Training, calluses, and a very specific kind of focus. The technique for fire walking and foot fire is built over years, not days. Your body adapts and your mind learns to stay present in a way that most situations never require. Once you've held fire on your skin long enough, a lot of other uncomfortable things stop feeling that way.
Each one represents a chapter. Some are about the Corps, some are about my kids, and a few mark moments I needed to carry with me permanently. Polynesian tattooing has a cultural vocabulary I respect deeply, and some of my work draws from that tradition. I don't get ink lightly, and I don't explain all of it.
United States Marine Corps, six years active duty. The Marines don't leave you. The training, the standard, the way you carry yourself in difficult situations, it stays in the way you think. I'm grateful for every hard thing it put me through.
I split time between Phoenix, Arizona, and Ogden, Utah. October through May I'm in Phoenix with my partner Rose, running Hana and building Unbound Mind AI. May through September I'm in Ogden, close to my three kids. It's a two-state life that takes real logistics to maintain, and it's worth it.
The Samoan Fire-Knife dance, or Ailao Afi, is a traditional Samoan warrior dance performed with a knife or machete wrapped in burning material. It is part of the fa'asamoa, the Samoan way of life, and carries deep cultural significance. When I perform it, I perform it with that weight in mind, not as a stunt, but as a living expression of a culture that deserves to be represented with care.
Because it teaches you to be honest. The camera doesn't care what you meant to do. It shows you what was actually there. Eighteen years in, I still find it humbling. I shoot branding, lifestyle, corporate events, and conceptual work, and each discipline makes me better at the others.
Unbound Mind AI is a company I co-founded with Rose. We build AI systems for business operations, custom agents and automation designed to turn the operational chaos most business owners live in into something that actually runs. The goal is simple: free you up to do the work only you can do.
The short answer is more. More structure inside Hana, more reach with Unbound Mind AI, more time with my kids. The longer answer is that I'm building toward a life where the systems I've created run themselves well enough that I can spend my energy on the things that require a human being in the room.