 Good afternoon. It's Tuesday at 4 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time, and this is Working Together. I'm your host, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, and on this show we talk about the economy, the changing face of work, the changing face of occupation, and what's happening in the tech economy of Hawaii. Today, we're really lucky because we do have a special guest who, thanks to technology, is joining us from the Big Island. We have Mickey Laurie from Independent Phone Service in Camuela, and she's going to be talking about what's happening on the Big Island and with the telephone industry, communications, and high-tech issues there. If you call in and join us, our phone number is 415-871-2474, and we will be able to hear you and then answer any questions that you have for us today. So you can also tweet us at ThinkTechHawaii, and again, we will be able to see your messages via the screen in front of us. So without further ado, let's go to the Big Island and talk to Mickey Laurie. Hi, Mickey. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you now. Very good. Very good. Good. So you are at Independent Phone Service in Camuela. Tell us about your business and about your client base and what you do for the local economy on the Big Island. Well, we are Independent Phone Services Incorporated. We have been on the Big Island. The business was started by George Laurie in 1990. We incorporated it in 1991. At that time, he had inherited a lot of his initial client base from the company that he was working for on Oahu. When he split up from them, the client base followed him and has since grown to well over 1,000 customers, both business and high-end residential here on the Big Island as well as the Otter Island. And we also have clients on the mainland using our VoiceOverIP's phone service. Wow. What kind of services do you provide? We provide and install telephone systems, again, for businesses and residential. We also provide VoiceOverIP phone service. Those also for primarily their individuals, a lot of whom are, they're teleworking. They're working for a company out of their home. And so you're able to provide the tech assistance that those telecommuting employees need right on Hawai'i Island? That's correct. That's correct. We house the phone system here in our office in Kamuella and deploy the phones. And like I said, we provide local phone numbers to people that are actually on the mainland working for firms that are here based in Hawai'i. So can you tell us how many people are you currently serving using telecommuting service? We have on our voice service about 500 customers. Wow. And what sorts of businesses do those telecommuters work for? Oh, they run the gamut from real estate to, gee, we have teleworkers that work in the hospital industry. There are some that have phones at home in case people call them during their off hours. I for one, for our company, have been teleworking since the early 2000s. Our company is here based in Kamuella and I was living on Oahu and working from there. And it was quite something back then to be able to tell people when I answered the phone, oh, I'm working on Oahu and they're like, well, I call your Kamuella number. Yes, and it rings on my phone on Oahu. And it just kind of boomed after that. So what kind of challenges do telecommuters face or that you experience that may be different from the kinds of challenges that employees who are more traditionally employed experience? For us personally, a lot of it had to do with hard paperwork. There, you know, faxes were always available so we could fax paperwork in between. But back in the early days when this was going on, if something needed an original signature, it needed an original signature. So I either had to fly the paperwork back or, you know, put in the mail and there was always that delay, the lag time in the mail. So that was one of the bigger challenges. Now a lot of offices, they say they're going paperless. I don't know if an office can truly be paperless. There's always going to be paper. There's definitely a paper trail that has to happen. Yeah, I see your paper trail right behind you. Oh, yeah. Yes. So you also mentioned that you have high-end residential clients. What sorts of services and products do these high-end residences require from you? The high-end residential mainly they have these, you know, these mansion type houses, not anything like what we see on the mainland, but on a smaller scale, but still in multiple millions of dollars. And so they want to be able to tie in their in-home security to their phone system. They want to make sure if someone pulls up to their gate, they can press the gate and call the house. Things like that. So it's mainly on-premise type solution for them. Yeah, their phone system, their communication system in their residence. So you have to then provide service, say, from the residence to the telephone pole, is that right? And then the phone company picks up the rest? Yeah, the phone company provides service to the DMARC outside of the house. It's usually not, it goes a little further than the pole. The service from the phone company will terminate in a box somewhere on the house, you know, in a knit, and we take it from the knit or the network interface device. We run the wiring inside the residence wherever it needs to go, and we connect the phone system to that. Have you found, one of the misconceptions or one of the stereotypes I should say about the neighbor islands is that they're technologically behind, say, what we're doing in Honolulu or what we're doing in the continental U.S. Have you found that to be true? Not at all. Not at all. We may be a little bit behind, but we're doing the same things and we're not as far behind as people think we are. There are places on the mainland that I even have talked to that we still live in grass huts, and we don't. Speak for yourself. I live in a grass hut. The coconut wireless is a little bit more than two coconut shells in a string. Yeah, drums, right? You communicate with drums? Exactly. So there's a lot of high-tech activity on Hawai'i Island thanks to the observatories and the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park keeping track of volcanic activity. What sorts of things do you see in the future for that kind of infrastructure and industry? Can the Big Island position itself as a high-tech hub by perhaps joining with those existing high-tech firms? You know, I would think so. I would think we have, logistically speaking, we're in a good place to do that. Our link to Asia, linking the U.S. to Asia, we're right in the middle of all of that. It would be nice if we would pursue that, if there were monies available from the government, whether it's local government, state government, or federal government that would put money into Hawai'i. I think we would be able to support that. Apart from the money issue, I mean, because we always talk about how government funding would be the panacea to cure all ills, I think, within the economy. But what are some of the other ways that we need to come forward and support high-tech in the state? Think a little bit about, say, public education, what should we be teaching our kids? And what does the educational system look like in terms of providing knowledge with our STEM programs, science technology, engineering, and mathematics? And, well, what's happening on the Big Island with public education that is helping the tech industry grow? Well, they're giving, I think, they're giving the students a good foundation. But once they finish that four-year education and they get out into the world and start working in the tech field, it's a completely different world. What they learn in the classroom, the concepts that they learn in the classroom, a lot of times it's not that they don't apply in the real world, but real-world scenarios are, there's no substitution for real-world, real-world scenarios, is what I'm trying to say. I had this conversation with George when I told him about the interview coming up and he said that his advice that he would give someone who was interested in getting into IT especially is get the bare minimum education that you need and get out there and get a job. Start at an entry level and learn that way because things change so quickly that what they're learning in the classroom can't keep up with what's actually happening outside. It's funny you mentioned that because I teach at the university level and one of the trick questions that I ask my students is, okay, you guys, five years from the day you graduate, you're going to have a degree in history. No matter what you studied, no matter what your diploma says, you are going to have a degree in history. So you have got to be developing the skills that you need to teach yourself going forward into the future. I'd like to focus a little bit more on this talent issue because you mentioned that it's important to get the bare minimum of training and then work as soon as possible. How many employees do you have at IPS and how do you compete with say, oh, because you've got Helco on the continent or on the Big Island and you've also got other high tech firms that are compete with you for customers. I presume they also compete with you for talent. So how do you find talent? How do you keep it? Well, we, as a company, we're family owned. We've been very fortunate. The employees that we have right now, we have three or five. There are five of us. George is the owner of the company. There's myself. I do all the administration and we have three technicians. We have a service manager. We have a field installation manager and we have kind of a jack of all trades. Brandon does a bit of sales. He does servicing. He kind of rounds out the group. Hinano has been with us for 15 years now. Lynn's been with us 11 years and Brandon's the newest to the group and he's been with us probably four or five years since he got out of college. So we've been fortunate that we've been able to keep and develop the talent that we have. There have been times where we, you know, talked about it's getting busy. We need to hire. Who are we going to find? And immediately George and Hinano and Lynn kind of all agree. Get somebody off the street. Get somebody off the street who we can train and mold into what we want them to do. We always get resumes from people that are looking for part-time work. They're like on their way to retirement. They're either on their way to retirement or they've moved to Hawaii and they were lucky enough to have started work at an early age and they have years of service in their company and they're eligible for early retirement. So they're in their, you know, they're my age, 50s, and they're retired from their main job and so they're looking for something else. We kind of shy away from hiring people like that. Number one, they want money that a small company like us cannot afford to pay. Mickey, hold that thought. We need to do a little bit of housekeeping and let our viewers know what's happening on Think Tech Hawaii with our other programs. So stay tuned everybody. We will be back to working together on Think Tech Hawaii and our special guest, Mickey Laurie, from Independent Phone Service on the Big Island in just a few minutes. Aloha. My name is Danelia, D-A-N-E-L-I-A. And I'm the other half of the duo. John Newman, welcome. We are co-hosts of a show called Keys to Success which is live on the Think Tech Live Network series weekly on Thursdays at 11 a.m. We're looking forward to seeing you then. Aloha. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. They'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science with me, your host Ethan Allen. Welcome back. This is Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii and I'm your host, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia. We're talking about the tech community on Hawaii Island and we are joined by a very special guest from Independent Phone Service in Camuela, Michelle Laurie. Mickey, are you there? Yes, I am. Fantastic. I need to talk with you a little bit about one of the stereotypes about talent on the neighbor islands. There seems to be kind of an attitude among tech professionals and other kinds of professionals in Honolulu that there just isn't enough talent or the right kind of talent on Hawaii Island. Can you tell us about that? You mentioned that you have had people working for you for quite some time, decades in fact for some of your employees. But what about those folks that aren't working for you? What's the talent market like sort of in a broader high-tech way? I'm not quite sure I'm understanding your question. You mean if we were to look outside for someone or you mean how tech differs on a wahoo versus the big island? No, no. What I'm talking about is the conception that Honolulu people have that people that work on Hawaii Island say are far less skilled and far less qualified than folks that work here. What's your observation of that? There is a myth out there that the outer islands that basically all of our tech people are shaved monkeys and that's so not true. We have capable, qualified, intelligent people that know what they're doing out here. And some of them, especially the ones that we work with directly far surpass the level of knowledge of some of the people that we work with in the same capacity on a wahoo. So what then can Hawaii Island businesses, Hawaii Island professionals do to overcome that stereotype? I mean we obviously, without say bragging, we've seen a lot of bragging in recent history and we probably don't want to go there. But how do the big island folks let the rest of us know that you all are just as qualified, just as capable, just as highly skilled as anyone we might work with here in Honolulu? I think the only way that message actually gets out there is by word of mouth. If people, like our client base here, they talk us up and down, we get referrals every day from just because of the amount of talent that we have and the longevity of our employees. I mean our clients all know our employees on a first name basis. They trust them. They ask for them by name. If I answer a service call, they ask for a particular tech that they've worked with over the last five years or 10 years. They want that continuity. They want to be able to work with that same person. They feel that level of trust. I can't really speak to how that differs on Oahu. I know the market on Oahu, the competition is so fierce. But even with our clients that we have on Oahu, we have a technician base there and he's only been there. He's been there on physical and Oahu and the regular service person of those clientele for the last three years. When they call our office, they ask for him specifically. So how we compete or get that word out there, I'm not sure. It's just by word of mouth and just keep doing what we're doing. Do it right and do it well. One more question about the skill set that your workers have. You mentioned earlier that there is some difficulty for small businesses competing for the top talent that you need because of issues like compensation benefits and things like that. And yet, you have a very long-term workforce. So what do you do that's different from other employers? If you can't match, say, the market wages that are being offered, what do you provide to your workforce that a competing employer simply doesn't have? We don't have the strict and stringent rules we did once upon a time. But we don't have the strict and stringent rules of if you want to take vacation, you need to put your vacation time in, X number of days in advance and all that kind of stuff. They could come in today, look at the schedule for the rest of the week and say, oh, it's kind of slow Thursday and Friday. Can I take off? It's like, sure. And with a staff that's as small as we are, we pick up for each other and we have each other's back and we just pick up the slack whenever somebody's not. With a small staff, if somebody is even sick for a day, that can wreak havoc on us schedule-wise if we've got a job scheduled that I need three people on. What do I do if one guy calls in sick most of the time? Two guys are going to go work that three-man job and they'll get it done probably in the same amount of time. Wow. With the same level of quality? With the same level of quality. How do you do that? How do you get two people to do the work of three, produce the same quality of product and not pay the competitive market wages? I want to bottle that and sell it. Let's go into business ourselves. You know, I think a lot of it has to do with the level of pride that they have in their job. I see people from the phone company out there all the time and they just don't care. They don't care. They punch a clock. They're seven to three or nine to five or whatever it is and when they're done, they're done. We all treat our business as a family business. They're all a part of it. They all have a stake in it. If one does good, we all do good. If one fails, we all fail. And it's never a pointing finger thing. It's we're a family and that's how we treat our employees and we found that they like that environment. They've had opportunities. They've had offers from competition. Hey, come work for us. We pay X amount more. What my guys think of and what they told me is that they look at the money, they look at the paycheck offer, they're sitting on the wall, but what if I want to take off? And they can't. That's one of their things. The flexibility that they have working for a small company. Yeah, that is often something that larger employers simply cannot offer because it would be chaos if they allowed everybody to kind of come and go as they please. So that's true. That is something that can create a product differentiation as you build your employment brand. Now you mentioned that yours is a family business, but I'd like to kind of talk a little bit about another aspect. Because you also did mention that the pay scale is not perhaps up to market level for what competing employers may provide. That is the gig economy. In case you don't know what it is, the gig economy is one in which people will cobble together a number of employment opportunities in order to create the livelihood that they need to support themselves and their families. And we're seeing a lot of that kind of entrepreneurship in things like folks becoming Uber drivers, turning their spare bedroom into an Airbnb, getting into various kinds of product sales, home-based businesses, MLMs, etc. What does the big island look like in terms of the gig economy in that regard? Where you might have a full-time employee who's also a part-time entrepreneur involved in some kind of gig-type business. Well, you just described me. Really? So what's your gig without naming names? I'm a full-time employee for independent phone services and I also have two direct sales businesses that I do. One, I sell a clothing line and I also sell a jewelry line. Oh, okay. That's interesting. When do you sleep? Well, I've learned to balance everything. In the beginning, it was a little bit difficult. It did take, and again, this was one of the advantages of working for a family-owned company. All I did was talk to my boss and say, hey, I've taken this on and, you know, I'm going to need some time here and there and if I let you know in advance that I'm going to have a sale or something like that, is that okay? And he thought about it and he said, sure. Good. Listen, Nikki, we are quickly running out of time, which is really too bad because I'd really like to delve into this more. Are you free to come back another time? Sure. You just let me know when I can come back. Great. Maybe the next time you're in town, we could broadcast live from the studio. Oh, that would be awesome. Okay. But meanwhile, you know, please extend our aloha to your crew on Hawaii Island, and we look forward to working with you soon. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me, Cheryl. All right. Take care.