 Welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Daelyn Yanagita sitting in for Reg Baker today. We are broadcasting live from the ThinkTech studios in Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu, and if you want to tune in, we are live at www.thinktechhawaii.com. If you would like to subscribe to our programs or get on our mailing list, please go to www.thinktechhawaii.com and sign up. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to bring you stories of businesses and people in Hawaii. Our guests share with us how they were able to build successes in our challenging environment, and today I am so honored to have Carleen McKay in the ThinkTech studios with us today. Carleen McKay is an author, speaker, and expert in the area of emergent workforce and alternative careers. Welcome to the show Carleen, and thank you so much for joining us today. You have so much to share about yourself and the work that you do that let's jump right in. So please tell our viewers about your background and your specialty. Well my background is very much like yours. I started with Human Resources and then decided to see the world, and the way to do that was to find a way to continue to develop and grow. I went to places like Penang, Malaysia, Oregon, which was a real foreign land time by the way. Mexico, any number of places to learn and to grow. And then I landed in Silicon Valley, and I was doing work with Steve Jobs and other people who were leaders at the time. And I saw something there that I've never forgotten, and that is that the world not only was changing, it had changed. And this was in the late 70s by the way, we're not talking about recent. So when I moved to Hawaii three years ago, and I've been used to standing on stages and writing books and having a great old time, I thought everybody here would be on the same page. And what I realized is they weren't. And not only were they not, they needed to be. So we needed to pay real good attention to all generations and help them to see the future that's here in an island, on an island. Anywhere in the world that you are today, you've got to be paying attention to the future. So that was the basic starting point. So how do young people today then find where it is that they need to be in this emerging workforce? Now you've got to play on this one with me, because we've had this conversation. Unfortunately, there are several things working against them. One is that they're still offered much in the way of learning that isn't very useful. And we know this, you and I, we've talked about it. Two, they've also been told something that used to be true, which is follow your passion. And nobody ever gives you the other half, which is your passion, better meet marketplace need. I think a lot of teachers, many, many teachers, teach what they've always taught, but it's a different time in a different place. So one of the things I have found here by looking are people such as at the Hogan program with John, Dr. John West, who teaches the entrepreneurs of Shamanad. And then I started seeing that some of the kids were seeing it, but here's a piece of that that kind of fits for today. Most of the students that are entrepreneurs that go on for masters are leaving Hawaii because the opportunities don't present themselves here as quickly, but that's changing and it's changing fast, I'm happy to say. Do our young people need to gain the tools to understand how to create those opportunities for themselves? Absolutely. How do they do that? Well, there's a couple of people here again who are doing a very good job at that. Star of the Sea, where I'm a board member, takes early learning very seriously. And little second and third graders are building robots and learning how to use technology in a way that's really play, as contrasted with just, oh, some book learning that nobody's too interested in. So we're seeing that happen, but not enough. The charter schools are making some good inroads. I don't know about the public schools enough here to make an overall comment, but I know about public schools, other places, and usually they lag, usually. So I know that you've spent some time developing, writing, authoring playbooks, and we talked a little bit about your playbook for teens and how important you felt it was for teens, particularly girls to understand what it is that they need to do to develop careers. Tell me about that playbook. Well, I was so excited about this playbook. What I did was what I do with all my playbooks is that I find the target audience and interview people. So I interviewed 20 young women and talked with them about such things as, what do you wish you'd told your younger self? Study harder. What did you need to learn that you didn't? I don't know. I think there's always something you think you don't know that you need more information about that. I should have paid more attention to that. Well, and what was beautiful about it, every single one of the young women, and they were all between 20 and 35 that I interviewed, was trying to give advice to teenagers. And they were talking about what they regretted they didn't do and what they were happy they did. I'll give you a couple stories. One was this young woman from another country with very, very underdeveloped country, and her mother got ovarian cancer. So her inspiration came from illness and she paid attention to it and said, I've got to be part of helping that. So there was somebody who really, really did something about it. Another young woman who I was very, very fond of happens to be my granddaughter. I interviewed her as well, my oldest granddaughter. And I said, you're an artist and she's a beautiful artist. What do you hope to do with it? And she said, I don't know, but if I can't do what I'm here for, what's the point? And so I suggested to her that she look at how she could apply her love and her art to what the market needed. And she went off and studied animation. She's in college in her last year of college now. And she's just been to South Korea for animation. Did you know they were leaders in animation in South Korea? Yeah, no idea. And now she's got a marketable skill from her love of art. And Pixar is already talking to her about possible, I'm not saying they've offered her anything, but there are people who are interested, which is what we all hope for. Wow. Wow. Wouldn't it be amazing if we all were able to do something that we absolutely loved, right? And that it paid the bills. Well, the paid the bills part. That's the part that's really the challenge. Yeah. So tell me how people should be able to understand what the emerging workforce in Hawaii is. What is that? Where is that space? What should we be looking at? Well, you can look at it generationally for one good insight. We're the oldest living state of the United States, longest living, I should say. And then look around again and say, well, that's okay. We're here to take care of our capuna. Well, that was one thing to take care of grandma when she died at 65 or 68 or 70. Right. Now we've got them living easily to their middle 80s. And now you have the next generation taking care of the youngest generation. So you've got to squeeze. So what I do with older people and the great passion of mine to help people see that you stay healthy longer, you stay active longer, you have more fun if you continue to contribute in some way. So for some people, it's finding a way to make money out of what they already know. For some people, it's new skills updating. For some people, it's volunteer work, but work, some form of work is actually life lengthening. That's the older, the youngest to go back to your original question. I think that it's up to all of us to be sure that we're paying attention that our children are getting the education we're paying so heavily for. And frankly, I don't know the answer to that here, but I know that when I look at my grandchildren, and it's costing $40,000, $50,000 a year to send them to college, I care very much that it's marketable when they get done with this. Yeah. So we both have backgrounds in HR. So people might frequently ask you as an emergent workforce expert, what are the job titles that I should be looking at? Don't look at job titles. Look at what work needs to be done and how to do it. And I'll tell you one thing for sure, absolutely. Good skills often are a larger benefit than the wrong degree. So there's not everybody should be in college, right? Not everybody should think, go right into the four years, right, that they can start with community or online or other ways, until you're clear with your direction and that that direction meets market need. I call it high school. That's part of just a longer high school period. It's interesting in Canada, high school is five years, by the way, not four. And that's essentially their first year of college. They get the feeling that they're starting to have to make decisions. So I think part of the problem we have is that people are not, most people, not all, are not ready to make decisions. They're just going off to college because they want to and because maybe they can. Would I send a kid to college who didn't need to go to college? Never. How do you know when that kid doesn't need to go to college? Because you can see it in them quite young. You can see, I've seen children and I do mean thousands who have fabulous talent and they like the skills. Start there. Don't start with forcing them into a four-year degree where they're learning stuff. Right. Let them start there and then eventually they can take that and hone it. Look at yourself. Human resources. Wonderful, wonderful career field. How's it changing? Oh, it's changing quite a bit. In fact, it's moving away from meeting people in a specific place. There is telecommuting. We are shrinking workforces because of automation. It's so amazing the way that the workforce is evolving. But for folks like myself or human resources professionals, there's a fear that there's not going to be work for us. That's not true. There'll be more work, but it'll be different. The threat is artificial intelligence. Let's say that we can immediately decide who we need full-time, part-time, some of the time or once in a while. That's part of what we have to deal with. That's the threat. The opportunity side is to motivate and inspire people in learning and development. Not training, right, learning and development. I think HR is going to evolve that way. I don't think it's important that you do hiring. I don't. I think that was purely a reaction to safeguards. Make sure that we've got all the Ts crossed and so forth. But I think to help to build a learning and development community is going to be the next big thing. What do you think? I do think that we need to take more time to build learning communities. I think that we should be guiding people in how to strategically bring the ideas to fruition and putting thoughts into action. Those sorts of tools. You're right. The people are always around to be recruited into jobs, hired into jobs. It's a matter of finding what their skill sets are and making that useful to make sure it's aligned. That's the whole point. That's a point of the organization and the point of the individual. You were mentioning to me earlier when we spoke before this broadcast about what's next. I really like the idea of journalism. I like the fact that you write books and I say, well, I don't write the heavy lifting book. I write about work and that meant that I've now spent the last 20 years researching. Paying really close attention every day, not some days. So I spend 15 to 20 minutes every morning looking at what's new, what's come out, what's changing, and double checking that. What I tell people, if you do that, regardless of your path, you start learning where your path is going. So you can be wherever you want to be. You can be a finance. You can be a lawyer. You can be anywhere, but where is it headed is more important than where it's been. Does that make sense? It does. I think that there's a million dollar question that everybody's going to want to hear from you. That is, so what does Hawaii need? What does its workforce need? What are those needs? Oh, there's so many good things coming. We need more technology. We need to pay more attention to what's coming with technology and do some teaching there. I think one of the exciting things for Hawaii is we really are the gateway to the Pacific. And the thought that you can sit in Hawaii on a beach, on a white sandy beach in Hawaii and work in Peru or wherever it may be, I think is some of the opportunity that we shouldn't miss because we have a multi-mix of people from everywhere here. And I can tell you again, a couple of the students at Hogan sit in their home offices and have a forensic science business and they supply. They work here, but their clients are there. They're in Peru and Ecuador and so forth. So I think that's the big possibility for here is to see a bigger picture globally and help this wonderful multifaceted cultural group see those possibilities, not what's up the street, what's around the world for you. Does that make sense? It does. We have so many families, parents, grandparents that are putting great, great money to higher education. They're sending their kids away to fantastic schools coming back with very prestigious degrees. How do we get them to stay here and do those things? We have to open those things up for them. And that comes from educators. And an educator to me isn't just a teacher in a school. You're an educator. The people. Reg is an educator. He can teach people all there is to know about starting a small business. Those are the people we need involved with helping people to learn. You have everything you need here. Everything you need here because it's not place any longer. The opportunity is truly global and that's in large part because of technology. Are we teaching our kids how to think? Not yet that I'm aware of. How do we start? That's you and Reg and it has to be more. It has to be programs like this. It has to be the Jays who came up with the idea of think tech years ago. But it has to be visceral. It's got to be something that when we're meeting with our children and our old people to show them and see how easy it is. Give you an example. Want an example? You know I'm pushing 80. I'm not telling people whether I'm pushing. If I'm pushing that way or this way. But I'm pushing. How do I work full time? You're writing. You're doing things like this. You're in Hawaii doing all these things. That's it. And a lot of your work you had mentioned is in Nordic and Cal. It's on the mainland. In fact I still have a universal US number instead of the 808 number because so much of my business does come from the mainland. Why? I don't know. You tell me why. Because I have something the market needs. So when they ask me to help with books or with presentations and to go down deep and give people a strategy. A strategy for how to run your life in a new time. That's what I do. So the strategic process of learning to run your career is a lifelong. Lifelong. It's not a matter of high school, college or anything like that. It's always looking at my career is my business. It's not my job. So I have to think strategically as though I were running a business because you are. Does that make sense to you? It does. It does. I know that you've done a lot of speaking and a lot of writing on the mature worker. Yes. What is the mature worker? Well, is it an age? Is it? Sometimes. It depends what you're doing. We've talked about some of the people I've seen in the hotels who are still waitressing and doing things that are very heavy lifting kind of. We've got to get them thinking beyond getting up today and just doing that. What can I do next? If you're going to live to 90 years old and you can't work beyond the age of 55 or 60, that's old. That's sad old. If you can think about some way with the strategy that we teach, how to look at the next thing instead of the last thing, instead of looking for safe, there is no safe. It's over. Now it's a question of this is your business. They lend this is your business, run it. And when they see the strategy, it's really a business strategy. I want to talk more about how that mature worker can start thinking about developing that strategy. We're going to take a short break and we are going to come back to business in Hawaii. We'll see you back here shortly. Great. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech, Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Despeng, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm going to the game and it's going to be great. Early arrive and for a little tailgate. I usually drink but won't be drinking today because I'm the designated driver and that's okay. It's nice to be the guy that keeps his friends in line, keeps them from drinking too much so we can have a great time. A little responsibility can go a long way because it's all about having fun on game day. I'm the guy you want to be. I'm the guy, say good money. I'm the guy with the H-G-O and I'm the guy that says let's go. Welcome back. This is Visas in Hawaii. Today we're talking with Carleen McKay, renowned author, speaker on our emerging workforce and just such amazing stories and amazing contributions. When we left we were talking about the mature worker and how they need to start thinking about the things that they can do to contribute to our economy and still be productive in the workforce. So talk to me about how our mature workers and we said it's not necessarily an age because sometimes our bodies will give out on the work that we currently do, but talk to me about how someone who falls into a mature category develops that strategy. Well, there's some real good initiatives in Hawaii by the way, one is through St. Francis and their active aging program. Colin Hayashita, I don't know if you know Colin, heads that program and essentially it's making the case that part of being healthy, aging healthy is part of that's work and so whether you do it as a volunteer or you're doing it for pay, that demand on your mental system is really critical to keep you active and engaged and they have a very big grant from United Way, I think, but don't call me a liar if I'm wrong, to help people start to pay attention to work as part of an integral thing to do with your life. So leisure, education and work. When I was young, the old went to leisure and decline, the middle did the work and the young were the educated. That's changing, so it's really this overlap of learning, lifetime learning and lifetime working in some capacity. I could never go in to your job today. Don't fool myself. I think you could. I don't think I'd even have the energy to drive there daily. I mean, that's truth. You've got to think that way. You've got to think about, what can I really do that matters? Again, keeping in mind what you're good at and what the market needs, finding that for older people is actually easy except for one thing. They can't let go. That is probably the most difficult thing when I work with older people is getting them through the strategy. Step one is letting go and letting go sometimes can take months of getting that person aware that in order to move forward, you have to let go of some things. So that's tough with older people. Simparation is tough. Yeah. I look at it another way and I'm glad that I'm this way. The next thing is always more interesting to me than the last thing, but not most people. They're not that way. They really, oh, wait a minute. I always did this. So it takes quite a while. We're a long way from done, but there are good initiatives with some of the schools and certainly this program with Cullen is wonderful. So we have, particularly in Hawaii, we see people who have been in their jobs for 50 years. So how do we get them to start thinking beyond those 50 years? Thankfully, there are a lot of jobs where they appreciate having the loyalty and the longevity in their organizations, but are those people satisfied feeling as though they're able to do the job well just as they did when they first started? So what do we need to do as a community to get them to start thinking about what's next? Because going back to the program that Cullen runs, that wellness, aging wellness, part of that is continuing to think about and continue to be active in their lives. So what do we do as a community? Well, okay, here's the problems to overcome. You've got the public sector worker who have big pensions and they often live for that retirement. Did you know what the pension deficit is today? It's about 15 billion, that's with the B dollars. That can't continue forever. And what's more, when you're 50 and retiring and you have 40 years to live, loneliness and boredom are the number one diseases of older age. Number one. And that leads to all the problems that we see with older people, that loneliness, that despair. We've all felt it, who are old enough, but you can overcome that only by learning to do something new. Work need not be for pay. For the people who have a pension, do something good for the community, it's still called work. It doesn't matter. But if you have somebody like you, you have a great deal invested in your education and in what you've been working in. I'd like to see that you can use some of that, even if you have it in a portfolio of things you'll do. So you might say I'd like to be writing, but I'd like to do HR as needed. And the third thing, maybe I can help in some of the public schools. And that's a portfolio of work, which is very easy to sell, believe it or not, because people all of a sudden, oh, you mean not a job? And I say, yeah, I'm just saying there's things to be done. What do you think you have to do? So let me ask you, Daylin, what do you think you have to do next? I have to do half as much as what you do. Your story is amazing that you're still continuing to create, to write, to author, to speak on issues that are so current and speaking to young people about their careers and developing their careers. I feel like I've got a ton of work to do before I can even get close to having the expertise to do. To spend 15 minutes a day, and you'll see it. You'll watch what's coming in technology, in artificial intelligence, and it's here. Did you know, for example, Uber is the largest car company in the world? So let's see, how does that affect us? If you're a cab driver, oh, it's a little bit of concern there. But how does it affect us? What's the first thing that happened when Uber grew, was people saw I could get to the airport for $20 instead of $50. It's not going to change. We will need some cabs. But we've got to think, what's the effect of that on how I make my living? If you look at artificial intelligence in the medical field, wow, what's coming is amazing. So if you're in college and looking at medicine, which part is really exciting? To me, robotics, genetic testing, just start exploring it. You don't have to make a decision today, you just have to say, I'm going to look at these things. How's that? Amazing. Carleen, I could go on forever asking you so many questions. I know that there are so many people out there that are so interested in your expertise and what you can lend, and unfortunately, we're out of time. But I really appreciate you being here today. I know that people are going to want to get in touch with you to hear what you have to say about guiding them strategically to what their alternative career is. But I thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, Daylin. It's been such a pleasure. My pleasure, indeed. So again, thank you. And thank you to the staff, the great staff here in the studio. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at two o'clock, and we're looking forward to seeing you here next week.