Minneapolis Part 2

First of all, I want you all to beware of this post, because I'm being a bit of a hypocrite. I'm doing something I don't like when I'm reading others' blogs...I'm posting a ton of pictures. But I really don't have a way to show everything we've done without them! So here's our summer in pictures.

Welcome to Minnesota: In the first week or so, we had a crazy hailstorm near my work (my poor car). The hail was huge - the picture shows a couple of the hail stones (and they really were as hard as stones - not light, fluffy hail like we get in the west - these two are actually slightly smaller than most of them I saw - and it had already started to rain by the time I got them). A few weeks later, there was some massive rain, and then a crazy windstorm that uprooted trees all over the city, and knocked out the power. Our power was out for about 18 hours, but it was out for others much longer.

Family and Friends: Surprisingly, we have family here! My cousin Grace lives out here, and it was awesome to reconnect with her. We went out to eat, gave her a little birthday party, complete with cake and ice cream, she babysat Scarlett for us, and she and I went to see the Star Trek movie while Kristen and Scarlett were in Utah for a week. Also, we got to see the Pecks (old family friends) when their son Ty got married to a Minnesota girl. Don't mind Scarlett - she just stole someone's bouquet.

  

Yummy Food: There are a ton of great places to eat around Minneapolis. We tried "juicy lucys," which are hamburgers with the toppings in the middle. We ate at the Blue Door Pub (Longfellow), and both got the Bacon, Cowboy-style: cheese and bacon stuffed inside a burger, with a couple huge onion rings on top and bottom of the burger, with BBQ sauce on top. Mmm...my mouth is watering right now. In addition, there's this really awesome thing in Minneapolis called "Restaurant Week." This is where a ton of the super fancy (read: expensive) restaurants have special menus for $10-20 for lunch or $20-30 for dinner. It gives us peasant folk a chance to try something we wouldn't normally. We went to The Melting Pot and Fogo de Chao (a Brazilian steakhouse). Both were good, but super expensive. We'll definitely be back at Melting Pot for dessert, though.




Sites Around Town: There is so much to see and do in Minneapolis. As I mentioned before, there are tons of lakes, parks, attractions, etc. We went to the Mall of America (where Kristen got to live her childhood dream of going to an American Girl store), Lake Calhoun (we want to go back and take out one of the paddle boats), the Sculpture Garden (see last post for a picture of us with the spoon bridge and cherry), the Wild Rumpus (a children's book store - that's Scarlett going out the kids door), I went to a Twins Game with work, a couple farmers markets, and we even went to Old Spaghetti Factory for Kristen's birthday (a little taste of home). We've also been to a bunch of parks (not pictured).

Trips Outside of Minneapolis: We also took the opportunity on a couple weekends to take some road trips. There is so much out here, that we didn't want to miss the chance to see some cool things. Over the 4th of July weekend, we went to Chicago. Highlights include eating at Wildberry two mornings in a row for breakfast (pictured is me with the red velvet french toast, which was basically red velvet cake for breakfast - so good), eating at both Giordano's and Gino's East pizzerias (we liked both, but Giordano's better; we also met up with Chad - one of my first semester groupmates - and his family at Gino's), ice cream and um...planking...at Ghiradelli's (let's be honest - we just love food), and the silver bean and the fountains at Millennium Park (Scarlett crawled under the bean, then tried to stand up and bonked her head - the rest of the trip she would talk about how her "head clonk da bean").

We also took a trip to Nauvoo and Carthage, Illinois another weekend. We were able to watch the Nauvoo Pageant, visit a lot of the shops and learn about their history, and see the jail where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered (as well as their graves). Trips are difficult with a toddler who won't sleep in the car, but we loved the chance we had to travel to these places.

 

  

 

Minneapolis has been an awesome experience, and I think I would be happy if we had the opportunity to come back here (we'll see whether I get a full-time offer from the company where I'm interning). And we still have 11 days here - there's more fun to come!

Minneapolis Part 1

I realize that it's been a while. Almost five months, to be exact. My family is currently in Minneapolis, where I have been interning in Marketing & Strategy for a Fortune 200 company since mid-May. It's been an amazing experience, and I've learned so much. It was also refreshing that the work I've been doing is actually going to be used by my company. It wasn't just a "fetch some coffee" or "do this project that we'll never actually look at" kind of internship. I created a marketing playbook for working with a brand new channel, wrote a case study based on the experiences of some of our partners, and devised an incentive plan to help maintain the integrity of both our brand promise and customer experience. I know that's a little vague, but it's all confidential information, so that's all I can share. :)

So that's what I've been doing at work. But in addition to all that, I brought my family along for the ride. It's one thing to move around when you're single, but quite a different experience to move your whole family with you. Kristen has never lived outside of Utah, so this is really new for her. But to be honest, it's relatively new for me too - I've lived in Utah since 2004 (except for one summer in Mexico/Washington in 2005): nine years.

I really never thought I'd live anywhere that long. My family moved almost every three years when I was growing up, and I liked being able to make a fresh start every so often. But I do find myself missing family and friends back in Utah. My best friend is there, my brothers will be (my other best friends: technically they're in Oregon and California right now), and most of my theater friends of course. I've lived there for so long, that it's naturally going to take some adjustment to get used to living somewhere else.

But don't get me wrong - I really like it here. Minnesota is beautiful - it's so green, there are gorgeous trees everywhere, and it really is the land of 10,000 lakes (officially there are 11,842 lakes more than 10 acres in size). The park system in Minneapolis is fantastic, which is great for Scarlett. There's lots of great food (we even found an authentic Mexican place...which took some doing, by the way), cool things to see, museums (including one of the best children's museums in the country), two zoos, a good library system, farmer's markets in the summer... There are just a lot of things to do and see here. As this is getting long, I'm going to break this post into two. In the next one, you can read a little more about our adventures here in the City of Lakes.

Why Are You Studying Business?

When I was in the process of applying to business schools, I went to a Marriott School information session for the program. I can't remember who spoke, but he posed the question, "Why does BYU even have a business school?" The implication being why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints subsidizes a program designed to advance the careers of those involved in business. Many people see business as evil - a selfish profession only designed to increase the coffers of people who already have plenty of money.

I thought about that a lot. It's true that the primary goal of most businesses (at least from a financial standpoint) is to maximize shareholder value. My initial thoughts came from the Book of Mormon. Jacob 2:17-19 reads:
“Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you. But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God. And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good – to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.”

A week or so ago in my Managerial Accounting class, we were discussing cost centers vs. profit centers, and really understanding our costs. In business, if we don't really know where our costs come from, we will have a skewed view of our profits and losses - in that situation, we might end up cutting a product that is actually turning a profit, because (based on our accounting system) it appears to be losing money. The bookstore here at the school relatively recently experienced a big layoff. They had been losing money for a while (I don't know the reason why, but probably in part because they didn't understand their costs), and in the end, they had to lay off about 30% of their workforce. These were our brothers and sisters, who as a result were now struggling for their marriages, their children's futures, to pay mortgages, etc. I'm not necessarily saying they should have kept those employees, but the point is that what is done in business matters, and it matters to a lot of people.

It is my professor's assertion (and now mine) that more lives are destroyed by the malpractice of business than of medicine. In his book, Clayton Christensen says, "I genuinely believe that management is among the most noble of professions if it's practiced well. No other occupation offers more ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team."

I have a good friend who told me something a long time ago about working with others. He told me (paraphrasing), "I spend more of my waking hours with you guys than I do with my wife. If we can't be friends/get along, my whole life will be miserable." So why am I studying business administration? Because we need good, ethical leaders in business who will create and reinforce positive company cultures. Leaders who don't motivate with fear, who don't create negative work environments for their employees, who don't make stupid decisions that end up costing people their livelihoods.

I want to be one of those good leaders. That's why I'm going into business.

Tutorial: Getting Rid of Captchas

Hi everyone! I like to read blogs. I sometimes like to comment on blogs. However, almost every time, I have to complete a captcha, and I hate captchas. For those who don't know what one is, here is an example:

Basically, it is an image (or two images) of distorted words / numbers, which is designed to prove you're not a robot. Often, people will create programs to troll sites and add promotions for their products/sites to as many comments sections as possible. You've probably encountered them many times before. Captchas are good tools to prevent this from happening. But unfortunately, when you have comments enabled on your blog, the default is for Blogger to ask you to "prove you're not a robot."

Unless you're getting thousands of hits a day, though, you probably don't need this tool. In fact, most people don't even realize they ARE using this tool. So I implore you, PLEASE turn it off, so I don't have to try and figure out what those annoying images are while I'm commenting on blogs from my phone. Okay, now here's how to do it (for Blogger).

First, go to your blog's overview page. If you don't know how to get there, you just go to your Blogger account and click the name of your blog:

That will bring you to your blog's overview page:

Once there, click on "Settings," then "Posts and comments." Scroll down until you see "Show word verification," and switch that from Yes to No:

You're done! Like I said, super easy, but some people don't even realize that it's there, or that it can be disabled (after all, you probably don't comment on your own blog very often). Consequently, if you want to moderate your comments, you can also do that from this section. Happy blogging!

How Will You Measure Your Life?

I'm currently reading a book by Clayton Christensen. Now if there are two people mentioned more than anyone else here at business school, they're Steve Jobs and Clayton Christensen. Anyway, yesterday I was reading about our personal strategy, and how we have two strategies: deliberate and emergent.

A deliberate strategy is what you want to do - what you plan on doing. An emergent strategy is what just ends up happening. The key is figuring out when you should turn an emergent strategy into your deliberate strategy. And our strategy, whether deliberate or emergent, is created through hundreds of daily decisions.

From his book: "To understand a company's strategy, look at what they actually do rather than what they say they do," and "We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs." Christensen says one of the problems professionals often have is that they prioritize the things that give quick returns - promotions, raises, bonuses - and neglect the things that require long-term work, but that won't show returns for decades, like raising children.

One of the worries of focusing on these short-term returns is that we use them to finance an ever-expanding lifestyle. As a result, we are then unable to cut back on work to focus on something at home - we're trapped. As one of my professors has said, you need to give yourself options. He also advised us to have "go to hell" money, the idea being that if you have a monetary cushion/you're not tied down to financial obligations, you don't have to remain stuck in a bad situation.

Something I've talked with Kristen about is that when we (hopefully) have money once I graduate and start a new job, we can't be seduced by the sudden influx of cash and start buying things. It's alluring even now, thinking about the money we may have in the future: "The first thing we're buying is a new washer!" or "I can't wait to buy a house that's all ours."

The most important thing to me in my life is my family - not my career or my material possessions (although some may question that when I talk about our huge, awesome TV - but hey, it was on sale!). Now it just remains for me to spend the next 30 years proving to my family that they really are my number one priority. After all, actions truly do speak louder than words.

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

I was totally just going to shower, and then read a friend's blog and was inspired to post something too (I haven't written since Christmas after all). It's 2:57 p.m. and I'm not dressed for the day yet. But hey - it's Saturday - don't worry about it.

So we're going to Minneapolis this summer. I don't think it's still quite real to me that I'm finally moving away from Utah - and not just away, but FAR away. 19 hours by car (according to Google). 25 hours from Portland (sorry Mom). I know it's only temporary, but if we end up really liking it, and getting a full-time offer after grad school, we could be there full time a year from now. Crazy!

It's amazing how quickly your life can change. The only thing truly constant in life is change, though. Our family may be headed off internationally sometime before school starts in the fall (and after the internship), so I filled out an application for a passport for Scarlett today. I pulled out my old passport along with the other documents in our fire safe, and saw a very young-looking missionary picture, taken more than a decade ago. It's hard to believe that I'm that same person who bawled like a baby when his entire family dropped him off at the local, one-gate airport to fly to England.

A lot has happened in 11 years. I bought a couple cars, filed my own taxes, bought my own insurance, graduated college, worked for four and a half years as a business professional, got married, purchased furniture, became a father, and now I'm back at school pursuing my MBA. I'm a real, live grownup, for all intents and purposes. But I still cry a little every time we have to leave my parents' driveway to make the trek back to Utah. I still crave the love and approval of my parents - I still want my dad to be proud of me. Sometimes I still lounge about the house in PJ's on a Saturday until 3 p.m., watching the last season of Burn Notice.

I'm still a kid, but I'm also an adult. I have a family to take care of, a daughter I want to raise to be a productive member of society, with chores to take care of and bills to pay. I have a calling and home teaching to think about, planning for temple nights and daddy-daughter dates to do, and a big move across country to prepare for. I always thought of 30 as old. Now it doesn't seem so old - but 20 seems really young:

I'm grateful for all of the changes in my life, but I'm also grateful for the things that haven't changed - that I hope never do. I hope I can always be a little bit silly, and not always take everything so seriously. I hope I can always have fun and be as happy as children are, while still taking care of the things that need to get done. Good goal, right?