 Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on ThinkTech Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, character, and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today was the president of United Laundry and a former first lady of our state of Hawaii. She is Vicki Cayetano, and today we are going beyond leadership. Hey, Vicki, welcome back to Beyond the Lines. Aloha, Rusty, and thank you for having me today. Vicki, I love every time I talk with you. I mean, you've been doing so many great things throughout your life, but can you first start off by sharing a bit about your background growing up? Well, I was born in Manila, Philippines and came to this country really on the coattails of my sister Ginny. You see, my sister Ginny was a child prodigy who played the piano, and she was discovered by Ed Sullivan, who back then had the number one variety show in America. And so he brought her over, and what was supposed to be just a one-year visit turned out to be really the privilege of a lifetime to live in the greatest country in the world. Well, I felt so great to meet Ginny as well, and you both are so cute together. And Vicki, I really like that you have both of my books, and can you tell me what stood out to you in my books? Well, your books are not only enjoyable in terms of reading, but what I really like, Rusty, is it's really written for people who want to excel in life, and it's written really well for leaders of companies, organizations, nonprofits, in terms of how we manage people, and how to get them motivated, so they know how to manage people. I love in your book Beyond the Lines, you know, I think it's chapter three, the four piece of success, where you talk about people, purpose, process, equals, performance. And so as managers and leaders, when we talk to people about how to lead and how to guide people, it's a great tool to use because it's very simple to understand, very specific, and it's a great manual for them to be a much better leader or manager of people. And it's all about people, right? It totally is, and I feel so happy that you like the books, Vicki, and I want to ask you more about leadership. I mean, when you were president of United Laundry, I mean, what were one or two reasons why you, they were so successful under your leadership? Well, again, you write well in your book, and some of those analogies really resonate with me, but for me, it's about the people and giving them purpose in what they need to do, clarity in how to do it, and giving them the tool, supporting them to make it work. I also believe that it's important to have transparency and accountability. You know, I've always told my team before, and you probably know that I left the company February of this year to concentrate full time as a candidate, but I would always tell the team, don't be afraid to acknowledge failure. Don't be afraid to acknowledge mistakes or the fact that we may be behind schedule, because the fact that we know it is a good thing. And so to me, accountability is very important. Too many times, especially I'm seeing in government, we come up with great ideas, but the execution and implementation is really abysmal. So the key to success for me is transparency, in other words, communicate with everyone what needs to get done, then accountability to track it, and then to celebrate success, and also to acknowledge failures. Makes sense. I like hearing those insights from you, Vicki, and Vicki, the big question. Why are you running for governor? That is a big question. Well, like so many people, I'm very, very concerned about where Hawaii is right now. You know, Rusty, for five years in a row, our state has seen its population shrunk. We're one of the few states seeing this, and the saddest part is that it is the young people and the working people who are leaving Hawaii. So I ask you today, if the young people who are the future of our state, if they're leaving Hawaii, what future do you think we can hope to have? It's very sobering. So this is why I'm running for governor because we need to bring the young people back. We need to keep them. They are our future. We need to keep them home, keep Ohana together, and make sure that we have a place where they can afford to live here and have jobs that they can choose from outside of the service industry. My own son and his family left last month. They moved to the main because like you said to me, you know, mom, I can't afford to live here if you don't keep helping me and I can't keep accepting charity. You know, I'm a grown man. I need to support my family on my own. That was really painful for me so to hear. And I'm not the only one. So many people are experiencing that. So like you said, get elected, create those opportunities for young people like us, and we will be home. That's why I'm in the race. Well, Vicki, you know, I think it's also a major bonus to have a business background because the governor, the mayor, I mean, they need to run a business, right? Right. You're absolutely right, Rossi. I mean, it's a huge budget and with many moving parts. And the focus is always serving the people. I want to bring my 34 years of results driven, proven leadership to this job. It's one thing as a former president and CEO. You know, it's one thing to be CEO. There's only one in the company. There are many number twos or threes, but it's a very different role. And so I believe that that has been the experience that I have, collaboration, and as an entrepreneur, being able to see not only the problems, but also the opportunities. And that's what we need to do because there are a lot of issues that we need to tackle with urgency to write the ship in order to bring our kids back home. So Vicki, I want to talk with you about some of those issues now. I mean, and I want to hear about some of your creative ideas, maybe some solutions you have. And if we can first start about your thoughts about affordable housing. So my affordable housing plan, I was probably the first candidate to come out with that. And it is on my website, but there are three components to my affordable housing plan. One is called rent to own. You know, we recognize that for many first time home buyers, the biggest challenge for them is being able to come up with a deposit, the down payment. They keep renting and they never create enough assets. So under the rent to own program, they continue to rent for a period of time with the state. And at the end of that 25 year lease, they take title to their property. They own the property. So that is a very unique concept that will allow first time home owners to be able to build their assets, even as they're renting. The second part of it is called designated workforce housing. While every job is important, there are three legs of our community that we cannot afford to lose because without them, we don't have a community. So designated workforce housing is targeted housing for healthcare providers, educators, specifically teachers. And the last component will be our first responders. And as you can see, you hear about the shortage of police officers. You hear the shortage of positions, especially here on the neighbor island. It is really at a crisis level already. So that's what designated workforce housing is for. And the third component, which is really hopeful to me in terms of being able to accelerate housing is simply affordable rental. Because there are people in our community like our young people or our kupuna who don't necessarily have to own a property, right? They're thinking short term, maybe three or four years. They just want to be able to live here affordably. And that's what rental housing is for. Vicki, I like that you have these ideas. And I want to ask what your thoughts are about helping small businesses. You know, Rossi, small business really doesn't get the kind of attention or support that it needs. And we need to be concerned because one, many of these small businesses are family owned and locally owned. And my concern is as we have welcome big box retailers, as we shop there and they do provide a service. But at the same time, it does hurt small businesses. One of the things I would do as governor is I would call for a different tax structure for businesses that gross less than $5 million annually. A tax structure that would be half of what the general excise tax rate is for other businesses. This allows them to grow their business because I think people like you and me would frequent support them. We would pay a lower tax rate. It allows them to build their business up to a level where they're more sustainable, where they're not as at risk, shall we say. And that's one of the things I would do to support small businesses. The other thing I think we really need to recognize is that so many of our residents are hurting. The cost of living has soared just in the last year. And so I would call for moratorium on the general excise tax for food, medicine, and diapers for people who earn less than $100,000 a year. We need to do something to support the people who need us most. And that's what government needs to do. And that's what I will do as governor. Vicki, I like what I'm hearing. And I think one of the biggest things that a leader can do is really to keep their people safe. And right now in our community, we're dealing with a lot of crime. We're dealing with homelessness. What are your thoughts about some ideas or solutions to those things? Well, you know, so many of these issues are interconnected together. So crime, of course, the shortage of police officers doesn't help the situation. Crime, drug related issues. How do we treat people with substance abuse? We really don't have a good plan right now, if you think about it. Whether you're talking about substance abuse or mental illness, these are long term service care situations that we need to address, not just taking them to the emergency room, making a visit, and they're back out on the streets again. So as governor, one of the things I would call for is a designated hospital or designated clinics on each island that will be able to provide a continuum of care for people with mental illness, people with drugs. People like these who suffer from this really need ongoing services. You're not cured of mental illness or substance abuse. You learn to manage it. And you can only do that if there's a kind of support that we need to give to these residents so that they can be part of our community. That of course is a big component of the homeless situation. You know, the mental illness, the substance abuse. So if we address those, many of our other issues in the homeless area will be taken care of, you take care of these two issues. But the third issue, to me, the saddest part of homelessness are those who are simply homeless because they can't afford their rent. We have no rent control in this state. And so when a landlord wants to sell their property or basically move a tenant out and give you an unreasonable increase, what choice do you have? We need to tackle that with affordable housing. And I would just say, Rusty, with my business background, affordable housing must also be tackled by looking at the underlying issues of the bureaucracy and the permitting and planning that takes way too long to get done. Vicki, you know, we haven't had a pandemic. I mean, before COVID, the previous pandemic was nearly 100 years ago. But for me as a coach, as a leader, some of the greatest leaders, they're always planning for all these unforeseen circumstances, no matter how bad it would be. I mean, and the pandemic is you can't get any worse than that, it seems like, but you know, just just planning for, you know, these unpredictable situations. So when it happens, you know how you're going to react. What are your thoughts about this past pandemic or the next pandemic? So with this past pandemic, if you think about it, much of the decisions were really left up to each county to decide what they wanted to do. While it's very important to listen and to local control, I think it's more important to bring them into the conversation and to create a statewide plan. I think there was a lot of confusion. Going to one county had one set of rules. Going to another county, you had another set of rules. I think that kind of miscommunication and confusion, lack of coordination, created a lot of chaos and frustration for the people of Hawaii. The second thing is, I find our government tends to be really too reactive. We react to issues rather than be proactive about it. Even with this latest surge now of COVID. Yes, we're not creating an overburden on our healthcare system yet, but it is creating chaos in the workplace because the infection, the transmissible rate is so high. So we're not talking about these things and really coming up with a well-coordinated plan among all the counties with the stakeholders deferred to health in order to have come up with a plan that everybody understands. And that to me is at the heart of being proactive and coming up with a plan that everyone understands, regardless of what county you're living in. We need to do a better job at managing not only pandemics, but any kind of emergency that can happen. Yeah, it's only a matter of time until the next emergency happens. Vicki, tourism is number one in our state. What are your thoughts about tourism in the coming five, 10, 20 years? So while people say, you know, we need to cap the number of visitors, we need to realize that you can't do that. I mean, there's, you know, people are allowed to travel back and forth here, but what we can do is manage capacity. I think this is very key. The good thing, the one good thing that we learned during the pandemic was that places like the, some of our treasured resources here, natural resources, how quickly they were able to recover without so many tourists visiting. So we absolutely must have a cap on number of tourists or visitors going to some of these areas like Hana Umabe, right? We need to have a cap on that. Um, the other thing I would do is make sure that our residents have access to these places so that there isn't so much of the divisiveness that you're seeing now between visitors and residents. But we can cap and look at the number of hotels that are constructed, you know, for future hotels, making sure that they stand, stay within their footprint. If hotels are renovating, they should stay within their footprint rather than expand and create more occupancy. That's how we can manage tourism, but we need to diversify our economy. And so many people keep talking about that, and yet we don't see any progress. The first thing I would challenge us to think about this is that to diversify economy, we need to attract businesses to come here or we need to attract businesses to grow here. And in order to do that, we have to have a better culture that works with businesses rather than be seen as an adversary of business. We need to be supportive and help our small businesses. They're oftentimes the heart of innovation, right? So to me, it's really important to create that culture. We want to diversify economy and have other lakes besides just tourism. Yeah, that makes sense, Vicky. And I want to ask you about education. What are your thoughts about how our public education system can improve? Well, you know, we've gone from an elected board of education. These are the people who direct the policies working with the governor to now an appointed board. And I think the most important thing starting at that level is to make sure that we have the most qualified, competent people on the board of education, people who understand what the teachers and principals go through every day. And then in turn, we'll support the superintendent. I think a lot of times some of our progress is hampered if we politicize boards or commissions, if we're not making the right decisions for the right reasons. So I would say that that's one of the most important things that a governor can do is to make sure that the board of education is aligned with the Department of Education and that we support our superintendent so that he can support the teachers and the principals to serve the students. Well, that is so key. I mean, having the alignment, I mean, an alignment, and I know how detailed you are. It's not just being on the same page, but being on the same sentence of the same word on that page, right, Vicky? That's right. I mean, you know, as the winning as coach, tennis coach, right, if you and your students are not and your assistant coaches are not in alignment, how do you achieve success? Yeah, that's for sure. And Vicky, I want to ask you about our healthcare system. I mean, obviously, are the doctors and nurses during the pandemic, I know some doctors and nurses that worked 24-hour shifts, 36-hour shifts, and then they would take a one-hour or two-hour nap and then do that 24-hour or 36-hour shift all over again. Now, I think we all appreciate what our doctors and nurses have done through the pandemic. Now, what are your thoughts about how our healthcare system can improve even more? You know, it's really sad I'm here in Hilo today and the healthcare situation on the neighbor islands in particular is really bad. I mean, the shortage, as you said, the burnout rate, so we absolutely have to tackle this with urgency. We not only have to look at how we can create incentives and keep our young people here to stay here, but we need to make a concerted effort to bring back physicians and healthcare personnel who have left Hawaii, from Hawaii, who have gone to other states. We need to bring them back and to me, we need to be very specific about how to do that. And it would be a combination of affordable housing so that they can live here and some kind of an incentive also on their tax just for the first two or three years is what I would see in order to incentivize them here to stem this shortage immediately. And then, of course, we need to tackle education on the neighbor islands because these positions and nurses have families and they don't want to be having to send them to private schools. So we need to also address that. So all these things are connected together. The independent physician model is disappearing. And to me, that's very concerning. We absolutely need to have a balance of both a corporate healthcare structure as well as the independent physician structure, especially in more rural settings like Hawaii Island. And then with that, we have to look at the reimbursement. Hawaii has the lowest Medicaid reimbursement. Why is that? We need to talk to our congressional delegation, work with them to see how we can increase those reimbursements. That is at the heart of why people are leaving Hawaii in the medical field. They just can't make it either. The reimbursement is too low. So there are many issues broad, deep, and all of them takes in my mind, a new mindset to be able to tackle that, not just the traditional way of governing anymore. Vicki, I like hearing your insights about all of these various issues. And you and I, we've been on teams before, whether it be in business or sports, you're a great leader. You know many other great leaders. What are some things that you feel the greatest leaders do? First, I think they have to be willing to make tough, difficult decisions. This is very important, not just the popular decision, but the tough decision. You know, I'm fortunate Rusty at 66 years old. I'm not beholden to anyone. I'm doing this because I want our young people to come back. I want to keep Ohana together. So being able to make tough decisions, to inspire and give hope to people. And then most of all, you must execute because the talk doesn't just doesn't cut it anymore. And then leading to lead with humility, collaboration and confidence. That's the three combination to me, humility, collaborative and confident leadership. Those are the qualities I look for in great leaders. I completely agree with you, Vicki. I mean, those are so necessary. And like you said, I mean, words and actions matter. And because what you say, you have to do it, right? It's about execution, but really love those insights there. And Vicki, what's when you reflect back on your life so far, what's an important lesson you've learned? Well, I think the lesson I've learned is really what my grandmother would share with me, that no matter how difficult life gets, and people can break your bones, they can try to hurt you with their words, but you never let them break your spirit. And that kind of, and you know, she said that because she told me she was thinking that when she was just about five years old, and they were breaking the bones in her feet as they found them. Imagine being a young girl and going through that pain. And she said to herself, as I went through that pain, I said, you can break me, my body, but you will not break my spirit. That's my grandmother, my biggest hero. I'm about to cry with you right there too, Vicki. And Vicki, I want to ask you one more question before we wrap up. What gives you fulfillment? Oh, that's not difficult to answer. Three things, making people's lives better. I always share that with my managers. If you can make your employee's life better, you are the best manager. So making people's lives better. Two is animals. You know, I have seven dogs. We have seven dogs and two turtles. And I love music and arts. That is the soul of a community. Animals, arts, music. We can take care of all the other things around us, which we must, ooh, shelter. But you also need to take care of your inner spirit. That is what creates thriving, happy, fulfilling communities. Vicki, I have to say it was an absolute pleasure having you back on the show today. You're a woman of great character, super successful in business, all your life, and really want to thank you for joining me on the show today. Thank you, Rusty, and thank you for inspiring me and inspiring so many people on your show and through your books. Thank you, Vicki. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com. And my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Vicki and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.