 Aloha and thanks for joining us again today for SBA America, good to have you with us. Today we're going to talk a little bit more about how people have started business, what they've taken on and how they become successful and how they define that success. Today we're going to be talking with a small business owner who's what we call at SBA an encore entrepreneur. What's an encore entrepreneur? It means somebody who's had a career or perhaps some different careers been very, very successful and on retirement kind of considers what am I going to do next, not am I just going to go and play golf. So today we're talking with Kit Barre, he's the owner of Oahu Home Inspection Services and he started a whole new career, a whole new job after a successful career in communications. So question is are a lot of people doing this, what did he think about and also well it is a big trend, I'm not sure Kit that you knew you were part of a big trend across America because they've seen a real increase in people on retirement for whatever reason deciding they want to continue or start their own business. So big thing with baby boomers you know and so tell us a little bit about yourself and what some of your early careers were and the kind of networks you established in doing that. Oh boy, every career that I've had I feel has added something to my resume and not just the resume you hand over to somebody with just your experience and abilities to do business and actually I started on the radio, my career initially was on the radio, when I was a kid I was a ham radio operator and an electrical engineer at college and when I joined the amateur radio club down the hall which was a bunch of geeks basically as I was, still down the hall was the college radio station and only did they need an engineer, they played music and there were a lot of girls down there. So I moved into the broadcast business and had actually on the air my first radio show in Pittsburgh at the age of 19 which I now I did this and then it was hired to come out to Hawaii in the early 70s to do radio here which I did for several years. That was a night job and I could do other things during the day so I had a couple small businesses, I owned an art gallery in Waikiki for a year, was a commissioned artist for a while and then I remembered what my father said when I graduated from college you know in the graduate where I can't think of the name, Benjamin is called over by his uncle, he says I have one word for you Benjamin, plastics, well you know in the 50s in this early 60s plastics, my father said two things, he said computers and cable television, this was in 1969 or 80 or 90 when I graduated from college and so when I left the radio business I went to the cable company and it was a small business in 1982 and I worked there for 20 years, I worked in the marketing department and I was their public affairs director and their spokesman because I was already comfortable talking to people on the air. That was great and I retired after 20 years when my boss retired I retired and I decided I'm retired now. Well a few years later, well actually a few months later a friend of mine who was a home inspector whom I had known said you ought to come out with me sometime and see if you'd like to start a home inspection business like I did and I had always sort of worked for other people and had a few small businesses of my own and I thought this might work for me and here when most people would retire I decided I would do this for a few years. That was 13 years ago. Unbelievable. I've done 8,000 home inspections since then and I already knew quite a bit about business and marketing from my previous jobs and I knew about promotion from the radio business and so all those things that I had picked up along the way I found were quite helpful in running this new business that I had started. Sounds very interesting and I think it highlights something that we're finding a lot is that people do have a number of different skills. People also live much longer so they want to make themselves and feel useful and feel productive you know after their major career experience so you're kind of a sounds like a serial entrepreneur along the way too with a lot of different areas so it's interesting to hear how you've taken some of the skills and the experience from each one of those careers or experiences in business and translated that in some meaningful way to your business now and something that's very very different going from say corporate communications and PR to home inspection so maybe tell us a little bit about what exactly it is you do. Okay well what I do is I help people when they're buying a home. Suppose you found the house that looks great your realtor will call me and say we'll give the buyer a few names and if they call me I will go to the house and I will inspect it for them and typically I will look at the condition of the roof I will look at the foundation of the house the layout of the land the plumbing system the wiring system there's about 50 different things that I look at and I've done this 8,000 times I have a routine that I go through yeah 8,000 times in my little short career retirement career now at 13 years and here probably is a good time for a disclaimer I have known Kit for probably more than 20 years as well we're friends and we sailed together and he also did my home inspection that's right so yeah so he's helped me professionally probably some of you out there because that home inspection is required with the sale of a house not really certain things are required certain things are not and a home inspection is still technically a optional however the realtors will require it okay they'll require it not only well they require it primarily because they want their buyers to know what they're buying they don't want to get a call six months later where the person's found problems with the house that they didn't know in the few hours that they have been in it if they find problems after they move in they call me if I've inspected it okay and I'll work it out with them if I'll figure out what the problem is or I'll put them in touch with someone who can help them with it so it helps the realtors it helps the buyers the buyers buy with a lot more confidence mm-hmm okay and so you work for the realtor or you work with a lot of realtors but for the buyer yes the buyer pays me the buyer hires me a buyer hires me and pays me and sometimes I will do a pre-listing inspection when a person is selling a house okay I'll go through and do the process and sit down with the seller and talk with them and give them an idea of what the buyer's inspector is going to say when he or she comes out later on so that the seller can be prepared and can address some of the issues that are likely to show up when the buyer's home inspector comes and visits wow so and so you'll go in and and the buyers will accompany you in the house or you go through with them sometimes you know it's okay if they're with me and there are a lot of home inspectors who will make a point of saying I do not want the client in the house while I'm working and it's because they interrupt the process mm-hmm something that I've done so many times I just have a routine of doing it and if I get interrupted I'm afraid I might miss something or I kind of lose step where I am concentration but I at the same time understand when a person is buying a house they'd like to spend a little bit of time in it they've come to the open house and maybe they got to walk through afterwards they can come but I tell them let me work for two and a half hours uninterrupted then I will sit and talk with you now communication remember is one of the things that I was good at doing because I did it since I was on the air 19 years of age mm-hmm I believe not only a technical understanding of what it is I'm examining and I was an engineer in college so I have an understanding of electricity and I re plumbed a house that I once owned and re roofed a house once when I was a kid with my dad who had us up on the roof so I learned a lot about those things but communicating the results of the inspection to the buyer in a way that's understandable educational and fun I've always felt that this should be fun and the realtors almost always say to me I always learn a lot when I come to the inspections about houses that makes it good for everybody and for me too because the best thing for me is talking with the buyers mm-hmm the clients are the most fun the house is the house sometimes they're challenging usually they're nice always found some big surprises you know that what are some of the the biggest surprises you found going through a house that perhaps say well I'm always hoping that I'll go up in the attic and there'll be this duffel bag full of hundred dollar bills some drug deal that went bad and no one wants to talk about okay but no it's usually much more mundane than that I was out in the leeward coast why and I and a hot sunny summer day and the grass was all kind of dry and I'm walking around the outside of the house and this house is what we call a crawler this is when I actually get underneath oh and with my camera to take pictures under the house and a little girl who lived there runs over and says you want to know what I found under are you gonna go into the house she said I said yeah she's do you want to know what I found under the house I thought well it's a bag full of money yeah I'll split it with you she went and got a mayonnaise jar and then it was a sandy colored scorpion I've never seen scorpions on the island but underneath this house apparently there were so I pretty much walked around the perimeter with a floodlight and a camera and didn't crawl underneath that oh okay you know I worked in an office for a long time and had nice clothes I mean it's dressed nicely like you all dressed up you know and now I'm a blue color color guy now but sometimes I'm crawling around under a house you know and I'm patting around I have gloves on and I have knee pads on I have a dumb looking headlight on my head to look around camera around my neck and put my hand in something and oh yeah and then I think back to the days when I dressed up and went to the Plaza Club for lunch and had a nice air conditioned office but but that's the thing you know when retire beggars can't be choosers when I retired at the age of 55 or so I found it was hard to find a job who's gonna hire a 55 year old guy who'd been working 20 years in a company and made good money and a good salary and now will probably probably expect that when he walks into the door okay yeah that that is one of the big challenges I think a lot of people face that they're thinking about making a change or leaving a company they're with or they downsize or they do something different and the situation changes it's time to do something different so I think what we'll talk about next we're gonna go to a quick break but I'd love to talk a little bit more about the work that you're doing and what you call success and you know what's most fulfilling about this new career okay we'll be back with you Aloha my name is Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A and I'm the other half of the duo John Newman we are the co-host of keys to success which is live on think tech live streaming network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. Aloha Aloha this is Martin de Spang I want to get you excited about my new show which is called humane architecture for Hawaii and beyond and it's gonna be on think tech Hawaii from downtown Honolulu on Tuesday after noon's 5 p.m. and we're gonna talk about to make architecture more inclusive on the islands which is what she was one of the definitions of humane which is being tolerant of you know many people of nature of many other influences so we're gonna have some great guests like today's guest for example my collaborator David Rockwood who's the author of the awesome manifestation of humane architecture in the background so see you on Tuesdays 5 p.m. and look forward to what hi here we are with Kip Barre of a Wahoo home inspection services and we're talking about a second career an encore entrepreneur career so we've talked a little bit about how he started his venture and what he does with this new business that is so different from his career in corporate communications I want to talk about that decision your friend took you out and said maybe you like doing this you're handy around the house you know a lot about homes you've owned several homes here in Hawaii so you know what some of the problems are that you might encounter but as he kind of showed you what he was doing what were you thinking about or how did you come to a decision to start your own business in this field well there was a certain motivation to find a job that I would enjoy that I could make money at I had two kids in college and a mortgage and if I can't think of a greater motivator than that you know when you're unemployed all of a sudden after being employed for 30 40 years so I was motivated but this seemed like this was also I had to work for myself my father said long ago you'll never get you'll never get rich working for somebody else that's a phrase that we all heard that's what motivates a lot of people to start their own businesses that's one of the reasons is the money and so I had set some goals I wanted I had a monthly goal to make every month I had to make X number of dollars and if I weren't if the money wasn't coming in I would work on weekends and do whatever I could money was a motivator money and goal setting because I couldn't find a job at 55 that would pay me decent wage that I would enjoy doing I was pretty much set in my ways anyway so and I don't small business earlier and I kind of liked it one of the things that I I would will sometimes say to young people it's an experience I had I thought I would like to open a restaurant one time because I had this great idea for a restaurant and I had a friend you are a good cook yeah you know I had a friend who also said that she wanted to start a business and she just loved going into like gift shops you know she said I just love that ambiance of all the stuff of people come in well my my love of having a restaurant was the reality was I've never owned a restaurant and I have learned that restauranting is a very difficult thing in Hawaii and there's a lot that I know about it I just kind of blindly thought that'd be a good thing to do as far as the gift shop my friend had never spent a day in retailing or had she ever gone out and competitively bought and shopped and gone to whatever else you have to do so you have to pick something that you have already some skills and knowledge and not just book now it's not just going to college and studying a book on how to open a store there's a much a mentor would be nice mm-hmm yeah that's right and you know SBA is really if you want to open a small business I would think that that would be one of the first places you go because if SBA can provide the information good if not they'll refer you to somebody right to help you get started and the ways to get money and get funding and things like that but I already knew how to take care of houses and I enjoyed being with people and so this worked out for me it wouldn't work for someone who doesn't really have an understanding of how homes work and I've known home inspectors who didn't succeed because they had problems when they had to deal with the buyers okay so I just happened to have those two things going for me and I didn't know everything when I started I learned a lot as I went along so that you had a good good network good communication skills and interest in some experience in this area well networking is animal evasion yeah I was well motivated all right but networking of course underlies an awful lot about small business the more people you know the more likely you are to have customers and get referrals and there are some groups in town there's that work with to get people to help people network mm-hmm and there I was in one for a while where business cards was the big deal you always carry business cards around and you carry business cards around with people you knew in businesses and you respected and you handed out cards all the time and one of the early my early goals was to hand out a thousand business cards a year you can buy them by the thousand online right and I found out it wasn't too hard to do I mean people every day my wife joked because she said what have you got a card dispenser on your belt every time you meet somebody it seems like when you shake hands you hand them your card well I got it I'm behind this week on my getting my dispensing of cards but yeah the more people you know you know and a nice thing is if you've been in Hawaii for a long time you know a lot of people mm-hmm if you're just coming to the islands it takes a little while I would think mm-hmm yeah so another thing about entering a new field where there are a lot of a lot of startup investments for you or or you know office space franchise anything like that you looked at at all no I bought a bag full of tools and just worked out of my house I mean they just woke up in the morning and got my forms together and went out and then I get phone calls all day long from realtors mm-hmm I know I probably have 50 realtors that I can count on when they have a buyer to call me and ask if I'd like to do these so over the years after 13 years I have a lot of people know me and I've worked with happy with the work I do so it's easy now in the beginning I had to make up a brochure I went online and downloaded and did it myself not that I look at it looks kind of amateurish but at the time it was something I could drop off at real estate offices and of course a stack of cards mm-hmm so that was how I got the word out and anytime I would go to inspect house I would always make sure that the sellers realtor got a card and I left a card behind because the person's moving they might have to buy a house mm-hmm get those cards out every time I paid a bill that I had right remember those I'd stick one of my cards in the envelope and send it off with my bill payment in the stuff I figure somebody opens that mm-hmm so I just kind of peppered the town so I've got over 10,000 cards out there now with so a lot of networking a lot of word-of-mouth referrals from from happy customers happy realtors you know another thing I've always said to realtors when they say oh he's the best one there is he's the best home inspector I ever saw I've always felt it's important to undersell and over deliver I've always felt that if you give people more than they're expecting mm-hmm they'll be happy and in my case when I do an in-home inspection the nice thing about a home inspector is he gets paid at the time mm-hmm of the inspection and so that's a difficult time when a person has to sit down or write a check to pay for something mm-hmm especially if they're not particularly happy with what they're getting so I measure for me of success is with a smile when they hand me the check and say something like well I really learned a lot or thank you very much when I leave them I say oh thank you so much I figure I must have done my job right and then I feel good about myself if I have a customer who doesn't look completely happy I go home and I tell my wife you know I'm trying to think how I could have done that job better because I know I gave them all the information they need but they just didn't smile mm-hmm at the end it wasn't because you told them about the termites or anything like that huh sometimes that could have something to do with it I think that you could have just saved them a lot of money you know it's fun for me I've had jobs that I didn't like one of my first jobs was selling encyclopedias door-to-door members I guess I remember door-to-door salesman to and that if you're just if you're a young person now and you're getting out of college you know door-to-door they don't they do door-to-door selling anymore but a job selling is a real good idea for you to a skill you should have you should recognize when someone is selling you something and you should understand what it is makes for a successful closing of a sale mm-hmm you know asking for the money yeah it's always so hard to do until you've realized it if you don't ask for it you're never gonna get mm-hmm so in some of those sales those sales experience did you kind of is that where you got some of your goal-setting ideas or your numbers and things like that because oftentimes some sales organizations are driven so much by producing numbers that's true and and I learned in selling encyclopedias and making sales that you you sell may you have to figure out how many how many tries you have to take before you actually make the same maybe your record is you know I pitched this thing five times and then make a set car dealers you know I had to talk to about 20 different people before I sell a car well good more people you see the more often you're going to get the sale it's not so much the case in what I'm doing now mm-hmm and it wasn't so much the case when I worked for the cable business I want to tell you people make like enjoy making fun of cable companies you know how terrible the services I've never worked for a more ethical operation than the cable company here in Hawaii and I'm not I haven't worked there in 15 years but I was so proud to be their spokesman because of the way they did things they just didn't think they had the highest standards of ethics and I had a very strong effect on me when I do my work and I just feel that you have to not only enjoy it you have to really respect the customer and just give them absolutely everything that they could possibly want so that customer relationship is very important you can't you can't get lazy with your customers you have to always be there and smiling and informing them and giving them more than they expect yeah mm-hmm so you think that ethics piece that customer satisfaction has also propelled your success and and no question no question about I may not be the best most detailed inspector there although I've learned a lot from doing it over and over again but I know the reputation I have is that I can present the information to the buyers clearly and in a way that they understand complicated issues that otherwise might just blow by them and leave them in a fog it just comes from doing it over and over again and thinking about it maybe even taping yourself as you do it so you can have a chance to figure out what works so you've always been kind of checking your progress checking how you're doing with your customers and is that primarily the number the number of clients per week is that been a measure of your success or how do you how do you look at what you've accomplished in the 13 years get yeah well I'll tell you if on a week to week basis if you find all of a sudden you don't have any jobs on Thursday and Friday you worry about it you think the end is come oh no the bottom has fallen out of the real estate market or that no one loves me anymore but then you know the next week comes along and things pick up so you have to figure out what range you want to measure I do it month by month I just plotted I put it all into Excel and I plot it on the graph I'm not a I'm not a CPA I just have to have some sense that I'm doing okay okay and it's a mortgage gets paid every month you know college loans get paid so those business management skills were not too daunting for you to develop it's not for me and I'm in I don't have any employees I was at one time the manager of a couple of radio stations and although I really enjoyed the field they're always problems problems and it's gotten more complicated now with regulations and insurance and all the other things you have to do and I I do now have a young man an assistant who works with okay he's just a recent graduate of the army 20 years and this is what he wants to do he's a great helper and I hold the baby bird will fly the nest he's done 30 inspections with me and pretty soon he'll be out on his own but if I had to pay him maybe another story so he's kind of like an apprentice absolutely he's a sponge is what he is he's taking it all in he's learning technique and detail and and electrical and all that stuff so I'm wishing him the best of luck and it's fun to bring someone in and get him started on it but I have an easy job because remember I don't have any employees it's just me just do my time I have a CPA does the taxes which is a fun thing that we and you're incorporated right so did you do that on your own did you get some help with the the formation of your business at first for that I was an LLC in the beginning and then my CPA recommended incorporation which the CPA took care of for me oh very good I really had a little to do but except sign papers and give me some money okay right that right the check and write your name a lot and I would I would rather your CPA or your financial advisor tell you what the advantages are of LLC and I don't know maybe SBA also can very easily explain why you might want to incorporate your business right I think there are a lot of good ways to look at that but that's a very important feature for people who are getting ready to start a business but thanks for sharing information about your business and your experience going on and thank you for helping that veteran get started as well and on his next career so you not only become successful in your business in your field but a great mentor as well if I just figure out how to really retire oh yeah that may just be something that you're not quite ready to do yet but thank you for all you do and congratulations on your second career being so successful third four fifth some people just love to keep on working and giving back to their community you can see is influencing other businesses and making people happy in their new homes too so thanks very much Kip for being here we have a lot going on with SBA and we'll see you again next week I see Davidson thanks for watching think tech why one of the things that we try to do here is promote civic engagement how do we do that we put on shows weekdays from 12 to 5 p.m. we let people in in our world on Facebook and all the social media today I'd like to talk to you about another way that you can engage us here at think tech Hawaii and help us promote civic engagement here in Hawaii 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