With the 'About Me' section, I want to be as objective as possible. I could easily talk about myself in a flattering way, but I believe the Flower Exercise from What Color Is Your Parachute? would provide you with a deeper insight of who I am.
I also encourage you to see what type of books I read and to request my resume if you'd like to learn more about me.
To begin, here is a picture of my wife and I.
And here is a video of me singing and playing classical guitar at my school's cultural talent show (I'm singing in Spanish in case you were wondering).
Now that you've attached a life to the endeavor, please see my Flower Exercise below.
This exercise is from Chapter 11 of Richard N. Bolles' book, What Color Is Your Parachute?. All quotes are from Richard N. Bolles, What Colors Is Your Parachute?, 2011, Kindle Edition, unless otherwise noted.
To begin (and for my future reference/inspiration), I’d like to jot down some quotes which spoke to me.
"What did you come into the world to do?"
"This time it's all about: Your agenda. Your wishes. Your dreams. Your mission in life, given to you by the Great God, our Creator."
This is not a selfish endeavor. After all, "It is concerned with what the world most needs from you." (This quote is my favorite.)
What does the world need the most from me? It needs Christ. But it needs Christ in a way only I can present Him. I believe this way is through discourse, via storytelling, but not written, rather seen and heard.
"What the world most needs from you is not to add to their number, but to figure out, and then contribute to the world, what you came into this world to do." (This is my second favorite quote.)
“You can do anything and if you can't it's because you haven't thought about it hard enough.” (Dr. Charles Ivey)
“If you have purpose and integrity you'll succeed.” (Jim Porter)
And finally, I read in another chapter of the book that a great person is describable in one good sentence. If I could be described in one sentence I hope it would be the following (boy do I feel mawkish!):
A purveyor of beautifully crafted stories which show a deeper, perennial truth.
===================================================================
Well, let’s get started with Bolles’ Flower Exercise. To begin, here are some preliminary questions and their respective answers.
Who am I?
- An artist.
- A creator of change.
- A man who can touch hearts.
- A powerful speaker.
- A lover of music.
- A lover of powerful stories whose infrastructures show the story of Christ.
- A lover of visual movie/animation media.
- A lover of well crafted stories.
- A man after freedom.
- A man who loves to grow and wants others to grow with him.
- A man who wants to be free to work hard at what he loves.
- A man who loves to learn new and meaningful things that make him stronger.
- A man that likes variety.
- A lover of video game entertainment.
A couple of years ago, I took the Strengths Finder test. Here are my top 5 “strengths”:
- Strategic (always trying to find the best path, an optimizer)
- Includer (I do not like for people to be left out)
- Competition (I want to be the best and stronger individuals are my to-beat benchmarks)
- Input (I like to collect things, in my case, data)
- Intellection (I like to think, and do not mind being alone in my thoughts, I am a great companion to myself)
Why did I say this? And what turns me on about each statement?
- I'm moved powerfully by music and movies/animation.
- I feel like I can change the way people think.
- I feel like I can soften people's hearts towards me.
- I get excited about speaking and can move people when I speak.
- Music moves me powerfully, and my imagination flows amazingly when I hear music.
- I believe that stories can change the world, and yet the best stories we've ever heard are merely the retelling of the story of Christ, and if a great story is not the retelling, in the least, it heavily borrows elements from the story of Christ.
- I want to tell stories utilizing media such as movies/animation. Stagnant images and words are not as powerful.
- Well crafted stories are powerful: with the right story, characters, music, and art, I believe stories have the power to change the world.
- I believe everyone has something amazing to offer this world, and yet most of the time they'll never have a chance to show us because they were born elsewhere. I want to equalize the world (i.e., bring freedom to it) to see what it has to say and to be able to speak with it.
- My desire is to change others towards Christ, yet I cannot change others without changing myself first. People are attracted to strength, and strength allows us to do things we couldn't do before. If I grow stronger I can make others stronger, and the stronger I grow, the more that people will come and hear what I have to say. Moreover, I believe that power should be with the good guys. It is safer with them, and the good guys should be powerfully competent (i.e., the best) in what they do. They should be examples to the world, showing the blessings and power of what happens when you do right.
- I believe God wants us to be free. Satan does not. There is something about freedom when combined with purpose that brings the best out of each of us.
- I like to learn new things because it makes me stronger. The stagnant and mundane drains the life out of me.
- I love to learn varied things because there is power in diversity. The stagnant and mundane drains the life out of me.
- Video games not only entertain, but are a mode of beautiful music, artistry, and tales.
Prioritized
- (11) I need to be free to do that which I love.
- (9) A man after freedom.
- (12) A man who loves to learn new and meaningful things that make him stronger.
- (13) A man that likes variety.
- (7) A lover of visual media (movie/animation/video games).
- (5) A lover of music.
- (14) Video games not only entertain, but are a mode of beautiful music, artistry, and tales.
- (6) A lover of powerful stories whose infrastructures show the story of Christ.
- (8) A lover of well crafted stories.
- (2) A creator of change.
- (3) A man who can touch hearts.
- (4) A powerful speaker.
- (10) A man who loves to grow and wants others to grow with him.
- (1) An artist.
Common Denominators
- Visual art
- Story telling
- Learning
- Desire to change people
Well, this depresses me a bit. I love the visual arts, but I cannot draw. I can write, but I’m no C.S. Lewis or Tolkien. I can play musical instruments and read music at an elementary level, but I’m no composer. In terms of my education, I decided for quantitative endeavors because I never wanted to be a starving artist. Thankfully, the world is changing and in-demand individuals are those that can do not only the quantitative, but the qualitative as well - in other words, the future belongs to those who can quintessentially fuse the left and right parts of a brain. So, perhaps I cannot do what I would like to do, at the moment, but thankfully, one of my common denominators is a strong desire to continuously learn. So I can’t draw, write as I would like, or compose as I would wish to do so, but I can learn! I won’t be able to be an expert at all of these things, but I can pick one or two, and in the least, I know I have the skill to powerfully identify quintessential visual media, stories, and music. So according to this, I should probably be working for myself and in some type of entertainment - perhaps video games or animation? Here’s a quote from the book that helped me grapple with this (it’s in Chapter 11, I do not know the book page because I have the Kindle version): “The point is: if what you most want to do is to make movies, it doesn’t matter what your skills are, because almost any skills you have can be put to use there.”
===================================================================
Here’s how “The Flower” would look for me. (It’s not filled, I fill it down below.) By the way, you can click on any of these images to make them larger.
Step 1: Values/Goals/Purposes
For this step I used a prioritization grid.
Here’s what I came up with.
I picked freedom as my number one value because I realized that none of the other things could exist without it. Perhaps, this is why God is so adamant about our freedom. The Heart, The Will or Conscience, and The Human Spirit all tied; I had trouble differentiating these three and ultimately saw them answering the same question, “Is your heart as it should be?”. In regards to possessions, I hope the world reaches a consensus on “enough” one day; instead of desiring more and more we should be better stewards of what we already have. In terms of the mind, the world is full of sophistry, and often hate and ignorance stems from the fact that those with power often manipulate those without it (e.g., China). With Eyes and Other Senses I want to leave something behind that will speak to the Heart, The Will or Conscience, and The Human Spirit; Entertainment, in short, is one way of doing this. Finally, Body and Earth are on the bottom, not because I do not care, but because I care more about other things.
Step 2: Top three favorite subjects.
Column 1: Culture (Asian and Latin American), quantitative modeling, computers, programming, financial accounting, managerial accounting, financial management, international finance, management, information systems management, information assurance, data security policy writing, enterprise architecture, IT governance, business statistics, IT services and administration, entrepreneurship, business plan writing, public speaking, multicultural communication, organizational behavior, macro and microeconomics, academic research, research writing, teaching, tutoring, marketing fundamentals, organizational communication, systems analysis and design, leadership, multicultural leadership, CIO and IT leadership, the value of community service, peer health education, formulating strategies, logistics and supply chain modeling, statistical forecasting, vocabulary and spelling, certified nursing assistant, piano, classical guitar, clarinet, and above all things I learned how to learn.
Column 2: Multicultural communication, multicultural team management, cultural acclimation, patience, communication with war-torn refugees, business process re-engineering, information system optimization, teaching, tutoring, auditing preparation, labor market research and reporting, project management and execution, sales, and mentorship.
Column 3: Multicultural teaching, cultural differences, teaching multilevel students at once (e.g., teaching an ESL Russian person with an MD while also teaching an ESL refugee from Burundi who cannot count to twenty).
Columns 4 & 5: stock investing, real estate finance, entrepreneurship, negotiation tactics, non-traditional management, rapid mathematics, memory augmentation, HTML programming, C++ programming, computer hardware repair, and mobile software development for iOS and Android.
Top three favorite subjects: IT (information technology) because you’re always constantly learning and you can do many amazing things with it. Entrepreneurship is another one because you’re always learning new things and it’s challenging. Lastly, I really like finance and numbers (I see that I have a tendency of gravitating towards endeavors such as stock investing, real estate finances, financial accounting, mathematics, accounting, statistics, etc.). I get excited about what data can tell you. My undergraduate degree was in International Studies, so I didn’t have to do financial accounting, managerial accounting, statistics, or quantitative modeling; as a matter of fact, these are the classes most students run away from in fear, yet I naturally gravitated towards these classes. It wasn’t uncommon for me to get a perfect scores on the tests in these classes.
In the end, I like what my classes and books read say about me: they say I’m well balanced in terms of qualitative and quantitative endeavors, and other common denominators that I see is that I like to learn new things and I like challenges.
Step 3: What transferable skills do you most enjoy using?
According to Bolles, transferable skills fall within three overarching categories: data, people, and things. From within each category an individual should claim the highest transferable skills (the skills at the top are the highest) based upon past performance. For example, if I pick mentoring as my highest transferable people skill then by default I am also claiming the other skills below it (i.e., negotiating, instructing, supervising, etc.).
With data, the highest I feel that I've gone up to is the analyzing stage. I believe this is so because I've worked as a statistician for the Texas Workforce Commission, I've been a research assistant at the graduate level, and I did two research internships as a McNair Scholar; however, I would probably have no qualms performing at the 'Synthesizing' level – after all, my masters degree is a fusion of business and technology, I have a strong foundation when it comes to quantitative endeavors, and research is mostly an event of synthesizing – that is, bringing multiple truths together and trying to infer what their fusion means.
With people, I would probably have to say my highest level is mentoring. During college, I served as a resident assistant in both freshman and sophomore male dorms. Normally, such an endeavor would not have been such an issue except that this was at a Christian University and guiding these young men was of utmost importance; it was my job to listen to these young men and guide them as best as I could, every day, for two hours or whenever they knocked on my door, no weekends off. I have emails from some of these young men, thanking me for the guidance I provided during their college years.
With things, the highest I've probably done is handling. I fix and maintain my own computers, but I do not have as large or as deep of a gamut as I'd like in order to claim anything beyond handling.
Step 4: What kind of people do you most enjoy working with or serving?
According to Bolles, there are six types of people one can work with:
1. The Realistic (people who like nature, athletics, tools and machinery)
2. The Investigative (people who are curious and like to investigate and analyze things)
3. The Artistic (artistic, imaginative, and innovative people)
4. The Social (people who like to teach, help, or serve people)
5. The Enterprising (people who like to start up projects or organizations, and/or influence or persuade people)
6. The Conventional (people who like to complete tasks or projects, and prefer detailed work)
Here's a visual representation as provided by Bolles:
If this hexagon where indeed the room of a party then let me answer the following:
- What part of the room would I go to first and spend most of my time in? (The Enterprising)
- Everyone in the first corner I went to leaves for another party – what part of the room would I go to next in order to spend the remainder of my time? (The Artistic)
- Everyone leaves again! Where would I go next? (The Investigative)
According to this, I would most likely spend my time with people who are entrepreneurial, persuaders, influencers, creative, imaginative, artistic, curious, investigative, and analytical.
This makes sense to me: I want to spend my time with people who want to figure out things and improve them. People who like challenges and approach issues from a different perspective. This ties very well into the Who Am I? section.
Step 5: What are your favorite working conditions?
In this exercise, Bolles recommends writing down a list of working conditions which are unpleasant to you. Once these are written down and prioritized, the antithesis to this list will be your optimal working condition. Essentially, you'll be filling out the table below:
Column A: Too much supervision, no windows, isolated work area, crowded work area (I mostly like to work on my own, but like to interact with people once in a while, my ratio in this sense would be 3:1, 3 being on my own and 1 being with people, I'm a big fan of delegation), having to come to work and leave at the same time everyday, having to come to work any time before 10a.m. (I'm not a morning person, I'm from a desert), an inept boss, a system which is content with the status quo, a bureaucratic system, not having the power to change things, low standards, an uncomfortable work area, unable to have food and drink, unvaried, not challenging, and an inflexible schedule (I don't mind working 12-15 hours everyday, but I want to be able to allocate those hours as I wish).
Column B: Below are picks of my prioritized dislikes as purveyed by the prioritization grid:
This list is ascending (meaning that my strongest dislike is at the top).
Step 6: What level would you like to work at, and what salary would you be satisfied with?
Step six consists of two questions, the first question (what level would you like to work at?) is easy for me to answer: I want to be the boss or CEO, owning my own business.
When I was in high school, my economics teacher told me he had once asked the richest man in the area how to become wealthy. The man's answer? Never work for anyone, even if it means selling tacos on the street. Last year I wrote my goals down and at the very top was this statement, Never work for anyone; however, I am not naive, I know that I'll always have to work for someone, be it clients, the market, or a bank providing a business loan. Nonetheless, an entrepreneurial adventure, to me, is far more enticing than the "safety" of a cubicle; I put safety in quotation marks because there is no such thing as a safe job, there is only less risk, but this risk comes with the highest opportunity costs, opportunity costs that will oft keep you from your dreams. In the end, you're dispensable to everyone, except God and yourself, so why work for anyone else? Plus, I believe very firmly that God wants us to be free, Satan does not.
To answer the second question (what salary would you be satisfied with?), let's begin with a calculated yearly average of my family's operating expenses. Luckily for me, I already keep statistical data of my yearly expenses, and taking into consideration future items such as a mortgage, student loans, car repairs, emergencies, and various insurances, I postulate my future yearly expense average to be $35,294.93 after taxes.
Methodology: Based on data I have, I added $24,000 (i.e., $2,000 per month) to my total expenses for the last 12 months (May 2010 - April 2011). I rounded up to the extra $2,000 per month after considering future expenses such as student loans, a mortgage, car repairs, emergencies, and various insurances. As a result, if I was the sole provider for my family I would need a job that pays $35,294.93 per year after taxes (i.e., $2,941.24 per month after taxes). Assuming a tax rate of 40%, this would mean I would need a job that pays $58,824.88 after taxes (i.e., $4,902.07 per month).
While this numbers may look scary, they have certain buffers attached to them. For example, I already own a house - mortgage paid off - and my wife would work as well. Therefore, between the two of us, I don't worry too much about covering our operating expenses. Nonetheless, taking into consideration the time, effort, and money I've invested in terms of my education, I could not take a job that paid less than $35,294.93 per year after taxes. If I did, I may as well be working as a chef at a local sushi steak house, and all my education, effort, and money would have been for naught. (Actually, this speaks volumes of what is wrong with our current tertiary education.)
However, taking into consideration my total expenses for the last 12 months and my financial buffers, I wouldn't mind working for myself for as low as $20,000 per year after taxes; however, if I'm only making $20,000 per year then something is wrong with my business, and I need to reevaluate what need I'm attempting to provide the market. Ultimately, my self-employment salary must beat an employment salary by a margin that is worth my time and effort. Let's start with a 50% margin.
Now that minimum salary is out of the way, what maximum salary would I be satisfied with? If I was working for someone, I would be satisfied with probably about $70,000 per year. If I was working for myself, I would probably never be satisfied because I could do more - employment has limits, business does not; however, in terms of self-employment, I believe $400,000 per year would probably shut me up for a while.
Therefore:
Minimum working for someone: $35,294.93 per year after taxes (2011 numbers).
Maximum working for someone: $42,000.00 per year after taxes (2011 numbers).
Minimum working for myself: $63,000 per year after taxes (2011 numbers).
Maximum working for myself: $400,000 to start off with (2011 numbers).
Conclusively, I would rather fail at my own business than succeed in someone else's, ultimately making someone else rich. I want to go after my dreams, not wander purposeless from pay check to pay check. This notion is not self-wrought, it is advice the wisest have passed down through the ages.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
~Marianne Williamson
"It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
~President Theodore Roosevelt
Step 7: Where would you like to live?
To begin, I'm first going to write a list of attributes an ideal location has for me. Thereafter, I'm going to use the prioritization grid to rank my preferences.
- Allergy friendly: I have allergies towards dust, mites, pollen and mold. Therefore, a location with verdure is not appropriate for me.
- Low pollution: I used to live in Hong Kong and everyday I woke up with red eyes - there was just too much smoke! Or, I'd go swimming at the beach and trash and bottles would float by.
- Cloudy: cloudy weather with a slight cool breeze energizes me!
- Cool weather
- Breezy
- Rain: I would like it to rain at least twice a month.
- Temperature around the 70s
- Not hot: I hate heat! I hate extreme heat, either dry or humid.
- Close to an ocean: No more than an hour away.
- Cool, crisp, clean air, not heavy or humid.
- Business friendly: A place that facilitates entrepreneurship.
- Networking: A place where I have or can have strong connections.
- Friends: The place where my friends are.
- Small and peaceful: No more than 100,000 people. Something that feels like Abilene, Texas.
- Close to my family: No more than two hours away.
- Short commutes: I can get anywhere I want, inside the city, within 30 minutes.
- Chinese market: this is very important to my wife.
- Safe: It's not overwhelmingly dangerous if I forget to lock the door.
- A strong, intelligent, and mature Christian community.
Here's how the list pans out when it is prioritized.
According to the list, the most important item for me is an allergy friendly location followed by low pollution. A business friendly environment and my friends being nearby tied for third, and I would also like an environment with strong connections (i.e., networking). In regards to the climate, living in an area with cool weather is very important to me. I would also prefer to live close to my family; not too close, but no more than two hours away. I do not want to live somewhere hot and access to a Chinese market (no more than an hour away) is very important to my wife and I. I want to live in a city with a strong, mature, and intelligent Christian community, that touts a climate with 70 degree weather. If possible, I would like the city I live in to be small and peaceful, no smaller than 80,000, but no larger than 200,000. Cloudy weather would be nice, as would short commutes, breezy weather, and rain. Finally, as icing on the cake, being close to an ocean would be a boon.
Incidentally, here's how a day's perfect weather would be for me. Cloudy, cool, and windy.
Here's what the temperature was on this given day:
Unfortunately, there is no place on earth that has all of these things, but the closest I can think of is San Diego, specifically its outskirts.
All of my family, with the exception of my brother, is in Mexicali, Mexico. While I am not sure if I'd like to live within the city of San Diego, I have been to, and enjoyed, El Cajon and Escondido. Living in El Cajon would probably be best as it is close to San Diego (i.e., to a Chinese market) and less than two hours away from Mexicali. Many of the items I mention on my list are found in San Diego, including the type of weather I prefer. The only drawback is that my friends are not there. Moreover, California is not as business friendly as Texas, nor do I have strong connections there (yet). I do, however, have strong connections and friends in Abilene, Texas, and while the climate disagrees with me, Abilene also has low pollution and a business friendly environment. In other words, Abilene has four of my top five priorities; however, missing is my family, a better climate, and an allergy friendly environment.
