 I'm your host on Think Tech Hawaii today, Cheryl Franklin, and today I will be joined by a very good friend of mine, a owner of NK Management and Entrepreneur, and we're going to be talking about the age of COVID-19 as it relates to being innovative and how it affects condo land. So why don't we start with you, Mano, and welcome, and thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me, Cheryl. How's everybody doing? Good, good, good. So let's just take a moment and just have you introduce yourself and tell the audience a little about you. I know a lot about you, so we'll just share with the audience. Yeah, I'm an entrepreneur. Cheryl, I would say my story dates all the way back to Texas. I was a refugee and I came to America in 1975, joined the military at 21. The military brought me to Hawaii. I got into condo management, got some really, really good mentors at Touchstone and Cheryl knows all these people too. I started my career at Touchstone and then I went to Hawaii first under Richard Embry and then a Vice President and Associate before I started my own firm five years ago. Yeah, yeah. And like you said, we know a lot of the same folks and I had the pleasure of working with you for a little while and venturing down the entrepreneurial lane, if you will. And as the owner of NK Management, NK Management is a site management company, correct? We did start off as a condo site management company and in condo land in Hawaii, there's resident managers, there's general managers and site managers all pretty much doing the same thing, but they just have a different relationship with the board, right? Resident managers live on site, site managers just come nine to five, they don't live on site and then the general managers, they're the ones that are at the larger hotels with the large staff, but they don't necessarily live on site either. But we all pretty much serve the same purpose for the boards. But then we've diversified since then doing landscaping and we just got our general contractor's license with the DCCA. Oh, that's exciting. I didn't know that. We just, you know, during the COVID, I have an RME, he took the exam and everything is just backlogged right now. But yeah, we're doing some minor renovations as well. But we've evolved since the last five years. Yeah. As it relates to site management and you're venturing into other aspects of that. Have you had to change your operational infrastructure much in lieu of COVID-19 and that's such a, that's such a, that's a loaded question. I think that depending on all the challenges that you have, I think your operations always gets tweaked to some degree. And, you know, Cheryl, we've known each other for a long time. I'm a big fan of tech. If an app can make our jobs easier to save time and resources just through some freemiums, through technology, I think you were the one that told me about Trello like six years ago. And I use that platform to store a lot of my governing documents. It's free. It's password protected. But yeah, you know, what's interesting is during the COVID, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are now being forced to use technology, you know, zooming for board meetings, storing documents online. I mean, if you're not already there, you're behind, right? I think this pandemic is going to force people to work more efficiently with technology or not, right? They're going to have a harder time. Yeah. Are you finding that most of your boards or associations are pretty, pretty open to our new normal and, you know, new ways of doing things? Are you having zoom meetings? We are having zoom meetings. And of course, the early adopters are going to have a lot more fluidity using the technology. I think a lot of people have iPhones and they underutilize them. But, you know, like my iPhone, I mean, it's not a commercial iPhone, maybe they should sponsor me, but I literally run my company through my cell phone. I have access to all the documents I need now. I think when, earlier in my career, I would follow the president of Touchstone around Jim Merrill. I'd go with him from meeting to meeting and he'd have this thick binder of like bylaws and house rules and decorations. I remember those things. Right? And he's tugging this thing along. And then nowadays, like this, it's been replaced with this, right? Yeah. And so, I built the company with that in mind. So now that like during COVID, I have access to documents I don't need to be physically on site to, you know, to have access to information. And I think that's very important, especially now. Yeah. Yeah. No, I remember those huge workbooks. I think they were about this thick, big blue and had all the minutes and all your documents and the financials, financials and everything. And we used to have this big wheeled briefcase that we travel traveled with. And so, you know, we've come a long way, and things are getting faster and smaller. And more efficient. And, you know, us being a site management company, I was like, how are we going to, you know, be different? And we have to standardize all of our buildings, right? Standard operating procedures, you know, if one site manager is replaced or is sick and they get coverage, you need some sort of standards and guidelines to follow, right? Oh, well, what does the maintenance guy do on Wednesday through Saturday, right? If this guy is out, the next guy should be able to come in and follow his procedures and do them, right? And we've, it took a long time, but we, we finally started, we had to build the system to use the system, right? So if you just take a new building in and you don't have the system in place, you have to build it, right? Like, if you had like a 10-unit leak, and there's a brand new building, you don't have everybody's phone numbers, right? So you have to like, you know, I have to get contact. You have to build it. You have to build it out. Then you utilize it. So, oh, there's a leak. Okay, well, the SOP is the contact owners, A, B, and C in these units, well, we don't have their numbers, right? So, you're bad for you. You got to come in and start, you got to build that system out to use it more. And again, if there's leaks now, I don't have to go knock on the door and see who's there. I'll just call, hey, Mr. Yamamoto, can we come and inspect your unit? Are you home? You can do so much with technology, text messaging, emails. So anyways. Yeah, I think when I met you, you and I used to go out to lunch and talk about the future and talk about technology, remember? We did. We do it often, but you know, it's a lot of work up front. You know, otherwise it's garbage and garbage out, but in the long run, it's worth it, especially when you can even automate the input, you know, taking spreadsheets, if you will, and uploading into a program or software opposed to manually inputting everything. And the future is where AI can actually read documents. I've seen some companies do that where they have automation that kind of scans your documents and, you know, and kind of extrapolates all the important information that, you know, a manager would need. Of course, right now, AI, you know, you have to have the quality control. You still need folks to kind of look over that to make sure the checks and balances are there, but I mean, the future is now we're getting there and at a rapid speed. But you being a tech guy, you know, this is right up your alley. Yeah, and, you know, I've had the privilege to work for three different management companies. And I know I can tell you for one that there's one company that has endless resources, you know, the largest in the world, which is a social, and they had the best technology, they had everything that I think they had C3, they had, they had like the latest in like Adobe Acrobat, you know what I mean. So if you needed to like assign documents, you could print, you know, you can save as a lot easier. But nowadays, there's a lot of, again, there's framiums out there where you can use the keyword searching for like OCR text reading. Reading through like pages and pages of governing documents and bylaws is makes your eyes bleed. And again, using using keyword technology is huge because just before we went on air, right, he was asking us for keywords and because we there's an audience out there that would find this interesting and we want to hashtag it and keyword it so they can find it and make maybe this is useful, right. Yeah, yeah, well that's definitely what we want to do continue to provide information and to continue to look for ways to help the audience. Innovate you and I also have in common that we're entrepreneurs at heart and I know that during this time, a lot of folks are looking to come up with creative ways to move forward and innovate and ideas are coming to the surface and you know, now's the time to use this extra time per se, although not everyone has a lot of extra time because working from home. But I find that a lot of folks are having a lot of creative ideas that are helpful during this time, you being one of them I know that you have another project that you're working on. And I'm excited about and you know I want to give you the some time here to kind of share that idea with the audience and let them know you know what kind of exciting things you're working on. So sorry if there's noise in the background we're doing construction but they're doing a really good job but you might hear some banging in the back. Thanks. I've, you know, I did get my MBA in 2017 at UH Manoa, and I've been surrounded by some of the most brilliant young leaders in Hawaii. A lot of my friends are CFOs in the hotel industry. I mean, they told me back in earlier this year, hey man, we're going to lay off 50% of our staff. Yeah, they're hit hard. It's hit hard, right. Yeah. I've had a lot of restaurant friends just closed down the restaurants during this time. And I think right now, you know, I listen to Mark Cuban a lot about how companies have to be, you know, innovative and compassionate during this time. If your, if your website isn't geared for you to accept online payment and transactions, you're already buying the curve so hire a web designer pay the money it's worth it right because you got to get your product and the customers hands without as easy as Fast, yeah. But no, the innovation for us. We are a site management company offering different types of services for maintenance and site management. So, you know, I have a background in medical. I was a hospital corpsman and a licensed emergency medical technician. When I was in the USS Navy US Navy US Navy as a hospital corpsman for many years. I don't think I knew that about you. I'm full of surprises. Yeah. But we always had to be ready with our medical supplies. The Marines and sailors we took care of. We always needed to have PPE so I have some back then yeah. Yeah. And for me, you know, during when this all came about earlier this year, I called a friend very good business guy in Vietnam Min Lee shout out to him. He used to play professional tennis before that he played for UC Berkeley tennis and he stayed in Asia made a lot of connections and has some. We have some factory partners that are mass producing these antibacterial mass. They're not they're not medical grade. They're not in 95s, but only really the only like construction guys and doctors and nurses need in 95s. If you're not in the industry and you're wearing in 95s, then you're protected, but it's a little excessive. Yeah, let's let's get into that in a moment right after the break. Right, right. Yeah, so it's a good place to take a break. So let's take a break. Pick up right there where you left off. Okay. Sounds good. All right, we'll be right back. Aloha, I'm Christine lenders, a physical therapy specialist and the host of movement matters. My show is designed to teach you the simplest and most effective treatment strategies to get you out of pain and back to doing what you love. If you or someone you know is having pain in a certain area of the body with like a free assessment and treatment over media or in person and then come on the show to talk about it. Email us at think tech movement matters at gmail.com. Or if you have a topic you would like to know more about, please email us. My goal is to decrease pain all over the world, inspiring people to take better care of their bodies to enjoy life to the fullest. I look forward to hearing from you. Welcome back. And thank you for joining us. If you're just joining us, we're talking with mono when a management. He is a CEO and serial entrepreneur and before we went to break and he was telling us about a wonderful innovative idea that he's, you know, taking on and why don't I let you continue telling that story. Hello, thanks for having me again. And thanks for all that you do to have the show going. Yeah, we were talking about innovation. And I was discussing my medical background in the military, and just just being, you know, prepared for either disasters. This disaster happens to be this pandemic, right? So the first thing that came to mind was, you know, mass, you know, Vietnam is a very advanced mass culture because it's the air quality is not that great anyways. So my friends over there were like, look, the factories were going to shut down a friend of friends factories like 1500 employees. They immediately became a mask producing factory overnight. And they became essential. Now they can't even keep up with the global demand around the world with the local demand, the local and the global global demand. Right. So just partnering with my friend men. He's moved over a million masks to Japan. We've, we've moved a lot to the US to nonprofit organizations, veteran organizations, different hotels here in Hawaii and we've been customizing it with their company logos. And that's been, that's been a new venture. I never thought I would be selling product, but that's what we're doing. And, you know, there's there's short term gains, of course, financially, but primarily I wanted to make sure that our team was prepared. We had proper PPE, my family, my church, you know, we've been donating a lot to first responders, HPD nurses. And I always say it, if you, if you guys need masks and you're on the front lines, call me, I'll gladly donate it. We'll have to make sure that, you know, we let the viewership know exactly where they can, can find your mask. And I think that's great that you're doing promotional masks because even on, you know, different properties. You know, often you'll see the staff, they have like custom or promotional shirts, right? And so why not coordinate with the PPEs or the mask, if you will, so that they're easily identified on the property. Well, I think you follow, you know, what the CDC saying, it looks like we're going to be in the social distancing new norm society for a year until like a vaccine comes out. Well, if, if we are, if we are, whether, whether people are afraid or not afraid, like, right, the powers that be you're going to put the standards so they're not held liable. We're going to be wearing masks and then I think a lot of the major brands are going to want to exercise corporate responsibility. And we, we could be right here, you know, with with that opportunity. So we have the ability to move millions of masks at a time from Vietnam. And they're they're really high it's really high quality fabric. So right now we're working with a couple of doctors I can't say too much but there's a few hospitals and they're trying to get us into the VA but fingers crossed, I mean, again, at the same at the end of the day, we're helping people. And we have the ability to do it right now. And I think because we're all gridlocked with travel quarantines and travel bands. All the top investors in the world right now, don't know about Vietnam, maybe they will after this video comes out. Well, I know. And you know, I have my own ideas. So we'll be talking about that. Yeah, I was excited I contacted Jeff Dickinson over at Hawaiian properties their shipments have to come in they they ordered a lot with their own company logo. Now Guzman from colon he ordered a bunch but a couple of hotels that I know they want to be ready because as the economy slow rows rolls and everybody starts getting back right we want to be safe. Yeah, well, then then be ready so hotel managers that you guys need to happy be for employees. Please reach out to me because it takes about a month turnaround time because they're they're producing mass for the prayer everybody else. Wow. And I think another key element in that that is attractive because like you said, so many vendors or companies may or may not produce mass, but when there is a community when you're involved in the community in terms of donating mass to hospitals and things like that, it brings added value. And I find that, you know, people including myself like to support those kind of causes. So when you know that you're involved with an organization that's also giving back and paying it for your, you know, that's kind of another incentive to just, you know, kind of go ahead and, you know, support that company. Yeah, you have a background for all of that. I mean, your story is intriguing and your story is one that you can be proud of because you've certainly given back. And so it's the world's opportunity to come. Thanks. Thanks, Cheryl. No, I mean my, you know, my wife got I got a call from some of our friends from legal aid and the foster the foster youth of Hawaii wanted to raise money. For the foster kids. And we we worked at a deal to sell it to the mccost and that that that just happened and that's that's just my wife's, you know, professional connections here just again, man, if we can help right now. It's it's a time to help right because like social media is just saturated with death and all these numbers and what the president is doing with this. I was like, look, I'm not going to get into all that. I mean, I can I can get worked up over it or I can figure out and just make my own contributions. However, however way we can right so right. These are what we do. We do have control over these things. So yeah, just doing what we can. Yeah, well we need to share your contact information or your website. Yeah, I'll give it to you and if you guys will put the link for the mass in there. Definitely www.nk-management.com. Okay, sounds, sounds good. Sounds good. So, so yeah you're pretty busy these days and happy to hear it, and happy to kind of share some of the some of your insight in the industry, you know, with the viewership. And some of the things that you're seeing and changes that you have to make and, you know, and supporting the community and, you know, keeping your business strong and the community safe and the properties that you manage. That's a lot. You're, yeah, you have a lot on your plate. You think so. We're all given 24 hours and I want to, I want to make it count because we got to make time for our families right. How much time do we have left. I think about we have a little time maybe about five minutes or so. You know, I'll, this is this would kind of be part of our wrap up, like, when I was in grad school, I was friends, I was in a group, I was in a group with this guy in Tice he was a farmer, and he was the most sought after farmer in the Netherlands he had like, develop some really sophisticated like aquaponics or hydroponics in the Netherlands right. He got recruited by Monsanto. Anyways, long story short, we, we had all these projects in grad school. And I came up with the most excuses because, hey, man, I got a business, I got a family, you know, I can't get to this project. And he called me out. He's like, Hey, man, we all got families, we all work, you know, and he turned his Google calendar around and showed me he's a look man. I have I work here I do I put homework here I have family time here I study here. He's like if you're not taking it seriously if you don't use your calendar, maximize your day you're going to you're going to fall behind right and so I really started like just filling up my calendar as as my own like assistant, you know, and that's those are those are some of the things that's helped me as I was for just stay organized is using my calendar. Yeah. Yeah. No, it helps a lot. It helps a lot, because you, you find that you need in order to accomplish anything you just need to block out time and stay organized and keep that calendar fell. And even block out time, you know, to take care of yourself. I'm going to send you a book. It's called a double your double your double your profits. You'll realize you like the title so I will appreciate that. I'm going to send you that book because it was recommended to me by a friend and it's it's helped me out the mindset a little last year. So I'll send it to you. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I just heard the little thing. So I think this is a good place to wrap up. Thank you so much for having me. Of course, of course, I want to thank you for joining in and kind of sharing with us what's going on in your world and how you're giving back and, you know, paying it forward and changing the industry and, you know, I'm always proud of you. I'm proud of you. Let's, let's get together soon. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. All right. So thank you again everyone for joining us. Please turn tune in every Thursday for the condo and cider show at three o'clock, and we look forward to seeing you again. Thank you.