Inspiring Kindness and Change with Augie T & Mahealani Tulba

This week on the Team Lally Real Estate Radio Show, we interview Augie T and his daughter Mahealani Sims-Tulba, founder of B.R.A.V.E. Hawai‘i. Augie and Mahealani share details about their upcoming BRAVE Hawai‘i event on November 29, an inspiring initiative dedicated to promoting respect, kindness, and service while addressing the growing challenges of bullying and cyberbullying among Hawaii’s youth. Together with Adrienne and Attilio, they explore how families can foster open communication, awareness, and positive behavior in today’s digital age.

We also have our Experts We Trust. Amphay Champathong of Estate Planning Group discusses how proper estate planning can protect your assets and loved ones from probate challenges and financial stress, while Danny Langerman of DHA Financial shares why current VA mortgage rates in the 4s make now an ideal time for veterans to refinance and maximize savings.

Watch or Listen to the full episode

Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE:
Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the team Lally real estate show, home of the guaranteed sold program, or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m still Attilio, and if you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596, or check us out online at Team lally.com

ATTILIO:
Our first guest is Honolulu City Council member who continues to make a difference, both in government and in entertainment, known across Hawaii as comedian, actor, radio host and voice over artist, he’s brought laughter and inspiration to local audiences for decades. Beyond the spotlight, he’s devoted husband and father dedicated to serving his community with humor and heart.

ADRIENNE:
Joining him is the founder and CEO of brave Hawaii. Be respectful and value everyone, a nonprofit organization committed to raising awareness about bullying and promoting kindness and respect among students and communities. Her advocacy has empowered countless young people to speak up, stand tall and support one another. Please, welcome back. We’re so excited back. Welcome back. Welcome back. Augie T and Mahealani Sim-Tulba, hello.

AUGIE T:
Nice. You know, I get three years left I might have to take up on that career night. Yeah, three left. Three years left in my term. And Lally,

ADRIENNE:
love to have you. So much fun.

ATTILIO:
Door knocking for votes. You can door knock for listing. Yeah, I go around, Hi, my name is running for your listing manager. Can I count on your vote?

AUGIE T:
That’s the best way. Like, you know, one of the things that I appreciate what you guys have done, yeah, you know, is that really, honestly, the grassroots you hardly ever seen any other real estate group do the aggressive campaigning that you guys do, and not only like, doing recruitment and and, you know, getting out there in the community, but like, Man, you guys do a really excellent job. And that’s why, like, I can relate big time to that. Yeah. So thank

ADRIENNE:
you, yes, and we’re happy to help cross promote this, this brave Hawaii events coming up at the end of November, like, so this is, this is so much fun. We’re gonna

ATTILIO:
do like tennis, like back and forth, back between the two of you. Let’s interweave, because it’s all you mean, you both serving the community. You’re both serving the community, which is awesome. But tell us about brave. What is what is that about?

MAHEALANI:
Yeah, sure. So I started brave when I was 13 years old. It actually started a little bit earlier than that. Well, the idea came up a little bit earlier than that. I wrote a book when I was 11 called it’s okay to be different. It’s a children’s book. So I wrote and illustrated it at 11 years old, and I was given the opportunity to read to after school. Part. Programs and to libraries. And a lot of the time, a lot of parents and a lot of you know, after school teachers and staff, they would come to us and they would say, Oh, that was an amazing story. You know, you have a great story. The book was great. The kids loved it. What else are you doing? Or can you come back? Can you do some more? And at that point, we only had me reading my book and sharing my story. So I got together with my parents, because they’re the ones that they’re like, my backbone, they help me with everything. And I was like, what else can we do? Because these parents are asking us, teachers are asking us, you know, to come back and to do more, and all I’m doing is reading a book, not that that’s not a great thing,

ATTILIO:
especially you could have added like,

MAHEALANI:
yeah, probably would have taken 8 million years to make those just like it did with my book. But, you know, we just had the idea one day to just create a foundation. And a lot of the messaging that I gave while I was reading these books to children, was it just about how brave it was to stand up to you know your bully and to share your story and to get others to share their stories as well. So it just felt kind of fitting that we would call our foundation brave, but it was more than that, so we decided to make it an acronym and have it stand for be respectful and value everyone. And as we grew, and as we continue to grow, not only do we focus on just school age children, but we also focus on the environment, the community, self love, mental health and all those really, you know, essential things that just really make our community a better place.

ADRIENNE:
And you guys have done like, a, like, a pageant too. Yeah, I love that aspect of it. And just like, just like, so I think just like, you’re promoting community service, yes, yes, yeah. There’s so much that’s all intertwined with the pageant. It’s not just about like,

MAHEALANI: 
yeah, we also, we also implemented academics into it as well. So that’s we try to, we try to hit every single facet of making our community a better place to live as much as possible.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, what now? We do have an event coming up, but before we get into that one, typically on an annual basis, what are the things that you guys are doing throughout the community? Tell us more about that.

MAHEALANI: 
Well, we’re trying to do as many events and, you know, community things as possible that we can. We are self funded. You know, we do everything with the help of our sponsors, our amazing sponsors and partners. Yeah, we wouldn’t be able to do anything without their support. So it’s really, really crucial for us to have that from them. But, you know, we try to do an event, at least at one big event every single year. Last year, we did the toy drive, which was awesome. We got to touch so many families, so many communities, so many different organizations who were in need of Christmas gifts that year, just to give to, you know, all their members or their church or whatever it may be. This year. Unfortunately, you know, we weren’t where we weren’t able to do the same type of event, but we still wanted to do something that was still giving back to the community. And we’ve my family and I, we’ve kind of been on this western kick lately, cowboy. So we decided. We decided. We decided that we were going to do a western themed Community Day event, and it was really important to us that we made this as accessible for the community as possible. So it’s free admission. Doesn’t you have to pay anything to get in? You can come have some fun. We’re gonna have lots of our sponsors there promoting their business or whatever it is that they do. We’re gonna have a lot of informational booths. So a lot of awesome people from our community, like the HPD and the fire department,

AUGIE T: 
I believe, are the whole bunch of information.

MAHEALANI: 
We’re going to have a lot of awesome people spreading as much information to the community as possible. We’re going to have line dancing. We’re gonna have western themed mechanical bull riding. Yeah, we’re gonna have that kinky we’re gonna Is

ADRIENNE:
there gonna be a contest who can stay on the longest? Yeah, is

ATTILIO: 
this, what is the prize? I heard the mechanical bull because it’s on the west side. You just grabbing the biggest mark. And said,

AUGIE T: 
that’s a cool part we created. We creating belt buckles for the winners. Oh, nice, yeah. Like, belt buckles.

ADRIENNE: 
That’s exciting. Yeah, start training, like at the gym. I’ll be like, squeezing, doing the leg,

MAHEALANI: 
right? You gotta train,

ATTILIO: 
right? They have,

MAHEALANI: 
I think they have one at L ranchero. Also, I think they have a mechanical practice, like I need to practice for the West Side Roundup, Braves, West Side Roundup. You got to let me

AUGIE T: 
on, yeah. So there’s gonna be different age groups, men and women, teens. You know, it’s gonna be a funny. You know, besides doing these events, you know, they this coming school year, we’ll be focusing in the elementary school, because we’ve been hearing, we’ve been hearing about a lot of things that’s happening when it comes to bullying. Unfortunately, we do advocacy, right? So we get emails just about every week, like, man, our child is being picked on. And one of the things that we all have to, you know, really instill things in our children. Kind of, what we’ve done, with my hand, all of our kids, is that when you see something, you got to speak up. Yeah. Don’t allow something to say something. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, we’re gonna be really focusing on elementary school. So if you are an elementary school teacher and you’re listening, you can go to brave hawaii.org because there’s a lot of schools and because it’s just my hair, you know, we got to make sure that we schedule it, you

ATTILIO: 
know, so in advance, the administrators principals listening to this show, what? Real quick. What the number? What was the what number would they call to you can call 808-371-1920. 808-371-1928.

MAHEALANI: 
Very good. I was like, What phone number is it? We have so many phone numbers in my brain. Or you can log on to brave hawaii.org and you can contact us. And

AUGIE T: 
it’s a really cool presentation that we do. It’s all about getting the kids to get up and speak right now, and really teaching the kids that you know the words you use is important and how you shouldn’t stereotype people by the way they look, you know, because a lot of it is just, you know, a lot of it at that age is really understanding, you know, not stereotyping, a very early age, and like, really talking and explaining why You feeling the way you’re feeling. So it’s very positive, yeah, empowerment. And we, you know, we, what’s cool is that, you know, when we asked, like, you know, what does? So let me just give you a sneak peek. So we look for the smallest kid in that group, and we dress them up as the Incredible Hulk, right? And we label them, right? This is mana muscles. We give them like a muscle suit, right? Amount of muscles. A small Guy Show me your muscles. Everybody’s laughing, right? And I go, why is mono muscle bad? Yeah, why is Manama? And you know, the kids will come up, you know,

MAHEALANI: 
yeah, the kids know all the answers, right? They’re a lot smarter than people understand,

AUGIE T: 
giving them the ability to talk, right? Yeah. And then we asked, like, how can we help mana muscle? What can mana muscle do besides? So what they’re doing now they really, you know, subliminally, we helping them understand, like, you know, yeah, you know, we stereotype. But then we can also help find solutions for

ADRIENNE: 
tools to Yeah? So it’s more of like a work, like a workshop,

MAHEALANI: 
yeah, kind of, kind of what we call it, play, yes, yes, yeah. A lot of that getting the kids involved and getting them participating really helps them retain the information. Also,

ATTILIO: 
I think that’s engaging, because it’s like, when I teach, I’m always sounds like fun, yeah, my goal is to engage with people, because you do straight lecture, man, the kids, that’s like, pure torture, and they don’t listen, you know. And

AUGIE T: 
by the way, you should get a telly to come and speak to your organization. He did with our office, yeah, and my office is, like, five years you know, that’s the reason why. Like, so thank you for, you know, spending time with us and, like, you know, really talking about how we can communicate that

ATTILIO:
one guy in the back playing Galaga on his phone. They was all engaged. They’re asking great questions, and it was always one, yeah, but I like that, because it’s, it’s the, if you think about it, the foundation of our society is these children, yes, and they’re either going to be the next awesome people, or the next knuckleheads, and the ones you all sitting in traffic with. And I don’t know about you, but I want to, I want to be in the traffic with the brave kids. Yes, yes, not raging, and have tools to deal with the challenges of life.

ADRIENNE: 
Yes, for sure. Will you guys be doing any of these smaller workshops during the event on November 29

AUGIE T: 
No, it’s all fun. It’s gonna be all fun. It’s a fun day. We want, we want people to come and, you know, as we get, you know, we one would be done with thanksgiving and then getting into Christmas. So, you know, there’s gonna be a lot of stress for a lot of people. It’s just another way of like saying, Hey, we’re here. Com, spreading joy, yes, yes, you know. And I want to hopefully see how this goes, and if you know, if it ends up a really nice Google event, maybe we’ll do year two, year three, and then just keep burning and bringing the bugs out. Because I really believe that, you know, in the five years of you know, being in office, that when you partner with public, private, churches, nonprofits, you can do amazing things in the community, and you can really get rid of a lot of the red tape. And this is just another way of, you know, using my hair’s platform to really spit out information, because a lot of people don’t know, you know. Where to go in case there is a tsunami. Believe it or not, you know, what can I do about maybe getting more help in counseling? And I’m hoping all these people will be there, and then you can get that information. Yeah, it’s gonna be lots of great country music, lots of fun activities, games, but like, I’m hoping that this will be a great way to educate the public about all the great things and all the great nonprofits, all those small businesses that make our community unique. Yeah, and

ATTILIO: 
brave, yeah. Where are they gonna

MAHEALANI: 
be? It’s gonna be at AMVETS in West Oahu. So it’s down Iroquois point, right next to the capulina Beach homes. It’s gonna be in that big field that they have over there. Nice.

ATTILIO: 
So this is like, right before the guard shack, where you gotta you show your license and registration. If you guys go out there a couple of we always, we still old school Noma zero koi point was for people who don’t know that was military housing. Yes. Now it’s open to the public for rentals right on the beach. And really, really so that that also you don’t need to have the license registration. No excuse. Calm registration. Come anyway. That’s okay. We won’t say anything. Big.

AUGIE T: 
Shout out to Commander Lazarus, because he’s been such a blessing for, you know, supporting holding our, you know, holding events. I forgot to do the stand up comedy there to, like, work out. So, yeah, shout out to command. Yeah, we had

MAHEALANI: 
the toy drive there last year too, and he held that giant container of toys for us for a really long time, so we wouldn’t be able to put that in our house. Yes, very thankful for him. Yeah, of course, always

ADRIENNE: 
his partnership and support in all things,

MAHEALANI: 
not just for us, not and not just for us, and with brave and everything that we do, but the whole community as well. He’s all. He is a pillar in, yeah, you know,

AUGIE T: 
you know, it’s always nice to see, you know, veterans out there, like, you know, participating. You know, sometimes we distance ourselves. I don’t know why, because the military plays such a big role. And you guys know this, you

ATTILIO: 
guys do a lot of, they’re all interviewing in our economy, and they wanna,

AUGIE T: 
and they wanna, they want to participate in our community events. So yeah, just perfect way to, like, bring in a community together and let them know, like, you know, there’s groups of veterans that really love our island, and they, you know, they want to help and engage the way we do so,

ATTILIO: 
well, we’re gonna, you’ve come into our booth, we’re gonna be handing out cowboy hats. Oh, nice. There you go. So every time you come on our booth and you get one cowboy hat, I want to hear and if it’s too soft, I’m gonna take the hat back

AUGIE T: 
thinking. I was just

MAHEALANI: 
thinking about that I saw. The most funniest preliminary is the team Lally booth. You gotta go over there, and if they approve you, then you can come compete in the contest on the stage. Yes, yes. There you go. Contest. There you go, yep.

ADRIENNE: 
So who’s gonna be the MC for this event? It’s gonna be me,

MAHEALANI: 
and it’s also gonna be a little guy, if you know us, you know little guy, my uncle guy, he’s awesome. I think he’s in Texas. Now, that’s where he lives. He does, he does Western cowboy, rodeo clown wearing cowboy boots. Yeah, yeah. He’s like, a, he’s a cowboy now, yeah, so he’s coming back. We’re so thankful for

ADRIENNE: 
that. So we have an authentic cowboy. Yeah? That’ll be in the M Yep, yeah. When

AUGIE T: 
was the last time you saw three foot five, Portuguese, Japanese cowboy?

ATTILIO: 
He also plays a man a hunny on many specials.

MAHEALANI: 
He’s also our buddy, the Bulldog, too. He’s got lots of hats,

ATTILIO: 
like a local kind Hobbit, yeah, yeah. But you know the the other thing too, just remember, you know why Adrienne? You know why cowboys boots is pointy so they can get the cockroach in the corner? Yes, I’ve heard that one before. It’s an old one. It’s a good one. It’s like, you know the thing about dad jokes, it’s kind of like wine, like it’s just it ages and though, and the older it gets in, the worse it is. What funny? What do you call a Samoan cowboy? Samoan cowboy? I don’t know Western. Samoan Western.

MAHEALANI: 
I never laugh at him. Of course, he’s really happy about that.

ATTILIO: 
My my litmus test, or my reading from my kids, is if they have like, maximum eye roll, super like eye roll like they’re looking out the back of their skull. I’m like, that’s the one.

AUGIE T: 
The eye rolls in my house is almost hateful

ATTILIO: 
the kids, they don’t realize the only song and providing us fuel and energy,

AUGIE T: 
I get the eye roll from my hand. My wife looks at me and go, yuck.

MAHEALANI: 
Mom is verbal. I’m just I’m nonverbal about it.

ATTILIO: 
Well, kanji reminds me of this 12 year old girl. She got to the top of Mount Everest, and she looked around and she said, el. Where’s the mall?

MAHEALANI: 
Hey, if you’re 12 years old and climbing Mount Everest, that’s impressive,

ATTILIO: 
and it is. It’s funny and it’s and it’s serious at the same time. But you guys address this stuff with the phones and social media, like, how talk to the audience about that

ADRIENNE: 
cyber bullying, that kind of stuff. We know that that happens quite frequently,

ATTILIO: 
bullies that are like, hiding behind anonymous, blah, blah, blah, whatever. So how do you guys deal with

MAHEALANI: 
that? I mean, it’s honestly really difficult, especially nowadays. You know, when I was growing up, social media was like, just starting to get really popular or just start, you know, Instagram was just becoming a thing. I wasn’t on MySpace because I wasn’t old enough, but my space wasn’t really about all that mess. But, you know, back then it was, it was hard to deal with, with that kind of bullying, because that was brand new. You didn’t really know who is this person with this, you know, string of letters, username, calling me ugly and calling me fat, like, Who is this person? What do you do? And back then, you know, you could just like, turn, turn, turn the app off, delete the app, and you don’t have to worry about it. But now, because everyone is so connected to their phones, it’s almost a necessity for people these days to have a cell phone and to have social media double

ADRIENNE: 
edged, yeah, and to have a smartphone, yeah, not like the

MAHEALANI: 
flip, right? Yeah, yeah. So many, especially now so many kids are getting cell phones younger and younger and younger. When I was a kid, my first phone had like five numbers on it, yeah, it had, it didn’t have a touchscreen on it. Had five, four phone numbers that you put in and the police, so there was no

ATTILIO: 
texting clamshell. And then had on long squiggly court connected through on hole in the

AUGIE T: 
wall. I can answer that question. You know, when it, when it came to my hand, the phones? Well, the, you know, I think this is the responsibility of parents, and I get it, you know what? I mean, that’s the biggest thing. You look when you get teachers saying they’re afraid because parents are retaliating because over the phone thing. Well, retaliating that their children is being a bully or being bullied, right? We live in one different kind of world. I mean, there’s no reverence, couple things. And in our parents, we got to take some responsibility too. Like, yeah, you got to know what’s going on with your kids and what they’re doing on their phone, you know, who are they contacting with? Like, that’s one of the things that, you know, I’m very thankful for that my hair was always open to, you know, okay,

MAHEALANI: 
communicating and talking and not being secretive, because I feel like, especially now today, it’s not even just about, you know someone else on another screen, bullying you. You know you were talking about chat GPT earlier. And even I’m not saying chat GPT bullies you. That’s not what I’m saying, but what

ATTILIO: 
I am saying, unless you ask them, bully me.

MAHEALANI: 
But, but the there, the dangerous part about chat GPT, especially using it as like a therapist for yourself, is that chat GPT is kind of programmed to validate the things that you say and the prompts that it gives you. I just, I don’t know if you’ve heard you heard this, but I just heard a story about a kid, a young teenager. I don’t actually know how old he was, but he was having a hard time with his mental health. Mentally he was he was really depressed, and instead of he felt very alone, he felt like he couldn’t talk to anybody. So he turned to chat GPT and started using it as his therapist. And it eventually got to the point where he was thinking of it was a real taking his life, yes. And he was talking to chat GPT about this and being very, you know, explicit about the things that he wanted to do and the things that he wanted, the things he was planning. And the thing with chat GPT is there’s a lot of ways to quote, unquote, jailbreak it, where you can just be like, Oh, I’m writing a story. This is for creative whatever, and then it’ll just tell you anything you need to know, because it thinks you’re under the guise of using creativity or writing a story or or making a movie or something. So it can tell you these really dark things, and it’s okay because, oh, you’re, you’re writing a story, you’re writing whatever. And it got to the point where that kid was like, Oh yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m gonna do it, whatever.

ATTILIO: 
That’s the problem. And that’s the warning. What’s the solution?

MAHEALANI: 
Honestly? Like, what my dad said, you have to, as a parent, you have to be so, so careful with what your kids are doing. You have to monitor what your kids are looking at, who they’re talking to, what chat bots they’re talking to, because it’s so easy these days to go into this deep, dark rabbit hole of just dark, consuming thoughts and

AUGIE T: 
honestly. I would love to see that we take bold moves in the state to Ban, ban phones in schools. You gotta focus and, you know, public education is

ATTILIO: 
free. Like, I know it’s a great

AUGIE T: 
opportunity to, like, you know, take advantage of this, this thing called, you know, education, yeah. I mean

ADRIENNE: 
also connection, to connecting with the other students in the school, like they’re all stuck to their phone and they’re not really like being kids. That’s why I don’t

AUGIE T: 
like doing assemblies. You know why I would rather talk in small setting in the classroom when they call, Oh, can we do an assembly? Yeah, the last assembly I did? No, it’s paying attention

ADRIENNE: 
all on their phones. Yeah? And,

AUGIE T: 
you know, it’s just, you know, if you’re a speaker, it’s almost disrespectful, yeah? But for me, it’s like, I want to keep on going. But like, you know, it’s easy for me to become that kid from Kalia again and go, you out of life well. So like, you know, you got to take away the distraction. There’s a lot of distraction.

ATTILIO: 
You have to eliminate it. It’s like, you know what? We’re just gonna put the crack on the table in front of the crackhead, but he’ll be all right, no, you got to get it out of the world, the addictiveness and here are some facts, folks, countries like Australia and Great Britain have banned all phones in the K through 12 system in the entire country. Hello. Psychologists have done studies that the neural pathways of these kids brains are being altered, and they really can’t handle it till they’re maybe at the end of high school, and these kids are getting it in second grade.

ADRIENNE: 
We’ve got about two minutes before the show ends, legislation. Any last thoughts for our listeners, besides, come to the brave Hawaii event. November 29 bring it your

MAHEALANI: 
cowboy wear. Bring your western wear. There’s gonna be a contest, yeah, costume contest. The events. The event is free, so bring your family. You have fun for the kids, for the adults, for everybody, and it’s from 10 to two, so it’s not that long. So

ADRIENNE: 
don’t be late. Don’t be late.

ATTILIO: 
Be early. Family members, you know, you know who you are. The ones that always show up late. Tell them it starts at 930 Yes, there you go.

MAHEALANI: 
Also, we’re trying to have a farmers market. So if you if there are any farmers market, people out there, constables, contact us. We want to have a farmers market at the event also.

ATTILIO: 
Oh, that would be great. So I name him all the favorite things I like.

MAHEALANI: 
Contact us. Brave hawaii.org let us know if you’ve got farmers

ATTILIO: 
market, give them the date again. Date location in

MAHEALANI:
time. November 29 the AMVETS West Oahu, 10 to two. All right, early.

ATTILIO: 
If you want to learn a new two step, please come out. Yes, free cowboy hat, and we

AUGIE T: 
get some amazing entertainment. Jared Ming, rich and, you know, rich and rich and Frank. Richard, Frank, cutting edge John, John Strobel, who will be teaching line dancing all through the morning, yeah, and afternoon,

ATTILIO: 
special appearances by Brittany spear. Hey, she came. That would be awesome. Spice Girls,

AUGIE T:
yeah, my hair’s gonna be singing her new song. I’ll be there. I’ll be there

ATTILIO: 
too. I’ll be there too. All right, we’re looking

ADRIENNE: 
forward today. All right.

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