 Hey, I'm Rusty Komori and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. We broadcast live on Mondays from the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving greater success, and sustaining that greater success, leadership, and finding greatness. Today's special guest is Keith Amemiah. He is the Senior Vice President of Island Holdings, which is the parent company of Island Insurance and four other local subsidiaries. Keith was also the former Executive Director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association. He is an extraordinary leader and extremely successful in everything he does, and today we are going beyond business. Hey, Keith, thanks for taking time to be here today. Thanks for having me, Rusty. It's a pleasure. I've known you for many years since you were Executive Director. You've seen me in action as when I was head coach for the Puno Boys Varsity Tennis Team, but I want to know about your history. Can you tell me about, you know, where you grew up and what schools you went to? Sure. I grew up in Hawaii Kai. I went to public schools from kindergarten through 10th grade, and then I made the transition to Punahou School in my junior and senior year. After I graduated there, I got my undergraduate degree from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in finance, in the School of Business Administration. And then I got my law degree from the University of Hawaii as well at the William S. Richardson School of Law. And I started my career as an attorney, a litigation attorney in one of the law firms here in downtown, and eventually made the transition to the Hawaii High School Athletic Association. So why did you get interested in law? How did that come about? I had a lot of family members and mentors who practiced law, and so they gave me the idea to attend law school. And frankly, I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do after college, and I thought a law degree would be useful whether you practiced law or didn't. And there's always, there's a lot of fundamental knowledge and principles you gain from going to law school and practicing law that can apply to other careers down the road if I chose not to continue with practicing law. Oh, that sounds good. And you're a big sports guy, but did you play any sports in high school? You know, interestingly enough, I always liked sports, participating and watching sports and following it. But I was a fairly marginal athlete, so when you're uncoordinated, you do sports that don't take a lot of talent, and I was actually decent in running, so I participated in cross country and track and field. And I did okay. You were at the last? No. I didn't come in last. I didn't come in first. I was kind of in the middle of the pack. But that's important for people to know that you don't have to excel in sports to learn from sports. Sports teaches you so many things. Besides, it's a good physical activity. You learn a lot of values and principles through sports, as you know, as a coach. I agree. That can carry you on through your adult life, whether it's in your personal career or even your professional career. Yeah, I totally agree there. Now you're a great family man. Can you tell me about your wife, Bonnie, and your son, Chris? So my wife, Bonnie, whom you met, is a successful accountant. She's currently the chief financial officer for Duane Kurisu, for his company, the AIO group. Yeah. And she's enjoying her work there. She likes working for Duane, Duane is such a great role model and leader in our community. And she's very supportive of anything that I choose to pursue, whether it's law or running high school sports or what I'm doing now. So I'm really lucky to have a very supportive wife. For sure. My son, Chris, just graduated from high school this past June from Punahou. And we just returned, my wife and I, last night from dropping him off at Loyola Marymont University in Los Angeles. He began his freshman year of college this morning, so hopefully it went fine. Great. And Chris played baseball for Punahou, is that right? He did. He played baseball for Punahou. He's a better athlete than me. He played on the varsity baseball team at Punahou for three years and enjoyed the experience. And like me, he gained a lot of knowledge besides the sports specific knowledge from baseball. I think he gained a lot of friendships and core values that hopefully will carry him on through the rest of his life. For sure. Well, let's talk sports. You were the legendary Hawaii High School Athletic Association executive director for 12 years. For 12 years. Now, how did you end up becoming, getting that job, getting that position? It was kind of my chance. I enjoyed practicing law and I learned a lot from it. But at the same time, I wasn't sure I necessarily wanted to be a litigator for my entire career. Sure. It can be very contentious and draining at times. So when I was approached by a fellow attorney to consider applying for the HHSAA job, I decided to go for it and see what happened. I was pleasantly surprised they selected me because I figured the normal course of selection would be to go with someone within the industry. But they went outside, took a chance on me and I was really lucky to get the job. You know, that sounds great and they made a great decision because I have great respect for you being the head coach at Punahou during those years when you were executive director. You're very fair. You love all sports. You really helped everything get better. Every sport get better and that's for sure. Now, what was some of your challenges that you dealt with as executive director? Well, one of the challenges was the public schools in particular are financially constrained. There are so many needs within the public school system, whether it's upgrading facilities, not only athletic facilities but academic facilities, there's teachers to pay, there's just so many financial needs that they're always short when it comes to athletics. So I viewed my job as one of trying to help the public schools with funding as much as possible and then the non-financial challenge was just trying to break the status quo. Once people get into a routine and they're used to things, I guess it's human nature. People don't like change but I try to break that mode. As I see fit and you can't stay still as you know as a coach or as an athlete, you always have to strive to better yourself, improve yourself and I believe that high school athletics at the time when I took over was going fine but I thought it had so much more potential. So I made it my mission to expand and grow sports, not only ad sports like canoe paddling, judo and a lot of female sports like girls golf, girls wrestling, girls water polo but improve the sports that we already have. Like tennis for example, where you are a very successful coach, let's find the best facilities across the state at which to have our state tournaments. Let's always try to improve the format for the tournament and let's try to make it fair and make it such that everyone has a fair opportunity to win a state championship on a level playing field and hopefully I accomplish that. No, I'm guaranteed you accomplish that. You being a successful leader, you have to have great relationships and you have to coordinate with everyone and kind of have win-win situations for everyone and you definitely did that. So what's the one thing that you're most proud of when you're executive director? I think trying to get everyone to work together and move in the same direction for the greater good of the student athletes. Sometimes as adults we get caught up in our own battles and our own issues and what's best for us as parents or coaches or administrators and I try to reign people back and remember what's our core mission, what's our core purpose and our core purpose is to do what's best for our student athletes. They're our future, they're counting on us and we need them to be given the tools to be as successful as possible to move our communities forward for generations to come and so that's what I always try to do is to remind people and myself that we're here not for ourselves, we're here for something much greater and that's for our youth and our future. Agree completely, I mean it does get lost along the way but it's always about the student athlete and if the coaches and the parents and schools can remember that everything will be fine. Now let's talk football, okay now I know you love football and you coordinated that OIA, ILH football situation where now they're playing each other in regular season games this year, can you tell me about that? Well football is important and let me make clear, I feel all sports are important but football is important in the sense it has the highest number of participation and it's very popular and we've had many successful football players come out of our state over the decades and I felt that it was unfortunate that for the last 48 years or so the ILH, the private schools and the OIA, the public schools did not play each other in the regular season. I was very very young when the split happened and so I don't really remember it but people tell me that high school football when the OIA and ILH played each other during the regular season was incredibly successful, incredibly popular and it galvanized and unified our communities across the island so I felt it was important to try to reunite the two leagues for all those reasons but also because it would increase finances because attendance would be higher, TV rights would be higher, hopefully sponsorships would be higher from the corporate side. There would be better competition by creating three levels and mixing the private and public schools. You wouldn't have as many blowouts as we've been having the last several years where a school like Kaiser, much smaller enrollment, no longer would have to play Kahuku, who's a national powerhouse. I mean that's not fun for either side and by combining the leagues you create more games of more competitive teams and so that was important to me to to create more interest, create more turnout. I think the lopsided scores and unlevel competition was discouraging turnout in some schools and I think the numbers this year already reflect a higher turnout in some of the schools that were struggling in terms of numbers. Let's talk about one of the most popular football players from Hawaii, Marcus Mariota, graduate from St. Louis School. You know him well. Can you tell me about Marcus? Sure, Marcus is an ideal role model. I don't think you could create someone better for as a role model not only for our youth but for us as adults. I mean he's extremely talented as a football player but above and beyond that he's a good person. He's sincere, he embodies all the values we try to instill in our children. The values of hard work, perseverance, discipline, selflessness and humility. So it's a pleasure to know him and his parents and I have to give credit to his parents, his dad Toa, his mother Elena. They've done an amazing job with Marcus and I again I'm so privileged to be able to know Marcus and his parents and his brother Matthew. And is that why Island Insurance hired him as in the commercials? No question. He again embodies everything that Island Insurance tries to live by. You know it's helping the community, humility, you know selflessness and doing what's right for everyone. Yeah, character. He's the perfect, we can't, we couldn't think of a happier or better role model and we're pleased to have him. Speaking of character, the Little League World Series happened this past week and Gerald Oda, the coach, the manager, he kept preaching over and over, be humble, enjoy the moment, love each other. Can you tell me more about why those messages resonate so well with the winning teams? Well, as you know as a successful coach, talent certainly helps but you need more than that to win championships. You need to play as a team, you need to sincerely care for each other and I'll take it even further. That not only applies to sports teams, it applies to businesses, it applies to companies. You need to work together for a common goal and it's not about you and I think the theme of the Honolulu League team, if you follow them during the regionals and onto the World Series was we is greater than me and I think you know you and I believe that and adopt that philosophy whole heartedly and that's why they're the world champs and we couldn't be prouder of them. Who doesn't love those kids? I mean they made our state proud. Yeah and it's, and winning is just a byproduct of all of those things that you do off the field and it's all about the character so that was great for the world to see that. No question and I'm glad you brought that up that the most successful leaders in business or coaches on the athletic fields. I feel don't measure their success or are not fixated on the wins and losses. They're fixated on building the foundation and the core values that a team needs to be successful. When you take care of business from that standpoint, the core values of hard work, teamwork, selflessness, the wins take care of themselves. Yeah, I totally agree. Keith, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we're going to continue going beyond business. You are watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest Keith Amemia. We will be back in a quick minute. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 am. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Anna all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Hey, Stan Energy Man here on Think Tech Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary. So I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff. So I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energy Man at lunchtime at noon on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energy Man. Aloha. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My special guest is Keith Amemiah, the senior vice president of Island Holdings and former executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association. And today we are going beyond business. Keith, you read my book Beyond the Lines. Can you tell me what you liked about the book? Well, as a general premise, I loved everything about your book. As you know, we talked a lot before you went ahead and dove into this venture. I loved everything that you told me about the book and everything you said came out in the book. What I like about your book is you keep it simple. Every chapter has a certain principle that you're trying to convey to the reader. And you also give real-life examples. I think you personalize it. It's not a lecture. It's a story that makes it easier for the reader to relate. So I mean, I'm your number one fan in terms of your book. And you don't have to convince me that it's a book worth reading. And hopefully everyone gets a chance to buy one and read it and share it with others. Oh, thank you. I feel honored that you liked the book and that you're helping me with the book too. And I value your advice and your opinion and everything. So that means the world to me. Leadership is definitely a complicated, complex subject. But I try to really keep things really simple and relatable in the book. And that's what people are telling me they like about it. Now, as Senior Vice President of Island Holdings, what are the companies that you're the parent of? So Island Holdings is the parent of five local subsidiaries, Island Insurance, Atlas Insurance Agency, IC International, which is a surplus lines insurance brokerage, Trademan Capital Group, the investment arm of Island Holdings, and PACSA, that's P-A-C-X-A, which is an IT company. So collectively, by Hawaii standards, it's a pretty big company that employs hundreds of people. We're proud of the success of all five companies and that we're able to keep people gainfully employed across the state and also give back to the community whenever we can. That's awesome. As I said earlier, you're extremely successful in everything that you do. I want to know, Keith, how do you define success? I define success. I mean, that's kind of a broad question. But I'll give it my best shot. Success is achieving a goal that stretches you beyond what you sometimes feel you're capable of. Success is trying to reach the pinnacle in whatever you pursue. Success is also doing it with others. You can't gain true success, in my opinion, without the help of a team, without others helping you reach that goal. And frankly, I feel success is more gratifying when you do it collectively as a group. And sure, success can be analyzed or assessed via wins and losses on the playing field or profits and losses in the business world. Those are good metrics to make sure you're on track. But when all is said and done, I feel success is something that you can't describe. It's that feeling you have in your gut. I mean, you know if you were successful or not. And sometimes success is achieved even though you come up short on the playing field or even in the business sector. As long as you've given it your best shot and tried to get others to join in the effort, to me, that's success as well. That you always will strive to be the best you can be. Sometimes you'll come up short, but in the long run, the wins will far outweigh the losses. Yeah, I totally agree with you. You've got to be in it for the marathon, not the quick sprint. And I like what you said earlier about, you know, being capable. Everyone is they're so much they're capable of doing so much greater things than they think they are. And I think that's that's a huge thing there. Now, I want to ask you Keith, why are you so successful? Well, thank you for saying I'm successful. And but I'd like to think you can you can never rest on your laurels as you know as a coach. And so if I'm successful, great, but I don't know. I never feel I've arrived or made it that that to be successful and to sustain success, you always have to try to challenge and improve yourself. And so I think that's a common trait of many successful people in the sports realm or the business realm, whether it's someone like Michael Jordan or LeBron James, they're always they're never satisfied with their achievements. They're always trying to better themselves and their teammates. And so I think that's a common trait of successful people is they're always striving to do better and they're always looking over their shoulder. They're not resting on their laurels as you as a coach. No, I mean you there are people always trying to gun for you or try to try to surpass you and you you have to never stand still. You always have to try you to improve yourself. Yeah, you don't want to become complacent at all and then you have to keep outdoing what you've done so that you become even greater. And that's really a parallel that a lot of these successful people and leaders have. Now I want to ask you Keith, what's been your greatest obstacle in achieving your success and how did you overcome that? I kind of alluded to this earlier. One of the biggest obstacles and maybe I'm making a generalization, but in Hawaii we and maybe worldwide people don't like change. They're comfortable with the status quo and and going back to our success discussion you can't stand still and rest on your laurels. You always have to look at ways of improving things and better make things better. And so that's how I always view whatever I attack in life is to always better yourself whenever you can and and again to try to do it as a team. Yeah I like that. In tennis it's such an individual sport but you know being on a team in tennis was extra special and I wanted to make it extra special for for my team and you've you've seen them in action for many years. No question that tennis, although there's an individual aspect on the single side there there's doubles teams that require a partner but to win the team title as you pointed out in tennis in Hawaii high school sports you need every team to do what they can and even if they come in third place or fourth place if enough of your teammates accumulate points you're likely going to win the state title. So there's importance in cheering on your teammates and supporting them as well because you want them to do well to achieve the the team goal of a state championship. Yeah it's definitely a total team effort. Now I want to ask you Keith what what do you hope to aspire to achieve in your future still? Well I guess like like everyone your life is a continuing chapter or series of chapters and and I just hope to do something that's continue to do things that are fulfilling that not only are good for me personally in terms of satisfaction but also improve the community. I feel somewhere along the line both locally and and even nationally we have become a a citizenry of or a group of people that are kind of focused on themselves and slowly over time that's obviously not good and I want to do what I can to to unite the community bring people together and and remind them the importance of working together for a common purpose. In the long run everybody wins when you when you work together when you go in your own silos and do your own thing things just don't work out in the long run neither for yourself or for the community. Yeah I love your insights there Keith and you know every great leader learned from another great leader so who has been mentors for you? One of my first mentors is attorney Bert Kobayashi he's the senior partner of the Kobayashi Sugita and Goda law firm here in Honolulu one of the larger law firms in the state he and his older son Chris who's my age always took me under their wing great and they're kind of like adopted or Hanai family and what I learned from Uncle Bert as I call him was the importance of hard work perseverance and also having balance in life you work hard in the office but when you get home you need to put all your energy and effort in your family and I really respect the way he's managed to balance a successful business career with a family career a lot a lot of people are good in business but somehow the family is shortchanged so to speak and what what I again admire about him was his ability to balance both. Duane Caris was another role model and mentor for both my wife and I I mean he's incredibly successful in business but he's also such a wonderful community leader and and philanthropist his Kahauiki village homeless project has been phenomenal no one thought he could ever do it and he's done it they've already finished one phase they're already working on phases two and three I just like the way he does things he's a man of his word he's respected and trusted and he always does the right thing yeah Duane Caris who is amazing I taught tennis to his wife Susan and his daughter Sarah and just a fantastic family now Keith before we close I want to ask you one more thing how do we get more Marcus mariotas more Shane Victorino's more Michelle Wees from Hawaii well I think we're we're getting to the point where Hawaii athletes are becoming more and more known success breeds success as they say and it becomes a snowball effect by getting our student athletes to play in camps and clinics on the mainland I believe even the internet has played a big role you don't have to physically come to Hawaii to see our student athletes and actually you can watch video of them and and the more success that Marcus has and and Michelle and and the other athletes it just turns the attention to our island state and already I believe it's it's working we have to a tango valoa yeah he's awesome who is probably going to be the starting quarterback for the defending national champions we have another starting quarterback in the in the sec from University of Mississippi Jordan Tom oh yeah city graduate Mackenzie Milton yeah Mackenzie University of Central Florida I mean we have talent and success they just need the exposure and opportunity and is incumbent on us adults to keep pushing for that and make sure they're noticed because we have a ton of talent well let's let's keep our fingers crossed on that and let's keep doing what we're doing and let's ride this snowball now I really appreciate going in depth with you today Keith and all of your insights is fantastic having you here today thank you rusty appreciate it and thank you for watching beyond the lines on think tech Hawaii please check out my website rusty kamori.com and follow me on Facebook Instagram LinkedIn and Twitter I want to encourage all of you to constantly strive to create your own superior culture of excellence every day and to find your greatness and help others find theirs aloha