 Charlotte School addresses community issues today on Community Matters. I'm Jay Fidel, this is ThinkDeck, and we have a full house like in poker, you know? And we have Professor Konstantin and Thansy over at Paranal. He's the teacher at Schindler, and it's a special class of the students who are dedicated to looking at our community, finding the issues in our community, contacting, connecting with small business in our community, helping those small business, and in the process helping the community in general. So welcome to the show, all of you, the whole full house. Say hi. Thank you, thank you for having us. I knew you'd say hello, everyone. Konstantin, professor, can you give us an introduction of the scope of this discussion and your various students who are here today with us? Yes, thank you again for Jay for inviting us today and our group. So really what we wanted to share, at least with the audiences, how our students at the Schindler College of Business, particularly these three, Melanie, Kent, and Crystal, who are master's of science and marketing management students at the Schindler College of Business are doing to help our community. So this is a specific class in digital marketing, and the goal is to apply the knowledge and the skills that we're learning in class and apply it in a practical setting by helping small businesses. Especially with the pandemic, I think a lot of our small businesses have been impacted and we wanna use this course to be able to assist those small businesses. So it's really important for our students to be a part of the community and to participate in how the community is going to emerge post pandemic. Oh yeah, that's great. And we need to say that some of the businesses that I've heard of have gone out of business and some of them are going out of business and some have yet to go out of business but will go out of business. And that is a dynamic community. But let me ask you, you mentioned that we are going to apply the skills that you are teaching in the class. And I think a good beginning here would be for you to identify those skills. What kind of skills are we talking about? What I was saying a while ago is really beyond the technical skills of digital marketing and understanding how it works and applying technology and using data to make marketing decisions. I think beyond that we're really helping students to gain their professional human skills and soft skills as part of what we do in class is working with small businesses, learning how to engage with clients, learning how to work in teams and understanding how to manage client expectations because that's exactly what they're gonna be doing once they're out of school. And I think some of the groups are really finding that it's one of the valuable things to learn is your clients will demand a lot of things from you and part of what you need to know is how do you manage those expectations and how do you provide value to your clients looking at you not as a student, but as a professional one who is knowledgeable and has the skills to help them beyond the issues and the pain points that they're experiencing. Wow, that's really valuable. I was talking about law school a minute ago. Any of your students here, Melanie, Kent or Crystal, you guys kind of play going to law school if you do raise your hand. Hmm, crickets. Okay, all right, thank you for that. Constancio, can you introduce Melanie and Kent and Crystal? What are they really like? I'm sorry, say it again. Can you introduce your three students here? What are they really like, really? Oh, yes, no, I have three wonderful, amazing, bright, talented, good-looking students in front of me. No, I don't know, but we have Melanie, Kent and Crystal and these three students have been, have shown great work in class, they participate in class and provide a lot of insight to class discussions and the reason why they are here is because I really wanted to share what they've been doing in class and outside of class because not only are they students but they are also working professionals. Melanie works for Bank of Hawaii, Kent works for Eastwood Center and Crystal works for a wedding company. So with all of those experience and background, they bring a lot of flavor to the discussions in class. Okay, well, let's start with Melanie. Melanie, I'd like to make a small loan, can you help me? For sure. So why are you in the business school in the first place and why are you in this class and what is your project and how did you select it? Well, first of all, I'm in business school because after finishing up my undergrad, I feel like there was still so much for me to learn and so I just thought this would be like a good opportunity for me to learn at the same time while I'm working so I can kind of apply what I learned into my work and then just keep going with my skill set and my knowledge when it comes to like how to be a good marketer. Okay, how do you like the soft skill versus hard skill, so to speak, I guess the hard skill is the technical skill that I was talking about. Which do you favor? Are you a people person or a technology person? I'm more of a people person but I think there are times when I'm not a people person but mostly I do love interacting with everyone and then I think soft skills are really valuable because technical skills, you can always learn them but then soft skills, you kind of have to practice and it can only get better as you get to communicate with people around you so I think, yeah. Yeah, so you wind up examining this business, whatever business it is and listening, listening, listening so hard, you know, like what do they call it in Stanford? Design thinking, if you've ever heard of that, design thinking is you listen and then you tell your client what he really wants to ask you because sometimes when he asks you it's not the real question. Anyway, so you listen and then you give advice and my question to you is do they take your advice? Yeah, well working with the small business that we're working with for our group there's definitely a lot of communication and from the owner himself, there's a lot of back and forth he has a lot of great ideas and I think our job is to really get what he's saying and then turn that into how he said what he's really asking and then making our recommendations most of the time he's really open to our recommendations thankfully and I think it's a great part of like us working together and just like bouncing off of each other's ideas. So that's a really great thing. Okay, Sancio, did you just say that Crystal and Melanie were on the same team? Yes, they are. Oh good, then I'm gonna go to Crystal. How much of what Melanie said is true, Crystal? Everything Melanie said is true, our owner- Oh, there you go. I gotta support my teammate, no. All right on, yeah. Yeah, we're truly fortunate. Not every group project or like small business you work with is gonna be picture perfect, but I think we lucked out and got someone that's not only open minded but willing to support us in our endeavors cause he truly does want what's best for his business. So it's really a great opportunity. Well, we haven't identified the business of the individual and I'm happy about that. But let me ask you, how is he doing in COVID? Because as I said before, there's a lot of business it depends on what sector you're in of course but there's a lot of businesses that are under pressure right now. Is your client under pressure? I would say that our client is doing fairly well considering most of his sales are generating online. So luckily he doesn't have a hard storefront at the moment like he's using other distribution outlets. So it wasn't really hit too hard from the pandemic. And I believe he only has room to grow especially with where we're heading. Right now we're focusing on email marketing, social media and like brand awareness. So we're really excited to see how when we put these efforts, it can really help him grow. Now, what I get from what you're saying is that challenges are opportunities. COVID is a challenge for sure. And part of your job, you and Melanie, anybody else on the team, part of your job is to turn these troubling challenges into opportunities that you wouldn't even think of otherwise. Are you doing that? And how successful are you in finding opportunities that are actually changing the way your client does business for the future? I would say that we are definitely taking baby steps towards that because since they are a small business they're fairly new. It's really right now about laying the foundation and ensuring that they have the tools once we finish this campaign to really continue on and be able to help themselves as well. Because we don't want just our campaign to be this short thing. We want them to be able to continue to grow and like continue onwards in the future. So I would say that we are trying to address these challenges, but as we are recovering from the pandemic that they're doing okay for now. Okay, do you expect to have a long-term relationship with this client? I see Constancio is shaking his head, yes. He's not suggesting an answer for you, but let me ask him. Constancio, do you expect your students to have long-term relationships with the clients in these teams? Oh yes, definitely. I think that's one of the main goals and one of the goals or objectives of the class is not just to see the client as a customer per se, but a mentor or someone who's part of the community. I think that's what we really want to do and want our students to gain from it because at the end of the day, particularly in Hawaii, we're such a small place, right? Or everybody knows each other and I want our students to develop the type of relationship just beyond a client agent type of relationship but really more of being a part of the same community. Yeah, sure. Who knows where it goes? This is a bonding experience. So Kent, we've talked about trying to help businesses, in this case, it sounds like a retail business, take advantage of the internet and online sales and all that, but you're with the East West Center, right? The East West Center is interested in foreign policy and you have this fabulous new president who is actually very close to ThinkTex, Susie Lump. And so I wonder, I mean, are you into the technology or the foreign policy? How does it get to be local, local community issues when you're with a global organization? You have to change the side of the brain that you're using when you walk over to the sideless school? Yeah, so just a slight correction, I'm no longer with the East West Center right now but when I was a part of the East West Center, I was working in the fundraising department. So that one was kind of just helping out with the online fundraising and developing a giving website so that people that want to support the East West Center are able to give in a more digital format or online format, which was like one of the bigger initiatives for when I joined the East West Center. In relation to what you were asking about foreign policies and how the school of thought changes from when I left work to go to school, it was kind of just trying to learn the concept and ideas that were in class and apply them to my work. But yeah, just learning all the concepts in class and being able to relate this back, relate it back to the small businesses, it's just been a great experience. My company that we're working with is a food and beverage company. So you can assume how hard it was impacted by the pandemic. They had to completely change their operations pre-pandemic to now. And yeah, just learning about the company and the owner has shown me like how much effort has been put in and the hard work that it takes to run a successful local business. But yeah. So that's, you're not doing fundraising for them, they're a profit corporation. I guess all of the companies, Constancio, they're involved in the program are profit corporations rather than nonprofits. Am I right? At least for this particular, cohort it's mostly for profit, but there are instances when we've worked with nonprofit organizations as well. And the objectives tend to be different, right? When you're working with nonprofit versus for profit, like what Ken had mentioned for a nonprofit, it's usually fundraising, it's usually awareness and getting the community involved. That's what normally where the help is. And kind of sharing the programs that they are spearheading or initiatives that they are offering the community. That's where usually the help is. Well, next time around, you might think of ThinkTech, we're a nonprofit and we need help every day. Oh yes, absolutely. We would love to work with ThinkTech, Kauai of course. And actually that's one of the things that we're, all of these companies are usually kind of either suggestions or recommendations from people that I know of that I've worked with and they understand that we are using the class to not only for students to learn and be able to apply what they're learning in class, but also to help small businesses. And so for any small businesses that would like to be a part of our class, I would definitely welcome, you know, the opportunity to work with small businesses. No, that's great, that's great. So let me go back to you, Ken. So you were doing fundraising, internet fundraising and you learned how to code, you learned how to make websites, you learned how to keep accounting records, if you will, on, you know, using, you know, software and all that. Did you write code? Did you design software? Did you use off the shelf software? And what you learned before doing fundraising, how does that play in helping advise your client now? Yeah, so unfortunately I didn't learn how to code or anything. We kind of use this platform called Classy, which is similar to Squarespace and in website design and building. It's pretty much plug and play. You kind of just design the websites to fit what you want. And in terms of like the giving platforms, it was just a site where people could easily give without having to traditionally mail in their checks. In terms of like, could you repeat the second part of the question again? Are you using the software, the skills, the computer skills, information technology skills that you learned before? Are you using them to, you know, consult and advise your client now? Yeah, so I think the main thing that I learned from fundraising is the people that give, they just want to feel good, essentially. And that's kind of easily translated into working with the small business because the company that I'm working with, because they're like a food and beverage company, they want to make people feel good and special through their food. And what I've learned from working in fundraising is how to provide value to people who give and then for our small business that we're working with, it's kind of taking those same key concepts and translating it to their food and how they're able to make people feel special and satisfied in that way. But would you say that you have given professional value in that regard to your current client, that you have given your current client new ideas, new systems, new ways to do outreach, using computers or otherwise? Yeah, so the owner of the small business that we're working with is interesting in the fact that he kind of operates everything about the business from the cooking, the restaurant side, to the online social media platforms and stuff. So he kind of does everything on his own. So where we come in and try to help is to maybe optimize his efficiency and make it so that he doesn't have to focus so much on the technological side and rather focus on the operations instead. So it's kind of just making his life easier right now. Got it. Well, you know, isn't that the role? You know, you come in there, you have a clear head, you look and see what he's doing, you ask him what his problems are, you interpret that to find out what his real problems are and then you give him concepts where he can move into the next phase. That's, I should say him or her, may I just say that him or her, okay? Them, whatever. Okay, Crystal, back to you. So, you know, the thing about it is that if I walk into a business, I am going to identify certain problems in that business. And of course, you know, being in the Charlotte school, studying there and taking courses, you know, you learn about the problems. And, you know, for example, I just picked this out of the air. For example, I talked about advertising, community contact, you know, I can't refer to that briefly. And I'm talking about human resources, which is always important, you know, harnessing the most powerful resource of all human resources. So, do you get involved in that? You know, how do you spend your time? What are the issues that you address when you're in there with your client? When I say you, I mean, you and Melanie, although Melanie, I'm going to ask you the same question and see if you want to agree or rebut what Crystal has to say. Um, thank you for your question. I would definitely say it depends on client to client. And first, the most important part is doing research and seeing what their individual problems are. Cause I'm sure Kent's client, his problems are completely different than our client. And depends to you on how much they experience they have, if they're rebranding or what direction they need to go in. I would argue our client, their main focus or main issue would most likely be just getting that brand awareness out there. Cause it's hard when people don't know about a brand and know how great it is or the story or there's confusion. So just really getting their name out there and like having it be identifiable is one of our huge main objectives, especially here in Hawaii and having the market being so saturated, whether it's depending on their product or whatever industry you're in, there's so many competitors nowadays. So just really differentiating yourself and showing the value you provide to the consumer. You know, one of the things that strikes me is, you know, Hawaii is often folded in on itself. In other words, it's about a local market, multiple products, local customers or actually imported project. Most of the things we sell are imported. But, you know, what about dealing outside? I might ask you all this question. What about exporting either systems, knowledge? This is going to be for you Kent. I'm telling you now, I'm giving you advanced warning. You know, what about connecting with Cincinnati? I should name other cities, but there are some cities in this country that are so underwater that I won't list cities but other places on the mainland where your client can deal with them, enhance his or her, you know, market, so to speak and geographical market and conceptual market. Do you help in that way? Do they care about that? Do the business, you know, issues that they are concerned with, the business issues include looking out, looking out from Hawaii? If the answer is no, just tell me no. I think I can get started with this question. So for our client personally, we first wanted to focus, of course, on the local market. However, as we said, we are focusing on digital efforts and digitally, you know, we are connected to the rest of the world. So of course, we do want to focus on in the area as it provides value to, you know, be able to expand beyond locally and that is so much opportunity. But I think just the first step is to get us familiar with the local market. And then of course, at the same time, also keeping our opportunities and our eyesight, you know, far ahead and wide open to the rest of the world. How distant, how ambitious are your aspirations in dealing with these guys? And I was reading up on Elon Musk the other day. Remember him? He's more famous than Paul Simon right now. So Elon Musk, you know, had virtually nothing 20 years ago. Now he's the wealthiest man in the world. So do you say to your client, look, you know, whatever you're doing now, this is only the beginning. You have the potential of being another Elon Musk. All you gotta do is focus, find the right steps, the right approaches, the right creative thinking and you can do it too. You try to help your client with those aspirations looking down the road, looking five, 10, 20 years down the road. Yeah, for sure. Our client will personally, like, you know, talking to him. We know he has like big aspirations and that's why we're here to help, like not only on the short term, but also in the long term, helping like his big vision to eventually, you know, come to life and like help him realize his business on like a much bigger scale than what it is now. But of course there's like a process to that. So we're taking it step by step. Ms. Tansio, do your students get a bonus grade or something if they can turn their business clientele into multi-millionaires or billionaires? I mean, I think they should, don't you? No, absolutely. I think the, you know, I always stress to our students that the main goal is when they run the campaign. So what's actually gonna happen is by November 1st, they're gonna start running the campaign and they will have one month to run the campaign and then evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign if they're actually providing value, you know, measurable value to their clients and, you know, whether their campaigns are successful. But I think one thing to point out is that, you know, the type of businesses that we're actually supporting. So the aspirational goals or the objectives of our businesses are really different from what big corporations are aspiring to be, not to say that their aspirations are not, you know, are minimal, but I think our goal is really to be a part of the community and to help small businesses because they are the ones that are really struggling. They are the ones that are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and we see ourselves as a support system for the community, right? And I think that's where the value comes in. And the community needs it, especially now I can tell you, you know, one of our engineers was walking down Bishop Street the other day, noticed that every other store was closed. Right. Every restaurant was closed and I have, you know, independent confirmation of that. It's really interesting because in my practice, you know, we watched everything grow for 50 years. We watched it grow now and shrinking. So, Ken, you know, what are you trying to do to show your professor that you got the goods, that you are, you have learned and applied the lessons from the classroom to the business community that you have helped your client and that your client appreciates it and has benefited by it. How do you show him that? You write him a paper, you take a test, do you have oral exams? What's it like? You have to satisfy him that all of this is worthwhile that you have made progress. Yeah, so the measureables for our project are given through executive presentations. This kind of showcases exactly what we're working on and how we're able to implement that throughout the campaign. Of course, the true value is coming from the owner itself. So it's whether or not we can fulfill all the goals that they had in mind for us. And then of course, our internals to help them that we've identified through researching the companies. But as far as grading goes for professor's class, I think it all comes down to how well we're able to execute our ideas and if they are related to all the core concepts of the course itself. It would be a big deal, wouldn't it? If you went into a client situation and you took the design thinking approach and found out what was really necessary to make this business work and then you made a system, let's say a computer system, new packages software, I believe that every business would be better if somebody came in and made a better than information technology system for every business, but especially the state of Hawaii as a state. But that's another show, Constancia. So if you can show your professor that you came in with a system that's different and that you raised the bar within that business, would that go to your grade? Yeah, of course. I think if we're able to provide extreme value to the business and change it in a way that makes them even more successful than they already are, then I think that would be a huge indication that what we've learned in class was applied practically or in practical means. And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that resulted in an A. Yeah, oh, okay, well, I wouldn't be surprised either. Constancia, would you be surprised? Oh, no, of course. No, I wouldn't be surprised because these are all talented individuals. And what I do too, I act as a mediator as well, right? I'm a liaison to a certain degree where I work with the students, I check up on them and see how they're doing. And I also am liaison to the businesses. So I check on the businesses as well and see if their expectations are being met, if the goals are being met, what their relationship with the students are. And so that's kind of like one of my roles in this project is to manage both of the students and the client and the relationship to make sure that we come up with a productive and a valuable project at the end. Yeah, earlier this week, we had an interview with a woman who just defended her dissertation at the School of Ocean Earth Science. And it was very interesting because throughout the process, and it lasted a while to write the dissertation, ultimately defended the dissertation, she had people who advised her, she had her committee who rode the process with her. They were always with her, always available and always helping her. And I guess that's part of the whole experience when you're out there and doing this kind of class. But let me go to you, Crystal. This is a hard one, I saved it for you, okay? So can you tell us what you have learned in Professor Parnell's class? One of the lessons that you take away from all of this, by the way, I might ask the others the same question, by the way. I mean, what have you got under your belt now that you didn't have before? What are the profound life lessons, business lessons, educational lessons that you've picked up in this class? I would definitely say that one of the most profound lessons is ensuring that the decisions and actions we're making are data-driven and that they're measurable because we wanna ensure that we're truly being successful. I would also argue that both the technical skills and soft skills have been truly beneficial. When I was interested in considering my masters, I was very, very interested in digital marketing. So being able to dive deeper into this field has been amazing. So super thankful for the opportunity to learn from Dr. Parnell. Yeah, let me say also in my observation, I practiced law for a long time. My observation that people who are most successful, the ones who can explain what they're doing and all you three guys and your professor, may I add, are good at explaining what you're doing. I mean, it's a power of communication, the power of articulate expression is critical to success in business, for sure. And you always see that when you practice law. So Melanie, what have you learned? I mean, you mentioned before, you kind of favor, kind of favor, the soft power skills and all that. It's very important in life. What have you learned about that? About yourself, about the way you communicate with clientele and the other members of your team. What have you learned here in this class about those things? Yeah, for sure. I think through this class, Crystal actually, we just met the semester. So it was really interesting working with group members who I've never known, but learning how to communicate and how to be a good team member and how to work together. And of course, for this project, working with an actual client. And as Professor Parnell said, managing the client expectations, being an effective communicator, it was all the soft skills that we got to practice and we've learned where we could get better, what worked for us. And then with his guidance, we're learning on the way, how to communicate better, how to exactly provide what the client wants and communicate everything that needs to be communicated. Well, Kent, that goes for you. I mean, let's assume just for a moment that you're more like the technical hard skills person. I don't know if that's true, I'm just gonna assume it for this discussion. You know, the issue there is to have the client accept what you're doing. Because a lot of people who are good at the hard skills, they go off in a corner and do something and the client doesn't know, doesn't care. And then when the advisor is trying to tell him about the work, the project, whatever, it's too late. He's already not interested. So how do you handle that? That's the first part of my question. Will you remember the second part? I got a second part, okay? How is all of this training you for your next chapter? After you graduate, maybe in graduate school and when you get out into the business community and, you know, what's the word? And jump in the pool, so to speak. Yeah, so talking about like the hard skills and stuff, in relation to like our small business owner, a lot of the concepts and key ideas that we're working on are kind of alien to him. So it takes a lot of communication and understanding that his breadth of knowledge on the concepts that we're working on may not be at our level. So we kind of have to try and explain it in a way that he'll understand and just to tell him that what we're doing is essentially just trying to provide more value for his company. And that's the main thing between the relationship of our group and our business owner. At the end of the day, he just wants to ensure that his business is continuing to be successful in operating in a post-pandemic world and translating our skills and what we've learned in class to our future careers is very important in the long run because in relation to our class, digital media, the consumption of digital media is almost just, it's just rising every single year. So being able to create these campaigns, social media collaterals and understanding that the metrics and statistics that come with that are super important in our career. So definitely skills that we're learning in class are easily translatable to the real world. And we're doing that in the form of working with these small businesses as well. So Crystal, I'm gonna give you an opportunity to summarize this discussion and tell Cantancio how you felt about being included in the show and what you learned from being in the media and having questions thrown at you and so forth. Or whatever you want, if you wanted to do a short poem or an aria from Puccini, it's okay too. But what are your thoughts here on the close? Yeah, of course, I wanna thank Dr. Paranal and of course Melanie and Kent and you as well, Jay, for having us and giving us this opportunity. It's been a blast and forced us to really think on our feet and summarize everything we've learned and really the importance of supporting local businesses in Hawaii and focusing on how we can ensure that their businesses are gonna continue to grow and be successful, especially when overcoming the current pandemic and adversity of that and inflation and other societal issues. You know, my partner in my law firm for 50 years, I asked him why did this? He's an extraordinary guy anyway, a great lawyer. Why did he do this? And he said to help people. It's that simple. It's not for the money, it's to help people. Melanie, let's go to you. I mean, how much of what Crystal said you agree with and what would you leave us with? Give us a message, make it profound. The pressure is on. Well, I of course, I 100% agree with Crystal. And I think as you said, the bottom line is to help the people and help the community and give value from what we learned because in the end, through our work or anything, we all just want to be a part of society and really provide value for everyone. I'm sure the school, the Charlotte College of Business would be really delighted to hear that. I really appreciate all of you. So Kent, you get the anchor man. I could say anchor woman, but you're the anchor man, okay? So give us your summary of this discussion. What do you find useful to carry away? In other words, let's assume it's over, okay? And your friend is in the hallway and he says, Kent, how did it go? What's your answer? I would say that it went amazing. I mean, a lot of your questions were thought-provoking and yes, it is a little nerve-wracking and difficult to answer them on the spot, but I think engaging in these types of difficult conversations and thought-provoking is important when we were stepping out of the, stepping out of this meeting, stepping out of the classroom and into the business world because those kind of conversations are gonna be carried on throughout the rest of our lives in our professional careers. So definitely just trying to get our feet wet in this type of environment is important, not only for our personal growth, but professionally as well. So I couldn't be more grateful and yeah, it's been a blast. Well, let me add that over all the interviews we've done, one metric for a successful guest, so to speak, is that they answer the questions and not everybody does. And if you could carry that away, all of you have done that here with me and I really appreciate it. You have answered my question. There are some people, and you can see them on national TV all day long where if somebody asks them a question, they never come close to answering it. They give you a whole song and dance and distraction, but you guys have answered them. So, Costantia, was this nerve-wracking for you too? Oh yes, of course, it's always nerve-wracking because it's, again, you'll never know what questions are gonna be thrown out, but it's also because Think Tech Hawaii is a huge platform. It's viewed by millions of audience and what we say is gonna stick out there forever. And so we wanna be true to what we say and what we do and we wanna be authentic. And we also wanna communicate the right message and also be the veritable ambassadors of the Schuyler College of Business and of course of Hawaii and how we're using what we're learning and for the benefit of the community. You know, I envy your students, Costantia, but I wanna say that I envy you at least as much to have a class like this, to have students like this and to have the kind of good nature that you have. And it's wonderful to meet your students and it's wonderful to talk to you. Thank you so much, Costantia. Thank you. Thank you, our pleasure. Thank you, Melanie. Thank you, Kent. Thank you, Crystal. Great to have you on the show, Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.