Today it has been 1 month since I’ve been back in Wellington…. time fly’s right.

Now my life is a bit more exciting I figure I have enough interesting things going on to start writing a bit more regularly.

What can you expect?
- Insights of a start-up in the tech/web industry
- Marketing concepts
- Profiles of interesting people

My main agenda is to share what I’m learning, suggest resources and people for people either in or looking at starting up a business and use it as a place to document my thoughts and progress in the journey to become a successful entrepreneur.

So What’s Going On?
- I’m currently contracting 30 hrs a week to Beetil which is a Software as a Service (SaaS) designed to make IT Service Management simple for SME’s. > This has been a great challenge and I’ve learned a lot already and really enjoying it.

- I contract another 20 hrs to a company I can’t disclose publicly (which is a really exciting project).

- I’m co-developing a new social change website/service with a well known NZ organisation which is going really well and related to the above company.

- I’ve started up a weekly Wellington Poker meetup for entrepreneurs called Well Suited. We had our first night last Friday and it super fun – Check out more about what went down here > Wellington Poker.

That’s it, that’s all.
That’s about it for now – I have some cool ideas for posts in the near future, if there’s anything you want me to write about or give a shout out for etc let me know.

I hope things are going well for you in this rapidly dissapearing year and if you’re ever in Wellington make sure you drop me a line and we can catch up or play a bit of poker.

Take care,

Jimmy James

Phew, what an interesting few months that was!

After a month or so working at Urban Media I had to move on as two of the magazines I did design for went into liquidation so it left me with little to do. This was completely out of Monique’s control and I didn’t want to put anymore stress on her so went back to my parents to work for them. I spent my spare time developing my new found skill and passion, graphic design.

With 2010 being my year of focus I picked my favorite idea and went for it. After some initial mock ups and some feedback from friends it was looking pretty good. I decided to take the idea to one of the organisations it would partner with and pitch it to them early on in the development. They loved it and we are currently in the process of co-developing it.

Just shows what a bit of focus can do!

Unfortunately I can’t say what it is or who I’m working with but it’s exciting and I’m learning a lot.

I’m also hopefully contracting to another two very interesting companies in Wellington and aiming to move back there soon if all goes to plan.

That’s about it, so far so good

Thanks for stopping by!

I have a new job! I’m an apprentice graphic designer for Urban Media in Christchurch.

After a bit of a rough end to 2009 I considered almost every option for a new career – from being a teacher to joining the army.

I knew I wanted a skill that I could end up traveling and freelancing with, something creative and web based… graphic design definitely fits the bill but I have no experience with the software. I would probably need to study for a couple of years to learn it, not keen!

Luckily I had heard of Monique Chapman through YouTube and had met her once at my old job (the night I broke my hip in 2008).

She is one of the best graphic designers in Christchurch and I thought it would be cool to catch up with another young entrepreneur. We had a chat on skype and I joked about being her apprentice designer. She was actually interested as she is getting pretty busy with work, so we hung out on St Patricks day and got on really well.

I’ve been working with her for 2 weeks and been learning Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator to make logos, business cards, websites and magazines. I’m really enjoying it and seem to be picking it up pretty quickly. (Check out some of my work here).

Monique has a vision to scale up the company to 8-10 employees as a full service design agency, she is already so busy she is looking at employing another person within a month or so and we are adding Search Engine Optimisation, Online Video and Social Media set up and branding to the services we offer.

I’m really excited about the next step in my career and keen to keep track of what we are up to, the things we are learning as a small business and the people we work with.

It’s great to be back into it and learning some new skills.

Thanks for stopping by, I promise future posts won’t be all about me, just wanted to kick it off with what I’m up to now

Take it easy,

James