Have More Fun

2012 will be about Having More Fun. 2011 was an internal, emotional struggle, although I still managed to have some fun highlights. Nevertheless, it was the least fun I’ve had since I graduated. As I mentioned in my Life After College post, it’s now my “senior year” after college and it’s time to live it up. I’ve simplified the quantity and complexity of my resolutions this year and made them more fun. Thematically, they are divided into 2 professional, 3 personal, 3 travel, and 2 fun.

Professional

1. Make Best Delegate profitable. I want us to hit our internal revenue target. I make my living off the startup right now so it’s most important that we succeed here because it affects everything else I can do personally and professionally.

2. Find a professional mentor. We’re missing a mentor in the startup world and we could really use some solid guidance.

Personal

3. Maintain a physical fitness routine. I know how to eat healthier now. The next step is to implement a physical fitness routine that I can commit to while on the road (e.g. P90x style exercises). I will need friends to help keep me accountable on this though.

4. Care deeply for those who I love. I’m great at maintaining soft connections with hundreds of people, but I think this year I want to focus on building deeper relationships with a select few who I love. This goal includes spending more time with my parents.

5. Outline my personal lessons. I want to write a personal development book in the near future based on my 15 Personal Lessons series and I think the first steps are framing my existing content and figuring out the core themes that I’d like to market to a broader audience.

Travel

6. Travel to a new country. Surprisingly I didn’t visit a new country last year so I’m just going back to the basics. Ideally, I’d like to visit a new continent in the process though. Also, I think a bonus goal would be to go on an international trip with family.

7. Travel for fun. I realized that traveling for work isn’t that enjoyable, so I want to block out some time where I just travel for fun again. I’ll probably seek out travel buddies for some of the potential destinations listed below.

8. Explore LA more. I want to experience life in LA as a young professional and be acquainted (or re-acquainted) with its many districts, signature food places, and nightlife.

Fun

9. Do more photoshoots. DSLR photography is my new hobby. I have a lot of fun doing them and I want to get better. I’m always down to do a photoshoot whenever I hang out with friends.

10. Add glamour to my life. I’m not a glamour-driven person, but sampling a “baller” lifestyle does spike personal ambitions and I realized I had a lot less of it last year than the two years before. To me, adding glamour could include: going to lounges or rooftop bars, partying/clubbing, going to Vegas, checking out culture or the arts, attending a fundraiser dinner, being in the networking “scene,” buying a new suit, etc.

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The last five can all be combined, of course. In case you’re wondering or looking for a travel / food/ photography / partying buddy, the destinations that are high up on my travel list include:

• South America: Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay
• Europe: Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, parts of Spain and Italy
• Middle East and Africa: UAE (Dubai), South Africa
• Asia/Pacific: Taiwan, Indonesia (Bali), India, Pakistan, Australia, parts of Thailand
• Domestic: Las Vegas, Miami, San Diego, Maine
• Potential work trips: London, Hawaii

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It’s also important to note what I left off from my resolutions. I realized I had a lot of goals that conflicted with being focused on the startup or are no longer high priorities given my travel plans and that I could accomplish them in another year. This list included: getting involved in international development, taking the GMAT, deciding on the next journey, learning basic French or Arabic, cooking, and leading a food tour.

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Happy New Year! Good luck with your resolutions as well and let me know how I can help!

2011 had its ups and downs, but it was still fun

2011 was about the internal, emotional struggles associated with what I want in my work, relationships, and life. I had to decide between a promising career or pursuing a passion. I had to learn what I really wanted in a girl and in a relationship and if I was ready for it. And I even struggled as I was living my dream lifestyle of location independent travel. Essentially, it was me going through the Quarterlife Crisis. I did turn 25 after all.

But I had mentioned that I had anticipated the Quarterlife Crisis and planned to embrace its challenges, and that meant life was still fun and I have plenty of highlights and personal lessons to share. Here are 15 of my top highlights from the past year divided by theme and roughly in chronological order:

Career

1. Ryan and I co-authored and sold our first book, How to Win Awards in Model United Nations. Regardless of the sales, we were proud to have launched our first product at the beginning of the year.

2. Our Model UN rankings went viral and Best Delegate achieves broad popularity in the community. One of the articles was even retweeted by the former Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Nations!

3. I was promoted to senior manager and graduated from the AT&T Leadership Development Program. I finally crossed over to the alumni side!

4. I actually left AT&T and went full-time with Best Delegate. This was a big decision! I’ll add that I also had a fun trip to China and Korea in between jobs; the trip served as somewhat of a reset button.

5. Model UN experiences overall: McMUN was probably the most fun conference I went to all year. FCMUN was also very fun. I probably learned the most at WEMUN and THIMUN Singapore. Professionally I’ve been told my best work took place at MUNUC, NHSMUN, and NCSC. I blogged about our top 15 highlights from work here.

Family, friends, and dating

6. I enjoyed a super-fun birthday with my Atlanta friends plus some visitors that featured home-cooked Korean dinner, clubbing, and late-night karaoke. This was probably one of my best birthdays ever.

7. Fun Memorial Day weekend with the LDP family: I made a summer fruit salad with a mango vinaigrette from scratch (my proudest cooking accomplishment this year) and then we went to go Shoot the Hooch.

8. Saw my brother graduate from college! That was one of several highlights in terms of good happenings for my family this year.

9. I met a girl I really liked and decided to seriously pursue her. I think I learned a lot about myself in terms of dating and relationships this year.

10. Atlanta life overall: I had a lot of fun with my friends. Atlanta brings back memories of Korean BBQ and Eclipse di Luna with the LDP family, Braves games with Jean, and more fun times. It also reminds me of Fox Brothers, Highland Bakery, Mary Mac’s, Flip Burger, Olympic Centennial Park, and the Georgia Aquarium since I always took friends to those places whenever I hosted them. Finally, Atlanta is where I saw Kina Grannis in concert.

Travel and experiences

11. I went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I had a lot of fun with the group, and the trip helped me fulfill my desire to travel with a purpose, meet new friends, and explore the South.

12. I took part as a model in a photoshoot for an AT&T in-store ad. I’m glad I got the opportunity to do something cool like this right before I left the company. On a related note, I finally bought a DSLR and I feel like I have gained proficiency in using it.

13. I went on an eye-opening driving night tour of the projects in Atlanta with my friend who grew up in the ‘hood.

14. I achieved Gold Medallion status on Delta and A+ Elite status on AirTran. In addition, I figured out how to use Priceline as I’ve now added hotels to my travel hacking arsenal.

15. I completed 12 weeks of consecutive location independent travel to the East Coast, Canada, Singapore, and San Francisco. I had a lot of fun everywhere, and San Francisco, Fredericksburg, and Boston were particularly enjoyable. Thanks again to everyone for hosting me!

Build Best Delegate toward profitability and automation: Neutral. I think the startup has grown significant since the beginning of the year; it has great name recognition and some revenue now. However, we’re still not close to profitability or automation — or even implementing our many good ideas.

Travel for fun with a purpose beyond sightseeing: Neutral. If anything, my traveling was quite the opposite. I didn’t get to fully enjoy my trips as much because I was locked down with work. This would’ve been a fail except I did go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Start a personal development website and post more often: Fail. I didn’t post as much as I wanted to, although I think my content did improve somewhat.

Start a microloan fund and continue exploring opportunities in international development: Fail. I didn’t get to start on this with so much of my focus being on the startup. In retrospect, perhaps my startup will provide opportunities to address international development in the future.

Purchase a DSLR and become confident in using it: Pass. I feel pretty comfortable using it and can’t believe I’ve only had it for less than a year. The next step is to use it more artistically.

Try following the Four Hour Body to holistically improve my physical fitness: Fail. Well, I did try it for several months but ultimately did not achieve my fitness goals. Although it didn’t work out, I do feel a bit more health conscious.

Be able to cook seven different healthy meals: Fail. I have one dish that I was proud of (summer fruit salad with made-from-scratch mango vinaigrette dressing) and I cooked occasionally when I was in Atlanta, but other than that I haven’t developed the healthy repertoire that I wanted.

Strive — don’t stress — for success in dating. Enjoy getting to know the other person and let success come to me. Also improve in communicating what I want and being more self-assured: Pass. Although I will admit I went through a lot of good growing pains on this.

Achieve GMAT and GRE scores in the statistical range for top 10 business schools and international relations schools: Fail. I didn’t even try studying for it. Right now it’s debatable how relevant this is for my career aspirations; I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do.

Spend more time exploring Atlanta and the South and meet new friends in the process: Neutral. I felt like I enjoyed Atlanta overall despite flying almost every other weekend to other cities. I didn’t meet many new friends but I was satisfied with my LDP friends already.

Overall: 2 Pass, 3 Neutral, 5 Fail

I rarely went to the library in college =P

I’m three and a half years out of college now. If I were in that same timeframe during college, it would’ve be the end of fall quarter of senior year and I would have been reflecting on post-college life ahead, so I decided to take this chance to reflect on life after college. For most people, college was fun, carefree, interesting, and relatively straight-forward, while life after college seems to be this complex and stressful discovery of what we want in our work, relationships, and life. But I think life after college is very similar to college in many ways. We shouldn’t just reminisce at college and say that it was a fun time in life. Rather, we should view college as teaching us the frameworks on how to live. We just have to remember to ask ourselves the right questions. 

Here are ten ways on how I am living life after college just like college — and the question to ask yourself if you want to live similarly: 

1. My major is management. In college, we spent most of our academic time taking classes in our major in order to graduate from college and find a job. In life, most of us spend the majority of our days working in order to achieve our desired career and lifestyle. We should think of our work like a major. I think about my time at AT&T as a major in management where I took courses in leadership, marketing, operations, and sales, and I ended up graduating with honors — I received a promotion to senior manager. 

Self-reflective question: Are you learning the skills and knowledge you need to be successful? 

2. I have a minor in entrepreneurship. In college, we would be willing to add extra work by picking up a double major or a minor in a field because we were interested in it, thought it would compliment the major, or thought it could help with job prospects. We should try to have something on the side that feeds our passions or helps us grow either personally or professionally. I think of my startup, Best Delegate, as my minor in entrepreneurship. Most of us were passionate about many things while in college and society shouldn’t dictate that we just drop those passions after we graduate. 

Self-reflective question: What’s something you’re passionate about that you can pursue on the side? 

3. I chose location independence as my study abroad. Studying abroad in college broadened our horizons in many ways and as we learned a lot and made many life-long friendships, we also became even more intrigued by the world and its people, wanted to find out how we fit in it, and wanted to explore places to travel to or even work/live. I’ve done an around-the-world trip, two Asia trips, and a Latin America trip since graduation, and now I’m doing a year of location independence where I live nomadically on the road. These experiences are all meant to help me learn about myself, other people, and the world. 

Self-reflective question: What part of the world — or what lifestyle — intrigues you? 

4. My resume and resolutions are my GPA. Professionally, my resume is like my GPA as it captures my accomplishments in my post-grad career. Personally, I make New Year’s Resolutions every year that I intend to keep that those serve as targets on personal growth. If you want to feel successful professionally and personally, then you need to know how you’re measuring yourself and what your targets or goals are.  

Self-reflective question: What metrics are you using to evaluate your career or personal success?  

5. My core textbooks influence my lifestyle. In college, there was probably a set of core textbooks or authors in your major that everyone read and was influenced by. Similarly, we need to find who these core, influential authors — or mentors — are for living life. I can tell you that some of the influential authors in my life include: Keith Ferrazzi, Timothy Ferriss, Chris Guillebeau, Ramit Sethi, Neil Strauss, Jim Collins, Garr Reynolds, and Seth Godin. 

Self-reflective question: Who are your core influences or mentors? 

6. Moving cities is like changing dorms. In college, we changed dorms or apartments almost every year. It gave us a refresh in our environment and usually provided an upgrade on our college life. Similarly, I’ve changed apartments four times in three years by moving around in San Francisco and Atlanta. Every move opened me to new experiences and every move was an upgrade in the quality of life in some way. 

Self-reflective question: How does your living situation help you achieve your ideal lifestyle? 

7. I still constantly build and maintain social and professional networks. In college, I would go to parties, hang out with friends, participate in extracurricular activities, and do other things that was fun or allowed me to learn about something I’m interested in. Similarly, I try to consciously balance my social and professional networks after college to keep having fun and to keep learning. The biggest difference is that I also now have to maintain these networks, especially with old college buddies who’ve moved all over the world now. Fortunately, my 2nd year dorm mates (Sproul 2-South) are still some of my best friends.  

Self-reflective question: Are you surrounding yourself with friends and professional contacts that will make your life better? 

8. I still want to make a difference. In college, we were somewhat idealistic but mostly motivated to make a difference on the bigger injustices, good causes, and community issues that affected our world. We did this through volunteering, mentoring, tutoring, and advocating. Opportunities exist outside of college too. I joined several Asian-American professional organizations to promote career advancement of this group, and I volunteer with UCLA Alumni as a mentor and scholarship interviewer. We’re lucky to be where we are and we should, at the very least, give back to our community. 

Self-reflective question: What are the community issues and bigger causes where you can make a difference? 

9. I still don’t know what I want to do. Remember how in college most of us didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives? Or even if we got a job, we still had all these dreams that we’d someday fulfill? I wanted to start my career in leadership and I pretty much landed a dream job in that field with the AT&T management rotation program. I wanted to start my own company and now I do that with Best Delegate. And I wanted to travel the world and I’ve done that by visiting 28 countries in the past five years. I have it good. But that doesn’t mean I still don’t experience uncertainty. I guess everyone does. It’s just how we handle it that determines whether we feel happy and successful and hopeful about our future. 

Self-reflective question: How do you handle uncertainty? 

10. I still root for UCLA. Our football team still sucks, our basketball team isn’t as good as the Final Four years when I was in college, and we’re now ranked lower than that school across town in the US News undergrad rankings. But that’s okay, because I still love UCLA. Go Bruins! 

Self-reflective question: What’s something — perhaps your university — that has helped shape your identity or personal pride? 

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That said, not everything in life after college is just like college. Here are the five biggest differences:

11. We have to manage the four currencies in life — money, time, generosity within relationships, and health — much more vigorously: In college, we didn’t have to worry about cash flow and expenses (worrying about tuition and loans gets deferred till graduation), we felt like we had all the time in the world (except during finals week), we did lots of favors for friends, and we felt immune to the effects of unhealthy habits like overeating, all-nighters, and heavy drinking. But after graduation, everything seems to become much more important. We have to take care of our cash flow. We have to make the most out of our valuable time. We have to continue to be generous in our relationships with those we love as we spread apart. And we need to take care of our health as we grow older. 

Self-reflective question: Are you making and spending the right about of money, time, generosity, and health for your life? 

12. Comfort and quality of life become important. Having more money and less time means we’re willing to spend on comfort and upgrade our quality of life. Unfortunately we’re not at the level where we can buy or do whatever we want yet, so we have to prioritize. 

Self-reflective question What aspects of quality of life are important to you? 

13. We have fewer opportunities for intellectual stimulation. Being taken out of the college bubble means fewer opportunities for intellectual engagement. I believe intellectual stimulation is necessary aspect of life though, particularly for those of us who are academically high achievers. 

Self-reflective question: How do you continue to learn after college?

14. We have more flexibility to pursue travel and hobbies. Not having homework means flexibility in the limited amount of time you have to do things that you love. 

Self-reflective question: How are you spending your free time?  

15. It’s much harder to meet new people. When I was working long hours or living in the suburbs, it was definitely harder to meet someone or even socialize with friends, even for someone who makes a conscious effort to socialize like I do. The proximity and consistency created by the college environment made it significantly easier to meet new people. 

Self-reflective question: What are you doing about it? 

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I got the life-after-college idea from Janice who blogged on a similar topic: http://www.themediamaid.com/2011/lessons-old-person/

I just wanted to quickly check in with everyone and let everyone know how I’m doing. Overall, I’m doing well. But I will admit that startup life and location independence are not easy — at least not when starting out. So here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of my current endeavors:

The Good – Five best things of startup life & location independence:

1. I get to see friends, family, and others who I normally would not see. It’s been extremely nice hanging out with friends in other cities who I have not seen for a long time. It’s also been nice spending time with my grandma and relatives as well as some other special people in my life. The world becomes much smaller with location independence and distance can be easily managed.

2. I get to set my own location and schedule. Specifically, I get to be in whatever city I want to be whenever I want to be (except when I “need” to be at a conference for marketing purposes). I have this newfound freedom where I can work from anywhere I desire.

3. I finally get to put my passions to work. I get to focus on the business all day and it’s much more stimulating intellectually and emotionally than when I was working on it part-time. I work till 6am sometimes but I love it because I truly care about it and believe in it. I’d rather passionately work late nights than have to look for the clock to hit 5pm every day. I also get to spend more time in the field (conferences and classrooms) which means I get to meet more customers (students and teachers), and it’s just great to hear the positive feedback that they provide once they finally get to meet me — or see how big of a fan they are which makes me feel like a rock star.

4. I have newfound appreciation for the East Coast. It’s so much nicer when I can slow down and enjoy exploring new cities — and getting around between them — on my own terms. Baltimore is prettier than I remembered, and Fredericksburg, Virginia, is a great town. I can get around Boston and New York City like locals now and I probably play the part too seeing how I’ve given directions in both cities. I already knew about Megabus and Boltbus but now I’ve also discovered commuter trains like the LIRR, Metro North, NJ Transit, MARC, and VRE which makes me feel like I have access to a whole new world of transportation.

5. I get crash courses in new skills. Being around different friends all the time means rapid exposure to their passions and crash courses in picking up their expertise. I’ve learned so much about photography, relationships, exercise, music, life goals, and just how to generally enjoy life in different ways from hanging out with all my friends.

The Bad – Five things I miss from my old life:

6. Consistent Internet & cell phone service. I’m usually in search for a Starbucks for free Internet since the place I stay usually doesn’t have free Internet if it’s not a friend’s place, but sometimes I end up paying the $14/day Internet at hotels anyway when work runs after 10pm. AT&T cell phone service has its issues on the East Coast (static in Boston, no service in NYC, echoes in Baltimore). So who in AT&T can take care of my #firstworldproblems? ;)

7. Cooking & home-cooked meals. Sometimes I just want to take a break from eating out and be able to cook my own meal in my own kitchen.

8. Hanging out with a core group of friends. I miss being able to hang out with my friends in Atlanta. Because I saw them all the time, catching up wasn’t necessary and we could focus on doing random fun things in town.

9. The Routine and impromptu happy hours. Well, just a little bit. Sometimes it’s nice to have consistency in your day and not have to do intensive planning everyday. There’s also something nice and convenient about being able to IM co-workers to organize an impromptu happy hour compared to always having to schedule my social life sometimes days in advance.

10. Productivity. This is a challenge everyday, even for someone like me with the nickname GTDxtreme (Get Things Done Extreme). I lose productivity right off the bat when I’m traveling between cities or when I need to find Internet. The other challenge here is that work can easily creep in everyday since I’m on the same laptop all the time and I have to manage between productivity and having off days where I’m not working at all to prevent burnout.

The Ugly — Five biggest challenges:

11. No salary. It’s scary watching my bank account on Mint.com drop every week with no guaranteed cash flow coming in. Any bootstrapping entrepreneur really needs to manage their personal budget with rigorous discipline and have saved up a decent pile of cash to keep them surviving day-to-day and to prevent themselves from freaking out and taking drastic actions.

12. Failing. Since income is now tied to how much revenue the startup produces, the consequences from failure really impact me. For example, our September product launch didn’t generate the revenue we had projected and that failure meant I needed to survive without that money and figure out how to adjust immediately.

13. Unexpected (and expected) costs. New laptop because my old one died, car accident, shipping my car cross-country, my own health insurance, random last-minute hotels, etc. All these costs could not have come at a worse time and it made a huge dent into my starting savings. You can manage risk and budgets well but sometimes you just can’t prepare for everything.

14. Maintaining healthy practices. It’s very easy to slide into unhealthy practices when you’re always on the road and working on a startup. From eating out all the time and drinking Starbucks fraps to not getting enough exercise and working until 6am, there are many bad habits that need to be regulated. Hopefully I can do a better job at maintaining a healthy lifestyle while I’m on the road and not take my health for granted.

15. The need to constantly plan for the next destination. It’s impossible to plan 12 weeks of consecutive travel so I have to plan basically several times a week. That’s fine since I’ve learned how to do that from traveling, but the biggest challenge is that it makes it difficult to enjoy the current destination. And location independence should be about enjoying the destination in addition to the journey.

The overall lesson here is that even dreams have growing pains. But I know it will get better. I took a break from my work travels to visit friends in Baltimore and Fredericksburg and I feel much more refreshed. When you’re going through your own growing pains, just remember to take a step back, breathe, and remember that it’ll be okay and it’ll be worth it in the end. Keep calm and carry on!