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BN: And then we talked a little bit about this, but I think just last year, you reached an agreement to sell the business.

DA: Right.

BN: So can you talk a little bit about...

DA: Well, I have four kids, right? So I wanted one of the four to take it over hopefully. I thought I had a couple chances at it, but nothing quite worked out. Though my son, Blair, I think, is interested in taking over the financial planning part of the business, so hopefully that will work out for him. So in looking around in the landscape of who I might want to try and partner up with or sell to, I felt that I didn't want to deal with any kind of agencies outside of Little Tokyo, or outside of our community. I had talks with a couple of other people I knew that had been bought by some of these other agencies that were looking, and didn't like what I was hearing, just the way they treat people, employees, that they wouldn't necessarily be guaranteed jobs, whatnot. And then looking around at the other agencies like mine, there weren't any really that had any type of perpetuation type of idea except for the Moreys. And I've known Josh and his dad, and his dad went to UCLA, so I've known him since college as well, and knew his wife, who unfortunately passed away due to cancer. But anyways, I knew the family, and so when I sat down with Josh and got to, listened to him, he convinced me. So I felt good about it and still do. And I think he's got a very good group of, a team that can take it to the next level, and he's doing that, I think. Meaning that he's looking for other agencies to buy and build into a much larger entity. I never had a vision like that. I would have had to have a lot more competent people around me in order to do that. Josh does, so I feel good that the agency's in good hands. So the fact that he set up this other umbrella corporation that will house all the agencies, and we're able to keep our own names still, I don't know how important that is for the long run, but I think in the short run I thought it was a good idea to keep all of our names. His name, my name, the Buna name, they just, being part of another large agency in Hawaii, so same kind of family agency. So anyways, he's growing pretty quick, I hope he's not growing too fast, but given I know that the people that he's got around him, he should be fine.

BN: So to what degree do you feel like the values that you carried from the Gidra days had an impact on the way you ran the business?

DA: Well, I thought... the one thing I thought that, and I still think is important today is the process. Is it collaborative or is it just "do as I say," kind of thing? And that was my dad's era, I thought. Do as you're told, walk the straight line, don't get into trouble, so forth and so on. I think the thing about the college days, and particularly the Gidra days is this whole idea of collectiveness, and deciding things as a group. But you have to have certain rules around that, right? So that, to me, made sense to me. This whole synergy idea, they call it synergy now, right? One plus one is three. I think that's kind of the most critical thing I think I've taken from it is the understanding is that it's better to try to make decisions as a group, and that's... the process of making that decision is as important as the decision itself.

BN: Right, right.

DA: I think that's most... because before it was all about the end result, the decision. This is the thing you've got to do, do it. Why? Just because that was the one done before, or that you told me to do it. Well, that ain't good enough these days, right? So I think to get to where you need to go, everyone needs to kind of understand how it's going to get done.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.