 Welcome to Keys to Success, which is live on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. We are your hosts, I'm Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Welcome to the show. Mahalo for joining us today. You can catch us live on stream at livestream.com on the ThinkTechHawaii.com channel. We also encourage you to call our hotline at 415-871-2474 to join our conversation or tweet us at ThinkTechHI if you have any questions or comments. The goal of our weekly show, Keys to Success, is to provide professional and personal development tools and profound insights on how to achieve success in life, career, and or business. Gladys Quinto-Marone, CEO of BIA Hawaii, was our guest on our last show. And her words of wisdom with regards to her Keys to Success can be found on both Newman Consulting Services website, NewmanConsultingServices.com, or on our landing page at Danelia.org. Our theme for today is From Rags to Riches. Commitment and hard work can lead to success. Joining us today in the studio is our honored guest, Salvatore Sabrera, an accomplished entrepreneur and vice president of Digital Alarm Technology, also known as DAT, or DAT. Prior to working with DAT, Sal started a distributorship with Kirby, correct? And in 1984, doing his stench with Kirby, you became the vice president, our regional vice president from 2003 to 2010. Is that correct? All right. During that time, his team became the top 1% distributorships in more than 60 countries worldwide. After being coached out of retirement in 2011, how hard was it that they made you come out of the picture to come back, Sal? I thought it was easy, but it was hard. Okay. All right, he started the Alarm Smart Home Security company known as Digital Alarm Technology. Mahalo for joining us today, Sal. Oh, thank you. I'm honored to be here. Okay, please share with our viewers, what prompted you to start the business? Which one? You decide which one you want to start. So Kirby, well, I moved here in 1978 to change the environment that I was in and I wanted to go as far away from New York but still be in the United States. So I landed here in Hawaii. And where else would it be, but Hawaii is right. And I had a couple of cousins that lived here. Oh, okay. And one of them lived at the Marco Polo. So when I arrived here, I slept on his living room floor because there was another cousin sleeping in the second bedroom. That's family for you, right? Okay. And I bounced around for like till 1984 and I found myself with no money. I was down to my last $75 in my pocket and I get a call from this man, Pete Worchester who had the Kirby distributorship. And he had run into me a few times and called me over to come and look at the Kirby opportunity. And I saw that it was selling vacuum cleaners door to door. And I said, no, I don't think I want to do this. So I left and two weeks later, the man calls me back and he says, I got the president coming into town with the supervisor and he'd like to meet with you. So I got my cousin Ernie, who then became my partner and we went and we sat out at the Royal Hawaiian and they wind and dined us and it was beautiful outside and told us, if you do this and do this and do that, you could have your own Kirby distributorship. So when you're broke and you're desperate, you do a lot of things like selling vacuum store to door. There you go. So I'm sure you had several people who told you you were wasting your time or you shouldn't pursue that opportunity or you need to do something else or you need to come back home to New York. How did you handle that? Yeah, we call them dream stealers. Right. Absolutely. There's always people looking to steal your dreams. But my parents would give me money to fly back and live on the East Coast, but they wouldn't give me money to stay here. And it's not because they didn't love me and it's not because all of my friends told me that I was crazy and it's not because they didn't like me. It's just that they couldn't see it for themselves. So they couldn't see it for me. But I had to live my dream, not their dream. So, and then I just dug in and went to work and did what they said. And what they said and the quotas that they gave us seemed impossible at the time, but we reached the quota in one month. Wow. Which shocked them. Right, right. And they said, I'm fine staying under Pete for another two months because he's in a contest to win the Thunderbird. I says, give him me this opportunity. I have no problem. All right. I said, so I'll do it. Did you imagine yourself becoming successful in business? Well, you know, when I was given this opportunity, I just made a commitment that I was in it to win it. You know, and I was gonna do whatever it took to become successful. I always wanted to have a life where when I went to a restaurant, I didn't have to look at the price of a dinner. If I liked it and I wanted it, I didn't care what the price was. I wanted to be able to travel all over the world. At that time, at 42 years old, the only place I've ever been to was Florida and Hawaii. And since joining Kirby, I was all over the world. Oh, wonderful. Down to your country. I used to go to the country. Oh, I love Australia. Isn't it interesting how, you know, we felt the same way about our business was that you're in it to win it and you're gonna do whatever, you have to be committed to do whatever it takes. Because you have to understand it is a challenge to have a business and anybody who owns a business knows that. However, you've got to keep going. And you gotta make sacrifices. Yes, make sacrifices. Any time doing your journey, and I mean, any time doing your journey, did you ever feel that you would make it and how did you overcome those thoughts? You know, I couldn't entertain that. There you go. You know, I just knew that I would make it. Of course, if it's to be, it's up to me. Yeah, I like that. That's a tweetable quote. That's a tweetable quote. Failure is not an option. There you go. That's a tweetable quote. I like that. What you're saying is that don't ever have negative thoughts. Never, never. I think positive all the time. That's great. There's power and a positive mental attitude. Yes, absolutely. You come into my office, there's a sign that's about this big and about as long as this wall and it says attitude is everything. Yeah, I love it. And you walk into that office, you know that. It's interesting, because in our office, we have one exactly very similar attitude determines altitude. Yeah, not your attitude. There you go. So we have that in our office too. What kept you up at night, Sal? If anything, I know you were positive, but even though- Counting money. Isn't that a nice feeling? Would you say that again? Counting money. Well, what mistakes did you make on your path to success? Well, there was a lot of them, but to me, failure is the best teacher. You know, there's a lot of people, they fail and they stop because they fail because they felt that they didn't learn anything from that. But I was always, always thought that, you know, failure was the best teacher. You know, a losing experience is never a losing experience as long as it's a learning experience. Another tweetable comment. And then the young man that created the light bulb, what was his name? Edison? Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison said, I never fail. I just found ways that it didn't work. Exactly. And that's what I hear you say. Yes, exactly. What do you feel was the biggest factor that helped you to be successful? Surrounding myself with the right people. My cousin was my partner and we had great people that came up through my organization, Mike Lowry, Nathan Chesmore, Dave Hulahan, Kalani. I mean, I could go on and on. We had great secretaries, you know, just a great bunch of people. Two of them, two of them actually quit and was walking down the road and I went and grabbed them back because I saw something in them that they didn't see in themselves. And turned out and went on to become champions. It was the same thing with Nathan. Nathan went to work for a furniture company and I called his mother, I says, Nathan never, never came in. She says, oh, he got another job. I talked them back into coming in and he did bigger business than I did. Wow, isn't that something? So you really mirrored and model successful people. Yeah, absolutely. You see people as they could be, not as they are. Because if you see them as they are, they'll stay as they are. And you know, and that is a quality of a true leader is to help others. As you are growing, you help others and bring them along with you. Because sometimes they can't, they don't see it in themselves. That's so true. That happened to me too. I mean, you know, somebody did that to me. They called you back and said, I was about to resign from the, when we first came to the States, I was about to resign from the job and the owner said, look, I see tremendous potential in you. What are you thinking? You know, I'll teach you how to be successful. And there you go. And one of the motivational seminars that we went to an old time was Zig Ziglar. He would say, help as many people be successful as you can. And you will always be successful. Absolutely. Helping up people get what they want and you'll get what you want. That's exactly right. Absolutely. So one of the things I know that you brought with you, you brought with yourself, with you some quotes. Would you like to maybe talk about one or two of those quotes? Share with our viewers and listeners? Yeah, well, you know, to me, the more you learn, the more you earn. Yeah. I love that. That's another tweet of Bacar. Go for it, huh? It's better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than have an opportunity and not be prepared. All right. Okay. And one of my favorites is life gets better when you get better. Oh, yes. Your life's not getting better until you get better. Now, I belong to the Honolulu Club and there's a lot of professional people in there. Yeah. Come January and going back into the club, I hear people saying, well, I hope this year is better than last year. And I'm saying to myself, buddy, this year ain't gonna be no better than last year unless you get better. Yeah. That's so true. That's so true. It was interesting because, you know, we teach seminars and I was teaching a seminar to a group of like a thousand people and it was business owners and we were talking about December, not this was a few years ago, but we're talking about December and a lot of business owners said, oh, my business really suffered in December. They weren't in retail or anything. It was a different type of business, healthcare. And all my business, you know, patients go away and this and that and you know, they're on vacation. And I said, is there anybody here who had a great December? And there was one doctor who put up his hand and I said, come up here. So he came up and I said, now tell us why you had a great December. He said, nobody told me it was supposed to be a bad month. I love it. Isn't that great? I thought, oh my gosh, you know, because we listen to other people complaining, complaining, complaining. Oh, they'll still your dreams. They'll still your dreams. And we also share with them. Good, I like that. And we share with them. You know, if you want things to change, you have to change. You need to, I love that. If I didn't change the way I thought, I'd still be in New York. Yeah, that's true. Really? That's true. You change your thinking, you change your life. So true. You want to change it to the positive. So true. People see me and they say, how can you be positive all the time? Why not? That's a choice that I make. And I used to say, oh, that guy makes me mad. I don't say that no more. Why should I give somebody the right to make me mad? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Absolutely. Nothing you can do is gonna make me mad. That's right. And don't get into it. Just understand that you have the choice to leave that situation. You have the choice. Don't leave somebody else for it. Exactly. All right. Okay, so we're going to take a short break. This is Keys to Success on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series. We're talking with Sal Sabera regarding a thing today from rags to riches, commitment and hard work can lead to success. My name is Danilia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We'll be returning in a minute. So please stay tuned for more Keys to Success. Aloha. It's summertime in Honolulu, Hawaii. My name is Steven Philip Katz. I'm your host for Shrink Rap Hawaii. We're on every Tuesday at three o'clock and we talk about mental health and general health. Join us. Thank you. Hi, my name is Kim Lau and I'm the host of Hawaii Rising. You can watch me live every other Monday at 4 p.m. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Richard Emory, host of Condo Insider, a weekly Thursday show at three o'clock that goes all summer long talking about issues living in a condo association. Each week we bring experts to talk about the rights and obligations of owners and boards of directors to successfully run their condominium. It's a great educational show, answers a lot of questions. We hope you'll visit us sometime. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Keys to Success on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series. We encourage you to call our hotline at 415-871-2474 to join our conversation or tweet us at ThinkTechHive if you have any questions or comments. We've been talking with Sousa Berra about our think-to-date from rags to riches, commitment and hard work can lead to success. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Welcome back. So, are you ready for this bombard ship of questions that we're gonna give to you? This is high stuff. All right. Share with us your top three success habits, if you will. You gotta have discipline in your life for sure. One. Getting up early. Two. And never missing a day's work. Three. And being the example. Okay. Can you expound on those now? Yeah, well, you know, from 1984 to when I left Kirby in 2010, I never ever missed one day of work. Oh, right. I was there every single morning in my office at six o'clock every single morning. There was even a day when I was 58 years old, I had to go to Kaiser and get a hernia operation and put a stainless steel mesh screen in. Wow. And I said, I gotta run my meeting first. I went to the office, ran the meeting, went to Kaiser, got operated on, six o'clock at night, I got out of Kaiser, I struggled to get home. And next morning, I limped into work just to be the example. You know, you get people, they get a little sniffle. Yeah, I know. And they, oh. Yeah, that happens a lot. I think my nose is running. I can't come in for a week. You know. I could put on, we could put on, you know, count the fingers of how many days we've had off in the last, you know, except if we took a vacation or something. But even then, we didn't take a vacation for the first 12 years. And the most bizarre reason we were ever shared with a wire up individual didn't come to work was my parrot bit my finger. Oh yeah. Would you believe that? And so when she came in 23 hours later, I said, well, let me look at your finger. And she said, oh, it healed. I said, so why didn't you take the finger out of the mouth of the parrot? Unbelievable. John, I just laughed. Of course, that person did not last, you know, two seconds. Well, my grandmother died, and she dies every other month. Yeah, right. Oh yeah, don't you love it? And every day, there's a traffic challenge, but get up earlier and, you know. That's it, you got to anticipate. And then you get a call from an elderly person that says, is my nephew there? And then we say, who are you? Well, that's my granddaughter. And were they supposed to have passed away? Yeah, they were supposed to have passed away. So looking back, Sal, do you feel that it was worth it? Everything was worth it? Are you still having as much fun? Yeah. OK. It definitely was worth it. But the best time of my life was when I was retired for that one year. I worked all of my life from when I was 13 years old part-time in New York for $0.70 an hour, and just worked right up until I was 68 years old. And then I felt I'm going to retire. And I retired for a year. And Nathan Chesmore talked me out of retirement to go into this alarm business. And he painted a great picture of what a great business it's going to be. And then I needed the mental stimulation. So you had to imagine. I said, well, it sounds good. I'm going to make a lot of money. OK. And here I am today still doing it and still haven't missed the day at the office. And still staying up at night counting your money. Still staying up at night counting your money. I love it. I love it. But you know, I make money not for what it could do for me. It's what I could do for other people. That's so true. That's powerful. It's so true. As a business owner, we do. We are and we feel responsible not only for the people who work with us, our employees, but also their families. Yeah, exactly. And that's it. When you're looking at your expenses, the average person would look at how much we spend in expenses every month and probably have a heart attack. Sure, exactly. That is a part of business. So you've really got to be committed. Yes, you do. Success is just not money, as you said. True success is helping other people become successful. That's it. And that's where it's heartfelt. Right. And you can't buy that. And that's why we do this show, because it's to help people understand that it's basic foundational principles. We all do it maybe differently, but it's still the foundational principles. And there's another quote that we share in our seminars and in our classes, that when you success is getting what you want, but happiness is wanting what you get. There you go. Yeah, that's a tweetable comment. And I always say that money can't buy happiness. That's right, that's true. But if you have enough of it, you can rent it. Yeah. All right. So what would you say to our viewers, your best advice on life itself? You know, they did a study. And they asked that question to Zig Ziglar, Jim Rung, Les Brown, Dr. Dennis Waitley. What advice can you give people? And the advice that they all came up with the same thing, watch who you surround yourself with. Oh, yeah. So true. Watch who you surround yourself. That's one of the reasons why I got out of New York is the environment that I was in. If I stayed there, I probably wouldn't be speaking to you today, I'd probably be dead. I wanted to get away from that environment, come over here and find positive people that can nourish my brain and nourish my mind. You know, we're born to win and we learn to lose. Babies, they're innocent. They can do anything. They can speak any language. You can teach. I can't speak Chinese, but if I had a baby now and it was my baby and I spoke Chinese, that kid had to speak Chinese. Yeah, absolutely. They're my sponges. Yeah, they're sponges. You want them to speak Spanish? Yeah. Their brains are so fertile. So it's real important what you say to children is going to have an effect on them for the rest of their life. So true. Because we also teach that behavior is taught. Yeah, it is. And that's any kind of behavior. There are people that would say that's not true, but if you look at life, as you said, a baby is taught to be negative. Yes, you're right. You know, they're winners from the beginning. And we are winners from the beginning. But I also think that we need to say that even though someone might have been brought up in a negative environment, you still have the choice to be able to change your attitude and your environment. You can't. You have the choice. It might be a difficult road, like every road is. But if you're committed, you can do it. And there are people in your life that will help you if you just focus on what you want for your life. Because a lot of people aren't even clear about what they really want. They say, well, I want money. Well, they think that that's going to take care of everything. But money will not necessarily take care of everything. And people say, well, you have money. So what would you say about that? And some of the happiest times John and I had was when we were on the path to success. Enjoy the journey. That's what we always say. If you're positive and you think positive and you're clear about what you want in your life, you don't even have to be real specific. As long as you're clear, I want a house. Where do you want the house? Do you want it on the ocean? Do you want another golf course? What do you want? And pretty soon, things just start happening. And it's brought before you. And you have that opportunity. And you have a lot of fear. And you go for it anyway. And that's it. The mind. I love the way you think. OK. I do. You got it. Thank you. Because your mind doesn't differentiate between real and fantasy. We've all woken up in a cold sweat, had a chill. Because what we think, what we imagine, we can accomplish. Absolutely. Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or whether you think you can, either way, you're right. It's all what you think. One of the best movies that I've ever seen and talking about kids that grow up in poverty, I think a teacher has a big effect. Like you said, whether you're born and you're not in an abionment of success, somebody will influence you to either become a failure or become a success. And the movie was Freedom Writers. Oh, yeah. We saw that. Oh, yeah. That was so incredible. Kids out of the ghetto turned them in to go into college and become successful. And she was committed to it. So she was successful as a teacher, was an even monetary success. So success doesn't have to be measured by money. That's right. And happiness is very important. And money doesn't necessarily bring happiness. No, it doesn't. But having money does help you live a better life so that you do actually have more choices in life. That's a true statement. As Sal said, you can rent it. Yeah, that's true. Is there a last-minute phrase or something that you would like to say before we wrap it up? Well, the main thing is you've got to get around the right people, really important. And the greater the struggle, the greater the victory. Oh, so that's great. And don't quit. The people that make it are the people that don't quit. All right. Thank you so much, Sal. Thank you so much, Sal. Well, we're out of time. We'll have to wrap it up, unfortunately, because this is a great show. Thanks so much, Sal. It's been wonderful. I'm on it. Sal's words of wisdom with regards to keys to success can be found on Newman Consulting Services' website, NewmanConsultingServices.com, and our landing page, denelia.org. Thanks to you, our viewers and listeners for tuning in. Thanks to our broadcast engineers, Uri Bender, our floor manager, Rich Peruse, and to our executive director, Jay Fadil, who puts it all together. Thank you, Sal, again for joining us today. It was a great show. We're very appreciative that you came on the show. Oh, I'm on it. OK. Thank Tech Keys to Success. We'll be back next Thursday at 11 AM. So we ask that you tune in again and ask your friends and family to do so as well. I'm Denelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Today, as we leave you, we'd like to leave you with a quote from where, babe? Albert Einstein. I had no idea. Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein. And he said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Thank you. Thank you all. Aloha.