Cameron Olthuis

So, the first of the two exciting redesigns and announcements that I’m rolling out today is Factive Media. Factive itself isn’t necessarily new but I don’t think I’ve ever really mentioned it here on the blog or really told you guys what I was up to with it. The official direction of the company has switched today as well so I’ll talk about that.

When I left ACS last summer, I left because I had an idea, or a vision if you will, and it was just the right time to make the move and go for it. Although ACS was becoming a very successful company, my heart was no longer in building out a large consulting firm. I also felt like it was an opportunity cost and there were much bigger things in store for me.

Two things happened when I left. I was suddenly bombarded with tons of consulting opportunities and I started my startup. The good thing about the consulting opportunities is that I could pick & choose and I could now also command the same rates that ACS, a full service firm, was charging. It’s pretty lucrative when you’re a solo dude charging what big firms do. But again, consulting was not what I wanted for myself so I made sure I didn’t overload myself and would still have time to dedicate to this other thing.

So while Factive started out as my own little consulting gig there has always been something much bigger brewing in the pot. Today I am happy to announce that I am officially changing Factive from being my little consulting shell to an action sports media network.

What you see on the page there is a very small taste of what’s to come. Seeing as I’m completely self-funded it’s not exactly going as quickly as I’d like so I’ll slowly be rolling out sites one-by-one.

So what exactly is my vision? Well duh, I’m building myself a nice little media empire in the action sports industry. Right now there is one site, which I’ll be posting about separately, that has officially launched v1.0. There are quite a few more that are in the works and will be rolled out over the next 12 months. These include everything from content sites to an ad network to community sites and other stuff not yet mentionable.

As many of you know, I’m an avid surfer and skier, so this fits the mold perfectly of doing something I love. I’ve been involved in action sports my whole life and I’m very excited to be building a successful company in this vertical. It’s a great opportunity for me to leverage my expertise and build a large online audience that will be worth a lot 5-10 years down the road.

As for consulting, I’m still doing that as well, but have been cutting back a little to put most of my focus on this. With the projections & numbers I’ve come up with I expect to be consulting for at least another year, unless I take on a small investment which is a small possibility at this point.