Age: 39

Title: President and CEO of several organizations.

Organizations: Reflections Glass Co., Big Island Glass Co., Diamon-Fusion Hawaii, WrightBuy.com. Carson is also chairman of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Region 1.

High school: Highland High School in Thornton, Colo.

College: University of Colorado at Boulder, bachelor's degree in business management with an emphasis on marketing and finance

Breakthrough job: "When I got out of college, I immediately starting working for Reflections. I was basically brought on as a salesman for Reflections. We had two employees and one truck. I had a very, very rapid growth in the business. I think I was in the business for approximately a year before I made an offer to buy an equity stake in the company."

Little-known fact: "I love my kids, and I'd much rather be with my kids than working, even though I love working."

Q. Why did you decide to buy an equity stake in the company?

A. I think that I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I really wanted to try my hand at developing a business and growing a business. I grew up in a small farming community. ... My parents really drove the value of education to me even though both my parents were only educated to the eighth grade. Really the thing was they wanted us to be educated not only on how to be good employees but actually how to be a good employer. And so I really grew this business through my employees. Not knowing how to run a business I asked my employees, so what do you think, what if we do this? And so it's really nice because we developed our policies and our procedures and our company manual through consensus. And I'll be the first one to tell you that, you know, we made a lot of mistakes but we made more good decisions than bad decisions.

And I have a funny story. When I first came I didn't know who King Kamehameha was. And my employees were asking me if we were going to have King Kamehameha Day off. And I said, we don't even take my birthday off, who's King Kamehameha?

Q. What are the biggest challenges you face as a manager?

A. I think that the pool of qualified employees in the state of Hawai'i is very limited. The other major difficulty is recruitment from the Mainland is very complicated because of the very high cost of living in the state of Hawai'i. So if I even took a product manager for example, who's making $60,000 a year here, that same guy is making $60,000 on the Mainland but the cost of living is 30 or 40 percent less. It's just not an equitable move, so it makes it very difficult to attract high caliber employees to the state. I think that if we had more labor we could double our size with ease because the available work is out there but we have a very, very strong philosophy of delivering what we promised.

Q. How do you motivate your employees?

A. The motivation is pride. ... It's just basically a buy-in philosophy. If our staff sees us in here at 4 a.m. and 6, and we're here before they arrive and we're here after they leave and they come in on a Saturday for whatever reason and we're here, they really know that the ownership has bought in and really is living the philosophy of our business. And that's to deliver what we promise every time.

We have a weight room, and that was probably one of the most important investments we made not only from a physical safety and health standpoint, but it's amazing how nice some of the bonding is that's occurred with some of the guys working out together.

I belong to an organization that's been very, very significant in my career that's called the Young Entrepreneurs Organization — YEO. The greatest thing with this is that you're dealing with a president and CEO or a founder of a company that has very similar things going on in their life like you do. For example, how does a business manager who is in their 30s, who has two children, who's working 70 to 80 hours a week, balance a healthy life, a healthy business and a healthy home?

Q. What is your role with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce?

A. I am presently the chair of the seven western states of Region 1. ... I do a lot of lobbying in Washington, D.C., on issues that affect minority business, and I think the thing that's really significant about that is when I'm representing the Hspanic community, I'm representing minority business. ...We advocate for procurement opportunities, access to capital, eliminating the digital divide in educating minority students.

The Hispanic community is represented by about 28 different countries. The funny thing is they are all very interested in family, food, spirituality and music, but they are all just a bit different. ... So what we did was we started focusing on key business issues — insurance, accounting, legal issues, banking — and it's amazing how the community coalesced. There is a small number of Hispanic-owned businesses in Hawai'i. I think they're very small. I think a lot of them exist but a lot of them are one or two man operations.

What the national chamber has done is they are not looking for handouts, they are actually looking for strategic alliances. ...It's, you're doing business with the Hispanic community. What we'd like to do is work with you and educate you about our community so that you can do more business.

Q. How many Hispanic-owned businesses are there in Hawai'i?

A. I really don't know. I have no idea. I've heard a number of 2 to 3,000 but I can't tell you whether that's true or not. That's the $20 question there that I would like to know, how to identify them, because if I could communicate with them and mobilize them I could put together a very, very nice group.