 It needs to success, which is live on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11am. We are your hosts. My name is Danilia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Welcome to today's show. The goal of this show is to provide professional and personal development tools and profound insights on how to achieve success in life, career and or business. Reg Baker was our guest on our last show when his words of wisdom can be accessed on Newman Consulting Services website, NewmanConsultingServices.com or our landing page, Danilia.org. Joining us today in the studio as our guest is Guy Benjamin, managing partner and executive director of Hawaii Medical College. Mahalo for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Yeah, welcome Guy. All right. I'm excited about having you on the show. It's good to be here. All right, we don't have a lot of time, so we're going to get right into it. Okay. First of all, I'd like for you to share with our viewers, if you will, a little about Hawaii Medical College and your responsibilities at the college. Yeah, we have about 400 students down on Kapiolani Boulevard. It's a health care certification in training school, mostly in health care, allied health, technical positions such as phlebotomy tech, ECG tech, pharmacy tech. What's an ECG? You know, the heart, EKG. Oh, EKG. Yeah, it's K in German. It's C in English. That was what I was told. So I started going to ECG. We have a billing and coding program, too. And our largest program is a clinical medical assistant. All right. So how did you decide to pursue the career that you have right now? And what was the pivotal moment? But before we get there, what are some of your responsibilities there? My responsibilities, I'm one of the partners. Oh, okay. And I have the overall responsibility for the operations of the school right now. So... Big responsibility. Big responsibilities. Make sure we meet all federal and state guidelines. So the buck stops with you? Yes. Well, it's wonderful, Guy. You and I met, well, we all met years ago. And, you know, to see the growth in that period, in that time has been fantastic. So congratulations on that, really. Yeah, thanks. I think we met, we might have had 50, not certainly over 100 students. And we weren't accredited at all and really struggling to get going. And then, you know, 400 students later, here we are. And you've morphed into 400 plus, you know, moving and still counting, right? So how did you get into this? How did you become a managing partner? How did you start the school? Well, personally, I've always been in education. It was in school of education at Stanford University. Came out here to Hawaii to be on the staff at Hawaii Manoa, University of Hawaii Manoa. I was a student service specialist with the DOE and then I went to work for a college named Hawaii Business College. And I ended up there being a job placement director. I went there because my daughter was, she grew up local girl, just moms hoping that she could make it through high school. She went to high school and now what? And she heard Hawaii Business College on the radio and it was on one of her stations and so she thought, wow, I'm going to go. And she ended up going, Blossom became the student body treasurer, vice, you know, ended up getting a degree and now she's working at Naohoku Jewelry as your senior tech person. And now you're very proud of her. Yeah. Yeah. You know? When I took, it transformed her and I thought, wow, you know, I might want to look into being a part of that. And so I was, they hired me as the job placement director and then the executive director had left. He was a pharmacist and he took on another job and they asked me to become the executive director. So I did so and started in that way. I guess let's talk about the pivotal moment because that is really a wonderful story about how you actually started Hawaii Medical College. Right. Well, it's a pivot from being an employee, right? And just thinking like that, thinking your world is like that to being an owner or being an entrepreneur. And it happened to us. We had an opportunity. We walked into Hawaii Business College one day and the doors were padlocked. And the owner had not fulfilled some financial requirements and so he lost his ability to offer federal financial aid, which is the backbone of any college, right? So he closed and then we ended up going to work and there are students out there and going, what are we going to do? And we realized that they could get jobs. The medical assistants could get jobs if they could just pass their cert. Okay, certification. And so we ended up renting, okay, we can help them. We ended up renting an office by the hour. We went, we trained them. They passed their certifications. They went on and got jobs. And then a few more heard about that and we did that for about six months and then students would ask us, well, why don't you just, why don't you do the whole thing? And that was the time we looked at each other and said, wow, you know, are we going to do this? How are we going to do this? We don't have any money. And so it's a pretty amazing story just the way that we started without any capital, literally barring the bond money from my mom's 401k and taking out credit cards and doing that, getting people to work for free for us to believe in us. And we did that for six months and I guess we were doing good and had a good reputation and the jobs were there. And then it grew. Isn't it amazing about sequence of events? How did you know that was the right decision? Because that's really scary. I mean, fear must have just been deep down, but how did you overcome that fear to really jump in there, you know, to do all of that? I mean, was it just, it was really on faith, but what, did you feel it? What was that? It was an opportunity, right? And I always feel, you know, you may not get many opportunities, if any, and you have to take advantage of them once you get them. So I've had that in the back of my mind. But I think the, and yes, it was scary. What do I do? Because I had another job at another college in line as a director, but my wife said, you need to do that. And I thought, okay, she's going to support me from home, right, and that's huge support. And then my best friend here, who I respect a lot, told me to go ahead and do it, right? And so my best friend, my wife, I figured I had some support and I just went and did it. That's fantastic. And I'll tell you why, because so many people are in this situation where they, you know, they get laid off or they go to the door and all of a sudden it's locked and what do I do with my life? And that really is a pivotal moment in so many people's lives. As we look back over careers and everything, you know, you make a decision. Do I let it bring me down or do I do something about it? There was some benefit in that situation that we were able to hire the best of the best, right, and take them. So they were good people. We had worked with them. We were close. It was easy to put them on the same mission. It kind of came a passion, right? It kind of became a collective goal that we had to make this thing work. We didn't have any idea we were going to go to 400 students. We were thinking, wow, if we could just, you know, get these students jobs and, yeah, maybe we could make a little money and, you know, I could substitute teacher on the side. That's how we were and it just kept growing. Fantastic. To give you even more confidence when you found that you were being recognized, and I asked this question, why medical college was honored as being one of the top, I mean, one of the finalists and the 50 fastest growing businesses by the Pacific Business News. And congratulations on that, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. It was 2015. I must have given you even more confidence than and showed you that you were doing the correct thing. Right. I mean, it was shocking, you know, really, I mean, because now you have some visibility in the community, you know, just not with students. But we were, you know, timing in business. We were able to, unfortunately, when we started Aloha Airlines, went out of business, but they had a lot of training money. And so we had a couple of Aloha former Aloha employees come, start our class, said they liked it, went back to their other colleagues. And before you know it, we had 40 Aloha employees, right? Fantastic. And then so that allowed us to get work links money, you know, unemployment. Right. And remember, this was 2007, so the economy was down. And again, timing, we were in a situation where vocational schools do much better with a bad economy than they do with a good economy. And so we had work links, Aloha Airlines, and then we had the surge in Afghanistan and the Department of Defense came up with this military spouse college funding, which was really, really significant. So then at about, over half our students were military spouses, right? We did that. And then it went on, we finally got our accreditation and our approval to offer federal financial aid. And then so we were able to do that, and that kind of took us to where we are. But there were these levels of opportunities that we had. What would you say is one of your biggest challenges that you experience running a college? The obstacles that you ran into. I think they're the unique obstacles that are placed upon us by all the regulations. So true. The accrediting body. We understand. So what is it? Right. Well, it's measuring outcomes, right? For us, we are responsible for meeting a benchmark on job placement. So 70% of our students have to be placed in a job, in their area, 70% have to graduate. We have to make sure that there's actually a default range, so we're even responsible for a student if they pay their bills or defaulting as well. And a couple other financial obligations that we have. So let me just, when you said default, can you expound on that a bit? Yeah, so a student takes the federal government loan and they graduate or don't graduate and they don't pay it back, right? We're still responsible for them paying it back and it has to go. We have to meet a certain benchmark, otherwise if we don't meet any of these outcomes, then we lose our opportunity to give federal financial aid, right? All right, so we're going to take a short break. This is Keys to Success on the ThinkTech Livestreaming Network series. We're talking with Guy Benjamin, managing partner and executive director of Hawaii Medical College regarding Keys to Success. My name is Danilia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. We'll be returning in a minute, so please stay tuned for more Keys to Success. Hi, I'm Stephen Phillip Katz. I'm the host of Shrink Wrap Hawaii. We are here every Tuesday at 3 o'clock on ThinkTech Hawaii, talking to and about shrinks and mental health. Please join us. Thank you for watching ThinkTech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m., where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in, and aloha, and thanks for watching. Aloha. My name is Richard Emory, host of Condo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. And our show is all about educating board members and owners about their responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a greater association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. each week. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Keys to Success on the ThinkTech Livestreaming Network series. We 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, we've been talking with Guy Benjamin, managing partner and executive director of Hawaii Medical College. My name is Danelia D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo, John Newman. Welcome back. So Guy, we're going to get right back into it if we can. How do you stay motivated? I stay motivated because of the students, right? And whenever I get a little bit down or questioning anything at all, then I go hang out with the students. And I'm fortunate enough not only am I the managing partner, but I also teach a class. And so I have an opportunity to have every student that comes through at least touch me for a few hours. That's wonderful for that. And that's really why we do it. That's why I do it. And you know, we find the same thing for us. Yeah. And that shows the caring and sharing. And the student feels that they're cared about, you know, it's just not a check or you're just not checking a block, dotting an I across and a T. They're there to help them get to where they want to be. Yeah. And you have a personal interest in it. Yeah. And it's a good feeling. It's a good thing to thrive off of the ability to get through to a student where they have their aha moment where they have a different way of looking at things or shifting consciousness. You know, they just see the world differently. And then that opens up the possibilities that they may have and then to help encourage them through that. It's interesting because that's what we talk about too with our classes. We talk about the same thing that aha moment where you see the light come on and it's like, oh, now I get it. Right. Oh, yes. So what advice would you give an employee going into the leadership role for the first time? Listen. I think to be able to listen, look, learn from others, see if you can find somebody to be a mentor, be patient. And I think just put yourself in situations where you can see not only your department but the operation of the whole school. Right. So you're observing, you're looking, someone's mentoring you, gaining knowledge. Okay. When you said listen, that's one of the things Danil and I stress in our business management school that we have. A person that listens is a powerful person. If you listen, and I think that makes your student or the person that's in your school understands that they, what they say means something. That's right. Absolutely. We've all had that moment and say, well, if you just listen to me, why don't you just listen to what I have to say? Right. Right. And yeah, definitely it has more meaning coming from them. The other thing that we ask from teachers is we try to ask questions rather than lecture and talk and tell them what's right. Right. Right. But again, if it can come from them, if you can ask the right questions and you have to know a little bit about where the students are to ask the right question. And then they tell you the answer. Right. Right. That's right. Delivery. Yeah. Kind of shift the whole old school way of disseminating information. So what is your definition of success and when do you feel that, you know, when did you feel that you became successful? Yeah. I don't use the typical definition of success. I use more of a mindset definition of success, a program that Dr. Carol Dweck from Stanford University has created, the brainology component to that too. A lot of schools are moving into that. And we define success as growth, right? And it's the learning, it's the growth, it's the hard work, it's the persistence That is success. You'll eventually succeed, but if you have a marker, it's really an artificial marker. It's a construct in many situations. And then students will measure themselves up against that or not, and then they'll take action whether they succeeded or they didn't succeed. And that's where you have a lot of students drop off or they start having a different attitude rather than, and you know, and the other thing, it motivates them too. It motivates them because they're seeing these small little successes that they have. And you know, with us too, we find that when the students grasp and believe that they can, that's when the turn occurs, right? Because when you believe you can, that's when success, you can see the success. Right. Yeah. When our new students come in and we ask their challenges, two issues pop up all the time. One time management, because now they just can't go through life. Now they're life, work, school, yikes, how do I do that? And then the other one is confident, they don't know whether they can do it or not. And that in the back of their mind going through can really affect a lot of their actions and their beliefs. And so we really work hard through the mindset to show them that they can be successful. What do you feel is the most valuable lesson that you've learned at this stage of your life and career? My stage. I would say to anything you do, and I mean anything, work, life, I've learned to reduce it down to one thing, right? One thing, if you do one thing at a time, you finish it, then you go to the next thing, you finish it, and then you go to the next thing, you finish it, is better than doing that and doing, trying to multitask on two things, three things at a time and finishing none of them, or finishing one of them, right? Now that requires you to prioritize and put off some things because you're linear as you go through. But I think just reducing, reducing down. I ask my students after they leave the first class, tell me one thing, one thing that you can do. Because I got to study, I got to go to class, I got to get babysitters, I got to, if there's one thing that you can focus on for your success here, what will it be? And then they can always come back to that, they got that, what's the next thing? So we look at the time management and problem solving going hand in hand as well. That's what you need to do. In this program, for our listeners and our viewers, we always ask a signature question of our guests, and it goes like this, what would be your three top success habits? Slowing down. Slowing down? Slowing down. And can you respond on that? Yeah, slowing down and think of quality rather than quantity, and I think as you start to get up in an executive managerial level, you've got so many things going on, it's just like, wait a minute, let's tackle this, this and this, rather than trying to be all things to all people and wanting to do too much. So instead of when we roll out something like a, let's say a tutoring program, and rather than just rolling it all out, we'll test it, just kind of see how it goes. So that's kind of what I mean by slowing down, being cautious and just doing what you can do and do it successfully. So I think slowing down is definitely one. Two is having patience. I don't know many people that respond to managers or partners that aren't impatient and demanding. I don't, maybe they do, I don't particularly do, I haven't seen many people in the education field respond that way. So I think patience is a third one, and then really it's being persistent and not giving up because you're going to go through, there are some days, some days, more than others. It's a marathon, not a 50 yard dash. You know what somebody told me once, he said, think of it as a 20 mile march, one mile at a time. That's exactly right. One mile at a time. A series of steps. And if it's an obstacle, it's just meant to go over, around, or through, and it's not a, the challenge isn't to get there the fastest, the challenge is to get there. That's right. Right? Yeah. But powerful. Yeah. Very powerful. The old tortoise and the hare. Yeah. Yeah, kind of like that. The old tortoise just has to keep going. It's going smooth, it's nice and accurate. Right. If you're too old, you might want to stop and have a miter on it. Well, you know, didn't this time go so quickly, there's so much to talk about. We're out of time. We'll have to wrap it up. Guy Benjamin's Words of Wisdom with regards to Key Six Success can be found on Newman Consulting Services' webpage, numinconsultingservices.com, and landing page, denilia.org. Thank you to you, our viewers and listeners for tuning in. Thanks to our broadcast engineers, Uri Bender, our floor manager, Nick Sexton, and to Jay Pudel, our executive producer, who puts it all together. Thank you, Guy, for joining us today. What wonderful information and sharing your insights to success, to the Key Six Success. Thank you. The Key Six Success will be back on next Thursday at 11am. We ask that everyone to lend and ask your friends and family to do so as well. My name's Denilia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And again, I'm now the half of the duo, John Newman. Thank you so much for coming, I mean, for tuning in. And we'd like to leave you with a quote, if we will. It's by an unknown artist, and it says, do not put the keys to your success and someone else's pocket. We thank you all. Aloha. Aloha.