 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German or Turk or Japanese, but anyone from any corner of the earth can come to live in America and become an American. Welcome back to A Nation of Immigrants, a new talk show program featuring the lives of the immigrants, knowledge, diversity, and inclusion. Brought to you by Think Tank Hawaii and the Kingsfield Law Office, we invite renowned immigrants to discuss their life stories, immigration adventures, and the contributions to cultural diversity. Today's guest is our good friend, Rob Paphis. Welcome, Rob. Thank you, John. I'm so glad to have you here. We have known each other for decades. Oh my god. Yes. I'm going to read a short bio if you don't mind. Then I have plenty of questions for you. So Rob is a vice president and co-owner of federal publication seminars, IPS. He is responsible for recruiting and managing strategic partnerships and alliance with government contractor executives and associations, attorney organizations, law faculty, and the media. Rob has over 30 years of experience working with several national legal publishing entities, including Thompson Reuters and a market lawyer media. He has successfully designed business development, marketing, and sales programs for the ground up, and led the programs to a successful launch. Rob excels in forming mutually beneficial relationships. He has deep connection with C-level and marketing executives in government contracting, global technology, and technology-enabled companies. He also enjoys mentoring individuals who are new to the field of government contracting and events management. Thank you so much for taking time to be on the show, Rob. As I said, we know each other for decades. But until like two or three years later, we first met at Vice Publishing Thompson Reuters, I realized, actually, you are second generation immigrant. So basically means you were born in the United States, but your parents were born outside the United States. So my first question to you is, what brought your family to the United States and settled in the state of Minnesota? Really, Chong, it was actually, it's probably a similar story to a lot of the immigrants that you've talked to. It was opportunity. And it actually were my grandparents that came over, not my parents, just to make sure that we're on the same page. And lucky enough, because anyone that knows the history of the Middle East and especially Lebanon, there's been a lot of war throughout the decades, throughout the centuries, actually. And luckily, it wasn't for reasons of war that my grandparents came here. Both my grandfathers came in the early 1900s. One of them came through Ellis Island. The other did not have the paperwork to come through Ellis Island. So I actually made his way through Canada and came to Minnesota. But both had heard of a burgeoning Middle Eastern Lebanese specifically community in St. Paul, Minnesota. No relatives, I believe at the time that they came here, were here, but friends of relatives had directed them to St. Paul, Minnesota. And luckily, both grandparents ended up around the same part of St. Paul together and met. And that is where my parents met. Once both their fathers in church, of course, which was probably a common thing back in those days. But both came here for opportunities, completely different backgrounds. One grandfather was educated at the American University in Beirut and came here as an accountant and had a job working for Armors Meats. The other grandfather came here with not much schooling, worked as a cobbler when he first came to St. Paul. And then through various relationships that he formed, got into the service industry as far as bars, restaurants, et cetera. And that's where he made his living. And so it came from different backgrounds, but all into this one area of St. Paul, Minnesota happened to both be part of the same, grew up in the same faith and met in the same church. Oh, what a beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing. You are most, the most hardworking people I ever know. And I trusted that your grandparents are very hardworking people. But I'm a little bit surprised, presently surprised. Nevertheless, to learn that they are quite a large Lebanese American community in the state of Minnesota. And I just realized that because I live like three miles from Lebanon Hills Park. And is that the park and something related to the Lebanon community? I actually, I don't know, but I do think it's very interesting that I have grown up and worked within this probably six mile radius for 55 years. And that has been there. And I don't know the history of it. I'm sorry to say that. No, I already bought it though. I will take it all. But you're right. There is a community here, Middle Eastern, Lebanese, Syrian. The church that I go to is, they actually used to call it a Syrian Orthodox, but it's actually, we call it an Eastern Orthodox Church. So the Lebanese Syrian community has been part of this community, the same, really the same call community that I grew up in for over a hundred years. And I think that that's very interesting. So there's a lot of history, both economically, religiously, et cetera. Absolutely amazing to, you know, to people outside of Minnesota, state of Minnesota can hardly imagine that we have a very strong Lebanese Syrian community, Somalian community, Tibetan community, Hmong community, it's absolutely just amazing for the, in the middle of the heartland of the United States. But now I'm asking you, since you have a pretty strong cultural background and even you are now the first generation immigrant and, but I want to ask you what it was it like when you grew up in the state of Minnesota, in the center of the Midwest, but you do have a strong cultural background or your family. And what language did you speak when you grew up? Only English? It really was English. There was a little bit of Arabic spoken when we went to my grandparents' house. Unfortunately, I never got to meet my father's parents, my father's mother or father. Mother passed away before I was born, well before I was born and my grandfather passed away very close to when I was born. But I was able to luckily have a long relationship with my grandmother and grandfather Awadah. And that's when we would go to their home, whether it was a Sunday dinner or sometimes to the lake with them in the summer. That's when you would, my grandfather spoke very broken English. So there was a lot of Arabic speaking going on, a lot of Arabic speaking between him and my grandmother. My mother did not really understand Arabic that well, even though it was spoken in the home when she was grown up, but my father did. And so there were times when he would translate a few things to me. And most of the things I picked up though as a child were probably, well, definitely food items, how to pronounce those, but unfortunately some swear words as well. Oh, interesting. Did you identify culturally or did you feel strongly you know, affiliated with the Lebanese Assyrian community or you just feel like a regular, you know, kid in the state of Minnesota? You know, when you grow up in the house that we did and in going to the schools that we did. Yeah, I was probably one of the, maybe there was one or two other Lebanese or Middle Eastern in your friends that were, you know, in my elementary class and then on into junior high, et cetera. We were Lebanese and we were, I was very proud of it. And there were differences and there were differences that I had to deal with. It was never an issue for me from a negative standpoint. It was always something that was just different and I was never made to feel anything other than proud about it, even though all of my friends, for example, in, I went to the public schools through elementary and through junior high, but then went to a Catholic school, even though I'm not Catholic. And my religion was different. My Eastern Orthodox, as I mentioned earlier, the biggest difference was around Easter time. Everyone, we always had a different Easter. We followed a different calendar than the Catholic church. So our Easter's were always from one to six weeks apart and then every six years, they would be the same. And so I would always have to deal with that. Everyone was getting off of school for Easter throughout my entire life, throughout my schooling, whether it was, you know, early elementary or through high school. Everyone had Easter break, Easter vacation, the Monday after Easter off. And that was great, but only every other, every six years did that mean something to me, you know, where it was actually where I was getting off when everyone else got off for the holiday. And so it would always be sometimes a source of jokes and things like that, but never ever made to feel embarrassed about it or anything like that. And that was good. I was always proud of it and still am and still celebrate my Easter, even though my children were brought up in the Catholic faith. It was just one particular holiday where we got to celebrate two times, which is always fun. And then there were different traditions around Christmas. Most, again, growing up around Catholics, they had midnight mass at Christmas time. We always had midnight mass at Christmas time and at Easter time. Easter was always the biggest celebration in the Eastern Orthodox Church that way. Not more than Christmas, but held probably at equal to Christmas. And so I was always running out to go to midnight mass, you know, in the spring for our Easter or our Good Friday mass as well. And, you know, that took away from some of the things that my friends were doing because the Catholic Church didn't have any of those particular types of masses, a midnight mass on the Saturday before, or a very, our Good Friday mass is one of the most beautiful masses that you could attend. And I haven't been, I've been to a lot of Catholic masses, but I don't remember going to a Good Friday mass that could compare to the Eastern Orthodox mass. Beautiful. Thank you so much. That's very inspirational. I learned a lot from what I just heard from you. And I can tell you when I grew up in the 1980s in China, Lebanon was on the TV every day. And because of the conflict between Lebanon and Israel. And when I hear Lebanon, my first impression from my memory is a good, good people. Because on Chinese TV, Lebanon was the right side. Israel was on the wrong side. That is very clear. I'd be educated that way. And that still, well, now obviously I don't, you know, think that when I hear the word Israel, not automatically going to be negative, but Lebanon is positive that it can be deeply, deeply embedded in my, you know, gene. But let's, you know, you mentioned your family and I think I knew your family pretty well. I loved his. I had, you hosted the best party ever. I enjoyed many different fantastic food you offered. And we go to Dinsen restaurant all the time. So obviously you are not a typical, typical Minnesotan. I would say because of some Minnesotans, typical, typical Minnesotans, they are hesitant to try different ethnic food, but you are very adventurous in trying the different food, including Dinsen, the typical Cantonese food. And tell us a little bit about your family and your career. Even I think I know some of them, but could you just give us a brief, you know, overview of your personal history and your career history? Sure. Sure. Well, I guess maybe to start at the beginning, I was born and raised here in St. Paul, Minnesota, really have, again, been in this 10, I guess a 10 mile radius from downtown St. Paul, which was called the flats of St. Paul at that time, where they brought me home to as a baby, moving up the hill to West St. Paul, Minnesota, and then to Indergrove Heights, Minnesota. Those were the years that I was with my parents, and that was through 1980, probably 87 or 88 when I went to St. Thomas Academy for high school and a Catholic school, Catholic military school, and then went on to, at the time, the College of St. Thomas, it's now the University of St. Thomas for my four years. And when I graduated in 1989 from the University of St. Thomas, that's when I moved out of my home in Indergrove Heights and moved to Egan, Minnesota and went to work for West Publishing and was with West from really from 89 to 2000, and then from 2000 to 2010 with American lawyer media, and then luckily came back to what was now, instead of West Publishing was now Thompson Reuters, and moved back there in 2010 to 2014, and then bought this business and so on. So I was very lucky to, I think grow up in an area that you didn't say it, but it really is kind of a melting pot. All the different, whether it's Hmong or Somali or the Middle Eastern, the Lebanese, the Greeks. When you grow up in that type of an area, you wanna try different things. My father was always trying different foods, loved spicy foods, took that always to the limit of trying the spiciest foods you could find. I remember coming home one time and seeing in the sink of calf hearts or calf livers, calf hearts. I mean, a pile of them that would have made anyone sick. Now I didn't try them, but that was kind of an annual thing that he and I think four or five of his friends would get together, they would grill these and they would eat them with our garlic sauce, which I believe you've had, John, our very potent garlic sauce and onions but it was memories of seeing my father and my mother eat a lot of different foods, experience a lot of different cultural things, whether it was at the festival of nations, which I'm not even sure if we still do a festival of nations in St. Paul, but for at least 30 years, that was a big celebration every year. Something that I personally was involved with from our church, always having a booth there as a child to actually chairing our church's presence at it and loved it, loved going to all the different booths. They probably had about 75 different booths from all over the world. Again, these people all living here in the Twin Cities. So I really feel lucky, even though I'm not as traveled as someone like you, John, I really haven't left the United States other than Mexico, Canada, and a few other Caribbean islands. I really feel lucky that I've grown up here to experience a lot of that stuff and I'm still relatively young. Hopefully I'll get overseas and get to Lebanon. I've never visited Lebanon. My children would love to go there. So again, that's a little bit of my history. I didn't go much into the work and I can do that if you want me to go into more, because I know some of this is gonna be about maybe attorney training and things. But that's kind of from a personal family standpoint. My entire life's been in this 10-mile melting pot, kind of a 10-mile radius. Thank you so much, but I do want a quick comment. You mentioned that I traveled a little bit more than you do, but you are a global thinker as well. You have a global men's side. And it doesn't matter how many countries I've traveled, people can be very close-minded if they don't see and don't feel. And it's amazing you call our state a melting pot. I think that auto-stated will be surprised to hear that, but I couldn't agree with you more. And Minnesota is unique and it's an open-minded and a place, it's extremely culturally diverse and a tolerance. That's the most important thing for all of us to understand the Minnesota. We have a very high degree of empathy toward other human beings. Anyway, now we need to change the subject to a little bit serious topic like career. And I vividly remember the day you bought Federal Public Service seminars. And all our friends and including myself are so excited for you, but we had this question and that will be tough job. But a few years later, you did an amazing job and you grow the, and you and your colleagues grow the company to a size that was quite unthinkable. And when it was just a department, yeah, a big corporation. Now it's fully independent. It's a leader in government contracting training. It's got a superb reputation as offer a very full range of courses through federal contractors, lawyers, and all legal professionals. And we don't have a lot of time to go through your full curriculum, but I'm always amazed to visit your website to understand what you are gonna keep up to date of the development of the law and the regulations. But just a quick question. How do you feel when you work with lawyers and all these legal professionals? You yourself are not a lawyer. No. You are a business leader and executive, but you basically have been working most with lawyers. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. It is pretty, of course, as the lead up to this interview, you think about this stuff and it is ironic. What? 1989, I started at what was then West Publishing. And to my, to this day, my entire career. So what is that, 89, 36 years, right? 36 years has, or no, 30, yeah, 36 years has been devoted to the attorney, the world of law. In different facets, my first three or four years really was more on the production side of all the tools that attorneys use. The books, I was involved more in the printing and the shipping of all of the books that West Publishing published and produced. But also very early on when I got into marketing, I was involved with, at the time, CD-ROM and five and a quarter inch discs, three and F-inch discs and getting those out to law students so that they would learn about West Law. So you can say really from 1992 on, I have been involved in the training in one way or the other of attorneys. And it is funny, I would, I do wanna mention Andy King, my business partner. When he and I bought the company in 2014, we kind of had, his background was more in the actual selling of training to not necessarily attorneys, that was more the end of his career before federal publication seminars, but he was involved in all different kinds of training through all different kinds of industries. But we were together for about the last 10 years before we bought federal publications and at Thompson Reuters at the time. And it's just interesting, the things that we learn, you ask what it's like and what it is day-to-day training attorneys. It's a much different world than Andy would tell you this right away. Everything in the attorney world and training is light years behind. And I think present company excluded, I think technology scares attorneys and especially the older attorneys. I think we're seeing a change over that's been going on for probably a couple of decades in the legal industry. And I think it's starting to catch up a little bit, but when you look at other industries, we're light years behind in terms of how we train attorneys. When we bought federal publication seminars in 2014, nothing online, maybe two or three, maybe a half a dozen webinars, 60-minute webinars. Now we're doing, we have a calendar of probably over 300 webinars and training courses, full-length training courses that last over five days are done virtually. Now some of that was assisted, how quick we did it was assisted because of COVID and people not being able to come to a public classroom setting, but it really has sped things up over the last two to three years based on what we've all faced. So my initial response to what it is like, it's frustrating at times because there's a lot of things that we might want to do that the legal industry isn't necessarily ready for. Thank you very much, I totally agree. And I think the reason you and Andy are doing so well with your colleague at the federal public year seminars because you are, I feel like you are working harder than lawyers. You are, well, I don't know about that. Well, to be honest, I had the great honor and the privilege to be on your faculty a few times and giving webinars. And every people I've worked with on your team is super professional, super attentive and everything just run like a clock and always punctuate, always right. There's no surprise and I'm certainly enjoying it and I wish you all the best with your team and federal public year seminars. And it's just a great company. You are, you know. I appreciate that, John. So if I have a second, in addition to Andy, I really, you bring up a good point. We have had anywhere over the last eight years at any given time, we have 11 to 15 employees. The growth of this company and the success that we've had is not just Andy and me. It's in all of them. Whether it's people who have just started or people who have been here longer than us owning it, we brought over some legacy employees with us when we bought it from Thomson Reuters. The one thing that Andy and I think about every time we're doing anything, this company is over 65 years old. So it has a rich history in educating attorneys, educating companies who do business with the government. We take that very seriously. We have the coat of arms that was developed back 65 years ago when this company became a company, when it became federal publications. We have it here on the wall and it's a reminder to us of something very serious. We take it very serious. I mean, these are companies who are doing business with our government. Sometimes it's international and dealing with other countries and we help them to stay compliant and follow the law. So we're very happy and excited about it. Well, thank you for your hard work to ensure that the federal contractors completely up to date to the law and the regulations. We are running out of time, but I do have a question I want to ask. Sure. That we ask all our distinguished guests and you have millennials in your household and you just imagine time travel permitted. You are traveled back to you 30 years ago and met a younger you at your kid's age. And what would you want to say to a younger self of yours? Well, if I were in my 20s, so, you know, one of the, it's interesting because I look at the millennials and I have two of them. My three children, two would be considered millennials. One would be, one is younger than that. I don't know, is that the Gen X or Gen Z? Yes. Okay, so the millennial, I would, you know, so my advice I'd give those millennials who are in their 20s or really all of them is to communicate more. So I was different. I would say to me, slow down. There was no rush in doing a lot of the things that I wanted to do right out of college. Slow down, enjoy the things that I wanted to do. And don't ask me what those were because I don't even know that I could tell you that. But what I see in some of these millennials is they have slowed down. Now, this is a positive and a negative as an employer of some of these millennials, it's hard because they don't communicate like we communicate. They're not used to being in an office setting like we're used to being in an office setting every day. And I hear this from other owners of companies from whether it's restaurants or whether it's accounting firms, large top six CPA firms. It's a different world when you get these 20-year-olds working for you. They don't wanna pick the phone up. They're used to texting. They're used to sending emails. They don't wanna just pick up the phone and talk to someone when it could take five minutes to solve a problem rather than sending 20 texts or five emails back and forth. So that would be my advice to the ones that are there now. For me, I would have wanted to take a page from the millennials now to have slowed my life down a little bit, but still kept the communication skills that I have, that I had then and I have now. And I am doing the job of teaching my three children who are at different ages. Of course, they're all within about 12 years apart. I'm trying to teach them and they're gonna probably see this when this airs. I'm trying to teach them as much as possible to communicate. And that could mean anything. It could mean with friends. It could mean with your boss. It could mean with whoever your partner is. More communication and in-person communication is worth it. Fantastic. Rob, thank you so much. Good advice. Good mentor, good father, good boss and good friend. Wow. He's lucky to have you. Your employee are lucky to have you as boss. The young professional is lucky to have you as a mentor and we are lucky to have you as a friend. Thank you, Rob. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. I've enjoyed this, Chong. I appreciate it and I look forward to seeing it. Yes, it will be broadcast shortly. Okay. Thank you again for your time and I look forward to having you back on the show and let's continue our discussion. Thank you. 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 and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.