Category: Uncategorized

The Psychology of Marketing

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I teach my students at Berkeley and Stanford that the foundation of marketing is psychology. Marketing is manipulating people to do what we want, so to get people to do what we want, we have to understand how they think, what they feel, and why.

I also teach that the foundation of psychology, what motivates all of us to do whatever we do, is self-interest. I explain that even saints like Mother Teresa, who spent her life feeding the poor, caring for the sick, did so out of self-interest. Mother Teresa was not altruistic. There is no such thing as Altruism. It is a religious construct to motivate good deeds, to get people out of our own heads, even for a moment, to consider others.

Many students, especially believers of religion, have a problem with this lecture. And, no doubt, many reading this blog are bridling right now. “Of course Altruism is REAL. It’s what we strive for, our highest attainment— to give selflessly, because we are fundamentally caring, loving beings.”

Not so much. We are fundamentally self-serving.

And this is NOT a judgment call. This is a fact of human nature. What can be judged is what we DO with this fact of our nature.

I teach self-interest religiously with every Marketing lecture I give. As Mother Teresa spread the word of Christ around the world with every sick child she fed, she was fulfilling her function as a nun. And her brain rewarded her efforts with Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin— ‘happiness’ hormones that made her feel good. In the face of that kind of poverty, I’d be crying daily. I don’t do what she did because it would not make me feel good in any way. I’d be profoundly sad, every day, knowing Christ will never save these children. People are going to have to do that.

We ALL act in self-interest. We scoff at Chevron fracking as the height of corruption, yet we blithely ignore our roles in global warming by driving SUVs we don’t need, or leaving lights or electronics on all the time because we’re too distracted to turn them off. Or we drive while on our cellphones, and cause over 1.5 MILLION accidents annually, and KILL, murder, 9 or more people A DAY so we can check our Instagram or Tiktok feeds.

I teach Marketing, not Morality, I tell students who balk at my contention our motivation, without exception, is self-interest. It is important to tell them this fact about us, this truth, giving them the ability to produce effective advertising down the line when they begin marketing their startups. To get people to buy into your product, service or message, you must understand their psychology— what they think they need or want, and why, then offer them solutions to their issues and desires.

Bernie Madoff did it to a lot of greedy people. He fulfilled their desire to get rich quick without effort when he convinced them to invest with him. Purdue Pharma fulfilled the desire of people in temporary and chronic pain, while simultaneously fulfilling the greed of medical professionals with kick-back payments that turned doctors into drug pushers.

Humans are self-interested beings. What we do with this fact is what matters, NOT that we ARE.

On the other end of the spectrum, Toyota fulfilled the desire of people interested in preserving our planet when they invented the Prius. And Tesla and other car makers have done the same with their all electric vehicles. Toyota and Tesla produce the cars they do to make money. And while serving themselves, they are moving closer to serving the greater good, by producing cars that have low emissions. Even better than electric cars, is solar and wind to power them, since over 60% of our electricity still comes from burning coal and other fossil fuels, which continues to do immeasurable damage to our planet.

Martin Andrew Green is an Australian professor at the University of New South Wales who’s dedicated his career to developing solar cells. Mr. Green’s self-interest is scratching a mental itch. He’s curious about light energy, and in learning how to manipulate it, his brain rewards him, makes him feel powerful, smart, valuable, serving his emotional needs.

Self-interest is NOT a curse. It is simply a state of being… human, in our case, but self-interest seemingly dictates the behavior of everything else that lives on Earth. Survival of the fittest is how species last over millennium. Not survival of the kindest, whatever ‘kind’ means. With every mouthful of food, every article of clothing, every vaccination Mother Teresa provided the sick and poor, she also fed them Christianity. She was not kind in spreading gospel that Jesus saves their souls. Instead of teaching the value and necessity of socially responsible behavior, which would have served the greater good, preaching rewards in the afterlife does not serve the living or their future.

There is no need to fear the fact that human behavior is driven by self-interest. Regardless of the religious allegory that Altruism is not only real, but mandatory for society to function, self-interest does NOT need to manifest as narcissism. Green, or Toyota, or the parents who work to provide for their kids, or helping a friend in need, most of us contribute to supporting our society or there would be no human race at all. We have no great physical strength or stealth prowess. Building communities, exchanging ideas and skill sets, being here for each other is all we have to sustain us.

We all have the capacity to be giving, generous, thoughtful beings. Our motivation is irrelevant. It is our ACTIONS that determine our morality, whether we are contributing to creating a society that thrives, or participating it our own demise.

Self-interest is encoded in our DNA, and is not a threat to humanity, but a valuable characteristic, a useful asset. We just need to lengthen our time horizon beyond our own lifetime, broaden our self-absorbed view. We must learn that acting ‘altruistically’ means recognizing our impact on each other and this planet, and that accounting for the needs of others as well as our own IS in all of our self-interest.

The Layering of Life

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Hiking on the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska a few weeks ago, I was trying to capture the iridescent blue/green light coming through the ice below my feet with my Canon Digital SLR. I took a few shots, with different apertures, from different P.O.V.s, but knew when I put them on the computer the picture would flatten. The spectacular translucence would be lost—look like a blue/green patch on dirty white ice.

At a photography store in Anchorage a few days later, I asked the guy behind the counter how one could pick up that exquisite depth of field of the light coming through the glacial ice on camera. Can’t, he said. But you can create it in Photoshop. Layering the image multiple times should bring back some of the depth the camera can’t pick up.

Layering…

It was like a light bulb went on in my head. He was right, of course. The camera can’t pick up the photons moving through ice, only the ones reflecting off the surface. But the word LAYERING reverberated in my head, as I’d been thinking about layering for quite some time.

When I’m not writing fiction [or blogs], I’m developing and designing marketing and advertising campaigns. I recently created an illustration of sound waves using an image off Google. Simply adding filters to the image made it brighter, or weirder, but still left it rather…flat. I lifted another image of radio waves, and layered it over the sound wave, filtering it to 50% opacity so the base image showed through. Then I went back to Google Images and got another light wave, and another, and layered them with effects too. As I built out the image, layer upon layer, the picture became richer, deeper, more 3D, almost in motion.

Layering made the image alive.

A while back my father took a painting class where students replicated a favorite work of a Great Master. Dad picked Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. It took him five months to paint, which upon completion looked virtually identical to the real one.

How did you do that? I inquired upon seeing his work. Did you know you could paint like that? My dad had been a weekend painter most of his adult life. This class, a first since college, was his attempt in retirement to reinvent himself as an artist.

No! He practically giggled with delight. Honestly, this teacher was fantastic. She taught us all about Layering, from when the Romans began using it, to the Masters, to the Impressionists. I’ve been painting for 40 plus years layering two, maybe three colors or tones. But in some areas on this canvas I must have used fifty. He proudly showed me highlights on the girl’s face that nearly glowed, bringing her right off the canvas, as in Vermeer’s original. It’s all in the layering, my dear, he’d said back then with a grin.

Layering… hmm… As I considered it, the more I could see how integral layering is to being alive.

I’ve always been scared of old age. The prospect of getting old is so terrifying, at times not getting there seems the better option— hasten the end instead of dragging it out with modern medicine. Watching my mother die of cancer and my father age hasn’t been pretty. It’s pretty scary. And I’m right behind them. Other than senior discounts, the upside of aging seems rather illusive.

Driving my daughter and her teammates to soccer last Friday, they chatted in the back seat about science class. They were amazed by the video of Neil Armstrong on the moon, each trying to quote his words upon stepping on the lunar surface, required for their test on Monday. They didn’t know we all heard him grammatically wrong—that he said, “One small step for [a] man,” not man in general. They hadn’t been there to see the grainy black and white image turn upside down on TV. They hadn’t held their breaths, or felt the collective sigh of a nation, and of the world, when our astronauts returned safely home. They hadn’t experienced the layers of that moment, that day, all the days of the moon mission, or the ones leading up to it, or since, for the most part.

Mankind’s first steps on anything but our home planet is a mere footnote to the 5th graders in the back seat of my car. The video image they watched in Science was a flat view of a definitive leap in human history. I’ve learned an undeniable gift of adulthood is understanding the significance of a given moment because of the layers of experience proceeding it. At 10, kids images are still just forming, their depth of field still limited to what reflects them, like the photons on the glacial ice.

Experiencing the moon landing as it was happening created a page, a layer, a memorable slice of my time. Aging’s saving grace may be the collection of these moments of living, layered upon each other, giving, if not wisdom, at least a broader range of awareness, and experience, for a rich, vibrant life picture.

Abortion and Choice

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

I was 16 weeks pregnant, with my first baby, when the results of an amnio told me that the wanted child I was carrying was not healthy. I have always been pro-choice, and never considered it a moral dilemma to terminate a fetus with severe Down’s Syndrome, or other life threatening, or debilitating abnormalities. Although I was aware that my advanced age of 39 increased my risk of potential problems, I was totally unprepared for the results from this technology, and the choice I would have to make.

We received the news on a gray Thursday afternoon in late December that the baby girl inside of me had an extra X chromosome, also known as Trisomy 47XXX. While waiting for clarification from a genetic counselor on the following Monday, I spent the next three days searching for information. I sat in the old, stone library in Concord, Massachusetts, crying uncontrollably with each line I read from a Psychology Today article on XXX. “Severe learning disabilities.” “Severe emotional disabilities.” “Slow motor development.” “Shy.” “Withdrawn.” I rubbed my swollen belly, trying to feel my daughter inside of me, fear welling up and gathering momentum. My stoic husband sat next to me, silently reading along. On the way home we talked, we cried, we argued about what to do next. We decided to wait to make any decisions until we could get more information, except there was little out there, and everyone we spoke with had some kind of agenda.

The genetic counselor insisted that the information we had gathered over the weekend was outdated and biased. A few minutes later she called in a staff OB/GYN who showed us a picture of a beautiful 8-month old XXX baby, swinging in her electric swing on a whitewashed, sun-drenched porch, smiling happily for the camera. The doctor then asked us if we would be willing to participate in her study if we decided to “keep our daughter.” During the following week, we spoke with doctors from around the world with any knowledge of XXX, who gave us a positive or negative spin depending on their personal views on abortion. We spoke with a social worker that dealt with the parents of handicapped children, who was subtly but clearly for termination.

I solicited advice from my parents. My father (who never changed a diaper in his life) told me to keep her. My mother said not to. We spoke with parents of XXX children. All of the children had suffered learning disabilities, delayed motor skills, were withdrawn, and had required special education. They told us how exhausting it was, how expensive raising a handicapped child. They spoke about mortgaging their home, and going into debt to afford the special care they needed for their XXX child. They spoke of the constant heartache watching their child suffer with depression, anger, loneliness, growing up both physically and academically challenged. But all the parents claimed they loved their daughters.

A decision had to be made quickly, before I felt her moving inside me. I knew if I felt her I could never give her up. At just 4 months, an insentient collection of cells inside me, she was still an abstraction, even though on ultrasound I had seen her entire body, the emerging vertebrae of her backbone, the two hemispheres of her brain, the protrusions of tiny feet and hands. “The ghost in the machine,” my husband had called her. I held my belly and begged my daughter to tell me what she wanted me to do, knowing the decision would be mine, feeling the weight of that decision ripping apart the fabric of my tightly woven self-image.

What kind of person was I that I would kill my daughter because she wasn’t perfect? Faced with the probability of a slow child, spending the rest of my life watching her struggle to fit in, feel accepted beyond our family, focusing every day on the care of a handicapped child, seemed overwhelming. The cost of raising kids without illness would require both my husband and I to work till we died. And while I’d always pictured having two children, gifting them a sibling, a confident for each other, we’d have to forego having another child to afford the continual care required for our XXX daughter.

It occurred to me that most of us go through life thinking we are generally good, honest, caring people because this view is rarely challenged, as most of our actions aren’t based on critical, pivotal, character-defining decisions. From the moment I got the amnio results, I knew my life would never be the same again. Technology had given me insight, and now forced me to make a choice.

This was undoubtedly the hardest decision my husband and I would ever have to make, but it was ours to decide, granted to us alone in a state where abortion is still legal. Only we, the parents of the pregnancy, could decide what we felt capable of providing our child. If we lived in Texas, the state could force us to give birth to an ill baby, spend everything we made on drugs, specialize schools and care, and damn us to the unbearable torture of watching her struggle daily, likely for the rest of our lives.

A week later we arrived at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Waltham, and were assaulted by protesters. They held signs that read, “Save Unborns,” and “Choose Life.” They crowded around my husband and I shouting, “Baby Killers!” and “Murderers!,” preventing us from getting into the building until a cop came out and pushed them back. They were amped on self-righteous indignation, full of religious fervor. They’d go home to their Christian conservative families feeling proud of themselves for making our passage into the clinic even more a nightmare than it already was. Most were young, more men than women, in their teens and early 20s, and likely had no children at all. They had no conception of what it took to raise healthy kids, yet alone devote their lives caring for a physically and emotionally afflicted child.

Doubting our own abilities to provide for a sick child pushed us into the decision that to this day, 20 yrs later, I still find shame in. But I honestly don’t know how the other decision would have played out. One of the mothers of an emotionally and physically disabled XXX 8 year old told me that if she had known that her daughter had the anomaly before she gave birth, she doubts she would have chosen to keep her. I guess when we make a decision with no good choices, the decision we make will never be okay. While I am grateful that the choice was ours to make, the trick is, finding a way to live with that choice.

A year later, and two on that, I was graced with two healthy children, now grown and on their own. But I think of Sierra often, who she would have been, how she would have been, and the lives we would have led with her. And I still ache for her. Through all the heartache that comes with raising a handicapped child, I know I would have loved her, passionately, wholly, felt that awe-inspiring humility, that magnificent intensity of love for her that I get to feel for my kids every day. And to this day, I still question my choice not to have her.

The Truth About Mark Zuckerberg

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

IMAGINE working your ass off all through high school, studying instead of partying, volunteering with school and community groups so you can into a good college. You send out your applications, to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, as you have the 4.8 GPA, and all the right clubs on your resume. Your mom kisses each envelope before mailing, “for luck,” then hugs you, with her silent prayer that you’ll be accepted everywhere, that the world will see her beautiful daughter the way she does.

Pins and needles until the letters start coming in, or maybe they won’t, and no college will want you, keeps playing in your head, until February rolls around and letters DO come. Cal Berkeley wants you! UC Davis wants you! Stanford wait-listed you. And Harvard ACCEPTED YOU!! You’re dancing in the kitchen with your mom, dad, and little brother, laughing, hugging, celebrating your achievement of hard work and tenacity. For the moment, you let yourself bask in the glow of your family’s pride.

August comes round, and you are settling into your dorm room at Harvard. Your roommate is nice enough, though she’s hardly there. Unlike you, she’s very social. She got into Harvard on her daddy’s dime. He went there. She had a 3.6 GPA, but got a free pass into the school, as did ex-president George Bush Jr (with a 2.35 GPA). If nothing else, Harvard is incestuous. Many of Harvard students are related to past students, with money.

You love your classes. Your professors. A few months into your Harvard experience you are doing well academically, even if you haven’t made any real friends. You assure your mom you’re fine, though you don’t tell her you’re feeling more than a bit lonely. The popular girls, like your roommate, came in with money, and come from money. They dress trendy, buy expensive, look sharp, act confident. Make it in Harvard, or not, they have no worries after school. The rich rarely have to worry like the rest of us.

You come back to your empty dorm room one afternoon, turn on your computer, and are about to get started on the paper you have to write for Expository, but the image on the screen stops you dead. Your face stares back at you, next to some other young woman. Under her picture it says, “HOT!” Under YOUR PICTURE voters say you are not.

This is the beginning of Facemash, which eventually became Facebook. This is MARK ZUCKERBERG’S idea of fun—making women feel like shit for his entertainment. IMAGINE what that girl must have felt when she saw NOT under her Harvard profile picture. IMAGINE if it was YOUR CHILD. OR YOU.

And here’s what ZUCKERBERG said the first night he released Facemash: “I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.”

This is MARK ZUCKERBERG then, and THIS IS MARK ZUCKERBERG NOW! He is still the same ugly, petty, small man/child, pulling the same ugly crap, indifferent to anyone but himself, ignoring the pain he is causing across the globe now. Zuckerberg was already a second year student at Harvard. He was not a child. If ZUCKERBERG was a decent man, a man of goodness, not cruelty, he never would have COPIED HOT OR NOT, an app that was already out there. Zucky just ripped it off! To debase Harvard WOMEN. Shame on you ZUCKY, and your MAMA and PAPA, for not teaching you how to treat others with respect and kindness!

ZUCKERBERG is still indifferent to anyone but his own needs, even TODAY. His Facebook recommendation engine helped get TRUMPY ELECTED! And he’ll likely do it again. How? His recommendation engine only shows you what ZUCKY WANTS YOU TO SEE. You do NOT see all your connection’s posts. ZUCKY WON’T LET YOU. He shows you only posts that REFLECT YOU. It helps his advertisers sell you more, to show you only what you’ve shown interest in, or people like you have clicked on. We are all merely seeing posts that reflect our own opinions now.

ZUCKY only sees his own reflection too. It’s what allowed him to debase women at Harvard. It is allowing him to keep his screwed up recommendation engine on and running, as you are more likely to BUY from people reflecting your position. Russians, Republicans spreading lies, ZUCKY doesn’t care. He cares about getting and keeping advertisers. His “fake news” AI department is a joke. I know someone working there, and they tell me he really isn’t trying to stop it at all. It doesn’t serve him to do so. He wants advertisers, and you don’t get them, and keep them, limiting ad sales.

He got lucky debasing women from an app he RIPPED OFF. Now he’s god, to so many. Sadly, they are so blinded by his “success” and they can not see the ugly little man/child he was @Harvard, and still is. Humans get our moral fiber between 0 – 8, maybe up to 10 years old. He clearly didn’t get much moral guidance from his parents. And amoral people rarely change. They need a brick to the head, to ‘hit bottom,’ and ZUCKY ain’t fallin any time soon. Now, he’s guiding the world to disaster, to make money from advertisers, to keep FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM going. (And this is what Millennials, and MBAs deem “success.”)

Now he’s on to #THREADS, to collect MORE DATA on you to SCREW YOU, this country, the world. Don’t let him! Don’t get on THREADS!

My hope, MARK ZUCKERBERG, is that you learn to THINK beyond yourself, and to ACT with kindness and empathy, instead of what you were obviously raised to be— mean, thoughtless, sexist, totally and completely self-interested. Your power was wielded by the wealth of your parentage, mere chance you were born into money—dumb luck, literally. Imagine how you and your wife, #PriscillaChan, would feel if YOUR DAUGHTERS, #Maxima and #August, were voted NOT HOT, deemed UGLY their first year at Harvard, as no doubt they’ll go there with the money you have made on the trillions of wasted hours all of us have spent on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM , and coming soon THREADS.

#DeleteFacebook

#DeleteInstagram

Raising Kids Without Religion

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

My husband and I raised our children without religion. We gave them no religious identity (as in claiming to be Christian or Jewish because of our parentage). We are both devout atheists, and I use the term devout with purpose. We don’t believe in a higher power, or any gods, or even the possibility of one. We are not agnostic. We believe awareness begins by the sixth month of gestation, and ends at death. Upon birth, our combination of chemistry defines individual uniqueness, so often mislabeled as a ‘soul.’ No heaven, or hell. No rebirth awaits us after death. Reincarnation is a myth. There are no second chances to get living ‘right,’ and we never ‘ascend to a higher plain of existence.’

You, me, Hitler, all end up the same. We cease to exist upon death. Only our contributions throughout our lifetime remain when we die.

Frightening and harsh though this may seem to believers, the fantastical bible stories and the ‘jealous’ malicious god, (Exodus 20:4-5), described in them never resonated with us. Much to our parent’s chagrin, we grew further from all religious ideology with their spiritual indoctrination. Ancient dogma conjured by men to control the masses by creating an outside deity that could not, and by its own commandments, must not be questioned, religious leaders were telling us not to think. They required blind faith, and neither my husband nor I were willing to buy into thoughtless beliefs.

We agreed before having kids that we’d raise them without religion. We could not teach them what we do not believe, and what we both feel is fundamentally destructive at this point in human development. The value system we hoped to impart is based on a keen awareness of self, and others, our planet, and the immense responsibility each of us have to preserve all life here.

Picture a bull’s-eye, we told our kids, like the Target logo. You are the center dot, obviously, as you can only perceive and participate in life while living. The first ring out from you is your immediate family; the second is your extended family and friends. The next ring is your community, then your country and then the world. And all rings must be considered when making choices and/or taking an action.

The Target philosophy is a model for a thriving society. Consciously considering the radiating effects of our actions forces us to think before we act. Our ability to think conceptually, project into the future, then alter our behavior to achieve that projected outcome is what separates the human race from all other life forms here.

There was no need to sell our kids on religious dogma such as promises of heaven, or threats of hell. We taught our kids not only to be considerate and responsible to family and friends, but to humanity as a whole, and all things on this Earth. We expect them to honor their debt to those before them by striving to deliver a better world to those here, and those yet to be.

As atheists, we are considered by many to be heathens– uncultured, uncivilized people. Our parents are constantly trying to convert us, under the delusion that we are what they were raised to believe, whether we admit it or not. They vehemently express their disgust in our ‘denial,’ and barrage us with threats that our children will be lost without a religious upbringing. My brother, a born again Christian, assures us that Christ died for our sins. He promises my children will be ‘saved’ after death from all wrongdoing if they just accept Him as their savior. He never stops to consider the catastrophic lack of responsibility this ideology instills in his, and every other blind believer’s behavior. My brother, and his brethren real estate brokers lie, cheat, and rob unsuspecting clients of their life savings without ever considering the destructive effects of his actions, believing in his own righteousness, having ‘faith’ in the forgiveness promised him.

By everyone’s reckoning who’ve met, or know our children, from family and friends, to teachers, to restaurant servers, my kids are liked and well respected. They are courteous and conscientious, more considerate than most adults, and 90% of their so called ‘god-fearing’ peers. They are team players in sports, strive for excellence in their studies, both straight-A students from grade school forward. They share what they have, and compromise to ensure fair play. And they do all this, not by threats of eternal damnation, but because they understand their role in, and responsibility to humanity, and this planet we inhabit. My children are not lost. They experience no spiritual void. They find beauty and wonder in many things, like nature, and sometimes even in the nature of man.

With the advent of technology and advanced weaponry, our world has become so very small and fragile. We must stop pretending we are powerless, under the will of various deities, or follow the divisive rhetoric of religious leaders who preach if Christ exists than Judaism is wrong. If Allah rules than Christianity is a lie. Religion has become the problem, giving excuses, or worse, forgiveness for whatever crimes we commit. Christ will not save us from global annihilation. We are all responsible to save us from ourselves.

At the dinner table recently, my husband asked our now teen kids a simple question: “What are you?” Both answered: “Human.” Touché! Religion, skin color, and/or economic status, my children see no division between themselves and other people. This position is mandatory for the survival of humanity. We teach our children to recognize their radiating effects on all they touch, and not only acknowledge their mighty power, but embrace the responsibility that comes with it. Humanity’s future depends on each of us taking individual responsibility for the actions we take in life, not for rewards in an afterlife, but to enrich the lives we touch here and now, and to make it possible for those yet to be—the generations to come—to experience the unfathomable wonder in being alive.

How to Raise a Genius

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Went to the Jelly Belly Factory on a field trip with my daughter’s 2nd grade class. The young man assigned to escort us on the tour misquoted a brilliant saying by one of my favorite icons.

The guide delivered his canned speech, spoke of how long and complex the process to make even one single jelly bean, but that nothing great ever came easily, “as the inventor, Thomas Edison said: ‘Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.’”

But that is NOT what Tom said. He said, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

So what is my issue with the mere 9% our tour guide misquoted?

Mr. Thomas Alva Edison was trying to tell us that to get good (‘genius’) at ANYTHING takes HARD WORK (‘perspiration’), and a lot of it. He should know. It took him, and an educated team of men many years and over 5,000 exploded glass bulbs to invent the light bulb.

Still, you say, it’s only 9%. The 8 year old’s the tour guide was talking to didn’t even know what “percent” meant. And while this may be true, there were 15 adults with the pack of 40 kids the guide was leading. And the parents understood. Most had probably never heard the quote before. It is somewhat obscure, which is a shame because it is an astounding insight. What the tour guide misquoted did not communicate the gravity of Mr. Edison’s meaning.

In the beginning of the 4th grade our son failed several math tests in a row, and upon inquire we found he didn’t understand the material. When asked why he hadn’t asked for help from either his teacher or us, he confessed he felt afraid he’d look dumb. Having always done fairly well in math, when he got lost, he felt too stupid to ask for help. He was supposed to be smart, but maybe he wasn’t, he cried, clearly shamed.

I hugged him, held him, and reminded him of old Tom’s saying for the hundredth time. Then my husband and I got to work, played tag team, alternating afternoons, evenings and weekends to teach our son what he needed to know. Within three months of daily math lessons he not only grasped the material presented but excelled to the top of Math Swap in his grade level and remained there through elementary school.

Our son now loves math. It’s his favorite subject. He works hard at it and that hard work just placed him in the most advanced math class at his new middle-school. Failing those math tests in the 4th grade turned into a great education for all of us. We got to see directly how hard work pays off. And though our son may not always tow the line of excellence, he now knows that ‘smart’ is not given, but earned.

The New York Times Magazine had an article a while back on ‘genius.’ It sited Anders Ericsson’s research on The Making of an Expert, which concluded ‘genius’ wasn’t born, as previously thought, but made.

“Outstanding performance is the product of years of deliberate practice, not any innate talent or skill,” according to K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely.

Most everyone starts out with the 1% inspiration. It comes with being human, and our ability to think abstractly.

Few of us have the tenacity, or the determination to endure failure after failure and continue through that last 5-10% it takes to achieve excellence. Most of us settle on gawking at greatness instead of pursuing it.

So, the question is not, ‘What is genius,’ or even excellence, but what motivates persistence?

Achieving good grades, or becoming a killer guitar player, or great at soccer, or even parenting, takes “deliberate practice.” We need to impart Tom’s wisdom to our children, teach them by example, with unwavering diligence, that reaching their potential can not be achieved blowing most of the day binge watching Netflix, or YouTube, or gaming. To actualize ‘greatness’ means devoting the 99% perspiration— the time, energy and effort necessary to create anything of lasting value. Whether it be a school report, a science project or a math test, genius is not only doable for most every child, but for all of us with hard work and persistence.

The Virus Killing Silicon Valley Startups

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

There is a pandemic in Silicon Valley. It is making startups sick, and 90+% of all small businesses fail. This virus didn’t start in China, or any country. It didn’t begin in crowded, filthy wet markets from different animals swapping genes. It began with Google and Facebook, and their unrelenting greed for profits.

I am currently mentoring startup students at Berkeley-Haas. I also teach entrepreneurs at Stanford and Cal how to achieve that illusive 10% of sustained business success. Without exception, all are starting up in the exact same backasswards way.

1. They begin their business by developing their product or service.

These entrepreneurs have invested their time, and often their own money in creating a MVP (minimum viable product), a concept introduced by Eric Ries in 2011, and the 2nd of 3 primary reasons most startups fail. NEVER begin your business by producing two-thirds of an idea hoping to ‘find’ your customers, and get them to tell you how to improve your offering. In fact, producing your initial offering at all is the wrong way to start any business.

2. The startup, with their developed MVP, create ‘digital’ marketing campaigns.

They launch their website, and create SMM (social media marketing) and PPC (pay per click) ads to get ‘traction.’ Impressions, Engagements, and Likes are virtually meaningless. Sure, Branding is essential to build awareness of a startup, but sales are what makes a business successful. SALES. That’s it. Without sales, or paid subscriptions, or donations in nonprofits, you have a hobby, not a viable business.

Let’s get real. It’s ridiculously simple to use Google Ads, or to place Facebook ads. These platforms spend millions annually to convince entrepreneurs that slamming the net with crappy advertising will make your company successful. It’s BULLSHIT. They are lying to you, pocketing your $3,000 – 5,000 monthly to ‘train’ their AI engines to “target” your business better than you can. In fact, you should KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE BEFORE YOU PLACE ANY ADS, or even develop your website.

Beyond Google and Facebook, there are tens of thousands of “Digital Marketing” agencies, selling you the same crap Google and Facebook are. They promise to make you money if you spend your money with them because it is equally easy for them to place these PPC ads as these platforms have made it for you. Stop buying into their deadly virus!

The real ROI on “digital advertising” is very hard to find. Google, Facebook and ‘digital’ agencies make these stats almost impossible to come by. Reality check on ROI of “digital” advertising, according to Search Engine Journal: “the average ROAS (return on ad spending) for small accounts is 1.5 to 1% – or barely break even.” Additionally, PPC or CPC means COST PER CLICK, not sales. It is estimated that 25 – 40% of all clicks on ads are fake, meaning you are paying for clicks from Click Farms in the Philippines, or automated systems meant to profit Google while costing you for every fraudulent click.

3. The startup goes after “building market share” with freemium offers, hoping to convert users to paying customers somewhere in the theoretical future.

It’s easy to get people to try, or even use your offering for free, when they have no skin—money—in play. SALES means getting folks to pay for your offering/s. Getting actual sales is a lot harder!

To garner actual SALES, you must first understand the competitive landscape of your product or service. Many startups have no idea the market share they’re seeking has been garnered by another company with the same or similar offerings. And here’s a heads-up to all the entrepreneurs who think your offering is so unique there’s nothing out there like it. Bullshit. In 5 minutes I can find similar offerings to just about anything. Even if your offering has a few more bells and whistles, it’s hard to get people to pay to switch from what they’ve become accustomed to using.

First and foremost, MARKETING is NOT “digital advertising.”

Broadcast, to PR, to networking, the ROI from these mediums average between 2 – 20+%, way more than the .05 – 1% ROI of ‘digital’ advertising.

BUSINESS, any business, BEGINS with MARKETING. Regardless how great your products or services are, your business will NOT be successful without constantly marketing your offerings. Branding is a tool of marketing—campaigns meant to build awareness of your offerings and company. And Marketing takes many forms, way beyond the extremely low ROI of “digital” campaigns.

The Marketing process is far more complex than designing a logo, putting up a website, and slamming the internet with “digital ads,” organic or paid. BEFORE you build your offering, construct a MARKETING FOUNDATION for your startup, (or existing business—better late than never) to create a thriving, sustainable company.

Before investing the time and money to build a product or service, then waste more countless hours and dollars advertising it, BEGIN any startup or business venture by PRODUCTIZING each and every offering IDEA.

PRODUCTIZATION begins by getting intimate with the offering you hope to create. Make lists, actual, physical lists of your idea’s FEATURES, and the BENEFITS or SOLUTIONS the FEATURES your potential offering will provide. Next, create lists of who will benefit from the features of your offering. These are your TARGET AUDIENCES, the people you will market your offering to. These lists also provide SEO content marketing when you begin the process of creating advertising campaigns.

PRODUCTIZING your offering/s means doing COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS every month or so, to be sure you understand what companies are producing similar offerings, and the market share they’re collecting. If your startup has any success at all, others are going to copy what you’re doing, and go after the same targets you’re hoping to attract, and keep. Understanding what your competition has will help you define what makes your offering unique. Your startup’s marketing should always be selling your UVPs (unique value propositions)—what makes your offering better than your competitors.

It is a lot more fun developing products and services—turning a concept into a reality—than PRODUCTIZING an idea. PRODUCTIZATION is time consuming and detail oriented, and a drag comparatively speaking. If you want to have fun, then enjoy your hobby of creating offerings. If you want to be among the 10% that build SUSTAINABLE companies, you must first build a MARKETING FOUNDATION under your startup, which begins with the PRODUCTIZATION of each and every potential offering.

Reverse Racism IS Racism

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

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

“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.

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 the rest of his life because of those formative experiences.

Yet, neither of my children are racists, like so many of their Asian friends and associates. My daughter gets bullied often, even from 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, and yet my children are still not racists. Why, when so many are?

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 was a tech-visa transplant from China in her early 20s, and had no association with U.S. traditions. She did not adopt them for her kids, regardless that they are native born here. 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 existed between us. She was raising two kids, a boy my son’s age, and a girl, my daughter’s best friend, 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 had 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 preached 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. Combine 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 as parents.

—

*Dating app data (in the U.S. and abroad) shows White men prefer Asian women, though it is unusual to see an Asian man partner with a White woman.

**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)

LOVE Defined

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

My sister is dead, I told the bank manager.

She isn’t dead. She lives in Washington with her husband, having recently moved from L.A., where we were both born and raised.

The bank manager expressed his condolences. He accepted the paperwork from our lawyer to remove my sister’s name from our Trust as the potential guardian of our children should my husband and I die before they’re of legal age to care for themselves.

I told him she was dead to delete her from my psyche, distance myself from loving her. Five years ago, she told my husband she didn’t want any contact with him, me, or our kids, her then 7 and 9 yr old niece and nephew, in a response to an email my husband sent her.

Much to my sister’s chagrin, we’ve raised our kids without religion. Cleaning out her Agoura Hills McMansion before moving to her custom built estate in Washington, she sent our kids Hanukkah ‘gifts’ of broken toys that used to belong to her children. She missed acknowledging our daughter’s birthday, again. Three months later, she sent her a present with the one she sent for our son’s birthday, and spelled her name wrong on the card. She’d disappointed our kids time and again, ignoring their birthdays and special events, rarely calling, and talking about her life, not theirs, when she did. Many times after jacking them up that she was coming to visit, on the day she was supposed to arrive, she left it to me to tell our kids she wasn’t coming.

Her sins were many, and mounted with the years without apology. My husband got tired of her hurting our kids, emailed her five sentences politely informing her the correct spelling of our daughter’s name, and requested if she was going to send them birthday cards or gifts to please do so on or around their respective birthdays.

My sister decided he was asking too much and emailed back that “though I am deeply in love with your kids, and it breaks my heart to do so,” she was withdrawing from their lives entirely. She stopped calling every few months. For a couple of years she sent the kids birthday cards when it struck her fancy—weeks late to our daughter, if at all, but managed to get cards to our son within days of his, professing her deep affection and love for him. It took all my will not to shed the cards in a million tiny pieces. Her sentiments to him were totally self-serving, for her ego, her ‘loving’ words meaningless, meant to pump up her self-image alone.

“Love is an ACTION, what we do, not some abstract in our heads,” my husband and I teach our kids. “Don’t profess love in words without taking actions to show it,” we preach. “And don’t accept words of love as truth without seeing the actions that actualize their sentiment.”

Over the years my sister had been so disrespectful to our youngest that our daughter never really formed a bond, but her choice to terminate her relationship with our kids deeply hurt our son. She was important to him because the few extended family members we have left, namely my brother and father, didn’t call or acknowledge our children in any way.

My mom died when our daughter was just 2, and our son only 4 yrs old, so she never really got to know our kids. She did love them though. Deeply. Profoundly. And they got that. How did they know?

  • She came to visit often.
  • She called them on the phone every couple of days.
  • She mailed them presents on time, and called to sing Happy Birthday on their special days.
  • She spelled their names right.
  • She stayed abreast of their lives through me, my husband, and through the kids, consistently showed interest in their interests and feelings, and shared her world with them.

My mother often extolled how much she loved our kids, to me, to them, to anyone who’d listen, but she also showed it, so my children knew it was real.

The day my dad called to tell me of my mom’s cancer diagnosis, after I hung up the phone I said to my husband, “Well, that’s the end of my family.” She was the conduit that kept us together, in contact, a feature in each other’s lives. She fervently believed people come and go, but family is forever, the folks with which your love and loyalty should reside. Within a year of my mother’s passing, my sister and father checked out of my life, and the lives of our kids, too busy with their own to bother with me or mine.

My father, like my sister, practices love in the abstract. He never talks to his grandkids, never calls [even me], never asks to talk to them when I call him, and rarely even asks about them. He doesn’t acknowledge their birthdays anymore. I got tired of reminding him with multiple calls and emails weekly the month before their special days, then daily reminders the week before. The rare occasions I call my dad, he always professes how much he loves my kids, how important they are to him, though he does nothing to actually show them this. He never did, I just didn’t notice, as my mother’s effusive love overshadowed his self-love. When I mention his grandkids, he reminds me to tell them that grandpa loves them, and misses them. But I don’t. I tell them, “Popi says hi.” I don’t want our children to ever get the impression it’s acceptable to say you love someone when you take virtually no action to show it.

Her body ravaged by cancer and near death, my mother insisted my father take her to Toys R Us. She bought each of our kids their next birthday gift, and made him swear to mail them on time. She was hoping to establish a tradition (an action) for my father to adopt for his grandchildren after she was gone. He delivered her dying gifts to our kids two years later, on his way to visit my sister in Washington.

In a thousand lifetimes I cannot repay my mom for her precious gift of LOVE I now model to our children. But I cannot buy into her belief [and society’s rhetoric] that family and love are synonymous anymore.

LOVE, like potential, is meaningless unless put into ACTION.

Jobless America

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Took a family vacation to Yellowstone last summer. After a day of exploring the spectacular park, we ate dinner at Canyon Village, a sprawling commercial development in the mist of the natural wonders. The kids wanted some souvenirs so we stopped in the gift shop before eating. The clerk at check-out was a kid, no more than 20, as was most of the customer service staff in the park. His name tag said Mal-Chin, and under his name was his country of origin: Korea.

Seated inside the restaurant we were served water by Jianyu, his country of origin: China.

We were served rolls by Mi-Cha, Korea again.

Earlier in the day, when visiting the geyser, Old Faithful, we stopped in the mini-mart at Yellowstone Lodge. The check-out guy was Yeo, China again. At breakfast, at the restaurant in the lodge, our waitress was Fedheeta, country of origin: India.

Our waitress at dinner was Kathy, her country of origin: USA. She was probably 1 of 10 Americans out of the 50 or more employees of the park I saw that day.

Yellowstone is the United State’s first national park. Over 2 million acres of pristine, protected wilderness resides in a massive cauldron of a dormant super-volcano in the states of Montana and Idaho, with the majority of the park in Wyoming. The USA preserved this land for families and fans of natural beauty to come explore, discover and study natures wonders for present and future generations. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars goes to maintaining Yellowstone National Park annually.

So why are most of their service staff from everywhere but the USA? I asked our waitress, Kathy, at dinner in Canyon Village. Why are our kids not landing these jobs, which provide a great opportunity to acquire sales and communications skills, add to college applications…etc?

The American kids get fired here constantly, Kathy told my family after taking our order. They party a lot, get drunk, don’t show up for work, and are rude to the customers. They write the orders wrong, or charge people the wrong amount because they can’t do simple math quickly. The management can’t keep them for more than a few weeks into the summer because they’re mostly irresponsible and lazy.

Her words literally hurt me, because I knew they were the truth.

Kathy went on to describe the programs that land the out-of-country kids the jobs at our national parks. They pay thousands just to get here, she said, which is generally less than the salary for six days of work a week, including the food and lodging during their contract with the park. They clearly want to be here very badly, usually to acquire work skills and develop their English fluency, and they do an excellent job. It’s easy to see why management prefers them.

Heavy sigh.

World News Tonight on ABC used to have a segment they called Made in America. It was a joke, an embarrassment to any sensible, educated, aware adult who knows that China produces over 1/3 of all global manufacturing, with Mexico and Korea close behind them. The World News segment was touchy-feely, saccharin and all smiles with David Muir interviewing American manufactures of unique hats and scarves, or a cupcake maker gone viral, and then touted these businesses as being the cornerstones of our future success. This segment is no longer produced.

Hats and cupcakes won’t cure our supply-chain issues. The USA is not, and will never reclaim its manufacturing base when we charge in excess of ten times as much to do the work other nations are willing to do, and do well, for so much less.

The internet has united our world, as it gives most everyone the opportunity to see how others live. It’s easy to find the American lifestyle attractive. Our families generally have warm houses with running water, electricity for light, computers, entertainment systems, cars in almost every garage, freedom from religious and/or political persecution (sort of). Most countries still aspire to be US, to model our independence and luxuries.

Watch World News Tonight’s entire broadcast, and David Muir will tell you all about rising inflation, families charging groceries and gas just to get to work and feed their families, maxing out their credit limits. He’ll tell you about our personal debt crisis, where the average American has over $15,000 in credit card debt, and he’ll introduce you to one of the many families bankrupted from a medical catastrophe not cover by their insurance or Medicare.

This decline in the American lifestyle will continue for most U.S. citizens, and eventually even the 1% wealthy will be effected, guaranteed, if we stay the course we are on.

Like it or not, we are a global world now. Today’s manufacturing, trade and technology bind us, and gives us the opportunity to thrive as a people, a planet; or we can destroy everything we have here, through our laziness and greed.

Our K-12 public education system is failing our kids, regardless that we keep pumping more and more tax dollars into education. U.S. now ranks 36th out of the 79 countries and regions in math, behind China, South Korea, even Canada. It is no wonder U.S. kids aren’t hired for even the simplest retail positions at our national parks. Our kids are unprepared to compete globally. And according to our server, Kathy, at Yellowstone, who went to a private school back home in New York, the American employees clearly demonstrated their lack of education in their reading, writing, and math skills, in addition to their poor interpersonal skills with customers.

Cutting school hours of instruction with “teacher furlough days,” short days, and extending ‘teacher work days’ has not, does not, and will not produce a nation of creators. It takes education, practice, and focused persistence to produce anything of value. For the U.S. to achieve the potential our parent’s achieved—have jobs, and retain the lifestyle to which most of the middle-class has become accustomed, we’re going to have to limit our play/relax time, and work a hell of a lot harder.

Partying, with attitude, instead of doing their work, like the stream of U.S. kids fired from Yellowstone; playing Halo, or killing endless hours on TikTok or SnapChat, or binge watching Netflix instead of studying math and science won’t help our kids compete in the job market locally or globally. H1B visas requested by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other tech companies reached a whopping 308,613 H-1B registrations for 2022, a 12.5% rise over 2021.

Greed, laziness, the-world-owes-me work ethic so many Americans possess won’t win us jobs, or help us keep them here in the States. We must teach our kids that PRACTICE is the only way to get good at anything. This means investing the time and energy into academics instead of iPhones, social media and video games, which means parents need to pay more attention and invoke more discipline. It means educators need to step up to the plate and give more homework, harder tests, teach longer hours for the same money because giving more money to education shows little improvement in student performance.

We are a nation of [mostly] Christian believers, but if Jesus really saves, he’d better start saving our kids, because it sure as hell isn’t our education system, and clearly most parents aren’t doing any better. Raising a generation of spoiled, unmotivated, under-educated Americans can not, does not, and WILL NOT compete in our global economy.