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This concept of using leverage and helping the community was still swirling in Leong's head when the second event happened in 2004 - the passing of his uncle, Sen. Hiram Fong, whom Leong had always sought out for advice.
"I'd always wanted to record my late uncle and I never did," says Evan."Once he passed away I knew we were missing the boat.
"I remember my uncle and I were talking about my business, and he said 'That's good and all, but what do you do for anyone else besides yourself?' I really had no answer for him, and he did not give me any judgment for it, but it got me thinking."
Leong's thought was, what if he could share these great men's knowledge with everyone? He was truly blessed to get to learn at their feet. How much better off would the world be if they all could learn from them?
He had found his leverage. "It got me thinking, I can only give so much money, so much time," says Leong. "But if we could capture these conversations like I had with Duane, and that could have the same kind of impact on one, 10, 1,000, 1 million people, now we have something pretty interesting."
He wrote up the blueprint for GGR as a business plan for an entrepreneurship class he took while getting his executive MBA at UH.
Homework turned into reality in September '05 when GGR aired its first episode with Kent Unterman, the former UH football star and owner of Pictures Plus. The program found its home on ESPN 1420, a sports station, but it quickly expanded onto the Internet. In January of this year it moved on to television on KGMB, with half-hour shows on Saturday and Sunday preceding the news.
While they are excited about the move to television, the Internet is where Leong believes they can have their most lasting impact as a source that can be accessed at any time.
"This is where we took the leverage piece," says Evan. "We can record these people once - that ends up on radio,TV, the Internet, print pieces and archives. So they can mentor people they have never met, in different countries, even after they are dead. That is something else."
In their best month so far they had more than 24,000 podcasts downloaded, and from as far away as Arizona they receive testimonials from people who have been affected by the show.
Many of the recurring themes they have uncovered from the interviews would seem obvious to most things like having a strong sense of purpose and valuing family. But what surprised them was how important charity and giving back led to these business owners' success.
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