 I am Rusty Komori and this is Beyond the Lines. We broadcast live on Mondays from the beautiful Think Tech Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book which is also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership and finding greatness. My special guest today is Juno Chung. He is the owner of the very popular Koa pancake house which has multiple locations across Oahu. It's been an extremely successful family run business for over 30 years and today we are going beyond pancakes. Hey Juno, welcome to the show today. Thank you for having me Rusty. Well I'm excited to have you here. I know you went to Marinal in your youth. What did you like going to Marinal? Oh I loved it. You know small class sizes, the school is very small, you know the teachers get to know you beyond just being a student. You know the small class sizes is huge for me you know so there's so much interaction and yeah. It's a great school, great school. Great school and what kind of activities and sports did you do there? I didn't do too many organized sports. I paddled in high school but other than that you know I did a lot of outside activities like skateboarding, surfing but paddling was my main sport in high school. All the fun stuff and you could do that anytime you wanted to right? Yep 100%. And then what college did you end up going to? I went to Shyamunad University and there I got my business admin degree. Wow that's great, Shyamunad. And another small school right? You're not just a number there, professors know your name you know and again small class sizes. They did good I mean you're your owner CEO of the pancake house now. You did something right. Now what was your first official job that you had Judo? It was working at Zippy's as a counter I was taking orders at the register and I also helped out with the bakery department. Now why was that? Why did Zippy's become your first job and not with your parents? You know my parents actually my first job I wanted to work as in the valet. I was into cars in high school and I wanted to just be around it but my parents you know they told me that if I were to work anywhere I had to either be with the family business or somewhere that would help me gain experience that would help out the family business. So yeah I mean I like eating Zippy's so I chose to work at Zippy's. Who doesn't I have to Zippy's like at least once twice a week. I just had it last night. But I absolutely love co-op pancake house through these years I mean it's you guys are just awesome and your parents started co-op pancake house in 1988 yep how did it all begin? It kind of happened by accident my parents moved here from Korea and they had a bunch of different jobs they started out being a waiter dishwasher and the first business they owned was a driving school and they would help immigrants especially people from Japan and Korea learn how to drive in the United States my parents speak both Korean and Japanese so they helped people get their license and that was their first job that they had and I guess they were just looking through the newspaper and they seen that a business was for sale in 1988 and it was Koa house in Kaneohe and they took a stab at it so then they sold their their driving school business and then bought co-op pancake house. Do you guys actually have some Koa in each location? So that's actually the reason why we're named Koa pancake house so the original owner that started Koa house back this was probably in the early 80s his main job was importing wood for a living and he wanted to get into the restaurant business so he built his first restaurant and since he had the connection with importing wood he decided to decorate the whole interior with Koa wood which was very expensive so he named it Koa house and when my parents took over in 1988 they just kept with the theme and all of our restaurants now unfortunately is not decorated with real Koa wood it'd be very very expensive but we use a Koa laminate so still has that same feel. Sounds good now in 1988 you must have been very young how young were you and through those years with your parents owning Koa pancake house what were you doing during those years? Yeah so I was three when my parents took over and bought Koa pancake house yeah and I was just going to school but I was pretty much raised in the restaurant some of the long time customers say that they remember my mom holding me or me being behind the register while my mom was bringing up people and the customers used to joke around and you know say does this person have a worker's permit because he's so young because I would always be in the restaurant and they would joke around and say that it was child labor. Now I want to know Juno how did it evolve to where you became the owner? Yeah so you know after my first job at Zippy's and I worked there for about a year or two after that I went straight into the family business so I did everything from working as a cashier, cook, busboy, everything and over the years you know I just worked with them and it slowly became a thing where I was going to take over I mean it was never a question whether or not I was going to take over and so you know I went to college got my business degree and then it was just a thing where I was going to start working with my parents right after and you know after working with my parents after graduating college we started to butt heads you know my parents being the first generation business owner and me being the second you know I had different views on how I wanted to run the company and we started to butt heads argue all the time and then I you know it got to a point where we were arguing so bad but you know so I told my parents let's let's just split ways you know you guys run the business this is your business and I want to preserve the relationship between father and son and mother and son rather than you know just work together and argue all the time so we actually had a fallout at one point and I think this was in 2000 this was 2012 okay 2011 and so I pardoned ways started my own business I moved to New York and then shortly after I get a call from my sister and she says my parents health wasn't doing too well and I was a lot closer to my parents than my sisters were so my sister asked me if I could come back home and talk with my parents and then after some talk yeah they they agreed that you know they wanted to retire they wanted to focus on their health and yeah I soon took over so you became owner and you wanted to be 100 percent in charge which you are right yes now I want to know Juno what what's your biggest challenges that you're dealing with as a business owner oh biggest challenge is the biggest one has to be by far employees okay you know I know a lot of people now talk about employees being the biggest challenge because of the low unemployment rate but you know for me the biggest challenge was when I took over the business we already had about 110 employees and for me I felt a lot of pressure to take care of these employees um and I believe I was 28 at the time when I took over and I was like everybody was looking at me like yeah okay what would you know what do we do like and they were asking me all these questions and I felt very scared to make a decision I was almost paralyzed because you know I knew that with a wrong decision or if I did something within the company it would affect all 110 employees um you know so employees is definitely my biggest challenge because I'm always thinking about how it's going to affect them and their livelihood yeah and in my book you know I talk about empathy and you definitely have empathy for all of your employees and I'm sure when they watch this uh TV episode they're going to fully realize that yeah now what sets your restaurant apart from others so in 2001 my father opened up his second co-op pancake house which was in Wahiwa and he decided to go with the fast casual concept you know with with with today's you know technology and everything everything is so instant right and my father wanted to change it from a sit-down restaurant to a fast casual where you order up at the counter you seat yourself everything comes on a paper plate and fork and knife and you just throw it away and so we changed our business and we wanted to make it kind of like in between fast food and and and a sit-down style restaurant and we strive on being a quick breakfast you know you don't have to wait for a table you don't have to wait to get served you know and you could get your orders to go if possible you know so well I absolutely love that I love how how great the food is and how casual it is but it's very comfortable yeah yeah thank you thank you so much now how many current locations do you have right now so we have a total of eight restaurants uh six of them being co-op pancake house okay and we opened up two core cafes that are actually going to be being converted to a co-op pancake house in the next couple of weeks now what are your current goals right now as a business owner um right now my current goals are just to kind of create structure within the business um so my parents when they ran the business it was a very mom and pop style organization um you know we had no managers no handbook thank god we didn't get sued by anybody but um yeah we had no rules whatsoever in the company and everything was just kind of done we're just putting out fires left and right and so for me I'm wanting to put in more and more structure um you know come up with the benefits package you know I have a handbook we have a handbook now great and just hiring more management level um positions in the company now knowing that what is your what is your vision for the future of your company uh that actually changed recently um when I first took over my vision for the company was to expand and to open up people would ask me what my um my big hairy audacious goal was and I used to say I want to open up a thousand restaurants but recently um it it became to more just sustain what we have now um you know and if we do open up one or two here and there that would be okay but um for me my vision is to be able to create a sustaining well organized well running restaurant and also venture out and do other things you know um I have this other clothing company that I have on the side and I would like to spend a little bit more time on that yeah and you know you know winning a championship or having a successful business be number one I mean achieving success is one thing but sustaining success is is really challenging and that's what you're doing right now yeah um you know my father always told me that after I took over the company he would always tell me it's you know you don't have to expand just don't bankrupt the business so yeah I guess that's the only thing I have to do what do you think Juno are the keys to running a successful business oh that's a really good question um you know I definitely the people um you know without the the employees you know we're nothing um so I always focus on making sure that we're taking care of the people um taking care of my employees and you know any extra money that we have we're actually working on our budget right now and with all the excess money that we have I want to make sure make sure that we're paying our employees well you know we're coming up with with benefits like creative benefits where it's really taking care of my employees so I think yeah that's the number one thing yeah and you know when I come into your restaurant it's it's really great because it's such a positive you know atmosphere in there and the employees are very welcoming and it looks like they're having fun yeah yeah that's actually one of our core values uh it's fun you know I want to make sure that people come in and they're not so stiff we don't have like a you know welcome to coa pancake house or whatnot and yeah it's just hey how's it you know and we want to make sure that everybody's just having fun while they're working yeah totally I mean and it's it all starts because of the owner right thank you it permeates through the rest of the staff and that's great now Juno why why do you think restaurants fail that also is a good question um and if I've known that answer um I don't I don't think that we would be converting coa cafe to a coa pancake house um you know because I thought that I could run um and start my own business you know along with coa pancake house I wanted to kind of do something on my on my own and you know so I started coa cafe opened up two restaurants and it wasn't doing so well so we're actually converting to a coa pancake house and hopefully that kind of picks up business a little bit but if I've known that answer I mean yeah I mean I want to save a lot of money so coa cafe was your idea yeah and so what what happened when you told your parents about that whole situation um yeah so I have these meetings with my parents you know we we go out to lunch or dinner every now and then and I remember having this discussion with my dad and I sat him down and I told him you know coa cafe we're losing money every month I'm looking at the PNL statements and we're just constantly losing money and the whole time I'm telling him the story he has like this big smile on his face and I'm like wow like how is this he's like laughing at my pain and um yeah and and for him the reason why he was so happy is because he feels that everybody in one point or another should should fail in life and um that's the only way that you're going to learn from your mistakes and um you know for me when every time I look at this PNL I would see how much money I'm losing and I remember like I felt my like all this anxiety built up and my father told me to look at it from a different perspective where he said you know when you go to school you have to pay a tuition right I mean there's and when you pay this tuition you're you're paying that so that you can learn my father feels the same way in business where you know sometimes you need to pay money to learn a lesson so he's telling me that you're just paying tuition and sometimes the the tuition is like a Harvard MBA tuition and sometimes it's a community college tuition uh unfortunately mine was probably several MBAs from Harvard well it's definitely a learning experience definitely is well Juno we're going to take a quick break and then when we come back we're going to continue going way beyond pancakes okay cool you are watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest Juno Chung we'll be back in a quick minute hey stand the energy man here on Think Tech Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary so I'm stuck doing energy stuff but I really like energy stuff so I'm going to keep on doing it so join me every Friday on stand the energy man at lunchtime at noon on my lunch hour we're going to talk about everything energy especially if it begins with the word hydrogen we're going to definitely be talking about it we'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner how we can make the world a better place just basically save the planet even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore we got it nailed down here so we'll see you on Friday and noon with stand the energy man aloha hey aloha my name is Andrew Lanning I'm the host of security matters Hawaii airing every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii live from the studios I'll bring you guests I'll bring you information about the things in security that matter to keeping you safe your co-workers safe your family safe to keep our community safe uh we want to teach you about those things in our industry that you know may be a little outside of your experience so please join me because security matters aloha welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii my special guest today is Juno Chung he is the owner of the very popular koa pancake house which has multiple locations across Oahu and today we are going beyond pancakes Juno I want to know what's a lesson or lessons you've learned since becoming owner so far uh one definitely has to be you know being humble um you know with creating koa cafe I I felt that you know I could do something better than what my parents has built have built and um yeah you know so that's why it was a very humbling experience every time I looked at the the statements and and was seeing that we were losing money um and after that you know I felt like who might have say that I know better than my parents who's been doing this for about you know 25 or so years um so definitely being humble is this a big one and there's there's a a lot to be said about experience right right so what did your parents say tell you about you know if I mean if it isn't broke right yep yeah so my parents they would always say if it's not broke don't fix it and for me I always felt like you know even though it's not broke it could be better um but you know sometimes that's not the case and so with my parents when I when I pitched them about you know doing something different with the business they told me if you're going to do something do something on your own so that's why I created koa cafe because they didn't want to mess they didn't want me to mess with whatever they had built right and they felt like they they tweaked the formula and they got it right so they're like why change it right yeah because it's working yeah yeah and you guys do a lot to help the community um what can you share like what you guys are doing yeah community uh so every year we do we work with the make a wish foundation and we team up with them they have this event called waffles for wishes and we donate food and we um we work the event with them we also donate to IHS which is a homeless shelter here in Hawaii and every Thanksgiving the IHS puts on a dinner and we felt why not have it an all-day or deal where people get to come in and enjoy food so we actually donate pancakes and breakfast to the IHS IHS shelter and just feed everybody breakfast so that they could you know enjoy just a whole day of eating wow all day all day wow that's that's so fantastic to hear that yeah it's really good now June I want to talk to you about my book I know that you read my book did you like my book I loved your book yeah I did what did you like about it you know there was that story uh Chris Ma I believe his oh yeah name was yeah and um you know it in that's in that part of the book you talk about teamwork and you know that's another big core value in our company um you know just making sure that everyone works well as a team and sometimes you need to sacrifice whatever you want that's for the greater good yeah he was he was a freshman on my team when he beat everybody and became number one and I thought he was going to play for singles but I had five singles players I needed one of them to play doubles and he's like coach I'll play doubles and I'm like really I told that story to everybody every year I actually tell that to my my leadership team as well too every time we have a meeting and we're talking about teamwork I bring up that story so yeah thank you how often do you guys have management trainings oh we do that we we have management meetings once a week um yeah and it's every Tuesday that we have these these meetings and I mean that's when we kind of all come together and we just make sure that everyone's on the same page and helping out each other and you guys that's where you guys go beyond the lines right exactly now Juno I want to ask you about success how how do you define success oh for me success you know a lot of times people look at how much money you have or properties or whatever it is for me I feel like success is all about being happy um so you know I if I'm not happy then I'm not being successful in my life so definitely happiness is a key thing for me now you have extremely high standards for yourself and I mean sometimes it's I mean it could be a bad thing yeah like for instance you know I see a therapist um and my therapist tells me you know stop reading books you know and um you know I read this thing online that an average CEO reads like 50 books or whatnot uh a month or so I forgot what the what the statistic was but I was like wow I gotta start reading books so I started reading all these books and my therapist told me slow down because for me you know every time I read these books and I learned something new on on how to run my business or something about personal growth I feel like I fall more and more behind you know every time I don't implement some of these things that I've learned you know I'm just like wow like I'm not being the best person I'm not being the best best version of myself or I'm not being the best CEO so you know my my therapist sometimes tells me slow it down a bit you know you don't you don't need to read all these books you know and um yeah so so why why do you have a therapist I mean what what issues yeah um are you dealing with so in what was it 2009 2010 um I was diagnosed as being depressed um I had major anxiety I was on antidepressants anti-anxiety medication and um we don't really know exactly where the cause of it started uh but you know it it was somewhere having to do with um me being involved with my parents business um you know this was couple years after I graduated college started working for my parents full time and me and my parents were just arguing non-stop we were butting heads and you know I wasn't sure if I was happy with what I was doing in my life and you know I just it it just all kind of came crashing down and um so I decided to seek help I started seeing a therapist uh you know he put me on all the medication and during that the the peak of things um you know I wasn't able to get out of bed you know my anxiety was really bad and I remember my therapist telling me along with these medications that I'm taking um I need to do something beyond that um so he told me every day I need you to get out of the house at least once a day and just walk around the block get some fresh air get some sunlight and he told me that it was going to help with my anxiety um so I did so and every day I would do this walk and um growing up so I wasn't the best kid growing up and I dabbled in graffiti here and there and um so every time I would go on this walk I'm like instead of just walking around aimlessly I'm going to do something so I created this stencil of an outlet like a regular electrical outlet okay and I thought it would just be funny if you're walking down the street and you see this spray painted electrical outlet on the side of the road um but that eventually evolved into um being a sticker so I thought it was less of a crime if it was a sticker rather than spray paint because you could easily just peel that off but yeah so I started putting up these stickers everywhere and that slowly became a thing where people started finding out that it was me responsible for putting up all these outlets everywhere and they started asking for one and yeah I mean I slowly realized that it was becoming a thing where you know every time I gave a sticker to somebody they would put it on their outlet and for me putting up these stickers was my outlet to my life right it helped me with my depression and my anxiety so I created this company called my outlet and the tagline is what's your outlet and uh for me it was a lifestyle company where it just told the stories of people and what their outlet to life is um so when I when I separated from my parents business um this was in 2010 um yeah I didn't want to argue with my parents anymore you know and ultimately this was their business so who was I to tell them this is how you should run your business so I told my parents I want to preserve the relationship between mother and father and and I mean father and son and mother and son and I'm going to go do my own thing so I moved to New York started that company and um that was your outlet yeah that was my outlet now did you have any suicidal situations during that time uh I you know suicide thoughts always ran through my head uh I never took any action but um it was always there you know I always thought about you know like it would just be easier if I just wasn't alive um but I never really did anything oh wow yeah that's like that's deep Juno yeah and you know I don't know maybe it was because of my outlet right with putting up these stickers um saved you yeah pretty much it saved me so yeah for me I wanted to really with that outlet company I really wanted to just break the stigma with with with depression and anxiety you know and and just let people know that it's okay to be depressed it's okay to have anxiety you know just make sure that you have an outlet that you're doing something that you love so that's why when you ask me the question about success you know happiness is is for me the number one measure of success wow that's thank you for sharing that you know that's very personal um Juno what's been your greatest obstacle in achieving your success and how did you overcome it you know my greatest obstacle was um just figuring out the things that make me happy um you know growing up there was a lot of pressure put on me um I'm the only boy my whole entire generation uh my parents would always tell me I had you have to marry a Korean nice Korean girl you have to take over the family business you have to do all these things and there was a lot of expectation put on me and growing up I never really knew what was things that I actually wanted to do you know like I had a hard time differentiating what I truly wanted to do versus what my family was wanted me to do um um yeah wow that's that's great insights Juno Juno I want to thank you for taking time to be on Beyond the Lines today and for really sharing you know the professional side of the business things and as well as the personal side Juno thank you thank you for having me on the show thank you Juno yeah and thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii for more information please visit my website RustyKamori.com and my book is available on Amazon Barnes & Noble and all Costco stores in Hawaii a special thank you to Iolani Sportswear for my awesome shirt I hope that this show inspires you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs aloha