Hello (Shalom) and welcome to my new blog called "Financing Baltimore", a series of reflective essays about my life in Baltimore and my career in Finance.

I've been working in Finance secretly for the last six years but recently I've gotten a job that has encouraged me to be more public with my endeavors, provided I can paint my career in a positive light, something I not only have a lot of experience with, but something I'm genuinely excited to do.

Before I go into what I do for a living however, I would like to go into my background a bit, in case you don't know who I am or you only know me from my limited interactions on social media or in person.

My Name is Daquan Pean, with the pronunciation varying depending upon the language spoken. The name itself is French, indicative of my Haitian Ancestry, but considering the fact that I'm American and I speak and write mostly in English, I usually go by the English pronunciation.

I say that because the English pronunciation is noticeably different from the French one and because Americans have a funny habit of butchering names. Honestly, I don't care how my name is pronounced as long as it's spelled correctly. In my heart, I am as French as my skin is Black, even though my current French is limited to saying my name and asking if it's okay to speak English.

"Bonjour, Je m'appelle Daquan Pean. Pouvez-vous anglais?"

If the French speaking person says yes, I say thank you and sigh, as speaking in French is extremely exhausting to me because I'm so new at it.

If they say no, I say «Pouvez-vous m'aider? Écrivez-le, s'il vous plaît », which basically translates to "Can you help me? Please right that down". I would then close the conversation by giving them my contact information.

It's easier for a person like me to read than it is to speak to a person live, because the combination of search engines, translation apps, and my own reference materials makes it easy to take my time, articulate my thoughts, and add my personality.

Also, I generally like reading a lot more than I like talking, and if it was up to me I'd communicate using handwritten letters and notes, supplemented by drawings and photographs, and with my closer friends I'm more inclined to actually do that. Generally I avoid speaking to strangers outside of work and I try to tone down my personality around people I don't know or otherwise people whom I know not to trust.

Personality is important, as it's one of the highlights of doing business with me compared to my competitors.

In my personal experience, most people tend to do business backwards: they focus on the product first then the customer, which almost universally comes off as bizarre. I'll explain using a real scenario:

Let's say you go to the store and you are looking for a product. You walk into the store and even though the salesperson doesn't walk up to you, you walk up to them and ask about a product that caught your attention.

The salesperson gives you a strange look and flatly tells you the price, before asking if you are interested in buying the product, which is literally the dumbest question he could have asked.

He should have assumed you were interested in the product because you walked in the store and asked about it.

Salespeople who ask dumb questions are actually more common than customers with dumb questions, since the only dumb question a customer can ask is one that is not related to making a purchase. For example a customer asking "what time do you get off work?" is a dumb question because you can't sell the product outside of business hours, while asking "how much does this product cost?" is a great question because it is a buying question and not a personal question.

Once a Marine

A little more about me, I'm prior military and even though I'm not currently serving, I'm hoping to return to service once I resolve some personal issues. Prior the military I worked in sales, specifically selling products in the energy industry, namely fixed-rate energy supply contracts. I went by an entirely different name during that time frame, but most people either know me for the person I was during that time, the person I was in college, or the person I was in high school, all of whom look and feel like different people.

In high school, I would skateboard literally every day (and film it), in college I was an artist who sold paintings, and in my early days as a traveling salesman, I was known for dressing well and being a savage in the field (and the bedroom) and I had developed a reputation as something of a playboy.

Those days are all long behind me; I don't really skateboard outside of a kick flip here or here, I don't sell paintings ever, and I don't really have the energy to entertain women outside of coworkers, committed relationships, and genuine friendships.

That being said, I do have a lot of female friends because women tend to be smarter than men, better communicators, and generally make better friends. In addition to that Finance, being primarily an office role, is mostly a female dominated workplace. The military service really serves to help balance that overwhelming feminine energy which can be extremely toxic, while my career in Finance helps to balance the overwhelmingly toxic masculinity of the military, which is mostly a male dominated workplace.

You see, life is all about balance, as too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and too little of a good thing is worse. It's why I sometimes encourage people to sleep with each other and or drink alcohol. I'm not saying to sleep with 100 people in one day nor am I saying drink yourself into oblivion, but I am saying that you should sleep with one person (ideally your spouse) and that one drink will literally not kill you. A glass of wine can be good for you, provided you are drinking it as a reward for a long week of work and not as a coping mechanism or a replacement for human connection.

The military, especially the Marines, is full of people who use alcohol as a substitute for drugs, alcohol as a coping mechanism, and think that drinking and alcohol poisoning are synonymous, which cannot be further from the truth. Drinking is a natural part of life (water is a thing) and a moderate amount of alcohol under the right conditions is a healthy part of a good social life and a good religious life. It keeps you happy and it keeps you around good people.

Speaking of good people, it's worth noting that every single meaningful relationship in my life right now is someone I either met at work or at religious service. I was actually a Chaplain's assistant while I was active duty in the Marines although my service was interrupted due to the personal issues mentioned above. I won't really go into the personal issues into too much detail, except for mentioning the fact that it revolved around my name and the identity of my mother. If you've ever read the Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible, there's a story that very accurately reflects a judgment in my life. I'll write about it on another day, but I'm gonna wrap this journal entry up because I gotta get some sleep and get ready for tomorrow.

Closing

Finance is not a business based on products, it's based on relationships. The products I sell consist of loan products, insurance products, and education products such as self-help books, the value of those products being the impact they have on your personal life.

Borrowing money is never about the money, it's about how you used the money to improve you quality of life, and how you built a reputation of doing what you say (aka paying it back).

Life insurance is not about whether or not you will die but about rather about insuring your life ends on a high note. It's one thing for you to die and your last memory to be a gofundme that only makes $4,000 and it's another thing for your last memory to be a thank you note, written instructions, and a check that finances your ability to carry those instructions out.

Health insurance is about maximizing and your quality of life and doing what you can to prevent health issues when possible. It's not about doing the wrong thing and expecting your doctor to pay the difference, it's about doing the right thing and having access to a doctor in case of desire or emergency.

Do not smoke. If you are currently smoking, it's time to quit. Do not inject yourself with anything unless a doctor specifically tells you to do so and tells you why. The same goes with pills.

Please pay very close attention to the instructions of both controlled and over the counter substances such as the amount you need to consume, ingest, or inject. Pay even closer attention to the person writing your prescription and always get a second opinion.

I've seen what drugs do to people and it's horrifying. Most drugs are illegal and therefore automatically a bad idea, but there are some that are legal and still extremely bad for you.

Smoking, and the related products, whether they be tobacco, marijuana, or something illegal, are by far the fastest way to kill yourself or otherwise lower your quality of life. I can and will write a book and make films about why you should not smoke, and hopefully they strike genuine fear into your hearts.

I will call it "Underwriting", or undeniable evidence I was extremely good at my job.