사업가 대니엘과 히피 흑인

Today was such a weird but amazing day.

 

One random homeless-looking African American guy approached and started talking about energy, frequency, and vibration, pointing out my laptop and calling it a negative charge. He said I was emitting the same energy as his best friend and talked about love, manifestation, and some inexplicable random spiritual deep shit.

 

There was an Asian 아저씨 who was sitting next to me and ended up being another listener to that spiritual guy's speech. I felt unpleasant about his ranting but also, at the same time, was very curious about what he was saying cause some points made sense, and he seemed somewhat weirdly enlightened. I think The Asian 아저씨 felt the same way, not knowing how to stop or escape from that conversation. He went out to smoke and escaped.

 

After the spiritual guy left and Asian 아저씨 came back, we both nodded and said, "It was deep." He asked me what I do, and I told him I'm a graduate school student also working full-time. I asked him what does he do. He said he'd been an entrepreneur of a software company for over 25 years. I was so happy to meet an entrepreneur since I've been searching for mentors for a long time. The company's name is "BeProduct," a product development management company for the fashion industry. And they have a partnership with Clo, which I knew from the EO channel and even introduced to Candace, who I bragged about how cool the Korean startups are.

 

Daniel and I clicked and talked for 2 hours. Starbucks closed at 9:30PM, and we spoke in front of the entrance, standing still. He is such a cool dude. His parents are from Korea and immigrated to Brazil back in the 60s. He lived in Brazil and Germany during his youth and came to America to attend the college, which was a public CUNY college (Queens college and transferred to FIT). He studied Fashion Production and did coding as a hobby. When he was 20, he managed his dad's fabric factory because his dad wanted him to become an entrepreneur. After that, he founded a fashion ERP software company during and after the Dotcom bubble and succeeded in doing an IPO. He sold and left the company and founded "BeProduct," which he is running it now.

 

I asked, "As an Asian immigrant who speaks English as a second language, how do you lead Americans?" He stressed the importance of confidence. He said I should represent myself and speak up. He said that when he started his business, he was more inferior than this era. There were fewer Asians, and he was way younger than other leaders. He said he had to prove himself. There was no other way around it but to work two times and five times harder and prove his capability to them. The funny thing is since Asians are primarily shy if they see some confident and open-minded Asians, they assume those are special and talented and tend to follow. So I should be confident and represent myself, not saving words for later. He also mentioned the importance of praising and asking for help. In networking events or the workplace, people will think you're stupid if you only brag about yourself. We should habitually complement even small things frequently and introduce people next to us to others gracefully with lots of praises. Asian tends to solve a problem by themselves without asking for help. Only a few people say no when you ask for help, and also, it's a great way to build bonds.

 

Today was such a weird but fantastic day. I hope to meet him again soon.