Last Wednesday, January 9, rock icon and reality star
Gene Simmons attended the Small Business Hawaii's 32nd Annual Business and Investment Conference. Simmons, who stars in A&E's hit reality series
Gene Simmons Family Jewels, served as the event's keynote speaker.
His talk, called “Ten Points to Make You Rich Like Me,” was heard by 300 attendees of the conference, which was held at the Ala Moana hotel from 8am to 2pm. Gene Simmons shared various entrepreneurial secrets, and after his presentation participated in a Q&A session with the audience. He also took the time to sign autographs and pose for photos.
With numerous entrepreneurial ventures to his name, Gene Simmons continues to draw success not only in the music and television industries, but in the business world as well. Some of his projects include a clothing line called Moneybag, the recently launched Simmons Comic Group and the Simmons-Abramson marketing firm.
Also part of the conference's program agenda were Hawaii Superferry CEO John Garibaldi, Ko'Olina's Jeff Stone, former U.S. Congressman Ed Case, and internationally known economic education author, Ken Schoolland. Three Hawaii Small Business success story awardees – David Arita of American Carpet One, Mylene Hinkle of Mylene's Floral Wholesale and Bill Tobin of Tiki's Grill & Bar Restaurant – were also at hand to share some entrepreneurial tips.
Gene Simmons' appearance at the conference was filmed for some upcoming episodes of
Family Jewels, which will soon premiere its third season on A&E. In the meantime, fans of the rocker can catch him on another and equally popular reality series,
The Apprentice.
In a recent interview with CraveOnline, Simmons said that he wanted to become part of the NBC show because he wanted to see just how well he would fare in business-oriented situations that require a team effort.
“Entrepreneurs, it seems to me, by and large are self motivators, self starters. They'd rather do it themselves and sort of outsource and use somebody else's infrastructure to get to where they want to go,” the
Family Jewels star explained. “The question is how's Gene Simmons in a situation where you've got other people? In other words, in a team situation. So it's a totally different model and I was curious how good I was. I'm the rat that knew the maze to get to the cheese. But how good am I in a brand new maze?”
-Lisa Claustro, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: Small Business Hawaii Website, genesimmons.com
(Image Courtesy of Small Business Hawaii)