The Garage

When we moved in, the first problem we had to tackle was the garage. Apparently, the people who lived here before us smoked like chimneys...and they did it all in the garage. You can see by the photos how yellow the walls were from the smoke. We used some serious paint, called Killz. It's an oil-based primer made specifically to seal odors, stains, etc. like smoke and mildew. It worked great, but had some serious fumes (hence the masks).

Next order of business was organization. I installed shelves at the front of the garage for moving boxes right above where we keep our garbage cans (our HOA requires us to keep them in the garage). Kristen thinks I'm crazy for keeping those boxes, but moving boxes are expensive! I also added insulated panels to the garage door, to keep the temperature a little more moderate.

I also got some wire shelving units to store boxes along that wall, and hung up the bikes.

I also built a workbench (which will be the subject of another post), and bought a motorcycle dolly. I wanted to be able to fit both cars and the motorcycle in the garage - the dolly allows us to move the motorcycle around easily and fit it where there is room. We also got a laser parking guide that I installed on the ceiling.

There are still some things I want to do with the garage, but I like how it's turned out so far.

Here is a picture of the laser parking guide - it's plugged in near the garage door opener.

House Projects 2016

In August, we bought a house. It's not a brand new house, so of course there are things we want to change about it. We've done a lot so far, but still have a lot we want to do. So for the next year, I'm going to catalog the things that I've done to make our house into a home. Stay posted!

My Personal Strategy

*Note: I wrote this posting on a separate blog for a class project last year (originally posted April 2013). I am shutting down that blog, but I wanted to retain this post, so I moved it here.

This blog is in response to a requirement for my MBA Business Strategy class. In a couple classes, our professor gave us the opportunity to think about our personal strategy - where we are and where we want to go. I started out by doing a personal SWOT analysis: thinking about my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In conjunction with that, I took a look at my potential "Blue Oceans" - what is my unique selling proposition? I feel that one of my strengths is that I am good at striking emotional chords with people through my writing, so I decided to use a blog to capture my thoughts.

In class, our professor heavily emphasized asking the right questions (as did my market research professor). If we don't ask the right questions, we're not going to get useful answers. While reading my blog, I realized that a large majority of my posts from the last year talk about how much I love my family, how grateful I am for them, etc. I wrote a blog post specifically about what is most important to me: How Will I Measure My Life?

"The most important thing to me in my life is my family - not my career or my material possessions."

This is video of me singing to my wife at our wedding
She and I have performed in several local plays together
Performing brought us together and continues to draw us closer to each other

The first question to developing my personal strategy was, "What is most important to ME?" I also needed to know the answer to "Why Am I Studying Business?" I liked what I wrote there, so I'm going to say part of it again:

"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."

In our first semester in the MBA program, we created a leadership profile which consisted in part of contacting friends, colleagues, former co-workers, etc. to find out what they felt our strengths were. What was surprising to me was what they told me. By and large, the most repeated strength they mentioned was "kindness." I had never thought of myself specifically as a kind person (not that I'm mean), but I try to show respect for others and help those who are in need. I also try to be sensitive to others and stay in control of my emotions (to think before I speak). Other strengths were my organization skills and my ability to stay calm in stressful situations. These other skills help me to be kind. Because I am organized, I usually have contingency plans for when things go wrong. Even when I don't have plans, because I think quickly, I am able to stay calm and collected in those situations. And when I handle stressful situations well, I am able to interact well with others, staying sensitive to their needs and feelings. Relationships are extremely important to me.

Looking toward to my future after the MBA program, from a professional standpoint I want to start out working in a B2B marketing function, but I'd like to try different functions: supply chain, M&A, human resources. I guess the point is that I want to have an influence on the lives of others. I want to make their working days a positive experience, so they can go home and continue to have a good day.

In the long-term, I'd also like to serve my community through supporting the arts. I am passionate about theater and music, and want to continue to work with local community theaters, supporting their productions. But ultimately, my first question drives my personal strategy. What is most important to me? My family. And I will do everything I can to spend as much time as possible with them. Even if that means turning down a potential career advancement that would take me away from them too often, that is a sacrifice I will make.

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!