet Lin Here
Final Thoughts
I have been asked, more times than I can count, what the real secret to Hawaiian Vacations was. People are looking for an angle. The deal. The route. The pricing trick. The marketing channel. The piece of luck that turned everything.
There wasn’t one.
The closest thing to a secret is this: we held a structural advantage — the only non-stop route —, and we made a habit of not behaving as if we did. We competed against our customers’ alternatives, not against the absence of a competitor. We invested in the experience as if a competitor were going to walk through the door tomorrow. And when one occasionally did, we were ready.
A great product brought people in. A fair price kept them comparing. The culture is what kept them coming back and bringing their friends — and what eventually convinced a buyer it was cheaper to acquire the market than to fight us for it.
We owned our market. The reason we owned it was not what most people would guess. And we did not even know that ourselves until about a decade into the work.
Pick the cornerstone. Name the values. Tend to the six elements. Celebrate the wins out loud. Trust your people enough to take down the time clocks. Treat your guests, your vendors, and your team as people who win when the company wins.
That is the real secret. And it is the work that, in time, lets you walk away on your terms.
With love and clarity,
Ral West
Livin’ the Dream
FREE DIAGNOSTIC TOOL You built a successful business. So why does it still need you for everything?In under 3 minutes, the free Owner Bottleneck Diagnostic will show you precisely where owner dependency is holding your business back - and give you a clear picture of what it will take to finally change it. |
WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER
|
8 questions - under 3 minutes - instant personalized results No cost. No obligation. No fluff.
|
Subscribe and watch our latest videos on YouTube
Know someone who could benefit? Share this link with them!
