 Aloha, and welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We broadcast live every Thursday at 2 o'clock until 2.30 on thinktechhawaii.com in the downtown Pioneer Plaza studios of Think Tech Hawaii. We are a show that focuses on the positive stories in Hawaii, positive business stories and their owners. We've got an abundance of them here, and every year the PBN publishes the fastest 50. We have the SBA awards not only on Oahu, but on every neighbor island, and so we've got probably well over 100 different companies that get national or maybe statewide recognition and some of them make national recognition for their achievements and their success. And that doesn't even mention the runner-ups. So if you plug in the runner-ups to this, we've got an abundance of successful stories in Hawaii that I'm here to share, and hopefully people can learn from their experience. Today we have Stanley Lau, he likes to go by Stan. He's the CEO of Hawaii Tech Support. He's also the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii's Young Professional Program. And so he's here today to talk a little bit about both of those, and also some of his maybe secrets of his success. Stan, it's good to have you on the show. Hi, Rich, thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Now you've been in Hawaii a long time. Is this your home? I was born and raised here. After graduating from high school, I moved to Los Angeles, lived there for almost 10 years. My wife is from LA, and in about 2004 we debated whether or not we should relocate and ultimately being closer to family brought us back home. That's why you came back. That's why we came back. Very good. Yeah, it's a sometimes a tough decision to, you know, and I had been in Hawaii since 73, I left, I came back, and it was, this is where I'm comfortable, this is where I want to be, but there was certain recognitions that I had to accept, you know, it's an expensive place to be, and there's some challenges, but, you know, it's worth it. Absolutely. So it's good to be home. What high school are you at, too? So public school, I went to Pearl City High School. Pearl City, all right, cool. And you go to college? I went to UCLA, I studied computer science and engineering there, and worked in the LA area for another about five years before moving home. Very good. UCLA is a great school, and you know why a lot of people go to UCLA? Because they can't spell USC. Did you say spelled or afford? No, it's a great school, and a great place to learn. And did you go right into the technology field when you were in LA? No, so interesting enough, after graduating from high school, I took a year off, and I worked, coming out of Pearl City, I actually, funny bring up SC because I applied as a civil engineer, and I got accepted to USC and UCLA, but I, at the time, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, so I moved to LA, my family moved to LA, and I took a year off, and I basically worked at a systems builder. So think of Dell before they were a large corporation, this was in the mid-90s. So we were, I was working at a system builder, assembling computers. Different components of the system and all that. And so it was, that ultimately led me to reapply and go down the computer science path. Well, and that's kind of neat because that gave you a different perspective on things. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you probably got, as a result, you got a little bit more out of the education process because you had that experience. Right, and I was talking to someone recently how, in some other countries, they have tracks where, as part of their curriculum, they get to experience workplace trials, kind of like an internship, even in high school, and that helps people figure out if that's something they really want to do or not. And I think that's what it was for me in that year, figuring out what I really love to do. That's great. Yeah. That's good. My son went through a similar, he's now one of the managers for the infrastructure over at the Bangalore. And so he went through a similar type of process, not sure which one he was going to do, and he kind of looked at two different areas. Engineering was a little mathematical, and so he ended up going MIS-side, but he did a good job and he had a good job now with the banks. But having that work experience, and he worked at Super Geeks for a while, and he worked at different other places, and he got some good, I guess, hands-on experience in what he wanted to, you know, what he didn't want and what he really wanted to do. Right, right. So that's good. Now you've, you've been doing the Hawaii Tech Support Company for how long now? So I started the company in 2004, so we're in our 13th year, I basically started out consulting on my own, so with the experience. So you started with one guy? One guy out of our IAEA apartment back in 2004. So I'm thankful. Our first client was, who's still our client, she's very well known in town, and she's been a great advocate for us, and hopefully, you know, our work reflects, you know, our growth and all of that. Well, and the fact that she's still a client after 13 years is a real testimonial. Yeah, yeah, we're excited, and you know, just over the years, there's been a lot of learning, doing, and hard work, so, but it's, I don't regret it. Yeah, very good. Now, and we'll get more into the Hawaii Tech Support, maybe in the second half of the show, but more than Hawaii Tech Support, you're also doing other things too, right? Right, right. Right, now you're the, you just had your first board meeting as chair of the young professional group at the Chamber of Commerce. Mm-hmm. And how did that go? It was good. It's a seat with the full Chamber of Commerce, and it's a good opportunity, I think, for young professionals. So the YP program really is a professional organization for people who are between the ages of 21 and 39, and the goal are a fewfold, but I think, to me, the primary focus of the organization is really the professional development aspect, and whether that be learning life skills in terms of public speaking, meeting individuals that are leaders in the community, gaining a greater perspective of, you know, what the business and community means, I think all of those come together with the YP program. Right, and it's not just the chairman that gets this, I mean, you've got a group of people that are also young professionals around you that help pull this organization together and make it happen, and all these people benefit from this. Absolutely. It's definitely across the board, and I think that's why it's a thriving program. How many people are young professionals now? So we're currently at about 250. 250. Yeah, I looked at the numbers last month and the month before, we added, I think it was 15 and about 20 members per month before, so it's good, it's growing. It is, and they just had an event, what was it, last week, a little dinner hopping event. That was last night. Last night. Oh, okay. Did you go to that? I did. And how was that? It was great. So this, to me, is one of the signature events, so the format, it's called a progressive dinner, and so we had three executives, Sherri Manor McNamara. She was one of them from the chamber, and we had 30 people come together. We started out in Waikiki at Ruth's Chris. We spent time with one of the executives, and we changed over to Tommy Bahamas for dinner, and we went to sit down, and it was great conversation. We talked about a number of things, and a lot of it was just chit chatting, but of course there were important topics, so we ended up talking about politics, policy, what young people are experiencing in the business community. But by the time we reached the third location, it was a good time. A little bit more relaxed. A lot more relaxed. I would assume that maybe there was a little bit of wine flowing there. It was, yeah. People were having a good time. Good, good. I wish I had been there. No, that's good. But you get to the established relationships, not only with the executives that you're meeting with, but also with the peer groups that you have, and it becomes a good support group. Somebody you can bounce ideas off of and different thoughts. Right. Yeah, and I think we're seeing that right now in terms of some of the programs or initiatives that we're looking at. We have a couple of events coming up, one at the end of this month that we're really excited about, but really the brainchild of that was getting the young professionals together and the buy-in, the support. Everyone had good feedback that we put into play in terms of how we're going about executing this program. Is this a program that you're keeping a secret, or can you share with us what this is going to be at the end of the month? Sure. Yeah, so it's going to be on September 29th, and it's actually in collaboration with the chamber, where the chamber's sponsoring the mayoral debate. Oh yeah. And so we're really looking for... I saw the flyers on that. Yeah, so as part of it, one of the initiatives and goals that we talked about as a young professionals group was really to raise awareness, get people out to vote, but understanding the policy, what it means even as the election process. And I think with the poor turnout that we had during the primaries, a lot of it is just the goal of getting people out and interested in things that make a difference. And that's a message that I think, as a community, we really need to get out there. Not making too much of a political statement, but I think it was the younger voters that got Obama elected. That was a big period. And it made a huge difference in the country for the last eight years. And something similar like that could happen. If we could get the young voters engaged and get them to go out and vote, I think they could actually have some pretty significant influence in what happens in Hawaii. Right. Yeah. And it's important because everyone's affected just because you're a younger person doesn't mean that your vote doesn't matter. And it's interesting, even during conversation last night, there are a couple of kind of setbacks or reasons why people said they didn't participate in the primary election. And a lot of it had to do with just the mindset of, my vote doesn't really count. Even if I voted, the process is somewhat determined. And it's unfortunate that that's kind of the thought. But I think if people really voted what they wanted, and that's how I am, too. In the past, I was one of those that didn't think my vote mattered. But someone, it was actually my wife, told me that if you're not going to be part of the process and the solution, then don't complain about the situation and outcome. Exactly. And I think one another way to look at it, does one vote matter? Of course it does. And I've seen some in the past elections that were decided on just a few votes. But I don't know how many of the people there are under 39 that would be considered young professionals. But if there's 10 or 15,000 of them, and if they all voted, that 10 or 15,000 swing vote could make a huge difference in the elections in the state. And I think part of what you're doing at the Young Professional Program is creating this higher level awareness of what the issues are and being able to step in and analyze and look at it and educate. And this is great. It's good stuff. Well, we're going to take a short break, and then we're going to get into the Hawaii tech support. What you really do for a living puts money in your pocket. So we'll talk about that in the second half of the show. But this is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. I'm here with Stan Lau talking about the Young Professional Program at the Chamber of Commerce. And we're going to be talking about his company, where he's the CEO of Hawaii Tech Support, in the second half of the show. So we'll be back in just one minute. Welcome to A Show in the Wheel. Looking forward to see you next month on October 13, Thursday at 11 o'clock. Aloha, and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. I am Inna Chang. I am the guest host for Small Business Hawaii with Reg Baker. Tune in every Thursday at 2 PM and watch us. Aloha. Hi, I'm Chris Leitham with The Economy in You, and I'd like to invite you each week to come watch my show each Wednesday at 3 PM. Aloha. My name is Danilia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We are the co-hosts of Keys to Success, which is live on Think Tech Livestreaming Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 AM. Aloha. Aloha. Aloha, and welcome back to Business in Hawaii. We're here this week talking with Stan Lau of the Hawaii Tech Support Company, and also chairman of the Chamber of Commerce's Young Professional Program. He just started this company only 13 years ago. But for overall 13 years, surviving in the high tech industry is an accomplishment. And he's got some of the first clients he's ever had. They're still clients. So that's a real testimonial to do a really super job. Tell us a little bit about your company. Sure. Like you mentioned, we started 13 years ago. I started as a one person company taking my experience from working in LA and bringing it back here. At the time, the technology gap wasn't as big as we think it would be. I think Hawaii companies are on par. But one of the challenges is having enough available resources. And at the time, our business and the model that it's in was relatively new. The whole idea of outsourcing in terms of technology was so common to have on-site company provided staff. The servers were all on site. And some of these servers were pretty big. You get the AS300s or the IBM mainframes and all that. So you actually serve as an outsourced IT department? Right. So that's the core of our focus. We're what's called a managed service provider. And so our business is the outsourced IT service or arm of companies. And so our typical clients, they're in various industries. But you'll find that the segment that can use a service like ours is roughly, they have 20 to 75 employees to fill that need. And so a lot of our clients are in that space. And we provide services anywhere, I'd like to say, from broadband to the desktop. And so internal infrastructure, help desk, project planning. So in that type of environment, does the desktop kind of act as a remote terminal into your hardware? Or does some of it reside in the client's offices? Right. So things are starting to change. Traditional networking setups and environments, they're still predominant. So a company will have their desktops in the office at the desk. But you have a lot of mobile users. But one of the things that I started talking about and I'm a big proponent of, as of even three, four years ago, is this idea of what's called virtual desktops. And I think that's what you're alluding to is, are people really working on their terminals and their actual laptops where corporations can provide infrastructure that provides these virtual desktops in a data center that they can connect to? And correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows 365 kind of serves in a capacity like that where the processing is actually done remotely. And you don't have to have a lot of it on your desktop. Yeah, so Microsoft has a number of solutions. So Hosted Exchange, I think Office 365, that's what you're referring to. They have Azure, which is virtual machines and servers in their infrastructure. So I think it's a lot easier for businesses to get off the ground in terms of the technology investment because it's no longer a one-time purchase and manage and maintain. Well, it's not just one-time stand. When I had my business, I had 28 offices and I had to buy computers for these offices every three or four years and they were expensive. And then you had to buy the software to go onto the computers, it adds up. It does, it's a big expense. So to have this type of environment now and have it scalable, start with a one person, and I'm not talking about you, but another company or client could come in with one person but with the plans of growing it. And they could grow that relatively painlessly, could they not, using your technology and then just having an interface into your systems. Right, right, yeah. The days of running out of space and then having to scrap your investment after a year to buy bigger, faster, you know, that's kind of on its way out. And the planned obsolescence, it's built into the system, so it's nice to have someone else carry that risk. Right, right. So tell me, what do you think would be a case study, if you will? What is the type of client that you think would be best suited for what you offer? So our clients, the client that we look for is one, it's technology savvy. So they have a use and dependence on technology, whether that be engineering, architecture, healthcare, law firms. Actually, if you look at it, so many industries nowadays are, they're almost completely dependent on it. And I guess a quick test you could say is if your systems went down, how much productivity could that company have? And so that's a good measure of their dependence on technology, but in terms of size, like I said, anywhere from 15 to 75 employees, and there's reasons for that, some of it's financial, some of it is complexity. But industry-wise, we don't focus on a particular industry, even though we kind of have clusters of industries. But that's kind of our typical client. And what kind of, I mean, do you have software as a service or is that part of the package or are we just talking about hardware? Yep, we do. So in terms of solutions, if you think about what a company needs to run, like I was saying earlier, broadband to desktop, so we're talking about their internet connection, the hardware, the file services, communications like email messaging, yeah, file storage and sharing, security, backup, help desk, all of that is- Firewalls. Firewalls, yep, that's part of their security, and which is a big thing these days too. It's always been, but it's just because of awareness, and I think this is another awareness issue too, especially with the incidents that have happened over the last couple of years, people are more aware they're talking about it. One of the, and I'll use this as an example, and then you share with me if that's something that you work with your clients on, but I've been doing, I've had in-house servers doing tax software, which is pretty intense, type of software packages. It can do a lot of different types of companies in different states, blah, blah, blah. And right now, I've gotten rid of all of that, and everything is done through a portal, and I have no software anymore that resides on any of my hardware, and I can pick up any laptop, and I can, with the proper coding in the passwords and all that, tap right into my company and all of its tax returns, and I can process anywhere in the country or the world for that matter, and I don't have to worry about the upgrades, I don't have to worry about any of the hardware issues or the backup issues or any of this kind of stuff, and so the need for me to have large investments in hardware is quickly reducing down almost nothing because everything is done through portals, through the internet, and that's, is that something that you can help companies go through and identify and transition to? Yeah, that is, so what you're talking about is this as-a-service delivery, so this started maybe about five years ago, I would say in terms of mainstream, it's been around, so in the past, that's where Citrix and those types of companies started, it was kind of their bread and butter for application delivery, and so with the advancement of that, everything became, there's a web service for that, there's an app for that, there's a portal for that, like you said, so really the investment and maintaining all of that takes, it's taken away from your lap and then moved on to the vendors, which they're the vendor for, they made it, they're the best at doing that. Well, it provides an opportunity for them, but it also provides a huge cost savings for the people who used to cover all of that, so there's an economies of scale benefit that's beginning to take place here, and I think as the economy evolves and the workplace evolves into this more of a, if I could use the term, a virtual office type of environment, all of a sudden the footprint for these companies are beginning to shrink because they can access this information from a lot of different areas, like from your home. It's interesting you mentioned that, so our company's lease is up at the end of the year and one of the kind of strategy that we've been talking about was maintaining a smaller office, but having staff work virtually or not assigned to an office, and I think the big benefit to that is aside from the cost savings and whatnot, but really the commute, the quality of life for employees and for our employees, because a lot of them will go out in the field to customer sites, coming into the office is great for team building and fat cohesiveness, but in terms of their overall quality of life, not having to fight traffic, suit up and that kind of thing. Well, and you touched on that, the client service aspect too, I think can be really enhanced because now all of a sudden you can start going out to the client's office and being more close to them and doing some of the work there and build better relationships with them. I do that now in my environment where I'm one of the few CPAs in town, I think that actually make house calls. I can go and do whatever I need to do, anywhere I need to do it and whatever's convenient for the client. If they wanna be in an office, I can do that, but then there's parking issues and get downtown and all this kind of stuff or we can go somewhere else, even your house. Right, right. And there's a lot of positive customer service elements to that. Right, yeah. So you wouldn't have to do as much advertising either. The word will get out there. Yeah, I mean, it's been good. I think, yeah, over the years, growth is always good. Staying in an industry that's constantly changing is I think that's probably one of the big challenges for us. Now, let me, in the high tech industry that you're naturally in, one of the challenges that I've heard is sometimes getting access to skills, the talent sometimes is a challenge. But if you're working in this virtual world, can't you tap into that talent anywhere that it might be? That's a really good, there are definitely opportunities for that. I think where we are, especially being Kauai and the dynamics, I think in other environments where people are more about, a little less about the relationship and more about what gets done. It's not that we don't get things done here, but there is still that personal aspect. We've considered doing that in terms of using outside back end support, but ultimately, my goal is to have people be able to call, know who they've talked to. We've had events with clients coming in and they meet some of our engineers and techs, and they're excited because it's like, oh, you're the person that I talked to on the phone, or I think there's an aspect. You don't want to lose that. I mean, that's part of that relationship, but if there are components of what these individuals, these professionals are doing that can be done, I mean, if there's, I'm just using a term coding, or if there are some non-customer-facing type of activities that can be outsourced, you could outsource that to anywhere that that talent might be, and have that done, and still have that boots on the ground here dealing with the clients. So all of a sudden, what I'm getting at is the challenges of having the proper skill sets in Hawaii become less of an issue if you're able to tap into it wherever it's at, whether it be New York, San Francisco, Houston, whatever. Right, right, yeah. I mean, ultimately, I think in our industry, and just talking to different companies, there's always, the need here is, it's huge in terms of qualified, skilled individuals. Even with that option, there's still that element. So we're looking for people. We've had a hard time in terms of qualified candidates that have come through, but I think just based on discussions with other employers, everyone's having a similar problem. It's not easy to find good people, but we are gonna wrap up here real quick. If somebody wanted to know more about your company, what would be the website they could go to? Sure, it's www.hitexsupport, that's hitexsupport.net. .net, okay. And do you have job postings on there, too? We have job postings on there. All right, so if somebody's looking for a job, they can go there as well. Yes. All right, very good. Stan, it was great to have you on the show today. We'll have to have you come back again. But this is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. I was here with Stan Lau. We're talking about Hawaii Tech Support and the Chamber Young Professional Program. We air every Thursday at two o'clock. We talk 30 minutes with successful businesses and individuals in Hawaii. I hope to see you next week. Until then, Allah.