 Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines. We are broadcasting live from the beautiful Think Tech Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and building winning teams. Today's special guest is extremely special to me. He is my three-time state doubles champion, who I talk about in my book, and he is the owner and CEO of the very successful, very popular Rainbow Drive-In. He is Chris Iwamura, and today we are going beyond plate lunches. Champ, great to see you. Great to see you today. Congratulations on the book and a successful show so far. Oh, thank you. Well, I have to make you proud. I'm excited to be here. Now Chris, I want to ask you, when and why did you start tennis? I started tennis maybe when I was around five or six years old. My dad always played tennis, and there's a sport that he loved. I played a bunch of sports when I started. Obviously, as high school went along, you have to pick one, so I stuck with tennis because it was the one I was the most successful at, so I stuck with it. And then you and I got connected because I started teaching you private and group lessons when you were in seventh grade. Yeah, seventh grade. So how did you like my lessons back then? You pushed me. You definitely pushed me. No, I loved it. I think tennis for me was just a way to escape kind of school too and just have fun on the court, learn things, and learn life lessons throughout the entire process. Yeah, and I wanted to try to keep things fun. It was always fun. Really to push you hard. I never beat you. I never beat you, but I came close, so that's as much fun as I had. Let's talk about varsity. Now, when you're on my varsity team, you're my three-time state doubles champion. You won as a freshman with Bucky Janks, and then you won twice with Nick Leong. Why did you love playing doubles so much? I could have someone to blame. I'm just joking. I like doubles because I think for me singles was just kind of too much of a solo act. I liked having a partner. Even now, I like having teams. So it was like a little team that we could have. What was unique about tennis in general is that you're just out there. You can't coach us until the set's over. So working with Bucky, working with Nick, even Matt, we had to figure out strategies on the fly, and that's kind of what I loved was the problem-solving aspect to it. I have to coach you guys to coach yourselves out there because it was all about our preparation. Now, what did you enjoy, Chris, about playing on our varsity team? It was just so much fun. And that was the main thing above everything else, is we had fun. We worked extremely, extremely hard. You ran us. You drilled us hard. It was all worth it, though. And we had fun in the process, and we learned a lot during that time. And I think, I mean, just do something you love. Everyone says that, right? Do something you love, and you love tennis at the time, so I played it. Yeah, and then winning became a byproduct of what we did on our team. Exactly. You know, we had a great team culture. It was the culture of winning, and anything less, not necessarily meant failure, but we would learn. You know, we'd play each other. You'd sometimes lose, and what do you learn from that going forward? Yeah, everybody learned more from losing matches than we did really from winning matches. Exactly. Now, why do you think our varsity team was so successful? I think, like we spoke on, just the culture. You come in, you know, you see the varsity teams, me in seventh grade, eighth grade. I worked with them a little bit. And you see that culture of, you know, just the hard work ethic, and basically perfection. So that's kind of why it was successful, is because it kept getting handed down, handed down. And you know, when I even coached the JV team in varsity, and I would still practice those techniques and things, and teach them to be perfect. Yeah, no, totally. And then after Punahou School, you went to college at Santa Clara, and you played tennis there. How was your experience in college at Santa Clara? Completely different. And not necessarily, it's just, it's a different culture. Coming from Hawaii, it's very family. Not to bash on anyone, it was just more run like a military style. And then that coupled with me going to school, trying to get a computer engineering degree, and labs and things, it was just, it was too much. And that's why I only played two years, and then I had to step down for school. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, Chris, you were, I mean, you're one of the greatest doubles players I've ever had on varsity. Has tents. Yeah. Exactly. Hey, but you're legendary. Now let's talk about your parents, Harvey and Betsy. I know them for so many years as well. They are fantastic parents. Tell me, what are some of the principles you learned from them? I think anyone that's met my parents knows that just aloha, love, you know, just having that feeling of, you know, you're not being left out, including everyone, making sure everyone's taken care of, that was the number one lesson I learned. The second was hard work. Yeah. I used to be, my dad and I would go practice serves literally in the dark at 5.30 a.m. I'd have practice during lunch and practice after school too. So it's just, you know, growing up in that culture of practice, practice, practice, but you see the payoff. I mean, that's helped me tremendously growing up. And Chris, when we had our varsity potlucks, I mean, oh, you guys would bring rainbows would come to put a whole school, basically. It was amazing. Yeah, you want to talk about legendary. Our potlucks were legendary. I don't know how I even like did homework after this. We would have so much food and that was part of just the culture, though. In fact, like everyone's a family. We come together after the games. Even the girls would join us and we just eat and talk. Story is memorable. Your mom and dad would bring a whole cooler of slush flows for our team. And they'd be like, co-trustee, these two are for you. Exactly. They had to make sure you had yours and they didn't care what happened to the other ones. Free for all after that. Now, let's talk about rainbows. Can you give everyone a brief history about rainbows? So rainbow driving is a third generation. I'm the third generation family business. It was started by my grandpa. So my grandpa went and fought in the 442, 100 battalion. And he was a chef for the army. So that's kind of what he knew and what he was trained in doing. So when he came home, he tried to open up a couple of different spots. They didn't turn out for various reasons. But then he parked at rainbow driving on the corner of Kapahulu. And ever since, we've been cooking, play lunches. And it started in 1961? 1961, so 57 turn 58 this year. Geez, that's amazing. Now, you guys have won, I mean, multiple awards through the years. And I noticed that you guys are featured on Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum PI. Why do you think rainbows is so successful? Well, my grandpa always said that it's hard work plus luck. But I think one of your favorite quotes is that we make our own luck, right? So I think it's just through hard work. And just through consistency, we were very fortunate to have a base. And as that grew, as more tourists spread the word, internet helped a lot of things, we've just been really lucky after that. Yeah, well, I mean, it's luck. But I mean, like you said, you guys work hard. And you wanted to give a lot of food at a reasonable price. That's part of our mission is just to make sure that there's restaurants there that are out that you pay a lot and you get a little, which is fine for those type of people. But we based ourself on you come to rainbows, you're probably going to have to take a nap after. So you just expect that. And that, for me, should never change. I mean, that's what we started on. And that's what we should always go with. Now, champ, my favorite food items I have to share is the chili plate, the breakfast special with the corned beef hash. And obviously the boneless chicken gravy all over. Now, I want to know what is your favorite food items at rainbows? I love our chili. And actually, one of my favorite food items is our barbecue pork, either in a sandwich or on a plate or even on top of a chili plate, like a side of barbecue pork as I was really, it's something that I mean, I kind of grew up eating and I've always loved it because I can't eat boneless chicken every single day. So it's something on the healthier side that I like to eat. Oh, see, that's the problem for me is I have my favorites and I want to try other stuff, but I don't want to miss out on not having the ones I really love. Exactly. We have a lot of people like that or people that just want to come in and, you know, they're here for vacation and they ask people, they'll ask you maybe, like, what are your favorite plates? You'll give them three. So they'll just come and be like, you know what, it's cheap enough. We'll just order three and then family style it around. With the slush floats. With the slush floats, always, always. Now, Chris, how do you balance what has worked in the business in the past versus staying current right now? I think that's, it's tough because, you know, we, we're known for our nostalgic feel. A lot of people grew up as kids eating, you know, plate lunches. So there has to be a balance between keeping it nostalgic and moving forward. And I think with me working in tech for a while, it was like just move forward, move forward, move forward. So I had to slow myself down and be like, okay, we're going to just do one thing at a time. We're not going to like scare a lot of our employees like, here's a brand new system, go learn it. So we're just trying to balance like moving forward with staying nostalgic and trying to still keep the outside feel of nostalgia that you knew when you came here as a kid. Yeah, because you guys also have a lot of long time employees. We do. We have a two employee, three employees now over 25 years. And you know, you know them because you see them every time. So I mean, that's one of our best assets is our employees who have been there a while, even, even if it's five, six years, they build, especially our cashiers, they build connections with people. They'll remember your order, they'll remember your name. And that I think is very important because as a family business, we want to still keep that family aspect to it. And things, small things like remembering your name just makes it feel like home. And that's kind of what we're shooting for now. Yeah, you're right, though. It's the culture that, you know, your grandfather and then your parents and then you now have, you know, continued on. And it's all the details. I mean, those little things make big differences. Now, champ, I want to know, what are you doing to enhance the business now as the owner and CEO? So for me, I'm trying to take my past experiences and bring it forward. So things like even lessons I learned in tennis, hard work, things like that. I have a master's in computer engineering. So what I took away from that was problem-solving skills. You know, even as simple as something's broken, OK, let's figure out what part of it is broken and how we can fix it. Or scheduling, it's like playing Tetris. I'm just trying to learn how to put pieces in place and put the people in place, too, that for us to run forward. And then recently, last year, I got my MBA from UH. And what that did was it took my mindset from just maybe just straight problem-solving, like computer analytical. And I put it in a business sense. So that way, I feel that I'm well-equipped to tackle most situations. Yeah, you know, the greatest CEOs, the greatest leaders are always learning. They're always trying to be better. And I love, and this was last year that you got your MBA. And I love that about you because I've known you for so long. And you're amazing. You're extraordinary. And I just know that your whole team, your employees, they are just so lucky to have somebody like you leading the way. I hope so. No, it's been learning to me is something that I hope to never stop. I even go on YouTube and just learn random things about marketing, about finance, just trying to learn as much as I can. And it's part of my personal mission is to just learn as much as I can and use that knowledge to help the business, myself, Hawaii in general, move forward. Yeah. Champ, what do you see? What are the challenges that you're dealing with right now with rainbows? I think the biggest challenge right now is that we are so, I understand why nothing has changed. Because the saying, if it's broke, don't fix it. The problem is that with everything's getting older. The floors in our drive-in are 57 years old. There's things that have been there since the start. And so it's trying to figure out how to modernize things while still trying to keep the family feel and not making our employees feel like we're pushing them out or anything like that. But just trying to make their jobs more efficient and make it easier for everyone and safer too. Yeah. No, that's a delicate balance right there that you're trying to do. Champ, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to continue going beyond plate lunches. OK. You are watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii with my special guest Chris Iwamura. We will be back in 60 seconds. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lowe. And I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock. Live from Think Tech, Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. I'm Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power, Hawaii with Think Tech, Hawaii. We come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, Mabuhay, and aloha. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I've known my special guest for a very long time, because he is my three-time state doubles champion and the owner and CEO of the very popular rainbow drive-in. He is Chrissy Womura, and today we are going beyond plate lunches. Champ, you know how proud I am of you and I know you love my book and I talk about you in my book. How do you like that story that I talked about? It was the most appropriate lesson learned for me and my story because you talk about risk-taking with me. And risk-taking is something that I think I take very seriously, but I think you use the term calculated risk. I try and try to calculate as much as I can. Something with like Ramos, it was a risk, it was a big risk for me. I went from living in SF Bay area, coding to helping to run a kitchen, but this one was, you know, it's been my passion and I just kind of jumped in and was like, if I'm going to do this, I've got to fully commit. So basically what I did was I went in and literally started from the ground up. So I would wash dishes, scoop rice, cook, cashier, learn kind of learn every single position. And it's something that I enjoyed. It wasn't like I came in and going, oh, I have to do this today. It was like, okay, I need to learn. So, you know, it sucks getting burned. It sucks cutting yourself. But you know, it's something that you learn and you get a better appreciation for the jobs that your workers do if you do their job. And you, you know, if they come to you and you go, I know, I know it sucks getting yelled at by someone that's angry. But you know, I did it too and let's work together and figure out how we can, how we can help the situation. And that's very impressive champ because your employees, I mean, you've done every job. I haven't seen you taking out the garbage. You know, I mean, you've done every job and that's how you gain respect from your team because they know that as the owner you know what they're going through. And you know, having empathy for your people is huge. Now, I know you have empathy for them. I mean, I know. Now, what, talk to me about empathy and your people. Well, it's just, I think it's just connecting. It's a culture that I wanted to build, you know, and kind of off the family and kind of off a lot of like the Aloha. Aloha is our core value in it. We want to spread that to every aspect of the business. It's just, you know, being there for your employees and knowing exactly what they go through. I think that was the biggest thing. Someone, I forgot someone told me that, you know, the janitor is the one that knows what's broken the most and it's true. Like you can't just going in and being higher up doesn't mean that you don't care about your employees. It's you go and talk to them. You find out how their daughter or sons are doing and things like that. Obviously you don't have, you know, hours of data talk to them, but, you know, just reaching out, I think, is very important, especially here in Hawaii. Whereas the big area was a little different. It was more just business-minded, but in Hawaii, you need to establish connections. Now, that's so key and that makes me happy to hear you say that because on our team, you know, I was first and foremost, I was so concerned about your guys' well-being first and then playing 10 a second. But when you guys knew that my first priority was to really help you guys develop as people and then practice 10 a second. Even if you yelled at us for an entire two hours, we knew that it wasn't because you just wanted to yell. It had to mean something to happen. I'll never forget that day. There was a reason. There was a reason. There was a legitimate reason. And now I can look back and appreciate it exactly. Now, you know, we were, you know, for our culture of our team, I mean, a lot of when we would play some of the tougher schools like Mid-Pacific and Eolani and Kamehameha, I would tell you guys, hey, they're gonna have a really great attitude and give a great effort against us. And you know what, we can't do the same. And you guys are like, what? And I said, yeah, we have to have a superior effort and we have to have a superior attitude. And that has to be our culture. You remember that? Exactly. Being the best at something, if you're complacent, you're gonna go down. It's there's no like doubts about that. And for us, we were the top in the state and every time we played someone, it didn't matter who, they were bringing their A game because they had nothing to lose. So what that did for us though was kept making us improve because we always had to adjust and be like, oh my God, this guy is not missing a forehead today. Like we're just gonna, well, for doubles, I'm like, I'm just gonna hit to this guy. He's like, he's in his own. So it's just, it's yeah, like keep on growing, keep on learning, even though you're number one, keep on growing. Yeah. And that was a huge thing because I didn't want us to take anyone for granted. And I wanted us to outdo what we've done every single year. You always set high expectations for us. Well, we always want to reach for something. Just be on our reach, right? Exactly. Now, one of the biggest concepts, too, of our team was to welcome adversity and to look forward to challenges. What are your thoughts about that? Nobody likes adversity. I mean, in the ideal world, everyone would just like to cruise through life without any challenges. But I mean, it's, I learned a lot about that recently. Or recently with the new job and recently just in life in general. I mean, everyone goes through their challenges. It's how you kind of, you know, you grow from it. I think your show at June Jones, he was talking about the car crash and how he had to mentally fight mind over matter to get his legs back working and everything. So I think adversity should be cherished because you're going to come out stronger. Mentally stronger, if anything. And it's something that I'm still learning to this day. There's, it's a restaurant. Something's broken right now. Something is broken. But it's just like how we fix it and how we move forward. And I think that part was trained early. You know, I lost a lot of singles matches. I lost doubles matches. But it's just how you move forward on from that. Yeah, and you learned a lot from that. And I like what you said about the challenges because you know, I would tell you guys that when we would look forward to adversity and we didn't know when it was going to happen, but it was going to happen. And once we got through it and we dealt with it, we would become stronger for that experience. We'd become better. We'd become smarter for that. Cause you say to yourself, oh, I've gone through that already. That's fine. I know you have the confidence to overcome that hurdle if it ever comes up again. So then you look, what's the next hurdle coming up? Yeah, it's a mindset. Exactly. And Chris, what do you feel the best coaches or the best leaders do? I think leadership, just in general, defined in the term leadership for me is growing a culture that everyone wants to be a part of. And I think you did that at Punahou. Some of my bosses on the mail ended that. I enjoyed going to work. I enjoyed going to practice, even though it was work or practice. It's creating that culture that I want to fight for you. And I think that's something the best leaders do. I know some leaders are very yelling military style. But again, in Hawaii, I think it's more about empathy and building a team, building an ohana to tackle bigger problems. Yeah, no, you're completely right. And Chris, what do you see as the biggest difference in you today versus you 10 years ago? 40 pounds. No, I can't be Superman. When I first, I think when we're all young, we're like, oh, we can do everything. Like, I can do this and this and this. And now, I mean, I'm still young, but I'm learning more and more that trust in your team, trust in your people, and also trusting in yourself. Just being able to delegate has helped me a lot. With the stress, with a lot of things, just being like, OK, this is your task. I trust you to do it. And then it takes off my plate. I can't be Superman. I need sleep. I do. The key, too, is when you're delegating, whoever you're delegating to, I mean, they don't want to let you down. Yeah, exactly. I think that was a kind of a realization, too, right? It's not just delegating. And then if you build a good enough team, they're going to do it with a purpose. They're not just going to be like, oh, he gave me this to do. I'm just going to do it when I have time. It's like, oh, he gave me this. He trusts me with this. Let's let me do my best effort. Yeah. And it's a team-first mentality where everyone's contributing. Everyone makes an impact. And everyone is valued because everyone's a reflection of each other. I mean, if somebody screws up, it's like you screwed up. Exactly. Even tennis as an individual sport, when we play as a team, all of us reflect your values that you instilled onto us. And if someone's not holding up their end, like maybe as captain or whatever we call them out and be like, hey, you need to step up, we're all fighting for the same cause, you need to step up and help us. Yeah, and that's so true because when you're in the spotlight, when you're number one, I mean, we had a huge X on our chest and a huge X on our back. Just X's everywhere. Exactly. And I would tell you guys that, hey, we can do 99 things right. But if we did one wrong thing, everyone's only going to remember that one wrong thing. So we can never do that one wrong thing. Exactly. And it's a privilege to be in that situation. But it's similar to you now because everyone knows Rainbows is so successful. It's a lot of pressure. But I think I'm starting to embrace it more and more because I'm starting to own it more and more. You always gave the fishbowl analogy. And that's always stuck with me. Our team was in the fishbowl. Everyone was just constantly watching us. And I think that's what I take when we go back to work. It's like, everyone's watching what we do. And sometimes what I'm starting to instill into the work is people come here for, they give you one shot. It's one meal. Try to put out your best. It's not just, oh, another meal. It's like this person flew from New Zealand to have, they took their time to come to Rainbows. And we need to appreciate that. And yeah, so. No, that's your soul, right? I mean, I would tell you guys the fishbowl analogy, I mean, all the time. Every month? Yeah, yeah. Chris, before we wrap, I want to ask you one more thing. What gives you fulfillment? I think how I define success for myself and fulfillment in the same terms is not money or these accolades or anything like that. It's being able to leave an impact on people. Whether it's in my personal relationships with friends or it's a customer or my employees, eventually when I pass away, I leave an imprint. And my values can transfer over. That's kind of what IDM is for fulfillment or success. I like that. Champ, it was so awesome having you on the show today. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. I feel so proud of you. Well, I'm honored. I'm honored to be here. This has been fun. Well, your employees are very lucky to have you. That's for sure. I hope so. Thank you, Champ. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Now you've seen why Rainbow Drive-In will continue to sustain success under Chris's leadership. And I want to thank you for tuning in today and a special thank you to my clothing sponsor, Eolani Incorporated. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com. And my book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all Costco stores in Hawaii. I hope that Chris and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.