Hi, I’m Chris Yates… AKA “Arvada”
That’s me pictured at the right in 1991 having a good time with friends in the California Mountains while on leave from the Air Force. I had just come back from a tour in the Middle East during the first Desert Storm and really needed the down time.
I’d like to think that this picture accurately captures my personality.
I’m not particularly athletic (although I wish I was), not real outdoorsy (I hate bugs), and obviously not a good fisherman (see how proud I am of that tiny fish)…
But I am a real person, which is something that most online entrepreneurs try to hide from the public.
For me, having a business where I get to do exactly what I want, when I want, and how I want is the only way to go. I’ve tried a lot of different jobs, and none of them ever added up to the adventure that I’ve had being my own boss.
The Truth About Arvada
You may be wondering why I’ve decided to use the pen name “Arvada” in all my articles and content. I wish I had a really interesting story about how it’s some really cool nickname that I earned doing some kind of daring deed, but I don’t.
It’s actually pretty boring.
You see, I’ve been writing articles and website content since 1997 — most of it under my own name “Chris Yates.” You’d think that I’d be easy to find after putting thousands and thousands of words out there, but if you do a search for “Chris Yates” in Google, you won’t find me… until about 100 pages in.
Why?
Because there are a couple other “Chris Yates” out there who have been more popular and more prolific than me. Those imposters have gotten top billing in the search engines… darn it!
So, I decided to re-invent myself and my online personna. After an extensive search I’ve come up with the name “Arvada Yates.” No one else online has this name and it actually means something to me personally… which I’ll just keep to myself for the time being.
Ultimately, this name change comes down to good marketing and the attempt to actually brand myself within the online business and marketing world.
Why have I decided to tell you all this?
Because you can’t expect anyone to trust you, your recommendations, or your advice if you aren’t honest with them.
Now you know the truth about Arvada.
Arvada Yates
Thanks for sharing about yourself and the interesting reason for changing your market name. I’ve read a lot of materials this past year and I’m trying this Internet marketing journey myself. I’m interest in developing a branding name myself and interested in learning great techniques in Internet marketing!
Well Good Luck to you Ralph! It’s a lot of work sometimes, but I absolutely love it!
I wanted to say thanks for posting this information and also I wanted to tell you that I can’t seem to get your site to work in Internet Explorer for some reason. However, if I switch over to Firefox which I don’t normally use, everything seems to work ok. It might be a problem with one of the plugins you use, or maybe it’s something wrong on my end.
Thanks for letting me know about the problem. I actually ran browser compatibility on it when I first changed the blog to this format and everything looked great — no major problems.
But I never went back and checked it after I updated wordpress the last time.
That’s the only reason I can come up with why it’s suddenly changed. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it at this point… I’m not up for another complete re-design.