Okay, we're back for the two o'clock block. I'm Jay Fidel. We're talking about leadership in Hawaii. We're talking more specifically about transportation and trade import-export for Hawaii with Russell Hanla. He is the U.S. senior official for APEC Hawaii. Welcome back to the show, Russell. Okay. Thank you, Jay, for welcoming today. I know that when I spoke last time it was on the Vietnam issue, Vietnam hosting an APEC conference in November. But today I would like to talk about how it affects not only the policy side, but in terms of moving goods and service, what actually happens in terms of operation. As you know, when you're doing import-export, you have to ship goods, and that includes ocean shipping and air cargo shipping. So like in Hawaii, we have like MAPSEN, we have PASA, we have foreign steam ship companies like K-Line, or Mitsui shipping company that has a lot of port of entry here with the State Department, the Harbor Division. So they have to pay their warfish fees every time they do the docking. Foreign carriers have a hard road to hoe because they can only go between the foreign port in Hawaii and back and forth. But under the Jones Act, they can't go to the mainland U.S. in that same trip. Yeah, exactly. Because you know what the Jones Act calls for. It has to be built and manufactured. The vessel itself has to be built and manufactured in the U.S. soil using American labor or American Union. On top of that, if it's American flag carrier from one port to the next port, for example, from Los Angeles port to Honolulu port, you've got to use the American carrier in this case. So I know that, you know, there's been a lot of talks about changing the Jones Act because it's been so old, you know, it's been since 1920s that's 100 years old. Exactly. So I know that like a lot of these foreign carriers as well with foreign investors or even American commerce as well, because some of these vessels are manufactured in China now. And what they're trying to do with the Jones Act, maybe 25% can be manufactured like using the Chinese labor or our steel that they have. And I know like even now the U.S. Navy is building their ships in China. And hopefully, you know, because the labor and the steel price is a lot cheaper there. But maybe they're not subject to the Jones Act the way commercial shipping is. Yeah, I think in those kind of aspects. And you know, as you know, with our new president, Donald Trump, he wants to make America great again by using American labor, bringing manufacturing back. So I don't think this Jones Act is going to work this time in terms of ships because we only we have only one or two shipyards that are capable of building a significant ocean, you know, ocean cargo ship and and for that matter, an ocean liner for cruising. And I think they're both in the south. They build an average of one or two ships a year with peanuts. And these guys, the unions there and those shipyards are effectively through the Jones Act, they're blocking American shipping interests from using ships built overseas. So the result is you pay something like five times what a ship would cost in Korea if you have it built in one of those shipyards here. And the result is it stymies American shipping. And so that's a question I put to you. You know, let's assume for a moment that it's true, we're stymying American shipping. And Madsen pays five times as much as it needs to pay for a ship. And the amortized cost of that extra hundreds of millions of dollars, we have to pay. It's passed right along to us here in Hawaii. And that's why one of the reasons why it's so expensive to buy, you know, a carton of milk. So my question is, you know, can we change that? And if we do change it, what happens if you look at I know that there's a lot of movement within from a congressional point of view, even from the state of Hawaii, I think each state nationwide has brought this issue about the Jones Act. And it's not like it happened overnight. But we've got our delegation supporting a change in the Jones Act. Russell, I know that, you know, because in Hawaii's case, I don't think it's going to affect us as much because we don't have too much shipment coming in from Asia or in terms of job shipment. And as you know, a lot of the ship that comes from Asia is like K line or could be a mid three line, or even Korea has a Hanjin Hanjin. What are they bringing? What are they bringing to us? Those foreign lines, what are they bringing here? Actually, if you look at it, a lot of these made in China stuff, or made in Asia products, or made in Japan stuff, or made in Korea stuff that we consume here in Hawaii, a lot of a country of origin, because of manufactured goods that, you know, if you look at Hawaii, 98% of all the goods that we consume here are brought in either from the mainland, or from Asia, because we don't manufacture. Yeah, we don't have anything here. Only thing that we may have is like our produce that we consume here, or because we don't have a coal or manufactured industry to produce steel for having a manufacture. So, you know, Hawaii being a isolated location in the middle of the Pacific, so we have to rely on shipping. Shipping is very important, like, you know, the State Department Transportation, I used to be with the State Department Transportation was a statewide planner. So I know what the ramification of the shipping and it's very crucial here, we have to maintain our port here, as well with our airport, with the tourists that comes here. And in terms of import, export, I would say 97% of the goods that we consume are brought in by ocean. Maybe I would say 1% or 1.5% might be from air cargo. And that a lot of the airlines that we have, and you know, even the airlines, we have a contract between signatory air and non-signatory. And when you do like the airport has their when I was there, we have to have a landing agreement with each airlines, because each airline has a agreement with each State Department Airports Division. No, I'm thinking though, you remember, you know, when we studied social studies and history back in school, that the shipping, international shipping, global shipping began like in 16th, 17th century, with these trips where the ship would carry stuff from point A to point B, and then different stuff from point B back to A, or the triangle or muta triangle, carry stuff from point A to point B from then from stuff from B to point C, and then other stuff from C to back to A. The result is, you know, that you had an efficiency going and the shipowner could make a profit that way, because he was always carrying something. You know, the, what do you call it, the deadheading when you don't have anything on board, that's, that's just expense without revenue. And so ship owners don't like to do that. So for example, if I give you a ship, one of those international carriers you mentioned, coming from Asia and bringing manufactured goods from China, Japan, what have your career, to the, to Hawaii, okay, A, they can't pick up anything in Hawaii to go to the mainland and vice versa because of the Jones Act, and B, there's nothing here, correct me if I'm wrong, there's nothing here for them to take back to Asia, nothing. I mean, we have such a sparsity of agricultural products now. Used to be we were sending agricultural products everywhere. We don't have an agricultural industry to speak of. We're not exporting anything that I can think of. You know, Moomoo's, for example, you know, we don't export, we don't make them here. We bring them in, we don't send them out. So, you know, going back to that old Bermuda Triangle kind of analogy, what happens, it's got to be more expensive, that the goods they bring in on the leg from Asia to here have got to cost more, because they're deadheading back from here to Asia, am I right? Yeah, I think in terms of a cost, and if you look at the value of the goods that's being brought in, you know, like Hawaii, where, you know, basically, like you said, if they're going back to a steamship company or air cargo people that's coming in, mostly air cargo is under done on the commercial airplanes that comes in, or they have their own little cargo. So what they do is they have the LD-3s or LD-7 pallets that has a different size, like if you go to ocean carriers, you have your 20-foot container, 40-foot container. The 40-foot containers are the large container that's used with the truck, with the piggyback style, have a flat bed with, and you see it around the freeway in delivery throughout the airports or throughout the ocean cargo areas. So they are doing their delivery orders from the U.S. Customs when they clear customs, they have to go and clear, pick up their merchandise. So what the Custom Brokers do is usually they look at classification, valuation, liquidation process. But classification, you have to classify what kind of item you're importing in. And valuation is what value based on the invoice or pro forma invoice for the shipping list. There's a value, is it F-O-B price? Is it C-I-F cost insurance break? Is it prepaid or collect costs? But none of these terms from law school. Yeah, exactly. So you've got to kind of take case by case where what country of origin the shipments are coming in. Am I right about my analysis? If you bring it in and you have nothing to bring back, then the cost of the consumer on the imported goods is going to be higher because the ship owner needs to make his expenses. He has to pay his expenses coming and going, but he really only has cargo in one direction. And so the result is we, the consumers who pay for that cargo to consume that cargo, we're paying for, you know, at the end. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, if you look at both sides of the trip. Yeah, if you look at it, depending on what commodities or goods that we're consuming, if you look at the Asian goods that we're consuming, it could be our Sony Walkmans or TVs, VCRs, or some of these products, the food stuff that we bring in from China, South Korea, or Japan that ship oil from Indonesia and the shipping company, they have their own little freight borders and they use their own little steamship companies. And the steamship company that comes from Asia are usually foreign steamship companies or steams. So in other words, the Jones Act will apply so they cannot go and do a drop shipment from Indonesia, bringing oil or from Japan, they're bringing a lot of these electronics goods. Can't stop you to do American ports. Exactly. And if you do a dropship in Honolulu, then go to Los Angeles or San Francisco or Seattle. It's not American carrier with American flags. So let's go on that for a minute. Don't you think that Hawaii would be better off if there were no Jones Act or if Hawaii was exempted from the effect of the Jones Act? This is just one question. And it's what I was saying before is that a ship made in the United States costs five times what a ship costs made in Korea or elsewhere in Korea is my favorite because it's cheapest in Korea or elsewhere in Asia. I mean, wouldn't it be better for Hawaii if Matson, for example, spent one fifth of the costs of a new ship when it buys a new ship because then it wouldn't have to amortize that cost against us and pass it on to us. So from that point of view alone, wouldn't it be a good idea to get us exempted and and why is the delegation not doing that? I guess because of the home rules concept and they want to make sure that you're protecting the American industry in terms of manufacturing. There's no industry here, though. There are no shipyards here that are building these ocean-going ships. Exactly. The US Navy has a shipyard here for that's only for military purposes. But in terms of commercial, we have to either go to San Diego or in Seattle. So we don't benefit by, you know, the union, the benefits to the unions and the benefits to shipyard owners under the Jones Act, American shipyard owners and American union. We don't benefit for that at all, but we have to pay the price of having these expensive ships because we that's why that's a lot of the if you go to the supermarket over here, you look at the retail price, I would say compared to the mainland grocery stores, you compare like the milk or orange juice or whatever or the meat that we consume here, I would say six to eight percent of the difference because we're paying like six to eight percent in transportation costs. And which, you know, if you're in the mainland, a lot of you might get a lot of these stuff cheaper. Yeah, I mean it was just another survey indicating that this was a very hard place to get a job, relatively speaking, in a very hard, it's a hard economy for people and it's a hard place to buy things because your wages aren't enough to pay for the high cost of living. And this is really a recipe for backwater. But let me go to one of the question I think we should address and that is what can Hawaii do, aside from the Jones Act now, to improve the possibilities for import-export. And you mentioned before the show we were talking before the show that we have a foreign trade zone which plays into import-export. It's a big thing. And right after this break, Russell, I'd like to talk about how that works and what, if anything, the state of Hawaii can do. You and me and our elected officials can do to facilitate better import-export by improving our transportation facilities with the State Department of Transportation, for example, at the foreign trade zone or otherwise in order to improve the prospects for trade and our economy. Let's take a short break. We'll come back and then see what Russell says. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate, empower and inspire. With your conception, the host of Hispanic Hawaii. You can watch my show every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. We will bring you entertainment, educational, and also we'll tell you what is happening right here within our community. Think Tech, Hawaii, Aloha.  Welcome back to Think Tech. More specifically, welcome back to leadership in Hawaii. Today, we're talking about talking about trade. We're talking about transportation and trade. We're talking about import-export for Hawaii. We're talking to Russell Hanma. He's a U.S. senior official for APEC Hawaii. And he thinks globally. And so, if I ask you that question, what could you offer me? We have a foreign trade zone. First, tell me how it works. In terms of foreign trade, I know that our biggest one is that foreign trade zone 9 that we've seen right next to the Homeland Security Office. But immigration is right behind on the, there's a foreign trade zone office that the State Department of Economic Department of Business and Tourism DBED operates. And it's under the state jurisdiction. But they do work with the United States U.S. Customs or with the U.S. Customs Border Protection Agency, which they changed the name in 2003. And so, under the Homeland Security, we have our immigration there, services, as well as U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agency. And that plays a major role in terms of customs regulation. How does it work? I mean, what does it do? In foreign trade zone, like, it's like, I'll tell you a good example. Like, it's an area that you designated that if you know like a similar from a state level, like state enterprise zone, which is a similar kind of concept, but you don't pay state taxes. But in foreign trade zone, you don't take, you don't pay federal taxes. Like, in terms of U.S. Customs. Customs tax. When you're paying for the importing goods coming from foreign countries. Sanctuary. Exactly. It's a neutral zone. What long as you do conduct business in this foreign trade zone area, it's an area that's designated as a free trade area, as a free trade zone. So I can bring goods in. I can leave them there. And I can ship them out again. And there's no federal tax effect at all. Yes. Long as you have the legal documents to justify that, like it's similar to what freight borders do in terms of a warehouse entry, like you want to bring it in and you want to just store it there and re-export it out. And you don't have to pay any tariffs or anything. Maybe some fees for our service fee. But in this case, in foreign trade zone, what you can do is a good example of what we used to do at the foreign trade zone 9. I don't know if they're doing this now, but in the past in the 80s or what they used to bring apples for New Zealand. And in New Zealand, apples would be converted into apple juice. And they'll can it and actually do a manufacturing process in the country. The food processing area. And then what we do is after you have the finished product, you can re-export it out without paying any. Without ever sort of touching this economy. Yeah, even you bring in the apples coming in from New Zealand. And a lot of people do that. Like I know like Panasonic used to have a foreign trade zone in the Bayeia area. And that's where the diagnostic laboratory is with the blood bank. But that used to be a foreign trade zone for Panasonic. So what they used to do is they used to bring in parts of material from Japan and they'll assemble it there by using a local labor force in terms of manufacturing. And then after they have their finished product, they can re-export it out and without paying any. Okay, as soon as you cross the gate, so to speak, as soon as you leave the foreign trade zone and so come into Honolulu or IAEA, whatever the case may be, Bingo. Now you're subject to American customs. Harris would have you, right? Right, and you can you know and then you have a choice you can either based on whatever freight borders use like a foreign warehouse entry is a good example like foreign trade zone where you can export it import and release some of the goods that you wanted for local domestic consumptions. In other words, you want to have that finished product like apple juice and you wanted to sell it in long so safe way or time supermarket or a food land that you can whatever apple juice that comes out, you've got to pay taxes on that portion. Right, but you don't have to pay taxes on the difference between the apples and the juice. Exactly. Because juice is more valuable than apples. Exactly. So that manufacturing process is essentially not taxed. Not by tariffs anyway. Longest you're operated in that bonded kind of area. Yeah. And another good example is duty free shoppers in Waikiki at the airport. That is a foreign trade zone too. But the store is a foreign trade zone. The store itself is a duty free. So whatever whiskeys or high fashion merchandise that you see over there, you don't have to pay tariffs. Longest taxes on a sales tax because this is a foreign trade zone. So who decides this? Actually, you've got to get a license. And like foreign trade, you've got to have one US customs broker official working there to manage the foreign trade zone. Make sure there's no funny business. Exactly. Waikiki gallery at the duty free shoppers is a foreign trade zone there too. I think it depends on the which floors. So it can be a little thing. It can be a big, doesn't have to have a fence around it. It doesn't have to have barbed wire or security guards. It can be a shop. Yeah, exactly. Like duty free shoppers. Exactly. And you know, it gives an incentive for, you know, to me that kind of creates a little bit of win-win kind of situation. So what happens with duty free shoppers?  I mean, I shouldn't say everybody. It's the Japanese tourists, isn't it? It's not me.  But they get a break, right? Yeah, they got to show their passport and they go to the area where they have a foreign, like a duty free merchandise are laid out. And there's an area there for locals can go there too and shop and pay their generous tax. They got to pay the tax. Exactly. The Japanese tourists or whoever, whatever kind of tourist, they don't have to pay the tax. Yeah, as long as they're shown. As treated as if this transaction did not take place in the U.S. Right, right. So if you could go all over the world, duty free shoppers have some kind of outlet at the international airports throughout the country or throughout worldwide. So that gives, you know, back in the 70s and 80s, that was a good thing. Because nowadays there's so much competition that merchandising and product is all over. You know, you can get it. You can probably get it in a wholesale price anywhere, practically. OK, so here's the magic question for you. You know, Russell, you're into trade. You're, you know, the U.S. senior official for APEC, which is all about commerce and economic development. And that's what you think about. That's what you do. That's your orientation. You would like to see as much trade between this country and other countries as is possible. You would like to see the Trans-Pacific Partnership succeed. You would like to see us part of it. And I guess it's beneficial as far as your view of it is concerned for us to have foreign trade zones because that's commerce and import, export, trade, and whatnot. So my question to you is, what can the state of Hawaii do to improve its economy by way of this transportation aspect, foreign trade zones or otherwise? You know, what do we do to get in on the benefits of import, export, or to increase our import, export activities because of transportation or the way we handle import, export through any mechanism at all? And, well, what do we do and can we, in fact, do it? Yeah, I think it's already being done. You know, it's moving. I remember that you look at the numbers statistically from year 2004 to year 2014. Within that 10-year span, we must quadruple the exporting of Hawaii merchandise. And roughly right now, we have about over 840 Hawaii companies who are engaging in exporting of their services or their product. And Hawaii alone, we generate roughly about $1.5 billion in export. Where are we exporting? Most of them could be fruits, could be finished products that we bring in, woodwork, cabinet kind of things. Arts and crafts, trade, tourist items. And some of the other energy products that we come up with. So there is a market coming up in terms not only for we export tourism as well. Those numbers in there, I know like two years ago, Hawaii Tourism Authority won that export e-commerce award from the president through the White House and became one of the tourist destinations in the world. What was that for? As for exporting tourism. Oh, tourism is treated as an export. Yes. And those numbers are in there. And that's why I was saying in Hawaii, one out of five people are working in the import export trade related industry here. Well, if you look at the numbers, I would say we have like 1.4 million people in population in Hawaii. Out of that, 208,000 people are in the import export trade related industry. Well, you've said that we have increased our import export with that consideration. And other thing is, to me, if you want to expand on the business, I would like to see more trading company here, more entrepreneurs that want to go into freight borders, that want to engage in more export people. Helping these businesses how to do import export. Yeah, it's not magic. How do you do that? You get a license? Actually, all you had needed is a general exercise last to do business. And you can hire freight borders to do the trading for you.  And right now, there's so much opportunity with the internet interstate commerce and all that. You can buy a merchandise and host them on the internet and you can do the shipping right there. And you act as an agent. Ship to Asia. And ship it to Asia. Anyway, you're up all over the world. And so what you're saying, I think I hear what you're saying is you're taking goods that are manufactured on the mainland, U.S. mainland. And you're selling them to Asia.  And you operate from Hawaii. And the goods don't actually necessarily have to actually come through Hawaii. Exactly, because they have their own little shipping department over there. Exactly. So why is it better to do that here than in California? Actually, anyway, it doesn't have to be in California. You can be anywhere and do that. Long as you can have your site and through the website. What I hear you saying is that somebody who can build a website, somebody who understands this process you've been describing can be here, live on the beach, whatnot, and engage in a profitable import-export business, mostly export, of American goods to Asia, and possibly vice versa. Tell them, tell the entrepreneurs, tell the young people what their options are. And that's what we need to impart to them. I would like to tell you when I first started doing import-export, there was no internet. There was no e-commerce or e-bay or anything where you can buy things on a wholesale and sell at retail. So we all had to represent a company and ask the company to be your company rep and get a sample of the product or service that you're selling. And we had to take that sample to overseas. Like I remember I was doing on this business with Hard Rock Cafe in Japan. And I was representing company in New York. And we're bringing in a lot of these letter jackets from Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts and put it in Japan's Hard Rock Cafe. And I was the one that was doing the transaction. And I got into surfboards and skateboards and represent this company called Action East. And it was like a generic kind of, but there's all these ways that you can approach in an entrepreneurial kind of way. But long as you have your, you've got to understand the import-export transportation operation and understand what freight borders and US customs brokers as well with a trading company operate. You yourself can operate as a trading company. Even I can do that with my iPhone or in terms that it's just a way of nowadays with the technology that's out there. Everything's capable nowadays. Yeah, and your advantage over, for example, somebody who lives in China who could read the same internet and could read the same laws about freight forwarding, your advantage is that you know the arbitrage. You know what we have here and what they don't have there and how to make a buck on satisfying that demand with what we have in the way of supply. That's the notion to me of import-export, finding out what we got here that they don't have there. And so you can do that. But I think you have to travel, don't you? You have to travel. The other thing is that if you can attend a lot of this trade show and depending on what kind of commodities or business that you want to gauge in if it's a gift item kind of trade show or it could be electronic products or something that's unique that you think there's a marketplace and you attend those trade show and you talk to those manufacturers rep and get some information and ask them if you want to be your manufacturer rep. How much is a wholesale? If you can buy it in a wholesale price or X-factory below price, then you know there's a market fee for retail. So as yourself being an intermediator like a trading company broker, you want to get you want to be good to the supplier and see if you can get the best price to the supplier. Then you have the customer, the buyer on the other side. You got to be good to them as well and see what they're looking for. So you got to kind of play both sides. And you have to think globally. Exactly. You have to think globally if you see that the possibility of the market and the supply and demand curve and opportunity. And then you can make a buck and just to close, I mean in the past we had more of this than we had now. For some reason, am I right? It's diminished and we have to rebuild that if we want to be the crossroads of the Pacific economically in terms of trade and import-export, right? Yeah, I guess in terms of rulemaking, you know, like I remember when I was being an advocate for pushing that multi-trade agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership so-called TPP. And I wanted to make Hawaii the headquarters because we can apply the American law here with due diligence and with the international rule of law. And based on the policy side we have it set, then we can move the private sector and people to follow and create the business opportunity. So it gives a lot of chance to a fair deal or making the playing grounds more equal in that way. Great and interesting way to earn a living too. Thank you, Russell. Russell Hanra. Yeah, thank you, Jay. You are a senior trade official for APEC Hawaii. Thank you.


And footwear is extremely difficult. It's physically hard, it's monotonous, and it's not what people think it is.  It's like internet fame and Kanye checks and the reality of making shoes. Kind of talk them out of it in some ways unless they come in and they got like blistered hands already and I can see that their people work with their hands and that they understand what that's like. Being a shoe designer and being a shoe craftsman couldn't be further apart. My name is Mark Gainer and I am the designer at No One Footwear. I'm originally from Canada. You know, I worked, my primary skill set is I worked as a graphic designer for a number of years in magazines and books. I came down to Los Angeles and worked with a company called Gourmet Footwear. So, you know, with John Buscemi, Greg Luchy and Greg Johnson. First time I got into, you know, an athletic shoe factory and specifically into the sample room and saw them making shoes, you know, saw them taking a flat paper pattern and turn it into a sneaker. Then I was hooked. You know, that's when I was really, that's when I got the bug. The cost starts at 6.75 for, you know, kind of off the shelf shoes and then bespoke starts at $1,000 a pair. This is the Alpha. This is the first shoe that we made and it's our take on a deconstructed desert boot. We had some holdups getting it moving into the space and so it was myself and my pattern maker. We're kind of working out at my house for the first five or six months of this. So this was a shoe that we developed as a kind of study of what we could do with no machines. So this is the No One Bravo. This particular one is a Italian pony skin zebra print upper and then inside we've got a French lamb skin lining. This shoe took about 14, 15 days to make. There's the curing period and then cutting, et cetera. Someone comes into No One and they wanna make a shoe. The first thing we'll do is sit down with them with our pattern maker and we'll get measurements of establish what size your feet are. Then we'll select material for the upper. We've got a great selection of inventory of hides that we've collected here. And so we'll sit down at the table, roll those out and select a material for the upper. The first step is the paper patterns. Then we select the materials. Then you cut the pattern. So you cut all the elements for the pattern. The second stage is lasting. And so lasting is where you will take a form which is called a last, which is a form of the human foot and you wrap the upper around it. And that's really the exciting part of the process because that's where it goes from being a flat object to a dimensional form that you recognize as a shoe. We can really celebrate both aspects of that. Our ethos here is art, craft and technology. Those are kind of the three pillars that we invest in. And I think there's this component of craft that's historical and especially in footwear is such a beautiful history to it. So there's this really historical system here and then we have technology because we are a business in the year 2017 merging those two things together. That's really our sweet spot. I think we got it. You know what? I think so too.


Aloha, welcome to finding your piece of the rock on Think That Kauai. I'm your host, Abe Lee. I have been a licensed real estate agent since 1973. I'm the owner of Century 20 on I-Properies Hawaii and work with almost 100 wonderful agents in real estate sales. I started Abe Lee seminars in 1980. I have taught over 10,000 students to help them to get their real estate licenses and have taught continuing education classes for licensees to renew their license every two years. Our show is dedicated to helping buyers and sellers understand the process involved in a real estate transaction. Our special guests will talk about legal issues, escrow, title, getting on loan, surveys, home inspection, insurance, contracts, wisdom trust, and much, much more. We're really honored today to have a very good friend of mine and someone that I've known, Brian Lee. I've known him for over 50 years if you can believe it, and he and his wife and family are like family to us, but I gotta tell you, Brian is one of the best estate planners in Hawaii. So let me give you a little bit of background before I ask Brian to tell us a little bit more about him, but he's the principal of E-Bus Consulting LLC specializing in estate planning. He has been assisting Hawaii clients for over 45 years, designing and executing their estate plans. He was recently a 2021 and 2022 star advertiser finalist for Hawaii's best in estate planning, and in 2019, he's recognized by the Hawaii State Legislature and Governor David Ige as one of the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii's great Gatsby honorees. So Brian, thank you so much for being with us today. You're welcome. By the way, like I said, Brian's not just a business friend, but a family friend. So I'm really honored to have him. And by the way, we're not going to finish everything that he's got to tell us today. I guarantee you we're going to have two or three more segments because of all the knowledge that he has. So Brian, tell us, how did you get involved in, well, tell us about your family first and your education, where you grew up, and how you got started. Well, you know what? I took this huge exam and I passed it. So McKinley High School said I could come to their school. So yes, I went to McKinley. I graduated. Then I went to school up on the mainland, started a family. And in 1972, started in financial services. Basically, I was in the life insurance business and back in that time, was extremely successful, as you know. But I got to the point where I wanted to do more. So I left the insurance industry and did what I always do. I get up two o'clock every single morning and study to the point where I try to specialize and master the area of estate planning because that's what my clients needed. And over a period of time, got recognized nationally and ended up for some of the largest financial institution in America, writing the manuals and teaching nationally. I had an apartment in Covington, Louisiana, I was in Orange County and my address, there was 888 Disneyland and I was on the mainland two weeks out of every single month. And I became a Nestle instructor, which means I certified all of the accountants in America, as well as a CFP instructor and recently been hired by the Hawaii Association of Realtors to teach specialized classes for them. And here I am, that's what I do, basically doing estate planning and business planning. And Brian, without bragging too much, and I'm going to brag for you, but this is all self-taught. Yes it is. Right. There was, when I was going, there wasn't a class that was given. So my expertise is kind of unique. I get hired by law firms on the mainland, that's what I was doing. They would send me out to meet the clients because they had their hard time. And because of my background in said business succession planning and tax planning, I would often meet with the CPA firms. So my specialty is, there's about nine specialties that I have that I get called in. So yes, I have different specialties that are working. That's amazing. I've been in Brian's seminars, by the way. I sit in the back and listen to him. I go, holy mackerel, these guys are walking in psychopedia. So let's talk about, what are some basic estate planning that you would recommend too?  This is the one single biggest decision our family has to make for legacy planning, for transferring assets down to your children. The estate planning today is not about dollars and cents because the fact is, from a federal guidelines, the maximum amount that you can have without being any taxes is close to $13 million per person. So when you've got a husband and wife, that's like $26 million from a federal level. When you take a look at it from a federal point of view, less than three tenths of one percent of all the citizens in America will ever pay a transfer tax. Now, that's on a federal side. In the state of Hawaii, people worry about inheritance tax, but by the way, Hawaii does not have an inheritance tax, but it's only a play of words.  But Hawaii does have a transfer tax. So if you have in a state that has about more than $6.2 million per person, then you pay about a 10% anything above 6.2 husband and wife, we're talking about $12.4 million. So when you take a look at a citizen in Honolulu in Hawaii, there's very few taxes that start to be paid. So what are the problems that we face? Well, the most common problems that we have today that causes a huge problem is a relationship problem. See, when you talk about lawsuits, there's what is called a civil lawsuit. That's where I'm offending you and things like that. You know, 45% of all the civil lawsuits is sibling rivalry. And you know what? You're in real estate. Real estate is the only, only asset that has a bill of rights. People know what the bill of rights are. That's the rights that you have to citizen with your relationship with the government and what the government can give to you. Real estate is the only asset that have their own bill of rights. People don't understand that when in fact mom and dad loves their children, besides that they're going to split the property equally between three children, they don't realize that problems can come up all the time. Common problems. Divorce is one huge problem. Immature death, bankruptcy, sibling rivalry, all of these things. I often asked, I was at up. I was speaking for AIG with 700 people in there and I asked this question, how many of you by the raise of hand, when you die, you're going to transfer all of your assets to your children either equally or unequally, everybody raised a hand? And I asked this next question, how many of you, if you have the opportunity, you're going to business with your brothers and sisters along with their spouses and children. Guess what? Out of 700 people there, only eight people raised their hands. And I said, how many of you are the only child, half of them were? See, here's the problem. You wouldn't go into business with your brothers and sisters, but you do the same thing to your children. And under the bill of rights, if in fact, three or four of us own the same property and I come to you and I say, buy me out. So under the summary of partition rights, I can sell the entire property with or without your permission. The problem that I have is when I get put into that position, my siblings become a relationship only in name.  I'm like the architect. I have settled five sibling rivalry, different families. Every single one of them above age 65. And right now, just right now, within the last week, I got hired by a group of people here, which I can imagine names as you know, because they're very popular, six children. And I'm talking about litigation from back 20 years, they couldn't solve it. And I finally got hired by them to go in there and mediate. And I have a pretty good feeling that I can solve the problem. So estate planning is more than the dollars and cents. Estate planning is all about relationships. The relationships that we create that we leave back, that we're less going to leave lasting wounds or it's going to build relationships. By the way, one of the cases that I settled pre-COVID had Thanksgiving last year. First time in five years, the children had Thanksgiving because we solved the problem. So yes, but on the same token, is it better to have a plan than not to have a plan? Yes, it is better. But you've got to also consider this, you know, 99% of all the estate plans are identical. I mean, literally, it's identical because they're on a software. Cannot, I don't believe, do a very good estate plan in two and a quarter hours. Well, what does the two and a quarter hours stand for? It is the average time that it takes nationally for someone to go and see, someone to do their estate planning, typically an attorney, from LOL signing up and completing their estate plan. You know, it takes you maybe 20, 30, 40, 50, maybe two generations to make a decision the decision that you make on your estate plan can go 80 to 100 years. How can you logically make a decision to do an estate plan in two and a quarter hours? You know what's even more interesting in life? When you've got two, three children, four children in your case, you better go, you know, Abe doesn't have television, besides so many children up there, but he's got so many children. But the point is when you have so many children over there that live under the same house, under the same conditions, maybe live in different economic conditions because the first one and the last one, but what is interesting, somewhere along the line, they're all different. And who they marry is different because you create culture, tradition, and when they get married they create their also. But when you design an estate plan and they're all coming together in the same plan, it doesn't work very well, it doesn't work very well. That's why it takes time to do a proper estate plan. The best kind of estate plan is not based on the answer, it's based on the question. It is incidentally more important to ask the right question at the right time in planning than knowing the answers of the universe. So yes, you do need estate planning. Doing estate planning is very, very, very difficult if you do it the correct way. But another problem is the people don't really know if the estate plan is going to work or not because they're dead. One of the first things I did in 1974, before I got started, because I knew I wanted to go into this area, when I spoke to my dad I was going to change, one of the first things my dad said to me was, you know, you may want to check with the people who the estate planning was done for, not with. So I did research. I went to see people who estate planning was done for and found out why the estate plan didn't work. What was the problems that the trustee ship created? How did this positive provisions was? All of those things was so important. That's the reason why we identified the 15 areas of estate planning. Estate planning is not only about dying, it's about living. That's what it's all about. But this is your show, so I gotta at least take a walk. You get me going to turn this thing on and I'm going where your question is, yes, there are a lot of stuff. One last thing is estate planning is not about dying, by the way, okay? Not only about dying, that's why the 15 areas has those things inside there. So if you look at it, there are a lot of stuff prior to that that you gotta do.  Well, I remember Brian having attended some of your seminars. When I went to your seminar, you had 10 areas of estate planning, and now you've expanded to 15, right? So one of them you said was about sibling rivalry. And that's really important. But what are some other areas that you feel that you covered that maybe most estate plans don't cover? One of the single most important areas of estate planning that is not covered is actually the funding of the trust. You see, what happens here is that you can create all of the trust, and the trust, let me say that a trust is the main document you're gonna work with. Now, by that, I mean this. The trust is one of the few documents where you can convert a wish and a desire and make it enforceable, okay? So by doing that, you get what you want for your family. But it does not work unless you put the asset inside of the trust before you die. If you don't do that, it's going to trigger a probate. And let me cover a myth, okay? Every time you turn on the television, every time you go to estate planning, I always hear this, you got to have a will. You got to have a will, okay?  Unfortunately, the will is the one single document that has to be authenticated. And the process of authentication is called probate. Now, there's three things wrong with probate. A, one, it becomes a public document. It's going to name all the people what they're going to get. Number two, there's a title A. In Honolulu, maybe an average of 22, but the case that I'm going to settle is 24 months, 24 years they never settle, okay? And number three, the probate process has a fee. And funny, the fee is predicated on the gross amount, not the net amount. Now that's only domestic probate. Because if you own property all over the United States, there's another kind of probate called ancillary probate. And that, oh my gosh, it takes three times longer. It takes, it's three times more expensive. If in fact someone made your estate planning and they don't sit down with you and go over all of the assets, make sure that it gets funded, believe it or not, and I'm not trying to point fingers at somebody, but whoever is pulling your document, get paid three to four times more to settle in the state by not putting it in the trust and putting it in the trust at the same time you do this. So after the documents are signed, one of the things we have is an asset allocation meeting to go over every single asset and figure out which one should be in the trust, who's going to pass it and write it down so that we know. That is extremely, extremely important. If you don't do this, it can take months and months and months and months of going through and settling. You know, I remember 20, 30 years ago, an article came out about the brothers up on the big island that you were involved with when you were working with me. And remember the guy died and did settle the estate. He wasn't in the trust, he didn't even know. And what happened is that the taxes was due and the values went up and they ended up losing all the property to brothers. Okay? I don't remember that, it's too bad to be here. I do. Yeah, so the fact is it is extremely, everything has to do with those small little stuff that you put inside there, making sure that the T's are crossed and the eyes are dotted and then the plan works very well. If they follow, you know, my personal feeling is when I do these seminars and I talk to people, I tell them out front, just take the ideas that I'm giving you. I don't have to do the estate plan, but get someone to do it. Take all of this information and then get it done. It is much better to get it done and not to get. Question that I have, Brian, and I've been in your seminar where you said that your children will not own the assets in the trust, but they'll control it. The question you asked is about ownership versus control. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. Okay, remember this, how can you lose something if you don't own it? Okay? So the idea here is this. The way that I designed the trust, and this is not mine, I have to ask the question. When you have an asset and you want to protect it, you don't necessarily have to give it to the children. If you put it into the trust and make them a beneficiary of the trust, if they go through a divorce, lawsuit, premature death, bankruptcy, alienation, they can't lose all any of their stuff because they don't own it. And the best part is this. How can the government tax you on something that you don't own? So by leaving you that, a good example of that is the Campbell State Trust. You see, the Campbell State Trust was approximately 100 years old. Who ever heard of Kwananaa 4? Yes, we heard. But all of a sudden, the trust had to end. Yes, she had 300, 400 million dollars, but all of a sudden it came out. When it left the womb of the trust is when the protection gave out. Okay? You can actually protect your children by putting all that into the trust and separate the trust so that they don't have to be touching each other's asset. The idea is don't own it, control it. That's what the idea is. So I remember you saying that when you and Susan passed away, that your children will be controlling and be the beneficiaries, but they will not own the trust. So should they get divorced or get sued, and then the ex-spouse or the creditor cannot go after the assets because they don't own it? Yeah, there's one caveat that you've got to be careful for. Because although the principle cannot be touched, there's a flow of income coming out of the trust. Okay? And if there is a divorce, a lot of times the in-law, which is going to turn into the outlaw, if you know what I mean, my son in-law now is an outlaw, okay? What's going to happen is when they go to court, they're going to ask for what is called a standard of living that they're accustomed to. And in some states, the standard of living, the definition of income to a family is all income, including trust income, coming from outside forces. So we sometimes put a provision inside there that says, hey, in order for you to qualify in order to be an income beneficiary in trust, this spouse has to sign a post-noctural agreement, be represented by their own attorney that says, in case there's a divorce, they got to sign off saying you cannot use the income coming from grandpa or grandma or moms or dad's trust to determine standard of living. And once they sign that off, then they can't touch the money. So in protecting the principal and the income in the trust, put a benefit of your children. Yes, if that's what you're asking me, those are some of the things that we can put inside there. Now, it is true that I've spoken to many, many divorce attorneys. Half of them said I can always break it. The other half says nobody can, but every one of them agreed with one thing they all had in common. It is better to write that provision in there because when the judge look at it, they're going to look at it and make a different decision maybe. So yes, that's some things that we add to a trust document that if it's important. Brian, I know you talk about really what I call sophisticated issues like generation skipping trust or other types of what I call the more advanced trust. Do you cover a lot of that in your basic estate planning or is it for maybe more wealthier clients? Hey, just one thing I don't differentiate. That's the difference between the zeros, okay? So I get the same kind of service, same kind of time with somebody that has 50 million as somebody who might have $5 million, okay? The difference of course is somebody has $50 million and the issue is going to be taxes that's thought to be paid. There are some sophisticated tax programs that we have to go put in that costs more bucks, but we're saving them way, a lot of money that has to be done. But yes, I don't differentiate because actually the thing about it is the guy who puts on his pants the same thing, whether it's so did gold or cotton, they still get the same problem. So I always bring up the same issues. And so just because you got more dollars doesn't mean you get better planning. You just got more dollars. So don't differentiate, I don't differentiate at all. Now you also talk about asset protection in your estate planning. And I know that when you have the revocable living trust you're subject to lawsuits and creditors, current once that trustor or the person dies, then they're pretty much immune from losses and creditors if they don't distribute all the assets to the children. Well, you know, there's something that people don't realize. Hawaii is one of the 29 states that has PE protection. Okay? That is by the entirety. And then the basic three characteristics of PE property is that you got to be married. You can't sell property without your spouse. And if one of you gets sued, then you're protected. Now, a lot of times when people are doing an estate plan in Hawaii because we're separate property, you got two trusts. So a lot of the attorneys will recommend that we split the property in tendency and common and then we'll fund the trust. But as you know, when you split the property from PE and TC, you lose the protection. But in the year 2012, April, our legislators changed the law. They said, we still can have the asset protection by putting in the specialized wording in there. And the specialized wording will provide the protection that is important. So that's what we're looking at, putting in that specialized wording inside there. But what a lot of people don't realize is this because nobody asked the question.  Now, one of the three characteristics is no longer around. So you don't have the protection of the TE. That's not correct. The law says that if you have it in TE and it's in trust and you die, if Sally gets sued, it's still protected. But that's the beauty of having TE property. The other thing is this, if you have a lot of assets, okay, you do wanna put a special layer protection. And that's where putting up LLCs are concerned, understanding charging orders, making sure umbrella insurances are there. And the one thing that people don't recognize in lawsuits is there's a huge difference between inside lawsuit and outside lawsuit. So what I'm teaching about asset protection, setting up asset protection programs is important that it's not just one pill is a cure-all, okay? That's why it's important for you to get understanding. And if you notice in the past, I've said the key to doing proper estate planning is education and education takes time. I know we're running out of time, because I'm frosting at the mouth, because now it's like that, because you know that this is my passion, this fight. So the other thing too, Brian, is if someone did their estate planning before 2012, then they were married, then they might wanna reconsider switching it to TE in a trust rather than TC. Right, and the law says that if you add it in TC, in order to get back the 509 protection, you gotta spend twice. You gotta change it back to TE and then back to TC with the 509 provision inside. And by the way, I hate to say this, but we find quite a bit of those mistakes, they're terrible. So, you know, that's basically what it is. You know, Brian, like I said, this half an hour was well spent and we ran out of time, but we will bring Brian back, folks, because we still have about 12 areas of estate planning that we didn't cover yet. Class, Brian specializes in what we call retirement planning and about distribution of assets and what happens when you have a business. So those are some areas I think in the future that we might wanna talk about. But Brian, I can't tell you how grateful I am for you spending some time with us. I know you're busy, so please, yeah. So make sure you come back again because we're gonna do phase two and three, I'm sure. But thank you so much, folks. If you really enjoyed Brian's talk, go to ebusconsulting.com and also if you wanna know more about real estate classes, go to ablyseminars.com and tell your friends about this wonderful seminar or this video and we'll have more in the future. Brian, thank you so much. Appreciate it. You're welcome, babe, anytime. Okay, a lot of love, folks. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.


Sup guys, it's Jacob here. Welcome back to another reaction video. Look, I'm just gonna say it off the bat I do have a Broncos beanie, but I have no idea about the rivalry between the 49s and the Broncos So if there are if there is look if there is a classic rivalry if I'm literally committing absolute treason right now by mixing these two logos, I apologize, but I really don't give a shit now. Let's get into this video We're looking at von Miller. He's a linebacker for the Broncos. Is he the guy that wears glasses? I feel like he is. The last time I saw him would have been on this list this time last year It's been a long time, mate. It's been a long time Let's get into it Then he's named all the chickens after his teammates Who's that guy? Who is that guy? Yeah, I knew he came in early last year. What's gonna be the best way to wear this beanie? I'm thinking like this You know, I appreciate pass rush more than anything. You know pass rush is what you know up to dvs So it's just to watch him Damn, all right Can you imagine how that felt in a blizzard being tackled being split in half by von Miller The 26th best player in the NFL on the snow on the rock hard ground. I mean Does it get any worse? Just watching him get off the ball is unreal Yeah, good luck. Good luck 75 John Taylor has to respect the upfield much more against von Miller You know, I've heard a lot of people say that von had a doubt. I didn't really like that player I'm not gonna lie.  He's too quick too strong Too powerful Let's look up his stats Sounds like he's out Not optimistic von Miller will be able to return this season von B. Vishawn Miller, Jr Is born on March 26th 1989, which makes him 31 years of age He looks totally different without glasses, which is the case with a lot of people. He's six foot three 250 pounds So he's definitely up there in size. He went the second pick of the first round in 2011 He went to Texas A&M for what I'm assuming would be three years. Let's have a look. No, he went for four. That's surprising That is surprising. That wouldn't have happened these days. He's he's uh, oh my god He's listed as having a 40 yard dash of 453 I'll tell you what. He's on the wrong side of the ball in my opinion. Let's go And this defense is not just a defense where he's not a rush I know that he was playing worse than absolutely Vic Fangio wanted him on the field at all times because he's such a difference maker Whether he shows up in the snapbook or not. I feel like he did a great job Doing everything he was asked to do That was von Miller von Miller came knifeied through Honestly and Vic Fangio's defense I think for I'm just gonna keep going up up enough This is usually a timer number 58 decides to make himself knowing I still remember the passers-by when we got off the ball. He just dug under the tackle and got the sack 6-3 Jesus man, how can you be moving like that? How can you he's There's no tackle in the world that can stop that Bro, look at this. Look at that That's like Valentino Rossi in the gp The guys can stick around and keep running When you see him do it is so freakish because he's getting low It would have happened so quick as well Watch that. Yeah Man, that's a nice move That is dynamic man Is this is unbelievable to watch is that the guy that he bet that's number 75 No, it was 72 That's 72 right there Okay, so 72 is the one the guy that he bet And this is 72 right here. So this is 75. So Where was 75? Now 75 wasn't on there, but 72 certainly was he literally missed him, didn't he? Yeah, not easy not easy at the best of times, especially not when you're like six foot six Oh my god, you're not gonna believe it. You're not you're not actually gonna believe it In fact, the guy who always asked for tj what isn't gonna believe it, but he's next He's number 25 on the list. I wasn't expecting that not at all not one bit So look, I'm not gonna waste any more of your time guys. That was von miller A player I know who who it is, but it's not a player that strikes me, you know It's not a player that although that move was absolutely ridiculous Look, it's a player that look if he was on my team if it was on my local team I definitely back him But as a Jags fan And really only a Jags fan


Head office eventually got a real address in Sydney. Now we're in Singapore. Head office, this is actually our head office here. We're in nine offices, six countries, four continents. So we have data scientists in New York and both of California. Dev offices opposite of Hague and the Netherlands and engineers scattered around the world. We're not a large company, we're about 50-odd people. We have been larger, we have been smaller and we really progress through the time as technologies change and we react. Now we used to be heavily into large engineering, lots of mobile developers when mobile was hot back in 2010 even when Libby and I have been working together for over 11 years and we've had other companies. But Sakura is focused on three things, cloud, data and security. Cloud, in terms of openness, we were an Amazon partner. Today we're a Google Cloud partner. We are a cloud partner, so we are actively in-market working with cloud on a daily basis. So, and I'll talk about our implementation. Security-wise, we do cyber security, digital forensics. We also help people like the strange local police, track down cyber security criminals and things like that. So we do some pretty cool stuff. Today we do somewhere between 200 of our penetration tests across many of the banks that we use today as well. So we're quite active in the sub-screw space. In the API space, I don't think as a modern technology company it's unlikely that you're not using APRs, right? You've got to be using APRs because that's what it's all about. Orchestration has always been a common word and common concern. Who's actively developing APIs today? Ends on the code. What's your biggest problem? Worship. Worshiping. Worshiping? Yeah. Worshiping. I find multiple data sources and multiple clients being this issue, having to redevelop authentication for multiple different clients, having to distribute a ticket in sync and all sorts of stuff. So for me, when I first got into the cloud space, I love to plug in pictures and be able to just drop in, I do plug in very quickly and go going. So that's what I've addressed myself. Sorry, I should've been the piece of myself first. I'm actually the CTO's group. My background, geez, I've graduated from uni and I've gone to Engineering Mountain County one. So I've been at Engineering since I was only one. I used to do some social lecturing at NTU. So I've been coming to Singapore for 20 years now. I've been living here currently this time for two years. I've been focused mainly on architecture, API development, and security. I really love that thing. All right, so case studies. So both of these case studies are home-based. We're currently working with a machine-based NAS-regulated entity in the FinTech space. So it's a small company. We're talking tens of thousands of users, nothing particularly scary. But what we do, we have a machine-learning investment bot in the background and visualization of that. So we have multiple clients. We're also white-labeling the product. And so we have to white-label it for Thai-based banks. We've had to white-label it now for American-based banks and all sorts of things. So we have to deploy it quickly. We have to have multiple clients connecting. We also have multiple API back-ends that we have to control. So we have in-house Django, class, Ruby and Rails API back-end, and having to pay as a startup the company didn't want to reinvent all of their retirement. So API Gateway was probably very, now the best and fastest way to look at things. We had to deploy across private, data centers as well as public data centers as well. So we're currently deploying now to Amazon and we're also deploying into bank data centers. So we had to have a solution that could be deployed with anywhere. And we had to be able to support different teams and have a common language. So for us and this environment in particular, we had to have a common solution. How we deployed this, it was actually fairly simple. We just went with the basic Postgres deployment. Anyone looking currently today in Postgres? For me, yeah, cool, okay. For me, when you're looking at scanning solution, Postgres is much harder to scale than say, both require good planning. So when you look at scalability, I think looking at the solution, having a scalability plan for growth is essential in the data, getting the data source right number at the beginning is something you need to do. For this company, because we had to deploy many times, fairly small deployments, having an easy to manage Postgres database was very simple. So we just went with our own, we're not using Lambda, we're not using Google Cloud deployment. Sorry, Cloud Launcher. So we just got installed it, whacked it on to the back of Postgres and deploying the correct plugins that we need. Solution, I think I've already said a couple of this. We had to reduce fragmentation. We totally had to generate government in there, always in Amazon Web Services. We wanted to single-convincence, with the AWC recognizing what protection calls and a few other things. So this is actually a main pillar. All front-end is a main UI here. But we also have server consumption, so we have edge-based consumption, we also have some internal-based API as well. Second one, take a quick test of your own color. Here's a big advertiser in the company with Global Reach. This company head-off is, I'm not sure I think it's London, maybe New York. I don't know, CIO, CTO of the company is in New York, but a lot of finance companies come into London. They are the world's largest media company by billing, and they're probably going to be run over in Singapore. Now, they have offices in the US, UK, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore. We've got thousands of youths, and we had to bring together a whole series of different APIs. They were taking eight hours to process, so we actually got our data scientists involved. We had to find the solution again to bring those APIs together as well as scale it, and make sure things were performing well. We've had to go from eight hours to processing time, and then target is five seconds per run. So it's a big difference. So the millisecond delay is very concerning. We have many clients we consider. We've got Amber Jazz, Rubio Riles, Hype on Dingo, Microsoft Excel even. Many different APIs, different security patterns required. You know, we have the GWT event with the Beowulf, and it's like that. So some public, some private. A lot of issues to concern and get in. Where for a bit? Are we for five seconds? We're probably down to two minutes. We have to get to five seconds. So the original APIs were written in Visual Basic.net. And we've brought that all across to Python. And we've custom written an entire algorithm back in Python. And we've actually been able to scale and make Python forward to the back end. And having a front, they'd be okay when they form up the central to the top. So, let's be good. So what do we do? We have with Amazon Web Services, multiple regions on our programming tool group. But regions were primarily in scope. So we have there in Singapore, we have the US, and we have Germany. So in this, we'll actually use Chrome mode. So we have the request coming in. We have Chrome on the app. We have the set right here. And there's that as well. We see shop, that's where it is to report. From CSTAR, CSTAR. Then we have all of our APIs on the back end. And that's basically replicated throughout the regions. So we have Chrome, we have CSTAR, all of the APIs. And again, Cassandra. So Cassandra uses the cross-up protocol combo tool. If you're used to REST-E or console or things like that, the same technology within the dynamics, very easy to scale. So, from regions and zones, Parallel, Parallel would be scaling across any of these regions. Kong is stateless. It handles cache invalidation very well. So, if you make a change in configuration in Kong, it will refresh and change that, and it will replicate throughout all the different nodes in the system of Kong and maintain that state. So, also maintain that memory process experience. Kong cluster and cross-up protocol base, we are using communities. We are very, very active in communities work. We give a lot of package management with helm, if anyone's using helm. We're also a Cassandra partner. So, we do a lot of Cassandra work. Some of our big clients in that space, we currently manage a 20,000 node cluster with 80 million users. So, that's our largest Cassandra production for memory capacity. So, that's part of the solution that we're working through. Lessons we've learned doing these things, what work, is features that count. Obviously, we don't want to rebuild the wheel every time, and if you're having multiple APIs and you can bring different APIs together, having a nice, fast-scaled, front-end base media. I've found Kong documentation really easy to use. So, I've been playing with documentation. Amazon Web Services produces great documentation. Google, a guillotine of producing some documentation that needs to work. Get your analytics and reporting right. So, make sure logs are shipped. Into your favorite reporting tool, that's essential. Using the plugins. We had a quick slide earlier of the sorts of plugins out there, but pulling in a plugin is really simple, and I already encourage you to get into an handle.  Actually, I might finish this slide off with the launcher, a common sense is sure, how easy it is inside Google Cloud. Now, also, I think of Kong as a cool little middleware that only has features when you're in it. So, probably don't like it, don't middleware it, but to me that's really where it's at, and it's really fast if you're going, you can build your own plugins, which we can discuss, and you can get an entire lifecycle with a request and a response. You can do rewriting, you can do all sorts of re-equals. Now, then, that's mainly around your data sources. You've got to pick the right data source from day one. Scanning Postgres can be a pain. Scanning Cassandra is a lot easier, and it can help early as well. So, look at the enterprise, the enterprise support.  Today, I'm working on a CA-based API gateway product, and that's from Big Bang here in town, and I'm not doing within CA too much. But, you know, I like to work with this. That was a record presentation of that, too, for me, sort of, of time. But in terms of how easy it is to launch it, anyone here using Google Cloud? Anyone here know that it existed? Yeah, great. All right, so, Google Cloud has a Cloud Entrepreneur product. You can easily go in here, and just go, if I type it right, there's from there, quality is from back to the links. You can literally launch here. You can pick, now for instance, is how big, there's this, where I'm loading one, it launches all of this, and just click launch, and you can have phone playing in it in 10 minutes, when you're done. Wait, 48. 48 minutes. Yeah, 20, I've got some months. That's obviously not going to come, that's going to Google. For instance, and the N instances, how are they, computer instances, and you know, on top of that, you've got start and everything like that, consider. By default, this is a Bitnami version. By default, Bitnami, we're going to take requests from <IP_ADDRESS>.1, so you're going to do some instant reporting or something, to work with it. The only production you can spot all that off, if you just, you didn't see it alive, just go into work with it. So you can go, any other tips or tricks in that space, just launch it, it's really easy. Play with it, look at the documentation, work through it. There's a break between tips as well up there, and Chrome holds a lot of webinars as well, so get yourself online as this, and help with what's going on. There you go, that's two use cases. Small company, monitor scale, and a message. VWolves number one, media company, looking more appetite, we're doing billions of dollars of going through Chrome, in terms of data. So, very happy. Any questions on those cases, cool? Are you guys using the Chrome Enterprise right now? We've launched, initially, during this period, with Chrome open source, but we're moving to Chrome Enterprise. The small star, they probably wouldn't look to Enterprise, I reckon they'll look to Enterprise, maybe like that, March, April, the media company, they'll be on Enterprise, I think, quite a few minutes. Yeah, so it's coming in fast. And our pressure look is, it's easy to work with an easy play with, and set it up like that.