Welcome to Adventures in Small Business. This is a collaborative effort between the Small Business Administration Hawaii District Office, the Hawaii Small Business Development Center, the Mint Center for Business and Leadership, as well as the Veteran Business Outreach Center of the Pacific to showcase the local entrepreneurs and small businesses. Welcome, I'm Dennis Wong from the Hawaii Small Business Development Center, and today we have some special guests from Dehigh Foods, which is Jason Miyamoto and Justin Enright. Welcome, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having us. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Anyway, Dehigh Foods is a locally owned company that manufactures and distributes crispy jerky. How did the business get its start? So the origins of it, I had a coworker maybe 18 years ago. She used to make this type of jerky. More recently, we started dabbling and making our own type of, you know, crispy jerky for the past couple years and trying to perfect it. Once she kind of got it down, my other partner and I, Elliot, we kind of got a hold of Justin because I don't have the business acumen side of business, and I know how to create the product. So I called him up and asked if he'd be interested, and then he agreed after doing some research online that, you know, it'd be a viable business, and yeah, he's willing to be a part of it, and it's basically the very, very beginning of origins. I see. And as far as, tell me about how did you create your product? What was the type of flavors that you, what you have, and what was the origins of your product? So it's a, it's a Hawaii style of crispy jerk, you know, of jerky. It's crispy. It's thin cut, marinated, dehydrated out.  Thank you, everybody. And we have four different flavors as far as our beef goes, and two flavors as far as the pork goes. So for the pork, we have Korean barbecue and we have klua pig, which, you know, everybody understands in Hawaii what klua pig is. That's actually my personal favorite right now. For now. We're always going to look into constantly expand our product line. As far as the beef, we have garlic, which is like a ponzu-based marinade and has garlic added. The pepper and the spicy are more like old-school traditional beef jerky. As far as the flavor goes, is liquid smoked worcestershire that deeper darker flavor. Pepper has black pepper added, spicy has black and red. And then we have our chiaki, which stands for chipotle teriyaki. So we thought we were being cute. We added the name together, but then now we're going to answer everybody to ask, what is chiaki? At the end of a Made in Hawaii event, over three days, talking to 20,000 people answering that question, what is chiaki?  Before, as soon as people look at you, you just already explain it. Yeah. So that we are, we used to use star pot, but we got away from that. We mix our own teriyaki sauce and we add a splash of chipotle, among other little things. But yeah, that's the basic taste profile for that one. When did your business start? And being that there's three partners, by the way, Elliot Lau could not be here today. But there's three of you that are co-founders. And what strengths did you bring to the table? And how long ago did you start your company? My strength as we find out going through all these things, and I do the more product side and creating and visuals and whatever we need for our company. Justin does pretty much anything we need for the business, keeping everything running smooth, making sure we're heading in the right direction and all that. And then Elliot fills in everything else that's needed. I see. And so when were some of the challenges or barriers or things that you needed to do to start up your company as far as operationally and financially? Well, we were fortunate enough to start our business in the era of Google, where I wrote a 40 page business plan just off of Google. I'd worked in finance, more on the financial advising side, but I've never taken any business classes or entrepreneurship classes. So being in the era of Google, we were able to kind of figure out what we generally need. And then going to the small business center definitely helped out a lot. There was a couple free expos that they did. It's usually twice a year at HCC and then LCC. And you sit through an hour long course, so you get three courses a day. And you can kind of pick how to start the what taxes, you know, GE tax license. How do you get that? It's a class that I teach too. Yeah. The DCCA, how to register on on break, you know, how to register your business and make sure that your name isn't the exact same or similar to anybody else. So that was a definite help as far as once we started the business, getting everything rolling. And then financing, you know, we started on a shoestring budget.  And then it was just family and friends. And within a bottom month, we had paid enough to cover the cost of all of our machinery already. So then we each took out loans. And we moved into a little 400 square foot box, which we outgrew in less than a year. And then we had our current facility. I think in any business, there's risk elements that you have to pay too. I, there's, yes, there's risk, but we always look at it as an educated risk, you know, as a well thought out risk reward, you know, and that's why we started small, as opposed to starting in a 100,000 square foot facility on a $20 million budget. That's our end goal, you know, our, our bigger goals are to do that. But right out of the beginning, we knew that that that would be an insane risk until the concept.  What things that you needed to do in order to be to manufacture and distribute, or is like, is there a certain facility license or health situations? What did you have to meet and go through? So in order to get state certified, which is the green placker that you see in, on restaurants and stuff, it's pretty easy. You get an inspector come maybe once a year, check your refrigerators, make sure everything's at temperature, make sure you have hot water and a three-compartment sink, and sanitize water. That placard allows you to sell direct to customers. But if you want to get into the wholesaling side of it where you see it in stores, you have to be USDA inspected. Or online. Or online, yeah, and online. So online, across state lines, you have to be USDA inspected. So we did a build out. Everybody was telling us it was going to take about two years to get your USDA inspection. We built out our facility ourselves where the walls are completely washable, floor drain, everything you can imagine. We had to build a wall separating the bathroom from the production floor and creating a HASAP plan, which is a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point plan. We did that all in six months. And everybody was telling us it was going to take two years. Because we were so aggressive in growing and growing and growing and growing. Because we didn't have an option. I was going to say, we left ourselves no choice. We had to get it done. So you did a USDA inspector on-premise on-site too. Daily, every day we do production, we have a USDA inspector there. Walkthrough, check logs. Luckily for us, it was a brand new facility. So everything is spot sparkling clean when you first start. It's the facilities that are 20, 30 years old that might have a little bit more maintenance issues than we do. So for our purposes, the inspector is mainly just checking the records and making sure everything is handled properly. Is that the facility where you're at right now in San Island? Yes. Correct. I see. So, you know, as far as your business started up and progressed and you've gotten into the facility, what other challenges that you had to face? Like, was there a labor type of challenge, you know, packing, distribution?  Yes. And that wasn't in great disrepair and something that we could afford. And it was relatively close to where we all live, which is in townside. So, San Island was an ideal fit. As every business owner in Hawaii knows, the labor shortage here, the labor market here is so tight that it's really hard to find people. You put out an ad and you'll get 40 responses, resume responses, and only one person will show up to an interview. So, there's that. And there's employee retention too? Yes. Yes. There's that. And then, two days after we got our USDA inspection, we had an order for 150, 160 cases for our first account that needed to go out. Two days after that, we got, we had a fire, a transformer fire in our facility. Yes. So, luckily, thank God we were there. And the entire, because we're in a strip mall. So, not every other business burned down. We were there.  But we had no power for a week. I guess that's the wisdom of Jason, because when he first looked at the business, he didn't look at it just himself, but he looked at partners, people that he could co-partner with, and each one brings their own strength and collaboratively work together. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I know my strengths and my weaknesses. And thankfully, my two business partners, they fit in where it's needed.   Well, where can people find your product? If you wanted to buy it, where is your product sold? So, right now, we're currently in over 300 stores, 7-Eleven, Helle, Aloha Gas, Safeway Times, Don Quixote on the Outer Islands, Minute Stop, Beef Turkey Store in Hilo, Times, Foodland, yeah. So, pretty much every major local chain were not in Longs or Walmart, Target, Walgreens, those type of nationals. But most local chains were in, yeah. No, it wasn't just easy just to walk in and get all these stores and all that. What kind of process do you have to do in order to gain the relationships and obtain the orders from these stores? Lucky for me, in my past life, I was a financial advisor and one of my clients just happened to be a buyer and I told her about the idea of us starting this business and she recommended we join HFIA, which is Waifood Industry Association. So, we joined that and then from there we met, you know, kind of a lot of different buyers and it's Hawaii. Word spreads pretty quick of, you know, our products that are out there. We got about a minute before we take our break. If you can tell me from the beginning that you started the company to now, has the feedback changed or what kind of feedback have you gotten from your consumers and your buyers? Pretty much just positive feedback.  If they're a vegetarian or vegan, obviously, our product isn't for them. But if they don't eat jerky because of the texture, because it's too chewy, it hurts the jaw, you're chewing on it for 10 minutes. We get a lot of people that don't like jerky because of that, but we'll get them to come to our booth. We just did a show in Dallas. And one of the big things was we call it a jerky conversion. We convert them over because it's the easiest way you can actually eat both. It's like a potato chip. I see. You know, as far as now, I hear that you're getting some orders that not even locally, you have a lot of interest that is gaining nationality. When we come back to the program, when we start with that and you can tell us about how your company has grown and evolved and what kind of growth you've gone through. Absolutely. Sure. Hi, I am Yukari Kunisue, host of Konnichiwa, Hawaii, Think Tech Hawaii's Japanese program, broadcasting every Monday from 2 p.m. I usually invite a guest in Japanese language community who does interesting things, and I'd like to share stories with you guys. Please tune in and listen to Konnichiwa, Hawaii. Hello, I'm Mufi Haname. I want to tell you about a great show that appears on Think Tech Hawaii. It's all about tourism. In fact, we call it Tourism 101, where we talk about the issues and challenges that faces our number one industry throughout the state. We'll have some interesting guests, very informative dialogue, and allow you an opportunity to maybe learn a little bit more about why this industry is so important for our state. It's been great for us in the past. We need it today, and especially going forward. That's Tourism 101 on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. Thank you, Buu, for being with me this morning. I'd like to continue where we left off as far as we talked about being that your company has been in operations for over two to three years, and what kind of changes have you seen in your company besides facility, but as far as revenue, what kind of growth and where are you getting your growth, and what kind of new opportunities do you have? We started at the very end of 2016, so 2017-18. We saw our revenues double for 100% because we moved into a bigger facility. Now we're at capacity at our current facility, so we can't sell anymore, even if we wanted to, because we just can't make enough. So this year, we're probably looking at about a 20% growth year over year. Now it's how do we make more product? That's the next challenge that we're on to. How do we make more products so we can get it out there? Even though we're selling to 300 local stores, we are still getting online orders, and we pretty much almost all 50 states, maybe North and South Dakota haven't heard of it yet, but yeah, and it's all grown organically. We've spent $0 on advertising. Number one, because if we do a commercial or we're talking about it, I can talk to somebody for 15 minutes and explain to them what Krispy Jerk is, but until they actually try it, it doesn't really register in the brain, like a beef chip. Okay, I can understand beef, I understand chip, but putting them together, and once people take that first bite, that's when it, ah, and I watch people's faces when we do shows on the mainland and stuff or even locally. I watch people's faces to see their very first reaction within the first five seconds of what their brain is thinking, and it's super interesting. Not only the texture of the chip and the thickness, but it's also the different cases because you have different flavors as well. Right, right. How are you getting your product out there? I mean, how do people know about you? You have online orders and you participated in trade shows, or what have you done? Ah, our first year we did like Swap Meet, and we did a lot more shows than we did in our second year because we had more wholesale accounts and we just didn't have the time or the product. Now, this 2019, I think we only did the Made in Hawaii show. Yeah, locally at least. Yeah, locally, but we've been doing a lot of shows on the mainland because people have no idea what crispy jerky is. So, we're introducing a completely new product to them. Most of the shows have been for buyers. We don't really get a public feedback, but we just did a show in Dallas last month, and Texas is the heart of jerky. You think of Texas, you think of barbecue, you think of steaks, and the positive feedback that we got there really helped me see, okay, it's not just the buyers that are saying it, it's actual consumers that are trying it, and it blows your mind. The first time you gave it to me, it blew my mind. I was like, it's not what you're expecting. Yeah, when we had a casual conversation, you had told me about the interest that you have gained from the trade shows. What is exciting news? Are there other people that are larger distributors or retailers that are interested in the product? Yeah, so right now, we're in talks with about 20,000 plus stores nationally, as well as internationally. We've had interest from Japan, and being a Hawaii company, obviously Japanese love Hawaii. It's just the beef exporting to Japan requires certain additional certifications. That's a lot of hoops that you've got to jump through in order to get it over there. Now, with this exciting news and opportunity, presents other challenges such as you need more labor, bigger warehouses, and different opportunities for you to explore and how to meet that demand. It's good because the opportunity is there for you. It's incredible considering that you started in late 16, really, full operation scale in 17.  It's a fortunate problem to have where our production can't keep pace with our sales. We're selling faster than we can make it. So that's a great problem to have, but it's also something that we want to produce more. So we have to start looking at, do we build a bigger facility in Hawaii, where it's going to be way more expensive, and then we're shipping it out to the mainland, or do we start seeing looking at options on manufacturing on the mainland? Jason, when you first started out the company, what were some of the learning lessons, or were there any mistakes, or what did you grow? What have you found now, from what you started to what you're doing now? I would like to refer back to Justin as far as making mistakes. We don't make mistakes. It's all learning lessons and all that kind of thing. As you do it the same thing twice, then you didn't learn anything. So yes, you made a mistake. It's very good that we keep each other in check. We've put money into things that weren't necessary, and these kind of little lessons that we've learned. But I mean, we won't take it as a failure. We made the mistake once. We won't make it happen again, and we're moving forward.  Can you tell me a little bit about it, being that there's three of you as partners and how you help each other out? Sure. I think the biggest part about it is, first and foremost, we started as friends. We all have different backgrounds and personalities, especially for Justin and I, which do most of the front work. He's a lot more aggressive. I'm a lot more laid back. We're constantly pushing pull, but I think that keeps us right in that sweet zone of where we need to be and not overextending ourselves as far as not moving too slow. I think everything works out really well in that aspect. Do you have downtime where you guys can just talk about issues, share about things that you see that should be done, or issues in the company? And also, being that you're longtime friends, how do you bring friendship to the table as well? Oh, I mean, we've talked from day one when we had the meeting in my apartment, sitting around my little table, that business is business, friends is friends. And we've been very adamant about keeping that separate, being very honest with each other. I think this speaks to anybody that ever wants to go into business, especially with friends, that some of the key things they tell you not to do. Don't borrow money from family, don't go into business with friends. But I think it's worked fairly well because we're very honest with each other. And we understand that that's coming from a place of business. It's nothing personal. And we reassure each other that this is what it is. This is the business talking. This is what's good for the business. And I think that understanding helps us go a long way. Yeah. I mean, when you can be brutally honest with somebody, like, hey, you're messing up here. You need to be better at this. Yeah. And it's constructive criticism. Everybody likes to say that. Yeah, we don't need to shoot that out. It just is what it is. That's easier said than done, though. When you think your personality is how you mesh throughout the years, it's carried forth in the business as well. Yeah. Yeah. When you know somebody for 30 years, there's not much that he's going to say that's going to really fly me off the handle and vice versa. And like you said, I know that it's where it's coming from. He might be angry in the moment, but it's just in the moment. And we know bottom line. When you know somebody that long and you hang out with them, it's whatever. That's been advantage to that tightness and a friendship and that you know each other well, too. Sure. I think, yeah, I think there's been a great asset. I think those are good takeaway points, too, that you mentioned that when you start a business, whether it's with friends or partners and all, you should clear the air and get the understanding done. At the very beginning. At the very beginning. Yeah. A lot of times that's what I tell my clients, too, as a business advisor that when you go into business with other people that you should even put it into writing and have certain understandings about that. So there's no miscommunication. And in fact, sometimes it applies that you may go into partnerships with three people, but something unfortunately happens to one partner and unexpectedly you might have to deal with that person's beneficiary or spouse to continue with the business. If that original partner cannot continue in the same capacity, then now you're faced with a different partner that you didn't anticipate dealing with. But, you know, as far as what are some of the important things that you've learned being in the business now, going through all what you have done, that things that you could share with other people, thinking about starting their business or wanting to start their own business. It's a lot of work. We're actually me and him, we're just talking about this the other day. There's three ways that you can become successful in business.  The other is, you're just a genius.  The third is because neither of us come for money or are particularly astute in any science that would allow those sort of breakthroughs is you got to work your whole life. So I think I get five days off a year, major holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and even on days off or if I'm on a trip, I'm still going to let me go check out Minutestop because we have our product in there. It's still always on my mind. I'm reading convenience store news articles about what's the new products and those sorts of things. So for me, it's a 24-7 kind of gig. You had mentioned a test before anybody goes into business and what would you advise them to do? I'd say work two full-time jobs. Work 80 hours a week doing something that's difficult. And if you can make it through two weeks of that, then you know that you have what it takes to make it through owning your own business. Just a last question or a few more questions. We're heading towards the very end. How did the Hawaii Small Business Development Center assist you? The Expo's definitely helped out a lot. The Small Business Fair days. As you could go, you meet banks. You need to know, do I take out a line of credit or do I take out a full loan, a term loan? How does business checking account differ? Something that I just learned and we've been in business three years, something that I just learned a couple days ago was Dun and Bradstreet doesn't pull your data, which is like an Equifax or personal lines. But for business lines, they don't pull credit card data or anything like that. So the way that you build your business credit is completely different than the way that you build your personal credit. I didn't know that. So when we apply for loans or when we apply for something, and they tell me that you don't have any, I'm like, we've been in business for three years. Thank you for joining us today. It was a pleasure having you here and thank you for sharing your experiences with us. Thank you for having us.


Well tomorrow of course is a new year and with a new year comes that sense of a new beginning a Fresh start a new chance To begin a fresh and of course with a new year comes the inevitable new year's resolutions Now how many of you with a show of hands are planning on or have planned a new year's resolution? You know something that I want to do to do better some of you are saying don't raise your hands. He's setting us up totally him I Think for many of us we have a new year's resolution something that we want to maybe a personal goal something that we want to accomplish I did some research for 2024 and the top resolution For our country going into 2024 is to lose weight number one and The second one is to become more financially stable. I think that's why perhaps one person prayed God this next year I would like to have a fat bank account and a thin body And God, please don't mix those up like you did last year And not only a new year brings new year's resolutions, but it also brings for a Christian anticipation We're excited for what God wants to do in our lives this next year a new new opportunity To be used by God in a greater capacity to say God here I am so send me Lord use me for such a time as this and with a new year comes a sense of a New start of what God would want to do but oftentimes in our lives in In order to be used by God first many times a prerequisite to being used by God requires steps of faith forward for us to be willing to be in motion So that God can guide us and direct us to what he wants for us to accomplish That we would be those that would say God I want to take steps of faith forward in this new year. I would walk not by sight not by Understanding not by knowing how it's all gonna work out, but God this next year I want to walk out in faith like I've never walked in my walk with Jesus before a Walk of faith oftentimes Steps of faith can be a catalyst to see God move and God to accomplish What only he can do and that's what we see in our text today in first Samuel chapter 16 excuse me first Samuel 14 To fully understand what our text is explaining You have to understand the background to what's gonna be discussed in our text today At this time in first Samuel 14 Saul was the king of Israel In Israel was in very bad shape The enemy the Philistines were wreaking havoc across their lands Saul's Warriors his soldiers most of them were so discouraged and defeated and depressed That most of them just gave up went home and quit Jonathan and Saul were the only two that had weapons of warfare swords The rest of them had these make shift weapons, so they were if you will outgunned by the enemy There were no match for the enemy and because of this Saul and his men were hiding in caves while the enemy was gaining ground and plaguing their lands pillaging their homes and There was little that they could do about it as the Philistines were raiding and the men were hiding But King Saul's son Jonathan he gets this crazy idea To let's go see what God might want to do may be God wants to do something new And that's where we pick up in our text today First Samuel chapter 14 beginning in verse one It says now it happened one day that Jonathan the son of Saul said to the young man who bore his armor come Let us go over to the Philistines garrison that is on the other side But he did not tell his father Jonathan shares with the man who bore his armor his armor bearer now an armor bearer Was a man who was the most loyal Companion to a soldier He would be one that would carry the armor for the soldier when he wasn't in battle But he was more than just a servant bearing the armor He was trained in the weapons of warfare He would be one that would go into battle and no matter what the outcome would be no matter what the soldier would face He would always be there standing to guard his back Like we say in today's language. Hey, man. I got your back and Armour bearer was the epitome of that He was a loyal companion a loyal friend who would stand by his side and follow him no matter what uncertainty they would have before them and So now Jonathan says to his armor bearer Hey, I have this crazy idea Let's go over to the garrison Garrison it's the fort of the Philistines It's where it would be heavily fortified many many soldiers and just the two of them to go over to the garrison To see what God might do and you contrast that with verse 2 where you see Saul the king Who was sitting in the outskirts of gibbia under a pomegranate tree which is in Migran the people who were with him were about 600 men Notice Jonathan says hey Let's get up Let's go out. Let's see what God might do. Let's let's let's step out I know what happens in the future is gonna be completely uncertain But let's do something and then you see Saul Saul who's sitting in the shade of a pomegranate tree and probably eating some pomegranate seeds Doing really nothing and join the shade Not looking at doing anything and Saul has with him 600 men But not doing anything to advance the kingdom But then you see one man and a faithful loyal friend who would say let's go Let's step out. Let's step up in faith Let's go do something. We don't know how it's gonna work out. We don't know what to expect But let's go see what God might do And Jonathan he didn't have a lot of people standing with him like Saul did But you don't need everyone to endorse you to be able to do the will of God You don't need everyone to cooperate with you to do the will of God You don't need everyone to understand what God is calling you to do to do the will of God but oftentimes we allow people's disobedience To what God has called them to do to dissuade us from following what God has called us to do And you see that throughout the Bible Moses made that mistake Moses when it came to entering into the promised land there at Kedish Barnea Moses knowing that God called them to go into the promised land. It was promised to them It was already given to them and yet Moses decided to take a vote to see who was ready to go in and Because the people Voted and decided we're not going to go in it kept Moses From ever entering into all that God had for him We have to make sure that Nothing will stand in our way of being obedient to what God tells us to do You don't need mass amounts of people to accomplish great things for God All you need is God It just takes someone who would say you know what let's step up in faith. Let's step out in faith Let's go see in faith what God would want to do in my life in your life in our lives as we walk by faith and then we see in verse 3 a Haja the son of a high tub Some great Bible names if you're thinking about naming your child something if you're an expectant parent Ahetub Ikebob's brother the son of Phineas the son of Eli the Lord's priest in Shiloh He was wearing an ephod, but the people did not know that Jonathan had gone Now that might seem like a lot of insignificant information Until you realize that the ephod was the bag inside or behind the breastplate of the priest and Within that bag contained two things two stones the Urum and the Thumin Not to be confused with the actress Uma Thurman now The Urum and the Thumin would be two stones that the king could consult with God And it was believed that God would answer the prayer of a king So the king could say should we go to battle and then they would be given an answer Through the ephod that God would reveal his will for his people Saul had everything he needed Right there with him to get direction from God and Yet instead of seeking the Lord to do something he would rather sit and do nothing But while Saul and his men were in hiding Jonathan decides to be one that would step out in faith And it says in verse 4 between the passes by which Jonathan sought to go over to the Philistine garrison There was a sharp rock on one side and a sharp rock on the other side and the name of one was bozez And the name of the other was Sina Now Jonathan sought That word sought means he intended He didn't even know if he could make it, but he had a plan and His plan was to position himself in a place where God could use him if God so desired to use him That Jonathan would say you know what we're not doing anything here But I'm willing to take a step of faith forward to see how God will use us. Let's position ourselves in a place Where God can use us if he so desires to use us Now listen, you need to understand this God doesn't need you for anything And some of you that know each other are thinking amen And yet God Almighty places himself in a position of partnership with his people So that when God does what only he can accomplish We can be a joint recipient of the reward of what only God can do Let me give you an example of that when I was young Really young but my dad he would allow me to mow the lawn with him And what that looked like is he would be the one at the handlebars pushing the lawnmower But in the middle of the Lawnmower handlebars, there's like a support bar. That was my handlebar just my height just my size And so I would stand in front of my father and hold on to that handlebar and I really had no power in and of myself as a as a young boy to be able to push that lawnmower to Guide the lawnmower to mow the lawn and yet my father would include me in that He probably could have done it a lot faster even without me I was probably getting in his way more than anything and yet He would allow me to partner with him to mow the lawn so that when we finished mowing the lawn together I could stand there as a proud young boy with my dad and say look what we were able to accomplish We did it dad and I was a recipient of the reward of accomplishing that which only my father had the power to do And so too, I believe the same is that God would allow us to partner with him Because he desires to see his kids blessed too And so that when God does what only he can do in guiding and directing and having the power to accomplish those things We are powerless without our father But he would allow us to partner with him in a position where we then can be a recipient of the rewards Of what only God can do Jonathan he places himself in that position, but in order to get to that place He has to go between bozez and sena Now the word bozez Simply means slippery It was a sketchy cliff to climb And sena on the other side That word simply means thorny It was a sharp slippery dangerous treacherous cliff That jonathan would have to navigate To get to the place where he could say okay god if you want to use me then use me The point of all of that is this you have to realize In our christian walk Just because things are difficult doesn't mean that it's not god The will of god for our lives is not always what's easy and simple and smooth sailing And sometimes I hear people well meaning people say and it really is so limiting to really how god works But people say things like oh, I know it's god because I mean it's literally just Been so smooth so easy. It just it has to be god and I understand that god can work that way But god doesn't only ever work that way Sometimes god can part the red sea And and give you dry ground a pathway so clear. It's obvious that this is god, but sometimes It can look like the path that jonathan had to walk Not really even a path more like a cliff to climb a thorny sharp treacherous Pathway that he would have to navigate to get to where god wanted him to be You might not always have the yellow brick road To walk on when following god But i'll tell you this whatever path that god gives for you to walk It's the one that we ought to take No matter how painful how dangerous how treacherous wherever god Calls you to be whatever god calls you to do. It's going to be the best thing for you And then it goes on to say in verse five The front of one faced northward opposite of mikmesh And the other word other one southward opposite of gibbia And then jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor come Let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised If you don't know what that means pastor david will be talking about that next week It may be and here's where I want to focus Tonight's message on this simple phrase that jonathan gave It may be That the lord will work for us For nothing restrains the lord from saving By many Or by few jonathan now gives A Not so motivational speech to his armor bear As he's Convincing his armor bear. Hey, let's go up Let's take steps to faith forward Let's step out from our comfortability And let's go see what god Maybe will do You know when you hear motivational speeches Whether it's a motivational speaker or even a coach with his team in the locker room You don't really hear people say things like that No, you don't hear a coach get with his team before they game and say listen boys. We're going to go out on that field and Maybe we'll win Maybe we'll lose Who knows Let's go get them You know, you don't hear things like that.  Let's go get them It's usually something along those lines But jonathan He gives a not so motivational speech And he simply says Maybe God wants to use us But for jonathan Maybe Is enough I wonder how many times in our lives we wait for certainty Of how everything's going to work Before we walk forward into what god has called us to do What the outcome will be where it's so certain that Well, I can walk confidently now because I know what the outcome will be But jonathan he has no Understanding no Preconceived notion no way to understand but for him it was maybe god will do something And maybe is enough For jonathan and his armor bear to say let's go and see what god Maybe will do jonathan leaves where he's at He leaves his comfort He leaves his security With the rest of the 600 men He leaves where things are easy To make a difficult journey Where when he arrives He will have had risked everything Including his own life You know, there's a great story in the old testament that illustrates this perfectly in genesis chapter 12 Where a man named abram later known as abraham Is called by god to do that very thing God gave abram a very simple and direct command Walk away from everything that you've ever known And go to a place that I will show you And in genesis chapter 12 verse 1 god told abram to leave his country your people Your family and go to a land that I will show you God didn't even tell him where he would be going just to go The command was simple leave and go step out from your comfort ability step out from your security Step out from Your things that you've been holding on to so tightly And step into your god-given destiny But in order to step into all that I have for you abram You're gonna have to step away from everything else Sometimes in our lives we have to step away from what's comfortable Maybe god's been calling you to step up To begin serving the lord in the church that you call home Maybe your own fear of your own inability has held you back Maybe the lord's been calling you to trust him in the area of your finances and begin to to tithe Consistently regularly and that's something that god's been stirring your heart, but That's going to require you to trust the lord In the area of your finances Maybe the lord's been calling you to be used in a greater way and to to take steps of faith forward in your spiritual walk And maybe begin discipling somebody or go into a a bible study or getting plugged in in a deeper way to The different bible studies throughout the week here at the chapel and Maybe the lord's been stirring in your heart to do something but within our own fears our own inabilities We've told the lord the reasons why we can't We've given him excuses why god can't but oftentimes it just requires us to leave our comfort ability It requires us to leave our security It requires us to leave what's predictable and what's easy But oftentimes to step into your god-given destiny. You might have to step away from everything else Who knows where god will take your story As you begin to take steps of faith forward who knows what god might do Years from now when you look back on your life And you see this great steps of faith forward that you've taken What's it gonna be in your life? well, I thought god was calling me but I made some excuses or I was afraid to move forward. So I did nothing Or Will you have a faith-filled adventure to tell? We'll be one that will be dictated by a life of faith. The difference is whether or not You simply say yes to the lord when he says There's something for you to do We want certainty We want certainty of our future certainty of how it's going to work out but listen In order to have certainty It requires no faith A lot of times people think that doubt Is the opposite of faith But oftentimes it's our own personal doubts That is the doorway that leads us into greater faith in god like I don't know how I can accomplish this But then that doubt Can cause us To say god i'm going to trust you with this and i'm going to take steps of faith forward even when I don't know How i'm going to accomplish this Doubt isn't The opposite of faith certainty is Let me ask you if you know exactly how it's all going to work out how much faith does that require? Zero It requires no faith if you know the certainty of what's going to happen and god recalls us as christians to walk by faith not by sight And in order for us to walk by faith and our faith to grow and our faith to be challenged and our faith to be Strengthened our faith that would dictate the type of life that we would live god purposefully does not give us certainty So that our faith could be strengthened and empowered that we would be willing to take greater steps of faith forward for the rest of our lives We want certainty certainty of success certainty of our future But you can be confident in god When you are uncertain about the situation When you have the attitude like jonathan did in our text, let's step out. Let's see what god will do Then you have the opportunity to see what only god could do First the attitude Then the opportunity Many of us want the opportunity to be used by god Before we have the attitude that would say i'm willing to go and do whatever god calls me to do But jonathan maybe it's gonna work out. Maybe it won't We'll never know though until we go and i don't share this with you today as some Theological concept that i read and thought it was a Good message. So i thought i would share with you, but As many as many of you know My wife morgan Myself and our three kids recently Have been called by god to step out in the greatest steps of faith. We've ever taken in our lives To leave our own security to leave our own familiarity To step out in faith We left our home That our three kids had ever known We left the only area that we have ever lived in our entire lives We left the church that god had called us to pastor for the last 12 years We left our family our friends We left every source of security and familiarity and what was comfortable And it's not always an easy journey to say yes to god Sometimes the path that god leads you on is difficult Sometimes it's painful And yet you see the lord's faithfulness in it all I remember Early on the first few weeks that we were there Our kids One or another if not all three crying I want to go home. I want to go home dad Comforting them as a father, you know, it's hard to see your kids in pain because of the loss that they've encountered because you're being obedient to the lord And trying my best to comfort them the best i know how while tears are streaming down their cheeks The same time tears are streaming down mine And yet the lord Was faithful in it all And the lord remains faithful through it all It's not always an easy journey to say yes to god It may be difficult, but you realize this what jonathan said in verse six that nothing Can hinder the lord from saving whether by many or by few and like jonathan Let's see what god will do And giving us great victory over the enemy scene the kingdom of god expanded it might not always be easy There might be rocky times But if we like jonathan and his loyal armor bearer say Let's be a part of what god wants to do then and only then we will see what only god can do jonathan had a crazy idea But he believed that god could if he wanted to To see the kingdom advanced To see the enemy beat him back to see the people and the land be set free from captivity And so he stepped out in great ways Maybe for you today it's not stepping out, but maybe it's stepping up Stepping up into what god has for you this year into 2024 What has god called you to do? Well pastor listen It's it's huge. It's big. I don't know if I can serve in that capacity I don't know if I could step up into those roles. I don't know if I can be used in that way I love how daniel the prophet, you know daniel on the lions then daniel I love how daniel puts it in daniel chapter 11 verse 32 He says it this way those who know their god shall do great exploits If you know your god You're going to do great exploits In other words the more I know about the lord the more faith that I will have to do great things for god William carry a missionary from generations past said it this way attempt great things for god And then expect great things from god I believe that every believer should go in so far over their head That unless god shows up it's destined to fail To do something so much bigger than yourself That when god shows up Everyone would have to say it had to be god Well, what if we're wrong? What if we step up step out and nothing happens? Well, I would rather attempt to do something impossible And not accomplish what I set out to do Then to sit and wonder what god would have done If I would have stepped out Maybe the lord will do a work And maybe Is enough We can't allow our fear to characterize our faith If we go there if we fail What if what if what if And so we end up doing absolutely nothing Because of the fear of failure Jonathan said nothing can hinder the lord from saving His arm is not too short that he cannot reach God's ear is not deaf that he cannot hear Nothing can hinder the lord from saving Jonathan stepped out in faith believing just maybe just maybe when we step out god's going to do something huge If you never attempt anything for god If you never attempt anything great for god, listen, you will never do anything great for god It was possible for jonathan to get to the other side difficult but possible But if he didn't he would have never seen god do the impossible If we simply do the possible and position ourselves in a place to say god Use me my life my family whatever it is that you want to do god here I am at your vessel for the master's use for the master's purposes god Here I am so send me as Isaiah would say God use my life when we place ourselves like jonathan did in a position to say god whatever it is that you want to do I'll do But when we place ourselves when we do the possible Of what god would call us to do then we have the opportunity to see god to do the impossible of what only god can do What jonathan said to his armor bear is not nearly important however As what the armor bear would respond back to jonathan and we'll close here in verse seven And this lone armor bear this loyal friend and companion He looks at this crazy leader Who doesn't have any certainty, but he does have confidence in the lord And he says back to him in verse seven Do all that is in your heart Go then Here I am With you According to your heart This armor bear says do all that you have in your mind. Go ahead. Let's do it together And if you skip to the end of this story the battle was so successful jonathan and his armor bear go up there They place a fleece before the lord. They said if if the philistines call us we'll go Sure enough. They called them and jonathan said that's the sign from god. Let's go They go to battle against the philistines god supernaturally gives them great victory The army of the israelites that were encamped down below they hear this commotion going on They see it on the other side of the ravine. They realize they do a quick count jonathan the son of the king is missing it must be him They charge over there, but by the time they get there the battle was already run one and the philistines were already in retreat Because one man and his faithful friend said let's step up Let's step out in faith. Let's see what god might do the entire nation of israel Was delivered the kingdom was set free The captives that were held bound were released And god expanded the kingdom that day Because a man and his friend said let's go and see what god will do May be just may be God will do something great when morgan and i stepped out just recently and made a journey To a distant land called idaho To take on this new work. We knew it would be difficult. We knew it would be painful But when we stepped out we began to see god do the miraculous Of what only god could do We've seen god provide in a way that only god could we've seen god come through and only in a way that god can And i could tell you many many stories, but i just want to share one with you tonight It was very interesting the first day that we landed there Someone came and knocked on our door and said hey We like to show you around the neighborhood and you want to jump in our golf cart So we jumped in their golf cart and they drove us around the neighborhood telling us who everybody was in the neighborhood Pretty hospitable and So we went and they're like and this is the barbers house and like what do you mean?  So i said sure when i came back he said listen With tears in his eyes. He said something is crazy. That's happening. He's like earlier today There was a man in my chair. I was cutting his hair and he said there's pastors coming to town and I ought to go check his church out And he showed me a picture of you and said I ought to go go to your church About an hour later another man unrelated to that man not knowing that man sits in my chair and says Hey, there's this pastor coming to town You ought to check him out go check out his church And he said both of these guys told me that I needed to connect with you And then about an hour later my barbershop door opens and you walk in And he said I know that god's trying to get a hold of my life So our very first service he was the first one down to the front to give his life to jesus christ Over the last eight weeks we've had over 50 people make first time commitments to follow jesus christ And so we've seen god do story after story after story of what only god can do and I share that with you today To be an encouragement to you listen It's not always easy doing what god's called you to do It's not always what's most convenient or even desirable But when you say yes to god You will never regret it Because the pathway that god gives to you in your life of what he wants to do in and through you Is going to be the very best thing for you The most fulfilling thing in your life Is walking your journey through life According to god's plan For jonathan it happened because god placed an idea In his head and a desire within his hearts And gave a person some faith to step up from where they currently were So that they could step in to all that god had for them Church 2024 Or just a few hours away from it Could it be the year that we say yes to god and everything The year that we would say god whatever you want to do in my life here i am And could it be the year that we walk forward in faith Stepping out in faith stepping up in faith like we've never done before Simply because we say yes to the lord Place yourself in a position of partnership with the lord and watch what god will do I'm thankful that god doesn't always meet our expectations Because god is the god who exceeds them And if god meets your expectations and meets my expectations then god wouldn't be the god Who does exceedingly abundantly above and beyond everything that we could ever think or ask And i'm thankful that god has a plan for each of us a purpose for each of us So step out step up and see the great things that god has in store for your life and make 2024 The most faith-filled life that you've ever lived this next year


Hello, hi everybody. How you doing Russell Moore the name of my channel is called dedicated to financial literacy I started this channel based on you know my friends and family and church folks was calling me and said hey I had a question about stocks. You seem to know a lot and So we could not get together because of the pandemic So what I decided to do is start a YouTube channel and it was for the sole purpose of just my friends and family But now people are saying you ought to keep this going keep the keep them going keep them going keep the videos coming So I said, okay, I'll do it. I'll keep continuing to do it. It's been a lot of fun. So please tune in It's dealing with the stock market economics Real estate I talk about everything hacks budgeting all kinds of stuff and then also I want to give a little plug for my wife's channel the name of it is called dedicated to planning and so It's a great channel. She's very creative for those that love Using planners and organize organizing your life through a planner. It's a wonderful channel Okay, so be sure to hit the notify button so you can get content in the future I want to thank you and have a wonderful wonderful day


Live from the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, it's theCUBE at the HGST Press and Industry Analyst Briefing. Brought to you by headline sponsor HGST. Here are your hosts, Stu Miniman and Jeff Frick. Hi, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are live at the Sheridan Palace San Francisco, California for the HGST Industry Analyst and Press Day. For a full day of CUBE interviews, I'm joined in this segment with my co-host. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman with wikibond.org and joining us for this segment is Brendan Collins, who's the VP of Product Marketing from HGST. Going to dig into the hard disk drive market. Brendan, thanks so much for joining us. You're welcome, glad to be here. All right, so a lot of announcements today.  We just dug into a lot of the flash pieces and you would put from hard drives, you know, aren't dead and there's some really interesting technologies. So I'm hoping you can help us kind of unpack this. Especially the helium stuff is pretty cool. People that aren't too familiar, it might be something a little bit new with them, but the end of an era, no more, you know, air based drives going forward. So can you walk us through, Brendan, first? What were the kind of major announcements from the hard drive stamp? Yeah, so we announced three major new products today. Two of them actually are industry first. They involve both helium and shingle magnetic recording. Maybe before I get to those two, let me first talk about the 7K 6000. So that is our six terabyte drive in air and it is the last of the generation, right? So we've been designing and building hard drives since the 1950s and they've all run in air inside the product. This will be the last generation and we've come to a point where we're putting all of our chips if you want into the center of the table and we're betting big time on helium. The Aries 6000, the 7K 6000 product, rather, that will ship, obviously, for another two or three generations. That's seventh generation is probably, I would say, arguably the most successful platform in the last 20 or 30 years. The other two platforms, the other two products, rather, that we announced, the first is the HE8. So that is the second generation helio seal product. That offers not just increased capacity but low power and low cooling. The benefit to the big cloud service providers, right, is not only can you increase capacity but reduce power and cooling and increase footprint all at the same time. So if you're a cloud service provider, you're trying to deal with this explosive growth in the data center and you have a flat IT budget, this really helps them address that gap. The third product that we have is the 10 terabyte drive. That's exciting just by the sheer size of it. What we get to do is we get to leverage the 10 terabyte or the 8 terabyte helium product and use single magnetic recording. The combination of both of those enable us to deliver 10 terabytes, typically two to three years earlier than we normally would. All right, so the helium technology, can you give our viewers a little bit of understanding, why did we need to move from air to helium and what are kind of the opportunities and the challenge for the industry, the disk drive industry going forward? Well, when we started engaging with the cloud service providers a few years ago, right, they would come to us and say, look, you guys really help us out with high capacity, low cost and reliability. But if you look at our total budget, we have CAPEX and we have OPEX. The OPEX piece of that is power cooling and footprint. And they're saying, you're not doing anything for me in that space. That's when we reached into our bag of tricks and took out helium because it helps them pretty much every single one of those areas. HelioSeal as a platform going forward allows us to stay with the large three and a half inch form factor that we have probably for another 10 plus years. The five disk platform that we have today in air, we've been using three and a half inch drives for 12 to 15 years now. And it's coming to the end of an era. So at that point, you would typically have to go to smaller two and a half inch drives or invest in helium and prolong that platform. So we'd be able to stay on that cost curve for the foreseeable future. So Brandon, what's the secret sauce in the helium? Is it just literally just the attributes of the gas relative to air? Is there some other stuff going on inside the covers? I mean, what if you could explain a little bit about more because you're hitting on all the hot topics, right? As you said, it's capacity, even more it's power and it's footprint. So is it simply this enclosure with the helium and the mechanisms work better? I don't know if you can explain a little bit more. Okay, two aspects to that. First is if you were to look at the heads flying over the disk inside a hard disk drive, there's a lot of flutter and vibration going on. When you go to helium, helium as a gas is one seventh the density of air. So all that disturbance goes away.  Right. So helium, everything's very still. So it's one seventh the density of air. Okay. So what that enables you to do is because you have less vibration, you can go to thinner disks. As a result of that, you can go to more disks and you can pack more capacity into the same volumetric space. So that's how helium works and how it benefits. The magic sauce in helium is anybody can use helium and disk drives. The magic sauce is in how you seal it, the methodology that you use to do that at high volume in an automated factory. So we have managed to come up with processes in the factory that do that at high volume and you can guarantee the seal over the life of the product. Interesting. So Brendan, when we talk about like the 10 terabyte drive, I mean what huge capacities and the focus on that, my understanding is what you're calling active archiving. Can you lay out for us, there's been a lot of discussion as to where does archiving live? Of course we understand there's the offline archiving, if you know, stick it in a truck and stick it in a mountain versus cloud economics. Amazon can do a penny, a gigabyte per month. So where does this fit and how does, I'm assuming you guys are saying that this has changed in the game for the way archiving is done. People have been using the term cold storage actually to describe infrequently accessed data. Now cold storage is a broad term. Within cold storage there's what we call active archive, is one aspect of that. And then there's deep archive. The deep archive is more tape-like. In other words, the data could be, in the case of disks, it could be spun down or not used, extremely cost and power sensitive. If you now look at other areas or pick applications like big data, where you have to run contextual analytics, you can't afford to wait 90 seconds to spin up your drives or go find your tape drives. So for active archive, you have to do, typically have to do metadata searches and you require extremely low latency and high bandwidth. So you really need to be using disk-based technology to achieve the analytics and the speeds that you need. So that's where you need the lowest cost per gig and that's where the 10 terabyte comes in and the fact that it's disk-based means you can achieve the latency and the bandwidth that you can't achieve with tape and optical. All right, so can you talk a little bit about what your customers have seen so far with Helium? To my understanding that Netflix used Helium, so what's it done out in the wild? What's the customer experience been that obviously successful that you guys are moving forward as the direction for this type of drive? So it gives a little bit of insight. So the first major adopters of the HE6, which is the first Helium drive was primarily the cloud service providers. So they're the guys, for example, that have data centers that are as big as 10 football fields with like 100,000 servers and probably a million drives in each one. When you can go and talk to those customers and say I can cut your total petabytes per watt in half by deploying Helium versus Air, that's a big deal. The fact that you can pack more capacity into that volumetric space means you also need less servers, not just less storage, less servers, networking gear and less footprint. So all of that translates into much lower capex and OPEX. Interesting, so that was really the OPEX driver from your cloud service provider was really the driving force behind the Helium move. Yes. Interesting. And are you seeing any more, are you seeing some of that happen in the enterprise space as well where they're starting to do and act a little bit more like a cloud service provider company in terms of the way they're scaling and the way they're building out and their kind of changing requirements? Traditionally, enterprise OEMs would be a little bit more conservative in adopting new technologies. So they took a wait and see approach to see how it would work with the cloud service guys. Today, I think the enterprise OEMs are needing to compete more directly with the cloud service providers. And they also need to adopt these technologies. And if the economics are as radically improved, as you say, then when their internal customers are shopping their internal services against an AWS or whomever, they're really going to be at a disadvantage if they're not taking advantage of this economics. That's right. You have the exact same set of challenges when you go to a private cloud, which most of those folks have versus the public cloud, the cloud service providers. So, they have the same budget challenges and the same need to manage all that growth, that storage growth. Interesting. So Brendan, if we look at kind of disk versus flash, one of the huge advantages flash has had is power is much, much less than disks. And traditionally, disk has had much more capacity. So we're starting to see a closing of the gap on capacity. Flash is getting more. But now you've also closed the gap, I think, on some of the power consumption with what you're doing with disks. So can you help kind of sort out, what do you guys see? Because you guys, obviously, are looking for both to succeed. So how should people be thinking about the kind of disk and flash adoption? And obviously it's use case specific, but can you give us some of the guideposts to how to think about this? Some people think it's one or the other and they're really complimentary. If you speak to some of the storage architects in the data center, they would argue that about 10 to 15% of all data is hot, right? We would agree with that. How much? 10 to 15? 10 to 15%. If 10 to 15% of the data is hot, that is probably the percentage of the data that will end up on flash. So you will end up paying a premium for flash, but that's okay. In a market that's low latency or high bandwidth or that's valued, you will pay that. For the other 85% of the market, that is more mainstream capacity. And we see that continuing to be enterprise capacity, disk-based, and even more so as we move to cold storage of Active Archive. The cost per gig, that gap will continue to widen. Yeah, interesting. But you guys are continuing to really renew the life cycle of disk with this new helium strategy. Yes. Helium in my mind enables us to stay with the current three and a half inch form factor, which is high volume and enables scale and low cost. And we should be able to deliver future technologies like hammer or bit pattern media and put them on top of helium and ship for the next 10 to 15 years. Right. So you talked about 10 to 15% of the data is hot, what percentage of the data do you find in these big service providers is really cold? Like cold, cold, cold, drive it to the mountain. Versus now you've got this Active Archive opportunity and what was interesting in some of the conversations earlier is that, you said that the actual value of the data increases over time. Right. And there's things that you may not know that are there that you're going to go back after the fact and pull out and drive data. So I mean, should anything be cold? What percentage of it is cold, cold? I've heard varying degrees. I've heard anything from 50%. I've heard up to 80% at different cloud service providers. But I think a lot depends on your application. There are applications for this Active Archive or this HM10, this 10 terabyte drive that we have that requires, as we said, low latency and high bandwidth. If you look at applications that use big data, so you have these massive data sets and you need to continuously run analytics on them. That's a good example of data that's been infrequently accessed. You could classify as cold, but it's also, it's been frequently accessed. There's the infrequently accessed stuff that would typically be stored on tape or optical. There are certain applications that require only that and you have less analytics where you can afford to wait 30 seconds or 45 seconds or minutes for your data. I think that will continue to be on tape and optical, but it's also a class of cold. Right, and is that where you kind of define the line is based on latency at which you can wait to get the data? Is that really what defines kind of your tiers? Yeah, within cold storage, we showed a chart today that showed deep archive or cold storage off to the right that could be tape or optical or even spun down disk versus low latency, high bandwidth. That's where our active archive and the 10 terabyte drive plays. All right, so Brendan, we spend a lot of time talking about density of the configurations here. One of the things that I hear is really the limiting factor, especially if you're talking in the enterprise is usually the power density that we can get. Most customers are kind of locked into a data center and have limits as to how much they grow. How do the technologies that you're releasing help address those needs for the enterprise? So let's say, I mean, there are a lot of application areas like in financial services. Let's say you're a bank and you're in New York City and you're on the 19th floor and your data center is full, but you now need to go from 50 petabytes to 100 petabytes. You can't go to a new building or a new floor. One of the ways of doing that is to replace your existing storage that runs on air with higher capacity, low power drives. So in that particular case, you can actually reduce your watts per terabyte by 50%. So you can actually double your capacity and still stay within the power budget. Yeah, I think we're good. So Brendan, thanks for stopping by. Learned a lot about helium and really extending the life of this active archive, which is a new kind of area of storage that really wasn't actively mined before. Yeah, Brendan, the last thing you have to show, on our intro package, we've got a little clip of the helium here at the show, which not only is it the drive itself, but it's in a non-conducting liquid, I guess. Can you explain what we're showing off there? There's no fish in there because it's not water. But what are we looking at? Yeah, there are applications out there in the marketplace for racked-end servers where power and cooling is a big deal. One of the ways that our customers are dealing with that is immersing the storage and the servers in this non-conductive liquid. So this is an example of that demo. And the purpose of it is to show that the drive does not have air or an air filter. So you can see actually the motherboard, the processor, you can see the bubbles. So the drive is sealed inside the server. Yeah, interesting, because that's the next talk and great talk in cooling too, right, is liquid cooling. So I guess you guys are already pre-configured and ready for a liquid cooling environment. Well, Brendan, thanks for stopping by theCUBE, good stuff. We'll be right back with our next segment here from the HGST Press and Analyst Day. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE, we'll be right back.


Hi, so Logan here we are all the way from Miami, Florida to Washington DC at the NEA symposium. Hi everybody. Hey and you are a community organizer and you are Afro-Latinx, your trans-masculine non-binary person of color and most importantly you have a lot to share with us. Really important insights about the promise of public education. So what's brought you here today? So it was an evening after work fairly early in the evening you know sun is just beginning to set and I was laying on my bed surrounded by concert memorabilia and posters about trans liberation and as I was leisurely just scrolling through twitter I stumbled across a tweet that struck me and it stayed with me and it said if you were a gifted kid in elementary school there's a hundred percent chance that you're gay and depressed now and initially I laughed because I'm queer and I'm also diagnosed with depression but I noticed when I noticed I when a close friend retweeted it I had a really sobering moment of realization and it was almost everybody who I was with in the biomedical and agriculture magnet program has either experienced or is experiencing some form of depression and when you look at the number of people who have passed away due to suicide or drug overdoses there's an alarming truth that no one is looking at and it's that millennials on forward are in a very intense mental health crisis and no one is talking about it so you know as you know it's very easy to connect depression to tumultuous home life but there's another connection that oftentimes people fail to make and the connection to school system so what do I mean by that the school school in its of itself is seen as a safe home away from home that's all about the wellness and success of students but the unfortunate truth is that schools perpetuate the same systems of oppression that we're fighting against so we're talking about class-based systemic oppression and race-based systemic oppression which is oftentimes internalized yeah so oppression can you say more about what that is what that looks like what are you talking about when you say that okay so first let's take a look at like the geographical inequity it's it's not a secret that low-income schools are completely underfunded and under resource what's interesting is that in the state of florida there's a guidance plan mandate but there's no mandate for an actual school counselor so what that means is that if you attend a low-income school you're either at risk of losing your school counselor or you don't have one at all whereas wealthier schools have you know the extra dollars to invest it in their students wellness while lower-income schools don't and they don't have to invest in their students and then there's also the piece around identity politics right so depending on the intersections of your identity it exposes you to it exposes you to a certain level of trauma in schools so for example black and latino girls face higher rates of suspension in their white counterparts and they're also met with harsher and way more punitive measures than their white counterparts yeah and there's also some really disturbing information about trans students and their experiences so i mean 47 of trans students have admitted that what's in a 30-day period they've skipped school at least once 50 percent of trans students have admitted that they've seriously contemplated suicide and there's a very direct link between harassment in schools and low GPAs and that's not even to mention all of the trauma and stress that's triggered by over militarization in schools and because of the utopian school myth that we all believe in students are not getting the support they need or deserve yeah so some people might say like how would you respond if someone said okay that's probably just a few isolated cases this sounds kind of like a fringe perspective how big of a problem is this really so i mean the statistics can speak for themselves right but there's also tremendous value in actually listening to the experience of students so i was able to find a tweet um that really talked about experience and it reads after seven hours of school i should be able to come home and chill but no i have to sit down and do three hours of homework when will this stop why do we have to act like this is normal and acceptable the system is so messed up and harmful school is the leading cause of my depression so you know we talk a lot about like what it is so what is the impact right so what happens when students leave the school system by however they leave it whether they're pushed out or whatnot they're they can be faced with increased mental health issues as they attempt to unlearn all of the toxic behaviors and ideals that was instilled in them from their experience in the school system yeah and there's also this really intense and tricky stigma about seeking mental health services so what if you don't normalize it in grade school when you get to a point where you're like hey i may need to see a therapist it's intimidating and it's you know foreign but on the flip side there it's a double-edged sword the help that you can receive in school isn't always help that has the student's best interest in mind so because of all these things that pile on top of each other unfortunately that means that not all of us survive suicide is the second leading cause of death for young folks between the ages of 10 to 24 which includes college age youth which means to put it into perspective more young young adults and youth die from suicide than cancer heart issues aids birth defects stroke pneumonia the flu and lung issues combined and it's absolutely terrifying yeah so this is a really big problem clearly can you tell us a little bit about where you are in all of this so my experience in the school system is pretty intense my dad emigrated to the states in the 80s from Colombia you know for the promise of a good education my mom she didn't want to be living in projects for the rest of her life across the street from Edison senior high school she wanted to get out of the hood by any means necessary and for her that meant education because that was the only way you could get out so as you can imagine a lot of the messaging that I received around education was pretty intense and toxic for my development and then of course all the trauma that I accumulated before and after my mom passed away while I was still in high school so I had to graduate by any means necessary and I did but was it all truly worth it I'm honestly not sure yeah so you are a community organizer can you tell us a little bit about what all of this means in your community organizing yeah so I started organizing after my mom passed away so about four or five years give or take and I've heard I witnessed a lot of things in those years and one of the most powerful things I witnessed was when we were holding a series of circles under the Black Girls Matter Miami Coalition and during the closing leadership summit there was a Q&A panel and a foreign principal stood up and was basically asking how can you help Black Girls when they have such abhorrent attitudes and don't respect themselves very heavy engagement like respectably politics and the youth responded with authenticity and truth they pointed out that when Black girls act out it comes from somewhere and it comes from pain and hurt and trauma and instead of chastising them actually listen to them and value them all she could do was take a seat the youth organizers felt truly empowered and finally heard the principal gained a deeper understanding of what it meant to be trauma-informed and this is what happens when you invest in the leadership of Black and Brown girls, femmes, non-binary and trans youth and this is why I organize beautiful so can you talk about what you want to leave everyone with yeah um so we're looking at divesting and investing so divest from reactionary and shallow responses to youth bad behavior invest in holistic support that isn't patronizing or trivializing by hiring more school counselors who actually have time to counsel divest from law enforcement in schools invest in very intentional restorative justice practices and at the end of the day just listen to the students because they are the masters of their own experiences and before we close out we just want to show everyone a really quick video um could we roll the footage please duty to fight it is our duty to fight it is our duty to win it is our duty to win we must love and protect one another we have nothing to lose but our chains thank you