We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sebastian & Kristine Rodriguez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sebastian & Kristine thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

When you are your own boss & own your own business, every day is a risk, because you don’t have someone else to rely on. When your business is a television show, the risks are even higher because you rely on multiple factors including viewers, sponsors, content and of course the stations. When we first created the show it was a risk and it was right before the pandemic. We took a huge hit financially as Vegas slowly came back, but had such support from the stations and our viewers that it motivated us to keep moving forward with this passion project.

Sebastian & Kristine , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

We are husband & wife team who have created a television show about Las Vegas that airs across the state of Hawaii, across Southern California, in Yuma, Arizona & in Las Vegas. We are also streaming through the Hey Vegas app on Roku, Apple TV & Amazon Fire. Our show highlights Vegas businesses, events, entertainment & activities to keep our viewers connected with the Ninth Island, Las Vegas.

We chose our name, because Las Vegas is affectionately referred to as Hawaii’s Ninth Island, due to the large number of Hawaii visitors to Vegas, as well as Las Vegas having the largest population of former Hawaii residents. We include all of Las Vegas, but often focus on the Hawaii ties here in Vegas.

In addition to our television show, we create content for other businesses, including social media content, which has been a new branch of our business.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As we’ve shared, our television show debuted three weeks prior to the shutdown of the pandemic. We lost all of our sponsors and the travel restrictions (we lived in Hawaii at the time) posed quite a challenge. But as the saying goes, the show must go on and it did. We had a wonderful producer who helped us and a friend who also stepped up to help. We had to learn how to do all aspects of the show with a very small crew and often times just the two of us. It was very stressful, emotionally, mentally and financially; however, we never once considered quitting. Today we are airing season four of Ninth Island Connection, which continues to grow in new markets. Our social media and Youtube continues to flourish and we have added a new content creation branch to our repertoire. We will continue to push forward and know that we could not do so without everyone who has and continues to support us.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Sebastian and Kristine met in 2004 in Savannah, GA and actually were married in Las Vegas at the Little White Wedding Chapel in 2008. Sebastian worked in sales and marketing and Kristine worked in social work (special education and mental health) up until they decided to roll the dice, gambling on a business of their own.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ninthislandconnection.com
• Instagram: @ninthislandconnection
• Facebook: Ninth Island Connection
• Twitter: @NinthIslandTV
• Youtube: Ninth Island Connection
• Other: Stream on Hey Vegas app on Roku, Apple TV & Amazon Fire

Image Credits
Ninth Island Connection