I Did Not Value My Skills
What I'm Up To (Back to Business), What I Reflected On (Self Acceptance), and What's Occupying My Mind (Orange Chicken) - all part of Allen's Friday Flights
HELLO to the Friday Flights
A classic collection of random things including introspection from me.
Ciao!
Allen
Past Flights
Inside:
What I’m up to
What I reflected on
What thing occupies my mind
What I’m Up To
TL;DR: Getting back into more business.
The Things:
Thor Love and Thunder is such a fun movie, and I love the overload of humor in it.
I bought some NFTs because they said there would be food
I am looking for a Solana blockchain developer / analyst for a small project. If you don’t have blockchain, that’s alright - but knowing the data analyst part such as pulling and structure data from a massive and noisy data lake is pretty key.
Trent T. changed by relationship with Chick-fil-A. Also check your app if you are a SoCal resident for free sandwich.
I recycled an article through the Microsoft Start Creator Program last week and made $1 in ad revenue.
I got my Steamdeck. Game changer. Concurrently, received a notification from Amazon that I’m eligible to buy a PS5. Anyone want to take my place? 46 hours left to make the decision from the date of this publication.
Are you an artist and want to make your own NFT, and more importantly, create deeds that prove you own said property? I know a cool guy who is looking to reward you for using his product. Check out own.studio.
What I Reflected On
TL;DR: How I went from working in the business, to working on the business, and how that changed the way I looked at what I’ve done, can do, and what to do.
I Did Not Value My Skills
This is a continuation on the previous reflection around the Multiverse of Me. I would not consider it a sequel, but more so, another story around self-acceptance (in a career sense).
Preface
You have to collect the dots in order to connect the dots. Dots being the analogy to experiences, skills, - stories, basically. So here’s a journey through a few of my dots collected, and how I didn’t appreciate them until I connected them differently.
The College Antics
In college, I was unknown even to myself. I had no skills, and I found myself attending student clubs in the hope of osmosing my way into a job. The then organizations weren’t impactful for me and I didn’t get much. I had the to opportunity to help make them impactful, and I being the college student full of eargness, decided to. Few college moments later, I would help successfully grow, and even create, a number of things things for the benefit of others.
I did these things in college as a way to develop new skills. I was developing those skills as a result of the problem I wanted to tackle: How do I make things more impactful for members of a particular community. My “Why” then became one of “Helping other members get job opportunities for those who weren’t look at" which made me feel not good, but great. I would carry enough of that energy that I would continue to add people, and even create programs that would lead to the influence of adding a significant amount of people to the headcount of my former employer, not to mention its competitors.
The Exit Opportunity at the Entrance
When I started public accounting, I realized that my exit opportunities bestowed to those who in my service line (Risk Assurance) was being in internal audit. After working with many clients and interacting with their internal audit function, it didn’t appeal to me as an opportunity that would be for me.
I realized my “market opportunities” would be narrowly defined by what I was doing in Risk, which at the time, did not feel like much. So I added other “Service line”-like skills sets across financial audit and business consulting.
I did all these in my first 3 years of college as a means to…again develop new skills. The problem I was tackling: How do I come out on top of my Big 4 experience, beyond standard outcomes of what I was seeing in the market. My why was straight forward: Don’t “lose” out on not trying all the things a Big 4 can do.
Escaping the Standard Trajectory
Even with the diverse experience, I realized my exit opportunities in public accounting were still ones of an accounting function or internal audit. They are financially stable jobs, but the people that work in them aren’t the ones exuding life-invigorating energy in a way that I’d crusade to the ends of the earth with them. Nor were they ones I could see myself in. In fact, just the opposite.
I decided to make a pivot toward tech sector skills. I landed with Product Management, making the attempt to shoot myself that way in the beginning of 2019. I would “modernize?” my teams, promote the intern, and do all kinds of experiments in a way to extract more learning opportunities for myself. I ended up finding my way in to an opportunity to work with a then-really ambiguously defined innovation program at my previous employer where I did some of the most random things and wore so many different hats, including product.
The problem I was tackling for myself was: Create a way to permanently pivot out of anything accounting and finance related, industry side. I was fleeing from public accounting and consulting. Why? I didn’t see what I was doing day-to-day as anything beneficial to someone else, beyond fluff.
Apathetic Driven Break
I had apathy for my own career, and for my own experiences, that I couldn’t find an optimistic possibility with them. I knew I could be financially stable taking a job anywhere, but I felt like a husk of myself. There was a part of me that wanted to be daring, impactful, and directly changing lives. At the support of my SO, I put in my notice and proceeded to take a career break.
7 months worth of it.
Skipping my great lessons of my career break, I did come up with a new realization that helps me look at “why did I do the things that I do”, which is inspired by my map of all the things I did do.
A Problem of Relationship
I have a strong conviction around the idea that “all problems are problems of relationship”, which I take from Adlerian Philosophy. My relationship to the skills I picked up in my first years as an auditor, for example, was a relationship where I saw the roles as low value, with a dash of compliance and cost-center containment. Who would pay for this, and are these skillsets for a startup? In someways, the question would be “who else but us” would find value in this.
The then working environment I was in did not give opportunities to change that relationship for myself, as the reward for work is more busy work. In everywhere, each day soured the relationship.
It did give countless opportunities to pick up brand new skills.
While I was getting new skills, the problem I realized with constantly picking up skills all the times and complimenting my existing one is that it does not really change the relationship to what I did have. In fact, I found that the more new things I did do, the less I appreciated what I previously did.
What was causing my diminishing appreciation in those early skills I picked up? Was it it the skills in a vacuum itself, or was it the business model and context of the skills? Turns out, it was the business model.
When I left the environment I was in, and even paused all forms of work. I embarked on a journey of curiosity. I found a lot of it through others. I found a new ways to look at old things.
Sometime in that journey, I was able to offer free business advice to two founders, thinking not much of it. It came as a referral from a former client contact of mine, who is now off doing great things. The advice I gave to the founders was very much to do with everything financial, tax, and risk based, but seeing as I was not in that work context anymore, I gave it forward.
It was well received enough that a month later, they had offer to hire me as a consultant to do more of that.
It was then, my relationship to my skills changed.
A Changed Relationship
What was free consulting advice that I gave to two founders proved to be the catalytic moment that changed my relationship to all the skills I acquired in my last employer. Specifically, it took being independent, externally validated, and financially compensated for me to realized that I valuing my skills as a functional cog, and not so much as the holistic ability to do business with others.
Because of my complete independence from any employer, I found myself having to behave like I was a business. Everything outside of the core activity you get hired to do. The business. Things like figuring out a contract. Pricing & Rates. What do they need to know. What’s important. How do I actually get paid, using what service?
I’m reminded of a quote from Kat Cole, a Business Leader, who said “There’s working in the business, and there’s working on the business.”
Up until my career break, my time was spent working in the business, and using my roles in the business. I never did have the opportunity, or even perspective, to work on the business. And if I did, it felt like one of those dangling carrots to someone elses agenda. I made for a decent product, but I wasn’t a decent business.
There’s a difference between a company that makes one great product but is a shitty business model, and a company that has many okay products but is a great business model. The best surviving restaurants don’t make make the best food, they can sustain good-enough food but have a business model that allows it to healthily operate.
My relationship to my all skills was from the perspective of someone in the business. The grunt, so to speak. My new relationship to all my skills is complemented greatly as someone who works on the business, doing all the things so that I can give myself the repeat opportunity to work in the business.
In changing my relationship and treating me as a literal business, where time, knowledge, and energy are incredibly finite resources, I’ve learned how to prioritize, and more importantly, how to drop 99% of the things that simply do not matter.
If I could tell myself a few years ago what I should do when I thought, and acted on, opportunities where the grass was greener on the otherside, I’d start with: “What does that look like as a 1 person business, and when would hiring a 2nd person, and 3rd person, be justified?”
Right now, I’m my own business, and I’m a partner.
…
Wait did I just become the one thing I made fun of?
p.s. Today is the anniversary of when I started at EY in 2015.
Simple and “Fast” Ways to Work “On The Business”
Bill Independently: You need to freelance bill at least once in your life, preferably as early as possible. It needs to have a monetary value to it. The power of getting what you think you are valued.
Create and Sign Your Own Contract: There aren’t many times you get to do this, and when you do, its too late. Get your reps in now. It’s the power of negotiation and terms.
Passive Value Generation: What can you do that separates the direct correlation of the time you work on something, versus the value it gives you? Try writing instructions that can be reused or creating templates.
Relationships: Check in on people.
What thing occupies my mind
TL;DR; ORANGE CHICKEN.
Orange Chicken Turns 35
Did you know the Panda Express Orange Chicken has only been around for 35 years? It was created in Hawaii in 1987.
Its one of the few foods created in the last 4 decades that has such a ubiquotous and cultural effect on American perception a lot of people who never had Asian food will call out Orange Chicken as being one of them.
And what’s so hilarious about is that Chinese Restaurants don’t have Orange Chicken. It’s a purely American invention, similar to the fortune cookie. Yes, fortune cookies are also an American invention.