I’ve been tossing around an idea in my head for a while to create something that will help inspire and guide a new generation of entrepreneurs, artists, and movement leaders. Inspired by the work done by Andrew Warner at Mixergy.com and Jason Calacanis at This Week in Startups, I want to start interviewing entrepreneurs who’s ventures were built on passion. I hope to accomplish a few things by doing these interviews: I want to champion [...]

So many people like to talk about how to use social media for business and I just wanted to give an example of an exchange I had today with site5, a hosting company that I have worked with a lot throughout the past year. Here’s some background information. On May 1st, the main server for Ukulele Underground which is hosted by Godaddy (we signed up prior to learning about site5) was hacked and a malware [...]

I can honestly say that my one of my strongest passions in life is business. More specifically the early stages of business. The genesis, and creation of something tangible from basically nothing. Although I am not anywhere near what I would consider a success yet, I feel I’ve accumulated a ton of knowledge and experience from my many failures and few successes throughout my professional life. I think many of my friends realize this as [...]

In my first post of the new year, instead of talking more about myself, I’d like to point out a few people who I think should be watched in 2010. I fancy myself as someone who can identify the “it factor”. There are a few I stumbled across in 2009 who were just getting their personal brands going and I think can really kill it in 2010 and create legitimate businesses around their content. Although [...]

One of my biggest problems is remaining focused on my current project. I think it’s a problem that many entrepreneurs deal with. I’m constantly seeing problems around me and thinking up solutions to these problems. For the most part, I’ve done a good job of keeping myself focused. I’ll launch a side project here and there and let it die. Getting them up at least lets me tell myself, ok you did that one get [...]

When I first began as a web designer about 5 years ago, the career choice creating websites for clients didn’t seem like a bad idea at all. At my first job, it was not uncommon to bill clients in excess of $5,000-$10,000 for a simple html website. It was easy to run a profitable business with a large enough client list. These days are pretty much all but gone now, sure there are still web [...]

It seems like ever since I returned to Kauai, I’ve watched business after business close up shop. Many of the local businesses still operating are still struggling more than ever. These businesses are family owned and operated and have been gone through multiple generations. When asked why sales are so poor, they always cite outside sources; Costco, Wal-mart, K-mart, Safeway, the economy, etc. How can they compete with these big box stores with huge national [...]

When I discovered a month ago that Verizon Wireless was getting an Android device by the end of the year, I became very excited. I had been sitting on a contract renewal for some time now but did not want to renew just yet because there really weren’t any cool phones available from Verizon. Historically, Verizon has always had the lamest phones of any major carrier but almost everyone on Kauai has Verizon so it [...]

When this qualifies as a business trip, you know you’re doing something pretty cool.

Being that today is Mother’s day, I came up with an idea for a way for a flower shop business to increase their yearly revenues. Offer a subscription service targeted at men that reserve flowers for them for all important dates. Standard package would include, Valentines Day, Mothers Day, for additional fees birthdays, anniversaries, etc. The payment is a yearly subscription and will guarantee that there will be a flower arrangement available for each subscriber [...]