In this monologue, Daryl H. Bryant recounts his entrepreneurial journey, beginning with a college‑aged venture called Liquor Lamps that turned recycled liquor bottles into trendy lamps for students. He describes how the business leveraged waste‑reduction partnerships with bars, early online marketing via liquorlamps.com, and the operational challenges of manufacturing and distribution. A legal dispute over alleged brand defamation forced the shutdown of Liquor Lamps, teaching him key lessons about operations, marketing, and intellectual‑property risk. He then co‑founded Hudson Horizons with a fellow Montclair State University graduate, growing it over a decade into a nationally recognized web agency that earned the New Jersey "Best Place to Work" award. Building on that success, Bryant launched Startup Valley, an equity‑crowdfunding portal for tech startups. Throughout, he offers practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: start with written ideas, develop a business plan, seek mentorship, and engage with university resources such as the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship, which provides certificates and networking opportunities.
Chapters
Passion, focus, and fire. And the reason I say fire, it's that internal flame that's inside you that's never going to make you stop doing what you're doing, Whether it's someone trying to give you a negative thought on your business or, you know, just another roadblock that's. That's being put in front of you. It's that fire to keep on going, which turns into literally an internal flame that makes certain entrepreneurs just extremely successful. It all started back in college, and I think at the time I was about 20 years old, and I just came up with an idea to create trendy lamps made from recycled liquor bottles for college students. The great part about that was we actually found out from these local bars, clubs, and restaurants that they actually had to pay by weight to get rid of these bottles for the empties. So we actually came in there, offloaded a lot of their empty bottles and reduced the weight and the cost that these restaurants and bars had to pay to get rid of them. So a big part of the marketing was through the website. We had liquorlamps.com and we actually marketed it online. And back then, I mean, the Internet was just starting to pop, right? Just starting to become something big. And people were actually finding us online, searching for lamps and searching for things like that. So they basically found us and came to us and then contacted us. And then, of course, it was through local distribution, through our own university at Montclair. I think it empowered me to do something different and do something unique and just set on a path to trying to find something that I was passionate about. Being an entrepreneur is something that was always with me from when I was young. So I think once I came upon this idea, it just allowed me to spread my wings and fly while I was still in school. I think liquor lamps taught me, number one, how to run a business. We had a purchase and get these lampshades and bases and all the different products that made these lamps. We had to work with the manufacturers to get these kind of shipped into our facility and get these made up. And then it also enabled me to focus on marketing and understand how to reach your target customer, who is your target customer, and how to speak to them with all your marketing. So liquor lamps actually got such a big name at the time that one of the major liquor suppliers did not like what we were doing, said it was a defamation of brand, and we were over crossing on some IP rights. So we were forced to basically shut our doors. After liquor lamps stopped, I now focused my gears more on larger scale ventures. So we started Hudson Horizons with the support of my business partner, Matt Marinick, and who is also a fellow MSU grad. And in 10 years, we've turned Hudson Horizons into a nationally recognized web agency. And we receive awards, recognitions. We just got the top New Jersey Best Place to Work award, which was an honor to receive, so. And now it's geared us over to a new venture that we're working on called Startup Valley, which is an equity crowdfunding portal for tech startups to raise capital. If you have an idea for a business, I would say start to put notes on paper. Ultimately you'll get to a point where you can develop your own business plan. And I would say just get involved with trying to find other people who can help you. We now have the Feliciano center for Entrepreneurship. So I'd say get involved there. Speak to the university and figure out a way to make your dreams come true and turn them into a reality. The Feliciano center, they're offering a certificate. So anyone that either wants to be an entrepreneur or just wants to learn a little bit more about it, it's a great course that you can go through to learn what it takes and what it's going to take in order to create your own business and launch it out there in the real.
