 Welcome to Connecting Hawai'i Business on Think Tech Hawai'i. My name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting, and I am the host for this program. Think Tech Hawai'i is a platform that encourages civic engagement through conversations that educate, enlighten, and inspire. We are live streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com as well as on Think Tech Hawai'i's Facebook page. If you are watching us, you're able to send in questions throughout our discussion by emailing them to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. So for today, we have a very special guest, and I'm very pleased to have him on the show, especially since what he is going to talk about is super relevant to our current environment. He is a pro at marketing, event planning. I'm going to try to rattle this off as fast as I can, but it's a lot. It's a long list. Public relations, social media management. He's also very active in the local, national, and international markets. He is involved in numerous community and non-profit organizations, both in volunteer and leadership positions, and as well as being a family man, a father, two, and a cook for the family. So I'm ending it with that. So please welcome to the show, Toby Tamaya, president of AT Marketing. Hey, Toby. What's up, ThinkTech viewers? There you go. So thank you again for being on, and I say, Amalette, I need to work on that, since we are going to be talking about leveraging Zoom for networking events, and that is something that you're very versed in. It's part of your business, but before we delve into that, and I know I've already said my intro, but go ahead and introduce yourself to our viewers today. Hey, my name is Toby Tamaya. I founded AT Marketing in 2004. We are public creations, as Kathleen said. We do all the different types of marketing here in Hawaii, and we also, all these kind of new platform services like virtual reality, and augmented reality, and social media, and now a clubhouse, and heavily on Twitter, but anyway, I'm just like all over the place, and I'm really proud to be able to share some of my knowledge of how I've been developing Zoom webinars for nonprofits, businesses, and strictly for networking, but really happy to be here. Yeah. And again, thank you. I know you're very busy, Matt. For those who are not familiar with Toby, I think of it as like, for five of you who are not familiar with Toby, he's like all over the place, and it's good to have him on the show today to talk about how things have been different. So Toby, your business has been heavily reliant on face-to-face interactions and networking events, especially with large groups, because they are networking events that require a lot of people to talk to each other and get to know folks. How has your business, and you even as an individual, pivoted during COVID-19? Yeah. So, you know, I develop a variety of different events. I'll start with the easy ones, the Waikiki Span Jam, the noodle festival. Those are huge events with 40,000 to 50,000 people attending. Those are not taking place right now. So we pushed all those back to the fall. Of course, none of them took place back last year. So that was a huge pivot. We just can't do these large festivals anymore. I also do a lot of non-profit events. I'm working on one that we did last, actually it was right before COVID, it was a second week of March before the lockdown, where we had 800 people at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel drinking wine and eating from 14 different restaurants. We're pivoting that into a Zoom webinar, which is going to be three days long. We'll talk a little bit more about that later on in the program. So that's how we kind of pivot it. We're going into a virtual space. I'm actually developing hybrid events now. So because we're at the Royal Hawaiian last year, we're actually going to be filming at the Royal Hawaiian this year, but we're going to be doing it as a hybrid event. The cool thing about this is that, you know, we've actually been very well with sponsorships already. We sell a lot of individual tickets, not only here in Hawaii, but we're actually able to expand this event around the world. And that's really what's kind of the key movement that's happening now with Zoom is that we're actually able to not only do it here, but now we're actually able to reach a global audience. That's pretty exciting. You know, in terms of the real big pivot for my company, you know, unfortunately, I'm in the tourism marketing business. So it's been very, it's been very hard. And I think, you know, what we're trying to do now is we're trying to really look at how we're going to be developing more on-site premise marketing. We're trying to go more off the locals and try to see what they're interested in. It's been very challenging. And unfortunately, you know, the light in the tunnel, we thought it was going to be a couple months or even six months. It's probably going to be a year or two. So I think for a lot of us right now, we're trying to adapt to see how we're going to do on-marketing. We're doing a lot of more e-commerce. We're doing a lot of more social media advertising and promotions that lead to e-commerce sales. And definitely, we're trying to get people to the restaurants because right now, you know, you can only do about 50 percent capacity. And so luckily, most of the restaurant clients that have are pretty full, especially over this weekend for Valentine's Day. But anyway, that's just some of the pivots we've been doing over the last year. It was very challenging for COVID in my environment, especially for the company that I run. Yeah, tell us more about those hybrid events. I mean, I think that's very fascinating. And go into the why of it all, like with the pandemic and everything shutting down and all these restrictions and regulations. Why should people still keep doing networking events, even if it's a hybrid or if it's just through Zoom? You know, people still want to connect with each other. They still want to be able to, you know, it's been a year now. And a lot of people haven't even seen each other. Maybe they've seen each other on Zoom on the back. And we're going to teach some of the back end reasons how you can connect on Zoom. But we're trying to really bring back a sense of norm. But we're also trying to do what is going to be next. And I really think these hybrid events are going to be next. We're maybe even next year, this event that I'm doing in March will already have 500 people at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, but we're going to reach a global audience of five to a thousand more people that could have been there. So we're going to try this out. It's actually the future of event and networking where you can actually no longer sustain to just being in that realm where you're going to be at the Pacific Club or you're going to be at a hotel. You can actually now take this to another level. People at home, people living on the neighbor islands, people living definitely abroad. And that's why we're trying to really push the hybrids because you do it now. We all know that you can't be successful on your first time. You can learn some mistakes, you'll learn some things going on. So you got to start trying it now because it's going to be the future of events. On that note, so for the hybrid part, there's still that in person interaction. You had mentioned earlier when we were talking before the show that you were working on a project that addresses that. Can you kind of talk a little bit more about it initiatives that you have taken on to make sure that these events are safe or even not even just events like organizations that you're working with when it comes to, you know, safety during COVID-19. Well, actually, I got to say I'm not doing in person. I don't think it's right to do any in person. You know, we're only up to five people. We're going to probably be up to 10 people pretty soon. So no, I'm not doing it in person events. What I'm doing is actually I'm doing an event at the site with just about 10 to 15 people, most of them are camera people. Most of them are just the tech side and we're just trying to bring it on. We are planning for events in the summer, though. And I think the summer, you know, as soon as more people get vaccinated, we're trying to figure that out. But I do have some events in the summer, which will be an in person event. We'll have seated tables. There will be six feet apart. We'll have six people on it where we're trying to work with the hotels and some of our people right now on that. It's very challenging that we're trying to get together. But we have conversations with the Convention Center and other really large venue spaces on how we're going to make it safe. But how we're also going to be developing an online component through Zoom through we're featuring it. So I think right now we're not doing it, but definitely it's summertime and moving beyond that, you're going to see more in person events. But I don't think the time is right in person events right now. I agree. And on that note, you had so you were talking about Zoom and networking using that platform a few weeks ago for Pacific inch. So you did have a webinar, which I feel was useful for folks. We have a couple of images to share so you can tell people or talk about networking using Zoom meetings. So if you could pull up the first image. This was part of your deck for that presentation. So could you go over it for our viewers today? Yeah, before we start, I want to make sure that people understand that there's two different types of Zoom ways, Zoom meetings and Zoom webinars. And so we're going to be talking about Zoom meetings here and how it actually works. And really, what is you going to find out from it? Because Zoom meetings, it allows you to see everybody in the whole area. So the first of all things is, again, we're talking about what Zoom did. Is it allowed us to go into a note? We can do things worldwide. And Zoom actually played into now what you guys probably heard about the most popular social media app Clubhouse happening right now. That is like geography is not a factor anymore. I am doing calls with people from around the world every day. And so we're really excited about how we're moving into this type of non-Hawaii start type of networking through Zoom and through other platforms that are happening right now. Facebook and Twitter are also going to launch their own Clubhouse apps, which are basically audio apps that allow people to talk to each other. You know, social media is key if you want to be successful in meetings between Instagram, Twitter, even Facebook, you've got to be able to have those platforms moving so people can understand who you are and what they want to connect with you. We're doing a lot of virtual happy hours. So basically people are drinking and having a drink and we're having a cocktail. We're doing network breaking breakout rooms and really fun stuff to get people active and people have people get ready to go back out into the real world, which hopefully, again, we're hoping for this summer. You know, we're doing a lot of breakfast, lunch. We're trying to support the restaurants the best we can. There's a lot of great delivery services out there. I work a lot with elite delivery that can deliver things to different people. We can have some virtual dinners. We have a lot of icebreakers, you know, joint different organizations. You know, I think one of the core fund was the Chamber of Commerce. Last year, they did so much different Zoom networking events and I learned so much from them and I really applaud them for being really the forefront of bringing this to the Hawaii business community. And you can actually search for Internet events online. You know, there's this new thing called Zoom. I'm sorry, not Zoom. I mean, you can search Zoom right now and have Zoom events where you can actually get information about different events. And you can also search and join organizations because every organization sometimes, especially like the Rotary and other organizations, don't have opportunities for you to network. But yes, great networking because we got to still get out there and meet people. And let's pull up the second image because we had a series of it. Yeah, I guess one of my biggest peeps are you on mute all the time, you know, especially when you first go on. A lot of times like you're not going to be on mute. And so just check that out before you go on your cameras and all that thing. You know, check out the lighting. I have so much lighting here is unbelievable all around me. What is that that you just held up? I just have lighting all over my face right here. Yeah. And, you know, make sure you guys get those kind of things going on, including your social media. I mean, that's the way people are connecting right now. Right. You can still leave your email. You can still leave your phone. That's fine as well. But really what you're trying to do is you're trying to make an informal way of people to go back and learn more about you through Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. Or whatever social media you're using, or you feel comfortable using. There's a lot of chats going on during the Zoom meeting. So when there's a Zoom meeting, you see somebody going on, you can actually start chatting with them directly, right? Because that's the cool thing about Zoom. It allows you to really just go out and just touch people exactly where you want and talk to individual people there. As for our contact information, I probably made more meetings through Zoom. I'm doing a follow up meeting on a one on one, probably more than I did all in 2020. So that's basically where it was. And of course, utilize your background if you can. You know, sometimes you want to use the background is great, you know, but it doesn't really sometimes you get fuzzy in the back of something that I don't like always using it. But yeah, it also promoted. That was actually the Shilor Alumni Association. We did a big campaign called Shilor Strong back in October and November. I mean, we raised a lot of money and we were actually because, you know, it's pretty hard time for the college students right now. So we're really proud of what we did. But every time I did a Zoom call, I always had my Shilor Strong back on during the fall. That's actually a really good idea for branding. Well, we're about to go on break, but when we come back, you can talk further about using Zoom for networking events. So stay tuned. Welcome back to Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee. And on the show today, we have A.T. Marketing President, Toby Tamaya. So before we left off, he was talking about Zoom tips. And we have a third image to kind of continue with that conversation and to give you viewers out there more ideas on how to either attend or run successful Zoom meetings. So Toby, go ahead with that. So we already went through what my best practice is for attending a meeting. But hey, let's say you want to create a meeting and, you know, I just want to be clear that Zoom is just one platform. There's also like Microsoft Teams and there's so much other ones out there. But Zoom is probably the one that everybody's using. So that's why we're kind of continuous now. But of course, feel comfortable with whatever you want to do when you're going to create your own event to the platform you want. Just keep in mind that people got to download an app and sometimes it can be annoying. But everybody already, everybody already downloaded Zoom. They know where the mute button is. That's the most important thing, right? You know, try to find the mute button on a go-to meeting. You're going to be like, we're the mute button. So, you know, that's really important to that's why people I like using Zoom because people feel comfortable if they know where a mute button is. But yeah, so you want to keep it really simple. Keep the attendees to how much you want. We always keep it about 60 to 90 minutes when we create a networking event. We send calendar invites for login participants. We open up the session early to make sure that, you know, people want to come in early. We like to make video required if possible. And here's the key. I mean, I don't know what you guys do, but there's this thing called breakout rooms on Zoom. And I'm going to be doing, I do those so often it's like, it's in my, I break out in my sleep. And so what we do is we bring in 90 people or maybe 50 to 90 people into an event and I can break them up into like groups of five and six and they can actually go on and do their elevator speech and tell them who they are. And I can rotate that like four or five times within 30 minutes. And so if you really want to research how to do networking, get a group together and then have them go into breakout rooms. And you can research that more through Zoom and learn how to do breakout rooms. It's been really the biggest thing that we've been doing on Zoom in terms of having networking going on. It's great that you mentioned that because I know that there are some organizations that I have been a part of or meetings that I have joined where people are actually still trying to figure out how to do breakout rooms. So it's good that you go over that and remind people that there is that option instead of people just logging off and then logging back on whenever like a certain segment is over. So good prompt for people. It's a very good, very, very useful part of Zoom for networking. Yeah. And speaking of networking, we do have a viewer question. When is the next event, Toby? Ha ha ha. So right now I'm working with the University of Hawaii Alumni Association, the Schuyler Business School. We're doing an event from March 19, 2011 called the Executive Vineyard. It's going to be the 21st year of the event. It's again, it's going to be a virtual pivot. It's kind of cool because what I did is the Executive Vineyard is a wine tasting. How do you get a wine tasting into people's homes? So I actually developed the program where I'm working on a three-day seminar. So I actually have a seminar. And wine is not for everybody, but whiskey can be. And so I actually have a whiskey seminar coming up on March 8th. Oh, sorry, on March 9th. We have the speaker coming in from the owner of the Canadian whiskey. On March 10th, I'm doing a taste of Italy. I have five Italian wines that we're going to be featuring. And here's this. I got the guy waking up at six in the morning from Italy to do it for us. It's crazy. And then finally, we have our main event which is going to be March 11th. And it's going to be a pivot event. It's a virtual event. It's a hybrid event. It's all thrown together. We're going to have people from all over the world. It's going to be cool. We're going to have a game in it. We're going to give away Hawaiian airline miles to get people to go in and just feel excited. It's going to be cool. But before that event, I'm going to have a networking event. And so for people who buy tickets for this event, they're going to be actually able to join a networking event with breakout rooms that they can start doing it. Because actually with the webinars, we can't really network, right? So we want to make it a fun night for Charlotte graduates, as well as their guests to be able to really enjoy this. So again, that's a cool event because it's kind of like what we're going to see in the future in terms of people doing virtual platforms. And we're actually working with high stakeouts at MW and LaTour to do all of our dinners. Elite Delivery is going to take it to their homes. Food Jocas is going to be doing all of our wines. I mean, you got to get creative now these days. And so our next event is going to be March 9 to 11. And we're selling tickets right now. You can visit shawty.edu slash executive venues for more information. So let's go over those types of events with the ones that have like the great interactions and the kind of going along with the theme, right? Like the wine tasting or even like the steakhouse. How does that work? Like how do you get people involved in a way where it's like, oh, I'm tasting with you or are there delivery people or companies that you work with or collaborate with? Yeah, definitely. And we try to keep it as low as possible, right? So we've been working a lot with Elite Delivery. Again, I think I mentioned them a couple of times. But, you know, we try to keep it as low as possible. You know, the whole thing about events is that it revolves around food and drinks, right? So, and everybody's in their home. So how do you do that? How do you pivot into that realm and that sphere? And so, yeah, we've developed all these partnerships with these different restaurants that are able to do it. And again, we're helping out the restaurants because we're actually asking for these meals like early, right? Like two to four o'clock and they could still run their dinners. They could still run their takeouts during the dinner time. They could still run their lunch and they get this whole pocket. Like MW, I'm gonna buy, they'll tell them I'm buying like over a hundred meals for my event. Well, not even told them so, here we go. Yeah, now it's public. But I mean, and that's what we're doing. And so that's kind of cool and that's the way that we can help these restaurants out during this hard time is by doing setting up these delivery services. And then, you know, of course, you were asking the restaurants to give us a good price so we can actually sell a nice ticket so we can actually make a profit for the nonprofit that we're involved with. Yeah, that's a, cause you're also in, along with everything that you've spoken to, you're also involved with not just the business side, but like the nonprofit things as well. Was there anything that you wanted to kind of go over or mentioned to folks out there? Yeah, so, you know, restaurants are hurting a lot. So what I did is I took on the chairperson role to work with the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation to launch a Hawaii restaurant week, which will start from April 2 to April 12 this year. Wow, okay. And so we're really excited, we're making it super affordable for the restaurants to get involved. They're gonna be coming up with these set menus, you know, they're gonna be coming up with these discounts and we're gonna start promoting it heavily and they're gonna be busy during those week and we're excited to be able to bring this, not only in terms of like the marketing that we have with the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation, but we're also excited to help the restaurants. And indeed, you know, we're gonna have, we're also gonna have an auction. So we're asking the restaurants, they don't even have to put a cash in, they can put a gift card or a donation in so we can auction it off. And using that money, we're gonna be donating it to the Hawaii Agriculture Foundation to get help the farmers, help our future leaders of the agriculture industry, help the students really learn about how important, you know, eating local and buying local is. And so it's a really new campaign, but yeah, I'm chairing it, so I'm just trying to get involved as much as I can, especially not, you know, it's a little bit slower for tourism, but I wanna give back as much as I can and help these guys survive until we can really get to a path of success for the restaurants, the whole industry and get to a way that we feel comfortable again. And hopefully it's gonna be sometime in this year, but we know it's not gonna be until summer. So we gotta do what we can over the next four, a few months, eat at restaurants, eat local, make sure you're shopping at people. And even if you're taking, even if you're grocery shopping, remember that everybody has a job there and everybody's getting paid. And just try to keep as much money as you can locally here always, especially when you guys get your stimulus, okay? It's a good time now. I, you kind of already covered this, but I'm going to ask it since it is a viewer question. What are your feelings about hybrid events where people attend in person with the event either broadcasted on TV or Zoom? I just love it. I've been involved with so many different events that are broadcasting, especially on television right now. I worked with the Japan American Societies event in November, Pacific Edges event. I was the head, one of the head judges for their event as well. And so I love it. I love the way, and I go to these people and both of the presidents and the executives of these companies, I thought of, this is the way we're gonna be doing it in the future, okay? You're gonna still be at this in person. We're gonna do it safely. You know, we're gonna, you had 300 people last year. Let's do 150 this year. And let's broadcast it and go back on KJN again or back on Hawaii news now. And it's really nice that these, they're actually interested in working with us because, you know, they want to support local, local, local nonprofits here. So it's a good timing. I hope that it'll stay like this for a while. But I think that we're also looking at our side is that we can do television, but hey, can we go even bigger? Can we go global, you know? And so I think that's our next stage in terms of that. But I think the hybrid events are here to stay. It's gonna be this in person as well as it, as well as these virtual events. But I just think right now is not the time. It's gonna happen soon, but it's just not now. Okay, and then you had mentioned too, aside from Zoom, there are other platforms and one of the newer ones is Clubhouse, which I think you're more versed in than I am. I have yet to kind of delve into that, but kind of talk a little bit more about that. So people have an idea of how that connects to what you were talking about, which is the larger picture, which is involvement of people outside of our country. And I think- Yeah, I mean, if you really want a network nationally, internationally, get on Clubhouse. Unfortunately, it's only for iPhone users right now. Hopefully it'll come out with Android in a couple of months. But man, there's just chats about any subject you want, food, marketing, whatever the football. I mean, whatever you think is interesting, you're gonna find a chat room there that you can talk and be part of the conversation and listen to experts about what is happening. It's a new app. We just heard that Facebook and Twitter are gonna be launching our copycat apps on that. You know that app is big when you're doing that kind of stuff. But I've jumped into rooms with only Japanese. I've jumped into rooms basically with people around the world. I was saying, Kathleen, I was on a call this morning with people from Turkey and Germany. And we're talking about the same issues that we have here. COVID, how do we have entrepreneurship, business? Everybody's having the same problems. If you can listen to the solutions from other people, you're gonna find so much value in these kind of things. And I think Clubhouse is just an exceptional new way of us developing. It's just an audio. So all you do is listen. You can cook, watch dishes, multi-task. I always check email and listen to Clubhouse, but yeah, I really love it. And it has a really, really has a nice connection to both Instagram and Twitter as well if you're active on those platforms. That's awesome. What is there anything else that you'd like to add if we have a couple of minutes left that I didn't ask you about that you want people to know? You know, stay safe out there. Try to figure out what you're gonna be doing to pivot into actually becoming somebody that understand what's happening right now is gonna stay for us for a while. And understanding what's happening right now is also changing the way that we're trying to develop new programs. You know, I've developed new webinars now because of it. We didn't really get into how I'm actually developing webinars for networking where I've developed an eight week long tourism restart webinar that was attended by over 5,000 people here in Hawaii. And so I did that during the fall. And so we're working on new programs like that, but keep in mind that this type of pivot, if you can make it work for you, it might work for you again in the future. And so we're hoping that things get back back to normal. But right now Zoom, stay on it, be happy. It's gonna be here. It's gonna be part of our stuff. Go invest into the $15 Zoom account already if you can. Just start doing it. And yeah, it has some fun networking. And if you couldn't networking event, you know, make sure you take things like Hawaii so we can actually get on it and we can promote it and have everybody back to really meeting each other and starting to network and find out more about how we can help each other. And I think that's what Clubhouse is about too. You know, and I hope that's what's gonna be the future of us. How do we help you? I mean, that's the main thing I always hear on Clubhouse. How can I help you? How can I help you? And that's what we should always lead this office. How can we help each other during this time? Whoa, I like that note. Let's pull up the last image. So image four, just to kind of close it out. So, how do people get a hold of you, Tobe? Actually, Instagram or Twitter, same thing. AT Marketing is my handles. You can get me on LinkedIn. Facebook, unfortunately, is a 5,000 friend limit and I'm so close. It's crazy. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm so close to the 5,000 limit. And I had just tons of people just trying to be my friend. I don't know what to do. But anyway, Instagram and Twitter is just basically the best way. As far as LinkedIn, I'm not really heavy on LinkedIn. I'm on it, but I'm mostly on Instagram and Twitter for conversations and for networking right now. Yeah, and you can find all the latest things about the food and what's going on in Hawaii. Hopefully these events that's gonna be starting on later on this year that we can start planning. I really would love to bring back the spam jam, the noodle fast and the Korean festival and all these other events that I chair to bring back here and really help out the community. And I'll get us back together and get us back to some sense of normality. Well, thank you, Toby, for bringing your passion and enthusiasm to today's show. We really appreciate it. Excellent. So for folks that wanna get ahold of them, AT Marketing and social media accounts. Again, my name is Kathleen Lee. This has been Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you to Jay Fidel and the staff at Think Tech. We have Haley helping us out today for making all of this possible. Have a great rest of the day.