Cafe 42 Blog

On Raising a Doctor

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

“I saw someone die today, Mom,” my daughter told me on the phone, her voice four octaves higher than normal, like she’d been sucking on helium.

“Where are you?” I heard street noise in the background.

“I’m on the 101. I’m driving home from the hospital.” Again, her voice was…off—too high, too cheery. “I saw her die, Mom. She was fine, then she flatlined and died.”

“You OK?”

“I am.” She was practically giggling. “Really. It was bizarre, for sure, but I’m fine.”

She didn’t sound fine. “Honey, I want you to get off the freeway at the next exit and pull over so we can talk about this.” I was in my office, a thousand miles away.

“I’m telling you, I’m fine. I can handle this, when I’m a doctor,” she insisted in that squeaky voice. “I was cleaning her room, and we were talking about her daughter at UCSD—” her voice cracked right then and she stopped talking.

“Jade, I want you to get off the freeway. Right now. How far to the next exit?”

“I’m taking it right now.”

“Pull over on a side street, and shut off your car, then talk to me.”

I raised our kids with an open forum, not the surface, pc-level shit most people spout. The ‘I’m fine! Biz is great! Everything’s dandy’ bullshit my parents and colleagues pushed down my throat daily wasn’t going to fly in the family I created (or my friendships that stick). “Talk to me,” is my personal mantra.

“OK. I pulled over,” my daughter said, her voice deeper now, though still not exactly normal.

“Good. Now turn off your car and tell me what happened.”

“She just had gallbladder surgery, just like you did last yea—year.” Her voice cracked, like a teen boy entering manhood. “She was fine…” Gasping breaths and I could hear, even feel her anxiety attack coming on. “Her daughter was in the hallway…When she flatlined a bunch of nurses came in and then doctors and they were shocking her and it didn’t work then they did it again and again and I just stood there, holding the trashcan I just emptied.” And I heard my beautiful daughter sobbing on the other end of the phone, and I was a thousand miles away from being able to hold her.

“Honey, I’m right here. You’re OK. Deep breaths. Breathe with me. Breathe in… Breathe out… It must have been really hard to witness that. I can’t imagine it. It’s why I never wanted to be a doctor,” I say deadpan to lighten the mood but could still hear her struggling to catch her breath. “OK. Let’s do some box breathing.” And we did, all four sides, in and out. In and out.

“Her daughter was my age,” she said, weeping as she spoke. “It could have been you, Mom. It could have been you and I can’t lose you yet.”

“I’m right here, baby. I’m healthy, and I’m active and I’m here for you.”

“Does this mean I’ll make a lousy doctor?”

Of course, I said it made her human—the best kind of doctor. Maybe too human, but I didn’t say that. I listened as she unraveled from giddy shock. She told me how one of the nurses asked her to get a sheet to cover the dead woman, then helped the nurse place it over the body. She saw the doctor talking to the daughter crying in the hallway.

“She kept asking the doctor, ‘What? What do you mean?’ like she didn’t believe him that her mom was dead. She wasn’t suppose to die, Mom. And now she’s dead. And I don’t want it to be you.”

“It isn’t me, Jade. I’m right here.”

“Now!” she almost yelled. “But what if you never get to know my kids, like that daughter today, or your mom?”

I listened, empathized, and helped quell her fears for another half hour before she was calm enough to get back on the road and go home to her shared apartment off-campus. She’d have roommates to talk to there, two young women also pursuing the medical pathway at UCSD. I told her to call or text me when she got home, just to check in she got home safely, and fifteen minutes later she texted she did.

Heavy sigh of relief, but in the distance, far beyond my grateful nod my daughter was safe to an almighty I don’t believe in, I felt…annoyed. I never wanted to be a doctor. Never played one as a kid. Didn’t like them because every time I had to see them either I, or someone I cared about was sick. And they’re so sure of themselves they don’t listen beyond test results, and half the time don’t know what they’re talking about even though they pretend they do. I don’t like doctors. And my daughter is on her way to becoming one.

I try to keep my personal disdain for her career choice to myself, but beyond my distaste for the medical community, I hate blood and gore. I can’t look at it on TV or in the movies. I have to look away because it literally makes me feel like I’m going to vomit. I won’t let her describe to me the process of guillotining rats for her spine research lab assistant position on campus, but on the phone I did remind her she got used to doing it after a few times.

My daughter’s wanted to become a doctor since she was child. At 10, when we allowed her an email account [under her choice of pseudonym], her first address was doctorscientistsoccer@. She got accolades when she told teachers to girl scout leaders she wanted to be a doctor, but that seemed to be the extent of her interest in medicine. She played soccer but I never saw her play doctor. People in wheelchairs or maimed or missing body parts scared her when she was young, and no matter what I said she would not engage with them. If a movie involved a child losing one or both parents, or parents losing their kid, she’d come undone—start crying that would sometimes escalate into a full-blown anxiety attack. She ran up to her room sobbing towards the end of Dances With Wolves when the wolf was killed.

Handling illness and loss didn’t exactly seem to be our daughter’s forte. Becoming a doctor requires compartmentalizing your feelings—locking yours away to deal with the patient or situation at hand. And maybe she could learn this skill over time, but I don’t want my daughter burying her emotions, denying her feelings, and becoming the automaton most doctors I’ve met seem to be. And let’s not forget, spending her career jumping through hoops of insurance companies to give patience the care they need without killing them financially. I wish for my daughter so much more than a lifetime of attending to others’ suffering.

I’ve never ever wanted to journey down the path of practicing medicine, yet I feel like I’ve been unwittingly roped into it. Along with her undergrad degree in Biology, volunteering at Palomar hospital was resume building for medical school. Before the death of this mom, she called me often to unload—overwhelmed by the coursework, or the illness she saw at the dermatology clinic she worked for, or torn over the moral quandary of ‘murdering rats’ in the lab.

Becoming a doctor requires more education than becoming a rocket scientist. I never considered endeavoring down such a very long, hard, expensive career path, self-doubt assuring me I’d fail if I attempted it. Since she’s ventured down the medical road, I’ve been our daughter’s emotional and financial support system through her undergrad degree; four, nail-biting waiting for scores, MCATs; spent months helping her edit countless essays for various med school applications. And right when I think maybe I can get a break from all this, she’ll be on pins and needles for the next 6 to 8 months waiting to hear where, if, she’s been accepted to study for four more years before another four to seven years of residency. And even when, if, she gets in, it’ll cost her $300k in student loans on top of the $100k we’ll give her. Becoming a doctor is very expensive!

When she was little, she used to build these incredible structures—towers 8 ft high out of Magnatiles. She has a great sense of physics and I used to imagine she’d get over saying she wanted to be a doctor when she realized what it takes to get there, and the hardship of constantly dealing with people in pain and corporate corruption. She’d become a civil engineer or architect, create structures of beauty and utility, and still live well.

I set up an open forum of communication for the family I created because I never had it in my own growing up. My ‘turn that frown upside down,’ or ‘make lemonade out of lemons’ mother denied every negative feeling of mine, of hers, until her deathbed when she spewed hate at her husband, my narcissist of a father, for two straight weeks before the cancer silenced her.

The next 2 to 3 months are going to be tense at home. We’re all waiting to hear from medical schools my daughter applied to that are interested enough to ask for ‘secondaries’—school‑specific applications requiring their own essays and fees. Assuming she gets requests for secondaries, I’ll have to work with her for another 2 months helping her edit more essays for each school. Then we have to wait another 3 to 5 months to hear if she’s been accepted anywhere.

My daughter is going to be a doctor. Oh joy!

Not so much…

Assuming she gets into a med school, I’m going to have to hear about gruesome details of human anatomy, disease, diagnosis, pain, death, and many of her experiences through residency. Except I never wanted to be a doctor, or walk the path of becoming one. And I still don’t. Just the thought of blood, cutting someone open in surgery, makes me ill. But a part of me, the adult part with a broader view than my personal gratification, understands my daughter is honoring my vision by choosing to devote her life to the welfare of others, and I’ll do whatever I can to support her achieving this goal.

I can hear the chorus of non-breeders and parents more devoted to their work than the kids they create dissing me for helicopter parenting. But the road to becoming a doctor, or even a rocket scientist isn’t like becoming a soldier or real estate broker where the barrier to entry is extremely low. “Emotional support from family is one of the strongest predictors of admissions and persistence in medical school,” AAMC, AMA, and tons of medical education studies have found.

We play God giving life, having kids. My sister had three. The first two she pursued her own bliss, playing tennis for hours daily, taking two week vacations 3 to 5 times a year leaving her kids with our mother, or a nanny. Her husband, their father, found his value devoting his life to his career. Both their kids struggled academically regardless that they had the financial means for expensive tutors. Both dropped out of college and have no discernible careers. At 46 and 44, they both are always hustling to make ends meet, pay the bills—get by.

My sister had her third child seven years after her daughter. This boy loved the violin from the first time he heard the instrument. My sister gave him one at 5 yrs old and signed him up for lessons. The instructor told her son the proper posture for holding and playing the violin, and for the next decade my sister worked with her son most every day, for an hour or more, coaching him to: “Lift your elbow. Drop your shoulder. Center your chin.” She took him to his lessons, attended his recitals and proudly invited friends and family. A guitarist herself, they played music together often—a bizarrely bonding experience (if you’ve not done it and don’t know). My sister formed a connection with her last child she’d neglected to establish with her first two. She gave her baby her most precious gift—her TIME.

Her son, at 37, is a successful ARTIST—likely the hardest career to attain. He got into the prestigious Berkeley School of Music with my sister’s emotional and financial support from applying through attending. He now co-owns a gallery in the posh Wilshire district of L.A. where he showcases famous and up-and-coming artists. He shows and sells his work globally. Financially stable. Happily married with kids. A resounding success by every measure.

Tell me parental support doesn’t really matter and you’re lying to you.

I always wanted kids, not only to raise them better than my parents did, but to create human beings that were better than me—kinder, more receptive, perceptive, smarter choices and actions for themselves and the lives they touch. I had this notion that if each gen raised their children better than the last, people could rise above our petty prejudices and squabbles and learn from each other, work together and reach our true creative, compassionate potential. Our children’s children’s children wouldn’t know poverty, inequity, blind faith or hate. Imagine what we could create…

Thing is, most don’t share my vision, so absorbed in their day-to-day they can’t see the forests [we’re killing] through the trees [on their block]. And that’s a shame, really. Contrary to popular perception, our individual lives don’t really matter in the long run. Regardless of how famous you become, or the amount of money you make, or even your memories from life experiences, it all goes when you die. You may be remembered by family, friends or fans for a while, but even your memory will fade for most everyone in short order. The greatest contribution we can make in our lifetime is in service to others. Raising kids, supporting parents, friends, colleagues, strangers, we create a better world when we invest our time, energy, and heart into each other.

© 2026 J. Cafesin

On Being Human

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Talked to an old friend yesterday. We hadn’t spoken for almost a decade. No particular reason. Life took over and we lost touch. The last time we spoke, 10 yrs back, he told me his wife had quit her job as a restaurant manager and was very happy to be home, fixing up their house, shopping, cooking, doing things she never had time to do when working.

Ten years later, she is still not working. The house is now fixed up. There are no children, and she has no other responsibilities. When I asked my friend what his wife does with her days, he told me she enjoys working out, watching TV, and she plays a lot of Candy Crush.

My mother-in-law lost her husband of 53 yrs a few years back, a year after they closed the small business they had together from the beginning of their marriage. With no business to maintain, no kids to care for, and only sparse time with grown grandchildren, I assumed she’d find her niche in volunteering, perhaps invest time into her community, teach literacy at her local library, or maybe the hospice her husband spent most of his last days.

I don’t like sick people, she told me upon inquiry. And she has no interest in teaching, anyone, anything, she insisted, clearly annoyed at my suggestions. I’ve worked my whole life. It’s my turn to do what I want.

What does she do all day? Plays Solitaire, watches TV, or goes to plays and the movies with friends and family, when they’re available, which isn’t often. Most elderly folks she knows are helping their kids with the grandkids, or volunteering — giving back for a lifetime of privilege.

On the phone with my old friend, I intimated his wife has too much to contribute to kill time playing Candy Crush. But my friend disagreed. His wife enjoys her days now, no longer under constant pressure to perform. She’s allowed to relax after working most of her life, he told me. 

She’s 53 yrs old, I countered. She’s been relaxing for almost a decade now. So? He was perturbed by my observation. They don’t need her income. He makes enough to support them both, so no harm, right?

Wrong.

We are ALL born owing humanity for the life we have. My mother sacrificed a career to raise three kids and provide us with a warm, clean household. My father worked hard to support our family financially, keep food on the table and secure a home in a safe neighborhood with good schools.

I’ve heard parents called ‘breeders,’ by people who claim to never want kids. The absurdity of their derogatory comment is they couldn’t voice it without being alive, having been bred by their parents before them.

Without those who worked hard before us, there would be no humanity at all. My mother-in-law, my friend’s wife, you, or I wouldn’t exist without the hard work of those before us. From the lightbulb to the internet, we stand on the shoulders of those who have contributed to the life we now live.

Our system that seemingly runs itself — doesn’t. We actually have to work at making it work. And playing Solitaire or Candy Crush all day does nothing for society. With everything given something is owed. Every day we are alive we owe each other and those who will precede us. We are obligated to gift, nurture, and protect life forward, and make sure our children have a planet to live on similar to the one gifted to us.

We are ALL responsible to make the world better. Contributing to a worthy cause we believe in, or inventing solutions to make our lives more productive, or managing a restaurant or small business, we all must continually contribute to humanity for the human race to survive, and thrive.

What Happened at MIX

by jcafesin, posted in lean startup, startup, startups

Why Tech WON’T Fix Your Business

A while back, a friend asked me what I thought about him taking a job offer at MIX.

“They’re the reboot of StumbledUpon,” he’d told me. “They want me to improve their recommendation engine, to keep the users they have with better recs, and to get new users by recommending them ‘better’ content.”

Hmm…MIX is a failing content curation platform started by Garrett Camp, co-founder of Uber.It has no valuable differentiators from Instagram or Pinterest, or even the dopamine rush of StumbleUpon’s random discovery model known as ‘intermittent reinforcement’— the most addictive reward system known in behavioral psychology.

“This is yet another startup looking for you to save them with tech,” I told him. He’d been down this road many times. As a seasoned data scientist, failing businesses reach out to his ML, NLP, and AI programming background, looking for him to come in and fix them—code collaborative filters and recommendation algorithms that will attract and retain users. But an AI rec engine isn’t going to fix MIX.

“Their platform is a marketing play,” I told my friend before he accepted the position. “This isn’t a tech fix. StumbledUpon at least was unique in its random “stumble” feature that made the site successful. Now MIX is trying to play catch up as just another content curation site. They need to continually come up with solid differentiators to attract users away from competitors, and tightly targeted ad campaigns to brand and sell their ever evolving unique features. And all that’s marketing.”

“A better rec engine could attract and keep users,” my wide-eyed developer assured me, stroked from landing the gig.

“What does a ‘better rec engine’ even mean? MIX can’t recommend content it doesn’t have. Neither can any other platform. Netflix rec engine sucks because they can only recommend movies in their library—content they have the rights to stream—and there are rarely any in their collection I’d like to see that I haven’t seen already.”

My friend glared at me because he was one of the original developers of Netflix’s rec engine. But he didn’t dispute the accuracy of my assertion.

“You asked me what I thought about you working for MIX, and I think it’s a bad idea. Job won’t last a year unless Garrett figures out he needs marketing now, not blowing capital on tech. I guarantee you, MIX needs campaigns that show unique benefits to attract users because they need content, and only when they have a lot of it will they then need you.”

Six weeks after my friend was hired, he was fired, along with the entire rec team. Bleeding cash from AI developer salaries, equipment and servers, Garrett was right to do so, even though he’d authorized every job req for his team of data science engineers. They were shocked to be abruptly terminated, as was an H1B employee, who, suddenly unemployed, found himself at risk of being deported back to India.

MIX has never had the reach that Instagram has, nor the communities Reddit, LinkedIn, or Facebook have built. They don’t need an AI correlation/recommendation engine at this point in their development. Almost a decade into MIX’s launch, they still don’t have enough users or sticky content to garner retention or quality affiliate advertisers.

Garrett Camp, the CEO, should have seen all of this coming had he been performing weekly competitive analysis, but his background is data science. He thinks, like so many developers, that all business problems can be solved with more tech. He got lucky with StumbledUpon, launched in 2002, the same time Google was getting popular. He got funding from Accel, one of the biggest VC firms in the Valley, which launched his trajectory into the entrepreneurial community.

StumbledUpon did not innovate, up their game with unique horizontal or vertical features, benefits, or new offerings. A few months after it launched, I got on it for a year or two, until Google provided the search results I wanted. MIX’s value became nominal, so I stopped using it. My behavior is typical. Retention, and sustained growth are continuous hurdles for most SaaS offerings.

StumbledUpon integrated Garrett into the startup and VC communities, which propelled him to his next, now infamous startup, Uber. And Garrett designed and built the first prototype UberCab, but he wasn’t the guy who made it a unicorn. That was Travis Kalanick, his co-founder. Travis studied coding in college but wasn’t a coder. He was a business guy, a salesman—the #1 job of a [good] CEO. Out of nine startups Garrett founded to date, all but Uber, and Eco (pivoted) have collapsed. This is typical for engineer-founded and run startups, which is likely why he gave job recs for engineers, instead of building out a pro-marketing team for MIX. Garrett clearly needs another Travis to achieve sustained startup success, or one hell of a marketing team for his content curation platform.

As of this writing, MIX is currently hanging on by a thread, experiencing a significant, multi-year decline in active users and traffic. To avoid becoming among the 90+% of startups that fail, MIX is going to need many users producing ‘quality’—sticky (as in funny, cute, informative, visually arresting, interactive)—content. And to get these users to their site, then get them excited to join, and stay engage on the platform, is NOT a tech fix. It’s a marketing play! Garrett must put a marketing foundation under MIX, go back to the beginning of the marketing process to propel his startup into a thriving, sustainable business.

PRODUCTIZATION (1st phase of the marketing process) of MIX:

  1. Identify Features and Benefits of MIX.
  2. Find and Profile Target Markets and Users.
  3. Discover Competitors.
  4. Identify and/or Create uniquely valuable Differentiators.
  5. Develop Horizontals and Verticals for a pipeline of new releases.

Letting Go of Adult Kids

by jcafesin, posted in parenting, parents, psychology, raising kids, writers, Writing

For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a mom. I was absolutely convinced I could parent better than my mother. My father was the breadwinner — king of our small kingdom — and more into himself than raising the two kids he produced and the one he adopted.

I became a mom at 40, after six pregnancy losses. I grieved every loss as my failing, since I was 37 when we started trying to have a child, but sperm degrades in men over 35. My husband was 40. Three years later, after another loss, I had our daughter. I’ve been a full-time mom since.

Along with being a mom, I’ve run a marketing consulting biz helping entrepreneurs launch ideas into startups. I taught at Cal and Stanford for close to a decade, wrote two marketing books, two novels, and two short story collections. And in all my career, I’ve never, ever, put in the amount of effort, time, money, and heart that it’s taken raising two children.

There are no words to describe the love I feel for my kids. Now in their mid-20s, they are kind people — my #1 goal raising them. They are thinkers. Productive. Grateful. Giving. Loving. I could not be prouder of them. Full stop. And while they are both at home this moment, they are moving on, as they should.

The issue: I am unclear how to let go.

Right now, I’m in my office trying to focus on writing fiction, but my mind keeps drifting to my son. He’s been with the same nonprofit for 4 yrs, and he’s been trying to find another job [on and off] almost as long. He had his first ever on-site interview last week and is waiting to hear back today. I keep listening for the back door of our house to open. He wouldn’t come out to my office a quarter acre from the house if he didn’t get the job. Since I’m not hearing the back door, I’m checking my email obsessively. He’ll email if he doesn’t get it.

Seems like I’m a bit over-invested in my son’s career, and I’ll walk that. But here’s a bit of my investment in this job he’s waiting to hear about:

  • I talked him into taking the in-person interview against his resistance since he’d be spending close to a grand to make it happen.
  • Talked him into flying instead of blowing 3 days driving and his other interviews set up for later in the week. Then I helped him set up a flight to get to his on-site interview.
  • I looked up BART times from SFO to be sure he’d get there on time with a short time frame from landing to getting there.
  • My husband drove him to the airport at 4:30a.m. to make his 7:15 flight, but I was his emotional support on the phone with him from 7:00a.m. until 10:20a.m. that morning. He called when all passengers were kicked off the first flight over an hour and a half delay. He’d be late for his interview if he waited so we worked to find another flight leaving sooner. He found one, got on it, and some guy the flight attendant didn’t like wouldn’t leave the plane when asked. My son, and all the other passengers, sat on that plane half an hour for security to come and escort the guy off. My son was now guaranteed to be late.
  • I dictated a text to send to the hiring manager that he’d be late for the interview, which was trickier than it sounds since he was flying in and they’d assumed he was local.

I won’t even go into the hundreds of hours I’ve spent editing our daughter’s school essays, to the tens of thousands of dollars already spent on her undergraduate degree, to emotionally and financially supporting her through college and four MCAT tests…etc.

I wonder if focusing on our son’s job prospect is an excuse to avoid writing fiction today…

Is my focus on this potential job of his justified by the hours of my life I’ve invested parenting him, and guiding his career?

  • Pushing him constantly to look for a new gig with every complaint about his current job.
  • Helping him write his LinkedIn profile, bio, and micro-messaging to potential hiring managers.
  • Edited his CV, including yr over yr updates.
  • Be his cheerleader to lift his depression with constant rejections.
  • Pushing him to network, go to uni and tech meetups. Socialize more!
  • Fully funding his master’s degree…etc.

I told myself I’d do better than my mother, and so I have. I’ve extended an open forum for our kids to share anything, and ask me anything that strikes them. I’ve challenged them to find their true feelings often masked as anger, or in defense of destructive behavior. By their measure, I am still their best friend. It’s easy to be with them back at home, sharing their day to day. But our daughter will be in med school soon. Whether this job or another, our son will be leaving soon too.

The virtually electric connection I feel with my kids will be lost with distance, and their shifting priorities. Family will take the background to their ‘real lives.’ As it should be, but nonetheless, their independence leaves me a bit lost. Our kids health and welfare have been my #1 priority from the day I knew I was pregnant. Made my body a temple of health before working at pregnancy — killed Diet Coke, all caffeine, weed, processed and fried foods, salty snacks, and passed on desserts. I also ran five miles five days a week. And in an effort to model healthy habits to our kids, I’ve continued working out daily.

My kids have been great motivators for me to model the best of myself — disciplined, motivated, creative, caring, loving freely, fully, without reservation as I do our kids. I will miss talking to them daily, keeping abreast of their lives in real time, hugging them, being their greatest advocate as they find partners to stand beside them.

The hiring manager texted my son early today they’d have a decision about the on-site job he’d interviewed for by 4:00p.m. It’s minutes away and he’s yet to hear anything. Is that bad? Or maybe he’s talking to them now and I don’t know in my office a good distance from his. I keep checking my email and listening for the back door to open. My heart is beating so hard I hear it.

I’m proud of my son for flying down to the interview, staying chill during a nightmare flight, and managing to get to the interview only a few minutes late. I passionately want him to get the job offer! A deserved win after much effort. Great life lesson. If he gets it, he’ll move out, down to the Bay, close to a thousand miles away.

Waiting to hear if he got the job, I’m battling my desire to hang on to the last of these moments we have together. He’ll be upset if he doesn’t get it, and I’ll be here to help pick him up and dust him off and push him to keep looking and applying.

Ultimately, no matter how much I help my kids, or am there for them along the way, I cannot protect them from heartbreak. And as they move on, I am too. I’ll have to find my value, the best of me beyond being their mother. I’d likely be doing just that — engaged in writing fiction right now — if I wasn’t so focused on hearing about our son’s job opp…

Are You Broken Like Me?

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized


Women are inherently maternal—raised to put others before self. This is the cost…

I think I may be broken. Not the quirky, cute type, but really cracked, unable to compartmentalize my desires from those of the people I love. I don’t stand up for what I want because I often lose sight of what that is exactly. I feel an initial desire for or against something and often state it, but that voice is drown out by my husband, or my kids’ objections or justifications in opposition to mine. My desire to please seemingly becomes more gratifying than getting what I thought best or actually wanted.

I don’t like Disneyland, but every year we ended up at the theme park throughout our kids’ formative years. I don’t care for camping, or hiking, or petting zoos, or pumpkin patches, yet was consistently one of the few parent volunteers to chaperon our son’s Boy Scout outings, our daughter’s Girl Scout adventures, and many of their school field trips. I’ve told my husband 17,000 times I want him to plan and execute a romantic getaway for the two of us, yet in 30 years of marriage I’ve been the only one to invest the time to create memorable vacations we both appreciate.

It can be argued that I’m getting what I want with my husband happily joining me on the vacations I plan. And it’s true I was glad to turn our kids on to safe, family fun experiences going to theme parks and camping trips annually. So giving in to what I personally don’t like or want to do isn’t only negative. The problem with acquiescing to everyone else is I never know how annoyed, tense, and most recently insane I’ll feel until I’m actively engaged in doing what I fundamentally didn’t want to.

Case in point…

We’re looking to buy a home in specific areas north of San Francisco, within our very tight budget. We mistakenly moved up to the Seattle area 5 yrs ago and have been looking to come home to California since. We’ve yet to find a house we both agree on. Either my husband or I can nix any property, and the other must agree to walk away without resentment. But this rule between us has been getting harder to maintain as the years have passed.

Looking for a home is never easy, especially since this will be our last, the one we leave to our kids so they’ll never know homelessness. I look at Redfin 5x a day. Every few weeks a listing gets our hopes up that ‘this is the one,’ only to have them dashed when we visit the wreck of a house, or get outbid three times over.

Last week we found two homes in the areas we’re looking for within the price range we can afford. One was exactly where we want to be in Petaluma—a rare find with very few homes for sale in that particular neighborhood. It sold within 48 hours of listing. Halfway into our 13 hr journey driving down to see the property, we got a call from our realtor that the house went under contract with another buyer. We offered 100k over asking with contingencies of seeing the property and getting inspections, but the seller went with their first offer which our realtor claimed was also over asking and required no inspections.

The second property was in the low, dry hills of Novato—picture a fire waiting to happen cuz their insurance carrier does! The lot was tempting—over a third of a flat acre—and the cost of the house was at our threshold, but doable. The owners had turned their two bedroom into four, the additional two bedrooms a garage conversion built on a thin concrete slab. No central heating or cooling in over half of the house. In other words, the attractive listing turned out to be cheaply constructed, jury-rigged crap.

The two homes we saw have been typical of our home-buying journey, which is why we’ve yet to actually purchase a home in the very competitive housing markets we want to live. Nonetheless, we decided to extend our stay and see what came up for sale.

We stayed over a week and saw 16 properties, some new listings, some days, even weeks old. Most were overpriced wrecks. A few were clean, and my husband insisted they were “Fine!” He wants to be back in the sunshine. So do I, but these ‘fine’ homes had less than 7000 sq ft lots. Living on top of the neighbors didn’t seem ‘fine’ to me, especially coming from the 1.5 acres we have now.

We went to see a home in Novato, though it had been on the market 11 days. Any property over a week on MLS indicates there are issues with the house. As we perused the interior, we were both impressed by how clean the home was. Good layout, though dark in many rooms, but enough space for our two adult kids, and my husband and I to set up separate offices.

The kids will be moving in a year or less, I told my husband while we walked the small property. And the lot was only 7200 ft. It was in a 3/10 flood zone. It was at the base of a bone dry hill, blocking sunshine and an extreme fire hazard. There was a monthly HOA fee of $200, and the community pool that money funded was almost across the street.

“This house is fine by me. It’s fine for me. It’s big enough for all of us. It’s quiet, and it’s fine.”

It wasn’t ‘fine’ by me, but I could feel his frustration mounting. All he wanted was to move back to the Bay. The 5 yrs we’ve been in Seattle he’s complained non-stop about the grayness. The cold. The dripping rain. I, too, want to come home (I’m native CA), but not just any house in any neighborhood and end up with a house and property we don’t want like we did moving up here.

I listed a few more negatives about the house. The price point was at our limit, and our property taxes and utilities would be at least a third more. And being tied to another HOA for a pool we’d never use was a waste. Standing in the kitchen, I told my husband I did not want the house. He heard me. So did our broker who let us in.

My husband was clearly upset I was rejecting the property. A house I’d rejected earlier that day he’d also said was “Fine!” (It wasn’t fine, and not just to me because it’d been on the market for 35 days.) He ‘suggested’ we go look at the pool area as we were leaving the house, regardless that I’d just said I didn’t want the home. I followed him across the street, still on the page of a no-go, but seeing how upset he was stung.

  • Was I expecting too much home or land for the money we had?
  • Every property comes with problems. Were the issues so bad with this home I couldn’t be happy here?
  • Am I just being gun-shy from the mistake of moving up to Seattle?

We left that house, and while viewing others my husband spent the rest of the day trying to convince me the Novato house was “just fine!”

  • He thinks we can afford it, and if we live very tight, we likely can.
  • He likes how big the house is, with enough space for all of us to live comfortably.
  • The location is good, he reminded me multiple times, an area of Novato I’ve said I like.
  • We’d finally be back in the Bay, in sunny CA. Home!

We saw no other houses worth considering by the end of that day. My husband was tired of looking, and the Novato house had a lot going for it, he reminded me as we headed back to our hotel.

I, too, was exhausted by our endless search but was willing to keep at it, though I could tell my husband was reaching his limit. “If you don’t want this house, I want to stop looking for a year,” he told me earlier in the day. We’d previously agreed to work hard at finding a place before another dark PNW winter. Going back home and have him sour, annoyed, and pouting every gray day there wasn’t working for him, or us. It’s why I agreed to put a bid in on the Novato home. “This isn’t the house,” I told him when we docusigned the paperwork. “We’ll have to move again in a year or two, scale down when the kids move on.”

Earlier, and still, he wasn’t really listening to me. He’d told me time and again he wanted our next home purchase to be our last, but even the threat of moving again didn’t dissuade him from signing the bid.

Twenty hours later, we were dining at a Thai place in Novato and we got a call from our realtor that the sellers accepted our bid.

I put my fork full of crispy noodles down on my plate. I couldn’t breathe. I looked across the table at my smiling husband. I did not smile back. I excused myself and went outside where I paced and tried to regulate my breathing and slow my heart rate. It works, sometimes, if I tell myself to chill. It didn’t work right then.

I couldn’t think to form words. I kept seeing this too dark, too big, too expensive home we were about to buy in my head and there wasn’t one good feeling to latch on to, even the many my husband had iterated.

I went back into the restaurant and managed to tell him we had to leave, pack up our meal and go. I explained I was having a meltdown, a full blown anxiety attack I did not understand, and that I wanted to go over to the house again, see what we just bought. He didn’t question me. We went back to the house and stood on the porch since we couldn’t get in without our realtor who was off celebrating her birthday.

We stayed on the porch through sunset. It was mostly quiet the half hour we were out there. A guy played basketball by himself at the mini park next to the pool, which stayed empty even though it was a holiday weekend. The rhythmic bouncing of his ball was annoying, but oddly calming, as it gave me something to focus on. My husband touted the quiet, the house size, the end of a 5 year search, finally coming home. He dismissed my meltdown as nerves about moving, which, he informed me is right up there on the stress meter as marriage, divorce, and child birth.

I’m scared, I admitted.

“I know,” he’d said. “But we’ll make it work.”

No, we won’t. I don’t want this house. I didn’t say it aloud since I wasn’t totally sure at that point. Instead, I burst into tears and cried the 15 minute drive back to our hotel. My husband said this house is FINE. I agreed to bid on it, said YES, even though I told him a lot of valid reasons we should say NO. Now we were locked into a binding contract that I wasn’t sure we should follow through with or how to get out of.

My brain locked up. Never happened to me before. Even under extreme stress, I usually can think (rationalize?) my way through to clarity. Not this time. My husband drove in silence. I could feel him shutting down as he always does with strong emotions. He’d be no help, and likely a hindrance in me managing my panic attack. He’d castigate me for agreeing to put in a bid. And he’d have been right to do so.

  • Maybe what he said at the house is right and I’m just panicking over moving.
  • He really wants to move home and so do I. Maybe this is the best we can do.
  • Maybe the house won’t be so bad. It’s big enough, and quiet, even though it’s rather dark and we’re moving home for the sunshine, and the kids are moving out and we don’t need this much space, and it costs too much and we don’t need additional HOA fees, and—
  • Maybe I’m bat shit crazy for agreeing to buy a house I don’t want to please my husband.

He finally asked me what was going on as he pulled into a parking space at our hotel. When I told him I didn’t know and needed some space to figure it out I wasn’t lying because right then there was a war in my head. He went up to our room and I stayed in the car and wept. I struggled to breathe, and see through the blinding headache that felt like my eyes were popping out. I needed help finding clarity since my brain didn’t seem to be functioning so I called a friend.

“Make a list of the pros and cons of buying this house,” she told me after twenty minutes of listening to me freak out with the opposing voices locking up my brain. She helped me realize my full body meltdown to winning the bid was telling me something, and I should at least acknowledge it. Bless her!

Couldn’t help crying again up in our suite as I apologized to my husband for freaking out. I knew I didn’t want the house by then, but was afraid to disappoint him. Instead, I offered up my friend’s suggestion, and my husband worked with me on a pros and cons list. By midnight, it was obvious where buying the house was trending, and even he was moving toward withdrawing our bid. He suggested we decide what to do in the morning since nothing was going to happen at that hour, so we went to bed. Well, sort of, since neither of us really slept.

“You realize this could cost us forty five grand in earnest money?” my husband asked me in the morning when I informed him I was 100% sure I did not want to buy the Novato house.

“It won’t. We have an inspection contingency.” Thank God we did! In popular markets, brokers push buyers to waive all contingencies. In five home purchases, we never have, regardless if there’s ‘pre-inspections’ provided by the sellers.

The moment we docusigned our bid withdrawal my headache began to subside. I could tell my husband was relieved too, especially after our daughter called to inform us the house was priced $200k over comparable homes in the area. We hadn’t run comps before bidding. Our bad!

We left the Bay area the next day. The drive back up the coast I mused we were in the same position as when we came to check out those two houses—still homeless down there. But my husband disagreed. We learned a lot, he insisted.

  • Never bid on a house without an inspection contingency!
  • Always run comps of the area to see if the house is competitively priced.
  • And never, ever agree to buy a house I don’t want.

Easier said than done. Women are inherently maternal—outwardly focused. We’re raised to be caretakers, put others before self. But I, too, learned something on this last trip. Almost instinctively, I want to please so badly I rarely fight for my position in the face of opposition. I eventually (sometimes quickly) cave with resistance to my preferences and desires. And to fix this part of me, I’m gonna have to stand up, even go to battle when necessary to be heard, respected, and come away whole.

What Religion Are You?

by jcafesin, posted in Religion

When I say I’m an atheist, the very next question most people ask is: “Well, what were you raised? What were your parents?”

Human beings.

Somehow that answer isn’t good enough. They’re looking to place me in a spiritual box and lock me into a religion and all the stereotypes that go along with it.

All my life I’ve been told I’m a Jew — by my parents, by my relatives, by society at large, simply because my parents professed to be Jews. But if I don’t believe in god, or any supreme being, or even higher power; if entropy is what rules my universe, then am I still Jewish?

Jews believe in one god.

I believe in none.

Some would argue I am culturally Jewish, a product of my parentage. But it’s ludicrous I’m considered Jewish solely because my parents were (and technically just my mother need be, according to Jewish law). Let’s get one thing straight. Judaism is NOT a race. It is practiced globally, from members of our Supreme Court to jungle tribes in Africa that pray to one God with ancient Hebrew texts. The thread that holds them together is not racial, or even cultural, but spiritual — a belief system. There are no cultural similarities between the African tribes and our former or current Chief Justices. Take away the religious string and there’s really nothing left of their cultural Judaism.

I adhere to no religion, don’t celebrate any religious holidays, and believe passing down to our children fantastical mythologies that promote intellectual laziness is dangerous at best. Growing up, my family celebrated the major Jewish holidays, though I never cared for the antiquated rituals and sexist roles we all played. Jewish parables were too often warped tales filled with praising their solipsistic god instead of people for their hard-earned achievements. I don’t like brisket, noodle koogle, or most deli foods. And as holidays go, the New Year’s Eve and Thanksgiving always meant the most to me culturally, and the food is far better.

If I’m culturally anything, it’s white, middle-class, American. Like most of us, I grew up with people of my socioeconomic status. I was raised in a relatively safe, suburban neighborhood — religiously, even racially diverse, but everyone made around the same amount of money. More fine grain, I’m culturally a native Californian. We have a whole other way of thinking out here than the rest of the world. Level of intelligence would be my third greatest cultural influence. I find I gravitate to thinkers — those who explore and question.

So how does this make me a Jew?

Liking bagels, or preferring salmon to ham, doesn’t define one culturally. Nor does espousing the virtues of education, or denouncing violence, or promoting empathy. These ideologies are widely held by most of our modern age. I’m not a Taoist because I believe in living a balanced life. And I’m not a Christian because I think Christ, or likely his myth, had a lot of charitable ideas.

What does it mean to say you are Jewish, or Christian, or Mormon, if you don’t embrace their belief system? If you were raised Christian and you didn’t believe in God, or Christ, would you still be considered a Christian? Hell, if you believed in God, but NOT Christ, could you still be a Christian?

What religion are you?

Most would respond with whatever religion we were raised. We practice the rituals our parents bestowed upon us. But the more important question is: What do you believe?

Think about it.

Have you let your parents define your spirituality? Beyond what you’ve been raised, have you considered what religious ideologies you actually believe in, if any? ‘Be kind. Work hard. Love your family and neighbors.’ These cultural beliefs began 200,000 years ago when we were still living in caves and aren’t exclusive to any particular religion. They may have been adopted as Christian, or Jewish morality, but the truth is ‘Be Kind’ stemmed from our need to be social. Humans are social creatures, and greedy, ungrateful, thoughtless behavior does not win friends or attract lovers.

Omitting how you were raised, what do YOU actually believe in?

If you don’t believe the fantastical bible stories, Old or New Testament, are a recounting of historic events, then it’s likely you understand these books were written by literate MEN — the highest echelon of society at the time — to control the masses of illiterate layman with parables that instilled fear. You also likely know that these powerful men imposed rules and roles to maintain the social structure they created, and assigned the administration of this order to an almighty [jealous and vengeful (Nahum 1:2–8)] God whose authority could not (as an ethereal being), and must not be questioned. If you do not believe in this God, or that his adventures in these bibles are real, then you are likely an agnostic or an atheist.

ag·nos·tic (a la Google); noun

  1. a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.

a·the·ist (a la Google); noun

  1. a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods.

You don’t have to subscribe to a religion to be spiritual. You can feel connected to this earth and all that’s here without being a Buddhist. You can believe in charity without being a Christian. You can encourage education without being Jewish. You don’t have to pass on bizarre, horrific tales to frighten children into adhering to rules handed down from men on high thousands of years ago. You can practice and teach values — choose to live a moral life: be kind, generous, honest, empathetic, loving, compassionate, without religion.

Why would you choose to be kind without a vengeful God threatening Hell if you aren’t? You’ve advanced enough in human development to understand each of us must continually contribute to humanity, and this planet we inhabit, for our race to survive, and thrive.

Do You Matter?

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Typically, on Sunday mornings my husband and I share articles from the New York Times. He’ll often read me pieces while I prepare breakfast or vice versa, and we’ll discuss the ones that pique our interest. The year-end edition of the Sunday Magazine runs detailed obituaries on a handful of famous and infamous people who died that year. Though many are well-known — actors, x-presidents, and the like, some are more obscure, but they all share one thing in common. They all had [at least] 15 minutes of fame.

I began to feel increasingly irritated as my husband read the list of obits this morning. My mom, who also died this year will never be in the NYT. Where was the balance with the everyday hero — the dad who worked his life to support his family, or the career woman who slated her ambitions to be a mom? The nurse who stayed through the worst of Covid? The teacher that ignited their students’ passions laying the foundation for careers? The rideshare driver that played therapist to his passengers? Their stories are equally important as some one-hit wonder or marginal actor.

Even the most common among us had lives that mattered, that touched many, and their stories deserve to be told.

On my mother’s death bed she asked me, “Did I make a difference?” She stared at me with sunken eyes, her skeletal face practically begging me for an affirmative answer. And I gave her one. And, of course, it was true. She was my mom. She made a difference to me.

She turned me on to love, color, beauty, nature, music, art. She would often point out a vibrant flower, stop everything to view a sunset, and be truly awestruck by its magnificence. My mom was childlike in many ways, always curious, and loved learning. She genuinely liked most people. She was open to ideas, as long as they weren’t filled with hate or born of ignorance.

In the late 1940s, from 16 to 18 yrs old, my mother sat on the back of the bus with Blacks to protest segregation on her daily ride to the University of Florida. Christmas Day for 20 yrs she booked us, and anyone else who’d join us, to serve the homeless at Hollywood Methodist. She was a humanitarian before it was trending, and without prejudice, and, by her example, she taught me to respect all things equally.

She was a wife for nearly 50 years. My dad used to call her his ‘sunshine.’ Laughter and joy came easily to her. They danced beautifully together. He’d glide her across any dance floor in perfect sync, though he was 6’3” and 230 pds, and she a mere 5’ and slight. She sang all the time and had a beautiful voice, carrying the harmony that blended perfectly with my father’s melody.

My mom was a passionate and devoted teacher. She created an ocean science program through the Cabrillo Marine Museum she taught to underprivileged kids that is still active today. I’ve had the privilege of meeting several of her students while with my mom in the market or mall. They’d stop her in the aisle and tout her praises, often claimed they became oceanographers and biologists because of her influence. She loved kids. They were uncomplicated — what she pretended to be, even wanted to be, but wasn’t.

I sat cross-legged next to her lying on her death bed trying to exude the love I felt for this woman, my mother. But as I ran through her list of accomplishments, her expression became darker and sadder, and my “turn that frown upside down” mom started to cry. She wanted to give so much more. And she had so much more to give, but she realized, lying helpless in bed and gasping for every breath, her time had run out.

Two weeks later I stood over her grave and refused the dirt-filled shovel the clergy handed to me. I knelt and scooped a handful of moist, sweet earth from the freshly dug ground, smelled its musty richness, and then let it fall off my hand and run through my fingers as I released it onto her casket. And then I silently thanked her for teaching me to recognize natural beauty and engage with it at every opportunity.

My mom died of cancer at 73. Over 100 people attended her funeral. Another hundred or more have contacted our family since her death to give their condolences — lives she touched, who will touch the lives of others, and so on.

Andy Warhol was wrong. Most of us live and die in obscurity.

But we make a difference.

Racism—Up Close, and Personal

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

My daughter came home crying from her job as a barista for a local Boba Tea shop.

“They don’t like me, Mom! I’m doing the exact same level of work that all the new kids are, and they keep calling ME out cuz I’m not Asian.”

Several other barista-type jobs at various local businesses to which she applied told her flat out they only hire Asians (which, at least in my neighborhood, includes Indians, from India). Since most of the fast food and convenience stores here are owned by Asians, this has severely limited her choices for simple, flexible, part-time work while in high school.

A month ago, on the first day of this first job my daughter’s ever had, she came home and said, “My manager called me their “diversity hire,” since I’m the only White person who works there. It hurt my feelings. He made me feel like I didn’t get the job cuz I deserved it.” Every day since, she’s come home with other racist comments most of her managers continue to make.

Our daughter has a 4.3 gpa, is a hard worker academically, and socially. She is the only White person in her small group of all Asian friends. She’s worked very hard, and continues to do so, to be a part of this bunch of kids, to fit into the Asian culture that is now well over 75% of her high school in our East Bay suburb of the San Francisco Bay area.

My son wasn’t so lucky. Boys going through puberty are all about bravado, one-upping each other. Girls are about connecting, communicating, building their community. Our son was excluded and bullied for not being “A”sian, throughout middle and high school. He had no friends at all, though he tried again and again to ‘fit in’ with them, from Karate to Robotics to Chess club and more. It broke his heart daily, and mine as well, watching my beautiful, open, kind kid ostracized for being White. He will likely struggle with a damaged self-image for the rest of his life because of those formative experiences.

Yet, neither of my children are racists, unlike so many of their classmates. My daughter gets bullied often, even by her ‘friends’ with thoughtless comments: “I only date Asians. I don’t find White girls attractive,” from the 4 out of 5 boys in her group. My daughter would love to get asked to proms, on dates. She watches her Asian girlfriends get asked out. She does not.*

These are REALITIES for all of us, Asians and Whites, here in the global melting pot of the San Francisco Bay Area.

My daughter’s half-White, half-Chinese best friend had a sleepover the weekend before Thanksgiving. Her BF told me their family didn’t celebrate the holiday. Her mother is a tech-visa transplant from China. She had no association with U.S. traditions and did not adopt them for her kids. My daughter’s BF confessed she’d always dreamed of celebrating Thanksgiving. Well, of course, I invited her, and her mom and brother, right then. She was so excited she texted her mom the invite, and the girls were jumping up and down, cheering, moments later with her mother’s response.

The seven of us ate turkey, and stuffing, and shared stories of thanks around the table that night. We played Pictionary after dinner and laughed and laughed. When the kids exited the scene to play video games, Yi, my husband and I spoke of relationships, politics, religion, ignoring social lines of polite conversation. And though we have radically different perspectives, and I felt no personal connection with few common interests, a profound one exists between us. Yi is raising two kids, same ages as mine, and Yi loves her children the exact same way — with the same intensity — as I do mine.

Globalization is a REALITY. It’s happening right now. Most first world nations are being inundated with immigrants looking for that illusive ‘better life.’ Like it, or not, global integration is here, and, as my husband, and our kids know, it is mandatory, simply must happen, for humanity, and our very small planet to survive.

My husband is a software architect. He’s been creating and deploying SaaS offerings for over 25 years here in Silicon Valley. Every job he’s ever had in the software industry, and trust me, he’s had a lot of jobs, he’s worked almost exclusively with Asians. While offshore H1B labor has been brought here by the tech industry since 1990, this massive Asian influx into the U.S. was not anticipated. In the last five yrs, the companies he’s worked for in software development, or any other department now, whether the staff is 30 or 3000, 60% or more are of Asian descent. And yet, my husband is not racist, though he’s been passed up for many positions by Asians on work visas and H1Bs.**

“One wish,” my mom asked my sister and me on our drive home from elementary school back in the old days. “Anything you want, what would it be.”

“World peace,” I’d said. It was the mid-1970s, and a common catch phrase, but I meant it. Without war, or economic disparity, I believed in our creative potential to problem solve, and our unique ability to work together to realize our fantastical visions. I didn’t know about the hunger of greed then, insatiable, and colorblind.

It has been particularly hard on my kids, this globalization process. It deeply saddens me that they must suffer the slights of blind prejudice, just as the Asians in past generations, and today have to suffer the racism of the ignorant Whites here. It terrifies me — the global competition for fewer jobs my kids will be competing for after college. Yet, I still advocate for globalization. This very small planet must integrate, or we will perish, and likely take much of the life here with us.

My daughter worries she’ll never meet anyone to date, yet alone marry, but I assure her she likely will. And it’s even likely that man will be Asian, since 60% of the global population are Asian*** and more than half of them are men. “It doesn’t matter where someone came from, what their heritage, or place of origin on the planet,” I’ve preach to my kids. “Choose to be with someone kind.”

A border wall surrounding the U.S. entirely will not stop Asians from flying in from China and India, Korea, Viet Nam, Indonesia and other emerging Asian nations. Nor will it stop the Middle East, South Americans, Cubans from coming here. Seeking to keep us separate is a fool’s play. Communication is key to build bridges over our differences, allowing us to meet in the middle and mutually benefit from our strengths. Ignorance and mistrust breed with distance. Nationalism is just thinly disguised racism.

Asians, Latinos, Syrian’s, and Palestinians, are all different cultures, not separate races from Caucasian. We are one race, the human race. Globalization — the blending of cultures — is hard for everyone, scary, new, threatening to our social structure, but a must if humanity is to survive, even thrive. The beauty of interracial marriage is the same thing that bonds Yi and I, as parents. We both passionately love our kids. She can’t possibly hate Whites, since her children are Asian/White. Combining two cultures, at least on a localize level, defeats racism, as most every parent loves their kids with the intensity Yi and I do. It’s one of our best bits about being human — the magnificent, spectacular, all-encompassing love we get to feel, and share.

—

*Dating app data (in the U.S. and abroad) shows White men prefer Asian women.

**Hiring offshore workers for less money, now being exploited by every social network from Facebook to Instagram to YouTube, to Mr. Trump’s summer staff at his Mar-a-Lago estate, lowers the pay rate for all of us. It’s no wonder U.S. income levels have been stagnant for years. There has been 308,613 H1B registrations for 2022, a 12.5% rise over 2021.

***Asia Population 2022 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs) (worldpopulationreview.com)

How to Find Startup Competitors

by jcafesin, posted in startup

The Competitive Analysis process, step-by-step…

I want to find competitors for my fantastic AI SaaS application. Well, let me be clear. I don’t want to find competitors already producing my brilliant offering, but I know it’s smart to look for them before investing a lot of time (and time is money in business), in developing and marketing an idea that’s already available.

I am unsure of who my competition may be. As stated, I really don’t want to find any, so my brain probably isn’t accessing the possibilities of who these companies could be if my heart isn’t into the competitive analysis process. I need a plan, a method, some steps to follow and perform, to find out what I don’t want to know.

I must be brave and locate my competitors.

To quickly locate direct and indirect competition for your offering, use the iterative search process. Choose keywords and phrases closely related to your offering as search terms. How do you choose the most efficient words to begin your initial search? If you’ve done your Features and Benefits list first, you have bullet lists of keywords and phrases directly related to your offering on your first 4 (of 8) Productization* lists.

Utilize these Productization lists by lifting words and phrases to use as search terms. Find competitors producing an offering directly or indirectly related to yours, meaning, not only very close to your offering, but similar offerings as well.

Of course, you’re going to find competitors, if you are thorough, and tenacious, and keep searching until you find them.

When you do, you may start to think it would be brain dead to spend time developing and launching an offering already being done by others, currently building the market share you want. Most every innovator runs up against this issue when they perform competitive analysis. But remember, it doesn’t mean your idea is dead just because you’ve got competitors.

A part of your job as the CEO of your idea, is working around roadblocks. THINK about what you must add to your original product idea to make it unique. Consider what your target users are not getting from your competitor’s and provide them your improved offering. Disrupt an industry, or the status-quo with your unique new offering to the business marketplace.

It is critical to the success of your business, any business, to keep a dynamic list of your competition. Carve time out of each week to do a quick search. Look beyond Google and Chat as these apps only return what it ‘thinks’ you want to see. Research publications from your industry.

Fridays, with your morning coffee, iterative search the internet, and identify any new competitors that have popped up, or discover a known competitor’s product upgrade or new release. Do not delete competitors that go out of business but indicate the date they folded or liquidated. There is a wellspring of information in a business failure, and a user-base looking for an alternative to the defunct business.

By continually searching for your competition, you’ll find out about them quickly, and be able match, or surpass each of their offerings with great new offerings of your own. And it’s imperative you release updates, or new offerings every 9 – 12 months or so. If you don’t, your competitors likely will.

—

*https://www.ippglobal.org/competitive-analysis

The Price of Brilliance

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

How do you get good at anything?

Practice.

How do you get great?

Obsession — Practice most all the time.

Pick any famous author, artist, or musician, and they’ll all have obsession in common. And while we, the public, enjoy the fruits of their creative labors, those closest to these individuals were/are generally left wanting more of them, more from them.

Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, “was an indifferent and often inattentive father and husband.”

Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame, “worked 12 hours a day seven days a week, [and] his wife, Carol, tended to their daughters, Jodi and Anne.”

Adrienne Armstrong, wife of Billy Joe Armstrong of Greenday, said of her husband after the release of the album American Idiot, “I think it challenged us to a new level, pushed us pretty far, the farthest I ever want to go.”

The creatives above are all men. All married and all had/have children.

Now let’s explore a few famous women.

The romance novelist Jane Austen never married. She was, in fact, ‘relieved in later life to have avoided the pitfalls of married life, not least the huge risks of childbirth, “all the business of Mothering.’”

Georgia O’Keeffe, the surrealist painter, “wanted to have children but agreed with him [her husband, Alfred Steiglitz] that motherhood was incompatible with her art. She needed to focus all of her attention on her painting.”

Oprah Winfrey, the media mogul has never married. “The very idea of what it means to be a wife and the responsibility and sacrifice that carries — I wouldn’t have held that very well.” And she never had children. “If I had kids, my kids would hate me. They would have ended up on the equivalent of the “Oprah” show talking about me; because something [in my life] would have had to suffer and it would’ve probably been them.”

Ms. Winfrey had the guts to address the unvarnished, unspoken truth when she referred to the “responsibility and sacrifice,” in being a partner and mother. She understood the investment of time, physical and mental energy it takes to be a conscientious parent would have interfered, even waylaid immersion with her siren to grow a multi-billion-dollar empire.

Men have historically been the breadwinners of the family. And while this trend is slowly changing, the fact is women who seek personal excellence, especially in the arts, often have to choose between pursuing greatness and being, at least, an available partner and parent. Even today, men rarely have to make this choice.

Regardless of this sexist disparity, anyone, man or woman, obsessed with becoming great [at anything] should recognize the sacrifice and cost of pursuing brilliance.

As a wife, mother, and writer, my creative muse is constantly vying for prominence in my hierarchy of desires. When my kids were babies, my creative process encountered fewer distractions. I could stay rapt in storytelling, run dialog in my head while watching them play at the park or practice Lil’ Kicker’s soccer. Small kids, small problems. Now the parent of two young adults, my muse is often drowned out by the very real traumas and trials of adulting my children face every day. To help them navigate these tumultuous times, I question, probe, and even invade their space to stay connected, be there for them as a sounding board, a trusted confidant, be their ground when they’re falling, or envelop them in a hug.

I chose to marry and have kids. And while I am present, available for my family, forfeiting the hours I could have been making it with my muse writing was a battle I engaged in daily. Much of my fiction focuses on this internal war. My novel, Reverb, illustrates the cost of a guitarist’s obsession with creating music. Disconnected confronts the reality that women can’t ‘have it all’ — be everything we want to be, and still be there for our kids and family.

We glorify the brilliant author, the renowned artist, the genius scientist, and successes in business, often secretly wish to be one of them. Entrepreneurs that have built global companies made their startups their newborns, investing their time and energy in growing the business. To become great at anything means obsessively working at that job or craft, honing a skill set with relentless practice, which is the fundamental reason why genius is so rarely achieved.

Google “Genius,” and “Einstein” is in the first several pages of search returns. Einstein had intellectually incoherent views on politics, economics, and psychology, and by most accounts from colleagues and family, he sucked at relationships. Focusing solely on math and physics, he neglected most everything else, but he was one hell of a physicist.

Obsessive practice, to the exclusion of most everything else, is a reliable indicator of achieving brilliance. And now that my kids are grown and on their own, I have more time to make it with my muse, and I do. But truth be told, while it used to matter to me to be someone, achieve ‘famous writer’ status, or at least a Wiki page, not so much anymore. I’d never have been a creative director, a founder and entrepreneurship educator. So absorbed in my own greatness, I’d never have cultivated the truly intimate relationships I now have, or earned the status of Partner and Mom if I’d chosen the road of pursuing the title of ‘brilliant.’ I’d miss too much living such a hyper-focused life. Besides, it’s so much more fun to hang at home with loved ones, watch Netflix and be entertained by those who’ve ‘made it.’ ;-}