On Wednesday, March 11 2009 I lost one of my few business heroes. Charles “Mask” Lewis Jr, founder of the Mixed Martial Arts lifestyle brand TapouT passed away in an early morning car accident. While some may feel it necessary to critique the way of his passing, I choose to remember the life Charles chose to live and why he will always serve as a huge source of inspiration to me. TapouT was founded in [...]

Them: So what do you do again? Me: My partners and I run a website where we teach people how to play the ukulele online. We have around 7500 registered members now and get like 20k uniques a month. Not great but it’s a pretty good start considering we started with $300 and spent no money on advertising. Them: Oh wow, so all those people pay to use your site? Me: No, we give away [...]

January 25. One year older. I’m officially in my late 20s. My 26th year of life was an exciting one.  Here are some highlights Grew ukuleleunderground.com with Aldrine and Aaron from an idea to something pretty special Quit my job as New Media Director at a web / software development firm in Honolulu Helped Aldrine produce his debut album Suite 409 Moved back to Kauai from Oahu Started playing music again Went on tour to [...]

Ukuleleunderground.com has given me the opportunity to meet and befriend so many amazing people throughout the world. I always take some time everyday to think about just how fortunate I am to have made so many new friends within the past year. One of these new friends is a man named Mike Hater from Nashville Indiana. Mike is an amazingly interesting person. He has described himself to me on more than one occasion as a [...]

Understanding your website analytics and statistics is a key component in developing an online web strategy. INC magazine had a great article on this in November. Here’s the link. If you are a business owner looking to develop or grow your online presence this is important info. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081101/improving-your-sense-of-site.html

When people hear WordPress, majority of them (if they even know what it is) think blogging software. I love WordPress. Blogging to me is the best way to serve up daily, weekly or any kind of regular content. But, I love WordPress for more than that, it is quickly becoming a very powerful content management system or CMS. In fact, almost all sites I build for clients today are built on WordPress. Here are just [...]

Ron Richards gave an awesome presentation about the future of internet television and what they are working towards at revision3.com. I’ve been watching rev3 stuff for a while and I agree with him that the convergence of the computer and the television is inevitable. Being able to watch high quality niche content on a HD tv is a dream that is going to be realized before we know it though there is still a debate [...]

I get a kick out of hearing local businesses complaining about negative reviews on blogs or sites like yelp.com. The game has changed my friends. The internet is like a megaphone for word of mouth marketing. It’s word of mouth marketing on steroids, or on HGH, or both. Good or bad, your customers now have a voice and the power to let others know if you suck or if their experience with your company was [...]

I’m currently reading ‘Predictably Irrational‘ by Dan Ariely and am finding it fascinating. The book makes the case that while we like to believe that we are very rational creatures that make decisions based on past experiences and learned behaviors, many of our daily decisions are influenced by shared irrational though patterns. More so, we are so much more irrational than we think, that we are predictably irrational, meaning if we know what to look [...]

Though I haven’t had one yet, I can imagine growing a business is very similar to raising a child. Not so much in the physical pain experienced by the mother at birth, but in the sense of the commitment and dedication required to grow and nurture both. There an initial excitement when they’re brand new. You find yourself staring at it saying to yourself, “wow, I made that!” You devote countless, often thankless hours in [...]