 Welcome to Seymour's World on Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm your host, Seymour Kazimerski. Our show today is called David Livingston, the man who gives and never stops giving. And we're going to talk about what he has done in all of his philanthropic efforts here in Hawaii. We're going to address the issue of how he has such a totally unselfish attitude to help others. If you want to ask a question or participate in the discussion, you could tweet us at thinktech-h-i or call us at 415-871-2474. Now, before we get on with Dave, I want to talk about last week's show. We've had so many comments regarding Sharon Yarborough and Sisters Empowering Hawaii. And I wrote some of them down for you. First of all, I have to tell you that we were rated the number one show for Think Tech Hawaii. Some of the comments are from a lady in Calgary who's 89 years old. She wrote, you go girl to Sharon. Another lady in Israel wrote, please come to Israel. We need you here. A lady in Montreal, Canada, what a powerful woman Sharon is. And somebody in Los Angeles saying she is doing exactly what we need for the world. Well, due to popular demand, we have asked Sharon to come back. And she's going to be joining us with two guests. We're going to continue the conversation on the empowerment of women and more important, how these ladies got to where they are. So stay tuned for that show. Now, I also promised you, and I didn't deliver last week because we didn't have enough time, some of the photographs of our last trip to Germany. So we're going to cue those pictures up for you. Here's our first one. This was in a little town called Garmish Park in Kichen. I was actually born here. And if you recognize that scene, that is from one of the James Bond movies. The next picture we have, let's see if we can get it up, is part of the area called Berksis Garden Area, which is unfortunately where Mr. Hitler had his summer residence. The next one is the area I went skiing on, believe it or not. This was just two weeks ago. It was zero degrees up on the top of the mountain and 65 degrees at the bottom. It took us over 40 minutes to get through. I think we have one coming now. There is my wife Sue, who was our photographer, and she actually took the pictures of me going skiing. And I think we may have one more. That shows you the lift we had to take to go up to the top of the mountain to be able to go down. It is 2.7 miles and 8,500 feet above sea level. So I was stuck in air up there, but I loved it. Absolutely loved it. So that's the last four. Oh, here's the last one. That's the actual hill from the top to the bottom. So may I please introduce Dave. Dave, I have known you for 24 years. Is that correct? That's correct. And in 24 years, we've done many, many different things. But I wanted you to come on the show because I've never known anybody that gives so much to so many wonderful organizations here in Hawaii. Thanks for having me on the show. But that's probably, there's a million guys out there that do more than I do. But I am more than happy and pleased to serve. I've had a good time. And thanks to you for hiring me 24 years ago to come to Hawaii. I appreciate that. You mean I am responsible? Well, you're one of three. You, Phil Sammer, and Sally Takamini made the final decision to bring me in here to run the YMCA 24 years ago. It's hard to believe, isn't it? It really is. And you know, Dave, now that you say that, I have to say that not everybody was in favor of bringing this howly into Honolulu. And I said, but he's experienced and he knows what he's doing. And we need somebody to really make sure that the Y gets to where it was. So as the chairman of the Y, I said, we've got to have you. And I have to tell you, you did a great job. Well, I enjoyed it. It was great. It was a great 25-year career. It ended here. I retired here in Honolulu. And you know, what a great place to retire. And thank you so much for bringing me here. Of course, I'm not retired, but I retired from the YMCA. Well, we're going to talk about that because... I've had a couple of experiences since then. Retirement is not in our vocabulary. That's true. I know it's not in mine. And I know it's not in yours. No. We had lunch the other day and we were already talking about more things we can do for kids here in our Y. Yeah, look at all the things you're doing for kids. I'm wearing your badge. Yes, you're wearing our Make-Em Smile pin. And that is our program with the hospital. And we talked about our foster kids program, how you can help our foster kids almost have a different kind of experience by coming to the Y. Absolutely. And this is something we're working on just because we had that lunch the other day. Isn't that great? But let people hear a little bit about you. Tell us where you came from and what happened. Well, I came from... interesting. You're probably having the only guy born in Iran ever on your show. Were you born in Iran? Yeah, my dad was a Shaz pilot for seven years. He was U.S. Air Force. And I was only six months old when we moved to March Air Force Base in California. But my start in life, I grew up in a trailer park at March Air Force Base. My dad, my mom, my parents divorced when I was eight years old. And my mom and four kids, she had an older brother and two sisters. We stayed in Riverside. Dad went back to Kansas. I grew up in Riverside, California, had a blast, ran the Riverside Y, the Corona Norco Y, the San Bernardino Y, the Pasadena YMCA. And you guys hired me to come over here and run the Central Y. I remember we had many conversations about the Norco Y because I had a client there who was a veterinarian who was the actual, he invented the microchip, the RFID microchip for dogs and cats. Yeah. I helped them bring back to the market. Small world. Small world. Yeah. Yeah, that did it. But Dave, what makes you do what you do? Hey, I get up every morning and ask one simple question. Who can I help today? And I've got a whole list of activities that I can do and help at as a volunteer. And it works well into my occupation as a financial advisor because I get to go out and meet people and work with people. And when you gain their trust, a lot of them ask you, hey, can you help me with my money? So it's kind of a symbiotic relationship, my volunteering and being a financial advisor and helping people. And you're working with AmeriPrize. I'm with AmeriPrize. I have my own franchise over here at the Alamoana Pacific Center. That's wonderful. And of course, that helps both ways, right? You get potential clients that you talk to. And at the same time, you get people that you work with to help in some of your endeavors. Absolutely. And you know, it's all about teams. None of us get anything done alone. You and I talked about that at lunch the other day. We're just lucky to be surrounded by really great people. People don't want to help make this community even better. We live in a beautiful place, but we've got some challenges that we need to work on continuously. And how do we do that, Dave? How do we convince more? I've been trying for, since I turned the corner and decided to devote my life to helping others in all the different things that I do. And I see people really understanding it, but then they have to take that step to really begin helping in all of the different ideas, whether it's children, whether it's cancer, whether it's any type of organization that needs assistance. Well, I mean, that's exactly right. And there's a bunch of them. But you know, I belong to this small group called Rotary, 1.2 million members worldwide. And we continue as Rotarians, we continually look at our communities and assess where the needs are, both locally and internationally. So for example, our club, we wanted to address the homeless problem. So Stephen Morgan, our community services chair, went down and met with the folks at IHS and next step shelter and said, how can we help? And the guy at next step said, hey, look, we got a great facility down here, but you know, it's pretty ragged. And Steve just happens to be a painter. So with the last year, every quarter, our Rotary Club goes down and repaints one third of that shelter. So those people have a more decent place to show up at night. We help with gathering goods for them. We help with the feeding, the clothing, obviously the housing by keeping that shelter in pretty good shape. One of the many things on an international scale, Rotary is involved the last 30 years with wiping polio off the face of the earth. And we're this far away. Folks like, again, those teams that you develop, Bill Gates from Microsoft gave us a two to one match this year. So the $150,000 we raised in Hawaii became $450,000 against to fight polio. And Rotarians are going around the world putting those drops in those little babies' mouths so that they don't have that virus. And we had 15 cases last year and five this year in polio, or when we started that campaign, there were 385,000 cases a year. So it's just great to be part of these organizations that really do make a difference in the world and in our community. Steve, we have viewers all over the world, as you heard in the intro, that watch the show. And one of the most important pieces of the puzzle in what to do with your life is what you just said is taking that first step. Well, an easy step, join a Rotary Club, join Kiwanis, join Lions. You have a whole lot of people that have a lot of great ideas and they need the manpower to affect change in their community. Or you can, I'm on 12 boards and I'd never say no. I just say yes with here's my limitations. One of the things that I bring to the table whenever I do any of my community service projects, I'm a photographer. I do a lot of photography. I just did the 50th anniversary for the Veterans of Vietnam Commemoration. We did three events. We had Tony Orlando and We're going to see some of those pictures, I think. No, I hope so. Yeah, we'll see them in the second half of the show. But the three things we asked volunteers for, time, talent, treasure. I've got a little talent with my camera. I can help with finances. And we do. Pam and I, like Sue and you, we give to organizations that we believe in. The time is something a lot of people don't have anymore. They got so busy in their retirement that they're busier now than when they were working. So we have to measure that. We have to very carefully decide what we want to take on as a project so we can give it the adequate time to accomplish the goals we set. So if you have time, talent, or treasure, one of those three, join an organization. I've got boards of directors, junior achievement, for example, right now looking for volunteers to go out and help teach kids. They have the kids, they have all the knowledge, they've got, it's a completely packaged program, takes you about an hour to learn how to be a volunteer and you can take that into a classroom. And we've got lots of classrooms asking for junior achievement volunteers. YMCA is looking for volunteers all the time. Rotary needs volunteers. There's so many organizations out there that need help. And both of us attest to the fact, Dave, that volunteering makes you feel great. You know, you make a living by what you get and you make a life by what you give. And you and I both know the more you give, the more it comes back. And we are blessed. You and I are blessed. First, we have beautiful wives who care and love us. That's pretty cool. Or so they say. Well, so they say. Yeah. But they put up with us. Yeah, they do. I know my wife has to put up with me and I sometimes wonder how she does it and I sometimes wonder why she does it because my schedule is like yours. I'm all over the place. I play my sports. I do my stuff and I do all my volunteering. Sometimes weekends, nights, we could be in Europe somewhere and I'm on the phone for an hour or two, you know, helping somebody do their thing. Exactly. And they still love us, no matter how many things we get involved in. And our families. And it must work because they're getting younger and we're getting older. It's kind of working for our wives. You know, you just made a couple of points. But you're very good at that. So that's terrific. I have to ask you, Dave, the wherewithal to do it, where do you find, when you get up in the morning, you say, you ask, you said, I ask, what can I do for somebody today? Who can I help today? Well, you know, it's funny, a lot of people have 12 hours a day that they get things done. I go to bed 10, 12, two o'clock in the morning. I get up at four. Wow. So I get a lot more hours than most people. I put together a newsletter called Things We're Saving. Goes out every Monday to about 22,000 people. It's all about what's going on in our community and it's stuff that people have given me from literally all over the world. Please share this and Things We're Saving. I started it in 9-11, 2001. A friend of mine said, I just spent a lot of money on advertising and nobody's in my store. And that was when everything was shut down. And I said, you know, George, I don't know if this is going to work for you, but let me try this. Give me something. And I had 2,000 emails at the time and I sent out George Nellis at piano outlets having a sale. He'll take 10% off. He already 50% off if you come down and he sold five pianos that afternoon. So hold that thought. I want to go a little further, but we've got to take a break. Sure. So hold that thought. As you can see, I said that we're going to have a wonderful guest today. And it's been terrific because I don't have to say anything. Once I give Dave the microphone, I just have to sit back and let him talk. We're going to be back in a minute with Dave Livingston, my very good friend, who gives more to the community than anybody else I know. Back in a minute, I'm Seymour Kazimurski on Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is my mainland every Friday at 3pm on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk about things of interest to those of us who live here and my past blogs can be found at kauilukas.com. Aloha, my name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I'm the host of Shrink Rap Hawaii where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha. Hi, welcome back to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii with my guest, David Livingston. And I'm smiling because I'm having such a good time with Dave. I mentioned prior to the break that I just have to sit here and give him the microphone and everything goes. But if you're really listening to what Dave has to say, it's amazing. He is just one of these people who never, never stops giving. Let's finish that last story about Piano Planet. Well, we sent the email out to 2000 people and 2000 people and two dramatic things happen. One is I got 17 of the people I sent the email to saying, can you tell them what I've got going in my store? So that was things were saving volume. One things were saving volume. Two had 17 little things in it that they wanted me to tell the folks about. I got hundreds of people saying, how do I get on the list? How do I get my friends on the list? And now you have how many? 22,000. Isn't that nice? So Pete Martinez, we talked about earlier. Pete was the desktop publisher at the YMCA when I came here. Wait a second. We have a picture of him. Let's go to the pictures, can't we? Well, let's go to the pictures. Pete's not in the picture, but hey, there's Tony Orlando. Tell us. Tony was just here, did a concert for the 50th anniversary of the commemoration of Vietnam, 50 years. He, an amazing guy, what an amazing entertainer. And he used to entertain the troops back in the, in the days. And I was a Vietnam era veteran, but not, I never went to Vietnam. I was a drill sergeant at Fort Ord during that period of time. And it was great to get to see Tony this weekend with Ann Margaret at the, at the Vietnam 50th anniversary. That was a lot of fun. And again, my camera was there and I got to shoot. And I know you're very involved in the Navy League too. Patros in the Navy League. You got my money on last week, right? Last week, you became a bridge member. I became a bridge member. Lots of benefits to being a bridge member. So please let me know if you want to be a bridge member. Call me up. Great, great. I'll be happy to get you, get you on board. Well, there's talking about the Navy League. There's Jane Ferrara and Jean Castanetti. Jean was the chairman of the 50th anniversary events and put together the team and asked me to shoot the event and asked me for some help and web design. And Jane is the head of the Navy League. Executive director of the Navy League. She was on the phone with you talking to you about your programs. Yeah, she wants to get involved in your program. It's teams, well developing teams. Let's go. There's one. You know, that's the rotary team. Those are the nine assistant governors. I happen to be one of them this year with our district governor, Clint Schroeder. And Clint Schroeder is a district governor through the end of this month. He's done an outstanding job. He's a good friend. He and Jason had a dive. I'm a school instructor on the weekends. Taught him out of dive about 10 years ago. We've been friends for a long time. He is a great human being and he gives back more than anybody I know. Well, he's ahead of Haggadon printing. Haggadon printing, of course. What's the next one? You know, that's a group of Rotarians at the recent walk. March of Dimes has a march for babies every year and we handle the water station. And again, we've got 70 Rotarians. So we always have, you know, 15, 20 of them at each of our events that are helping out. These guys did a great job. I've been a member of the March of Dimes Finance Committee for the last 20 years. I help raise money and bring businesses to help the March of Dimes. We raised about $800,000 on the walk. They did a great job. Let's see this next. Oh, maybe they asked me to go and see a convention that they want me to head up in August of 2018. This convention that I went to in Washington, D.C. was a seer in space. We're going to call our something different here in Honolulu. But it's bringing all the defense contractors and the military folks to a huge convention. This was a 90,000 square foot convention filled with military implements. We're going to do that here in Hawaii. This is what the convention hall looked like inside. It's one of the vehicles they brought in to show off. I couldn't shoot pictures inside this. It's classified the outside. These are the things that help protect our soldiers around the world. Let's look at the next one. Well, you know, that guy on the left is David Hader and that lady on the right is Gene Rolls. Gene was our salesperson of the year. David was the president of sales and marketing executives this year. And we have the annual salesperson of the year. And we recognize that the person who has most impacted positively Hawaii and its culture and Gene Rolls was our honoree this year. She's definitely deserving. She was very deserving and Outrigger, of course, has always been there for the community. I'll be taking Dave's place January 1st. I'm going to be the president of sales and marketing executives. Again, for the third time, 10 years ago, I left that position and I'm having the honor to do it again. You don't have enough to do, Dave. Well, you know, it's a great group and they asked me and I said, yes. All right, cool. Let's see the next one. There's the March of Dimes. There's Carmela Hernandez. Again, the executive director of the March of Dimes. This lady is amazing. She's a great friend. She's done wonderful things. She's been with the March of Dimes for the last 20 years and I've supported her and her devours. Her and her husband are Pam and I's closest friends. But she, this lady is one of the top fundraisers in the world. She just does a great job of the March of Dimes. Wow. I think we have one or two more. The Toys for Tots campaign. Our Navy League puts that on. I love this one. You know, my goal is to raise a thousand toys every year. That's my personal goal. And I do that through sales and marketing executives, through the Rotary Group, through a mayor prize. The mayor prize collects toys for me and for the Toys for Tots. And then we give those toys to the kids, the native kids out there. And our golf tournament raises about 360 of those thousand toys. So the Navy League is there every year. The first Friday in December, we have the golf tournaments. It's a great, again, a great networking opportunity for me. I meet a lot of people there and I've had the privilege of chairing this event last couple years. But there's one, you know, there's one organization where you're giving directly to the kids. They're getting a toy. Toys for Tots. It's not a money thing. It's the idea that kids who need toys will get a toy. That's exactly right. Thanks to you. No, that's great. It's a great organization. And that's our most recent, you know, when I left the YMCA as the executive director, they've had several YMCA directors after me. Troy, to me, is one of the finest I have ever met. He's running a central YMCA right now. Troy's just a great, great person. I used to work for his mom. Oh my gosh. Yeah, just imagine that. Wow. So Troy's great. Made our goal this year. He's a wonderful YMCA professional. And I look forward to working with Troy and all he does at the YMCA. I know there's a good one here. There's a great group of people. Bob McDermott's in the middle of that group. This is the Rotary Visiting the State Capital. Bob McDermott is in our Rotary Club, so is Gene Ward. We have two state representatives as part of the Waikiki Rotary Club. Once a year, we go down and find out what's going on at the state capital. And we get a tour. And fortunately, we have two guys in the state house that can take us on that tour. Bob is the past executive director of the Navy League, one of my closest friends. I love that guy. He's a great guy. And there's some of the Rotarians that help support the Rotary Club and go on these great little Rotary on the Road, we call it. Get to see what's going on out there in the community. Well, Dave, we have more pictures. Let's do this one and one more. Sailor of the Year Award. One of the greatest programs that the Navy League does. They recognize sailors from all over the world. They take the best of the best. This last several years has been at the Alamona Hotel. Again, in the past, I've had the opportunity to chair this event. This is our Admiral Swift, our Command Master Chief of the Navy honoring one of the sailors there at that event. And again, if you join the Navy League, you have the opportunity to recognize a lot of young men and women that serve our nation. And I think that's really an important thing to do. That's terrific. Terrific. Well, that time went by fast, didn't it? I know. It always does. We have time for a couple more questions. And I have one from a viewer that just called in. What are your personal reasons for helping others? Gosh, somebody's helped me my whole life. I ran YMCA. I didn't do it alone. I had hundreds of volunteers in every community that I worked in. It's my time to get back. It's my time to be one of those volunteers. It's my time to use my time, talent, treasure, to make things happen in my community. I'm just like you, Seymour. Again. I could never aspire to be to do as much as you do, Dave. You do so much. You're so modest about that. No, no, no. You give so much. It's something that we both share. We both share something happened to us sometime in our life that made us feel that this is more important than anything else in our life. Absolutely. It really gives me great pleasure to do what I do. And I think doing a show like Seymour's World and doing the commentaries that I do for our viewers, I get so many comments back that make me realize it's worth it. Just yesterday, I was at Schreiner's Hospital for our Make Him Smile campaign. And they gave me a picture, and I'll bring it for the next show. And on the back of the picture, the kids, the patients all wrote down saying how much they loved every Thursday when the musicians come to play for them. And these are kids that are there for three, four, five, six months. So it's just such a pleasure to be able to give back. And you're the epitome of it, and that's why I'm so happy to have you on the show. Well, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it. Well, I'm hoping we might even get you to even host a couple of shows. Dave, happy to do that. Terrific too, right? Because it's such a wonderful medium to be able to show people how to give back. Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming. It's a pleasure. Absolutely. And that brings us to the end of our show. We have enjoyed bringing it to you. I'm your host, Seymour Kazimerski. Our guest has been David Livingston. We've been talking about Dave Livingston, the man who gives and never stops giving, and his unselfish attitude to help others. I want to thank our production engineer, Ian Davidson, our floor manager, Robert McClane, and all the people who care and contribute to our ThinkTech products. If you want to see this show again, go to ThinkTechHawaii.com or YouTube.com slash ThinkTechHawaii, where there will be a link to more shows just like this one. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Aloha.