 I'm Rusty Komori and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. This show is based on my books, Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game, and it's about leadership, character and creating a superior culture of excellence. My special guest today is the president of our Honolulu Star Advertiser. He is Dennis Francis, and today we are going Beyond Midweek. Hey, Dennis, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Hi, Rusty. Dennis, you've been doing some incredible work throughout the years. I mean, you basically own almost all media and publishings. I mean, it's amazing, but I want to first ask you if you can share a bit about your background. Sure. I was born in Kentucky and I grew up in Ohio, which qualifies me for most, some people will know that Kentucky is known for their college basketball, so I'm a good Kentucky Wildcat basketball fan since I was born in Kentucky and I grew up in Ohio, so I'm an Ohio State football fan. I take the best of both worlds there, and I began my newspaper career in Ohio in a small town in the southern part of Ohio, and then I also worked in newspapers in South Carolina and Washington, D.C., Vermont, and then Honolulu for the last 30-some-plus years. So, Dennis, what got you interested in media and publishing? That's a great question, and the honest answer is it was purely by chance and a little bit by necessity. I was going to a small community college where I was in my hometown area, and I came home one evening from evening class and my mother was sitting at the table, and we were kind of the lower middle class in the economic sector, and she informed me that night that money was tight and we were running the item funds, and I can't afford my education, pay for my education any longer, so I'm going to have to get a job to help pay for the education. So I picked up my local daily little newspaper and I said, career opportunity. Like the ads that used to say those kinds of things, like if you wanted to work at McDonald's or somewhere, career opportunity. Learn the business from the ground up. So I caught my attention and I went and applied and filled out application and started at the very bottom. I think my title was district manager, although basically what that meant was I was supervising the newspaper carriers, the boys and girls at that time who rode bicycles and delivered papers door to door, and that was really how I got started in the business. So I did that, I was doing that for about going to school at the same time for about six months or so and realized that I love what I, I loved this job, I loved what I was doing and I decided, eventually I dropped out of college and decided to focus on this career opportunity and it ended up being correct. It was my career and that's the, I've never looked back and I've been in newspaper business ever since. Well, I love hearing that, how it all started. And Dennis, I remember the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star Bulletin and you made the decision to merge both newspapers. Why did you decide that? Well, two great, two great newspapers, both well over a hundred years old, it wasn't necessarily totally my decision but I was clearly involved in it and participated in the execution of the merging of those two newspapers. The market for a size of the community of Honolulu just got to the point where it really was difficult to sustain profitably two separate daily newspapers and that was really what really drove the merge, so to speak, it was actually a buying and selling but what actually ended up being is putting the two newspapers together. Well, Dennis, looking back, that was a brilliant decision, right? Well, yeah, it's been very positive for sure. It's allowed one profitable entity to operate in Honolulu and it's still COVID came along and became another issue. But yeah, it's been good for the community and I think good for employees of Oahu Publications. And Dennis, you were honored by that National Magazine editors and publishers magazine as being the national publisher of the year. I mean, and you're on the cover right there and Dennis, you have been such a successful leader for so long and I wanna ask you, what are your thoughts on what are some of the things that the greatest leaders do? Well, number one, I think, and I think it's true for certainly my newspaper, our industry and I think for almost any business in the country is surrounding yourself with good people. You'll quickly realize when you're at the top, it is lonely at the top as they say, but it doesn't have to be that lonely if you have good people around you. The only reason that things can get lonely is if you decide to isolate yourself and make all the decisions yourself because you'll end up finding out that you're probably not as smart as you think you are. With the collaboration around your team, building a good team is really, I think the most critical point that a leader can contribute, but also secondly, after that is making decisions and be a decision maker and not sit on things forever, not as I say, polish the Apple too long. It's good enough, let's go. So being able to execute decisions that are made and then thirdly, be successful. Yeah, you're not a good leader if you're not successful. So that's, you're gonna put all the effort you want and all the other things aside, if you're failing, you're not a good leader. I mean, that's just, I'm sorry, that's just the way it is and that's how we're all judged. No, I completely agree with you with really good three points there. And Dennis, how would you describe your leadership style? Certainly, I like to listen. I listen a lot to the folks around me. I like to absorb as much data as I can to make good decisions. And then once we get to a point to execute a plan, we move. You know, I always like to say that folks who know me know I've said it many times, but I'm a ready, fire aim type person. You know, I like to, I referred to Polish in the Apple earlier, but I like to get to a point where we have a reasonable plan. We've asked enough questions, we got enough points in our marketing plan or our strategic approach. And then we move, that I'm assuming that we have enough measurement points along the way and that we're paying attention to the project, whatever it may be, to make adjustments on the fly as we go. I feel that gives us an advantage in the market that when you're out, you've left the dock already, there's no going back, but you can fix it if you see that we're moving left of center in one way or another. But it's important to move and to make a decision and get out there. Ready, fire aim, I love that. Yeah. Now, Dennis, what are some of the challenges you face in your business? A lot, as you can imagine, the media business and this particularly in the newspapers, but this is all media, really, all media. And we're certainly not alone in facing challenges, but our challenges has always been, and I'll share a story that when I first started in this business in 1977, don't do the math on me, but back then when you started in the newspaper business or started any business, you were not necessarily given training, you were given a manual. If you were a vacuum cleaner salesman or you were a car repair person, you received a manual and said, basically read this manual and this tells you how to do your job. The manual that I received said welcome to the exciting world of the newspaper business. Our number one challenge, this is 1977, remember, is attracting young readers to read the newspaper. Well, for the last four decades, you've heard the reason newspapers are struggling or newspapers will eventually die one day as it can attract young readers. Well, that's been the case for a long, long, long time. Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, we were able to transition folks from younger readers who might not particularly be into the newspaper eventually into as their life's changed to be a newspaper reader, but now that's even changed. And certainly with the digital era, we try to do it as much as we can digitally and all the digital platforms and we're on all of them and we do that quite well, but it's, the economics of that are quite different from the newspaper side. So it's difficult at times to figure out how we're gonna pay for everything because the revenues are digitally, are significantly different than they are on the print site. Well, that's some interesting insights there, Dennis. And Dennis, you met one of my idols, Tiger Woods, and you got to play golf with him. How was that day? How was that experience like? That was surreal at best and nerve-wracking. It was, again, purely by chance. I received a call from, at that time, the tournament was called the Mercedes Championships. I received a call from one of our advertisers that said a dealer from Georgia was snowed in somewhere and couldn't make his flight and do you wanna play in the tournament? Pro-am, and I said, well, sure, love to. And he said, well, the draw party, you don't know who you're playing with, of course, but when you get over there, they'll fill you in. Well, I find out when I get there, that I'm playing with Tiger Woods. And back then, he was running his prime, and of course, he was the number one player in the world. So you can imagine I'm on the first tee and normally when I've played a lot of the programs and you have your friends and family around you, maybe some strangers, maybe 50, 60 people walking around. Well, I'm standing there and there's thousands because they wanna see Tiger Woods, of course. And they announced, ladies and gentlemen, now on the number one tee, the number one player in the world and winner of all these tournaments. And they pause and they say, Tiger Woods. And then it just gave me chills to know that I'm on the same tee box with Tiger Woods. But not exactly the same tee, but he was way further back. But he was a gentleman to play with. He was super helpful, friendly. I couldn't have been more thrilled to play with him. And it was very nerve-wracking because I'm an average best golfer. And some of the guys I play with probably wouldn't even describe it as that. But to play with someone of that ability and worrying about, I'm gonna hit somebody here, just being just totally nervous about it. It was quite the experience. Wow, what a story, I mean, how lucky were you to draw him? And Dennis, you also met President and Michelle Obama. I mean, that is amazing. What kind of questions did they ask you? Well, that was a fun experience, too. I wasn't even told that we were meeting the president. And I was part of the planning committee for APEC. And a few of the business community leaders were involved to be there for an event. So I'm in the room waiting, basically I think we were having a cocktail. And then you see some people scurrying around in their suits and they got the wires in their ears and those kinds of things. And I was curious. And then you hear ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, and he walked into there and I was totally stunned because we weren't told that we were gonna meet the president. And so it was supposed to be a few seconds of meet and greet and shake a hand and then to get a photo and move on. And for most folks that that was what was happening. So I get up and I'm rushing up to, I shake his hand and greet Michelle. And then I'm ready to move. And then he asked me a question. And he could see my profile, I guess. And he said, oh, you're the publisher for the newspapers. And he said, now when I lived here, there were two newspapers. And so now they have merged. And I said, yes, that's correct. And he says, well, how's it going? Well, that's a broad question. Like, how's it going? Okay, well, and I see everyone waving at me to the folks around him like, move on, your turn's over. And so I started to tell him about how it's going. And then once I, and I realized that I had to be brief. So he then asked me after I gave him the answer, he then asked me what basically what you just asked. What are the challenges of today's in the newspaper world? Well, again, another broad question for not an easy answer. And I can see people anxiously trying to get me to move on. Well, he's the president of the United States. He's asking me questions. What am I supposed to do? So that was fun though. It was a really good experience. Wow, that's amazing, Dennis. And Dennis, you're also the owner of Midweek. I was so honored that you guys had featured me on your cover. And that was in 2010. Our team had won 17 consecutive state championships at that time. And Midweek, I absolutely love it. Why is Midweek such a popular publication? Well, it's an easy answer. Midweek has mailed, directly mailed to every mailbox on the island of Oahu. So roughly 280,000 households are receiving it. And it's family friendly. It's not a lot of hard hitting journalism, but it's a publication for everyone. And it has delivered to every household on the island. And so that helps make it very popular. And Dennis, you have both of my books and you know that I talk so much about creating that superior culture of excellence. And that's exactly what you've done with your businesses throughout the years. What are some things that stood out to you in the books? Well, I have one particular one that I was one of my favorites was, and I don't know if I quote it correctly or exactly or not, but it was basically making big victories and big out of all the small victories. A lot of small success stories will eventually turn into big ones. And I really took that to heart because I think that's exactly true and especially true in our business today because we put a lot of small victories together called revenue with a lot of small, much smaller advertisers than we were perhaps doing about 10 years ago. The days of the Sears and JC Penney and Circuit City and Toys R Us and even back in the day with Liberty House and all those, the major big conglomerates are gone. So those were the big accounts that are now replaced by much, much smaller local accounts. So to have those types of small victories, if you have a lot of them, they turn into big success. And I also part of that story that you described in your book was talking about attitude. And the attitude is incredibly important. And even for me, it still reminds me of the times that I start to worry about too many things and I start to get a pessimistic negative attitude. And I think you made the point in your book that if you change your attitude, you can change potentially the result and at least how you approach things. And it's true, it's easy to say, hard to do, but your attitude is incredibly important. And especially as a leader, because people feed off you, even if you're in the elevator, even if you're just walking, which I do from time to time, I got put my face on my phone and I'm reading and texting while I'm walking down a hallway and somebody might walk by you and I didn't even acknowledge them because you're so focused on those kinds of things. But it is an attitude and the attitude is very, very important. No, I like that you brought up little victories and attitude because positivity is a choice and I'm trying to inspire everybody to choose better choices and hopefully they can inspire their team members to do the same. And Dennis, you are also the owner of one of my favorite magazines, High Luxury Magazine. I mean, it's absolutely classy. I mean, I look forward to every issue. Why is High Luxury such a popular magazine? Well, first thing, thank you for that. First, that was our first magazine that we launched and now it's over 15 years old. As a newspaper industry here in Honolulu, we decided to look for our other revenue streams and we began to look at some of the community-based magazines. High Luxury was our first that we have many, many others since then focused on lots of different targets. But High Luxury, we targeted basically Mainland High Luxury luxury type retail stores that you'll see mostly at Alamon Amal or some in Waikiki and some of those places. But there wasn't, a lot of times when you make decisions like this, you're basically doing it because there isn't anyone else doing it. And we thought that was an opportunity for us to get a potential, a type of advertiser that we don't normally would get into the newspapers, a different audience, different market, different demographic. But interestingly, we have several advertisers that came out of the High Luxury magazine that you'll see in our newspaper, Amaze and Harry Winston and Rolax and some of the others. That there's probably not a newspaper in the country our size that would get those type of ads. And we're getting them because we had the relationship with High Luxury magazine. And Dennis, you've helped our community in so many ways throughout these years. I mean, you've donated to the Arthritis Foundation. You've also helped the Ronald McDonald House, I know. And can you tell me about what you did to help the Ronald McDonald House? Yeah, that's an interesting story. And it goes back quite a ways. When I first moved to Hawaii, I was the vice president of circulation for the White Newspaper Agency. And that was in the early 1990, 1991. And I decided to launch a program with McDonald's through their drive-thrus where we would sell newspapers through their drive-thrus. And then we give part of the proceeds, a good part of the proceeds back to the local Ronald McDonald House. That ended up being so successful. We were selling thousands and thousands of newspapers a day through all the drive-thrus. You get your coffee, you get your sandwich and buy a newspaper. And we promoted it as buy your newspaper there because you're helping Ronald McDonald House and we ended up donating literally hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years through the proceeds. What was interesting about that is that the program is that it won a national award. And then you started seeing McDonald's all across the country, all across the mainland with the same, you could be in California, Arizona or Ohio or Georgia. You go through a McDonald's drive-thru and the local newspaper there would have the same ability to sell their newspapers and give back to their local Ronald McDonald House as we did. And so I don't even know what the total would be for the country, but it went on for decades. And it still is today, but it's obviously a little bit different in the digital world than it was when it was on newspapers. Wow, that's majorly impactful, Denison. I know that you were also the chairman of our Chamber of Commerce. Was that for two years and you were honored by them? Yes, I was a chair for supposed to be one year, but our CEO, Sherri McNamara, decided that we're gonna change the board, change the bylaws to make it a two-year chairmanship. So I was on board for two years and then certainly love participating with local business and brainstorming ways to help them and also work with our board at the Chamber to try to improve things as much as we can for the community in Hawaii. Wow, that's impressive, Denison. Dennis, professionally or personally, what's a big adversity you experienced that you overcame? We're still trying to overcome it, but I think the quick answer to that is the COVID experience. It was, for our company, it was quite devastating. We lost about $30 million in the first eight months of COVID with all the shutdowns and restrictions and those type of things. All of those businesses that were affected by that were my advertisers. And so when the supply chain as a fallout after all that came disrupted and folks didn't know what kind of inventory they might have, so they couldn't advertise something that they might not have or might not receive. So it was pretty impactful. Certainly I wasn't alone in that. Other media certainly in town had the same problem, but all businesses were impacted by that greatly and still to this day, I think there's obviously still some of a fallout, but trying to offset as much as you're one of your responsibilities as a leader is that you lose $30 million of top-line revenue that you need to adjust costs in some way to minimize the damage to that, to your bottom line and to how you manage your company. So we did all the things that you hate to do with furloughs and four-day work weeks and part of that fallout for us was when we went digital only on Saturday and eliminated the print edition on Saturday because there were significant cost savings to that, but that was the damage from COVID was significant. And I say, I think we did overcome it mainly because we're still profitable despite losing that kind of top-line revenue, but it certainly made us a much different company than we were since back in 2010 when we first merged. Dennis, I want to ask you one more question before we wrap up. What's the best advice you ever received? A couple of things. And there was both when I was much younger, but those things kind of stick with you. The first one is, and it was funny because I approached them both differently how I handled the advice. The first one I received was when I first made, received my first promotion. And I was now from one of the guys to the department head. So I was managing the folks that I was, they were my peers. And we'd go to lunch during the day, during the week, and we'd do things over the weekends together and those kinds of things for the month, first month or two, I received the promotion. And then one day my, the publisher, the newspaper calls me into his office and he asked me how it's going and I tell him good things. And he says, you know, I notice, I see you a lot, you know, with so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so and I said, yeah. And I said, and what about the weekends? Did you, I said, yeah, I didn't know. I was answering the question. Yeah, we spend a lot of time on the weekends together and do things and he looks at me and he says, he starts nodding his head. He was, and he says, if you, let me tell you something. He says, if you ever want to leave the band, you first got to turn your back to the crowd. And he's nodding his head and looking at me and I give him a blank stare and basically I could tell that I wasn't getting it. What does that mean? And he basically explained it as it's okay to be friends and have a good relationship with your employees, but you can't be one of the guys anymore. You have to lead them. You can't be their best friend and their best bud. So I evolved over the last, you know, some decades later of, you know, that certainly to that extreme that we can't be friends or we can't do things together and those kinds of things, but I did get this point that if you're going to lead folks, you've got to separate yourself from the crowd. The second point that I, advice I received was a really interesting one. And it was also when I was fairly young, I was, I think I was 23 or 24 years old and I was in South Carolina and I was a middle manager at the time striving to be the department head, but I received my performance review and it was a glowing review. It was fantastic. It was really good. And then my boss is telling me that the publisher and the general manager, the newspaper both signed off on it. They both had high marks, remarks on my performance review. And I could see my boss getting a little uncomfortable and he says, but I do want to share one remark that came from our publisher and he did make a note on your review about it. And I said, okay. And he says, if you want to be successful, you got to, you got to dress like it. And he said, so dress for success. And I mean, my immediate reaction was, was defensive as well. You know, I, you know, I, I, I can't shop where you shop and I can't spend the kind of money on ties and those kinds of things that, that they do. I mean, they make a lot more money than I do. And I, you know, I don't have that ability. And he nods and he says, he goes, I understand that. He says, but you can shine your shoes, right? And I looked down at my shoes and they were scuffed. They were, they were not, they were not shiny by any means and, and they stuck with me. And, and I never forgot it that many people will comment sometimes of, you know, of what I wear or what I'm why I, the shoes I have under those kinds of things is generally because of that comment that goes back a long time ago about being successful and dressing for success. Dennis, I love those pieces of advice. And Dennis, I want to thank you for really all the publications that you've been, I mean, because all of us in Hawaii have been impacted positively by you through your publications somehow in one way or the other. And I really want to thank you for sharing your insights on the show today. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. For more information, please visit RustyKamori.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Dennis and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.