 Welcome to Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're a show that broadcasts every Thursday from 2 to 2.30 and we focus on success stories in Hawaii of both businesses and individuals and occasionally organizations that support them. We broadcast live from the downtown studios of Think Tech Hawaii in a pioneer plaza in beautiful Halalua, Hawaii. This week we're very fortunate to have Emily Kleiner, who is the Director of Events for the Pacific Business News, which is one of the premier business publications in Hawaii and has been around for many, many years. Emily, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Now you're here, I guess, wearing two hats today. I often do. Yeah, well, most small businesses, particularly the owners, wear multiple hats. But you're also a member of the Chamber of Commerce Young Professional Program. That's correct. I work with them on their steering committee to handle our mentorship program as well as professional development. Very good. And that keeps you pretty busy, I would imagine. It does, but it kind of goes hand in hand with what I do at PBN, so it's a natural fit. So there's overlap there. Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit. We're not going to spend a lot of time on it. We've had young professionals from the chamber on here talking about the program in the past. Excellent program. We're going very quickly. How many members do you have now? We have a little over 200 members and growing. That's amazing. I mean, I just remember I was with HMAA at the time when we actually kicked this off with Kyle. Yes, of course. Kyle really deserves the credit for getting this all started. They jump-started it, and we provided some of the initial sponsorship and funding for it, and it took off. And I think it took them about a year or two, and they hit 100, and now they just seem to be on steroids. They're just taken off. Yeah. It's a really fantastic membership committee in place. Jacob now has really transformed it. We get new members every week, and also I see that the caliber of the members have really taken off. We're seeing a lot more high level, director level, VP level of our members. Excellent. And that's the maturing process that the organization's taking, so it's nice. And Jacob is one of those energy guys, and he works for a company I think called HMAA. I believe so. Your role, you're involved in what capacity over the young professional? I work with professional development. So we do a once a month course for the entire year where I pick a different industry leader that has knowledge on a certain topic. So it's things that any young professional would need to know. So for example, we just recently had one on business etiquette, what to do at a meeting, what to do at a networking event, how to exchange business cards. Some of those basic skills, but things that not everybody knows. We range in topics from social media training, networking, personal finance, things of that nature. So it's all things that are really beneficial to people that are up and coming in their careers. Something they could put to immediate use. Exactly. Very good. And you do one of these a month? We do one a month. We take off December and sometimes July, but once a month. And we have the whole schedule posted on the Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals website. So you do events with the YP program, but you also work for another organization. I do. You do events over there too. I do. I'm the Director of Events and Promotions with Pacific Business News. I know you're quite familiar with the brand, but PBN hosts upwards of 50 events a year, all different types. Everything from educational base to, you know, thought leadership events about a specific industry or a specific area of the island. We also do a lot of award events. That's probably one of our more commonly known styles. We call them a signature event. Things like Women Who Mean Business or our upcoming Forty Under Forty Awards. That one's happening on June 9th, as you know. Forty Under Forty, and that's the one that, there's a lot of overlap. You see a lot of familiar faces in both the Chamber and, yeah, both sides. I think it's my work with Forty Under Forty since being with PBN that kind of steered me in the direction of the Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals Group. You know, Forty Under Forty is a super well-recognized brand. We're about to have our 18th year this year, the events at the four seasons. And we have close to 550, 600 people attending. Wow. So the program is really quite grown. Our Forty Under Forty class this year is amazing, and we find that the classes now really interact with each other over the course of the years. And many of the members are also members of our Chamber of Commerce Young Professionals Group. So in working so closely with the Forties over the last few years that I've been with PBN, it made it a really nice fit to do some work with the Chamber of Commerce. Right. And so every year you have this, and sometimes these groups stick together and they continue to collaborate, you know, almost like a, you know, a networking group. They do. And we really encourage that. We sometimes get calls and emails from the class of 2000, the class of 2002, where they've gotten together and done some sort of philanthropic event together, or gotten together just for a little palhanna. And it's really nice to see. We're looking at, in the future, doing some more alumni events as we call it. Well, that could be neat. You know, even at this year's event, we have several alumni that are attending and we do plan to note them out in the audience and work a little bit more with that as a brand itself. You know, it'd be kind of interesting to get, you know, one of your first classes, you know, and kind of pick a few and say, OK, here's where you were then. Where are you now? It's funny you say that. We've often thought about doing some sort of, I mean, almost like a yearbook style section where we have some of those former classmates that were in those beginning years and showing what they've accomplished, showing what was written about them when they were a 40 under 40 and how much has grown. You know, a lot of these are local leaders that are, you know, still here in Hawaii today. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I'm sure that they have a lot to share on how they were able to take this honor that they got and how they were able to make it work for them to help them along to get to where they're at today. Absolutely, definitely. I think that there's something there when we talk about mentorship and and really being there for our up and coming in professionals that are past 40 under 40 have shown a great interest in wanting to participate in that. And that would just fall under an events type of umbrella? It would. You know, we look at things like, you know, at PBN, there's so many different ways that we want to connect with our audience, but events are certainly the most tactile way. You know, it's the way that we can see people face to face. I find a lot of people use events now as their only time that they get to meet in person. So much of our communication is done on email and on phone. That virtual world. Exactly. So sometimes, especially for those under 40. Definitely. So sometimes we see that our events, sometimes it's the only times that you'll see your clients or see potential clients out and about in the real world. So we try to definitely encourage that. But another, you know, part under that event umbrella is looking at kind of, I mean, not an organizational standpoint, but looking at ways to keep those classes together, like what we talked about having some sort of maybe alumni group. We at PBN have a group of women business leaders together that we call Biz Women Connect. It's a private invitation only group where we host quarterly events for them. And that's proven to be quite successful and allows women in a smaller setting to be able to continually meet and grow together. So I think these are all things under the umbrella of events that we would like to consider doing in the future. Well, doing 50 events a year, which is like one a week. Just about, yes. And then you start layering on these other activities that you may be getting involved in. I mean, you're going to have to have a staff of four or five people to help you with this. Maybe I'll just clone myself a few more times and then we'll be able to get something going. No, but it's been extremely gratifying, especially to see where events have come just in the last few years that I've been there, but also just as an industry where it's come over in the last decade or two and how much it's played a role in people's professional development. Well, and that's, that's an interesting when you mentioned that the evolution of the industry and how things have changed. And I guess there's also some aspects of both the YP program with the Chamber and also with some of the events that you do with the PBN. Is it how do you get out and reach these people? How do you get them involved? How do you keep them interested in what's going on? I guess there's different ways that you do that now. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I mean, if you want to look at it from a basic marketing perspective, you know, there's the traditional ways that we market events. Of course, you know, through print, through email, all of that social media has become a huge part of that, both for PBN events and with our Chamber of Commerce YP events. What I found to be really helpful is when we get past honorees or past panelists, if it's a panel event to get in on some of that social media marketing with us, you know, there's nothing like getting an invitation to an event from a past honoree to really make someone say, hey, maybe this is something that I should attend. Obviously, the caliber of the people coming are going to be good. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, taking, you know, and multiplying the effect of having everybody get engaged with their own social media friends in contacts. Right. I mean, this can start multiplying pretty quick. And that's why you end up having a large turnout for some of these events. Exactly. And when we look at events for the Chamber of Commerce YP program and some of the PBN events that are more geared towards a younger audience, you know, millennials and Gen X, social media really plays a huge part in the getting that word out there. Absolutely. That's right. And enduring the events too. There's a lot of chatter that takes place during the events. There is, you know, take 40 under 40 as an example. Again, just because it's coming up soon, we'll of course have hashtags that will ask the guests to utilize. We have a Snapchat filter that's all done with geocaching so you can have your Snapchat filter come up when you're on site only. It's quite interesting what you can do now it is. Wow. And you said one's coming up very soon. Yeah. So 40 under 40 is our upcoming event. It's on June 9th. It's going to be at the four seasons this year. Don't worry. We started a little earlier. So it starts at three o'clock. So you don't have to hit that traffic. Getting in and out of that's good. That's good. But that's going to be a real classy event then. Yeah, it's going to be wonderful. We're really looking forward to it. We have a really fun theme this year. It's kind of this 80s 90s prom style. It's going to get carried over into the section that we do that will feature all of the honorees. Well, I'm going to ask a silly question. But do some of these 40 under 40 know what the 80s were all about? You know, a lot of the 40s were born in the 80s. So I don't know if I would say that they know what high school in the 80s was like. But pretty sure that they've all done their research as well to kind of see what it's about. We've been having some fun with it, asking them questions and what not about, you know, their favorite 80s songs and 80s movies just to get a sense of their responses. And they've been quite candid and quite hilarious if I do say so myself. Sounds interesting. It sounds like it's going to be a good event. And this is the one you're saying you've got about four or five hundred people? Yeah, it'll be probably between five and six hundred. Five and six. So that's going to be good. I hope they have enough parking for everybody. They do. Complimentary value parking for the event. So. Can't ask for any better than that. So what other type of events are you going to be looking at here in the near future? With Pacific Business News, we have a few new types of events coming up. We, of course, have our panel events. When we have also in June is our when we're to Wahoo means business panel. Many people are aware that this is when we've done several years. It's going to be on June 16th. It's a breakfast from eight to ten. Well, that's right after the night. Right after it. We just keep going right through it. But that's a really great event. We get business leaders from the windward side to talk about issues that are affecting them. It's moderated by our editor, Cam Napier. And it's a really good deep dive into the issues that are specific to Kailua, Kaniwa, Waimanalo. Now, we only got a few seconds left before we got to take a break. But just one real quick question. Does PBN ever do anything on Neighbor Islands? Is that something that might be considered some day or? Definitely something we are considering. We are looking heavily into reaching our Neighbor Island audience. We have quite a few subscribers on Maui and Kauai and the Big Island, just looking for the best way to approach it. But definitely it's in our future. That's going to be interesting. I might even fly out there to attend it. Why not? But we're going to take a short break. This is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker. We're here with Emily and she's just gotten married, I guess, a little while ago, years two, six months or so. Six months or so. So it's Kleiner, Emily Kleiner. And we're going to be taking a short break. We're going to come right back and we're going to drill down a little bit more into some of these events at both the YP and the PBN formats. We'll be right back. To Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker, this week we're talking with the PBN and Chamber YP program, one of the leaders in both organizations, Emily Kleiner. And she is going to be going into a little bit more details on exactly what's going on in both of these organizations here in the second half of the show. Emily, YPs, they do a lot of programs too. And if somebody wanted to find out more information on the YPs, maybe how to join and what form they have to fill out, how much it's going to cost. Sure. Where do they go to get this information? I think the easiest way to go is online on the website, the Chamber of Commerce Hawaii website has a very easy link that goes right to the Young Professionals program. There you can sign up for events. You can sign up to be given more information or even to be a member. It's actually quite affordable to be a member. The Chamber of Commerce YP program is for people that are 21 to 39. So I think that any organization that has Young Professionals would benefit from a membership. That's right. And the Chamber website is www.cochawaii.org. That is correct. See, I got that memorized. Great job. So we can go to that website and just drill in. There's a link right in there somewhere that goes to the YP program. Absolutely. And you've got all kinds of information there. Yeah. And if you're more into social media, you can certainly visit them on their Facebook, Instagram or Twitter pages. Just look for Chamber of Commerce Hawaii Young Professionals. Very good. And then there's a calendar. And I guess, do some of these events cost or are they free? How does that work? Yeah, we have both actually. So there are complimentary events for members to attend every month. We have a variety of different programs. We also have events that do have a small entrance fee, but most of the ticket prices are kept quite low. We also have, of course, the program we launched this year, our Mentor Hawaii program that has a cost associated with it, but it's a nice, intensive, half-year program for the mentees. There are a lot of benefit out of it. Yes, definitely. Yeah. And one thing, I just want to make this comment kind of peripherally. I joined the Chamber a long time ago, and I was very involved. And I started really when I started my practice, which was about 28 years ago, and it just started with me. And over a period of about 12 years I was able to grow that practice from one individual to over 200. And I had 28 locations. We were doing 7,000 returns, 300 business clients, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And it was done predominantly through the Chamber of Commerce and the networking and the value-add programs, the member to member. And so what I'm saying is that if you're not getting as much out or 10 times more than what it's costing you to be a member, then there's something wrong. There's ways to get that value. And it sounds like you probably know some of the tricks on getting the value out of the membership. And there's other people over there that can help them as well. Absolutely. We hear nothing but positive results from our members, especially the YP members. You can come in at a lower rate, but still get the benefits of a Chamber membership. It's some of the best networking out there. The events are very affordable. For many of our YP members as well, it's one of the only times that they get access to these C-suite executives. For example, we run a program called Professional Development Classes. They're once a month classes where we bring in that industry leader to talk about a specific subject. We keep these classes very small to about 20 or 30 attendees. So for a young professional who's looking to get some of that access, there's nothing really like it. That's right. And for them to get it in another way, maybe impossible. Absolutely. This provides not only the opportunity here to speak, but also to talk to them afterwards, because there's usually an informal Q&A. They'll hang around a little bit to have that interaction. I mean, imagine being a young professional just starting out in your career and being able to ask a question to a CEO of a local bank when you would normally not ever be able to have any access. It's a great opportunity for them. Absolutely. It's also, and I've presented to these and I've participated. Of course. And we hope you do so in the future. Of course, I'm happy to. But it's a great way for them to stay in touch with the younger generation too and get some feedback and thoughts and perspectives that maybe doesn't always find their way up to them at some point. You know, it really works both ways. When we talk about our mentor program, for example, this just launched this year and we had our initial cohort in the beginning of the year. We're just finishing up now and it went really, really well. So we're looking to expand it in the next session starts in June. We're actually still taking applications for mentees. But the response we got from our mentors was really just outstanding about how much they benefited from the exchange as well. And what I found is that I just do not have any shortage of wonderful executives in Hawaii that would love to serve as a mentor to our young professionals. One of the nice characteristics of doing business in Hawaii is that there is a willingness to share. Absolutely. It's been really wonderful and it works both ways because like you said, so much of our business in Hawaii and I imagine everywhere it's a multi-generational workforce. So these executives are also looking for information from our young professionals to see how am I going to best be able to work with the millennials in my organization and that gives them one-on-one time. It does. It's like you said. It's a win-win for both groups. Absolutely. Now, some of this also carries over to PBN. It does. So all these benefits and advantages that you're talking about through the YP program are also present in your events or some of the events that you do at PBN. I mean certainly when you look at the events that we host, the majority of them are featuring C-suite executives that are either speaking for us on a panel accepting an award. So being at an event where there's always at least an hour or two of networking cocktail time, it can really give you that chance to, as a young professional, to go up, introduce yourself, congratulate the executive and give you that one-on-one contact. I think there's, particularly when you start getting into the training aspects, because there's going to be the events where they have a panel or they have training and you'll be able to hear what they have to say, ask some questions at some time and then also have an opportunity to interact with them after the presentation so that, you know, you could just start building a relationship. You know, I couldn't agree more. We have an upcoming event as a perfect example. It's the state of well-being. It's an event that's about workplace wellness and focusing specifically on Hawaii. But we have as a keynote speaker Dan Butner, who is the New York Times best selling author of Blue Zones. At the event, we'll have a keynote from him, followed by a panel of local workplace wellness experts. And then after that panel, we have a nice little cocktail reception where the attendees can mingle with the panelists, mingle with Dan Butner. So it's a really great opportunity for you to be able to not only attend and learn, but also get that networking piece as well. Yeah, and sometimes it's that, you know, non-public type of discussion that can be most valuable. Absolutely. I mean, there's one thing to see somebody on the street and say, oh my gosh, hi, I know who you are. But it's another to be at an event where they're there for thought and they're listening and they know that you're interested in what they have to say on a professional level. Now, if somebody wanted to find out more information about some of the PBN events that are going on, and I'm using the acronym PBN for Pacific Business News in case the audience didn't catch that, but the PBN has a website as well. Of course, you can go to pacificbusinessnews.com and it's spelled out. It's spelled out as all pacificbusinessnews.com. You can also go to pacificbusinessnews.com slash events to see our entire events calendar. Very good. And if they get to that events calendar, are they able to sign up and register right there? Absolutely. All of our events are listed. You can register for any of them that aren't currently sold out, of course. And that happens often? It does. It does. This year we have had at least 90% of our events sell out. So it's best to get there early. Absolutely. Yeah, that's good. And you can take payment online too? We can. We take credit card online, secure a site for companies that we can always give us a call at our office. Good. And it's fair. And I've registered and signed up myself personally. And it's a relatively painless process. It is. We actually just switched to a new event site that really handles it for us really well. So there's only one page, super easy to fill out. Yeah. Very good. Now what do you think is the most popular event? And I'm putting you on the spot here. But what's the most popular event that PVN does every year? I would say that there are two, one being 40 under 40. That's always a big crowd pleaser. My other favorite event and one of our most popular, if not the most popular, is our Woman Homing Business Awards. That is a really wonderful event that we do every year. I believe this coming year in 2018 will be our 20th. Wow. So we'll be looking forward to reaching back to some of our honorees from the first year and seeing where they've gone and where they've gone in their careers. But it's a wonderful event where we honor the top woman in business in the state through nomination and we always have a career achievement honoree that's picked by our editorial board. That's a good question that just popped into my mind. Let's go back to the 40 under 40. Sure. What's the process if there's people out there watching the show and they're going you know, I want to get involved. I want to maybe submit my name or I know somebody that might fit into that group. What's the process? How does this all work? That's a great question. Most of our events that are award events are done by nomination. We have a nomination site on Pacificbusinessnews.com slash nomination. Very easy to remember. But there you'll see all of our open nominations for the year. Good. We have I would say eight to ten nomination based events a year. So you'll really find something for anything. Some are for individuals, some are for companies. For example, an open nomination that we have right now. It's a new event. This will be our second year but we had a wonderful response last year and we're looking forward to it as well this year. The categories include things like the best hotel event of the year, leadership and food and beverage. So there's something, you know, for all aspects of hospitality and we really look at it from a business standpoint. And I guess it's a golden pineapple right? This year was a Coalwood pineapple but we'll see what we'll do for next year. That's good enough. Coalwood has that Hawaiian theme too. Of course, of course. That's good. And I guess when you go to this slash event or slash nominations site it'll also give you the deadlines when it opens, when it closes. Everything will be right there. Most of our nominations have a form that you'll fill out and it'll have some simple questions. They're actually quite easy to fill out. Most nominations will also allow you if you choose to submit some letters of recommendation. We recommend these clients or business associates that would really be able to attest to a person or companies standing in the community. It's got some history with them. Yeah, exactly. What we look for when we're talking about nominations for most of our events, especially individuals, is not only what they do in their business but what they do in the community as well. That plays a much larger role in selecting honorees than people realize. Okay. Alright, well we've got a couple minutes left and then we're going to have to wrap up. But how does the judging and I know you mentioned a balance of community involvement as well as professional. What other categories do they look for and where does this group come from that makes these judgment books? Sure, I mean all of our events are judged in different ways and by different panels of judges for lack of a better word. It's usually a combination of our editorial board, past honorees, leaders in the business community that are specific to that industry that we're honoring. When we're looking for nominations the judges will have certain criteria that they look at and of course it depends on the event but like I said usually it's what the business or individual is doing for Hawaii from a business standpoint from a community standpoint and what things are different because of them in their organization so what kind of changes have they made what role have they played in elevating that company. And I would imagine because I've been a judge on some of the not PB unnecessarily but other groups sometimes you get nominated you don't always make it the first time. Correct. So there's nothing wrong in being nominated a second or third time. I mean practice makes perfect right? We completely recommend that you know we have a policy that those who are nominated but not selected as an honoree that is kept confidential so there's really no reason for a person to not nominate year after year you know some years we get significantly more nominations in one award than we would this year and so sometimes it's more competitive than others we really recommend to keep trying and also always to take that nomination and update it every year with what you've done that previous year. Absolutely that could make a big difference. Definitely. You know we're pretty much at the end of the program we need to wrap it up pretty soon but I certainly appreciate you taking the time to come over. Of course. Somewhere it sounds like you're doing more than 50 taking the time to come out today but this is Business in Hawaii with Reg Baker I was here with Emily from the PBN talking about the events that she does at the Pacific Business News as well as the Chamber of Commerce YP program we broadcast live every Thursday from 2 to 2.30 and we cover stories on successful individuals, organizations and businesses in Hawaii until next Thursday Allah