It’s been almost a month since I’ve been home but I’ve finally returned from my much-anticipated trip to Asia. It was well worth it. I’ll spare you the details but know that I achieved what I set out to achieve, and then some. I went into this remote work/vacation set up knowing it would be tough working Pacific Time hours while I was in GMT +9, while spending time with my family, and while site-seeing. After an hour's delay and a 9-hour flight home, I couldn’t wait to summarize my learnings here.
One of my goals was to truly reconnect with my parents. Now that I’m a parent, I wanted to have a heart-to-heart with my parents and for us to get to know each other better. I haven’t really been close with my dad, and my mom is not the same person she was 10 years ago, and as they get older, they need to be assured that their boy is doing alright and that they’ve done a great job raising me. I think we all learned more about each other and ourselves during the last 30 days than we have in the last 30 years, and that’s no exaggeration.
During the trip, I did my own version of the “mom test”. I wanted to know if my parents would understand what the app did after showing it to them. I did a quick demo and my dad was like “Oh, instead of writing down your story, the app helps you tell it!”. I’m paraphrasing and translating here since his response was in Korean, but he got it right away. This was a shocker since my dad doesn’t know jack about tech, and almost refuses to accept it. I assumed my mom would get it since she’s a computer wiz in her own right and she caught on just as quickly as my dad. Still, I was surprisingly shocked, but more importantly very happy. For once, my parents knew what I was doing, and thought what I’m building is something that could be meaningful to a whole lot of people and their loved ones.
AND THEY CAUGHT ON RIGHT AWAY!
They were genuinely proud and I felt like that was a goal I haven’t reached with both of them at the same time, like ever.
During the last 30 days, I also had my team overseas help me with my marketing and SEO. With one contract finishing, and another contractor I had to let go, a single marketer remains on the team. With limited connectivity, I was expecting the team to just do their thing without much intervention from me, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Now that I’m back home, I’ve reconnected with my marketer to refocus, and to shift priorities. He’s going to come back with a new plan so that we can start executing right away. Hire fast, fire fast, and continue to iterate fast.
So marketing is getting fixed, and my parents love the app. Now what? This week is going to be big. My co-founder is flying out and we are going to spend a few days calibrating our efforts while getting our pitch ready. We will have to identify and finish some prerequisite work so we can correctly position ourselves, and the rest of our time will be spent strategizing on the next big goals.
This is the year for both of us.
Before joining, it’s something we have said to each other independently and the only way for us to move quickly and accurately is to take leaps and strides in the same direction, toward the same goals. Until then, I have to clean up my house and make some room to crash.
