This week marks six months of me joining a private startup in Orange County. I met the founders a few months before COVID and kept in contact with them over the years. They had started in a garage and were in an office suite present day.
Sales. Delivery. Immersion.
When I was 8 years old, I sold chocolates in industrial office complexes to raise baseball funds. When I was 18 years old, I sold Cutco knives in residential mansions of acquaintance’s parents. When I was 25 years old, I sold patented, hand-powered cutting tools to commercial contractors. Cold calls, hot summers, long walks, late nights. The only thing that changed about sales was the product in your hands and the script in your mind. Clients with $5, $50, and $500 were not really that different. Everyone wanted a good deal. Every sale had to fit the right “timing.” Every thing needed a tangible difference but an effortless appliance. Much like public speaking, confidence in the subject matter could carry the entire interaction.
I have delivered pizzas, parcels, sandwiches, and people. In suburbs, cities, nights and mornings. Most drivers learn the lay of the land, few learn the tables of time. The average person assumes road conditions and clientele are dictated by city zoning, like business, parks, parking structures, and homes. While these features setup a foundation, the cycles of time throughout a day dynamically change who and what are on the road. The same streets filled during rush hour with passengers are filled with commercial carriers on off hours. No matter how many different parts of the United States I have driven and memorized, nothing can account for a local understanding the culture’s time patterns.
The best way to learn another culture is to immerse yourself in it. As a child, I was thrown into the deep end multiple times, when I moved and changed schools in the 3rd and 7th grades, and had to jump into established social circles. Immersion was not just limited to socialization, it also made a huge difference in practice. Learning the Chinese language in the United States versus learning Chinese in China. Reading about graphic design or game design versus selling logos and shipping games. Playing video games at home versus competing in local tournaments. Rather than drowning, I was born again, riding along a winding convergence of information overflow and ritual impressions. A Chinese proverb my father shared with me: 入乡随俗 – Wherever you are, follow local customs.
A deep dive and crash course granted me the identity of a farmer. One of the founders likes to remind me that we do not sell produce, we sell relations. I learned a similar lesson at an Audi dealership; Audi is not in the car business, they are in the people business. Harvesting, transplanting, seeding, cleaning, maintaining, researching, developing… that’s just inside the farm. Deliveries, customer relations, customer acquisitions… the world is our oyster.
I had dreams of California sunsets and beaches. I came here on a different adventure, yet this one seems as personal as ever. It’s beautiful returning to all the locations I explored initially, when I was searching for meaning in California. Now my map is filled with landmarks, dots all over the map. What once felt lost, is now becoming connected. I look forward to the next dot.
Leadership, Design, Writing 