Blessed Mentorship
Savvy Saturdays - 8/15/20
Hello friends,
Greetings from Austin!
Today is my last day with the housemates who hosted me for the past couple of weeks!
As I shared in my last update, I was very blessed by the time I spent with them, and I’m gonna miss the times.😭
In fact, we had some Texas BBQ as a last hoorah.🍖
Tomorrow I’ll be moving into my new home for the next year. 🚚
It’s going to be quite the experience, as the last move out was a whole 24+ hours of moving.
Fortunately, this time the plan is to start at 7AM and finish by 3PM. Moving out all the stuff in our storage unit into a Uhaul, then out to the 4th floor of an apartment complex shouldn’t be too difficult, but a lot of people will be moving into the apartment complex then.
Fortunately, all the roomies will be helping, as well as a couple of friends, so wish us luck!
Anyways, over the past several months I’ve played the roles of mentor and mentee, both formally and informally in the workplace, at church, and in entrepreneurship.
For work, it’s been more experienced engineers and managers being a listening ear, sharing their experience, and giving sound advice.
For church, it’s been living life-on-life with older and younger bros.
And for entrepreneurship, it’s been weekly sessions with a rising startup being a sounding board, giving strategic advice, and providing resources.
I’ve found these times to be very fulfilling.
Growing up, I had to figure out a lot of things myself, from education to faith. Especially in college, I worked tirelessly to figure out my career and pursue entrepreneurship.
It wasn’t until my sophomore year that my college pastor offered to disciple me, showing me through his life what it meant to live out your faith, and living life-on-life.
In the moment, I didn’t understand how special those times would be, and at his first offer, I was too busy to even consider it.😅
It was only in hindsight that I came to see the value of his investment. They’ve been influential not only in my faith walk, but also in my viewpoint of mentorship and discipleship. 👀
There’s something about someone investing in you, whether in the form of practical teaching, spiritual guidance in faith, or a comforting presence during hard times, that is empowering and gives confidence.
So experiencing that now, as well as providing that for others, has been a joy.😄
Though not every moment may be comfortable, (awkward beginnings for building rapport, moments of real talk, or difficult confrontations), I’ve cherished all the different relationships I’ve had with people, whether giving or receiving mentorship.
Wherever you are in life, I encourage you to find mentorship! Whether as a mentor or mentee, there is merit to intentionally sharing life with someone.
You never know how you or the other person’s life will change.
Thanks for checking in on this update!🙂
This past week has been hectic, as everything is happening at once.😳
Some quick updates:
We are starting Campus Missions Week, our welcome week for college students, this coming Wednesday, so I’ve been busy planning the logistics.
I started working on a personal website! It looks really bad right now, so I’ll share it once it’s more feasible, but here’s a sneak peek.
Work has many deadlines, and I’ll be testing out a feature that could 404 error the whole website, so fingers crossed we don’t get rekt.🤞
Here are a couple pictures from the past week involving friends, foods, and late nights:
(Playing tennis for the first time with a patient housemate 🎾)
(I got to witness a dartboard being set up. Feelsbadtho cause we woke up a housemate drilling a screw into the wall at 1 AM on a work night 😔)
(Tikka Masala with friends. We cooked too much rice and naan, but man that was an amazing dinner)
(inside look at my photo editing work for the website 📷)
(Spent 2 hours at 360 Bridge “attempting” to watch the Perseid meteor shower. It was semi-worth seeing two meteors amidst light pollution on a work night 🌠 )
(A 30-second timelapse of 360 Bridge landscape I took, which i found more interesting than the meteor shower 😢)
Anyways, thanks for tuning in!
Stay safe, keep it savvy, and I’ll see y’all in the next update 😊
Weekly Collections
Faith
There are four great realities that you need to know in order to be saved by Jesus:
God
Sin
Christ
Faith
1. Begin with truth about God.
Everything starts with God. Everything starts with the greatness of God, the glory of God.
You were created, you exist, to glorify God — to make God look glorious. You were created to show God’s glory, his greatness, his beauty, his worth. That’s our duty.
2. Explain truth about sin.
All of us have failed to live for the glory of God. You have, I have, everybody has.
“The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” - Romans 6:23
3. Proclaim truth about Christ.
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. (1 Timothy 1:15)
Everything up until now is designed to make Christ and his way of salvation appear as great and beautiful and wonderful as they really are.
God sent his Son, his divine, eternal Son, to bear the punishment we deserve. This is the heart of everything. This is the most glorious news in the world. There’s no way we can save ourselves from our sin and from his wrath.
4. Finish with truth about faith.
In other words, you can’t work for your salvation. You can’t earn it; it’s a free gift. You can’t deserve it; it comes from God’s grace or God’s love. Just a few verses earlier, it says, “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4–5).
That means that even your faith is a gift of God right now in this moment. If you are reaching out to take Christ, if you are ready to have him as your Savior and Lord and the Treasure of your life, you are a miracle. God has made you alive; it’s called new birth. Trust him, speak to him, tell him all your heart. Declare your faith to him, welcome him as your friend.
—How Do I Lead Someone to Christ? | Ask Pastor John
Entrepreneurship
“I am evangelizing the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a pitch should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. This rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc…
Here are the 10 slides:
Title
Problem/Opportunity
Value Proposition
Underlying Magic
Business Model
Go-To-Market Plan
Competitive Analysis
Management Team
Financial Projects & Key Metrics
Current Status, Accomplishments to Date, Timeline, & Use of Funds
(You can find an amazing infographic detailing it more out in the link below)
—The Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Pitch | Guy Kawasaki
Productivity
A reminder that productivity is not found in the ability to only push through long hours, but being able to have a healthy balance of all the different factors that give rest and energize us physically, mentally, and spiritually (time with God).
Weekly Reflections
Mental Model
The Scottish economist David Ricardo had an unusual and non-intuitive insight:
Two individuals, firms, or countries could benefit from trading with one another even if one of them was better at everything.
Comparative advantage is best seen as an applied opportunity cost:
If it has the opportunity to trade, an entity gives up free gains in productivity by not focusing on what it does best.
Example from Wikipedia:
Two men live alone on an isolated island. To survive they must undertake a few basic economic activities like water carrying, fishing, cooking and shelter construction and maintenance.
The first man is young, strong, and educated. He is also, faster, better, more productive at everything. He has an absolute advantage in all activities. The second man is old, weak, and uneducated. He has an absolute disadvantage in all economic activities. In some activities the difference between the two is great; in others it is small.
Despite the fact that the younger man has absolute advantage in all activities, it is not in the interest of either of them to work in isolation since they both can benefit from specialization and exchange.
If the two men divide the work according to comparative advantage then the young man will specialize in tasks at which he is most productive, while the older man will concentrate on tasks where his productivity is only a little less than that of a young man. Such an arrangement will increase total production for a given amount of labor supplied by both men and it will make both of them richer.
—(Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions)
How to apply the mental model:
Notice when you are working in isolation, and see how you can specialize and exchange goods & services with others.
Verse of the Week
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
—Philippians 3:12
Challenging Quote
“Here's the real secret: you can fulfill the commands of the Bible better by falling in love with God than by trying to obey him.
It's not that your obedience isn't significant or relevant; it's simply not the center of the wheel.
No, the hub of your life is your relationship with God. Your behavior and obedience radiate like spokes from the center of your life and allow you to roll forward. When you try to make your eternal behavior the hub on which you turn, you get stuck.
Forward motion must be fueled by love.”
—Chris Hodges
If you guys have found the newsletter to be helpful, I would love to hear from you on what’s been good, any suggestions for improvement, and anything else you’d like to see!
Please don’t be shy to let me know and thanks in advance!