 and welcome to another edition of Business in Hawaii. I am Deil and Yanagita, and we are broadcasting live from the ThinkTech studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we are at www.thinktechhawaii.com, and you can sign up to get on our mailing list there as well. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to bring you stories of local businesses by local people. And our guests share with us their journey to building successful businesses in our sometimes challenging environment. In the ThinkTech studios today is Richie Aki, managing director of Hero Fire Protection. Richie, welcome to the show. Good afternoon, Deilin. I have to tell you that, you know, I shouldn't be here because you are radio personality, you are, so I am just gonna roll right in and ask you, tell us about Richie, where did you start? How did you get here? You own Hero Fire Protection, tell me about that. Well, thank you for having me here. You know, it's been a while since I've been on the radio, so might be a little rusty today. But, you know, Hero actually started because I was actually, I got out of the nightclub business and radio that nightlife, so to say. I got involved in the renewable energy side of things with solar, so nightlife to daylife. And it was really competitive and we were looking for something that would differentiate ourselves when we're at the kitchen table talking to customers. And we were fortunate enough to be introduced to some of the product line that I'm about to tell you about today, which helps families, you know, to protect families in the event of a fire. I actually grew up being the son of a firefighter. He's a fire captain. He retired and he would go into homes for inspection, spent 30 years with the fire department and I would hear a lot of horror stories about tragedies and fires and detectors malfunctioning and families, you know, he'd walk into bedrooms and find families untouched, not burnt and they had already passed on and I just couldn't understand why people would just lay there during this fire. But, you know, he would tell me, what if you don't know that a fire is there when you're sleeping? So when this product line was introduced to us when I was, you know, running my solar company, I said, let's take a look at this and let's not just help families save on their electric bill but let's help them, you know, save lives out there. So this product took a life of its own and we started Hero Fire Protection because of it. I know that you also own Akamai Energy. Where did you find your entrepreneurial spirit? I mean, where did that come from? You know, I guess I just always liked the freedom and the challenge of, you know, shooting for the moon so to say but, you know, I've always been an entrepreneur ever since, you know, I was 16 years old working as a bedroom DJ, right? So, but, you know, my life has transformed and I'm still carrying on that entrepreneurial spirit and it's hard for me to get a nine to five, really. It's really hard, you know. It gives me the flexibility to spend time with my family and I don't need a lot of time to my church as well. So it works out. Where'd you go to high school? I have to ask. I went to Kamehameha. Oh, well Kamehameha served you well in bringing that entrepreneurial spirit to the table and getting into so many different things. So please, please tell me about home protection. How this will help us? Okay. Where do we go? Well, for Hero Fire Protection, our main intent is to educate families about fire safety. So when we visit a home, it's not necessarily to go there and sell them something. We walk into the home. We'll actually bring them an emergency preparedness kit which has 167 pieces in it. I have one here on the table displayed. There's things in there like a flashlight, a blanket, a poncho. Let me just grab it right now. Got it. And some cool things that are bandages, ointments. There's even an iPad in there and I always get this look from people like I'm getting from you right now. It's not that kind of iPad. It's the iPad for your eye and eye dressing. But you should see the kids that get really excited. Dad, dad. But anyway, yeah, we give one of these out to all of the homes that we visit. It's a $60 value and it's something that every home should have in case of emergencies. But we also go into the home and we'll do an assessment of the existing fire detection system. And then we'll also bring in some fire safety awareness education. Some brochures. We even go through a fire quiz. We even have a coloring book or the cakey. So we have something for everyone because fire is something that most people don't think about, you know? It's not something you think about every day. And people don't realize that there's actually two primary types of fires. There's your hot fire, which most people are used to hearing about. But there's also cold fires. And, you know, if I could, I would have set this on fire today. But I was warned by, you know, the person in charge or that no, we don't want the sprinklers going off. Just to show you what we'll normally do in a home. And I always check with the homeowner first, but I'll actually light a piece of paper towel. As you can see, it was already lit before, but I'll light a piece of paper towel just to show the flame like a flame you'd see on a birthday candle. You know, it's a hot flame. That's what we call a hot fire. Not as much smoke, more flame. But as soon as I put out the flame, you'll see more smoke. And then I'll cover the jar and cut off the oxygen from, you know, fueling the fire. But so we're talking about hot flaming fires and also cold, slow smoldering fires, fires that you can actually touch. So two types of fires. So when you're looking for a detection system, you want to be able to detect both hot fires and cold fires. And it's a battle for oxygen, which is why when my dad would find families and we just had some tragedies recently in high-rise condominiums where they found the victims untouched. And really, people often say it's because of smoke inhalation. But really, it starts off as asphyxiation, which is the lack of oxygen. During that fire, that fire is going to fight and it's hungry for oxygen. And it's going to suck that right out of your bedroom, even with the bedroom door shut. So it's going to put you into a deep state of sleep. And during that time, when you're unaware of what's going on, you breathe in the smoke and that's what happens. That's why tragedy strikes. Which, you know, when we go into the home, we talk about four misconceptions about fires. So the first misconception is that it won't happen to me. Everyone always talks about it. It's not going to happen to me. You know, we'll go on and start our cars and go off driving. Now, we're going to assume we're not going to get into our car accident. But most of us should have car insurance to protect us from a car accident should it happen. Well, fire is very real. If it wasn't real, we wouldn't have the fire department. We wouldn't have, you know, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers and whatnot. But fires can happen to anyone. You've heard of absent-minded moments. You know, kids, elderly have left things on the stove. People forget about things in the toaster oven. You know, things can happen. So fire can happen to anyone, you know, faulty electrical. There's millions of recalls every year on products out there. Why? Because of fire hazards. So it can just happen to about anybody. And places like the attic, there's a lot of electrical wiring up there. Places like the laundry room. You know, lint can cause fire. Places like the garage, electrical in there as well. But yet, there's no real detection system for those areas until now, which I'll tell you about in a little bit. But everyone in a home has a junk drawer in their house. So when we go into a home, we like to immediately call their attention to this junk drawer because in there, they have scissors, papercliffs. Looks like you have one as well. Let me tell you about my junk drawer. You have coins in there, staples, steel wool batteries. And what people don't realize is something like this, like this nine volt battery can be so dangerous, you know. You throw this in the junk drawer, throw this in a box and put it away somewhere. You know, I have a frying pan here. And sometimes you have like a steel wool in that junk drawer and this represents any type of metal. But see, if this were to touch this, it'll start to spark. And what happens is it can heat any type of metal to 150 degrees. And fortunately, my battery seems a little low, but you can see right here. Just by touching it, metal will ignite and it can heat any metal to 150 degrees. So something this small electricity in the containers, what we call it, imagine your home. You have electricity running throughout the entire home, through the walls, attic, you can't see it. Some homes have been there for, you know, 40 plus years, you've never changed the wiring. So fires can happen to anyone. So we always want homeowners to be ready, in case of a fire. The other misconception is number two. People think they'll have enough time to escape. And today's homes, you can have two minutes or less to escape a home. Old homes were built with much better materials, more quality made. You know, as time went on, you've got a lot of synthetics in furniture, a lot cheaper as far as manufacturing, more profit margins, right? So synthetics burn a lot quicker. So what the studies have shown is that you could have as little as two minutes or less to escape a deadly fire. Now, we've just seen fires on the news recently. The whole home has burned down in 15 minutes. So, you know, if you got two minutes to escape and you're in a deep sleep, which is when most people get surprised by fires, you wanna make sure that you're prepared. There's story after story about families just not having enough time to escape. Even, you know, really, really tragic ones where you've got fathers that only had enough time to save their daughters and not their sons. And I'm not trying to scare anyone out there, but really, if you lose a loved one in a fire or just in anything, really, that pain never goes away. So when we're out there educating families, we just wanna bring them awareness to the dangers of fires. We want them ready. The time to think about a fire is not when it's happening, when you got seconds left. The time to think about fires really is way before it happens. Way before it happens. So, you know, when we're out there, we're out educating people, it's absolutely free. I encourage them to visit our website, herofireprotection.com. We also have a Facebook page, Hero Fire Protection. We have a quiz up there. It takes 90 seconds. You can take that quiz and see how prepared you are in the event of a fire. And if you have any questions from there, you can always give us a call and we'd be glad to come and visit the home. You know, I think all of us remember while we were in school, elementary school, middle school, somewhere around there, that we would always receive education from the local fire department. We see them at home shows, right? Where they're educating about the fire, the actual fire. Right. Stop, drop, and roll. Right, right. That's if you're on fire, right? But hearing now what you have to say, it's never top of mind that what I have to be most concerned about is smoke. Right. And that's really, really interesting to me. I would love to hear more about some of those things that we think we know. Clearing up some of those misconceptions for us when we come back from a break. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m., aloha. Hi, Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch, for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich, enlighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, Mabuhay, and aloha. Welcome back to Business in Hawaii. My guest today needs no introduction, but we have Richie Aki, managing director of Hero Fire Protection. Hi Richie, how long has Hero Fire Protection been around? Because I feel like these are things that we should know. You know, we've actually only been around for about a year, and it's surprising. You would think more people would know about these misconceptions, but even from what I'm about to share with you soon, you'd be pretty surprised at the information that we provide for homeowners. I'm already surprised, so I wanna hear about misconception number three. So as far as misconception number three, it's that we are prepared, and the reason why we feel that we are prepared is because, you know, we often have fire drills at school and at work, and I've got my smoke detector, so no problem, you know, in case of fire strikes, I'll be ready, but what we don't realize is that when we have fire drills in schools or at work, you know, everyone is awake. There's either a security guard walking around or, you know, janitors, other teachers, and really, everyone's alert, awake, and they can escape and walk single file and get across the street safely, but when it comes to a home fire, no one is really prepared, and in fact, when we go into homes, we'll often give them a fire safety quiz, and it's a simple quiz asking them things like, you know, how often do you change your batteries and your smoke detector? Where's your fire extinguisher? Things like that, and one of the most important questions we ask is where is your meeting spot? And sometimes I get this, you know, you're in the headlights look, and really, I had that same look before because I never had a meeting spot, but really, the importance of a meeting spot is to have somewhere either across the street at a neighbor's house or even at the street corner near the stop sign because if there was ever a deadly fire and say, mom is home all alone, dad is at work, she makes two calls if there's a fire. One, she'll call the fire department and two, she'll call her husband. And if he's racing home 20 minutes away, by the time he gets there, you've got fire department, ambulance, media, onlookers, and it's so crowded. You see it in TV all the time in movies, you know, dad knocking over the firemen trying to get into the house to find his family, when really they could be safe and sound across the street somewhere else and he's actually putting his life at risk. We've even seen this where families are trying to escape fires and two are going out through the upstairs window, others are going through the front door and they don't know where every family member is at. So it gives you a good way to account for everyone in the house if you all have one central meeting spot. That way there's no one searching for anybody leading to unlikely accidents in case of a fire. The other thing is we ask homeowners, do you have an escape plan? And again, more often than not, they don't have any escape plan. So we always encourage them to have an escape plan because again, the time to think about it is now when you can have some fun with it. We even encourage them to blindfold themselves. Why? Because when there's a deadly fire, and smoke is so thick and black, you cannot see your hands in front of your face. So you need to feel your way out. Again, when it happens and you got 60 seconds to escape, you're gonna panic, most people will panic. So why not prepare ahead of time so that when it does happen, if it does happen, hopefully it doesn't, but when it does, you are prepared. And I would encourage parents to have some fun with it with their kids and time it because you wanna get out as quickly as possible. The other thing is we always ask homeowners, where's your fire extinguisher? And they'll tell us, well, I don't have one or it's in the garage, it's in the kitchen. These are great places to have a fire extinguisher, but we encourage them to also have one in the bedroom. Why? Because if there's a fire and especially in condos, you know, or apartment buildings, if you get trapped in there and the fire is outside, but your extinguisher is in the kitchen, I mean, what good is that gonna do for you? So we wanna make sure that you have one also, you know, in the bedroom. We talked about fire drills. The most important thing that I wanna get across today is misconception number four. And that's my smoke detector will go off. We rely on these to go off and most people, including firemen, they tell me, oh, no problem, my smoke detector goes off all the time when I cook. And that happens with every home. When you're cooking bacon, you're frying fish, there's a lot of smoke. It'll set off the smoke detector. What people don't realize is that the type of smoke detector found in 90% of homes is an ionization detector. And the way it goes off is through the disruption of ions. So it's really a disruption of ion detector. It's not necessarily a smoke detector. So what happens is in this detector, you'll have ions going up and down. What happens is when smoke gets in there, it cuts off the flow of ions, which is what sets off the detector. Sort of like a burglar walking into a house and he goes across that beam to set off the burglar alarm. Same thing with an ionization detector, which is why, you know, no one ever reads the manuals, but in here, it'll say things like, you know, don't put it in the garage or don't put it in the attic. Don't put it in the laundry room. Don't put it in human areas. Don't put it in the kitchen. I mean, there's a lot of don'ts in here. It even says in here that it'll save only half the amount of people, but no one reads the fine print, but, you know, I got it off. My eyes are still pretty decent. And I was able to go through the fine print and again, warnings in here about why ionization detectors will not go off. The other thing about these detectors is they all have an expiration date. So just like milk, milk can still be cold in the fridge, but it could be spoiled. Just because you changed the battery in the detector, all it's doing is making the speaker work. The ions could have already expired. Okay, when it comes to a deadly fire, you've got thick black smoke. The particles in that type of smoke are larger and less frequent. When you got cooking smoke, the particles are frequent and they're very fine. So they build that layer just enough to set off the detector. When it comes to black smoke, when you've got a lot of space in between particles, those ions can still flow, which is why you see stories. Just look it up on the internet. Story after story about failed smoke detectors. You've got tragic stories. In fact, on our site, herofireprotection.com is a seven minute video. You've got fire marshals talking about it, fire chiefs talking about it. You've got moms who have lost children and they changed their batteries and they changed their smoke detectors. But why is it happening? And it's because these detection devices cannot pick up that black smoke. And in tests done by the NFPA, which is the agency that tests fire safety equipment, 55% of detectors out there will fail, not even go off at all. And the 45% that does work may take up to 30 minutes to sound. No, think about it, 30 minutes to sound. We just seen a fire on the news the other day that the whole house went down in 15 minutes. We're talking about two minutes as the amount of time at most to escape. And yet some of these detectors can take up to 30 minutes to sound. But we've all gotten used to paying for a $10 alarm at your local store, putting it up, changing the batteries. And we feel safe because of this. So what we have is a device that not only will pick up cooking smoke, but it picks up dense smoke, gray smoke, black smoke. On the night of the fire, either you get out or you don't. So what we have is something that will go off with black smoke. It works with optics. So I know on TV you can't really see it, but you can see those two optic lenses. So it's basically searching every day 24 seven for 2% smoke every four seconds. So the only way you could duplicate this, you'd have to hire someone to basically patrol your house every night to make sure your family's safe. This does it for you. It scans for 2% smoke every four seconds. We have this screen in here that's also, you can also clean it on your own, but it prevents the insects from getting in. We don't want insects in there. That's why the alarms you have at home go off in areas with a lot of dust, the garage, the attic. Why? Because insects can get in there. So this does it for you. 2% smoke every four seconds. The other thing it has is a heat sensor. We talked about two types of fires. We talked about slow smoldering fire, which is your smoke, not as much flame. We also talked about fast moving flaming fires. Now that flaming fire is the same type of fire that can melt some of these detectors right off the wall. This is what my dad would find in homes. Go to the bedroom, family never knew there was a fire. The fire is moving so fast, it just melts these right off the wall. Well, this has a detection system for heat, which picks up a 20 degree rate of rise. So if it's in a short period of time, 10 seconds, it feels that heat coming, it'll go off. So, you know, you don't have to wait till that fire is like threatening your life. We recommend these alarms throughout the entire home, not just one in the hallway, which the old code talked about having just one in the hallway, but a fire can start in the attic, it can start in the garage, can start in the bedroom. One detector in the hallway is just not gonna do it for you. Now, we addressed the problem of heat detection. There are some areas like the kitchen, the attic, the laundry room, the garage, where a smoke detector can malfunction because of smoke, because of insects, because of dust. Well, we've addressed it with the heat detector. So what the heat detector does is it goes into these hotspot locations that are known for the fast flaming fire. So it'll detect fire in those locations and not malfunction. So now you can have protection throughout the entire home when fire is beginning to threaten your family, not after you have no way to escape. So, you know, I'm very passionate about this product. You know, I've been an entrepreneur since I was just out of high school, but out of all the products that I've sold, I'm most passionate about this product line. Why? Because every home I go into, they have no idea what they have that's gonna protect them in case of a fire. And here we have a solution. When I first heard about this, I called my dad immediately and I said, remember those stories you told me about? I have the answer. So I shared it with him and he spent 30 years in the fire department. He said, you know, you better get on that right away because seems like a really good product. You know, fire detection should pick up smoke. It should pick up heat because fire is both hot and also has a lot of smoke. So just to show you how sensitive this is to heat, you don't have to wait for the fire to actually get there. I brought my hairdryer. I know we're live here, so I hope this works. But I'm gonna make sure it's nice and warm. And I promise you, Dalen, the hot air is coming from this, not from me, okay? I'm gonna count it after. 1,001, 1,002, 1,003, 1,004, 1,005. Okay, so between 1,004 and 1,005, so four to five seconds. And because we're live on TV, you get to see how our Bluetooth works. Okay, so when there's a fire threatening your family, every device in the home will go off. The attic, the kids room, the garage, the kitchen, the living room, throughout the entire home. All you have to do is press the button on either the alarm closest you or on this bedside controller, like a snooze button here. It'll shut off every single alarm, except for the location where the threat of the fire is. So it's amazing. If I did this same test to this, the protection system you have, I'd be calling forever. So the end of time, this will never go off. Why? Because it won't pick up a fast flaming fire. To wrap it up, one of the best features we have with our alarm system is our phone app. It'll alert up to eight people. The monthly service, there's no charge for this. It'll tell you the room temperature, the smoke level, everything about the fire. So you could be at work on a trip. If you're not aware of it, somebody else on your app, up to eight people, your mom, neighbor, sister, they can let you know what's going on with your system and your home to keep your family safe. Wow, you know, I think for a person like myself, when we talk about prevention, but when a situation happens, so if there is a fire or there's smoke, the panic that sets in, and this is just human reaction, the panic that sets in, we forget all those things that we practice, what you're supposed to do. But with this smoke detection system, it helps it to be preventative. So it's detecting it so quickly that I have time to address it, to rectify the situation before I feel panic. Right, and you hit it right there. Time is what saves lives in fires. Right now, everyone out there has time to call us so we can prep you for a fire. And on the night of the fire, time is what saves lives. You wanna give yourself as much time to escape. So that's why, you know, our slogan is when fire strikes, you need a hero because really, that's what you need. You need time. Speaking of time, we are out of time. Is there anything you wanna leave us with? Just to remind us what is important. I just wanna encourage everyone out there to either call us at 942-HERO, that's 942-4376, or go to our website, herofireprotection.com. Also our Facebook page, Hero Fire Protection. Give us a call. Our service is absolutely free to go into your home and give your family an assessment of your existing fire detection system as well as your fire safety awareness. And it's absolutely free because we wanna get out there and help as many families in Hawaii as possible. Richie, thanks so much for keeping us safe. And the education, I think that's really, that's the most valuable part, right? Is we need that information and we need the education to make great decisions. So unfortunately, we are out of time. I wanna thank Richie for joining us today and a very big thank you to the amazing production staff here in the ThinkTech studios. If you would like to be a guest on our show, please feel free to email your information to shows at thinktechhawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 p.m. and we look forward to seeing you here next week.