Entrepreneur gives
students business basicsAppraiser Richard Ching
earns national honor for his work
Richard Ching, a real estate appraiser for the last 18 years, is really "a closet teacher."
He played the tuba in the Kalani High School band and wanted to be a music teacher. But he realized that if he wanted to make a good living, he should change his major to something more practical. He chose real estate marketing.
For 10 years, he has managed to combine his first love for teaching and his business experience as a volunteer for Junior Achievement.
Ching was named the 2002 Elementary School Volunteer of the Year, one of four national winners. His work with more than a thousand students was applauded in a speech by U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie at the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.
Ching was involved with JA during his sophomore year at Kalani, and he remembered how much he enjoyed it -- a pleasure renewed every time he stands before a classroom of fifth-graders to talk about how to be successful in business. He began his own company, Hawaii Appraisal, in 1991, but has done real estate appraising since 1976. Ching has also been a bank and business appraiser.
"I'm a one-man company," he said. "I'm the ultimate small business."
He spends an hour working with a class five times a semester, teaching the basics of business, starting with the job interview -- something everyone will have to undergo at least once in a lifetime.
"I usually have the teacher help me (role-play) either the interviewer or interviewee. One of us is the interviewee who shows up wearing sunglasses, and looking around everywhere" but at the interviewer, imitating behavior "you would never do at a job interview," he said. "The kids have a ball with it!"
This demonstration helps students understand why it's important to make a good impression by dressing properly, relaying honest information and giving the interviewer one's full attention.
"I like the hands-on experience of sharing my (business) experience," Ching said. "It's not a lecture situation. You always give them something to do," whether it's assembling a ball point pen to illustrating a certain kind of mass production, or making them come up with an advertisement for a simulated company.
"I want the students to know there's a big world out there," he said. "There's so much opportunity and the sky's the limit. You can do anything you want, depending on how hard you work.
"(Also) I was a Boy Scout and I guess it becomes ingrained in you -- that you have to give back to the community to help the next generation," he said.
Should the kids one day open a business that turns out to be successful, Ching warns that it'll be payback time for them, as well: "If you see an old Chinese man with a cane come into your store, it will probably be me, and I'm gonna ask for my discount, because this is where you got started (in business)."
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