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A 90% Chance of Death
Below is the recent video of me sharing this story:
90% Chance of Death
90% Chance of Death: Long Story Short
One summer evening years ago, a drunk driver plowed through a red light and into my car. As I lay in a coma, doctors told my family I had a 10% chance of survival.
Miraculously, I survived. I worked for many months in full time rehabilitation to re-learn to walk, talk, and everything else. I recovered! One year later I got to marry the woman who had been by my side throughout the whole ordeal.
I went on to earn my MBA from Chapman University. And I realized I had also earned a unique credential through my experience. I decided I could best use it to help vulnerable seniors…
My Past Life as a Musician
The first time I was ever paid to play music was when I got hired as the Director of Music and Media at R.O.C.K. Ministries, the youth program for Mount of Olives Church in Mission Viejo, CA. It was one of the most exciting and fulfilling professional roles that I’ve been a part of. It was here that I first got my taste for having a leadership role in a mission-driven organization…
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I became passionate about leading teams to pursue excellence and creating a vibrant community in the process. We experienced outstanding growth and success! (Read my letter of recommendation here)
During this time as an aspiring yet sometimes starving musician, I had to find a way to supplement my income. I found the greatest side-hustle for a musician that I had ever heard of, and still to this day I don’t know of a better one: balloon art.
I quickly built the necessary skills, acquired a stock of supplies, and began making balloon art for tourists in restaurants in the area surrounding Disneyland. By networking with people I met in the restaurants, I acquired new accounts such as hotels, corporate events and private parties. I soon had a full schedule of creating balloon art, but with the flexibility to create my own schedule and work around the requirements of my music career.
I was able to earn an income equivalent to peers of mine who were working as servers in restaurants, but in about half the time. Even better, I was able to train others and send them out to events and still make an income while I was playing a concert or writing and recording songs.
Ultimately, I retired from both music and balloon art to pursue graduate school and other business ventures. And now as a father of three, I have a great toolkit for birthday parties and family nights!
The Mississippi River Houseboat Adventure
When I was in college, I decided to fulfill my childhood dream of floating down the Mississippi River like Huckleberry Finn. I had the sense of adventure, I had the friends willing to accompany me, I even had a modest savings to pay for the necessities along the way. The only thing I was missing was a raft to carry us.
So, I built one…
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Luckily for me, my grandpa is not only the most ingenious person I know, he is also extremely generous with his time. He and I spent every weekend for an entire summer engineering a fully functional houseboat out of a 1976 Prowler Travel Trailer and an old pontoon barge.
It was a humongous effort and a feat of human imagination. Using limited resources and commercial grade tools, we retrofitted the travel trailer into a houseboat cabin, arduously hoisted it up onto the pontoon barge with a makeshift pulley system, connected all plumbing and electricity, and even turned the chassis we had cut off the bottom of the Prowler into a street-safe houseboat trailer so we could tow our magnificent creation to Irvine Lake to test it out, and after that to Coon Rapids, MN to begin our voyage.
To our delight, it floated like a dream, and we decided it was river-worthy and ready for my adventure. Unfortunately, my crew was not as committed as I was. I think perhaps they had doubted — during our brainstorming session when the idea of the great journey was born — that I would actually follow through in building the improbable boat. I tried desperately to convince others to join my crew. I wrote passionate, painstakingly crafted letters and sent them to dear friends hoping I could sell them on the idea through my writing talents. Alas, I wrote in vain. The boat slowly deteriorated on account of the elements, and with it, my dream of navigating the Mighty Mississippi.
In hindsight, that the trip fell through was probably for the best. I was possibly a bit naive, and quite likely had underestimated the vast length, width, and sheer power of the greatest and most important waterway in all of North America. The trip may possibly have ended in a tragedy greater than the heartbreak I felt in watching my beloved boat fall apart in dry dock. And eventually I realized that the experience of building a houseboat with my grandpa for an entire summer and the enormous sense of accomplishment when our boat worked as we intended it was my reward. It had been well worth the effort.
"John Mayer is Probably into Bitcoin"
I joined Andy Flattery as his guest on his The Reformed Financial Advisor podcast.
I initially followed Andy on Twitter due to our shared Certified Financial Planner (CFP) backgrounds and our keen interest in Bitcoin. Then I sent him an email, and the ensuing chat led us to discover that we had an uncanny amount of other things in common.
We have a wide-ranging discussion in this episode.
The Great American Roadtrip
In the Fall of 2011, my wife and I took a three-month, 12,500 mile cross-country road trip.
We documented the adventure on our blog.
