 This is Stink Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Thank you. Aloha, and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30 from the Pioneer Plaza in beautiful downtown Halalulu, Hawaii. We focus on success stories in Hawaii of the businesses and the individuals that own and run those businesses, trying to counterbalance some of the negativity that we've seen out there over the years on how bad things are here in Hawaii. There are success stories. There are people that make things work. And we have them come on the show and explain what they've done and how they've done it and how they're getting around some of these challenges. Today we've got an organization that's been around for a while and it kind of went away and now it's back. And we've got a person that has been very involved in the community for quite some time. He's the president of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra and his name is Michael Teeterton. And he's here to share some of his secrets on how he's making these things work. Michael, welcome to the show. Thank you, Reg. Nice to be here. Now, you've been in Hawaii for quite some time, haven't you? 18 years or so. Yeah. 19, maybe. That's a while. And you came over here originally to fix something? I came in originally to work with the Hawaii Public Radio, which along with an awful lot of other not-for-profits had a bumpy ride during the 90s. And I thought it was going to be just for, you know, six months or so and apply a few band-aids and it turned into 18 years. That sounds like you enjoyed it while you were here. I loved it. I have not regretted a moment of it. It's been great. And what have you done previous to that that kind of got you ready to come in and get your teeth into the Hawaii Public Radio? Immediately before, I was bouncing around the country fixing broken stations. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting gave grants to stations that had run into some sort of difficulty or another. And I was one of the folks that they sent out to do that sort of work. But before that, I'd been building stations, which I used to enjoy building things, frankly. I don't care much for running them, but I love to build them. And before that, I'd been a reporter, I'd been a producer, I've been involved in fundraising, done a little bit of engineering. And before that, I was a tool and die maker. Wow. That's a switch. It seemed like a reasonable evolution at the time. There was a lot of other things in between, you know, but yeah, that was my first trade was a tool and die maker working incidentally for the BBC, which was the Barking Brasswear Corporation or company. Is that what the name was? That's what the name of my company was. It was sort of an Avenger of Things Company. But there's another BBC too. I've heard of them. I've heard of them. They do good work. They're coming along nicely. All right. Very good. It was a broadcasting connection I was trying to make there. You've got, you know, it sounds like you're a turnaround specialist for the radio station. Well, that's sort of what I became. I never planned it that way, but I just gravitate toward problematic situations, I think. Well, it's the challenge. It is the challenge. I've left to build things. And whether you're building or rebuilding, it's the same set of glands, I think. Very good. And so you've gone through and you had all that experience, and then they reached out to you and asked if you could help or how did that all work out? It was kind of curious actually. I was in North Carolina in Wilmington, North Carolina. I'd built the station there. I'd built the station. I helped build the station in Asheville, North Carolina. And I'd been working out of there for years. And I got to the point where I thought, well, public radio has been a really good way to spend time, but I'm about done now. I've done everything I care to do with it. And you know, I was involved with this going around fixing broken stations thing. And I had my house on the market and I wound up, I was winding up my businesses and I was getting set to go back to London, which is where I come from originally, and go back and reinvent myself again, you know. And I was all set to do that and had everything except a plane ticket, really. And suddenly, one week, I got three calls in the space of seven days, all of them telling me about this situation in Honolulu. And sure enough, there was a situation. And they were looking for someone to come out and, well, they were looking for someone to head up to the organization. They were in between managers. And so I gave a call. I really didn't have that. In my honesty, I had not much interest in coming out to Hawaii. It was the only state I'd never been to. But I'd seen it on television and frankly, it wasn't all that appealing. It looked like, you know, there are lots of sunsand and coconut vacations. Well, I was just going to say, if you go to London, there's a lot more sunshine out here. There's a lot more theater in London. You know, it balances out. But I really, anyway, it sounded like an intriguing thing to do before going back to Europe and I came out, interviewed with the folks and just, it was so unlike anything I'd expected it to be. In what sense? Was the unexpectedness the environment or the public radio situation? Oh, the environment. Specifically Honolulu, which I just had no real preconception other than what I'd seen on Hawaii 5.0 or what Honolulu looked like. And of course that was dreadfully misleading. And what I felt was this incredibly intense environment. I mean, I heard it was very cosmopolitan. People from all over the world lived here. And that was intriguing. But I'd also heard it was a melting pot and it was all very kumbaya. And what I found was exactly the opposite. It was a train wreck. And it was the nicest possible way. But all of these cultures coming together and managing to coexist. And not only coexist, but managing to be dynamic. And for all that there are real challenges, obviously, to doing business in Hawaii is, you know, better than anyone. It, I don't know, it was thoroughly unique. It was like nothing I'd experienced before. Just the fact that there's so much Asian culture here and that embedded into most Asian cultures is a reluctance, for example, to say no. And yet each Asian culture has a different way of not saying no. And so when you're in a meeting with six or seven people around the table, all of them from different places, the business of body language gets to be awfully important. Interesting dynamic that goes on. Oh, isn't it, though? And coming from North Carolina, which has a similar sensibility, nobody likes to say no in the South either. And there are sorts of ingenious ways of not letting you know that's what's happening. You have to sort of figure it out. It's very polite. And there's also an era of culture, which it is here. I'm very proud of it, quite rightly. But anyway, it was not what I expected. And there was a vibrant cultural community, which frankly, I hadn't expected. And it was wonderfully exotic. And that six months turned into 18 years. And a couple of radio networks, which I was kind of pleased with. And when you got here and you saw what was going on, you say, well, this place may be not so bad. I'm not used to it. You had the challenge of trying to work with the public radio and address those issues. What were some of those issues at the time? Well, as I mentioned earlier, we're talking about a period coming out of the 90s, the bumpy time in Honolulu, in Hawaii. And the radio station had had a glorious start. When entities like this are born, there's a lot of enthusiasm. And then there's a tendency for people to take it for granted. Exactly, exactly. Honeymoon is over. And there were a couple of moves that turned out to be not too timely, like the creation of a magazine that turned out to be very expensive and non-revenue producing sidelines. So it had gone into a sort of a decline financially. And that has its effect throughout the equipment. And it can snowball on you exactly with the staff and other issues. And so morale was down quite a bit and all that. So there was the issue of morale, staff morale. There was the issue of the bottom line of making payroll, always a challenge. But most of all, there was the relationship between the radio station and the broader community. Because of this slight but seemingly inexorable decline, there was not a failure of faith, but there was a bit of a shrug of the shoulders and, oh, well, that seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's not going to work. And convincing folks that this actually was a very successful enterprise is just that it needed a little bit of tweaking. That was the big challenge. And that must have been a particular challenge for you because dealing with staff morale and dealing with the community, as you mentioned, there's a lot of cultures and a lot of different ways of people watching and interacting. That must have taken a little bit of time for you to figure out or was it pretty straightforward? I took some time to figure out. Now, it had the advantage of doing this sort of thing around the country, just on two or three week consultancies, but essentially parachuting into a situation and realizing over a period of time that with all these challenged radio stations, almost invariably, the problems, whatever they were, engineering problems or morale problems or financial problems or programming issues or whatever, tended to come back to the same source, roughly speaking, which was a breakdown of communication between the governing board and the management of the station. Not invariably, but almost invariably. You could trace it back to that. Well, there's a constant that common theme, I guess, that was kind of plaguing a lot of different owners. Yeah, and you can't take that for granted, but once you identify that sort of pattern, then it makes it a lot easier to troubleshoot. And that had been the case here to an extent. The board was one of the reasons, that was another piece of magic, was just meeting with the board, the governing board, who, to a person, were just absolutely splendid. The agents of change, all of them, and all were a tremendous affection for Hawaii, obviously, and for doing positive work within the community. And they saw public radio as being not just a good thing in and of itself, but catalytic, possibly, for the whole enterprise. And they had that vision. They absolutely did. You know, I've been involved in a lot of different non-profit organizations over the years at the board level. And you really need to have that engagement by the board. That buy-in has to be there. If they're not passionate and they're not buying in, that makes the job really, really hard. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And the same can be said of management. I mean, management has to. And that's the nice thing about working with not-for-profits is, generally, folks who have been around not-for-profits and not long enough to make it into management are doing it because they love it. They love the results of what it is that they're doing. They feel driven in a very sincere and good way. And I got to, in my opinion, one of your critical roles in coordinating that is to make sure that the board feels like they're engaged and that they are making a difference. And I've seen some executive directors that don't quite embrace that. They're more dictatorial, if you will, rather than collaborative. Yes, I mean, it's understandable. It's really understandable. When you think about the makeup of a lot of not-for-profit boards, they tend to be made up, once again, not invariably, but they tend to be made up quite heavily of people, of professionals, of lawyers, of consultants, or folks like that, many of whom have not had to make a payroll. And I've just seen that evidenced again and again and again. And of course, when you're running a not-for-profit, that's something that, yeah, it's not for profit, but you've got to pay people. And it's running a business like any other business, perhaps with a few more obstacles. Believe it or not, we're up on our break time. Oh, my god. OK, now quickly. Yeah, I did. And so we're going to take a short break for about a minute. We'll come back. And maybe we could just spend about 60 seconds on the makeup of a board. Sure. And then we'll go into the real reason that we're here today to talk about the symphony. All right, but this is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're here at the Hawaii Symphony. And we're talking with the CEO over there, Michael Teeterton. And we are going to be back in about 60 seconds. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Planning all week for the day of the big game. Watching at home just doesn't feel the same. What on the list is who's going to drive? It's nice to know you're going to get home alive. Plan for fun and responsibility to the DD. Captain of our team is the DD. For every game day, a sign had designated driver. Hey, I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark. And every Monday at 1 o'clock, I present Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa, where we bring together researchers from across the campus to describe a whole series of scientifically interesting topics of interest both to Hawaii and around the world. So hopefully you can join me one o'clock Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. Welcome back. This is Reg Baker, Business in Hawaii. And we're here today talking with Michael Teeterton about the Hawaii Symphony. I almost said, hallelujah. Yes, you did. We'll get back to that. We didn't quite get out. So the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. But before we get into that, I just wanted to just touch on Michael, your thoughts about the makeup of a board. What's your thoughts about board makeup? Oh, well, it's tremendously important. Board recruitment is a tremendously important exercise, often underappreciated. You need a combination of things. You need folks who share a common vision of what the particular not-for-profit should be out to accomplish, what it should aspire to. But the last thing you want is a board that's too homogeneous. So they need to be. With all the same skill sets. Well, and the same opinions and the same social. It's important that they be steering the organization into a mutually agreed upon constructive direction. But no, you don't want a board full of lawyers, for example. Now, lawyers tend to be quite heavily represented on not-for-profit boards. And it's not a bad thing at all. But you don't want to overload it that way. Nor do you want it overloaded with financial people, because they'll all argue among one another forever about the next year's budget. And you don't want all of one group. You want different skill sets. And that can be, recruitment is a challenge. You don't want somebody, it's not quite fair to say that you don't want somebody who is seeking to be on a board. But you don't want somebody, you don't want it populated with people who want it for the wrong reasons, in all honesty. You don't want some. I refer to that as resume builders. I've encountered people that just want to be on the board and do as little as possible. I have a name on the letterhead. It doesn't really serve anybody. But having folks who are motivated, not motivated to the point of micromanagement, which is a different problem. But different skill sets, finance is important. Legal understanding is important. Political savvy is important. Expertise in advertising or public relations. Maybe the industry a little bit. Yes, that can certainly help. Now, if it was public radio, which I'm familiar, public television, sometimes that makes as well with the disciplines and expertise of commercial radio and television, but not always. And you can be setting yourself up for conflict there. There are two completely different industries with different resonance debt and different ways of supporting themselves, different sets of objectives. Right. So it's just important for whoever it is that's in charge of president and CEO to make sure that not only do they have a current makeup of the board that works well, but they also have a pipeline. Because it over happens and you've got to be ready for that. And I don't want to dwell on that too long because I really want to get into the voice and for the awkward stress. So tell me how you got involved with the orchestra. Well, I retired from public radio last year after, I don't know how many years, 40 years or something in that industry. And traveled for a little bit and caught up on my reading almost. I was invited to join the board of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra. And I was enormously flattered because through my association with public radio, really, that's where my musical education has been. I mean, I'm a rocker from way back, you know? But public radio brought me into contact with classical music. And I've developed a real appreciation for it. And I have been very enthusiastic about the fact that we have a symphony orchestra. I had a symphony orchestra in this community. I was aware that they had had problems. And in fact, you made the observation earlier, inaccurately, I may say, that if I may be so bold, that the orchestra went away and came back again. It didn't. It went away and it died and it is no more. That was the sad end to the Honolulu Symphony Society, which was founded in 1902 and existed for over 100 years, oldest orchestra, west of the Rockies, wonderful, colorful history and had its real glory days. But they came to an end. And in 2009, they filed for bankruptcy and they went out of business. When that happened, it was very sad for many, many people. And a small group of citizens in Honolulu, a very small group, realized that they could not countenance the idea of a Hawaii without a symphony orchestra. And they recognized, also, that if this situation were to be remedied, it had to happen fairly quickly, because it takes a lot of professional musicians to make up a symphony orchestra. And of course, these folks no longer had employment in the orchestra. They had other side gigs, but they began to leave. And if that had been allowed to go on for too long, we'd have gotten below the critical mass necessary to stuff it up, exactly. So there was a certain urgency. And amazingly, this group formed a new 501c3, a not-for-profit company, and organized the musicians and created this corporate entity that would function once again as a nucleus for a symphony orchestra. And in 2012, it put on its first season, which is just amazing, absolutely amazing. That sense of urgency made that happen a little earlier than perhaps it should have or would have in a mainland community, where this business of assembling the critical mass of musicians wouldn't be quite such a problem, but here it's critical. It makes a big commitment to get somebody to move here. Exactly, exactly. And so that was why, in 2012, the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, as it now is, came into business. But it came into business a little under-capitalized from where it should be, making a very difficult job, even more difficult. Not uncommon for a lot of businesses to start under-capitalized, so but it's still a challenge. But with a lot of businesses, you can start, smile, and grow with a symphony orchestra. You need those 65 musicians. You can't start it with a triangle and a flute. It's just not going to work. But the response from the community was wonderful. Standing ovation went on for half, I don't know, a long time. It seemed forever. When they first came out on stage, it was just glorious. Now, at that time, I wasn't involved with it. Of course, I was from public radio. But I've attended a lot of concerts since, and I've been aware of what it takes to make this organization happen. And I've become a great deal more aware since I joined the board a few months ago and have recognized that, boy, oh, boy, this is a real, a real heroic effort that's being made here. They're serious about it. They are serious. If they weren't serious, it wouldn't be happening. And it is happening in a glorious way. But it needs a lot of shoulder to the wheel sort of stuff. And at one point, at some point, I was invited. I was suggested that I take over the presidency of the organization or actually become president because they didn't have one before. And I agreed to do that. And I wasn't looking for another career. I'm still not. But I do care about this organization. And so I've been hanging out of the office the last little while, and now I have my own little cubicle. And there are a lot of time. And my personal objective is to get this organization onto a business-like footing. Because of the initial undercapitalization, it's been a bit bumpy for the first five years. We're coming into it. We're in our sixth season now. But we've been losing money each year. And that accumulates. And that can't go on forever. So one of my objectives is to get us debt-free. And that was my initial objective with Public Radio. Because I think that's very important. And another objective is to construct a business model that is sustainable. And I think we're well on the road to that. As I've been saying to folks lately when I give little talks, we have a glorious future for this orchestra if we can just get through the present. We have two minutes left. And I want to get to a couple things real quick here. So number one, and remember, I'm a CPA by training. And so I look for this stuff. But is there an endowment program or something that is there? There is a foundation. It's a separate organization, separate company, essentially. And it's been in existence for some years and was a foundation that produced an income, or part of the income for our predecessor. And it's providing some of that income to this orchestra. It's a little complex. Because when the earlier orchestra went down, it went down having borrowed from that foundation, from the corpus of that. And we're having to put that right before we can get back to getting all of our due from that. One of the areas that can be focused on is to build that back up and get those balances higher. Now we've got probably less than a minute before we have to break. And I just wanted to, yeah, there's a lot of programs. There's a lot of events that are coming up. And you've got a couple coming up here soon for the holidays. Oh, Evans, yes. Well, we have our masterwork series, which is our classical music series. And we have some of the world's best artists coming in to work with the orchestra. Leonard Slatkin, the very first rank American conductor, is coming in to work with us. Longlong is coming in, arguably the greatest pianist alive right now. So that's the classical series. We have the Pops series, which we have a holiday Pops coming up in December. We have this weekend where we're doing two concerts of music by Michael Jackson, along with dancers and singers in the whole nine yards. And that's typical of the way we're trying to spread our wings a little to a wider demographic. And real quickly, where can somebody go to find out more information on this and maybe purchase some tickets and attend? That's the most important piece of information in this program. It'll be at the website, HawaiiSymphonyOrchestra.org. Which is on the screen right now. Oh, yes, there it is. Look at that. And you go there, we'll find a whole schedule. And it's still in a state of becoming for this season. And I guess we'll have all the information about the different programs and when they're going to be airing and how to get the tickets and all of that. And we have a little office in Kaimuki, and you're welcome to come by and chat about the orchestra or even better, buy tickets or buy a subscription for the series. Well, maybe early next year, we can have you back on the show again. You can give us another update on what's going on over there and how well things are going and what the other programs are that you got. I love it. And thank you very much for having me. Well, Michael, it was a pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We air every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. And I sure hope to see you next week. Until then, aloha.