My father has always been open to taking risks in his professional life and in his investments. There was a company he had built with a few coworkers years after we moved to New England. It was a technology based company and they were one of the first companies to create speech recognition software. With all the potential applications for this technology his company was bought for more than a million dollars worth of stock. The acquiring company was fraudulent with their books and before my father was able to exercise and cash out on any of his stock, the accounting was exposed and the ink on the stock certificates was worth more than the value of the shares themselves. This situation coincided with our family moving into a new home we were building. He then went unemployed for more than a year. He worked for years, received an amazing payout and then had it stolen out from under him. I am sure there were many emotions that he felt over the next many months before he started working again. We lived off food storage and rainy day funds but with time, he is again very successful and he has many things that he didn't have before.
I am not saying that I have made and lost my first million. I am not saying that I have at all lived a day in his shoes. I am not married nor do I have kids. I think the best way to explain is to simply share what happened. Years ago, my life was generally led in a direction where I felt like it would be beneficial that once I graduated from BYU in engineering to go get my MBA. I spent the next two years doing that and I learned a lot. It was a good experience and I learned a lot of things I didn't know before: marketing, finance, investments, venture capital, business strategy, etc. I worked at an unpaid internship at a VC firm. I went to Japan. I did a lot of different things however in my haste, I realized that I went to the wrong institution for what I wanted to do with my MBA which was management consulting. I still feel like I have the intellectual capacity, emotional intelligence and work ethic to be successful in it however my resume and the brand of University of Utah is not tailored to consulting so outside of networking a bunch, it made for months of fruitless effort trying to find an entry point to pursue that career path. Even working with the college recruiters at the university provided what felt like no real benefit.
After looking through my network that I had made and cultivated so far through my professional and educational careers, I was afraid of being too picky in what I applied to as I approached graduation. I felt like I had an expiration date to find a job because of my pre-existing medical conditions that required me to have continuous health insurance coverage that I would lose once graduation arrived if I wasn't employed. I ended up connecting with an alumnus that had what sounded like to me was a really interesting and compelling career. She was able to consult employees of large companies on their investments but her primary role was first and foremost as an educator and secondary as a saleswoman. I was not qualified for this role because I lacked many certificates and licenses but I felt that I could work my way up to it over a few years and I and my family would all benefit from what I was going to learn about investments in general. Still, I felt slighted in all honesty. I was starting a new career in a new industry living at home with my parents making less as a full-time employee than when I was working as an intern and making 30-40% less than if I had stayed my course and stuck with engineering only with a MBA that I wasn't using and a $30k debt that I had to pay off. I decided to focus on my future and make the best out of my situation, all the time hearing former classmates tell me I had made a terrible mistake and that I was worth more and more qualified than what I was being asked to do. Honestly, I still agree with them but still what I was learning about finance, investments and retirement planning had a lot of value that I feel will pay off down the road.
I had to start at the bottom and work my way up. I took customer service and call center sales roles and within a year I had been promoted 3 times. I continued to work hard and was able to make a name for myself in a sales role but quickly hit a ceiling on my progression. I talked with the head of my department and he said that the best route for me would be to head out to investment centers and start doing sales face-to-face with customers and after proving myself I would be able to better qualified to apply for the original role that I was interested in or even some of the B2B sales roles in our department. I took his advice and after passing a few more licensing exams and networking a bunch with various managers in our company I was able to interview for a role where I would be doing essentially the same things I was doing at the phone site but at one of the local branches in San Diego. The hiring manager seemed nice and accommodating but he advised me that although I interviewed very well there were many things I would struggle with at the branch if I didn't start at the front desk. He told me that there was another candidate they would most likely go with but that the branches are really fluid and he would not hold me to any time requirement to stay in the entry level role before I would be interviewed again for the same position. He told me he just wanted me to become more comfortable in the way business worked in the branches. Understanding that I was an unknown entity for him, I was willing to work with that however that was not how my San Diego experience actually was going to go.
As my parents and I drove out, I got a call from that same hiring manager. He was transferring offices. There was a few projects that required a few local managers input and help and he was going to cover for them as one of the other assistant managers took his spot while he was gone. He said that he was still in the same area so he would make sure that things went smoothly for me. Since I arrived fully licensed, the assistant manager immediately put me to work. I did my best and arrived early and left late every day for months. I was part of a 3-person team to man the operational side of this office while most of the other branches in the area had 4 to 6 people. My coworkers were an interesting pair. One had chronic migraines that kept her out of the office more than she was in the office. She was the one that was supposed to train me because she had the most seniority. My other coworker had only been working at the company for 2 months and was still getting licensed but she was being groomed for the next role by the managers and did her best to exert whatever authority she could create over me if she wasn't taking time off and leaving me to run the entire office by myself. She offended customers and did not want to help people as much as she was looking for sales. Within weeks, I was outselling her. I met people like her before but I never had to rely or depend on them. She created conflict when there didn't need to be any and even straight out lied to our supervisor and blamed a few of her shortcomings on me. After multiple failed attempts to resolve things with her, I accepted that I just needed to get promoted and move on. Little did I realize, the original hiring manager had not communicated anything about what role I had interviewed for or my agreement with him to my new acting supervisor and I had failed to get any of it in writing.
To put this in perspective, I will quickly summarize the situation. Over a period of 2-3 months, I was hired as a fully licensed individual but was never once trained in the process and paperwork I was supposed to be assisting clients with. I was hired onto a 3-person team and for probably 3 weeks I was the sole employee that showed up for work because my coworkers were either on vacation or sick. I was told that I was hired so that I could quickly move into the role that I actually interviewed for and the individual that hired me wasn't even there nor did he communicate these facts to his replacement. I was overqualified and underpaid (again on both counts), overworked and underappreciated. The only benefit was not only had I negotiated a better starting salary but I was accruing a ton of overtime pay on top of that. I took on a variety of other responsibilities and acquired a few more additional licenses, both out of necessity and to show my capabilities, to fill in the gaps of my absent coworkers. When I had to leave for corporate training, the replacement manager had to call another office to get someone to cover for me while I was away when he had two employees that should have been capable to handle the work load that I was carrying for months as an untrained individual. Once I got back from training, my coworkers must have gotten an earful because finally they would show up for work but only occasionally were they both there on the same day. I took this opportunity to start working with some of the advisors in the local area, sharing the expertise that I had been trained in at the phone sites. This was successful and I was able to add value in many client appointments and took appointments myself to help out the advisors. 8 months pass and at this point the original hiring manager comes back. He starts grooming again the girl with the smallest tenure at the company. In fact, the girl that originally was hired in the role that I had applied to is out on maternity leave and he trains my coworker to fill in for her saying that I am indispensable in my role. I protest saying that I am ALREADY trained for the other role and I could fill the spot IMMEDIATELY. His response was so patronizing that I can only remember it as a verbal pat on the head and completely ignoring my statement of fact.
Unfortunately, I begin hearing from my friends back at the phone sites that layoffs are happening throughout the company. I feel safe now that I am out at the branch. Plus, I am indispensable and honestly I am the only one that shows up to work. To bring this long and painful experience to a close, I was let go. Partially because it simply was a RIF but also because a lot of miscommunication and lies that happened at the office that blamed me for mistakes made there. Some were indeed my mistakes and I took ownership for them but again they were mistakes that I made in ignorance because I hadn't been trained and wasn't told that they were being tallied up. The straw that broke the camel's back however was a mistake of my coworker who was filling in for the next role, which she pinned on me (intentional or not I still do not know). I have never felt like I could trust someone less than that girl nor have I met someone that was as willing to walk over other people and use her appearance to get ahead. It was completely and utterly shocking to me that someone like her could work in a customer service role being such a selfish and self-centered individual. With the time I spent at the company, I had learned to find satisfaction in genuinely helping and educating clients on what they ought to do with their investments to help them reach their goals. Personally I was being paid less than 0.2% of what I was earning for the company but I figured that would change as I would be promoted due to my performance and merit.
I learned that in personal finance, it is still an industry where it is more about who you know than what you know. They continue to rank and pay their sales people based on products which is a conflict of interest when it comes to what is in the best interest for the client. Promotional opportunities only open up if someone has been promoted, died, quit, or in my case, let go due to a RIF. I didn't have a social life because when I was working, I had 10-12 hour shifts every day and was using my weekends to study for licenses and other work-related things. I do not want to go through this hell again so I start applying to different jobs in other industries. I try using the expertise that I had gleaned and make a horizontal transition. No dice. I try going back to management consulting but use my experience in finance as my expertise. Nothing. Months go by and I know I have been away from engineering for far too long to ever go back to it. I remember basically nothing now since I went straight into my MBA from my undergraduate program. I am only being reached out by recruiters to go back into this hell I am trying so hard to get out of!
Everything so far is only the professional experiences I had since graduating with my MBA. Personally, there were some positive moments that I experienced in San Diego but they were scattered with negative ones as well. Within a month of moving to San Diego, I got into a car accident where I was cut off by a teenage girl driver and because she stopped in the middle of the freeway, I hit the back of her car. I was deemed to be at fault for someone else who had been texting in the middle traffic and lost control of her vehicle so my car was totaled and I had to replace it out of pocket, costing me $10k. After losing my job and months later, I finally have a social circle from my church where I feel like I have found some solid friends. I had previously tried dating with no success and quite a few horror stories: too focused on her career, straight up forgets we scheduled a date, won't accept me because of my faith, etc. I did have some amazing memories with these friends. We went camping together, grilling and bonfires on the beach, visiting national parks, and had a bunch of movie, food, and gaming nights together. I became close friends with one of the Marines in the ward and we spent time at the rec center on base called The Great Escape and went to a gaming store across from the base, At Ease Games. I went shooting with another friend and became friends with a less active member. He was getting back into the church but his family really didn't care either way as they were preoccupied with their rich lifestyle. They owned a few houses and companies and yachts behind the in San Diego Convention Center near Coronado. We completed a bunch of escape rooms, movie nights, anime nights and even began playing and running Dungeons & Dragons adventures.
Spiritually, San Diego was not the best with the exception of our Institute teacher. He was by far the best one I have ever had and was the most down-to-earth as well. The Bishopric was fantastic. The Ward was super inactive. Out of my friends, I was doing my best to reactivate four of them, of which two were either excommunicated or disfellowshipped. Spending time with them honestly was fun but taxing. Throughout my life, I hadn't had such a tough time spiritually. Doubt, frustration, and pride all were eating me up. It was affecting my trust in God and I was slipping in my activity. I did not lose my testimony in the gospel but my faith was definitely waning.
At home, I felt isolated. I had a roommate that was crazy. She was super excited to be living in America. She was Chinese and she was here to learn English which she spoke almost fluently but in reality was trying to work and start a business here without a visa or proper paperwork. I respected that she was driven and successful and I helped her when I could but I have dated in the past foreigners and my family had to work through immigration laws so her doing so many things that were in their essence were false and would've gotten her visa denied, frustrated me frequently. She was a convert to my faith but it was out of a social obligation she felt to her extended family, not out of any actual understanding or belief. She felt alone too so she tried many times to pursue me romantically and I repeatedly told her explicitly that I was not interested in getting into a relationship with her and asked her to stop. It was tiring and for months, I had to lock my door at nights. Not accepting my dismissal she would buy me things which I would give back to her or re-gift to my friends. I wasn't responding to her texts so she bought me a new phone because she assumed mine wasn't functioning properly when I told her that I just didn't want to talk. This made dating impossible in my social circle at church because she would want to sit next to me or hold my hand and I would simply bat it away. I have never been unkind like this before but she was relentless and I did not want to give her any reason why she would think I was leading her on. She simply thought that with enough persistence I would succumb and give in but obviously she didn't really know me. She later when visiting home and her company back in China was denied re-entry into the US and she still continues to message me on Facebook to which I do not respond. Unfortunately, this is also what my friends did to me shortly before I moved up to Utah a few months ago.
My family and I went on many trips during my time in San Diego - family reunion in Arizona, international trip to Peru, etc. On the international trip (which if you haven't been to Peru - go... it is totally worth it), there was some miscommunication between me and my friends over a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I was running. I let one of my friends continue it on while I was away and gave him some ideas of what he could do to continue the storyline. I didn't count on how crazy the session was and when he told me I thought he was pulling my leg. Through some textual miscommunications, I had offended him and in turn the group gossiped and without even realizing how blown out of proportion it had all gotten my whole friend group had written me off without talking to me before I had come home. I wouldn't have even realized there was a problem if one of them hadn't decided to go against the rest of the group's advice to ditch me at the airport and instead kept his promise to pick me up. I immediately went about apologizing to everyone and even though I a few of them acknowledged it had gotten out of hand, right now, none of them will talk to me. It was the most shocking and painful part of leaving San Diego. These were blokes that I had spent months of time with, listening to their problems, being their friend when no one else was, sticking up for them when they weren't there, having their backs and creating so many memories with and instead they burn me over a simple miscommunication between one of them and myself.
Let me again summarize: Moving back to Utah because I couldn't afford to live in San Diego any longer, I felt defeated, isolated, alone, worthless and generally a failure. I had even right before leaving had been given a job offer from a company in San Jose and had moved up to talk the job when at the last minute the offer was rescinded due to my driven record 3.5 years prior. When I had moved to San Jose I at least felt like it was to start a new beginning before that was crushed. Moving to Utah, it was because I was losing at the game of life. No friends. No job. Savings being drained with interest building on an outstanding student loan from my MBA that had remained fruitless. I will be honest, during this last year I have never had these thoughts but before in my life I have had out of body experiences and other feelings that made me think that I was slightly suicidal. Who would notice if I was gone? Do people even want me here any more? It's not that you don't have a will to fight, it's that you don't think it is doing anything and you must be doing it wrong because nothing is giving you any slack. I wouldn't ever ACTUALLY commit suicide. It is a selfish act and made out of cowardice and there is a lot of pain and problems you leave for your loved ones. And moving to Utah, I was heading back towards loved ones. I give Utah a bad wrap because generally, I feel it is overly concentrated and homogenous in its culture and demographics and so people try to individualize and will radicalize themselves or there seems to be a large "Better Than the Jones's" culture or atmosphere. I feel it comes from comparing to impossible standards and not seeing that life is a process. My frustrations were from the fact that my "process" kept being stopped by roadblocks so I feel like my personal bias makes me feel that my feelings were a little more justified than most. Still, this period and these feelings are why I feel like I understand what my dad went through a little more.
I put in the best effort I could. I tried my hardest and stayed true to myself. I even pursued my course of action because I could see a path ahead and it looked successful. Then everything started to fall down around and roadblocks popped in my path and I kept slipping each time I tried to get my feet underneath me. God has blessed me in many ways and I have many gifts that I can attribute to him and the opportunities that he has provided me in life but for whatever reason, for a year, none of that mattered. What lessons did I learn from San Diego? Taxes are high and the weather is amazing. I helped to reactivate a few people and in the end I hope they continue to stay on the gospel path because they no longer count me as a friend. You can help people and love people and trust people and that never means that it has to be reciprocated but it is the only reason or way to live regardless. I hoped I helped someone or touched someone in a positive way because for me, I walked away with a few fond memories here and there. I learned a lot about myself and different hobbies and interests that I really could identify with. I learned that without God, you will not be able to move forward. San Diego is a beautiful place and I would live there again under different circumstances but to be frank it was the hardest year of my life and I look forward to moving away from it and moving forward. It was in January 2017 that I moved to Southern California and I am so happy that I am no longer there. Honestly, life could be worse and I could be dead. I haven't even gotten into everything that happened that made things so difficult.
I make an accounting of this not to look back. Life is meant to be lived as we move forward. I am doing this to lighten my load. To release some of the pain and frustration and doubt and just let it go. Things will be better. Things can only get better. It's time to dust myself off like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes and get back on that bike - even though I know it is literally trying to kill me. Whether that metaphorical two-wheeler is dating, social life, career, family, faith, etc., when the sun has cleared and I look back at the contrast of what I had to go through I hope I remain humble and be grateful that He helped pull me back and got me to wherever I am going. We are never truly alone no matter how much we are asked to endure.
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