I started working at eleven and never really stopped. My first real job led into direct sales, and that led into an interest that has never left me: how money actually works, and why some businesses compound while others just stay busy.
The Army is where the rest of it started. I served as a 31D, Mobile Subscriber Equipment Transmission System Operator, and 31F, Network Switching Systems Operator/Maintainer — Signal Corps, building and running the tactical communications networks a unit depends on. I also provided battalion automation support. That is where I learned networks, and it is where I learned that when the system goes down, somebody has to stay until it comes back up.
Everything since has been the same job in a different uniform. By the late nineties I was building and fixing systems in Anchorage under a name I picked because it was short and easy to say — Where2be.com. That business grew into Alaska Computer Support, incorporated in 2007 and still operating today from East Fireweed Lane. The domain you are reading this on, w2b.cc, is what is left of the original name.
Signal work pulled me toward systems analysis and process management, which turned out to be the real foundation under every business I have touched since. If you can see how the parts of a thing connect, you can fix almost anything — a network, a company, or a family.
Ventures
Over thirty years I have started, owned, or partnered in more companies than I can reliably count. The ones worth naming:
- Alaska Computer Support — managed IT and digital infrastructure for Alaskan businesses. Founded as Where2be.com in 1998; incorporated 2007. Still operating.
- Alaska Force On Force — firearms training and airsoft pro shop, Anchorage. Still operating.
- Acai Alaska — still operating.
- The Purple Turtle — fine auto detailing.
- Earlier ventures include Alaska Phone Company, Internet Marketing Service Gurus, Alaska Food Network, Team 5 Development, and VIP Card Services.
I have since stepped back from day-to-day computer consulting and now take more pleasure in being an investor in what I built than in running it.
Service and community
I am President of the Alaska State Defense Force Soldiers Association, a 501(c)(3) supporting Alaska's State Defense Force soldiers and their families. I served as the association's Treasurer before taking the presidency.
I also built and maintain the association's member portal and its volunteer onboarding platform — the system that turns a prospective volunteer's questionnaire into the completed government forms the personnel section needs. Thirty years after battalion automation support, still doing automation support for soldiers.
Family Adventure in Readiness, written with a co-author, is in use by Alaska State Defense Force soldiers as a readiness training program for themselves and their families. It has not been released commercially.
I am a USCCA Certified Instructor, teaching through Alaska Force On Force.
Writing
I write because the questions that changed my life were questions someone else asked me first. Our Promise: IT as a Competitive Advantage is for business owners who suspect their technology is a cost centre when it should be an edge. The Family Way is the other half of the same conviction — that a family, like a business, is either built on purpose or built by accident.
Alongside the books I publish white papers on communication, health, and how people are influenced without noticing. They are free, and they are on this site.
What I actually believe
I believe in a whole-ego process when it comes to life: Body, Mind and Spirit. Balance is the key, and finding it is a process, unique to each of us. It is the gateway to happiness and to a long life. That conviction is why this site holds business plans next to vitamin charts next to a creed — they are not separate subjects to me.
The creed itself is The Wheeler Way, six things I come back to when my actions do not match my intentions. It closes the book, and it is the reason the book exists.
