 Welcome to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Rusty Kamori. We broadcast live on Mondays at 10 a.m. from the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This TV show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, which is about leadership, having a constant striving for excellence, achieving and sustaining success, and finding greatness. My guest today, Jarrett Walters, is the Chief Operating Officer for Hawaiian Building Maintenance, and he is a great leader. Today we are going beyond maintenance. Jarrett, thank you for being here today. Thank you so much for having me. You went to Hawaii Baptist Academy. Share with me your experiences there. Sure. We moved to Hawaii in 1994, and we were looking at good schools to go to, and we chose Hawaii Baptist Academy. Great. It was a great place. It encouraged family principles, values, and God, and it really gave me an opportunity to participate in volleyball and basketball and all kinds of sports that, in other schools, I might not have had the opportunity to play. So I got a good diverse education, good experience, and met some really great people. And then after graduating Hawaii Baptist Academy, you went to Princeton University. That's one of the top schools, most very prestigious school in the country. How was your experience there at Princeton? It was so great. So coming from Hawaii, you can sometimes feel like you're in a small pond. And then you get into a place like Princeton, and your professors are the guys who wrote the books. And the people that you're talking to every day are some of the most brilliant minds in the world. And you grow just by having people that push you every day. So whether it was playing varsity volleyball in college and balancing all those things, it gave me an opportunity to see how much more I could learn and do. Amazing. That's great. Now, I want to know, what was the first job that you've ever had? First job. So the first job I technically ever had was pulling carpets for my dad in high school. I've been in this company for a long time. Great. And it'd be a Friday night, and you'd say, hey, we've got a problem. Skip your plans. You're coming in helping in the flood. And I would do it. First real job was working at school at Princeton. I was in an overseeing a game room, and I worked in the library, and I had a couple of jobs on top of sports in school. Great. Yeah. Now, I want to ask you, Jared, who is your rock in your life? My rock is definitely my wife, Anna. Awesome. A couple of years back, I got really, really crystal clear on what it is I wanted in my life. Someone who's loving, but will push me, great, is supportive, but challenging. And that's Anna. Absolutely. When I met her, it was just instant magic, and it's been that way ever since. And I'm a better man today from it. Awesome. Glad to hear that. I know Anna as well, and you're so right. You guys make each other better together. Absolutely. Yeah. So the Hawaiian building maintenance has been operating in Hawaii for over 50 years. Can you give me a brief history about how it began and how it has evolved? Sure. So we came to Hawaii in 1994, and at that point, it was part of a Fortune 100 janitorial company called Ogden Alleyed out of New York. Okay. And my dad came over to facilitate a sale to a company out of Boston named Unico. And then in 2006, he and some local investors put together a buyout and were able to make Hawaiian building maintenance locally and operated. That's when I came on board. Great. Now, how is your working relationship with your dad, Jim? Can you share with me how that is? It's an ever-evolving thing. Okay. And I've learned a lot about family business and some of the challenges and also some of the strengths. Great. At the end of the day, I know that my boss is a good man, and I've learned a lot from him. And I've also learned humility and having to respect the person you work for. It's easy in a family business to come in and say, I'm going to tell you what I think you're my dad. I can tell you straight. But anybody else in my role, that'd be his boss, and you'd have to think about the right way to approach him. So learning how to work with him, learning how to grow with him, and as our company evolves, share his vision, but also incorporate mine has been really a fun challenge. Both of you, as CEO with Jim and then you as the COO, you guys are awesome together and have really great dynamics, and it shows what the success of Hawaiian Building Maintenance. Can you share with me all of, well, not all, but maybe most of the services that you guys provide? Sure. So, you know, when we first came to Hawaii in 1994, it was primarily a janitorial company. In the last 25 years, we do building engineering. We have over 190 engineers doing your maintenance and your chillers and in your buildings. We also do special services, pressure washing, window cleaning and things like that. And one of our real fun departments that we do is HVAC, so that's air conditioning. We do LED installations. So we've got a really good team of people that do smart work, building upgrades and help you with energy efficiency. That's great. And that's a whole spectrum of things that you do that's so necessary. Well, the idea is if we can get in and build a good relationship with a customer on one angle, we have the ability from our variety of services to help you with your whole facility. Wow. I noticed that you have over 700 employees and you service over 300 locations. And you have very low turnover. Why do you think you have such low turnover? Well, this is where your leadership book and the philosophies that we both share are so important. There's a lot of people that, one, don't appreciate their employees and look at them as commodities. And two, don't recognize that investing in your people will pay off every time. So we have 700 people, we've got a diverse management team, we promote from within, but we also do fun things because you have to enjoy what you do. You want to come to work and have fun. What kind of fun things do you guys do? So the weekend after July 4th, we're having our 10th annual HBM basketball tournament and company pollock. So everybody comes. We have four or five teams and they play all day. The families come and cheer them on. We have good laughs. We give away prizes. Great. We have an HBM Idol competition in April and we have 15 of our best singers come and we celebrate them and we cater everybody and we serve some drinks and we have a good time. And people look forward to that stuff. Well, playing basketball, I think that everyone's going to want you to be on their team because you're like seven feet tall. Yeah, but they're fast. Aren't you fast too? Not as fast as I used to be, but it's really more about them than about me anyway. Awesome. Now, what do you look for in an employee? It's a great question. And one I ask my team all the time, we went through an exercise not too long ago where I asked them, what's your ideal HBM employee? And the list ranged from honest, hardworking, good character, communicates. It's easy to hire for skills, but we've chosen to hire for the people. And a lot of skills you have to have, but some can be taught on the job as well. So by bringing in good people with good hearts, that's our best opportunity for great stories. We have customers who have experienced a cleaner who's been in their building for 10 years and every day comes in with a smile. Great. And you can't buy that. You have to mentor and you have to appreciate and sustain greatness in people and great quality in people. And positive energy. Absolutely. I mean, it's so contagious. Yep. And everyone can do the same job, but the people with the smile on their face win every time. Yeah. Now, your company has grown incredibly, you know, through the years and continues to grow. What do you attribute that to? Well, one, we continue to look at the market we're in and we evolve with it. So we don't just hold on to what worked yesterday. We don't lose our history and our past and what's made us great, but we recognize that with Hawaii's low unemployment, you have to hire differently and you also have to choose your customers differently. And so as we work with our customers, it's an education process because they've had a number of vendors who may have just tried to tell them the cheapest will always win. And if that's their model, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. We have to let them know that if you want to have the same person clean your place for five, ten years, you have to appreciate them and you also have to let them know that they're wanted and compensate them. Yeah. Yeah. Now, every business has challenges. What are your current challenges with your company right now? Well, you know, like I said, the market's won. And we've been doing a good job by growing strategically. So every company wants to be bigger, but five years ago we might have chased some things that we wouldn't chase today. And it's not that we don't want to do everybody's buildings, but it might not be the right time. So we have to choose the right strategic partners at the right moments to grow sustainably. In a service industry, if you get too big too quick, then you're going to end up burning some bridges and that's not our goal. One of my dad's biggest philosophies is if you go to Longs or Safeway or one of the local stores and you see a customer, you shouldn't want to have to run away and hide. Sure. Now, you've achieved a lot of success with Hawaiian building maintenance. And how do you outdo what you've done to achieve even greater success? Well, you're constantly looking for motivation and inspiration. I've been reading nonstop this year leadership books like yours, which actually kicked off my year of reading and research. Did I inspire you? You totally did. I remember laying in the hammock in our front yard and just reading it and just feeling so energized. Wow. Not every book is going to be as energizing as yours, but you can learn something everywhere. And I'm always looking for things to draw meaning from, probably sometimes too much, but I think that you can learn from everything you do in life. And everybody in your life could be either positive or negative in your life, but you can learn from everybody, not just the people that say what you want to hear. Sure. Well, you know, Hawaiian building maintenance is part of the Adopt a School program. And you recently did one in Palisades. Can you tell me more about that? Well, what was cool about that is we've been doing Adopt a School for over six years now. One of our former managers brought it to the table and said, this is something that's a passion to me. And so we picked it up. We always look for things that, one, give back to the community, but two, resonate with the people in our company. And so what was so neat about Palisades was one of our employees had two kids in that school. And so they brought the whole family out. They worked with us. And so when we plan projects, I'll talk to our accounting department. I'll talk to our operations team. I'll talk to everybody and say, is there something that we can be doing with our time and our energy that energizes and motivates you? Because anybody can go work somewhere, but if it doesn't connect or resonate with your team, it's great on Facebook, but it's not what drives you as a company. I know that you guys have also done Adopt a School with a school in Mililani, and what other ones have you done so far? Well, this year we are looking at a couple on the West Side, too. We've done Farrington, which was really neat and very humbling for me, because we have a number of guys who actually had gone to school there and then came right into our workforce. And so they recognized some of the teachers that showed up and some of the people that were a part of the school. And they got to give back and make it beautiful for their next generation of kids coming through. You've also been involved in community cleanup in Kakako, and you're a past president of Paloma Settlement. Yes. You do a lot of stuff. Can you share with me some of those things about the community cleanup day and the Paloma Settlement situations? Sure. So we've been a member of BOMA for a very long time, and they've been doing this Kakako cleanup for a number of years. And it started off as an opportunity to give back and do some good work. But we've had more and more people every year, and there's some influential people at BOMA who really pushed that. We've been so thankful to be part of their community service programs. We had almost 20 people show up this year, which was great. They give up a Saturday, and we're part of about 300 volunteers that go. And by the end of the day, that whole park looks brand new. Wow. Paloma Settlement was something that's been a true passion of our family. So my dad was on the board. I was on the board for six years and president for two and a half. And now my mom's on the board. So it's been something that's been very important to the Walters family. Can you share more about the Paloma Settlement? Because I know that's passion. I mean, you have a lot of passion for that. Sure. So it's been in Hawaii for over 100 years, serving the Kalihi Paloma area with the Keiki and Kapuna. And it has educational opportunities, things where kids can go after school, events for some of the seniors in the area, like dancing and crafts, and really neat community and fellowship, which is really hard in Hawaii right now. So I remember we did an outreach to some of the local schools. And the kids didn't feel safe at school after hours. So Paloma became a place where they can go to and learn and grow and feel safe. And it's so important at early ages for kids of all communities to have an opportunity to grow. Yeah. That's absolutely fantastic. Well, we're going to take a quick break, Jared. And when we come back, I want to kind of ask you about your insights into leadership and what you think great leaders do. And you're a great leader, and that's why I really want to pick your brain about that. Great. Thanks. You are watching Beyond the Lines with my guest, Jared Walters on Think Tech Hawaii. We will be back in 60 seconds. I'm Yukari Kunisue. I'm your host of New Japanese Language Show on Think Tech Hawaii, called Konnichiwa Hawaii, broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 PM. Please join us, where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii. The show will be all in Japanese. Hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 PM. Aloha. Hi, I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5 30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of contemporary Asian affairs. There's so much to discuss, and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think, we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. The possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China, remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Rusty Komori, and my guest today is Jared Walters, the chief operating officer for Hawaiian Building Maintenance. Jared, you're a great leader, and my book is about leadership and achieving and sustaining success. And I really want to get your insights into what makes a great leader. What do you think makes a great leader? A great leader is something that evolves, and it grows, and it changes it every day. And I've experienced many roles of leadership in my life, and especially in my professional career as well as athletic career. I've been the player who wants to go in and be the best player on the team. And that's a great thing to strive for. And then I've wanted to become a team captain. And at that capacity, you're motivating, you're pushing people, and you have to actually get to know your people differently. Not everybody's motivated the same way. And so a time that you might have wanted to spend working on your jump shot, get spent on picking someone up and challenging them. And then as a coach, or in this case as a chief operating officer, you have to look at a number of departments. You have to look forward at the future. You have to look at all of these things that can impact your company moving forward. And so as you take that change from someone who thinks that you can impact everything yourself to a place where you're looking outwards and say, everybody in our company impacts our future, that gives you the opportunity and the bandwidth really to be a true leader. Great. Yeah, I like that insight right there. Now, all great leaders have been mentored by other great leaders. Can you share with me who mentored you and what are some key things that you've learned? Well, and that goes back so far. I had a basketball coach when I was a sophomore in high school who recognized me as a six foot four guy and wanted to teach me how to shoot and dribble. So many people in Hawaii, if you're tall, you gotta go bang in the post. And he said, if you wanna be sustainable with your basketball career and grow and play in bigger arenas, then work on your weaknesses. Work on the things that's gonna make you stand out and not just play to your strengths. And that applies to all parts of life. My dad's been a great mentor in a number of ways. He's not always been the typical walk you step by step, but he's always had a vision. My dad's a visionary man. And he's somebody that I've been able to learn from. And over the years, things he taught me five, 10 years ago start to resonate today more than they ever did in the moment. And there's things he's probably teaching me right now that I won't recognize for another 10, 20 years. But that's what a great leader is. It's planting little seeds. It's making corrections in the moment. And it's also looking for the growth of someone's potential. Well, I think that's what makes you guys so amazing together is as CEO, he's a great visionary. As CEO, you're the guy, you get things done and you do it well. Yeah. Great leaders are always learning. They have a constant striving for excellence, which makes them even greater. What are you doing to improve yourself even more? You mentioned that you read books. And can you tell me more about what you're doing personally? Absolutely. So I'm never turning down opportunities to learn. I just went to an IROM event where our good friend, Corey Campbell, was talking about coaching for leadership and not just being a boss. Because being a coach, being a leader, all of those things help you develop a culture. When I was looking at Book Street and I read yours, the culture impact and aspect was what really impacted me. Because that's the stuff that is sustainable and grows. I've been going out to our job sites and talking to our people. And some of our great leadership team have been coordinating site walks and audits and just being present. And that's been a big impact and making sure our whole company learns what it is that we're trying to do. Been going to conferences and conventions and all kinds of stuff just to glean whatever I can from great people. I joined YPO this year. Great. I met a number of really, really great leaders in their individual industries. And just by being around people that have done well and you can learn from and grow has really inspired me to learn and grow more. Now, you were telling me that you do trainings and leadership trainings for your company. Can you share with me more about what you're doing? So one of the things that I think has made Hawaiian Building Maintenance so great is for pretty much our entire existence, we've been doing monthly trainings for all of our managers and supervisors. So this Wednesday, for example, we're going to have a two-hour training at night. Great, talking about fun things, obviously, but also the nitty-gritty like hazardous communications and workplace safety things. But on top of that, I've had the ability to work with our team to do what we're going to be developing this year as a leadership development course. So I've been looking at all the books I've been reading. I've pulled some great excerpts from yours. Thank you. And we're putting together a class for our own people to grow to become better leaders, supervisors, or managers in our company. Promoting from within is a huge value of ours. And we want to get people the tools to succeed and do all that. Well, I feel honored that you're using parts of my book. I feel grateful. Well, and likewise. And part of the things that we're training on right now is it looks easy to be a leader, but the first thing that we're teaching on is attitude. And you key on that quite a bit in your book, too. Resiliency, attitude, integrity. And those are the three cornerstones that are important for a leader in our company. I remember whenever I promote someone, I give them the same talk. And they get all jazzed up. And they come in and say, oh, man, I love this. I'm going to be a department head, or I'm going to be a manager. And I say, OK, take this excitement. And you bottle it up. And you hold it inside of you. Because there's going to be a day. And it's probably going to come soon, where there'll be a crisis in a building or a problem with some of your employees. Because that's business. It happens. And you have to ask yourself, was that excitement worth this stress? And stress is something that happens everywhere in life. But if you have the ability to not take it personally and look for what you can achieve and not just look at the obstacles in the way, it changes your whole mindset in a way that you want to do great things for great people. Yeah. And you're going to remember this, that in my book, I talk about unnecessary stress and necessary stress. And so necessary stress is fine, but unnecessary stress is not. You mentioned some principles earlier. Can you share with me more about what principles you live by? Sure. It's something that you have to look at. And holding a mirror to yourself can be one of the most challenging things. If you're going to ask somebody to be disciplined, then you probably should be disciplined yourself. Yeah. If you're going to ask someone to be honest, then you have to be able to come into those tough moments and be honest with your people. When you ask someone to have good integrity, then your company should reflect those things. And so those are things we're constantly striving for with our team. I read this somewhere once, where being on time, being hardworking, being honest, those are skills that really don't require any god-given talent. Those are things that are a quality of character. And those are the things everybody has an impact on, regardless of where you're from, what your education level is, or what your career trajectory is. But we've had really good people that are exemplary of those traits. And I've watched a guy go from a part-time nighttime cleaner to a day porter making a couple bucks more an hour to a building engineer, where now he doesn't have to work two jobs to support his kid. Great. And those are things that if people really do listen to what we put out there and believe in us and also take a risk, being a leader is hard. Yeah. And being a leader can be awkward. There can be moments where it's not the popular decision. But knowing that you're doing what's right for your company and your team is what differentiates you from the people in the crowd. Yeah. Character is such a huge part of any team's success. And it's very important for the leader to talk the talk and walk the walk, like you mentioned. How do you get your team to buy into your philosophy? Well, consistency is key. And making people see, and sometimes they don't want to go right away. And sometimes people really do. So I take the people that are energized and motivated and I collaborate with them. We have Paige Onishi in our office right now, who has really been a good part of bringing new life into our janitorial side of the house. And she's got some great people under her that are ready to do those things, meet with people, talk to people, live those visions. Just this week, our company is going to be going through a vision and goal setting where we're going to work on refreshing those things that are important to our company. It's important to take a step back and work on your business, and not just in your business. And every three years, evaluate, OK, what's worked, what hasn't, and setting big goals. In 10 years from now, we can have 1,000 employees. But how do we want to get there? And you have to constantly reevaluate. Sure. Now, let's say there's a viewer that's an employee at a company. And they want to have a bigger role. They want a leadership role. They want to have more responsibility. What advice would you give that person? Well, be hungry, but be patient. People think that if you work really hard for a day, you're going to get recognized as the next superstar. Whether it's in tennis or in sports, it's the little things that you grind on every day. And it's a lot of times it's the things you do on your own. You're going to have people that are going to want to encourage you and mentor you. But it's an initiative and a drive that comes from within. It's not fun to read every day, but it's something that can bring you things that you didn't know yesterday. We have workers who truly strive to go above and beyond. And we have people that are willing to recognize what makes me grow or where do I want to be. And as long as you keep focusing on those things, and you don't get discouraged and you're patient, but constantly assertive that you want to be more. And you ask for help. A lot of people think that help comes to you all the time. But you have to seek it. And that everybody is blessed with an obvious mentor that comes down and just picks them up. Seek mentors out. Talk to people who are successful. Ask them questions. That's something I've learned personally a lot over the last year or two. It's just pick people's brain. You'd be amazed at the people that'll have a cup of coffee with you if you just ask. And so you have to want it. Yeah. And it's not a weakness to ask for help. Absolutely not. Now, oftentimes there's assistant managers that might have a promotional or advancement opportunity to become a general manager. But they might be a really good assistant manager. And then they get promoted to general manager and they fail because they're not prepared to lead in that new role. I talk about that in my book as well. And it's the same with in football. You might have a great offensive coordinator that gets promoted to head coach. And then they fail as head coach because they're just not prepared to lead in that new role. So knowledge is power. And reading and being prepared as much as possible is very important. I want to know this, Jarrett. What issues do you tend to deal with on a daily basis? Well, I never get bored. So we might have an issue on Maui with the job site, with the transition to customers in which we have to just go through and make sure that our services are exactly the same as they were, or if not better. We have issues on occasion with employees where we have to go in and either train or sometimes get people out of the company. And not everybody is going to be a fit. And I often say we have 700 employees and we have about 695 great ones. And it's not a fault of a company to recognize that there's people that either need to grow and develop or pursue another passion. So it's constantly looking for ways to find the right customers or find the newest technology. We've been really excited to be able to expand and grow and bring in new technologies and practices. 10 years ago, I never thought we would be putting LED lights in buildings, but that's what we're doing. And we've been able to grow in fun ways that are close to what we do, but also really kind of push the horizons of the company. Great leaders always make things look easy because of all the preparations and behind the scenes and stuff that they do to make sure that they're successful. Now, I know how busy you are at Hawaiian Building Maintenance and how much success you guys have. How do you balance your life with all the work that you do in kind of managing your stress level and staying, keeping a healthy life? What do you do? I mean, balance has been something that's been such a key in my life. And there have been times when I was younger where if one part was a little off, it could upset the whole thing, like a game of Jenga. I've fortified since and I've looked for things that put me in the right frame of mind every day. So my wife and I get up at 4.30 every morning, which sounds crazy to some, but for me, it gives me opportunity to be at the gym every morning, spend time working my physical fitness, and also get my head in the right place so that when I get into the office, I've already de-stressed before I walk in the door. It's a frame of mind, balances. If you're not afraid to stretch yourself, you're gonna find that you are more capable to do more than you thought you were. And all of my greatest moments of growth have come at the end of some moments of serious pain. As you're climbing the mountain, you never recognize the view till you're at the top of it. Yeah. And so take on more. Everybody is capable of doing more than they think they are. And I've worked on the last couple of years to think of it this way. People say a lot, oh, I don't have time for something. Well, the reality is, is they haven't made time for something. And I have to own that when I say, it's like, I've not made time for this. And we have to... That makes sense. Oh, and you have to say it to yourself that you have ownership over your actions and really listen to it and not just look at it as a gimmick. It gives you the opportunity to say, okay, well, if I've not made time for this, what have I made time for? If you don't have time at home, what have you made time for? And my wife has been very helpful at letting me know when my time has been spent. But also recognizing that it's great to be home every night, but part of it is finding balance. Awesome. Jared, I appreciate you being here today and really sharing the insights into what makes Hawaiian building maintenance so successful and what makes you so successful as a leader. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines. I'm Rusty Komori reminding you to constantly strive for excellence every day and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Until next Monday, aloha.