How I met my wife Kari, was it luck?
Gina Mangieri of The Cole Academy interview
Henk Rogers of Blue Lava and Jamdat
Doug Ho of Classic Coins Hawaii, Inc
Lori Komer of Leahi Swim School and the things people will answer
Website update
Countdown to September 3 launch
Transcript:
Today is August 10, 2005 and this is Evan’s Journal, coming to you live from Honolulu, Hawaii, my upstairs office.
Let me explain this a little bit. In the winter of 1995 I was working with a company called Equinox International and that was a multi-level marketing company. I was young, I think about 23, 24 at the time and it was really an exciting deal. I got to travel all over the country and go to exciting training seminars and a lot of really good looking people, everybody was young and seemed to be having a blast. Unfortunately, on the downside is that a lot of people weren’t making any money and a lot of it was hype. There was a time there where I was supposed to be doing really well and I was doing mediocre at best and absolutely just wondering if it was going to work or if I should be doing it or quit, but I’d worked so hard on it that I didn’t want to quit. And I didn’t want to come home.
At the time I was living in Utah, Orem Utah, in a house which a friend of mine and I were renting. We were supposed to be doing really well, but we were doing somewhat mediocre. So we needed to save on rent and the room, I think was about, was smaller than my office that I’m sitting in now. I think the room was about 10 feet by 10 feet at the max and my roommate at the time was probably was about 320 pounds or so, a big Samoan guy, about 6’1” or maybe even 6’2” but about 320 at least. I mean he was a big guy. So we had two beds, side-by-side, almost touching each other. The guy snored like an animal, really cool guy, but he snored just too loud. We had a small little area to put our clothes and everything and we shared a bathroom with this other guy that was renting another room.
And I didn’t want to come back home for Christmas. I had gotten sick of the whole dating thing because at the time, with all this hype, everybody was pretty, pretty horny is really what it was. So anyway, I decided that, that’s not going to be what I want. I want a serious relationship with a woman that I can fall in love with and has all the qualities. And the only way I knew how to do that was make a list and set some goals.
So I sat down, it was Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or somewhere between that time and New Year’s because I didn’t come home and I was all alone inside that small room. Orem, Utah is quite a bit colder, my roommate was gone doing his own thing and I was sitting there. And if any of you folks have spent time away from your family and kind of secluded, it’s pretty darn depressing. But I had a lot of time to think to myself and I wrote down a huge list of everything from emotional to physical to social to mental to spiritual, a huge list. I believe it was about ten pages long. I mean it was massive. There were hundreds of items on there, everything from height to hula dancing hula, I mean everything.
Then what I did was say a prayer on it a really, really sincere, strong prayer. And I prayed and prayed and prayed on it. And what I did on those goals was I put a date, I put “I will have a serious relationship with this person and we will have a great relationship and so on by June 1, 2006”.
In May I left Utah to come back home to Hawaii and it just so happened that my friend was selling his house and he had a birthday party. It was the end of May, my friend, Kekoa, who I do all the fun stuff with and that’s where I initially met Kari. And Kari at the time had a boyfriend that I guess she was getting rid of or whatever, all I know is she had a boyfriend at the time, but a little while after that she didn’t. Then we ended up talking, we hit it off and 1998 we got married and it’s been, you always have your little arguments here and there, but more or less it’s been a really, really incredible partnership. And I don’t think it is so much luck, but if luck is opportunity means preparedness, then maybe it is luck.
What I do think is that if you know exactly what you want and you can put that into your subconscious mind and then whatever forces may be your reality changes somewhat.
[00:06:03] So when I was thinking about that today and yesterday’s topic in regards to Dustin Shindo running a four-year business and going public, I’m thinking, how should I write this goal list? How should I write this plan in order to truly accomplish what I can not only be proud of but will give me fulfillment and then also give me something that will take care of my family? And if it’s this project, it is and if it’s the next project, it’s the next one, but I’m not really sure.An interesting thing would be if one of you folks who are listening to this did a similar exercise and tested it and if it worked or have done something similar in the past and give us feedback, that would be an interesting discussion.
So, I don’t know just something to think about.
[00:06:59] Anyway, back to housekeeping here for Greater Good Radio. Today’s interview this morning was with Gina Mangieri of The Cole Academy, also former Editor of Pacific Business News and an active Newscaster on KHON 2. Gina just blew me away today. She was way more advanced that I thought. And I know that sounds a little bit bad, but in the brief times that we’ve talked, I guess we weren’t able to go this in-depth. Her depth of knowledge was something else. One thing that blew me away was when she decided to do her business, she wrote the business plan in a weekend and got the financing the next week. And we’re talking about half a million dollars worth of financing. And in eight months had opened her location and prior to that opening it was already 70% to 80% full. I mean, it was an unbelievable story and that will be up in the next month or so. So definitely check that one out. Gina Mangieri’s definitely an interview to listen to. [00:08:12] We put the call back into Joy who is Henk Rogers’ assistant at Blue Lava. I guess it’s now called Jamdat, because they were bought out for $130 million dollars or so. And she called me back and said, “I want to make sure I get your references, Henk has not heard about your radio show”. So I had to explain to her that our radio show is not yet on the air, we’re just kind of in the preliminary stages and these are the other people, Bill Richardson, Rob Robinson, Duane Kurisu’s coming in. These people have come on and Henk is more than welcome to talk to them about their experience and we hope to have him on the show. So, I don’t know, we’re going to see on that one. It’s definitely going to be interesting to find out from somebody who sold their company for $130 something million dollars and how they went about doing that. I will give him a call tomorrow to make sure that he gets his questions answered. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to get him on the phone, but I can always talk to Joy I guess. [00:09:22] Another interview that we’ve scheduled for next week, Wednesday is Doug Ho of Classic Coins Hawaii. He’s one of I think two or three of the real professional coin collectors and traders here in Hawaii. I didn’t realize it was such a huge industry. He was talking about a friend of his in New York that was selling coins on QBC and making $20 million dollars a month. So, I don’t know, I guess coins are another method of investing, similar with stocks and options and real estate, it’s just another venue and Doug’s been doing it since he was a young kid. He travels the world, goes to China quite a bit. He does a number of things. Another interesting note about Doug is that his brother-in-law was Mohammed Ali’s doctor, so he has all these pictures in his office with like “Thrilla in Manilla” and the President is next to him and another ambassador, I mean it’s pretty interesting. He has some interesting some stories, so I’m going to ask him about that next Wednesday. Hopefully you guys will think it’s interesting too. [00:10:28] Another person that we’re interviewing next week, Tuesday, is going to be Lori Komer of the Leahi Swim School where Buddy is taking swim lessons, at the St. Francis School in Manilla. They do a really good job, they have a kind of repertoire that they take the kids through and we did his parent-assisted classes last year. So I took him through another session this year of actual lessons. He’s doing pretty good, he can almost take a breath, almost come up but he still can’t really paddle, but the guy’s two and a half years old, what can you really expect. Lori Komer’s been doing this business over thirty, thirty-one years now. We’ll talk to her about how to run a long-lasting business, over three decades, as well as her community involvement which is the arts, ballet, opera and other things, really, really interesting. [00:05:17] One interesting note about that is I’m amazed at what people will tell me if I just ask them a question and shut my mouth. When I initially started talking to her, I know she didn’t know me, but I asked her how long was the school in business. She said, “thirty-one years.” And started chatting, you know a minute or two on that. And then I asked her, “What type of non-profit work do you do?” Because you know that kind of falls into the Greater Good Radio ideal concept and she talked about it. She just started talking about it and as she was talking about it, I’m saying man, these people are so open. I ask them a question, if somebody asks me that, I would be thinking, dude what the hell do you want to know that for? But, I don’t know, it’s okay, maybe that’s just me and sometimes I have a bad attitude. Whatever, but it’s very interesting, you should try it, tomorrow or so, just ask somebody a question and then shut your mouth and see if they answer it. It’s pretty interesting. [00:12:31] Okay, web site update. The web site has gone through a massive revamp. We changed the way the things are organized. We got rid of the “events” because we don’t know. I still have to cut the deals on the events. So now we changed the names to “shows” which have Greater Good Radio and Evan’s Journal. In the shows now there are topics that each of the shows can fall under so that people coming to the site can easily sort through the subject that they want. So if you have a topic that you are interested in, email me at evan at greatergoodradio.com and we can see if it fits or maybe it can be combined with something else that will make it work.The next two days the site will be more or less completely revamped. It’s going to take another week or so for us to get a finished show. It just keeps getting pushed back, with little things that need to be changed, here and there. Things take time. So that’s not getting up yet. And we’re still trying to figure out the payment system and pricing model is going to work on all the “after show” portions, so that we can actually pay the bills. I guess that will be up and coming soon.
So, what else do we have on this Countdown to September 3rd launch? I tell you September 3 is coming up really fast, three weeks away. We’re still pushing for June Jones and waiting to hear on that. Michael’s the one taking care of that, so Michael if you’re listening to this please work your magic and make it happen. June Jones for our initial show would be an excellent, excellent show.
Other than that, that’s about all I have for tonight, it was nice talking to everyone and I will talk to you tomorrow.
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