 This is St. Tech, Hawaii, and one of the matters here. Well, hello, hot. How you doing? Welcome to Hibachi Talk. Gordo, the tech star here. Ben, why are you looking at me so strange? This is the first time Ben's ever seen this show. So anyway, as Gordo the tech star here, I'm here with Andrew, the security guy. Hey, everybody. And we're here with Ben Williams. Ben Williams is the owner of Hawaii Triathlon Center. He's the most athletic guy we've ever had in the house next to Mr. Landy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is not a comparative skater. And they called me an athletic supporter many a time. So anyway, please grab yourself a libation, beloved chair, and join us for an interesting conversation about the creating an Olympic competitor in the triathlon business. Or not what you call business. I should call it the industry. It's a lifestyle. Yeah. It's a real lifestyle. So we're going to get into that in a second. But we have our segment we always do at the beginning on cryptocurrency. Latest topic. So I've been getting asked, by the way, I'm doing a presentation tomorrow for the Women's Professional Association on Cryptocurrencies. But I was asked, well, what kind of apps do you use to track all this stuff that's going on? And I have one that's pretty cool. We could probably show up an image of it. It's called Coinfolio. And it's a freebie. And you can just download it. And then you can enter the cryptocurrency values that you have into that. And it updates it on a per second basis. You can always see how much money you're winning and losing. Right there. That's nice to know, right? That's nice. So how much have you made since the I gave you? So he gave me $12 worth of Bitcoin, $0.005 Bitcoin, a couple weeks ago. And now it's worth $12. Now it's worth like $20. I've done nothing. My money's gone up like 70%. He's gone up. He's made 70%. 70%. That's a lot. That's huge. If you imagine if that had been $1,200. That's right. Which you used to have at one point. Well, life is what it is. Anyway, Ben, we're going to start talking with you right now. And so tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? How did you make it here? Oh, dumb luck. I grew up in Florida. I actually grew up sailing on the water. I was really involved in ocean sports. But then naturally we had to swimming and then high school cross country and then college ran a little bit. I went to school at Ford Atlantic University and then made my way out here. And you ran track there? I didn't know you ran track there at all. Cross country? Yeah, I'll cross country. Nice, that's cool. So where in Florida is that? I'm trying to figure out where that is. Is it by the panhandle side? East coast, southern end, just north of Fort Lauderdale. Oh, OK, got it. It's on the outskirts of Miami. And you also used to coach some sailing? I did, yeah. So that was a big part of I think what's given me the confidence to do what I'm doing now with the kids is I did. I got to work with a lot of high performing youth sailors. And so that was a great opportunity. It was a great environment to kind of develop the coaching side of things with a skill that I was already familiar with and see how to organize the safety involved around taking kids out on the water was a big part of it. So that's given me a lot of confidence now of just understanding what needs to be in place to take responsibility for kids. But why did you? OK, so Florida, that isn't too shabby from a weather standpoint. I don't do cold weather. I don't do cold weather. Yeah, but Florida doesn't have cold weather. No, no. So that was any other option outside of Florida? So now you've got a lot of it. So I'm tired of the hot here in Florida. I'm going to go to Hawaii? No, it was just a different atmosphere. I'd spent some time sailing. It brought me to the Caribbean a bit. So I spent some time on the Caribbean Islands traveling around. And there wasn't really an island that provided what I was looking for as far as a lifestyle that died. It's still the United States, I think that's a big part of it. And the infrastructure that comes from that and the ability to get this training in and to pursue this active lifestyle without losing too much contact with the outside world. Yeah, but you picked pretty well to the farthest spot. East Coast to the tip of Florida. I got the East Coast to the tip of Florida to Oahu. He'd have to move to Kauahua. He'd have to move to the west coast of Hawaii. Yeah, so you've got to go all the way to the end to get even further away. And then you start up a business in one of the most unfriendliest business climates in the world. You don't have to comment on that at all. That's my comment. So we're ranked the worst in the entire nation as far as business is concerned. But you come in and you start a business. You start your own enterprise, 27,000 small businesses. When I first ran into Ben, he was training a lot and winning a lot. So did you come forth triathlon environment? Or was it different? I felt like my life had come to a head for all kinds of reasons. Oh yeah, you're so old, man, I tell you. It was a quarter-life crisis. I was 26 years old, and it was time to change things up. So that's what I did. I raced my first triathlon in high school in 2002. And it's something that I've stuck with over the years. It's always been, for the longest time, it had been an outlet, something different to do from sailing. And I just felt like that was something else that I knew that I was comfortable getting involved with. And Iron Man is out here in Kona. So you say triathlon. Are you seeing an Iron Man-type triathlon or a smaller one, like a Tin Man-type triathlon? Yeah, well, Tin Man is definitely a triathlon. Triathlon designates the sport, and then Iron Man would designate the distance. So you've got different distances. When we talk about Olympic racing, that's a different distance also. So it's just swimming, cycling, and running, and whatever. Well, in my younger years, I did Tin Man 10 and 11. It's great. So it was just some time ago. I knew you had run. I didn't know you did triathlon. I did 10 and 11, so. The Airbikes in Hawaii does a little bit. You've got to do it once, and I did it a second time just because I was afraid I couldn't do it again. Now ask me if I've done it again. Hell no. They were just, Tin Man's one of the longest running races around. It's a fun race. It's a super fun race. It's just every, for me, it's just the right amount of everything, right? It's just the right amount of every piece that you can do. So when you're saying triathlons, are you talking Iron Man, Tin Man, or both? All of it, all of it, yeah. And they're very different. Iron Man racing compared to the type of racing in the Olympics, it's a completely different, it's almost a different sport, different rules, different formats, yeah. Iron Man is for those that don't have a lot of marbles left. Oh, I'm looking at you over there. Iron Man is what you, what happens is you start, and I'm not sure if this was your story, but you start with the shorter ones, and then you go, I can go longer, and you go, I can go longer, and what happens is they double them. So it's longer, it's quite a bit longer. Yeah, no kidding. The half is what, about 70 miles, and then you get up to the Iron Man, the 140 total, 40.6 or something, I mean, it's a long day. It is, the Allure is there, they just have done, you know, back with like Julie Moss in the very beginning of the drama that surrounds these really long events. I think the Allure is just, as you show up to the event, you know, you do one that's a little bit longer, and you're a little more brave showing up for the next one. And then all of a sudden, you're captivated by this challenge that there's so much drama around it. Now, are there a lot of, I know the Tin Man in the Iron Man, but are there other triathlons in Hawaii? There are, yeah. Oh, yeah. We've got just about every distance from the very shortest all the way up to Iron Man. What's the shortest? The shortest would be a sprint. So this weekend coming up, for example, there's a sprint race on the Marine Corps Base. And it's, yeah, I think it's a 300 meter swim, and then a 10 mile bike, and a three mile run. Oh, that's a sprint. Maybe you can do it off the couch, anybody can do it. At my age, no, that's not quite a sprint. But, you know, for some, maybe it'll be you guys. Well, they call that because they go, because it's shorter, so you can go at max, your max speed. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't last very long. My max speed's still very slow. My max speed is a walk. Yeah, well, there'll be people walking. There will be, yeah. There's no doubt about it. Well, that's cool. 300 meters, no, that's easy. That's an easy swim. So we can pull that. So when you came, you, so when you got here, did you start racing right away, or did you, because I know you, you have to get raced on the pro started you've done, give us a bit of your, your evolution from arriving to. Yeah, yeah. So I, that's basically what happened. I connected with a, a really good group of folks that I, and so I have traveled around the world. I've raced all over the place at a professional level. And the community here in Hawaii, the Traflon community, is like nothing I've ever experienced. All around, that's awesome. All around the world. All around the world. This is, the community here is special, like nothing I've ever experienced. And, and that drew me back. And, and that's what made the decision easy to end up back here. So, you know, I did, I moved here. I, I didn't know a soul when I showed up. I actually, I, I applied for a permit to camp out at Sand Island Park. Okay. Because that was the state, you know, on the internet, that's the state park that you can apply, you can camp in. And it was not the experience I'd had camping across the mainland. Extremely positive, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I met some, some local residents there that weekend. And I, I didn't know a soul, you know? And so the community that, that brought me in was, was the Traflon community. And, and it was something I was interested in anyways, but that just really cemented the, the journey, I guess. So, but how did you find that Traflon community? I mean, how did you? They're just, they're out and about. If you, if you go out and ride your bike on the weekend, you will meet some people. Okay. So you're going to run into. You're going to run into them. And you know, you show up to a race and that was the thing, you know, one of the first races I did was the Lonnie Kai Traflon in April. Okay. And I, I met so many people there that it was, you know, they took me right in. And so that was just very encouraging. So it, for the next couple of years, that was like 2010, 2009, 2010. And then, you know, it just grew into eventually doing longer races. Yeah, but okay, you said the rate, but what, what possessed you to start a company? So that's, that's been a little more organic. I, you know, I, so after I, you know, I had done some racing at a pretty high level and gained some experience and began coaching. And that was just sort of a natural progression. The coaching led to, you know, more specialized services within the industry, bike fitting, you know, selling high end equipment. There's, you know, we talk about technology. This has become an incredibly technological sport. Bicycles are amazing. The bike technology is incredible. And now even stuff as simple as running, they've gotten very, very advanced with the tools that you can use. I got disc brakes on my new bike. Yeah. Isn't that awesome? Disc. And they work in the rain. Isn't that amazing? Oh, they're awesome. That you actually stopped. They're, I almost flipped over the front the first time I used them. They're so good. They work. They're very powerful. And that's a little spongy thing on the side. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, so that's where it's headed. So my niche, I would say, has just been more in that the pointy end of the developing technology. And so there's a market for that. And there aren't many other people here in Hawaii that are interested in that side of things. So that's sort of how it grew, was just pursuing my interest in the front end of technology and the new methods and new, you know, I really try to follow who's at the forefront of the industry, Olympic coaches and the top professional coaches and athletes. And there aren't really many other people doing that. So that was just sort of the natural progression that we took was, it got to a point where working for another shop that just wasn't necessarily as interested in that as I was. And it was a natural departure. It sounds like you're interested not only in the technology, but you're in the career and what it can do as far as a lifestyle. And so you're living your dream, I guess, so to speak. So, wow, that's pretty cool. Okay, well, we're going to take a break. We're going to take a break. And then we're going to get Angus. He's got Scottish word of the day. It's been a long time since we've done that. I'm not any good at these. Get ready for that one. Scottish word of the day. Then we're going to talk about this, your thing you're doing with the youth and the training that's all happening on that side. So anyway, we've got Ben Williams. He's the owner of Hawaii Traffo Center, which I keep spelling wrong, by the way. I keep putting an A in there. But anyway, from Hawaii Traffo Center and we'll be back in about a minute. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Match Day is no ordinary day. The pitch, hallowed ground for players and supporters alike. Excitement builds, game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff, MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your Match Day experience. If you drink, never drive. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii We're on Hibachi Talk Today with Ben Williams from Hawaii Traffo Center. And I don't have a security minute, but what I do have for you is some advice. You wanna learn more about security. There's a symposium for a safer Hawaii. Next week is going out to the Civic Club. It's free. Check it out on Eventbrite. And you can learn everything to no pick a session that suits you. There's four different sessions that ever happen. Angus, welcome buddy. How are you doing? How are you doing? Good to see you, lad. Good to see you, man. I like your hat. Yeah, I like my hat. No, my hat is gonna leave it long. Yeah, it looks good though. Anyway, I got a question for you. I've got a Scottish word of the day. You know I'm no good at these. But first, what date? Maybe Ben knows it. He might know it. What date? What date? The symposium. Oh, the 29th and 30th. 29th and 30th. You can come? I'll be there. Yeah, maybe we can do a show from there. We'll be, yeah, we try to do a show. Right on. All right, I'll do all kinds of things. Anyway, I got a Scottish word for you today. All right, let's try it. And this is very schematic on what happened on the course of this week. The word, the Scottish word of the week is eclipse. That's not Scottish. Yes, it is. Tell me what it means. It means the eclipse. It means that you can't see the sun because the moon's in front of it. Wrong. You got it wrong. And I gave you all the hints in the world. Here's what it is. You know, when my head gets a wee bit long, I go to the barber and he clips it shorter. I got to check your facts, man. I'm not sure about that. It's not any good Scottish word. Eclipse is not a Scottish word. Gordon's got to get his wee bit of eclipse. Anyway, that's my Scottish word of the day. You have a great day. I say it at the end of your segment. Let your wing gang free, or A, B. Hello? Eclipse, OK. I'm going to investigate that one. His barber eclipses here. All right. Well, welcome back. We've got Bill Williams here from White Trathlon Center. We want to talk a little bit about the shop. We'll talk about some of the services you got going on there. What do people come in for? Like, if they're new to triathlon, what's the most common request? Oh, man. You know, there is one. We get new people in the shop all the time. And that's, you know, I've gone to great lengths to make it approachable. A big part of our roots, you know, I've raced professionally. And my personal goals have been to compete at the elite level. And we've drawn some other athletes that have similar goals. And it's been actually a little bit of a challenge to play that down some and really focus on folks that are new to the sport. That's where my heart is at. The amateurs. Yeah. And not just the amateurs, but people that are, you know, they've heard of triathlon. They are interested, but maybe they've never, they don't even know where to start. And we are a great place to start. We can get you off the couch. We can get you out of the car, whatever. Whatever is intimidating about it, we do our best to explain it. And I think once it's all out there, it's not so intimidating anymore. So the biggest question that folks will bring to the shop is where do I start? What do I start with? And most folks, believe it or not, can do a triathlon on the very first day. It could be something as short as a three minute swim and a five minute bike ride and a two minute run. Anybody can do that. And so you just have to make it, you know, the way to eat an elephant swim by at a time. And I think that's how we approach it. So we're very beginner friendly. Training is a lot of what we do. So folks come to us and ask, how do I finish this first triathlon? And we'll help them. We'll give them all the tools. We'll write the plan. We'll set them up with the bike. You know, we're a bike shop. We're a retail bike shop. We work on bikes. We sell new bikes. All the equipment that you need to ride a bike or compete in a triathlon. And then the service side of that is, you know, the bike fittings and the training to get you where you need to be. So I was going to ask you at the end of last night. So where is your shop? We're in Kailua. So Kailua is a great place. We've got great ocean swimming just down the street. We actually have the district pool, which is a free 15 meter pool right across the street. We've got the trainers at our shop. We've got great running in the community. There's several races right out of our door that, you know, happened throughout the year. We're just near Cinnamon's restaurant in Kailua. Yeah, yeah. So who do swimmers come and want to learn how to ride a bike? Do cyclists come and want to learn how to run? You know, I came into it because my wife said, you're going to go do this if you want to spend time with me. And I was like, what? So I had to go out and learn how to do it on a swing. Not correctly. I mean, it takes a long time. You coach swimming. You coach each of these sports individually as well as the whole thing. Absolutely. And that's a big part of what we do. We have a pool that we rent the entire pool. And we do weekly swim training there. We do, you know, we take video. We offer a pretty thorough analysis of your stroke. But that's what we do. So it's the training that comes along with it. So what about the, so you work with adults, children, who you work with? What's your kind of focus right now? The full spectrum. So that happened a couple of years ago. There's a great race here, the H3 Trafon. And it finishes over in Kailua. And it's a great event. It supports law enforcement and. Better along. Fluff. You're, of course, we're both Fluff. Yeah. So yeah, you guys get it. It's a great cause put on by a great group of people. And I, so I finished the race a couple years ago, the first version of the race. I went around. I was the youngest person there by far. And that was kind of strange. That's either a good thing or a bad thing. It was a bad thing. That's the strange thing. He was also the fastest that day, by the way. I would bet, yeah. So yeah, that's kind of strange. It's kind of strange. And so I mean, I'm young, but I'm not that young. This is a sport that we are sending folks to the Olympics. The US won an Olympic gold medal in the sport in Rio. We should have a lot more young athletes. Especially in Hawaii. Especially in Hawaii. With the climate and whatever thing we got. But we don't. We don't. We're working on it. So back to your question, do we have swimmers or runners or who's coming? We, with the kids, we try to target swimmers because that's one of the hardest things to pick up. To learn later and like to swim quickly is a little bit challenging. But we get all types. So we have runners that have had injuries and they're looking to cross train a little bit. We've got swimmers that are looking to mix it up. The smallest demographic is probably cyclists that come to the sport that want to either swim or run. Yeah, because they're just so snotty. I think it's not. That is not true. You're not helping the athlete. The image of the cyclist. We love cyclists. Yes, we love cyclists. We love cyclists. Car drivers don't like them, but that's a nice story. Well, we do our best. We do our best. Hey, I just came back from Toronto and they've got all these bike lanes and everything. And all I heard constantly was complaining about the cyclists and the cyclists. And they were full. I mean, the bike lanes were full. And I'm going, I can't believe. Why can't we get along? Yeah, why is this? And they got them all divided up nicely. Everything looked great. And I said, this is wonderful. I mean, what's wrong with this? And they're not getting away. They took away a lane on this street. They took away a lane on this street. Says, don't get on your bike. Yeah, exactly. Take your bike. What did you get on your bike? So you just were at Nationals. I was just at Nationals. So I. It's a lot about that. It sounds exciting. Yeah, back to the kids. You know, that's where the future of our sport is. Yeah. And so. So you're training Olympic. Well, that's the goal. We had to start somewhere. So we're not the first one, but we're definitely the most committed youth training program. There was nobody else currently doing anything. Nobody's done anything for several years. So we're running on time. So I'm going to push real hard because I want to get stuff out. So you've got this youth training program out of your. Out of our shop. Out of your shop. And then, so when does this happen? How do I find out about it? How do I get kids involved, young adults? Call the shop or just show up Sundays at 9 AM. We have our training. The big thing that we do is races. So we put on youth specific races that are put on in a format to prepare kids to get really good at the sport. So we have one coming up on September 17th. That's going to be in Kailua. And that's how we get the kids into it, is giving them races to train for. So you get so that, but do you have other? Oh, there's your flyer right there. Perfect. Look at that. That's our race from there. That's the Hawaii Craftsman Center. September 17th, Kailua Beach. And that's ages 7 to 17. 7 to 17. Now, do you have anything for seniors? Not right now. But you can do Lonnie Kai. You can do Lonnie Kai. You can do Lonnie Kai. You can do the race on the record. You won't be the oldest guy there. I know, but I'm just, I need training. They just opened up Ironman to, I think, the 80 to 84, 80 to 84 age group. They kind of had some 80-year-old that wanted to go. I think he won, because I think he only won. These are all shot to hell, but I think I can run six miles. Or you can go, sometimes you can pair up with someone else. So you could do the swim, and they could do, so else there's a bike. Oh, I can definitely do the swim and the bike. You can get a team. I can't do the run. But yeah. Oh, so there's team ways of doing this as well. OK, so anyway, you've got this child, child. The kids program. You've got a kids program. How long have you been doing this? Well, we're in our second year now. So we did. We just, we've been pushing, I feel like to get the kids excited about it, they've got to have something to look forward to. So this year, we took a small group to Nationals. They took themselves. We just encouraged them to go. And that's so eye-opening to see this is the future. The kids that we saw winning races at Nationals, we're going to see at the Olympics in 2014. So do you reach out to the schools as well? We reach out to the schools. The swim teams are sort of prime picking for us, because they're getting that fitness training during the week. So like Al Lea, swim club is right there in Kailua. Kamehameha, swim team, those are the, and there's many others, but those are just a couple of it. My nephew just started Punahou for the first family member ever to get into Punahou. And he's on the swim team. Oh, awesome. And so he has for swim introduction yesterday. So this is a math major. I don't want to swim easily. They have good lungs, already good endurance, right? Because you can only breathe when your mouth is out of the water. So they've already got good breathing habits versus biking and running. You can breathe whenever. It's a little different. Harder to learn that. I struggle with that. Yeah, just the technique is really difficult, developing that coordination to swim well. And it's an interesting factoid that you may not know that Hawaii has the lowest number of people that can swim in the nation. We have the lowest number of people that can swim in the nation. And everybody goes, what? And here's the main reason is we have the lowest number of swimming pools. Yeah, I believe that. We've got the ocean, but we don't have any. And because we have the ocean, we don't have the community swimming pools and things like that. You and I grew up with it, right? Where they dumped us at the swimming pool and where we all learned. But so it's an interesting kind of thing. So again, so you don't teach swimming, though, do you? You do. Oh, so you can go and start at the very beginning. You can start at the very beginning. You can know nothing about swimming when you started. Well, I married my wife. She couldn't swim. And I thought, how to swim? Yeah, so I mean, but it was, I was just, I couldn't, she grew up in Waiwha. I was like, we don't swim in Waiwha. It was like Wilson. Wow. So you got so you get a good turnout to these events? I mean, well, last weekend at practice, we had 19 kids. That's awesome. And I mean, the vision that he has for looking forward. So here's a guy who's racing at lead level, but also trying to say, hey, look, the US, because Britain kicks our butt. Australia kicks our butt. Like, so there's other countries that have these programs from the time these kids can walk. They start running them and cycling and swimming. And the US just doesn't have that. So he's taking that on. Hawaii, what a place to do this. You train all year. That's awesome. Well, we've got a little less than a minute. Do you have any special message you want to get out before we? Yeah, you know, we, the kids program, it's the future first for it. It's great for the kids in that it's using discipline. They set goals. They work towards us. The work ethic they get out of it is, it's really, it's really good for them. And so we try to encourage that, putting on four races a year. They're healthy and they lose weight. And, you know, they eat right, and they train, and they do all the good stuff. This is terrific. I just think this is awesome. Anyway, so we're getting ready to wrap up the show here. Oh, yeah, we got, as we do it every show, no guest goes unrewarded. You can use this as your hydration device when you're. It'll fit right in the bottom. It's a little low-tech. Little low-tech, bottle of case on your bike. Number 130 in the series of our Hibachi stock shows. Anyway, this is our autograph solo cup. Thank you very much. So please, you'll use, to use that, you can actually put it on display. I see them many a time at. eBay. Local establishment, yeah, eBay. I saw them at J.J. Dolan's the other day. Yeah, they're the one up in the corner. Because we had J. Eba Manor show on time. So he displays it with great pride. Very high, so it doesn't get stolen because the value is huge. Anyway, we digress. Anyway, Ben Williams, owner of Hawaii Trafflin Center. Watch the show again if you missed anything. Check out your website at hightricecenter.com. Hightricecenter.com. And then, yeah, sign up and join up. I think I might. You'll go on out and give it a shot. Yeah, give me the seniors discount. A-R-P. Anyway, this is Gordo, the tech sour, Andrew, the security guy, all right. Hibachi talk. And like we say at the end of your show, one, two, three. How you doing?