“Be Best” — An explanation for being an unapologetic workaholic
Dedicated to my uncle Robert Busick Jr., a man of infinite inspiration, infinite love, and infinite strength. Here’s to the coming months of recovering and hopefully working together professionally.

Earlier this month, my uncle was playing around on a skateboard and in the midst of having fun, fell off and was rushed to the ICU with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Luckily, he’s recovering quite well and it appears that 6–12 months from now, there should be little to no lasting effects. However, this month has kept my mind thinking about him — how he lives his life and conducts business. His father had a saying he used to tell him — “Be Best”. A statement that meant being the best person you could possibly be, striving past limitations and pushing boundaries. Those are the exact words I’d use to describe my uncle — an innovator always looking to go further than what was possible or achievable.
In many ways, I have taken the “Be Best” attitude and integrated into my own mantra for life without realizing it. At 21, I left a comfortable job working for one of the largest defense contracts in the country to work for a small venture studio — Yak Studios — looking to bring the bleeding edge to an industry commonly dominated by Ruby on Rails, PHP, and Java shops. It’s a company that challenges the status quo, urging all of its employees to strive to be better than yesterday, speak up when they disagree, and always look for ways to improve the startups and companies we serve.
When I left that defense contractor and moved to Yak Studios, I entered the role of being a co-founder and CTO. I never had “big picture” leadership experience before. Sure, I successfully managed government customer expectations through requirements and software demos, but I had never led a company. It’s over these past 7 months with Yak Studios that I realized the “Be Best” mantra has resounded in my attempt to rise to the occasion — I’ve put in countless hours in unpaid overtime to make sure projects go out on time and continuously educated myself in both business management, while still refining and expanding my technical skills. I’ve put in more hours than the average 22 year old ever really wants to put into a work week — 70 hours border-lining 80 hours, exclusive of my time spent on phone calls and emails.
Now, everyone reading may have the same thought that my close friends, family, co-workers, and professional connections have — you’re working way too hard for being 22 years old. I’ve had people go as far to imply that I’m under-skilled and under-qualified for my position. It’s no secret to any that knows me that I completed my undergraduate degrees at University of Maryland in Mathematics and Economics, focusing my coursework in Algebraic Fields, Startup Economics, Game Theory, and Economic Development. I’m by far a long shot from being a classic trained software engineer. However, I spent the past 4 years practicing software engineering on various government contracts and over 12,000 hours outside of work supporting various libraries, side projects, and toy apps of my own(mostly sadly lost to my forgetfulness to git commit and failure of a slew of hard drives during an electrical storm).
Moreover, I’ve always grown up struggling and wanting a challenge. I’ve always wanted to “Be Best”. You see, growing up I had two mothers — for which I received taunts growing up in a conservative Maryland county. More than that, there’s plenty of darkness in my childhood that I don’t talk about — that one of my mothers who’s now in prison emotionally and mentally abused me pretty frequently; An abuse that I can pretty easily trace to my insecurity about my body. I also have vivid memories of her hitting and beating me. There’s was always this internalized struggle that one day I’d escape that sort of life, blossom, and be able to live without fear or baggage. Even harder than that struggle, I’m a gay man that grew up in a household that went through a period of Catholicism — a period in which my time spent with the Church instilled a pretty heavy distrust of organized religion and a self denial of being gay until I was a sophomore in high school. I can remember coming out too. I’d been texting a 15 year old boy from the UK and my mom has been reading my text messages over my shoulder. There then was this period of “trying to be straight” — of trying to date a girl in high school and be “normal”. Because, in the haunting words of my mother that I’ll never forget — “I never wanted this life for you. It’s such a difficult life to live”. My mother wasn’t exactly wrong. My first year of college, I attended a Catholic university where being gay was pretty heavily frowned up by the administration. I can remember being suggested to go to a “Gay in Christianity” conference to learn how to be a good catholic while being gay (Shocker, it was this long winded dialog of denial). I can remember being inappropriately approached by a higher up in the administration to perform sexual acts and rebuking him. I can remember inviting a boy one time to my dorm to watch a movie and stay over, him touching me inappropriately in the middle of the night, asking him to leave, and crying because I felt I had somehow become some a gay stereotype or statistic. These are all things that, until now, I have kept private — especially from my family — to save a lot of people grief and save myself from a lot of uncomfortable questions. However, “Be Best” isn’t about hiding or running away from the problem. It’s a commitment to being blunt and brutally honest — not telling people what they want to hear, but calling them out on their bullshit and telling them what they need to hear. In short, it’s not a commitment to just living a better life, but persevering in the face of uncertainty and immense challenge as well as surviving for better times.
So, when people question my commitment to work, my skill, my life choices, I simply have to explain to them that I’m trying to “Be Best”. To live my fullest life in all senses and to achieve my dreams. My dream and passion has always lied in being a creator — an innovator, a builder, and a do-er. I want to prove everyone’s expectations wrong, everyone’s feeling that I’m living a tougher life, and deliver a lasting legacy that stands the test of time. It’s a way for me to be able to point back on my death bed and be able to say that despite all the doubt and uncertainty from those around me, I succeeded. As everyone moves forward this next work week, think about doing things that let you “Be Best”.

