Reginald Harrison, a 24-year-old FAMU graduate from Decatur, Ga., works constantly to maintain his graphic design company Coldfinger Solution. His weekdays and Saturdays start between six and 8 a.m. and through them runs a continual stream of answering and returning cell phone messages, attending meetings, airing radio shows and planning for his company.
Harrison’s days usually last way past the typical nine to five shift forcing a battle between his creativity and fatigue.
“I’ve had to try to make myself at least establish business hours. It turns into a 25 hour thing,” Harrison says half-jokingly. “I can’t be creative when I’m tired.”
Shirley Harrison, Reginald’s mother and a BET Arabesque writer, said that her son’s becoming an entrepreneur was inevitable.
“If I were to think of one person to do it, it would be him,” Shirley Harrison said.
Joe Womack III, publisher of DIGITALGUESTLIST and a Coldfinger Solutions client, said Harrison is very detailed in his work.
“Everything he does is almost perfect, although it takes him forever,” Womack said sarcastically.
Harrison is locally known as the WANM 90.5 personality “Halo.” Harrison cites his hip-hop radio show “ATL/Philly Connection” as an inspiration for Coldfinger.
The name “Halo” is a result of what Harrison calls an eerie day on Feb. 8, 1996.
Harrison, one of the few top African American swimmers at his high school, was practicing underwater breathing exercises when he blacked out and sunk to the bottom of the swimming pool.
“I was a prankster and everyone thought I was playing.” Harrison said.
By the time he was taken out of the pool, he was non-responsive and had no pulse but he survived an 11-minute coma that would normally leave a person brain dead.
After that day, “Halo” became more than just a stage name; it defined a spiritual blessing.
“Halo is blessed; the halo symbolizes the blessed. I want people to see Halo before they even know what my name is,” Harrison says.
Harrison says that being on the right spiritual path and embodying “Halo” helped him start Coldfinger Solutions.
Harrison is confident he will complete his goals with Coldfinger.
Speaking with a smirk, “So long as I am God-fearing, my steps will be ordered and my success is inevitable.”
Gabrielle Finley can be reached at Gabirelle_finley@hotmail.com