 I'm Rusty Kamori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou School Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, welcoming adversities, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the highly respected President and CEO of the Avalon Group. She is Christine Kamp, and today we are going Beyond Real Estate. Hey, Christine, welcome back to Beyond the Lines. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me. Honored to be here again. Christine, you are doing so many incredible things. You have done so many, and you continue to do that. But can I first ask you, what's a memory, early memory, that you had growing up in Korea? Early memory that I had growing up in Korea was that it was cold. I woke up and walked in the snow with my bare foot. I was three years old, and I remember that we were very poor. So up on the rooftop, that's where we kept all our food refrigerated because we didn't have our refrigerator. And I remember walking on the snow, touching all the little pots where we kept the kimchi and the pickled vegetables and the food. And I still remember it every time it snows, because we just came back from skiing. That's an early memory. Wow. And Christine, I want to ask you this because you're, I mean, your family, I mean, your husband, your son, Ethan, I mean, you're so successful professionally. And then how do you balance family versus work? Well, if people say they're balanced everywhere, they're lying, especially the more successful you are, you have to look at the family makeup and the support system. And my husband is a very supportive husband who helps, you know, do grocery shopping, who helps with picking up my son. I have a whole network of extended family who help with my son. I only have one son, so, you know, it takes maybe less of a balancing than somebody who might have multiple children. But overall, an overriding theme is that my husband and I are a team and we raise our son together. Well, you guys make an incredible team. And your son, Ethan, I know him. He's an incredible boy. I mean, love Ethan. I mean, he's on the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team now, carrying on our tradition. Oh, yes. He's so proud to have made it in his freshman year. He aspires to be you, you know, play tennis all his life. Man, I feel so flattered there, Christine. And Christine, I want to ask you, why did you start the Avalon Group? Well, I've always remembered my dream. And my dream was to make a difference. And land, you land, you know, working in development or you're changing the landscape of communities, you can truly make a difference. So first 15 years of my career, I worked for others to learn the trade and understand it. And as I, I put in the 14 years and nine months into the, into my career, I realized that it was time for me to start my own company. And I focused on projects that really were filling the gaps in the community. Because to me, that is what's rewarding. And then you're, Christine, you're, you're doing that just because you have such a passion to really help local families and local businesses, right? Yeah. So, you know, in a community, somebody who was raised, and first of all, being an immigrant coming to Hawaii, the opportunities that this community has given me, I love this country and I especially love Hawaii. And it sounds very, you know, Pollyanna-ish, if you will, but I absolutely believe it. So wherever I go, I want to make it better. And so my focus in the, so 24 years in the business, we're going into our 25th year now. And so 24, 24 years since I started my company, I focused primarily in the west part of Oahu. Why did I do that? I didn't build housing. I built places of business because I felt that the gaps in that community was places to work, economic opportunities so that they didn't have to drive into town. So in 21 years since we first made our investment on the west side, we built 19 projects, all of them commercial. And that's impressive, Christine. And Christine, can you share with our viewers some of the properties that you've developed in the past? Thank you. So as I just mentioned, in a couple of business parks, 171 acres is what we've invested in. Milltown Business Park, Coral Creek Business Park, all these business parks, places of commerce. But we also looked at opportunities such as Hawaii. You know, Hawaii has the highest concentration of home ownership. But on the flip side, what is very unfortunate is that there is very few rental opportunities because everybody owns their own homes. And people who want to rent, they don't have the opportunity to move there. And because of the highest concentration of home ownership, the schools are one of the best school districts in the state. They have IVs, International Baccalaureate Programming from kindergarten all the way to Kaiser High School. And I knew this. And having gone to public schools myself, I felt that I needed to find rental housing opportunities for Hawaii. And we built 7,000 Hawaii. And from that, we also built affordable housing for families, two and three bedroom units for $1,500 to, you know, $2,600 unheard of. And so we were able to deliver affordable housing and gap market housing for people, prices that our average income earners could afford. So I'm very proud of it. I won the developer of the year for Hawaii because it's such a difficult place to bring new project. You know, I stepped over, stepped into the project after four failures on the same site, four developers failed and could not make it work. And we made it work and were able to deliver housing there. So that was 7,000 Hawaii, which I still own the affordable housing component because I had promised that it would be affordable for the durations that we committed to. So we'll be keeping that in affordable for quite some time. Man, I love hearing all the developments that you've done. I mean, so successful and just the impact that you're making in our community is priceless. And Christine, can you share with us the current projects that you're working on? Oh, yes. We have four projects on the West side. We have one project in Manawa and three projects in downtown Honolulu. So Davis Pacific Center, we've acquired it. It's a high rise, 375,000 square feet, 20 stories, 23 stories tall. We're converting that to 352 condominium units called Modea. We also acquired half of a block next to Walmart. We call it the Shark Campus. It's bordered by Hotel Street, 4th Street Mall and Bethel Street. And we're in construction right now for the Hawaii Pacific University's Science Center. And so that is expected to be completed in August. So you'll see 5,000 students back on 4th Street. They're moving back from the windward side where Hawaii Law College used to be. They're coming back to downtown and that's because we're building this building for them. And next to it, we just acquired Walmart building, as you know, and we're very pleased. We feel that that can be the center of downtown where we can do some significant activities to bring people back to downtown. And that's so exciting, Christine. Thank you. Yeah, three blocks in downtown. And that's so necessary. I mean, downtown needs more of your developments for sure. And Christine, tell me about you acquired the St. Francis School property as well. Yes, so 11.2 acres of land. The St. Francis School closed four years ago, unfortunately, and the nuns of St. Francis, this was the only asset they had. And most of them were in their 70s to 80s. They needed to sell it for a certain price and we felt that we could actually bring money back to them so they could retire for the rest of their lives. So it wasn't a market deal. We overpaid for the property, but we believe that we have a plan to bring about affordable housing and market housing in that property. Oh, I have no doubt. Yeah, I mean, Manoa hasn't had a new project in over 20, 30 years. And so we're going to make it so that there's a mix of affordable and market, similar to what we did in Hawaii in that property site. Christine, can you share a bit about the challenges that you deal with when you're maybe taking over a business building and trying to turn that into a housing residential? Yeah, so there's been a lot written about it since we've acquired the Davies Pacific Center. We are trying to follow the International Building Code, but City and County has something called a housing code that's in direct conflict with what everyone else does in the rest of the nation and internationally as well. And that is converting office buildings into residences required in Honolulu, windows for every bedroom, every living space needs a certain amount of windows. And that would make us force us to build significantly large units. And that would mean that it would be unaffordable to most of us, you know, it would run into million to $2 million for regular homes that we'll be building. So we tried to change the code to be recognizing what Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, major cities who have high rises that are vacant have already adopted the International Building Code. The state of Hawaii has adopted it, but City and County of Honolulu while they adopted it, has this archaic law called the housing code that didn't recognize it was in conflict. So we've been trying to change it. We've met some resistance because of misinformation, but the legislature has stepped in this year and is working on a law that will recognize us. And we look forward to that. Wow. I mean, that's... Hawaii needs to keep up with what's going on. I mean, just the times are changing and people, I mean, all of us, in order to be successful leaders, we have to adapt and adjust, but a lot of these ancient laws have to be updated as well. Well, they have to recognize the technologies and the design principles that have changed. I mean, you know, no one is going to put anybody in the harm's way, right? It's about life safety. It's about, you know, quality of life. And, you know, no one wants to give that up. And for us, we're spending 100, 250 million dollars into this investment. We wouldn't do anything that the market wouldn't accept. You wouldn't buy a unit without any, you know, proper ventilation and proper windows. We know that, but the city has been very cautious and it's not the city leadership. It's been just, you know, the council as well as the staff. They are just trying to do the right thing, but are not properly informed. And so we are, you know, I think the legislature body has now recognized that technology has changed, design principles have changed. And the vacant office buildings, if we don't do anything, we're going to come into some significantly trouble downtown. And to save downtown, we need this law. Oh, definitely. Christine, I want to ask you about my books. You have both of my books. You and Ethan both have my books. Yes. How did you like the books and what are some concepts that stood out to you in it? I love your book because it's very easy to read and it's applicable in every instance. It's not just business, but in your coaching. It's the winning mentality. I love that. The particular thing that really resonated with me is because it's the, you know, embracing adversity, welcoming adversity. You need to be able to welcome that mindset of saying, you know, no matter what happens, let it come and deal with it. And the way you wrote it, it was easy even for my 15-year-old to understand, but for me, that principle has guided me for all of my adult life and that is why I feel that I've reached the level of success. You can't win unless you welcome adversity and I call it embracing your fears and stepping into it. And if you're governed by your fears, you'll never achieve anything. If you're governed by, you know, avoiding adversity, you'll never reach the greatest height that you can possibly be. Right? So I love that concept. Embrace the adversity, welcoming adversity. I love that you mentioned that and because Christine, as we both know, I mean, adversities are inevitable and so it's all about training the mindset to welcome it so when it does happen, we can deal with it and move on and actually become better for that experience. So that's why that's what that concept really is, that welcoming adversity. And Christine, I have my third book, Superior. And in Superior, I talk about the difference between a culture of excellence versus a superior culture of excellence and a gigantic difference between attention and details versus superior discipline details. And you and I have heard the term high achievers before and I'm inventing the term superior achievers in this book because you're not a high achiever, Christine. You're a superior achiever and for you to achieve the success that you've had and to be sustaining the success and really growing your company, that's why there's that difference between what I say going from good to great to superior. What are your thoughts about that? I couldn't agree with you more. The discipline that's needed to be a superior achiever, attention to detail, it's all the important aspects of achieving the best. You know, it just reminds me, superior achievement. I remember when I first started with my first job, my boss used to tell me, is that the best you could do? I'll finish your work and give it back to him and he'll say, is this the best you can do? I'll look at it and say, hmm, no, let me come back to you and I'll fix it, fix it, fix it and come back and he'll say, is this the best you can do? Oh, no, no, let me look at it again. I don't know, did I miss something? And I would do that over and over again and I would come back with the superior work problem. Right, and you know, in hindsight, as I got older, I read a concept, it was actually a psychological concept people use. He was using psychological warfare on me to be the best that I could be, but absolutely that mentality that he set me, set me right for the rest of my career. Man, I love that story right there. That's so smart of your boss to do that because I mean, all of us, we're all capable of doing so much more than we think we're capable of doing, right? We have to push. But we're building Dream House High School for a school, it's a charter school. So it's not a private school, but you know, they have 1,000 kids who sign up to get the one class, like 100 spots and it's heartbreaking to see them, you know, not getting the spot. And I asked the school administrators, what is it about your school that makes everybody want to be a part? And how do you get such high achieving kids? Do you hand pick and cherry pick? And they said, no, it's by lottery. It's by lottery. And yet they achieved far greater. And I asked them, what was the difference? And when they said it's the expectation that they would be high achieving, right? It's the expectation that's given to every child when they come in. You're expected to, in your words, like a superiorly achieve. So that to me is exactly what people need. They need to hear. You need to be a superior achiever. And so for that particular school, they're achieving beyond their expectations. These are kids from why not? These are kids from, you know, places where they can't afford to have the transportation to get to the school. And yet they're achieving such high levels of scholastic achievement. I'm so proud of them. And that's one of the reasons why I decided to build for them, even though they didn't have the financial background or what have you, we decided to dig in. We're going to help these kids achieve the best that they can be. Man, that is impressive, Christine. And Christine, you are such a highly respected leader. How would you describe your leadership style? I am a doer, right? And I significantly look at the responsibility of leadership in this way. I must take risks in a way that it would be responsible for my investors, my staff, my family, and my community. And what I mean by that is I embrace my fear and I expect others to embrace their fears. So I lead by example and I expect them to do the same as I do. I would never ask someone to do something that I wouldn't do myself. That's my style of leadership. I love that. And Christine, you have built such an incredible team around you. I mean, because we all know that everything starts with the leader, but you can't do it alone. It takes a team effort. Tell me about the importance of your team and teamwork in general. I ask my team to have an owner's mentality that they do as if they were doing for them their own business, their own family, their own assets. So the decisions have to make common sense. Decisions have to be worthwhile. And so everyone kind of buys in. They have to have ownership in the game. They have to do what they call this. I always say skin in the game. You gotta have a skin in the game. Skin in the game a lot of times is the incentive compensation that we provide. But I've already identified top leaders in my organization. I've decided that they will own the company with me, not buying it, but they're going to own it. Whatever they do, will be the company that they inherit when I retire. And I actually gave them my exact date of retirement. And I've identified the four leaders. We were looking for maybe a fifth leader to lead in for every division that we have. But the way I look at it, I can't achieve everything by myself. I have to have people who act as owners of the business and make decisions similarly. And therefore I've made them owners. They're the future owners of this business. They don't have it. And I think they all now bought into that. So they act like business owners, even though they don't quite own the business because they know it's going to be their business. Wow. It's Avalon Group. Yeah. I could have named Avalon Group Camp Development Company, but I didn't. I named it Avalon Group because I've always known that this business belongs to people who have earned it. So my son, Ethan, will not be inheriting my business. It will be given to the staff who have built my business with me. Wow. Christine, that's, that's wow. Yeah. I mean, you know, just at a certain point, how much can you take with you? Yeah. And the best thing that ever happened to me is the fact that I had to earn my living and I had to earn everything that I've given, that was given to me because it gave me courage. And that allowed me to have my own leadership style. And I would like my son to go through and become himself. So the best I could do is to pay for the best education that he can get into and get the best type of, you know, skill sets like tennis so that we can provide him. So we're providing that opportunity, but my son knows you always talk about this. He will find his own path. Yeah. No, that's so important, Ben. And Christine, I love your mindset and the reasons why you do what you do and just the legacy like you just said that you want to leave to your team members there and their reflection of you, your reflection of them, obviously. And Christine, I want to ask you the importance of communication because all successful teams have to have great communication. And for me, I would always share with my team that I wouldn't give good feedback or bad feedback. I would give honest feedback. What are your thoughts about that? So in fact, the new supervisors that will take on the role, you know, one of the most difficult thing for them is to give honest feedback, constructive criticism. And I told them the leadership is not a popularity contest. Leadership is a responsibility and you have to muster up the courage to say what is needed to be said because you're not doing anyone any favors. And therefore that communication is important for feedback. And we don't wait for an annual assessment or a quarterly assessment. We give feedback when we see it, when there's a need. The adjustment has to be made immediately. So, you know, the reason why you're such a successful coach was that you are able to give the feedback. It wasn't a popularity contest because sometimes you give feedback but they don't want to hear. And I think, you know, as leaders we have to learn how to give the medicine and, you know, for those who want to be led and to learn to be a leader, they have to learn how to take the medicine. This is all good for all of us. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, some people, they can't handle the truth but if they know that you're trying to help them and they know that you have empathy for them, then the trust and respect builds and then they can start to handle the truth, right? Yeah, well said, I agree. Well, Christine, it's hard to achieve success but it's even harder to sustain success. What are you doing? Because you've obviously achieved great success and now you're at that level where you're trying to sustain success. What are you doing to assure that Avalon Group will be in business forever? Well, succession planning, which I've already done. I've done that five years ago. So we're five, five years into my 15 year plan. So I think it's absolutely important. The second part is making sure that everyone is on the same path, eyes on the ball. So not only just sharing feedback about performance but I share with people about what's going on in the company. There isn't anyone who doesn't, it's very transparent. Transparency is very, very important. Why are we doing what we're doing? What is it that is accomplishing for the company and how does it mean for that particular person, the team member? What does it mean to me? Why do I have to do what you're asking me to do? And we have to be able to be transparent about that. So transparency is very important. And then as a leader, I also have to reassess the amount of commitment that I'm making to the organization. Most recently I decided that I'm giving up my board positions in many of the boards that I've been on for a certain while at MCA and I stepped down in Kahalanui senior housing and I now recently resigned from Central Pacific Bank. These are all efforts to ensure that we're focused because I mean, we've never done this many projects at once, but we also didn't have the number of team members and the high caliber of people who have all the experiences we need. But given the amount of complexity that we're facing, I wanted to make sure as a leader, eyes on the ball even for me. And I needed to make sure that everyone knew focus, discipline, focus, execution. We need it. And so I'm doing it by example and I'm asking that of everyone in my team. Christine, you're focused on O'ahu. Are you considering expanding to really help some of the outer islands as well? We are. We actually do have three properties, actually four properties of Maui on the west side. So we are waiting for the permitting issues to resolve all the cleanup and then we'll start to look at redeveloping in Kahalanui and Front Street in Lahaina. We have a couple of properties there too, a couple of properties in Kanapa. So we will be looking at that, but right now Maui's need a lot of help. And I sit on a couple of committees where we're evaluating the rebuild efforts. Kauai, we actually own over 30 acres in Kauai and we are looking at opportunities. I think for Kauai, it's infrastructure. So hopefully we can elevate the dialogue to get the right infrastructure to build more housing there. Christine, it was an absolute pleasure having you back on the show again today and I have to say that I want more Christine camps in the world and I want to thank you for taking time to join us on the show today. It's been an honor and thank you, Rusty, for inviting me back. Really a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you, Christine. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Kauai. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Christine and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. We want to announce that Think Tech Kauai is moving into a new phase and will not be producing regular talk shows after April 30th. We will retain our website and YouTube channel and will accept new content on an ad hoc basis. We are also developing a legacy archive program to provide continuing public access to our content. If you can help us cover the costs of the transition and the development of our legacy archive program, please make a donation on ThinkTechAway.com. Thanks so much. Aloha.