1. Tyler Ash; November 4, 2013; Give and Take Paper
Give and Take to me is the most eye-opening book of the three books we have completed
or started so far in this class. It proves that what goes around comes around. To support this
theory, I completed four of the activities for success. In addition to the five-minute favor and
seeking help more often, I chose crafting my job to incorporate more giving and starting a love
machine. For the five-minute favor I connected a friend with one of my old wrestling coaches
that I haven’t talked to in months to help my friend with her career. Next I interviewed a very
successful man who works in the field of supply chain management, which is one of the jobs I
am considering trying to pursue as a career. I crafted my job to benefit other people as well as
myself by gaining more knowledge and attempting to get certification in mobile electronics
installation. Finally, I started a love machine by giving selfless givers an award so they get
recognized for their dedication and hard work without expecting anything in return. These
activities really showed me what it means to be an otherish giver and how many people can reap
the rewards from it.
For embrace the five minute favor I decided to connect two people so they could benefit
from it. Reading the section on the five minute favor instantly reminded me of my old wrestling
coach T.J. Maroon because he was always there for people no matter what. T.J. puts in over 30
hours every week to be a coach and every time he got his stipend he turned around and put it
right back into the wrestling program instead of keeping it. T.J. is a perfect example of an
otherish giver, but he is very content with not receiving anything from other people in most
cases. He always looks for how he can help as long as it doesn’t interfere with other priorities.
T.J. is a very successful freelance anesthesiologist and has a PHD from UC Davis, and my friend
in Reno is considering anesthesiology as a profession after she graduates with her PHD. I saw
this as a great opportunity to both make a new connection while re-kindling a dormant tie since I
hadn’t talked to T.J. for about nine months. I first asked Sarah if she would be interested in
meeting up with an anesthesiologist and learning a thing or two. She sounded excited so I gave
T.J. a call, even though I already knew that he would help in any way, especially when someone
is interested in medicine or wrestling. T.J. enthusiastically agreed to meet Sarah (which was all I
asked him to do) and even offered to let her watch one of his surgeries to see what the job really
entails and to answer any questions she might have over lunch. I gave them each other’s contact
information and they have set up a date in the middle of November to meet up. They are waiting
until November because the surgery he is preforming is closer to Reno than normal. I believe
Sarah will learn more information from T.J. then she can even retain, but I know she will have a
great time with him. Hopefully this helps Sarah decide if anesthesiology really is the career for
her or if she should find a different area within medicine. Secondly, when I called T.J. originally
I talked to him for at least half an hour about everything and by the end of the conversation he
offered me a referee job for a big two day wrestling tournament in Sacramento the week before
Christmas. Just by making re-connecting with this dormant tie I scored myself four hundred
dollars as well as help out Sarah with her career choice. Now I need to find something nice I can
do for T.J. for all the help, which can be difficult because it always seems like he is “livin’ the
dream” and wouldn’t change a single thing about his life. A couple years ago I installed a new
radio in his truck and he kept trying to give me money after I finished, but I refused because of
all of the time he had put into to coach me. Putting in the radio was the absolute least I could do
and nothing I do will ever amount to the amount of time and effort he put into coaching me. I

2. then offered him to come in to his wrestling practices over break because I know that both he and
the kids love it when alumni come back to help out and wrestle with them. T.J.’s attitude is
outstanding and all of the people that know him would instantly drop everything they were doing
if he needed anything.
For seeking help more often I asked for a short interview with my friend’s dad, Tom
Hack. I wanted to ask him questions first for a class, but mainly because I wanted to learn more
about his profession because his job is one of my dream jobs. He is the International Supply
Chain Strategist for Hewlett Packard and his job is absolutely fascinating to me. Most people
like to stay away from numbers, but I’m not most people. I gave Tom a call and asked him if he
would be willing to answer a few short questions for my report. His immediate response was,
“how about right now?” Shocked by this I agreed and quickly found the questions I was going to
ask him. I was so surprised because I called him at lunch and instead of taking that time off he
sat there and talked with me. When we started the interview, I simply asked, “Could you just
generally tell me how you got to where you are now and what you do in your day to day job?”
This is when Tom started talking about everything since college, which was 30 years ago, and
out of the 28 possible questions I was going to ask him, he answered 27 of them after hearing
only my original question. During his senior year at Menlo and slightly after graduating he had
an internship at IBM doing database design and network setups. After working there for a little
over a year Tom got his first full-time job at HP as a programming analyst which correlates to an
assistant manager position. Shortly after getting this job he had to learn massive amounts of new
information because of the change from DOS to windows that occurred in the late 1980’s. At
this point in his career HP started combining the tech side of the business and the manufacturing
side. Tom saw an opportunity because of his knowledge in both management and computer
science from his education so he got the brand new position of a business expert. In his new job
he was required to find any issues with the integration and find ways to solve them as well as
finding ways to make day to day operations run smoothly. After the integration was completed
and the problems were figured out Tom got a big promotion to become a supply chain strategist.
This was the major part I was waiting for because I thoroughly enjoyed my supply chain and
statistics classes more than any other in college. As a supply chain strategist he deals with
servers, networks, and storage manufacturing and shipping. His objectives are to optimize
transportation, know international tax and tariff laws, and to follow regulations all while
maximizing the revenue to cost ratio. The main problems he deals with are transportation cost
efficiency, clearing customs, and performing tax advantage manufacturing while following all
rules and regulations from multiple countries. Tom then tried to as simply as possible explain
the typical process for making and importing servers that HP sells. Some of it was way over my
head but I tried my best to follow along. Most of the small, lightweight electronic components
are manufactured in Singapore because there is no tax on the manufacturing. Tom said after
transportation to Mexico (where everything is put together) they save 12 percent over doing this
in the United States. Other larger electronic components that save money by using tax advantage
manufacturing are made in Puerto Rico and shipped to Mexico to get put together with the
components from Singapore. Once made in Mexico and shipped successfully through customs at
the border, a distribution plant receives the merchandise. After all said and done, Tom says he
saves the company about 3 percent if everything goes according to plan and there are no issues,
which translate to millions of dollars of extra revenues. Another major issue that appeared ten
years ago is the ROSS Act, which is a strict regulation of the amount of lead content within
electronics in an attempt to decrease the amount of harmful lead waste in landfills. Tom said

3. every year it gets more and more difficult to make as much extra profit because of constantly
changing regulations in countries all over the world, gas price increases, and extra importing
taxes. He spends a large amount of time just researching international business strategies to keep
up with the time and also for enjoyment.
He has never personally ran into any ethical issues with his work but the CEO resigned
because of his involvement with a woman at work and when the human resource department
investigated it they found several other violated corporate standards. He was found innocent
when it came to sexual harassment but the other infractions were enough to easily get rid of any
employee. Tom said, “the office policies are pretty standard but the punishments are very severe
and clearly stated so everyone avoids making poor ethical decisions.” Then I asked Tom, “What
advice could you give me to be as successful as you in the business world?”, and his answer was
almost creepy because of its close relationship to this book. Tom thinks the key to long-term
success and advancement in the cutthroat business world is to never stop learning because other
people will and then pass you up. Having strong relationships with as many people as you can is
also important and you should always be trying to help others because it usually comes back to
you. That statement was exactly what this book teaches and it’s nice to actually know someone
who puts the otherish mindset in to use and who has become very successful from it. I was
expecting to have a five or ten minute conversation, but it drug on for forty minutes because I
was so enamored with his supply chain job and he enjoyed teaching me about it. At the end of
the conversation, I truly realized that supply chain management is what I wanted to do for a
career. Even though the favor took a lot longer than five minutes, it didn’t cost him anything but
his lunch break and I know that he always enjoys helping anyone he thinks is not a “punk”. Off
topic, Tom has a very large hydroponic vegetable garden in his back yard that he thoroughly
enjoys so I bought him a twenty dollar gift card to a local Green Acres Nursery to show my
appreciation for his all of time, knowledge, and advice he generously gave me. By seeking help
and not just dolling it out all the time, I got some amazing insight and also gave Tom a gift,
epitomizing the definition of being otherish. Win-Win.
The next action for success I pursued was crafting my job to incorporate more giving. I
install car, boat, RV, and home audio/video systems as my job on the side so I can make my own
schedule. When I do sound systems for people on Craigslist, I make about twenty dollars an
hour and only work about ten hours per week, give or take. I typically take the rates that Best
Buy charges and cut them in half to get my price. Even though I do this as my job, whenever a
friend or a friend of a friend needs my assistance I do not take them to the bank. The first
question my friends always ask is, “How much would you like me to pay you?” I quickly reply,
“just bring over a twelve pack for us to share and hang out while I install”. They save a ton of
money because the average installation at Best Buy costs about 200 dollars. I have yet to find
any of my friends that aren’t fascinated with the process of installing a sound system so I try to
teach them as much as I can during the install. The way I decided to refine my job was to buy
the Mobile Electronics Certified Professional study guide so I could take the test and get certified
by the Consumer Electronics Association. When I bought the study guide I was assuming that it
was going to be all about how to install audio, video, and security systems, but I was very wrong.
This book ended up being packed with codes to remember for a various amount of car brands
along with a bunch of physics and electrical engineering. The Physics portion includes Ohm’s
law, Kirchoff’s law, Watt’s law, and overall general information about electricity. I learned that
there is much more to the craft I have been practicing for the last six years than I had any clue
about. The book includes pages of information about things I have heard about but never knew

4. had anything to do with electronics installation like diodes (both light emitting and not),
semiconductors, and resistors. Next, there were over 100 pages of how to troubleshoot a
plethora of problems that may occur, many of which I have run into and since I wasn’t able to
figure them out I just redid the system from scratch. After reading the entire book cover to cover
and taking thorough notes I was amazed about how this was just the “beginner’s guide”. I redid
the practice questions at the end of each chapter over and over in addition to re-reading the study
guide. I was going to take a full practice exam, but that costs even more money, so I just stuck
with studying more. I needed to get a 70 percent in each of the sections on the 150 question
multiple choice test in less than three hours and fifteen minutes in order to get certified. Between
the book and the test my total cost came out to 125 dollars. This sounds expensive but now I
have a lot more knowledge to conduct higher quality installations to help customers from
Craigslist, my friends, and also help my chances of getting a job in a real shop where I would be
able to learn even more from more experienced installers. I took the test at a test center on South
Virginia Street last Wednesday and am still awaiting my test results. It was an extremely hard
test, especially the security portion, and hopefully my score is above 70 percent in all of the
sections or else I lost 85 dollars. Either way, I still gained a ton of knowledge and I have a very
informative book I can refer to when I run into an issue. This was a little more expensive than
most of the examples giving in the book, but I believe the payoff for others and I will be great in
the end. Regardless of what the test results are it definitely helped all parties showing that this
decision was very otherish. I am very glad that this was one of the ten ways to success because I
probably wouldn’t have been motivated enough to do this otherwise. If I did pass the test, I will
be heading down to try to get a job at either Reno Auto Sound or Nevada Auto Sound as an
assistant installer and after a year of experience I will be eligible for the intermediate MECP
exam.
The final activity that I completed was create a love machine. Being a volunteer
wrestling coach at McQueen two nights a week and being a referee has given me a ton of
perspective of how many people go completely un-noticed for their wonderful dedication. I am
talking about the people that run tournaments for free who are completely vital to the success of
wrestling. Many of these people just love helping and the sport. The most outstanding people in
my opinion are those who don’t even have a family member who is participating, but just want to
help in any way out of the kindness of their heart. In honor of all the unsung heroes that exist in
the Northern Nevada Wrestling family, Holly (a fellow referee) and I brought up the idea of
having an award for those who go unnoticed but have a huge impact on the community at our bi-
weekly referee meeting. Holly said that she felt bad about people who gave and gave every year
but didn’t get recognized and I thought we could make a plaque to honor these unsung heroes.
Since this is only my third year being a referee in Nevada, I was previously in California, I didn’t
really know who have been the long time selfless givers here. As an organization we voted
unanimously to give the award and also include a state-wide pass for free entry at any sporting
event in the state for life. Next, all of the referees who have been around for a while, some for
over forty years, voted on who is the most deserving candidate for this brand new award we were
going to give annually. All of the “experienced referees” (they don’t like to be called old) had
two main people in mind but decided to give it to this little old lady from Carson City. She
doesn’t have any children or a husband, but for the last fifty or so years she has been all about
the community and especially wrestling. She attends every single Carson High School dual
match and is always their biggest fan. The biggest, most prestigious wrestling tournament in the
western United States is the Reno Tournament of Champions where about 100 schools from all

5. across America attend to see how they stack up nationally. She has been heavily involved in this
tournament since it started in 1996. She literally puts in 60 hours of work for this throughout the
week of the tournament and never gets anything in return except free coffee and a couple
lunches. She has also been a helper with the Nevada state tournament for as long as any of the
experienced referees can remember. This is where our next discussion arose and it was whether
to present her with the award at the Tournament of Champions tournament or the State
tournament because she impacts both so much. In the end everyone decided to present the award
to her originally at the Tournament of Champions because she will get national recognition and
then again before the finals at the Nevada state tournament to honor her in front of her local
crowd. Before three weeks ago, the only award given out was a good sportsmanship award to a
wrestler at the end of the season but now the people that are there to improve these kids’
experience also get to be recognized. I am really excited to help put together this award
ceremony and all the referees and my-self are still trying to figure out what the best name would
be. It’s a great feeling being able to give back a little something to someone who has had such a
large positive impact on Northern Nevada wrestling. As an association we are all being otherish
givers by giving up a small portion of our paychecks to buy her this plaque and buy the sport
pass.
When doing the five-minute favor I wasn’t expecting anything in return, but instead I got
an awesome offer to make some money and help out my old high school wrestling team in the
process. Hopefully Sarah learns what she wants and enjoys her time with T.J. Maroon because I
know I will have a great time when I do. The most influential activity for me was seeking help
from Tom Hack in regards to helping me understand his job. He gave me exactly the insight that
inspired me to pursue supply chain management and also made me realize that I have to take an
extra high level statistics course next semester before I graduate. I also learned that good givers
like T.J. and Tom will give you more than you ask for out of kindness and their desire to help
others. When I was crafting my job by improving my knowledge and credibility I realized it can
be difficult at times to be an otherish giver. The Mobile Electronics Certified Professional test
proved to be quite a challenge, but I know it has paid off. Even though this activity took up so
much time, I still think it will have a reward that makes it all well worth it. I started a love
machine by giving someone that is dedicated, kind, and a self-less giver the recognition that she
deserves for all of her hard work. To me this will be the most rewarding activity emotionally
because I can’t imagine that woman’s face when she receives her award in front of tens of
thousands of people in person and online during the live tournament stream. This paper taught
me so much more than if I just read the book because it forced me to actually go out and be an
otherish giver instead of just waiting for the opportunities to come to me like I normally do. It
also showed me how beneficial being a giver can be to everyone as well as how good it makes
me feel when I help others. It also surprised me how simple and easy, except the MECP
certification, it is to be an otherish giver. By just doing a few kind giving things I believe that I
have positively impacted a few people and many people to come; and it doesn’t hurt that I
benefitted from these activities as well.