 Aloha. Welcome to Keys to Success, which is live on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series, weekly on Thursdays at 11am. We are your hosts. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo. John Newman, welcome to the show. Mahalo for joining us today. You can catch us live on stream at livestream.com on the ThinkTech Hawaii.com channel. We also encourage you to call our hotline at 415-871-2474 to join our conversation or tweet us at thinktechhi if you have any questions or comments. The goal of our weekly show, Keys to Success, is to provide professional and personal development tools and profound insights on how to achieve success in life, career and or business. Salvatore Sobera, Vice President of Digital Alarm Technology, also known as DAT, was our guest on our last show. And his words of wisdom with regards to his Keys to Success can be found on Newman Consulting Services' website and landing page, Danelia.org. Our theme for today is steps to personal branding success. Joining us today in the studio as our guest is David S. Chang, the Chairman and CEO of Chang's Holden Company. David is an award-winning entrepreneur, wealth manager, keynote speaker and consultant. David is also the author of the Art of Thinking Smart, a blog, financial column in the Star Advertiser Weekly, mid-week. And he also, and the Art of Smart Money, a wealth-building membership program. David is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was commissioned and served in the U.S. Army as an armor and military intelligence officer and a veteran of the Global War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom. David is also a graduate of Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Business Program and was selected by his peers as the best opportunity growth pitch of the co-op. David has also been selected as one of the three outstanding young persons award by Hawaii Junior Chamber of Commerce and finalists of Top New Business of the Year by Hawaii Business and Honored by the World Chinese Venture Model Association. Mahalo for joining us today, David. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really excited. You guys have so many accolades, my man. I will have the whole show to share with our viewers if you will, David. What is it that clients come to Chang Holden Company for? Sure. So, Chang Holden Company is more just a holding company and without getting to all the legal mumbo jumbo, the primary bread and butter is WealthBridge, a wealth management company and Home Care Solutions, which is our private duty home care company. And they can go on to my site for more information, but ultimately we have in America 75 million baby boomers, 10 to 15,000 retiring every day. And one of the issues that we see after the 2008 crisis that people are really afraid of having another financial collapse and aren't investing for the future as they need to. On top of that, people are living longer these days, but unfortunately poor health. So we have this situation where maybe 30 years ago the greatest risk would be the stock market risk. Uh oh, what happens if there's a bad fall and I'm going to retire? Nowadays it's what I call longevity risk, is out living your money. If you're going to live to $90.95 and you're going to retire at $60,000, you got lucky because you retire from the military. So you got a great pension, right? Well, wait a minute. I'll call that luck. A lot of hard work, absolutely. I'm still in the garden and I hope to finish out and get my retirement too, but majority of Americans don't have a pension like they did 20, 30 years ago. Yes, you're right about that. And as a result, people have to be responsible for their own retirement. And Social Security when it was constructed in the 1930s, it was actually never meant to really be a primary source of income in retirement. It was actually supposed to just supplement and the average age that people lived to in those days was 63, 64, 65. Now within a couple generations, you know, 50% longer, 90. So this is why our Social Security are having issues of funding it for future generations. So that's why I think one of the most important things people need to do is can't use ignorance as an excuse anymore to say, well, I don't know about money or my spouse takes care of it or you know what, I'm just going to hope for the best in the future or I'm going to hope to win the lottery. And there's an interesting quote, a study that's shown that one-third of Americans believe that they will win the lottery. Oh, is that right? Yeah, it's terrible, right? That's interesting. One-third, one-third. I'm just thinking, I've read the statistics once about how many actually win it. So I want to add a billion. Billions. We're not a million. No, no. Ten million. One professor told me that the chances of being struck by lightning twice, right, is greater than winning the lottery. Oh, wow. You know what's sad though is that we meet so many people who are, you know, coming up, the younger generation who says, well, I'm just living day to day because I don't know what tomorrow brings. You know, we always say, well, believe me, tomorrow is coming and you better be prepared for it. Right. Because it's coming whether you want it to or not. Exactly. That's right. So I'm right outside millennials. So I was born earlier than the current millennial generation, but obviously I have about 450 clients. Okay. And see abroad from the oldest client being 98 years old, all the way to newborns being born, you know, this week from a client who set up a college account. Right. And the biggest thing that anyone can do, and really it's people think that, okay, I don't know enough about stocks or I don't know enough about anything is time is the greatest factor in how much money somebody can have towards retirement. So an example would be if you just saved $1,000 at somebody at the age of 20 and over 30 years, and let's just say it's 12% interest, right? I think that's high, but let's just say 12%. That $1,000 will become $150,000. But let's just say you save $1,000 a year starting at the age of 40. If you saved up until age of 60, it still wouldn't amount to as much as somebody who saved at the age of 20. We understand. That's how important it is. Now on the home care side, and this is, I think, very important, people are living longer these days, and everyone knows that they're going to pass. There's nobody who thinks out there they're going to be immortal, but everybody doesn't think that they're going to get sick before they die. They think they're going to be, you know, here and why walking on the beach and then when the time comes, but we've had a thousand clients come through our home care company, and the average age as they get in the late 80s is what they need to help. Activities of daily living, transferring toileting, eating, bathing, those type of things, and it's not cheap. Hawaii is one of the most expensive states for long-term care services. On average, a nursing home in Hawaii is close to $140,000 a year. And the number one thing when I talk to clients is they say, what are you worried about? They're worried about retirement, having enough money to live. And number two is I don't want to be a burden to my kids. And those two things are very, very important. So what I'm here to say is they're worried about outliving their money and being a burden, having someone take care of them. Right, because what happens is that if you outlive your money, so security's not enough, who's going to take care of you? Medicaid, if you're going to qualify for Medicaid, and this is how it is in our system, if you're very, very wealthy and you're medically or taken care of, if you are poor and you have actually nothing, you're still taken care of because Medicaid is an asset test. So if you have less than $2,000 as an individual in total assets, excluding your home, you qualify for Medicaid. So Medicaid will pay for your long-term care services. But everyone in the middle, unfortunately, that middle class, that's the one that's in trouble. You work 30 years, you saved up a million dollars, let's say. You need long-term care services, but you didn't plan for it. You have enough for retirement, but if a spouse needs long-term care, 24 hours, let's say, that money will be gone in three or four years. Then what happens to the spouse? So part of what I always say is you're saving for that rainy day is to look at, okay, well, what am I doing on the investment saving side? And I'm going to save for retirement, but if I do need long-term care services, how am I going to plan for that? So what we did is we created what's called the Care for Life program, where for those that qualify, we will take care of them for life, even if they run out of money. And that's part of our platform, and they can go to our website to find out more information about that. Let me just stop you there. Qualifications. You said if they qualify. Can you share with us briefly? Sure. What are the qualifying? So everybody's different. Qualifications sometimes will be, do they have enough assets that we can make sure that our wealth manager team can make last up until the age of 110? That's our goal, right? Even those that don't have enough assets, we have been able to extend their money several more years in some cases. Even if it's a year or two years longer than they currently have, that's still their better off. And most people realize that, okay, if I don't have family members taking care of me, and I have to have a stranger come in, there's that senior fraud and senior abuse issue that people have that's now becoming an issue now. Yes, it is. And so there's so much that we've dealt with that we want to really focus on what does the client need and what is the best way we can give it and provide it for him or her and their family. Because it's everybody involved, not just that particular client. You know, it's interesting because this show is keys to success and part of keys to success is planning for your future because the future comes a lot quicker than you think. Trust us. We're more mature and it's like, what happened to the last 40 years? It just goes really, really quick and you get tied up in life. But one of the things John and I did from a very young age when we first got married was that we decided we were going to invest no matter what it took. That was going to come out of our money, of our paychecks. It was going to come out immediately so that we just didn't, you know, never looked at it again. That's great. And it was amazing after so many years, you look at your account and go, whoa, how did that happen? You know, which is great. College, you know, taking care of a child that we never had. We started a college fund because we knew we would have one. And so it's just that, you know, one of the keys to success really is planning for your future. And that's exactly the key here. People think success is building funds. That could be success, but true success is being able to live your life comfortably as long as you are here. And also when you retire, that you actually be able to live it the way you lived it when you were working. That you actually have enough funds and so forth to be able to not have to change your lifestyle. And I kind of have this quote that I tell certain clients that I say you want to work full-time, part-time now so you can live part-time, full-time in the future. What that means is that you're going to really, in the early ages of your life. And I always say, even if people say, well, I'm too old to invest, the best time to invest may have been in the past, but the second best time to invest is today. Absolutely. To get started no matter what age you are. Correct. And part of the key to success is no matter what job, and millennials especially, they show that every two to three years they're moving on to a new job. I think it's actually less. I have about 60 employees. And turnover that I've seen is high, not just because they don't like a job necessarily. When I do the outreach, a lot of it is I just want to try something else. So let me stop you there, David. Sure. We're going to take a short break. This is Keys to Success on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series. We're talking with David S. Chang from Chang Holding Company regarding our theme today, Steps to Personal Branding Success. I'm Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. So please stay tuned for more Keys to Success. We'll be back in a minute. Hi, my name is Kim Lau, and I'm the host of Hawaii Rising. You can watch me live every other Monday at 4 p.m. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Richard Emory, host of Kondo Insider, a weekly Thursday show at 3 o'clock that goes all summer long talking about issues living in a Kondo association. Each week we bring experts to talk about the rights and obligations of owners and boards of directors to successfully run their Kondo minimum. It's a great educational show, answers a lot of questions. We hope you'll visit us sometime. Aloha. Aloha, everyone. I'm Maria Mera, and I'm here to invite you to my bilingual show, Viva Hawaii on ThinkTech Hawaii, every other Monday at 3 p.m. We are here to talk about news, issues, and events local and around the world. Join me. Aloha. Hi, I'm Chris Leatham with ThinkTech Hawaii, and I'd like to ask you to come watch my show, The Economy in You, each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Welcome back. This is keys to success on the ThinkTech live streaming network series. We encourage you to call our hotline at 415-871-2474 to join our conversation, or tweet us at thinktech.hi if you have any questions or comments. We've been talking with David S. Chang, Chairman and CEO of Chang Holding Company about our theme today, Steps to Personal Branding Success. My name is Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Welcome back to the show. David. Yes. All right, we're going to put you to the test right away. Great, great. How important is personal branding to business success? Absolutely important. And I would say, you know, I'm a wealth manager, and we're starting a franchise or business with our home care company, but I've been a serial entrepreneur. So I probably started two dozen business ventures. A lot of them have failed. Most of them. No, no, not failed. You just found a way not to do it. Step to success. That's how I look at it. You always learn through everything. That's right. Some of them just kind of didn't go anywhere. And a few of them that worked out that I'm working on now. And part of that personal branding is so important because this is what I found in today's world. And I'm a big reader. I live in Milani, Malka. So coming back and forth, you know, at least an hour and a half of traffic. Yeah, right. So I do books on tape. And for me, I do like double triple speed. Yes. You know, you can see I talk fast and I listen fast. So maybe to get through books a lot quicker than I would be reading it. And one of the things that I have kind of read about in today's world, it's not about how big you are versus how small. It's about how fast you are versus slow. Right. So we have companies like Blockbuster, Borders went out of business. And what's interesting is the Blockbuster CEO a year before they went bankrupt, said we did a market study and our market study showed that people don't like the Netflix model. People like to go to their local Blockbusters because they want to browse the movies, right? And clearly that was not the case. Look what happened. Was this market study right or wrong? You don't know. But one of the things that Steve Jobs would always say is he didn't do market focus groups because he would say clients don't know what they want. I will tell them what they want because I know it. Okay. And the reason would be, and it's always one of the innovation secrets, is that he would take it from the vantage point of the customer or client. And that's where branding comes in. I think when people see themselves as branding, they think what is it that I want to portray to the client? And I think that's a good question to answer, but I think it's a wrong order. That's not the first question to answer. The first question you should answer is, what does the client or customer need? What is it that I could fulfill a problem that I could solve that they have? Once that you have that taken care of, that's when the branding comes in. Because you can brand yourself as the greatest company out there, but if you don't do anything for the client, really you probably spend a lot of money on commercials, on your logo, all that design. And that's why I think fast companies, what they do is they're able to see market opportunities of, uh-oh, here's a need that has developed that we didn't see beforehand. For example, you guys teach computer skills. 20, 30 years ago, would we have seen that we would need that if somebody graduated from high school without having Microsoft Office skills, would they find a job in today's market? Really cannot, right? But 20, 30 years ago, we didn't even think about that, right? As long as they could type maybe at a certain word level or something like that. So that's where I see that part of the brand is moving quickly to see how can I solve a client's problems. Once you're able to successfully solve that problem, that's the brand. And I think the brand is, this is what we are good at, helping a client or customer and then building off of that. And that's what Apple did. For example, when Steve Jobs came in in 1996 when Apple was about to go bankrupt, they had 200 different technology lines. And the different departments didn't talk to one another so much money being wasted, and he says, we're going to shut it down to only four lines. And that's what he made successful. Even Mulally, who took over Ford in the 2009 crisis, they were the only U.S. car company that didn't have to take a bailout. In fact, they post their profits in 2009. Why? When he came in, I think there were about 30 different car lines. So I think Jaguar, Aston Martin, all that belonged to it. And he says, we're going to get rid of most of them and focus on eight car brands. And so by focusing and just solving that one or two problem for a client, and you're able to then dominate that market niche. And we've always said with business, people tend to go all over the place. And so you're spreading yourself. So then do what you do great. Right. Focus on that. And you will then meet other people who do other things that you could connect together and network together. They will utilize your services. You utilize theirs. Absolutely. And that way you offer the client the best of everything. Right. When we scrape it to the metal, I think I hear you saying that we need to focus on the client's wants and needs. Exactly. And once you focus on the client's wants and needs, that's what you give your clients and they will always be there. Right. And part of the brand, and if I draw a swoosh, you can't see it. No, right off the bat, it's Nike, right? Yes. So you could see if I have an Apple with a little bite into it, we know it's Apple Company. Apple, right. So they got to that stage by solving that issue or that problem. And I always recommend people, if they want to learn about branding, learn about how those companies formed from the beginning, the struggles that they had. And solving that issue is important. Now, on top of that, once you've solved that problem, what's important is to be consistent. Yes. You want to be consistent with your brand because you don't want to confuse the client or customers. Right. You talked about spreading yourself too thin. Yeah. If a brand confuses somebody and a typical example would be like when you go to your favorite restaurant, maybe you say, when I go to sushi, I like to go to this restaurant. And let's say that sushi restaurant starts saying, hey, we're going to start offering steak, spaghetti, even Chinese food. Yeah. You're thinking, okay, now is it the best sushi joint now or what is it? Yeah. It confuses the person. Right. And so that's why a good brand that splits second, you know this is what the company represents. That's where the logo comes in. That's where your marketing materials, your color scheme, your font. That's actually very important because subconsciously we look at a company and then all of those components, you know, built into the reputation of the company. Presentation is everything. Presentation. Presentation is everything. Right. So let me ask you now. So what I get, what I sense is that one of your keys to success is, and we believe that too because we do exactly the same thing, is listening to reading books, listening to tapes on books, motivational speakers and so forth. Constantly bombard yourself with motivation and with, you know, just because you get motivation doesn't mean that, you know, that doesn't mean you're going to become successful but you have to act on what you listen to in order to become successful. And as well as mirror and modeling successful franchises. Right. Look at what has been successful because the ingredient is the ingredient. Right. And I think hard work obviously is a big part of that. Yes. Absolutely. And copying somebody just because they are successful, what I would say is be careful with that because, you know, we're in different markets, Hawaii's Hawaii, just because it worked in Texas doesn't mean it's going to work here. A suit and tie, you know, just like we're in our lower shirt. Right, right, exactly. You know, don't put on a suit and tie. Right. And there's something called a T-shaped leader. A T-shaped leader at your T, the top, the vertical, or the horizontal component, is how you interact with everybody else. Right? And then the vertical component is your expertise in your subject. And in today's world, what we see is that, you know, an expertise in one, only one subject, back 30 years ago that was good. If you're an assembly line worker and you're only doing this one thing, maybe that's good. And I think especially in tech you want to specialize as important. But one of the things that we're seeing trends in America and entrepreneurs, for example, who really the small business community is the strength, is the backbone, really, of the growth of our economy and this is where other countries that travel a lot. And one of the things that they always, they always are, they admire about us as our entrepreneur spirit. Yes, that's very true. When I was in Europe, it's interesting that top graduates want to be civil servants, government workers. Yes. And America top graduates want to go to Google, Apple, they want to start their own business. Entrepreneurs, that's right. And part of T-shaped leaders being all around learning skill set is that you don't want to just say, you know what, I'm not going to care about anything else, I'm just going to care about this one thing of my personal well-being. So part of that personal brand is being well-rounded. And when I say well-rounded, it's not, okay, we're all my weaknesses, let me try to solve them all. It's not saying that. Part of reading and learning is to develop yourself consistently, constantly, over time. And I just had a meeting with my team this week, and I always say, just improve yourself just 1% a week. So true. So right, 1% a week. Now here's the thing, if you improve yourself 1% a week, over a year, 52 weeks, it's not a 52% improve, it's almost 170% because it compounds. Yes. Just like money. Just like money. It's so true. It's so true. That's a wake-up call. Yeah. So that's why reading something, learning a new way of becoming more effective, efficient, and coming back to branding, what I see, and I've done a lot of consulting for small businesses, is they're so worried about what their logo looks like. They're so worried about their website design, their SEO. Small portion of the picture. That's important, but are you solving a problem? Yeah. Is a client going to buy from you? Yeah. Worry about that first because you could have the greatest worth. Yeah. Because you could have, because you could do a thousand good things, and you mess up once. People remember you for that one mistake. And that's where brand consultants come in to try to change things up and everything. So that consistency of continually improving, getting better is important. And I told my company, if somebody asks us why they should use us as a wealth management firm, or use us as a home care company, we can give them all of those catch phrases, a premier company, blah, blah, blah. But I say truthfully, I tell them, is because we are six, we are much better than we were six months ago. And six months from now, we're going to be much better than we are today. I like that. And we're a company that's going to continue to improve, and that's part of our brand. And that's what you want today's market because you don't want a stale company that just kind of rests on their laurels. That's when I think about a lot of things. So, real briefly, what are your top three keys to success at number one? Make sure that you are going to solve a client problem and issue. Okay, number two. Number two, once you've solved that client problem and issue, be consistent and don't try to spread yourself out too thin and just focus on that consistency. Okay, number three. Always improve. Okay, great. That's what you want to do is always improve that process because another company is going to come right in if you don't do so. Well, thank you so much, David. We're out of time. Unfortunately, it went so quick. We'll have to wrap it up. David Chang's Words of Wisdom with regards to keys to success can be found on Newman Consulting Services website at www.NewmanConsultingServices.com or our landing page at denilia.org. Thanks to our viewers and listeners for tuning in. Thank you to our broadcast engineer, Zuri Bender, our floor manager, Nick Sexton and to Jayte Fidele, our executive producer who puts it all together. Thank you, David, for joining us today, sharing your insights to success, branding success, which is so important also in a business. Keys to success will be back next Thursday at 11 a.m. So we ask that you please tune in again. Ask your friends and family to do so as well. And in closing today, Denilia and I would like to share a quote with an unknown author. But it says the way you think can majorly influence the way you feel. My name is Denilia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Aloha!