 We're back, we're live, it's 11 o'clock rock here on a given Friday and we have Dave Heenan with us. Dave Heenan the word, we're also talking about a magic word, a mystical magic word. He's here, he's here with us. Take a quick shot, there's Dave. Thank you. Dave, he's the trustee of the state of James Campbell, one of the nation's largest land owners. He's a visiting professor at Georgetown University, at least for now. What did serve? I knew him then as chairman and CEO of Theo H. Davies & Co. for several years, and that's the North American holding company for the Hong Kong based multinational, Jideen Matheson. And he's been vice president for academic affairs at UH, and he was the dean of the business school, and I don't know what else. It takes too long to read all of this. I'm also a notary public. Notary public. If you have any notary public work. They always, you always forget. Sorry. And he's a writer, and he writes, and you know that when you're a writer, you know, you speak like a writer. Writers are different than regular people. So and he's written a number of books, I'm going to just take some of them off. The one we're talking about today is Hidden Heroes, Finding Success in the Shadows, just rolling out now. In fact, book signing last night. Last night. Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble. Book is just out, literally. Yeah, great. And here it is. And I have a copy, believe it or not. Also by David, and leaving on top, you've heard of some of these, Bright Trimes from Dark Hours about business, about business, Flight Capital, Leadership, Double Lives, Co-Leaders, the New Corporate Frontier, and Re-United States of America, which discusses, among other things, the draft, one of my favorite subjects. There you go. Sure. National Service. Yep. But before we talk about this book and the amazing points in it, I need to talk about the marathon, Dave. Well, you know, we're filming on sort of the marathon Sunday, almost, and for years you and I both ran together. I think I did, I did 13 here and two in Philadelphia. But after I quit, we happened to live in a company provided house on Cajal Avenue at around the 23-mile point. And because Theo Davies was the largest seller of Budweiser through its Pizza Hut franchise, we were able to abscond three kegs every year and essentially disputed or distributed a free beer on the course of the marathon, three kegs, which was just a lot of fun, you know, for both the helpers and the receivers. You were at the tail end of the route and kind of had to go down and across Diamond and hit it all the way down into Copy and Learning Park, so they were pretty dehydrated by the time they got here. And you know, you've done this, your mouth feels like cardboard, and to have a beer and it wasn't a big one, it's about that size, it's quite refreshing actually. But you know, the fast guys, you know, the world-class marathonists, they whiz by you and look at you like you're a pervert. But our kind of runners, you know, say, there is a God, there is a God, and they knock him back quite nicely. You know, in those days, I ran once in London, and in London it was really quite remarkable. I thought it was fabulous. Things were so different from running in the U.S. I mean, one, for example, if you needed to take a leak, you know, you did it where you stood, including the women. And then, of course, there was this extraordinary thing about the pubs, it was like seven o'clock in the morning. Well, the pubs are open. Yeah, God bless them. We must have talked to you, because they were handing out beer, these big steins. You know, my dad was a bartender, actually, an Irish bartender, so beer and I go back a long way. We must be related. I'm like cobblestones in London. Was that part of the problem? That's part of my story there, yeah. I've heard that, you know, in Europe, a lot of the courses are tough because of the cobblestones. Yes, true. They had red carpet throughout the whole 26-mile course, however, if you were slower than a certain speed, they'd be pulling up the carpet in front of you. You had a run on what was underneath, which was the cobblestones. And I remember, I'm glad you raised that, because I think I still have injuries from the cobblestones. Yeah, a lot of people have problems with that. So let's talk about your book for a minute, and I want to tell you what I was thinking on the way in. Yeah. I'm talking about hidden heroes. Right. I'm talking about heroes, and there's a disconnect for me, because the hidden heroes you're talking about in this book, and we're getting too great a detail about it, are people in the shadows by the tagline, and understood. But the problem is that usually a hero is somebody known, I mean, well-known, somebody who is following the thread of all your books, leadership in a leadership position. So how can you be a leader and hidden? Does that work? It's a disconnect for me. Well, this is less on the leadership side. I mean, we live in a star-struck society, and we worship our heroes, whether they're astronauts, CEOs or whatever. So accordingly, people like Richard Branson and Elon Musk and Bill Gates are treated in a very, very special way. Yet in our heart of hearts, we know the real work, the heavy lifting is not done by a few organizational gods. The great man or the great woman, it's done by exceptional subordinates, people who fly under the radar. And that's the gang that I'm talking about. I think Will Rogers had that great line. He said, there aren't many heroes out there. The few of them that there are out, we clap as they come by on the street. But it's a limited pool of people. But these folks are essentially people who are selfless. They're egoists. They give up themselves. They take their careers, their ambitions, their lives, half a step backward to propel someone or something a giant step forward. Why do you write your books? You've written about nine of them already. Ten. Ten, sorry. It was counting. And why do you write these books? I mean, you don't have to. You can spend more time teaching. What have you, business in general, but you write books. Why? Well, early on, I was in a publisher parish world. I was, you know, as a business school professor. And to get tenure, you know, you got to crank it out. Of course, that stuff tends to be terribly dry, very, very analytical, a lot of quantitative stuff, not terribly readable. Once I got into particularly leadership roles, I found out that it was a hell of a lot more fun to write stuff that's more meaningful, more hard hitting, more in touch with contemporary times. And so it's, Jay, it's like exercise. I mean, I typically write from 5.30 to 6.30, 7 o'clock sometimes, every morning, Saturday I'll go from 6 to 10, Sunday I lay off. But it's just part of the routine. And when you get into it, and I try to do, I try to do anywhere from two to four hundred words a day, preferably four hundred. All of a sudden it adds up and you've got a 60,000, 70,000 word product. It initially looks like junk, but you've at least got something on paper that you can work with. Do you, do you have the voice initially, I mean, does the, do the words just spill out or do you have to craft them even from the outset? No, you have to craft them. I mean, most of my books, I can tell you that I've gone through them. I've edited them seven or eight, nine, ten times. And that's really the fun is the tough part is getting that first product out and it always looks terrible. I mean, you, you, the next day you look at it and say, how can I have written this stuff? But then you, yeah, there we go. But then the craft of writing comes in and you start to rephrase things and retink of things. And that's really the joy of putting a book together. Poetry. Yeah, poetry. Yeah. So how did, why didn't you write this book? Because this book is a little different than some of your earlier books. This book, in many respects, is a sequel to the co-leaders book. The co-leaders book, you recall, was entitled Second Bananas. Again, publishers didn't like that, so with the help actually of Spencer Johnson here in Hawaii, if you know who moves my cheese, he actually came up with a title and publishers love that title. I wrote, I co-wrote that book with Warren Benes. A great leadership guy who died about a year and a half ago. But that book, as this one, was a frontal assault on the celebrity CEO, whether they're business, government, the military, what have you, who is presented, again, as the great man or the great woman surrounded by a pack of docile pygmies. This suggested that there's a broader group of folks out there. In that book, the number twos, that in many cases were as gifted, if not more gifted than the more celebrated number one. That book by far was our bestseller, and a number of people, including the publishers, said you ought to take it down a couple of three levels in organizational life, and that's what this book endeavors to do. So in the book, co-leaders with Benes, I think in terms of the appeal in the marketplace, a lot of people don't see themselves as leaders. But they could see themselves as co-leaders. So you're appealing to them. And now, with Hidden Heroes, you're taking it down to another level in the corporate structure, and you're appealing to more people yet. And Jane, as with co-leaders, this is not a business-business book. I mean, there are many people in categories in this book. And in co-leaders that are way outside the world of business. Yeah. Well, let's talk about sports education, entertainment. You have a table of contents here that's very provocative. I would hope so, yeah. Of course. OK, aside from the first in praise of Hidden Heroes, because I guess this is sort of an introductory, definitional thing. You have hoop dreams. That sounds like sports. You have football, light, LITE, even, something like sports. Supporting acts, is that about? It's about the openers, back-up singers, supporting stars who put their own careers behind the scenes to prop up their more celebrated headlines. Yeah. Find your Ed McMahon. Yeah, no. As you may know, I did a book before on leaving on top. Yes. Where I compared Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson. Johnny got out on top. Ed got out in absolute basket games. That's a long time. I remember we talked about that. Perfect Gentleman. I'm curious about that one. Perfect Gentleman are, who do you think is the most important personality on a luxury cruise ship? The captain, maybe, or? Social director. The social director, the head chef. No, the most important stars, Hidden Heroes, by far, are the revolving crew of male dance hosts dedicated to women traveling alone. Of course, of course. Absolutely. When you talk to far-sighted executives, and I'm talking the luxury segment, I'm talking the silver stars and the crystals and so forth. They're number one clientele. By far, or older, wealthier, women who outnumber men four to one on those ships. And over the years, they've found out that these ladies are no longer content to sail solo, nor are they content to play bridge and go to fashion shows around the swimming pool. They literally want to kick up their heels, and that means dance. And so, again, far-sighted cruise ships bring on a bunch of single men, typically between 45 and 70, to basically dance their shoes off. Maybe it could be an occupation for me. Well, you have to be to be, well, you've got to be single, and you've got to be proficient in six dance steps. Major dances. Is that right? You also have to be in damn good shape, because as you know, you've traveled. The gong goes off typically in one of the lounges at about 10 in the morning, and it doesn't end until afternoon. And the rule is you've got to be there for every dance. So you don't want to be an old geezer running out of gas. But the good news is you don't have to sing. You don't have to sing. Okay, Hall's disposable dons, that's provocative. Disposable dons are the large cluster of adjunct faculty. These are non-tenure track professors who teach now almost 65% of all the courses offered by our great universities. And they typically are way underpaid. They tend to be abused. They don't have office space. They don't have all the many faculty privileges, but they do the heavy lifting. And in terms of teacher evaluations, and then a lot of empirical work on that, they almost in every case outperform the permanent faculty. But they're a group that literally is fighting for their lies because many of them, you know, have found that this is sort of a career to know where. Yeah, no tenure possible. No tenure. And the tenured faculty tend to be against them. They have very little support groups. Although most you'll find in many campuses now, these adjuncts have unionized. And they've also gotten some support in Congress. But they're a very, very interesting group of people that definitely are in the shadows. And they make it go around. They are the backbone. They really are the background. And, you know, they're part of the gig economy, which you know a lot about. The gig economy on campus. On campus, you know, for university presidents and boards of region, if you wanna slash salaries, I mean, if you wanna, you know, save some bucks, you know, you let $125,000 full-time professor retire and you fill those classes with a couple of Joe Blows who were making 2,500 bucks a course. So, I mean, the criticism has been adjunctivitis, which Paul Solomon presented on PBS, where in many cases, either universities have overloaded on these folks, on the back of these people, or more importantly, they've just been woefully underpaid and undercompensated. So, you see, this is not just about hidden heroes. It's about the system. It's about our society, the way things work, where you fit in, where you don't, where you can make a contribution or not. That's Dave Heenan, author, among other things. We'll be right back after this short break. Hello, my name is Crystal. Let me tell you, my talk show, I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So, I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well-balanced attitude in life. Join me. Hello, this is Martin de Speng. I wanna get you get excited about my new show, which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're gonna broadcast on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha, kakou. I'm Marsha Joyner, and I'm inviting you to navigate the journey. We are discussing the end of life options, and we would really love to have you every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m., right here. Bingo. So, we're gonna talk about a little further detail about hoop dreams. There you go. And, you know, this is interesting because when we talked last, we talked about leaving on top, and in that case, you were out there engaging with people all over the country and beyond and talking with them, even visiting them, you know, taking a trip and going to see them and trying to understand why they left on top or didn't, you know, and the educational value of that is huge for anybody reading the book. So, did you follow the same pattern this time? I did, Jay, although that was more personality, people-driven. The chapters typically were about one or two people. These chapters tend to be about a cluster of people. I mean, there are tons of people sprinkled in the chapters, but it's less person-specific and more topic-specific. Okay, what about hoop dreams? Hoop dreams is interesting. I mean, hoop dreams, you know, pro sports are all about victory, all about winner. George Allen, winning is everything. Yet there's another group of people on the other side of the balance sheet, win-loss column, who are equally important. Those are the losers. And for 60- You can't have winners without losers. There you go. You can't. And for 63 years, basketballs, Washington Generals were hidden heroes. They were the losingest team in all-time sports history. Over the years, they managed to lose 16,000 games, all to the same team, the Harlem Globetrotters. Perfect. Going for a record. These guys lost in front of popes and princes. They lost in front of kings and queens. They lost in front of Barack Obama and Nikita Khrushchev. They lost on aircraft carriers. They lost in bullfight rings. Perfect. They lost in empty swimming pools. The last time they won was January 5th, 1971, when their owner played a coach, a guy named Red Klotz, who I interviewed. Red died two years ago at the age of 93. Managed to sink the winning shot that took care of the game. Since that time, they never won another match. But Klotz was always a circumspect about losing. He said, you know, losing's just part of life. And he said, if you've tried hard and given it your best, so what? It's how you play the game. It's how you play the game. And he also reminded me that winning's only important in two theaters, surgery and war. And in a lifetime, in 60 years, these guys and remarkable players were the competitive counterweight to Abe Saperstein, the creator of the Harlem Globe Trotters in the 20. You know, his famous all black traveling squad. They were great. They were great, yeah. But these guys, you know, when Red recruited players for the generals, they had to play the role of the foil, the victim, the understudy. They could never upstage the fan favorite trotters. These are guys that we're gonna have every night after night, their shorts pulled down, the ball put behind the back of their shirts. Shirts, by the way, Jay, with no names in the back, these guys before, during and after the game were totally anonymous. Professional straight man. Absolutely. And at the end of the game, they would sort of slither out a side door in the arena, never to be heard from again, until the next night when they lost another game. And that formula worked for years and years. I think you probably know, in recent years, the Harlem Globe Trotters have had some ups and downs. They've survived two bankruptcies and a string of ownership changes. But all during this process, Red Klots and the generals have been by their side. In fact, Red, on two well-documented occasions, bailed them out. Financially. Financially. Interestingly, as a closer on this, after Red's death, the Harlem Globe Trotters decided to name their 2015 world tour the Washington General's Revenge. And players on both teams had Red's initials on their jerseys. But only three months into the tour, the ownership of the Globe Trotters had a change of heart and terminated the 63-year relationship. Oh, too bad. And people in the sports world, and players on both teams, past and present, were shocked that this happened. One of the guys I interviewed was Curly Neal, if you remember Curly, he's now in his 70s. But a long time, a Globe Trotter grade, he said, you know, the Harlem Globe Trotters' success, which is now in its 90th year, by the way, is every bit as much due to red clots in the Washington Generals as it is their own. And he said, don't ever call the Generals losers or patsies. He said they weren't. They understood that one of the greatest joys we have in life is to put a smile on somebody's face. And at the end of our games, frankly, nobody knew the score. They only knew. They all had a good time. They all had a good time. And so when the Washington Generals lost, everyone won. And that's really the essence of the good hidden hero. So it's not one person. It's a group. It's a group. Very important point. Let's take another one that we hadn't mentioned. I'm just taking it by random. But underdogs of the air, what in the world is that? Underdogs of the air are a very interesting group of guys. This is more historical. These are men and crew, 5,000 of them, who flew Navy blimps in World War II, derisively called poopy bags and gas bags. These are guys you can imagine going through flight training at Pensacola. And you're about to get commissioned. And these guys go into fighter aircraft. These guys go into helicopters. And you get orders to go to Lakehurst, New Jersey to be a flim pilot. I mean, this is not in terms of building a career in naval aviation where you wanted to go. But in World War II, what had been a fairly deactivated Roosevelt-hated blimps, FDR, he never supported them. But as the war broke out, as an anti-submarine search and rescue, almost a C-130 sort of offshoot, they recommissioned the blimp gang and again produced 130 of these with a very large inventory of pilots and crew. And yet, you know, through their careers, as you can imagine, a lot of people poke fun at them. But interestingly, Admiral Domitz of the German Tsar said at the end of the war, in terms of anti-submarine, they never sank a sub. But he said they dramatically changed the flow in course of their travels and attacks. And many of the merchant marine folks that were picked up always said, God bless our blimps. They were first in their heart. Right, perfect example. Perfect, yeah. But at the end of the war, as nuclear subs came on board, as high performance aircraft came on board, from a budget standpoint, these guys were basically a goner. And so in 1962, the last one was deflated. You can find it at Lake Harris-Navell Air Station. All right, still today. Still today. Although the instrument, the blimp itself, is having sort of a renaissance in high tech terms of both manned and unmanned blimps that are, among other things, high altitude, weather seeking, some of them are equivalent to drones surveillance. Unmanned. Unmanned, some are manned. And the advantage is you don't need an airstrip of any size for these things. They have tremendous lift capacity. So transport in Alaska, and so they're doing a bunch of these things now, they are having a resurgence. Without an airfield, sure, Alaska's perfect. You know what strikes me? John Glenn died, and now we're sort of analyzing where he fit in the space program back when. And it strikes me that for every John Glenn, there's a lot of hidden heroes around him and under him. And that's another, I suppose, example of what you're talking about. And Glenn would know it. I mean, just as an aside, I was going through Marine Corps officer training at Quantico, and they hauled all of us into a large theater one day. And that was the day that Glenn blasted off. And of course, he was, at that point, he was a colonel, a Marine colonel. He flew in Korea with the likes of Ted Williams and Jerry, remember Jerry Coleman? Another Yankee who later was a broadcaster. So they had an incredible squadron. I knew, in fact, in my squadron, we had a guy named Bud Yont, family of Yontzville, who was also in that squadron. Yeah, an amazing group, but Glenn was the, in many respects, the essence of the Marine Corps, which is a spree decor. And if you look at the Iwo Jima Memorial in D.C. or any other place, you'll notice that all of those personalities are faceless. In fact, it's almost impossible to get any sort of facial recognition out of them. No general officers, no officers of any kind. And that's the kind of value system that the Marine Corps Semper Fi tries to inculcate that really is an element of the ethos of John Glenn in his later life. Supporting the program, not needing or wanting to be recognized as a top hero. I'm giving you your book, I'll sign it for you if you want, but I'd like you to pick a page and read us a paragraph just so we can feel the beat of the prose. Oh my goodness. Sorry, sorry about this day. You didn't tell me. Let's see, I mean, this is also good, that here's a local one that I hope doesn't shock anybody. Oh no, was Ruben Chong's street name, as in oh no, here he comes. For a decade, the homeless ex-convict prowled Honolulu's Chinatown in search of his support for drugs. Who could imagine that this 34 year old street smart thug would eventually find his footing at Leeward Community College, where he graduated as a straight A student and student body president. He then went on to earn his bachelor's and master's degree at UH Minoa. Nothing in Ruben Chong's life came easily. Given up by his parents at birth, he was abandoned by his adoptive parents at age three. As a ward of the state, he shuttled between at least a dozen foster homes before fleeing an abusive father in the 11th grade. After a precarious year in the streets learning to survive, he joined the army, where he stayed for almost six years. But when he got out, he had developed a drug problem broken and broken with no formerly family to call on. A demoralized Chong lived for 10 years on the streets convicted of four felonies and spent almost five years in prison. But it was there through a substance abuse program. He got his life back and I'm just jumping here. After his release from prison, he enrolled at Leeward. And from there, everything went up in the right direction. I think I've got it, Dave. What you're talking about is inspiration. You know, at the core of you, you're a teacher, a leader, an inspirer. This book is about inspiration for all of us. That's what I think. I think so, I hope so, Jim. Thank you, Dave. Terrific, thank you.