As an adult, I’ve come to learn the quickest way to insult, enrage, or quickly lose friends and make enemies, is to challenge someone’s ego. Challenge the perception of what that person believes themself to be.  This doesn’t even need to be done on purpose, it can even be done on accident and the effect is the same. The ironic thing is our egos are rarely, if ever accurate. What we think of ourselves is [...]

Before Ukulele Underground took off, I had failed many many times in business. Each of these failures took a huge toll on me emotionally and psychologically. My ego was crushed every single time. When you fail in business, its hard not to equate it to just you being a failure. You begin to question your self worth. “Can I even do this? Or am I always going to be a failure.” You think about how [...]

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how I was feeling a little burnt out. The truth is, I wasn’t just a little burnt out at the time, I was extremely burnt out. So much so I think I was experiencing generalized anxiety.  I was worrying about everything, everyday, and totally unmotivated to continue to build my businesses. Luckily, my wife convinced me to take a vacation to Japan for a little over a [...]

I live in a small community where the ideas of business, entrepreneurship, and self employment often get muddled and mixed together. I often I hear, “So and So owns a business where they fix cars,” or some other trade which they do professionally. I know it shouldn’t but it does bother me when the term, “business owner” is used to describe that such person. This person does not own a business, they own their own [...]

I’ve been struggling with a lack of motivation recently. I find myself looking for things to watch on youtube, or browsing reddit til all the links are purple. Days have gone by where I have not accomplished anything and it’s killing me. I know I have things I should be working on. I know I’m not at my goals yet, yet here I am writing a blog post instead of working. I think I’ve pin [...]

I hear it all the time. “I finally found my passion and its this, and thats why I’m starting this blog/business.” Listen, I’m going to give it to you straight. If you just found your passion, it’s probably NOT your passion. The word passion gets thrown around way too much these days. I get it. So many smart people out there are telling you to find your passion and do it. But seriously, when I [...]

If you’re in the tech webspace, you’ve heard of the Paypal Mafia, a legendary group of highly successful individuals who were all involved with the company Paypal either as employees or founders when it was in its early startup stage. These people went on to found or fund companies such as Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, Tesla / Spacex, Yelp, Kiva, 500 Startups and many many more. I think when you have a disruptive company such as [...]

The thing about networking with go getters is you’re going to feel down once in a while. It’s human nature to compare and when you start to see people you know being written about in publications you highly respect, being awarded awards and being recognized for being awesome its hard to ignore the fact that well, you don’t have any of these things happening to you. I began to wonder if my ‘little company that [...]

There are so many people calling themselves “Social Media Experts” these days it is ridiculous. 99% of them are full of shit. Despite all the jargon they will spit  about  gaining twitter followers, or building your Facebook fanpage, or using Tumblr or Pinterest to drive highly converting traffic to your website, there is only ONE thing that matters for your business when it comes to social media. You no longer control the message That’s it. [...]

I originally wrote this letter to give out at a college and career fair at my old high school. Due to scheduling conflicts, I was not able to attend to hand this letter out to the seniors there. It may have been for the best as it’s probably not something the teachers would want the kids reading.   Dear __________________ You may read this letter now, but you probably won’t think much of it. It’s [...]