 Aloha, and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We are a show that highlights successful individuals and their businesses, or in some cases the organizations that they lead. We have heard about all the challenges in Hawaii, and we know that they are out there. But there are a number of companies, there are many companies that have actually found how to be successful, and this show highlights how they've done it. Today we've got two individuals that's going to come in and share with us an untapped resource that I think Hawaii could really benefit from if they could figure out a way to make it work. And these two individuals are going to help us understand that a little bit more, and hopefully put together a game plan to take advantage of this resource. And this is a mouthful, but they're co-founders of the Military Aloha State Transition and Economic Retention Council, short Master Council. I like that better. But we've got Chase and Greg here today. Welcome to the show, guys. It's good to have you here. Thank you for having us. And just to kick this off and get it going. Greg, can you kind of give us a little bit of a background on yourself, and where you're at, and where you came from, and how did you get here? Yeah, absolutely, Reg. So originally I'm from Boston, Massachusetts. I grew up there, raised born, and all that. I moved to Florida for school, where I met my wife Stephanie Baldwin there. From there I commissioned in the United States Army as an infantry officer. I deployed twice since then, once in 2011, once in 2013. And to some places that are kind of like resort areas? Absolutely. A beautiful desert resort known as Iraq, and, you know, a mountain escape called Afghanistan. There you go, okay. So after that experience, I transitioned into the world of information technology for the military. I was a signal officer for two years, and then I moved out here eventually to Hawaii. As soon as I arrived out here in Hawaii, I realized that it was just the place for me to be. You know, my wife's family is from here originally, so it was a very smooth transition. It's kind of like Florida, only better. Oh yeah, oh yeah, better beaches. And I can say that, because I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, which is right on the Gulf of Mexico there. Oh, right. I kind of did the same thing. Military came out here a little bit before you did in the early 70s, and just decided to stay. Right. So I did my tours in Vietnam, and Chase, what about you? Yeah, thanks again for having us, Reg, and thank you for your service. So I was born in Southern California, and followed my father's job, and ended up graduating high school in Eagle, Idaho, of all places. But I ended up, only place I applied was the Military Academy at West Point, and thank God I was accepted. I graduated there, but met my wife, Samantha Capo, and better half, my senior year. I was down at Fort Benning, Georgia, and went through all the infantry-type schools. I'm actually a cavalry scout, and then came and was stationed out at Schofield Barracks. And oh, you know what, I haven't had the chance to deploy to the Middle East, but I've been through the U.S. Army Jungle Warfare School here, and then I've been on a Pacific Pathways training rotation, and I've been in New Zealand for a few months, as well as the Big Island in numerous times. Well, in both places, it could be good for training. Yes, sir, absolutely. And so my wife actually works down at Medigold Dairy in Honolulu. And so, you know, what she struggled, and part of the passion behind this is her finding a job and us going through the struggles. But now that she's found a great home at Medigold, and they've welcomed her with open arms, we're really excited to stay and make a home here. Well, and that's what I was alluding to a little bit in the introduction, is that there's an untapped resource that we're really not taking full advantage of. And I think, you know, I can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe, Chase, you're still on active duty, but Craig, you're out and you're now in the civilian employment. Yes, as of one month ago, I signed my DD 214, which is my exit paperwork, and now I'm officially a civilian. Very good. Congratulations, I think, but you've made the transition pretty well. Absolutely, yeah. Good, good, good. But you want to be able to share some of that experience and help others do the same. Right. So the transition process, as it stands right now, is definitely catered to give you as many resources as possible right up front. You know, the current transition process is known as the Transition Assistance Program. It provides resources from resume writing all the way to financial resources to help you make the transition to civilian life. So I tend to that as well as a entrepreneur course called Boots to Business, both of those SBA program. Yes, absolutely. And it's a great program. It definitely gives you some resources out there. One thing I noticed during the transition process, though, is that there's one key element missing. And that's state specific transition services. So, you know, trying to stay out here in Hawaii was a bit of a, it was a bit of a challenge, there's several barriers in the way. And I think Chase will later elaborate on some of those. But, you know, after I after I made some of those hurdles, and I found my way through the the jungle of resources, I was able to successfully transition. But, you know, I saw that some of my brothers and sisters and arms didn't have the same experience. So that's where we came to our concept for Master Console, which is going to try to help refine that resource. And didn't you have an experience with maybe a head hunter recruiter giving you some advice? I did, actually, I worked with the top four head hunters in the country. And every single one of them told me that there was no possibility of transition successfully here in Hawaii. And just to clarify and make sure that the audience is on the same page, a transition that we're talking about is going from active duty service into the civilian workforce. And there is a transition that has to take place, you know, there's a different mindset that people have to get comfortable with. And, you know, providing a bridge or support to make that happen is something that you would think the military would be very good at. Unfortunately, some places are in some places aren't. And there's probably room for improvement for that service here. Well, yeah, the transition assistance program, Reg, is really geared to set the service member transitioning up for success in their Homa record, wherever they first joined the military. And not a lot of folks about 66% want to go somewhere else. And so if any service member of their family wants to make a home here in Hawaii, the lessons aren't structured to make them successful necessarily here all the time. And that's missed opportunity, I think. But Chase, you're you're actually still in active duty, but you're going to be transitioning yourself here soon. Yes, sir, right. So I am a full 40 hours a week working for the United States Army. And they've got me employed to the fullest extent there. In the early morning hours or on the weekends, I'm working with Craig to advance our non profit. And then what really got me passionate to find some of the business opportunities here in Hawaii was that I'm a partner and a member of patriotic online marketplace. We call it pompusa.org. It's a military website, peer to peer marketplace where service members, veterans or their families can go on and sell their goods, services and products. And and so as we're looking to start that business here in Hawaii and headquarter here, with all the wonderful resources like Blue Startups and Devil Eek here that have been encouraging this, I've started to dig into some of the business resources available to veterans or transitioning members here in Hawaii. And that's what we found is the missing link doing it here. Well, and there are a lot of resources, but they're spread all over and there's no one specific place like a clearing house that can help you sort through where all these different options and where they are and how to tap into that's exactly right. Everyone has a specialty and very well intentioned individuals that are providing services. But no one is a specific reference, say, hey, I know exactly who you need to talk to for your need. And that's that's kind of the role that you want to be able to serve at some point. Yeah, that's right. Very good. And how far away are you from making that jump? Yeah, right. So my paperwork will officially be out of the army at the end of the summer here. So until then, getting pulled in two or three different directions. It's tough. But you know, and you mentioned something that I think a lot of people seem to miss or maybe are not aware of, but it's not just the active duty personnel. It's also the spouses and in some cases, the children. I mean, there's a huge resource there. And in the state of Hawaii right now is running a 3% unemployment, which means they're they're screaming for people, they're looking for people to come in and to work. And you've got the active duty, but you also have the spouses and the children. And so there's a huge resource out there that people can can go to. Yes, sir. Widely known statistic that military spouses are one of the highest labor underutilization rates in the country. And many on base and other military installations, they have some college courses or four or eight year degrees and then plug in those folks into the health care industry or the education industry, particularly in Hawaii is a big supply that has not yet a huge demand. Well, and that was something that we had a chance to chat a little bit with Senator Green about is the educational and health care opportunities that would be out there. I mean, both areas are screaming for qualified people. I mean, I've been in Hawaii since 1973, and we've always seemed to have a shortage of teachers. You know, we're always recruiting a huge turnover. You know, one of the arguments is always, well, you know, military or military families are only here for a few years and they're gone. That's no different than what they're already experiencing. Right. And one thing that we're missing to another statistic is that we do have a lot of veterans that are on the island or people that were associated with the military at one point or another. All said and told, we have roughly about 120,000 people that have been affiliated with the military that remain on Island here, whether it be active duty or have previously retired. So you're talking, you know, just a little bit over 15% of the island is actually military affiliated. And that's a great population right there with, you know, excellent skills that the military has taught them and, you know, set them out to the civilian workforce workforce with you know, and I think if we were figure, if we were able to figure out a way to tap into that, we could solve a lot of our challenges here in Hawaii that for teachers and for health care providers and support and maybe even some other areas. But we need to take a short break here. We're going to be back in about 60 seconds. This is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We heard talking about the Mount Master Council, which could be a part of the solution of finding qualified teachers and health care workers and other skilled laborers here in Hawaii. So we'll be back in about 60 seconds. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you get excited about my new show, which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha, I'm Kauai Lucas, host of Hawaii is my mainland here on Think Tech Hawaii every Friday at 3 p.m. We address issues of importance for those of us who live here on the most isolated landmass on the planet. Please come join me Fridays at 3 p.m. Mahalo. Aloha, my name is Richard Emory, host of Condo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. And our show is all about educating board members and owners about the responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Each week. Aloha and welcome back to business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. Today we're talking with the two co-founders of the Master Council, which helps military and civilian businesses tap into the resources that are available and help solve some of our skilled labor challenges that we have here in Hawaii. It's a brand new organization. It's still in developmental stages. We're looking for people that might be interested in participating, particularly employers. If there's any employers out there that are having a hard time finding skilled labor, please reach out to either Chase or to Craig and they'll be able to do some matchmaking and help you solve that problem. But let's get back to our discussions here. There's a couple areas that are specific that there's some skills available that can certainly help Hawaii. One of those is technology. So the tech world in Hawaii is starting to grow a bit. A lot of the companies that we're working with are the service providers. They're tech-focused and they're looking to hire either military or civilian IT experts like that can really augment their systems or bring new business to Hawaii. So one of the things that we want to do is start to put a lot of focus towards that. Start matching the IT experts with these companies that are starving for talent. We've heard it said that they want to create the next Palo Alto here in Hawaii. That would be nice if we could do it. It would be. It's a lofty goal but I think it's something that is achievable in time. The military sure as hell can put some back behind that. Absolutely. If we can just get halfway there, we're going to be doing good. It's going to be great. How would it work? If we wanted to create a Palo Alto here and get some of the skilled labor to stay and be focused, how do they get in touch with you to be able to start finding out about these resources? We've been campaigning here in Hawaii for a while now speaking with different organizations. We can be reached at any time. I think at the end we'll provide our information. If they want to get actively involved, they have to reach out to us. We can put them on the service provider list. If they have a specific need for any type of talent or if they want to help do placement services, we have those resources readily available. One thing that our company is focusing on, I do want to bring up, is that we have a program called Invest, which is the Integrated Veteran State Transition Program. That's going to help these service members transition successfully from their military service. This program is in no competition with the current Transition Assistance Program. I'll make that a disclaimer. But what we are trying to do, though, is augment those services to try to help retain these service members in state. As they come through our Invest program, these service providers are going to be able to see the type of talent that we're generating out of our program. Which would be impressive. Absolutely. One thing we fully recognize is all 8,500 odd service members that transition out of the military from Hawaii yearly. They're not all meant... Let's repeat that. 8,500 people transition out of the military every year in Hawaii. That's right. And every year it's plus or minus, but that's where we can really kind of peg it down to. And we understand that not all of those are meant for Hawaii. Now, back on the mainland, those states have an average of 33 percent of those service members that are transitioning out. So if they have military within their state, 33 percent of them end up staying there? Right. And so for us it would be, again, I think this last year, we were right in the 2,650 service members. At the national average would have stayed and made homes and new lives here in Hawaii locally as civilians. Now, we're not saying we're going to be 33 percent on par with Texas or Tennessee or anything, but we can sure do a lot better than where we're at now. Which is where? Yeah, between three to five percent. Right. And so we're in the low single digits. Wow. And so the opportunity cost is enormous. See, and that's the point I'm trying to make, is that, you know, there is a huge untapped market there. I mean, if the country is at 30 plus percent and we're only at five percent, you know, we're really not taking advantage of the opportunity just presented. There's a lot of lost opportunity costs and Chase, if I'm not mistaken, the numbers are somewhere around a billion over five years. Absolutely. So we've been extraordinarily conservative in our calculations and economic models, but for every veteran retained, and that's one new metric, we're trying to get the state as well as businesses to pay attention to, veteran retention. For every veteran retained, you can expect anywhere between $9,500 and $1100 dollars in tax revenue. Just for that one person or family, so it's averaged annually, total economic impact though from all the dollars that they earn and spend and all those dollars are created, we've pegged it down very conservatively to $144,000 per veteran per year. So state revenue and total commerce in the state just climbs exponentially. The more veterans are hanging back here. And you know, I think it's important for everybody to realize that when we talk about veterans, we're talking about not just people that carry a weapon and pull the trigger. I mean, there's a lot of support groups that support those guys that have some very highly skilled capabilities. Absolutely. Well, one of the service members that approached us when we were getting our initial push out there was a 16-year logistics officer, guy who retired as a major, hadn't found work in one year. And with the amount of resources that are out there, these things shouldn't be happening. We should have some sort of program like that helps them find the right resources if they want to stay here and stay. A logistics officer of that rank would probably have a significant amount of responsibility for moving and making sure that things get from point A to point B when they're supposed to. So it's a huge undertaking, it's a big job, and it takes a lot of training to be able to get to that point. Absolutely. They're moving roughly a hundred million dollars of worth of equipment plus every year. I think there's plenty of companies out there that could use somebody of that caliber. Yeah, Reg, our story's a bound. So to select two is really unfavorable to really what's out there, but there are many lower enlisted soldiers who join the Army or the Navy, whatever it might be, just for American citizenship. Many times they already have degrees, and so with their post-911 GI bill, they're looking for a university to go get their masters and a few that we've spoken with in computer science. And they're choosing between UCLA or somewhere along the West Coast, because this is really the first place they were stationed. But why not UH? Why not to HPU? And so we're really trying to link people together for the betterment of Hawaii and those transitioning members. Some of these other universities have veteran affairs offices that are maybe part of the administration or part of the campus that help people, veterans with this transition. And if there are, do we have one here? Yeah, there are a few, right? I just, we believe that they don't understand the magnitude of opportunity, especially with the surge service members that are starting to transition out. They've got veteran groups for the students, but you can just see in the numbers of between 3 and 5 percent retention, they're really not actively marketing the way they could be on the military installations or on local news, whatever it might be. So what I'm seeing is opportunity for the state to get some of the skilled labor that they're looking for, not necessarily have to bring it in from the mainland, which can be quite expensive. It's already here. They've already been here for a number of years, so they're comfortable with the environment. They want to stay here. It's not like bringing somebody in from Montana who's never been here before and trying to get them comfortable. You know, there's a lot of inherent reasons to focus on this area, but then you also have the children and even some of the service members themselves that want to go to the university and maybe even work at the same time and like most people do. So the universities can benefit, the community benefits, the business community benefits. I mean, I see this as a win and win all the way around. Right now, it feels and by the numbers are very much indicate the state of Hawaii is drinking through a garden hose of federal funds that follow service members rather than a fire hydrant of active and transitioning talented members and families. Well, the GI Bill being one of them, right? I mean, that would provide a lot of funding to do at least the educational piece. Just in 36 months, someone who takes it from the beginning to the end, the all day cost is about $112,000 of federal money into the state system. Per student. Per student, that's right. And that doesn't include whether they're in the National Guard or reserves or work in part time. So 10 students, you're talking about a million dollars. That's right. You know, that'd be a nice little pop intuition for the university. And maybe they wouldn't have to have so much tuition increases after that. If they get more students coming in, you know, it's just an awful lot. Now, if there are, again, people who want to get involved, I know you're still in the formative stages of the organization. You know, you've got the mission. You've been talking to a lot of people doing the networking. How soon do you think you'll have a website up and running that people can go to and start registering? In the next three months, our company is going to be 100% complete and we're going to be ready and operational right now. We're kind of operating a little bit with a shell of our full capability. But in time, as we gain more support, we think that, you know, probably by about March will be 100% efficient. We're learning a lot about businesses. We set this up because a lot of our energies are helping either unemployed or transitioning veterans. So do we try to find them jobs and talk to HR directors or are we working on setting ourselves up for longevity? So it's exciting. Well, and you've got organizations that's kind of stepping up and wanting to help out and get involved, don't you? Absolutely, yeah. You know, like as you mentioned earlier, we have Senator Josh Green who expressed interest in our program. Same thing with Tom Lee from the military liaison, I guess part of the governor's office. Yeah, there's many more. So representative Tokyo Kanito and the Military Affairs Council in the House, State House, Medical Dairy, they've all stepped up to say, hey, listen, send us military resumes and we'll get them plugged into some of the needed opportunities. Civically, the Navy League has been an extraordinary offering space and some of their free classes and tours of the island. We really kind of done anything without the Chamber of Commerce or the Military Affairs Council as well. We've really been blessed with a lot of graciousness. The mentorship, Reg, yourself helping us out. It's been extraordinary. Well, it's for a good cause and I think it's a good cause not only for our veterans and their families, but also for the community. I think that, you know, if we can just get comfortable, you know, on both sides to get orientated and to be able to, you know, go out and give them a shot, take a look at the resumes and have them come in for an interview and go through the process. I think a lot of people would be very surprised at how qualified and how trainable, I think, a lot of the families and the veterans are. They've proven themselves to be able to learn new skills and that doesn't stop when they leave. When they go into the workforce in the community, they can still learn. They've got that capability. That's right, Reg, and we understand that there are some obstacles leaving a very niche culture as the military and coming into one that is markedly different from what's on Kaniyoha or Schofield. But we've got a lot of countermeasures. Right now we're building a big database and we're calling it the Hanai Network of informal adoption whether they're a Hawaiian veteran or just veteran friendly of folks bringing in a single soldier's or family's. So they're sharing meals over the holidays or they know somewhere to go on the weekends. That's not their buddy's barracks room. So we've got that going and I think one of the things I'm most passionate about, Reg, is getting these transitioning members integrated into the civic organizations that are here on the island. Craig's joined the VFW, I've done American Legion. We're both joining Rotary to name three. Well, you're also a member of the Chamber. I'm a member of the Chamber. Member of the Chamber, fellowships with the MAC, and that's what we feel. There's a huge amount of opportunity as well getting folks in our generation and we're connected and isolated at the same time with our cell phones, but that's the big potential. Getting us involved cynically. The more that we get involved, the more those hurdles will start to break and those barriers to getting employed out here in Hawaii. No, and I think there's a whole different type of attitude these days about appreciating what the veterans have done and trying to help them out as much as they can. I think this mentoring process sounds very exciting. I think there's a lot of organizations that are stepping up and wanting to be engaged. I'm excited about completing the process and getting the mechanics or the logistics, if you will, working so that we can start showing some real results from this because it's something that I think we really need to move forward with in 2017. All right. Well, any final words? We're about ready to wrap up here in the next 60 seconds. Well, I just wanted to thank everyone like that's helped us out this far. We couldn't have done it without anyone's support that's already pledged. I wanted to thank my partner over here as well for being dedicated to the job and Reg, we want to thank you too for your support and guidance. Absolutely. Thank you to our spouses, Stephanie and Samantha, for our late nights working on this as well as all the transitioning veterans and businesses that are interested in this opportunity. Please reach out to us. We want to partner and we want to make this community a little bit better. Absolutely. And if for any reason any of our viewers are having some challenges finding either Craig or Chase, feel free to reach out to me and I'll be happy to make the introduction and pass it off and then you guys can carry on from there. So, all right. Very good. I'm so glad that you guys could take your time out and come in and visit with us today. This is business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We air every Thursday from 2 to 2.30. We look forward to seeing you next week. Until then, aloha.