I was 24 years old when my mortgage jumped by about a thousand dollars a month.
This was nearly twenty years ago. A thousand dollars a month back then was a serious number. Especially for someone who had just gotten out of the Navy, didn’t have a real career path, and was mostly operating on confidence and momentum.
I had taken out an adjustable-rate mortgage on an 80/20 loan. One loan for the 20 percent down payment. Another for the rest. I didn’t even really understand what an ARM meant. My realtor hadn’t explained what my VA benefit could have done for me. I just knew I didn’t want to live in the barracks anymore.
Within months of getting out, the payment shot up.
I didn’t have a steady job. I didn’t have real savings. I just knew one thing for sure.
I didn’t want to leave Hawaii.
For the first few months after I got out, I was selling luau and island tours in Waikiki. Stopping people on the street. Handing out brochures. Trying to get them to go to presentations. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was something. It was my first taste of sales outside the military structure.
But when that mortgage jumped, that small hustle wasn’t enough.
I wasn’t ashamed. I was stressed. There’s a difference. I had put myself in this situation, and I needed to find a way through it.
That’s when Randy G stepped in.
Randy ran a pub crawl in Waikiki and was a third partner in a bar called Tsunami’s on Kuhio Avenue. He was older than me. Calm. Sharp. He had that presence of someone who had already been through a few waves.
When I told him what was going on, he didn’t panic with me.
“They’re not going to come take your condo tomorrow,” he said. “Relax. You’ve got time.”
Then he did something that changed everything.
He got me out of Waikiki.
He took me to Sandy Beach on the east side of Oahu. If you’ve ever been there, you know the shore break is violent. The waves don’t ease you in. They slam you. You get tossed, rolled, humbled.
We got absolutely beat up out there.
But somewhere between getting thrown into the sand and coming up laughing, something shifted in me. My problems felt smaller in the ocean than they did in my living room staring at bills.
On the way back into town, we stopped at a little bar in Hawaii Kai. I think it was The Shack.
That’s where he made me an offer.
He told me he’d give me Sunday nights at Tsunami’s.
He’d hire a DJ. We’d get a keg. Fifty-cent beers until it ran out. Service industry discounts. We’d split the door.
“If you can get people in,” he said, “we’ll split it.”
I was hungry. I was desperate. And I was ready.
I already had a little experience promoting. My friend Tommy McKinley had a band called Liquid Courage that played Tuesday nights. When I went out and promoted, it was packed. When I didn’t, it wasn’t. I had started to realize something simple but powerful.
Attention could be created.
Randy saw that in me before I fully understood it myself.
So I went all in.
We called it Sizzling Sundays. Service industry night. People brought their liquor commission cards and got discounts. My first DJ was DJ MJ(Micah).
We printed flyers on colored paper that looked like something you’d make for a kid’s birthday party. Randy showed me how to design them on an old computer with a three-and-a-half-inch disk drive. Nothing fancy. Just names, dates, and bold lettering.
That first Sunday night, he printed the flyers, and at the top it said:
“Nugget & The South Shore Crew.”
It was the first time I saw my name written like that.
Not just as a nickname.
As something official.
As a banner.
That hit me.
That was the spark.
That Sunday night event became the foundation of what I would briefly call Nugget Style Promotions. Eventually, that evolved into Nugget Style Productions. But it started right there. On a cheap flyer. With colored paper. And my name was printed bigger than I had ever seen it before.
Meanwhile, I was doing whatever I had to do to survive.
I rented out both bedrooms in my condo. I rented the couch to Jerry, who worked the hot dog stand across the street from Tsunami’s. My best friend Pure and I moved onto the balcony. Two futons. Two Walmart bookshelves, turned sideways, for privacy.
It wasn’t glamorous.
But it kept the lights on.
And those Sunday nights started growing.
Randy didn’t just give me a night at a bar.
He mentored me.
He brought me with him when he took over the pub crawl on Tuesday and Saturday nights. He handed me the microphone and made me talk. He showed me how to control a room. How to read energy. How to move a crowd.
He taught me how to mass text on a flip phone, ten people at a time. I’d stand outside charging my phone wherever I could, sending messages, waiting for replies.
He didn’t owe me anything.
He saw something in me.
And he gave me a shot.
Within a short period of time, I was promoting five nights a week. Partnering with bigger promoters. Getting on the radio. Working multiple venues. My life accelerated fast.
Looking back, those weren’t literal tsunamis.
They were financial waves. Identity waves. Career waves.
They knocked me around.
They forced me to adapt.
They pushed me into something bigger than survival.
If that mortgage hadn’t jumped…
If Randy hadn’t taken me to Sandy Beach…
If my name hadn’t been printed on that flyer…
There might not have been a Nugget Style anything.
Those waves didn’t just knock me down.
They redirected me.
And in that sense, they saved my life.
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