Lessons Learned from Taking the Unconventional Path

Liam in the Fang conference room at Radius CoWork

My name is Liam O’Brien and I’m so excited to be the new Community Organizer at Radius CoWork. It’s great to have the opportunity to build this community that has given me so much joy and opportunity. I’m currently the managing partner at Oddity Productions, and a senior at Penn State Behrend.

I joined Radius about a year ago when we were looking for a space to get work done, build relationships, and be a part of a larger community of likeminded people. Radius quickly became my second home and now I spend most of my day here Monday through Sunday. But I wasn’t always the focused, busy business owner/college student people know me as today.

Like most of us at one time, I was a freshly graduated high school student with a crisp diploma in hand and a seemingly endless buffet of options in front of me. I didn’t know what I wanted exactly but I knew that one day, I wanted to make a dent in the world through a company that I had a hand in creating.

My first instinct was to go right into an undergrad program for business, specifically an international business and finance dual major from Penn State Behrend. This seemed like a logical, safe, and well-recommended decision by “experts” that had my best interests in mind.

My first year of college went pretty well. I was working part-time at Starbucks and taking 15 credits. Towards the end of the school year, my best friend, roommate, and now business partner Danny Pakulski and I started Oddity Productions. He was a gifted creative filmmaker and I had a driven entrepreneurial spirit, so we decided to focus on our strengths and start a production business together.

We were still young and inexperienced, but we managed to produce our first documentary titled A Life In Paint, about local artist Brad Lethaby, which later sold out its premiere at the Erie Art Museum and aired on our local PBS station.

Average actions yield average results

I’m not sure exactly where I first encountered this piece of advice, but the moment I did my attitude shifted completely. Its sentiment is stated so well in a Tweet by James Clear, author of NYT #1 Bestseller Atomic Habits, “Don’t put in average effort and claim that you want exceptional results.” That was exactly what I was doing. I was enrolled in a fairly normal undergraduate program, at a university with hundreds of thousands of students and alumni, and working at Starbucks part-time.

Although I had started my first official business, we weren't very organized yet and I still had a lot to learn. I realized that I was taking average actions and expecting exceptional results. On top of that, I wasn’t certain that my major was the right fit for me as an aspiring entrepreneur, and wanted to experience the real world before fully committing to the program.

I decided that a break from school was needed, so I started planning a gap year. I wanted to jam pack as many different internship experiences into the year as possible so that I could gather multiple perspectives from different business owners, see how different businesses operated, and become more familiar with how the real world works – not just read about it from a textbook.

Since my mother’s side of the family was from Brazil and I have been fluent in Portuguese all of my life, I planned on spending the first three months of my gap year in Brazil. I started looking for work opportunities through my family and friends’ networks.

Danny Pakulski (back) and Liam O’Brien (front) on the set of “Portrait of a Universe”

If you’re going to do something, do it world-class

My first gig was as an office intern at an asset and wealth management company for one month, unpaid. It was still a small company, with only around 12 employees at the time, and being in the finance industry, I thought it was a great fit to get me started. I had just turned 19 the month prior and, in a suit that was a little too tight, I showed up at WNT Capital on Faria Lima street in São Paulo, Brazil.

My first responsibilities were to watch & learn, scan papers, make copies, take documents to the buildings down the street, cross-check PDFs with excel files, and refill water bottles. Although the work wasn’t too exciting, I was thrilled to be working in a real company. I leaned on wisdom heard on a podcast with Ann Miura-Ko, “the most powerful woman in startups,” according to Forbes. At a young age, her father instilled the principle that all she did, regardless of how trivial, deserved “world-class” effort.

So, I arrived early and left late. I did my best to take detailed notes, scanned & copied papers with perfectionism, and double-checked my work cross-checking files. I would even wash out the reusable water bottles I was refilling, and add some ice to them to keep them chilled.

After 2 additional months of my internship being extended, I was offered a full-time position as an investment associate, paid. Now with my own company laptop, cell phone plan, and meal plan, I really started learning how to manage the backend of their investment funds, and manage client accounts at external banks. My days of getting water were over unless the boss was really busy (but hey, at least I was getting paid for it now).

Take a good opportunity, even if you're not ready

I worked at WNT Capital for about a year. I started getting comfortable in my routines at the company, confident in my Portuguese finance vocabulary, and pretty good at riding Lime electric scooters from my apartment to the office without getting hit by a car.

Things were going well and I had now reached the end of my gap year with little plans of returning home. I considered many things, from taking online courses to studying at a Brazilian university or skipping college altogether. Until I met Carlos Pires at a cocktail bar & cigar lounge after work.

Carlos was starting Ocidente Tech, a consulting firm to help start-ups enter and scale in Latin America. We connected instantly over a few drinks and exchanged information. After a few lunches and discussions about life, careers, and startups, Carlos invited me to join his team as his executive assistant and help get the company started.

I had never felt more imposter syndrome than I had at this moment and nearly turned down the position. Now, I was 20 with some professional experience, but starting a company and being the EA to the guy who was responsible for Skype’s success in Latin America seemed so out of my league. I distinctly remember contemplating what to do and I turned to great advice from Richard Brandson, which contributed to much of his success. “If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!”

I decided to take the position and quit my first job. I spent about 6 months working with Carlos and it was another great experience that really taught me a lot about startups, networking, self-management, creating internal structures and processes, team building, and life.

After flying home at the end of 2019 to return to school, COVID hit and everything went remote. In June of 2020, my now business partners and I came together and re-launched Oddity Productions as a more official business. Now, we all had more specific knowledge and experience that was necessary for starting a business.

We revamped our website and added new portfolio that Danny and our other partner and Director of Photography, Simon Yahn, have accumulated over the last year and a half. Then, with the experience I gained through working in the two jobs I had in Brazil, I worked with my partners to create our internal structure, processes, and business development strategy.

Today, we’ve worked with some awesome Erie brands like Erie Apparel, Presque Isle Partnership, the Hamot Health Foundation, and more. We produced our first short film titled, Alexander the Brain, which sold out its premiere at the Erie Art Museum, made finalist for best short film of 2022 at the LA Independent Shorts Awards, and has gone on to win over 10 awards at film festivals. Driven by our mission to improve the community by growing the Erie film industry through our creative work, igniting conversations, and facilitating collaborations, we look forward to elevating brands through creative advertising and promoting the Erie film industry with creative filmmaking.

(left to right) liam o’brien, simon yahn, and danny pakulski at the buffalo international film festival after winning best student film for “bond”

When to trust your instinct v.s. "expert" opinions

Throughout all of this, I was faced with opinions from experts, or people that I highly respected. Many people in my family encouraged me to return to college after my first three months of the unpaid internship because they truly believed college was the most important thing for me. When I told them I was going to get a full-time job and postpone my education, many of them thought I was making a mistake.

I had situations at my jobs where I would turn to people whom I trusted for advice. Sometimes my instinct would tell me one thing but my mentors would tell me another, and I would struggle to determine what was the right decision. Through this, I learned another valuable lesson, which is that while it is greatly important to have mentors or experts to turn to, it’s just as important to rely on your own instincts and judgment.

Had I taken the advice of my respected family members, or the career advisors, I would’ve missed out on incredible opportunities that have defined me as a professional. Now, I’ve become confident in my instincts and while I do still rely on my amazing network of coworkers, professors, and mentors, I’m confident that if my gut is really pushing one way or the other, I can rely on myself and give it a shot. The worst thing that can happen is that I’ll mess up and learn a valuable lesson that I would likely have missed had I taken the safe advice of another person.

Take life a day at a time

When looking back at my journals from my time in Brazil, I noticed a common theme: I was always stressed out about what my next move would be. Should I stay, should I go, what should I do? I was always worried about not making the best possible decision. In reflection, I realized that there’s rarely a “best decision,” and I was putting so much energy into worrying about it, that I wasn’t living in the moment and enjoying where I was in life to the fullest.

It’s often much more advantageous in the short term (and long term) to focus on the present moment. Enjoy it, give it your best, world-class effort, and don’t get so caught up in the future. It’s much more difficult to do something world-class if you’re busy stressing out about what’s next. So, I’ll leave you with a quote from a great Chinese philosopher and the founder of Taoism:

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu