 increasing DOD opportunities with HDA. We're going to tell you what that means. In fact, Pono Chan, who joins us today, who works with HDA, is going to tell you what it means. Welcome to the show, Pono. Thank you for having me, Jake. Glad to be here. Thanks for joining us here on the military in Hawaii. So this is a military thing. Is it associated with the Chamber of Commerce? So, yes, it's associated with the Military Affairs Council. That's where the Defense Alliance is housed. And we do things, right, the MAC focuses a lot on advocacy and policy, whereas the Alliance is a lot more framed towards helping build the defense sector in Hawaii, especially around small companies. And everything from how to do business with the federal government to workforce development. I mean, workforce development is one of our large initiatives this year to get local residents jobs in the defense sector. Well, it's very important because, you know, right now, primary economy is hospitality and hospitality is so fragile, so volatile, especially at a time when we have questions about the national and global economy. So we really have to have a backup plan, call it plan B, or at least a version of plan A. And so you really interplace where your work will have, in my view, it will have a lot to do with the future of Hawaii going forward because, A, the military is here to stay, it's here to expand its influence in the Pacific. And because, B, you know, we have the resources, we just have to put the resources and the people, the workforce together with the military. And then we have a very important second sector of the economy, a diversification, if you will. So why are you doing this, though? And what exactly are you doing with HDA? You know, when the coaches came to me and talked about this project, it got me excited. For the main reason in how do we help local residents get good paying jobs and be able to stay in Hawaii? I mean, we all know it's an expensive place to live and these are good paying jobs that can help people make a good living here. And oftentimes, for some of the areas, and we can get into this when we start talking about work first development, when either the military or its contractors have difficulty finding the skill sets, they have to bring somebody into Hawaii. And right, they come from the mainland, they stay here, right? They don't have roots here. So it doesn't work out for both because it's like a revolving door, right? The employer brings them in. They wind up leaving. They wind up being disappointed in some way and then they split and then everybody has lost time and money over. That's right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you know, what we're trying to do again is helping the companies who are here and then helping their employees and then those who we can recruit into the sector get those skill sets and get those good paying jobs. So you're a matchmaker then. They made a movie about that once. In fact, there was a Broadway play, the matchmaker. What kind of matches do you make, Mona? We do a mixture of them. So part of the defense alliance is kind of broken up into four areas, one of which is small business support. And we really have two components of that. One is helping companies doing business who may not be in the defense sector and are interested in getting involved. So we try and provide some onboarding resources because it can be a complicated procurement system and you have to get all these certifications. The other part that we've been spending time with is if you are in the defense sector, you have to get a certain level of cybersecurity certification. Whether you are an engineering firm or your landscaper, you have there are certain requirements that you need to meet if you fall under certain categories, no matter what type of business you are of what they call CMMC, which is cyber certification. And so that's the other part we're helping with. And we're doing that with Cyber Hawaii. They're doing a great job helping companies get set up, get their assessment done and kind of figure out what things that they're going to need. So that's part of that. And going to your matchmaking question is helping small businesses match up with larger what we call prime contractors. And for smaller companies, it's a way to get into the defense sector business is by partnering with a prime contractor and your sub. And then that's how you kind of, a lot of the smaller companies get their feet wet, get access into the market, and then they become primes themselves one day. Small companies are intimidated with defense contract work. They're afraid that they're going to have to read a thousand pages of manual and follow a thousand rules. And they're going to get in trouble if they don't. And that they have, what do you want to call it? They're on bargaining position because they're small and the guy at the other end of the table is big. So how do you help them get over that sense of intimidation? So a lot of times, sometimes we'll have programs and events where we'll talk about, we'll have the price go up. So one of our first in-person events was held at the sandbox. And we brought in some large contractors and they kind of talked about some of the projects that they have and that they see coming up through the federal government. Excuse me. And then we had breakout sessions almost like speed dating. It was an opportunity for them to meet the subcontractors and vice versa. The federal procurement system has metrics and targets to meet in procuring with small business. So oftentimes, the small businesses help the larger companies get some contracts because they have to meet certain targets, so to speak. So again, that matchmaking is getting them together, finding the right companies and giving them the space to get to know each other and then how they can kind of work together. Do you actually find matches? In other words, company A comes to you and says, we need a company B and you scan the horizon and find a company B for them? We don't do specific direct research. What we do is we create either the program or the event for that matchmaking to happen. And then the companies amongst themselves will follow up. Especially when you go through the speed dating, you share your contact information, you share what they kind of call your capability sheet, like what you're capable of, what your expertise is in. The military, the DOD, when they contract, they have what's called industry days and we've done some of those as well. And it's the same thing you go in, the company will say, here's my capability, here's what I can do. And then you kind of build that relationship and have that opportunity then to bid. So if I'm a company A looking at this video, how do I get involved in the system? Is it through a website, email? Yeah, so you can sign up boydefensealliance.org and then you'll get all of our emails. We send out emails at least once to two times a month. We talk about our programming events. You can go to our website and see some of the programs that we have. One of the other things that we have that has been a little bit of our mantra is so in the last 18 months we've done a little over 20 events of our own. And they've ranged from anything from matchmaking to workforce development, say in the ship repair or intelligence field or IT. The other thing we've done is partner with other existing organizations. And again, so what our mantra has been is not to duplicate what other people do. Because sometimes in Hawaii, even though we're so small, oftentimes we find that there's a lot of duplication. And some of it is necessary. Right. If you have a small business forum in February and somebody else has one in October, that's great because businesses can't make it just at that one time a year. You have to meet a multiple audience. But in partnering with our affiliate stakeholders, we've promoted and partnered with 54 other events. So in that way, we've been able to try and be the one-stop hub of all the programs, whether it's VBOP, MBDA, SBA, SAME, and all these organizations who do some sort of event or programming around contracting with the military. Well, yeah, you know, you had an awful question I was going to ask you because, you know, here in the course of our show, the military in Hawaii and on our rubbing shoulders with so many organizations that are dedicated to try to bring, you know, small contractors together with prime contractors and so forth and make an industry and make a robust, you know, and resilient industry here in Hawaii. There's a lot of them. And you're another one. And so I think I already have at least partly of an answer, but what's your special sauce? Why should we have multiple organizations doing what you do or things very close to what you do? And why are you different? I think what we do is we try and coordinate. And I don't mean in a leading way, but just in a sharing of information way amongst the various organizations. And each organization has a little bit of their niche. I mean, you look at SBA and they do a lot of great work. We've worked with them and had events with them and they do right the broad business community. Then you have MBDA that does minority focused programs and events or you have VBOP, which is veteran focus or PTAC that helps you with procurement. Everybody has a special niche and our one of our goals is to bring them all together. Excuse me, share that information and push it out. We have about a little over a thousand companies involved in the alliance. That's a thousand local companies. Here. So I mean, they have either they're locally owned or they are a mainland company, but they have a local office. And I've been able to kind of partner with everybody to share everybody's information. And if you are in the defense sector, you have one space to go that you can find all these programs and events. And then where we focus on is where we see a need and we try and fill it. So one of the things regarding workforce is ship repair association in working with them. And that is the private ship repair companies, not pro harbor shipyard, but I mean, that's DoD, but the private ship companies and working with them. And we set up a marine welding cohort in in partnership with the home community college and was able to get some workforce funding from the university for that. And we have a cohort that we just started. And it's taking 12 individuals who didn't have marine welding skills. And now they're going to get them. And then the expectation is they're going to get hired and have good paying jobs. And so we find those niches of either it's it's something that me is in need. And they just need somebody to bring the pieces together. Or another example is intelligence. There's no real organization that focuses on the intelligence field outside of, say, the federal government. And what we've done is had discussions on, again, workforce, how do we establish the pipeline? Again, another field where we have NSA here, we have a new innovation center that's going to be opening up or starting to be constructed that's going to provide hundreds of jobs in IT, cybersecurity and intelligence. I mean, IT cyber, there's there are organizations working on that we partner with them. But intelligence is a perfect field where it's kind of missing. And we've kind of done some programming and events around that, bringing together the university, other higher education and the defense sector. There is going to be, well, it's not us building it, but trying to get the stakeholders together to create that educational pipeline for people who are interested. Because in intelligence, it's a little bit of a different field. It's a it's a mixture of humanities, right, language, history, and then also on the intelligence side. So it's a it's a combination of fields that isn't normally placed together, like, say, an accounting degree, right? You want to want to get a marketing degree, right? It's prepackaged. So I've been working on that and had some events around the intelligence field. So, you know, at first, we are talking about company A is looking for a partner in company B or a prime in company B. Now we're talking about individuals. So maybe my my question before was if I'm company A, and I want to get connected with company B, I go to your website. Suppose I'm individual A, and I want to learn about welding for shipbuilding. I want to become competent in that area. I can get a job with company A. So is your website also a resource for me? Right now, it's mainly around companies and not necessarily individuals. But as we enter the next phase of our workforce development, we will our hope is to partner with our educational partners, whether it's University of Hawaii, whether it be Manoa, West O'ahua Community Colleges, or HPU, Chaminade. They're all part of this alliance and maybe put the links that need them to these programs. I think that's that's something that we're doing in our next phase. Because as an example, the welding program is kind of a pilot to see, right, did it make sense? Did it meet kind of the objectives? And then how do we move that further down the line? How about, you know, just I guess it's part of cyber in general, but computer programming, which is relevant to everything we do now. I mean, we live in a world of computer programming. And suppose I want to get trained up in computer programming, possibly including cyber. How do I, where do I go? What do I do? How do I get involved? Because that's always a pretty sexy career. It is. And there's a huge demand, obviously, not just in the defense sector, but in the private sector as well. Again, right now we're focused more on helping companies recruit that. And one of the things that we do have is the climb high resume bank where people can go in and we can get you that information where both companies can post job postings. We have about maybe 100, 110 job postings in the defense sector. And then individuals can go in and post a resume and then kind of meet it's kind of like our own LinkedIn, so to speak, for Hawaii and for the defense sector. Oh, that's very helpful, I think, right there. So after you make a match, so to speak, a partnership, some kind of contractual relationship with company A and company B, a prime, do you follow through? I mean, what's the concept on staying with it, the follow up and make sure everything is working okay? Is that part of your mission also? Yeah, I mean, we do follow up with companies. We do try and get feedback of what we can do better to improve the process. What are they looking for? Because in the end, I mean, right, time is probably everyone's most valuable commodity. And how do we make the best use of their time to get them and what their organizations need to succeed? And so we're always trying to get feedback and then trying to figure out where do we go in the next step? What are we going to focus on next? And that's kind of what we've been working on in the last, say, month or so. Sure, it's the marketplace. You've got to know what the military contracting marketplace is like because it may change. I'll say it will change. It is changing. It's all about change. So before the show began, you and I were talking about Zoom and virtual connections and you actually got organized right in the middle of COVID, which made Zoom an important asset for you in terms of communicating, organizing, putting people together, doing your own work for that matter. And I wonder if you could comment on that where you are in terms of using virtual connections and where you see it going in terms of the virtual connections between the players that you communicate with. Both for the alliance and as a small business person, I mean, there's no turning back. I think virtual is here to stay. I think even for the alliance, I mean, we have been doing in-person events. We're going to be doing more of them. But there are some things that virtual makes more sense. It's easier for people to access, whether it be from the office or the home, they don't have to drive anywhere, get parking. They can be more productive, right? You can go from one meeting right into our webinar and not have to put that transportation time in. And so I don't see us going back to the way it was pre-COVID. I mean, it's a mix of here to stay. And especially for the alliance, so a perfect example is we did an event with SAME talking about the business opportunities for Hawaii companies outside of Hawaii, right? Especially in the Pacific region, whether it be Guam or in Australia or other places that the military from the Pacific Rim spends its money. And so, right, we had somebody from the Alaska region. We had a few people here. And I think we had one other person from another region. And if we had to hold that event, right, you'd have to fly them in, pay for their lodging. And yet it was a great event. We had a lot of small companies who were able to see, oh, if I'm doing business in Hawaii, there's also opportunity for me within the Pacific region as well. And we've also had some companies speak to that because a lot of Hawaii companies have do business, whether it be in Guam, Japan, Saipan, Australia, you know, all over in the Pacific region, there's opportunity for them. Sure. And to go to something which isn't necessarily in your main stream, if I'm that guy who wants to learn computer programming, you know, or for that matter, shipbuilding as an individual, you know, with training and experience and all that. And I've gone to school at the program at, you know, the community college. I can interview using virtual technology. And, you know, I can tell you that that works, at least for us, it works well. Well, it's not the same thing as, you know, as being actually in the same room, but it's close. And you get enough information where you can make a decision. So that, you know, that works out okay. And I suppose if you have somebody who is trying to get, you know, trained up and trying to get a job in some DOD company, either here in Hawaii or in the mainland, you know, which has an office in Hawaii, whatever, it's got to be a great way to save time and money and travel and all that and to use virtual. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm making a little bit of a guess here, but I think it's also helped us get people to speak at our events in some cases where if they had to, right, get in a car, drive, come, part, go and then spend the time and then go back, they may not have been able to attend. So I think that is also helpful. That being said, right, there is still a place for in person. There are certain things that are better in person. Like we talked about our matchmaking programs and some of those. We've had both and matchmaking virtually works a little, but obviously in person, I think is a lot more effective. Sure. It's interesting. You're kind of a, you're a child of COVID. Can I call you that? You're a child of COVID, you're a child of virtual, you know, you enter the marketplace, so to speak, the marketplace of putting people together, matchmaking DOD companies. From that point of view, and I imagine over time, you'll really get to be good at it doing the hybrid, you know, making sure that you use the right methodology for the right circumstance. So this is a great opportunity, I think. It's a great opportunity for you for sure. It's a great opportunity for the chamber. And it's a great opportunity for Hawaii to have this company bringing people together on a kind of comprehensive basis. So tell me, what do you see for the future of it? I think we can assume that there will be more military presence and contracting here in Hawaii. So that's an assumption we can make. But what about the, what assumptions can we make about the ability to train and hold a workforce here? That's always been a problem as long as I can remember. And it is a problem today for sure. Just to put note, I remember a DOD recruiter came out here from Virginia contacted me and said, we want to find somebody who can do computer programming at Pearl Harbor. And said, you had to travel from Virginia to come out here and talk to me about that? What's the problem? He says, well, there are not enough people in Hawaii who qualify to do that work. So we're making a special effort to come out here and talk to people like you. And I was struck by it. So I guess, you know, what is, I'm asking, what is the future of the workforce initiative here? And what is the future of those companies, the thousand companies you mentioned, that have a presence in Hawaii, who could get into this industry that we, you and us and everybody are trying to build to bond up to DOD activities? What do you see the timeline? What do you see the result? What do you see the level of success? I think, you know, this always started about building the sector and creating jobs for local people, right? D-Bed, who brought us in to do this, that was their main focus. And in working with them moving forward, what we're looking at is actually, I'm very hopeful and we have a lot of good things going on. So you talked about the IT and cyber space. One of the things that we did that was part of our goals is to kind of do an assessment, not just of the defense sector, but overall, and that was done with the university, the Chamber of Commerce, and the IT industry, the defense sector, both public and private was part of that. And then saying, okay, here are the needs of employers. Here's what we're, if you provide this type of training in these skill sets, we will be interested in hiring these people. And so now we have that framework of the needs. The university and others are working to provide that, whether it's in credit or non-credit programs. Because for some of the things that we find in the IT space, you may have a degree in art design, but when you go to say coding school, or you get a certificate in software programming, a lot of people have come into the IT space who that was not what their undergraduate degree was in. So there's a lot of opportunity there, both for people to come up the traditional way through the two four-year degree in IT, or cross from that industry. So we're very hopeful in that space. The other is, again, in ship repair. Like we said, we did the pilot welding cohort. We hope to do more of those moving forward. And we think it'll help not just the contractors, but also Pearl Harbor as well, whether or not there's opportunity to do advanced manufacturing at the shipyard, right? 3D printing of parts rather than shipping them in. I mean, there's a lot of opportunity there. And then the other is in engineering, right? How do we do that? And the university has, has and has, excuse me, had a solid pipeline from the College of Engineering into companies for many years now. And so we're just trying to expand on that in the defense sector. We, one of the programs that we created, excuse me, events that we hope to have annually is the internship program. And that is a big way for students to get access to an employer and vice versa for the employer to see what talent is out there and bring them in, especially in the defense sector. It's important because it allows them time to go through the clearance process. And so at our event, again, at the sandbox, I mean, we had companies, it was sponsored by Booz Allen, Hamilton. We had NSA there. We had, and then we had other non defense sector. We had ASB, we had surf cold, we had Meyer, which is another defense contractor. And it was very cool to see. And in answering your question, I think back to the event is I'm very hopeful because you saw the young talent that we brought them there. And they talked about what their internship program was, what capstone or problem they were asked to solve, what they worked on. And you saw the future at hand with the opportunity to go into this field. And it was exciting. It was one of our larger in person events. We had almost 100 people there, mostly students. And it was a great meeting of the employers, the interns and, and the military. General Flynn four star was there who kind of was our keynote speaker talking about the importance, talking to the students of the importance of what they are doing and what it means to the readiness of our forces, right? You how being involved in IT and this internship relates to his ability to be ready in the field and what it means to him in his troops. It's yeah, I'm very important that you have some contact between active duty, military seniors are good with the crowd that you're talking to so they can, you know, examine what it's like to be in contract with the military. But that leads me to one last thing I was going to ask you about. So suppose I'm an engineer, a graduate engineer at UH and I get a job at the shipyard, where I'm an employee of the shipyard. And I look around and I see, you know, this is pretty interesting this work. I like being a DOD employee, but, you know, how about I should be an entrepreneur? I should start my own defense company. I see how it works. I understand it. I've been at the shipyard for a few years. I know enough to start a company, form a corporation, whatever it is. And I know enough about the, you know, the technology and the skills where I can effectively hire people for my entrepreneurial brand new company. And to me, a person like that sounds like the, you know, the perfect combination of backgrounds and skills because I have my engineering degree. I know about UH. I know about a source of additional workforce from UH. I know a little about Hawaii business. And I know how the Navy works at the shipyard. So I should be a perfect candidate to be an entrepreneur of a brand new defense, you know, one of those thousand companies, a defense company that will be one of your clientele, so to speak. Is this happening? Should it happen? Do you like the idea? Does it work? Or is the hill who steeped the climb? No, I would say go to our website, HawaiiDefenseAlliance.org. And one of the things that the small business support working group wanted to create was, like I said, the businesses who might be thinking and want to get in or those who are in. The last group is the ones who might, who have some, maybe something very small or they're interested. We have a module, excuse me, on our website that if you answer a survey of questions, it will populate some resources that are available to help you to get to that next step. So maybe you have your business, DCCA business registration, and you know, you got your tax license, but you don't have a checking account, or you don't have a financial plan, or you don't have a business plan. When you go through our module, I like to call it, and you answer all the questions, it will populate a group of organizations that can help you with that next step. And again, this goes with partnering and with our partner alliance organization. So if you need a business plan written, like what will pop up is you can go to SBDC, the small business development center, and they can help you with that. Or if you need to learn about procurement, you can go to PTAP, or you're a veteran, and you need certain things, you can go to VBUCK. So the system has certain things built into it, algorithms. And then when you go in, it'll tell you who you can get help from. And many of these are done by governmental agencies. So oftentimes they're free or very, very low cost. And that will help you there. And that's, again, the partnership working, not doing any of those things, not duplicating, but helping people be the one-stop shop to get to the right place. Because there are all these organizations that I mentioned do great work. And oftentimes, sometimes companies just don't know how to find them. And so that's what we built into our site. And hopefully that will provide a lot of value to small companies or entrepreneurs thinking about starting a company. Okay, we're about out of time, Pono. It's been great to talk to you. And I want to offer you this opportunity to leave a message with anybody who will view this program on any side of the coin, whether it's a small company, whether it's a prime, whether it's an individual looking to be part of the workforce, or the public trying to appreciate what you're doing. So can you leave a message? Tell us what you would like us to think about going forward. Taking a look at our website and seeing what things we can offer to you and your company. I think we have a lot of resources there that, again, not that just we can provide to your company, but your organization and your employees. And hopefully we can help you be successful. And if you have questions, you can contact us on our website. And we would love to hear from you as, again, working with our stakeholders and our sponsor, D-Bed. We hope we are making Hawaii a better place for the people who live here. Yeah. Let's build the economy. Pono Chang, Hawaii Defense Alliance, HDA. Thank you so much for coming around. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jay. And thank you for doing this and congratulations, 21 years. Wow, went by fast. Almost 22, but who's counting? Thank you, Pono. Thank you, Jay. Aloha. You too. Bye-bye.