Twitter blew up over the past few weeks about some guy named Peter Kavinsky and the resurgent ideal of young love. In digging, I found a light-hearted, well cast, adapted to screenplay, and directed, quirky Young Adult romantic comedy called To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before on Netflix that is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Race and Culture Are Not Characters, Nor Are They Ignored

So much about Hollywood’s narrative of race and culture are that they often need to be centerpieces in the storyline in order to tell the story — that they are causal to key parts of the film or are foundational secondary characters themselves in screenplays.

Race and culture in “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” are deeply woven into character backstories and identities, where the roles they play are much more transformative to the viewing experience. Characters in this film are afforded the time to develop and the complexities of their backstories, race and culture included (but also fractured families and lost parents). Here, race and culture offer opportunities for curiosity, learning, and connection instead of stereotype and trope.

In Lara Jean Conway’s story, we find ourselves in a world where neither race nor culture are a part of the primary storyline — they do not impact choices that are made between the two characters that affect the primary outcomes of the love story at all, nor do race and culture come up as points of friction among the secondary characters in the film. It’s certainly not a post-racial world, but it is an ambitious view into what American culture could evolve to — where race and culture are acknowledged but are not necessarily drivers of how we are perceived.

In fact, there is a striking and notable amount of diversity in the background characters in nearly every scene. For what looks like a fairly small town, viewers experience a remarkable amount of ethnic representation at that high school and in town, and it all feels very natural. When Lara Jean walks out of the cafeteria post back-pocket spin and love letter, viewers are delighted with an array of faces of all races.

It is a world where one of Lara Jean’s former crushes is not only black but also gay — and while he may be tentative about shouting his sexual orientation from the rooftops (because “it’s just… high school”), it is still common knowledge and he gets invited to the popular crowd parties. It is the potential of what American cities and towns can be.

The Conways themselves being an interracial family in some modern English speaking country offer viewers very little additional context when it comes to the struggles of growing up not quite White and not quite Korean. It’s simply a part of the film’s subtext — they live in a world where race and culture do not influence relationships and their outcomes. Given that as of 2013, 1 in 4 living in the US were first generation American or had at least 1 parent who was foreign born, to assume that race and culture can be entirely neutral in America is still somewhat of a delightful stretch. And this absence, while some may argue is naive at its best, makes me hopeful.

In modern day American politics, there are not many examples of great bi-partisan collaboration — where one can respect their peer on the other side of the political spectrum and find some middle ground to incrementally move the country forward. I see the “break stuff with a sledgehammer” and “I don’t need to work with the other side in order to get shit done” attitudes bleeding into the private sector, and it is troubling. Not necessarily troubling in the disruptive nature of this kind of attitude, but troubling in that many times this kind of working attitude is simply not as productive as collaboration.

Executive function muscles that educators spend years working with young children on — listening, inhibition, emotional control, and initiation as examples — simply don’t get flexed when you fail to try and cross the chasm and figure out how to find common ground.

So what’s happening and how can we turn things around?

The most successful politicians and leaders, Senator McCain included, seem to have refined their skills in key areas that mirror what I have seen and experienced as successful examples of creating mutual respect… even when two people fundamentally disagree. It comes down to asking yourself five key questions:

1. Know Why You Are Here: What is the goal of this conversation? Do we agree on that goal?
2. Start With Curiousity: The person on the other side knows something that I don’t. What is it?
3. Don’t Make It Personal: How can I make this conversation about the topic and NOT about the person?
4. Find The Anchor: Is there something we can both agree on here?

And lastly, because oftentimes as conversations become heated, people too often talk over each other:

5. Listen, Then Think, Then Respond: Why do I need to interrupt this person right now? What do I gain by stopping them from finishing their thought?

We are a social species. We spend our entire lives engaging with people. Our neighbors, our family members, our co-workers, strangers in line for coffee. Chances are, the person you are talking to has a very different life experience and by taking a moment to stop and listen I guarantee you that you will learn something new and be a better person for it. By consistently modeling this behavior, you create an environment where others around you feel heard and respected. In turn, the feeling becomes mutual and the job of moving forward in times of disagreement become easier to accomplish.

Annie Tsai

And it’s happening all around us. It’s happening to us. And we allow ourselves to do nothing about it.

In the early years of motherhood, I fell in and out of what felt like must have been depression. Wasn’t sure exactly what to call it. Did it have a name? Did it matter? The feeling of complete isolation, being required to do a job that I felt completely incapable of doing, the feeling that my body was failing me and I was failing my baby because I couldn’t feed this little being that came 8 weeks early. It was a lot, and it was a dark time. What brought me back to light were those micro moments of joy seeing a smile from my newborn, hearing his giggle, experiencing him finally responding to and interacting with me. It was just enough joy to keep me going and eventually I was able to self-regulate my emotions and believe in myself enough for his joy to be additive and delightful instead of a lifeline.

As adults, we don’t often have those in our lives to bring those moments of joy and surprise when we need it, and we too often don’t listen to our bodies and intuition when we are clearly saying that THIS is what we need.

Be someone’s joy today, tomorrow, and everyday. It’s good for you too, trust me.

They say the founder journey will force you to look at yourself in the mirror in ways that you never have, and ask questions where there would otherwise be no circumstance to cause you to ask. I could never have imagined how true that would be.

I founded EdioLabs because a lot of people I cared about were experiencing the same challenges that I had experienced with understanding and nurturing curiosity with our young kids. And I wanted to help them. I lucked out — a dear friend was equally as passionate about the problem and wanted to help me bring my vision to life through technology. So, we took the leap.

Most I talked to believed in the problem we saw and some version of how we were solving it. After 9 months of learning, testing, and building, I went out to secure a pre-seed round of funding just as we were about to launch a beta. I was about halfway through raising when my co-founder, after 10 months of being deep in the woods with me, had to step back for personal reasons I won’t go into here.

It sent a shockwave through my system that frankly I still haven’t quite recovered from yet. Tactically, I didn’t feel comfortable taking money with so much uncertainty, so I stopped fundraising. I sorely regretted canceling cable for several weeks, and ultimately had to come to terms with the simple truth that of all the challenges I had been faced with in the past 17 years of working in software, it was this one that left me utterly directionless.

It took a long time for me to understand why I was so upset. A part of it was that I felt like he gave up on the vision. A part of it was that I felt like he was giving up on me, even though he has repeatedly said that neither was the case. A part of it was that I was so embarrassed that I had put myself out there in front of all of these investors, entrepreneurs, academics, educators, family, and friends with some grand vision only to have the rug pulled out from under my feet. A part of it is that I should have known better and seen it coming. But the main reason I was so upset was that if I were to pick up and keep going, I would probably have to do it on my own.

Those who know me well know that I get much of my energy from the people around me, and I love the process of creating together. So I honestly questioned whether I would be able to do my best work without someone I trusted by my side. It triggered a process of introspection which forced me to outline all of my options, ranging from finding another technical co-founder to doing it alone to closing up shop and moving on.

What I came to realize is that while I was truly energized by being solely accountable for bringing to market something that people love and will pay for, much of the process during the zero-to-one stage of a new company does not honor what I really love to do. And that is to help others be successful. What was missing throughout this past year — which I filled in a number of ways through mentoring, writing, speaking, and advising — was the sense of feeling whole through the celebration of other people’s successes and knowing that I played some role in helping them get there. It is in personal connection and relationship that I find the most joy. And when you’re a solo founder, there’s not a ton of opportunity for personal connection.

I found myself remembering a mentor’s favorite reminder to those around her who so often attested to wanting it all. She would say, “You can have it all, you just can’t have it all at the same time.” And then I remembered another mentor’s footnote on the single most difficult moment in time for a founder is about 1.5 years in when it’s about as low as it can get for not having very much. Falling prey to the gut of the trough of sorrow, perhaps?

Throughout this process of introspection, one truth surfaced: I’m not the kind of entrepreneur I thought I was. My entrepreneurial spirit is rooted in creating an ecosystem of success around me, not for me. I connect so powerfully with the principles of education and human psychology because I love what happens when you ask the right questions and provide a scaffold to help someone get from A to infinity faster. It’s funny, we often spend so much of our lives reacting to what’s presented to us, that it’s a rarity to be celebrated when we are able to clearly articulate what we actually want. I want a butterfly farm. The question is this— what is the right path to get there?

If you’re wondering what my decision was on how to move forward, I haven’t made one yet. So, more to come.

If you are a #momintech and have a question you’d like answered in this column, please send me a tweet and let’s connect. All questions are anonymized and shared with permission.

Question from a Moms in Tech member:

I just got off the phone with a recruiter who delivered an offer after asking me for my salary expectations. I deflected as best I could, but when I finally got the offer it was 25k lower than I expected. This job has a lot of benefits for me (close to home, new and growing field). Any advice on how to get them to up their salary? -PRIORITIES

Hey there PRIORITIES.

We are seeing more and more Moms in Tech asking about how to navigate this very awkward situation, especially given the recent changes in California hiring practices legislation.

The situation: You want the job, but you feel like they may be lowballing you. So naturally, you want to figure out how to get them to a more competitive range. However, there are additional considerations to recognize and honor.

Understanding what’s most important to you within the context of the negotiation is equally as important as knowing what you are worth on the market.

PRIORITIES, you noted that commute and opportunity were two additional facets of the opportunity that were pretty important to you… important enough for you to bring up as an additional consideration balancing your disappointment against an offer 25k below what you were expecting. Are there others? If so, what are they? Write them down. What is on your must-have list for your next gig? What’s on your nice-to-have list?

Take the time to commit these to paper. You might be surprised what bubbles to the top and for what reasons. For one mom, commute became less important because she had an amazing extended family support system so felt good about taking an upside opportunity with more travel. For another mom, she put proximity to her children’s schools as the top priority because she had committed to volunteering in their classrooms on a regular basis. Every person’s situation is unique, so documenting your priorities will go a long way in providing you with clarity into how to enter the negotiation.

That said…let’s get back to this question of the offer being 25k lower than what you were expecting:

• Please do not think this is a situation where you need to choose between the two benefits you listed and an industry-competitive salary.
• It may be them, not you.
• It could also be you.

One of three things could be happening:

You are being lowballed → They are expecting to negotiate and are starting in a lower range assuming it will give them maximum flexibility to increase the package at a later time.

Your expectations are too high → You are most likely using a contextually inaccurate comparable. There is also a chance that you may think that you (or the role that they are filling) are worth more than they do. When this gap exists, I generally find that the internal reset can be too jarring unless the recruiter and/or hiring manager are exceptional at helping you through the reset process with fact-based perspectives while painting a vision of what’s possible. In short, you may end up walking away from this one.

Their expectations are too low → This can happen for a number of reasons. For instance, if they haven’t adjusted benchmarks over 6 months in a bullish employment market, there’s a very real chance that the market has moved on them. When this is the case, candidates can often provide fact-based information in the form of other offers or known market comparables to assist in resetting expectations. Often, it becomes more worth it for the prospective employer to bend now versus start over in the search as they will likely encounter similar pushback anyway.

Okay, let’s remove all of the other variables and simply assume you are being lowballed. That’s rude, right? Maybe not.

There are variables on the company side that affect the salaries they can and should offer (which you may not necessarily have factored into your expectations) such as stage, funding or available capital, geography, and state of the cap table. If any of these are the case, it would benefit you to have a transparent conversation with the recruiter and/or hiring manager to understand how these factors play into the offer you received, and where within the compensation package there is room to negotiate. For instance, in an early-stage company there are greater cash compensation and fewer equity or variable constraints. Once you understand the logic behind how the company structures offers, you should have a better sense of what you have to work with from a negotiation standpoint.

Additionally, there are variables on your side that affect your own expectations of salary range such as:

• What you make today
• What you have defined as an ideal compensation package regardless of who is making the offer
• What you know about what other companies are paying for similar roles
• What you know about what that company may be paying others in similar roles and why
• Whether or not you possess niche skills that others vying for the same role do not have

A word of caution here — just because you know what someone else is making, it does not mean that you have the right to ask for the same level of compensation.

I know, there are many not-great things about this system. However, given the system, information like this still puts you at an advantage given it is an important anchor that you can use to articulate the value you bring at the compensation levels that you are looking for.

Focus on the unique value that you bring and why the company needs to pay more for it.

As an example: “Given XYZ Company has recently aggressively poached data analysts and scientists from your competition and I have significant experience leading insight teams that drive business transformation, I know that I can quickly inject the leadership you need to accelerate your 3-year growth plan.”

In short, they need you and therefore need to align more closely to your value rubric.

Now compare the value/needs messaging to this: “Thanks for the offer. Actually, I think it should be $xxx because that’s what I’ve seen in the market for roles like this.” ← Very simply put, not as compelling.

Negotiating is often thought of as an uncomfortable situation, and you might want to just “get it over with.” Instead, consider reframing the situation — this negotiation is an opportunity for you to ensure that the company you are joining is on the same page as you when it comes to the value you are bringing. If you aren’t able to get there, then it’s probably better that you find that out sooner than later. And if you are, then your baseline for success is already defined and you are well on your way to setting you and your new employer up for success.

Best of luck, PRIORITIES, and please do let us Moms in Tech know how the chapter ended!

Every day at Moms in Tech, we are coming together to help each other be just a little more successful in work and life. I’ve noticed some themes in the questions and experiences many moms have had throughout their careers, and am excited to be starting up a new monthly advice column to share the wealth of experiences and rich stories from this amazing group of moms. Advice From the Field is a compilation of some of the most interesting questions from this unique community of women, and my advice for them. If you are a #momintech and have a question you’d like answered on this column, please send me a tweet and let’s connect. All questions are anonymized and approved.

Question from a Moms in Tech member:

I have an idea for a software startup that I’ve been playing with for the past six months and have started writing a business plan around. I would be the technical founder and would need someone to do the CEO/business part. While I have worked at a few startups up until this point and today am a senior development manager, I struggle with the thought of founding a company while being stretched as thin as my husband and I already with two young kids. What should I do? FUTUREFOUNDER

Hey there FUTUREFOUNDER.

Can I just say, bravo to you for so many things:

• For taking your technical capabilities, turning them back inwardly, and applying your talents to the problems you see around you;
• For listening to yourself and nurturing that idea;
• For taking the time to consider how much of yourself you have already given to your family and others in your life; and
• For understanding that founding a software company is extremely time-consuming.

Indeed, founding a company is a decision that affects every aspect of your life. It’s about as glamorous as what the first three months of having a newborn felt like (for you non-moms out there, imagine how unprepared and borderline depressed you might feel starting a new job as an astrophysicist when you were a marketing major that skipped Physics 101 in college while sleep deprived with dirty hair and only a box of Kind bars to provide you with sustenance while you’re getting puked on), except for one or two years… or longer. Don’t get me started on imposter syndrome. That said, without knowing the details of the problem space you’re going after, it is worth noting some distinct advantages and disadvantages in your situation as you think through the decision to jump into entrepreneurship.

Pro: You are technical.

I’m in a lot of founder groups, and the number of non-technical to technical founders seeking counterparts often seems like it’s 500:1... or more. Probably more. That is to say, there are a lot of people with (maybe good) ideas and not that many people who have the technical capacity to actually bring their ideas to life. And in the early days, software development and human capital costs are the two primary spends. When those can be wrapped up in the founder, your actual start-up costs are significantly lower. So, I would say you’re at an advantage already.

Con(…?): You have competing priorities.

You have kids. You have friends (that you sometimes actually talk to). You have PTA meetings. You have extracurricular activities to shuttle kids to, etc., etc., etc. Mostly, you have kids.

To be honest, this is both an advantage and a disadvantage. One of the things I always hear from moms is that after having kids, their superhero powers became multitasking, time management, and decisiveness. This, too, was my experience. The venture capitalists who have mentored me over the years have often talked about the power of extreme resource constraints, both in time and money. And in extreme dearth of either time or money, you must get very crisp on your decision-making capabilities very fast. Well, you’re probably pretty great there already.

Pro: You’ve already founded a startup.

Hello, you and your cofounder (your partner) started a family! I love this post by Angela Pickett on the crushing parallels between having a baby and starting a business. To paraphrase, you’ve already been through many of the harsh struggles a first time founder will go through: the challenge of knowing exactly what to do, the loneliness of being the person at the top, the financial burden this new thing places on your life, and often learning too late the importance of having a network that you can trust, share your struggles with, and learn from.

Con(…?): You need to think about healthcare.

With children come baseline requirements that are often not met in the very early days of founder life. If you and your husband are relying on your existing healthcare to cover your children, then it can be a financial burden to supplement or match coverage to reach parity with what you have today. That said, companies like TriNet are doing great work in supporting the earliest stage startups and offering competitive group coverage rates to even the smallest of teams. Alternatively, take a look at your husband’s health coverage and calculate what it would look like for the family to be covered by his plan if possible.

Con(…?): You need to consider your personal financial runway.

This would be the case even if you weren’t a mom, but more likely than not, you also have other financial commitments in place — such as potentially a mortgage, preschool fees, car payments, car and life insurance premiums, etc. So, you need to ensure that before you go into a new venture, you have a reasonable runway. My husband and I agreed on up to three years. I’ve seen other couples agree on 18 and 24 months. Give yourself time to build enough traction to support a funding event if that’s the route you think you’ll be taking.

Pro: You can pick your own hours.

Sure, you’ll be working a lot of hours. But, you can choose when that work happens. And for a busy mom, that’s GOLD. You might actually find this setup to be more favorable than a FTE job with a 45-minute one-way commute. As an example, here’s my schedule today (I work from home):

• 7–9 am, breakfast with my son and take him to school
• 9–4:30 pm, work, with a few breaks to walk the dog and run errands
• 4:30–5 pm, pick up the kid
• 5–8 pm, dinner, hang with the family, bedtime
• 8–11 pm or later, work

Here’s what my schedule looked like a few years ago:

• 6–8 am, wake, get ready for work, leave when kid wakes up
• 8–8:45 am, commute
• 8:45–5:45 pm, work
• 5:45–6:30 pm, commute, pick up kid
• 6:30–8 pm, run errands, dinner, bedtime
• 8–11 pm or later, work

The difference may initially seem minor, but can anyone tell me how long it might take to make a quick run to the grocery store during rush hour? Up to an hour. What about taking local roads from the grocery store back home during rush hour? That goes from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. And in the snap of your fingers, it’s almost 8 pm and time to get your kid ready for bed. How much time have you had to be present with your children on the weeknights anyway? Almost none. So in reality, it’s likely that more flexibility here is actually better for a busy working mom.

On a side note, I really wish more companies would support flexible work schedules and remote working.

Pro: You might not have to quit your job to build a prototype.

Some people might call me crazy for this. But ask yourself — what do you need to build in order to test your hypothesis? Do you have to go all out and build a fully functional product? Or, is it something much smaller? Depending on what you’re going after, you might not need much in order to get a test going. Take a step back from the details of a full-blown product and start with answering this question: What is the core of the problem I’m solving, and what can I do in order to validate that people will pay for how I’m solving that problem?

Final Thoughts: Get Aligned

The final and potentially most important consideration to think through is your relationship with your partner. When it comes to your partner, there are two important topics to align on:

• Domestic Equity: It’s well-documented and often talked about in mom circles that historically women have taken the majority of the responsibility when it comes to house-life. I’ve coined our job to be “the COO of the family” because it’s most representative of what many moms actually do at home. However, I’ve also known many couples where the partners have taken the time to define that COO role and parse out responsibilities to owners. When this happens, domestic equity is much more probable and as a busy working mom thinking about founding a startup, you have the right levels of support from home to support this new venture.
• Definitions of Success or Failure: Take the time to come to an agreement with your partner on what success looks like in the first six months, second six months, and so on. Agree on a time frame by which you are giving yourself creative freedom, and when you want to be showing some positive forward movement. When you and your partner agree to this, also talk about the risks and challenges that can potentially arise that could force you to reassess these timelines. The more you and your partner talk about definitions and timelines upfront, the easier it will be for him to understand that the down moments in the founder journey are temporary and his job is to emotionally support you through it.

I’m not sure if you’ve been keeping tally, but I have. FUTUREFOUNDER, you seem to have a lot of really great Pros going for you, and several considerations you need to think through as potential Cons. Best of luck in your journey.

If you have other advice or comments for FUTUREFOUNDER, please leave them below. I’ll make sure she gets them!

Authentic Connectedness → Escapism → People as Data → People as Brands… and now to back Authentic Connectedness

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about relationships, and how the dynamic of relationships has changed over the past 20 years. Affecting that dynamic are visceral, emotional, and temporal systems that live within each of us — trust, love, hate, our memories — and the technology that has fundamentally changed how we “do” nearly every part of our lives.

This piece seeks to understand the journey the internet has enabled (forced) many of us to go on. And from that understanding, offer both a fundamental truth and a prediction for what’s next.

Authentic Connections = Technology Enabled.

When I first got online with my 4800 baud modem and Compaq desktop in the mid 90’s, I found a world that simply did not exist anywhere else. Thousands of people in internet relay chat rooms who were coming together over shared interests and without a care of their geographic constraints. It was pure magic.

The core of the magic however was rooted in how authentic the connections were. Even though pseudonymity was the norm and actively embraced, authenticity still seemed to reign and many of the friendships that started online translated into the “real” world over the years. As a result, I’m still connected with many of the people I met back then. Later in college I would write that the internet and online communities enabled a new dimension of reality, one that perhaps Einstein would have added to his list along with time, space, and tesseract. It was perhaps the same world that those who succumb to Alzheimer’s eventually live in entirely — the world inside our minds that is deeply disconnected with their physical surroundings. People were being enabled to live two distinctly unique lives at the same time, and in those early days, choosing to live those lives authentically.

Enabling Escapism and Anonymity

As modems started coming stock with personal computers and AOL — yes the AOL, and all the other early ISPs — brought that same magic to the masses, I quickly encountered another side of the Internet where escapism and anonymity were the name of the game. Online communities relying on user generated profiles for identities enabled people to hide behind avatars and pseudonyms. Here, people were choosing who they were, how they wanted to be identified, and how much of their authentic selves they wanted to share. Where else could anybody be and say whatever they wanted without recourse? Can we talk about catfishing for a minute?

Bad Behavior =Technology Enabled.

In reality, bad behavior was enabled due to both a lack of technology and lack of design foresight. One’s identity could remain anonymous because there was no real way to connect who you were online with who you were offline, and the world of pseudonymity at scale became a reality. The 2000’s kicked off an age of en mass experimental escapism on the internet a la MySpace, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, and tumblr.

Experimental Escapism = Technology Enabled.

The juxtaposition of early social network taglines is in itself masters thesis worthy:

• Friendster → “the fun and safe way to energize your social life”
• MySpace → “a place for friends”
• Facebook → “connecting you with the people around you”

Regardless of how much research goes into that final tagline, the nuance of word choice is extraordinary. Note that Friendster and Facebook both leaned into language that was more rooted in the realness of the real world — “life”, “people around you”, “energize” — words that emote a physicality that the internet simply does not possess. Even if that’s not really what came next, there was a clear distinction between the anonymity and identity experimentation that MySpace offered and Facebook, which in 2008 took single sign-on to the consumer with Facebook Connect and effectively enabled a single, consolidated view of the verified consumer online. And let’s be honest, is it entirely surprising that Reddit, a platform that is fueled by anonymity, got it’s initial traction through fake accounts?

People as Data = Technology Enabled.

The SSO and connected profile strategy of course has its roots in making Facebook data and advertising powerhouse that it is — but something much bigger happened, both for the better and the worse.

The launch of Facebook Connect, along with the growing popularity of OAuth and OpenID in the mid-to-late 2000’s created an infrastructure for online identities to be connected and verified by their offline worlds. Companies like Disqus were also thinking about connected identities with SSO in similar ways, building commenting infrastructures that eventually enabled Facebook connect and broadened the reach of the “single view of you online” which are still widely used today.

I will be the first to admit that identity experimentation has never stopped on the internet. Even today, we see waves of false identities, claims, and bots in the millions on social networks like Twitter and Reddit where relatively few identities are verified. Reddit in particular, where the demographic has always leaned towards homogeny, has had continual challenges with harassment over the years (but thankfully more recently has taken positive action). Facebook has also always had its challenges with fake profiles. With the general population however, consumers bought into the convenience of Facebook Connect and Google OpenID. By 2016, nearly 93% of consumers online preferred social login to traditional email registration.

What could go wrong with a single data view of a person as we roamed the world wide web?

As we turned into the second decade of the 2000’s, the age of brands finally both understanding how to leverage and measure social media as a core conversion channel and having the tools to optimize their methodologies was upon us. Without the consumer realizing it until years later, they were being influenced in their purchase decisions nearly every minute they were surfing or engaging with others on the web. And along with that data came the realization that a powerful yet grossly underutilized digital marketing strategy was to leverage the consumer themselves as the voice of the brand.

The practice of customer marketing has evolved significantly during this time and both on the consumer and enterprise front. Organizations with customer experience and customer success strategies that involved a healthy dose of storytelling and connection were able to gain material momentum over their counterparts that did not magnify the essence and voice of their customers. Customer stories — their challenges, successes, and the trust that extended out of empathy — became the most powerful tool of all for brands, and a key driver of both retention and new business. It was Don Draper standing in a conference room pitching the carousel, with the data to prove that the tears you were fighting back listening to him bear his soul were actually dollar signs flying out of your wallet.

People as Brands = technology enabled. But also democracy enabled.

Along with the impact to a company’s bottom line though came the consumerization and democratization of branding itself. And as individuals began to leverage social media as a platform for whatever they chose to influence, the monetization of influence on the internet quickly became a tool for both good (GoFundMe, Kickstarter, charity collaboration), and concern.

Perhaps the most powerful catalyst for the democratization of branding however happened offline— the 2008 writers strike. With the professionals on strike, networks turned to the COPS template. Reality TV mixed with social media became a potent formula for an entire generation of amateur celebrities who were at their core centered around self-promotion and individual platform, and celebrity practically overnight became democratized. And while marketers are showing no signs of putting the brakes on influencer and digital marketing, what they have found is that the most followed celebrities on social media aren’t actually the ones that generate the best conversions. Ahh, data. And so opens the floodgates for micro-influencer and niche conversations to make a play. That combined with the cyclical outcry about the inherent problems with anonymity on the internet, and…

Are We Back to Authentic Connections Again? I Think So.

As a society I want to say we’ve learned a lot about the power of amplification through technology over the past 20 years — how quickly we can adapt, what’s possible when we come together in a unified voice, how long-understood insights about human psychology can drive behavior a la online dating and charity telethons, and just how challenging it can be to know what the truth is.

One truly positive outcome of the rise of “people as brands” is the realization that at some point, the pseudonym and anonymous online identity needs to become a living, breathing person in order to maximize influence and connection (although the case can be made that a few — Anonymous and Bitcoin’s Founder, for example — have successfully transcended this step). It’s through this realization and the embracing of one’s own identity and persona online where relationships at their core become meaningful to us again. In 2017, we saw the rise of Facebook Groups being utilized heavily as a tool for nurturing safe, connected relationships where agendas, harassment, and hate hiding behind anonymity and pseudonymity could be policed by people who cared about each other. And in that rejection of escapism, we get back to the core of relationships.

What’s Next?

It’s difficult to bracket this evolution into discreet months and years. The evolution of relationships online is like a symphony playing Canon In D or Row Row Row Your Boat on perpetual repeat along the technology adoption curve. What I believe to be true is that today is this: while the internet has enabled massive scale for message distribution, commercial interest, testing, manipulation, and movements, absolutely nothing has changed about what people need out of connection, trust, and love.

As technologists, marketers, customer advocates, and consumers, I hope we continue to embrace the trend of authentic connectedness online in the conversations we engage in and the products we build. It’s a good thing.

Real is a good thing.

Sure, the aggregate of these moments creates the rich and deeply authentic story of our lives. But I’d bet that most would choose Door Number 2 to ugly crying in the shower so no one can hear you.

And yet, the ugly cry was an important moment too as in this new life, we parents must learn to accept, respect, and manage new emotions of fear, helplessness, and unrelenting compromise. And letting go. Nobody told me parenting was this hard. Nobody tells anyone that parenting is as hard as it is.

The real thing that nobody ever tells you though is that single biggest challenge about being a parent is that the you have to face the worst parts of yourself during some of the most stressful moments of your life. It’s in these moments that we must choose to learn and grow or resent our situation. Even the best intended parents experience the latter sometimes, and it’s a hard pill to swallow when you realize that you’ve failed the test, as I have done on many occasions, including today. Good thing there will be thousands of moments in the coming weeks, months, and years to make it up.

So, I wake up tomorrow and try to be the best version of myself as a mom, wife, daughter, ceo, friend, and self. I probably will continue to fail spectacularly, but hopefully I will be able to take each step back as an opportunity to step forward.

My reply:

The book? Kobi Yamada’s tale of a young child who has an idea and doesn’t know what to do with it.

It’s a beautiful, visually whimsical tale of a child that meets their idea and tries to walk away with it, but it follows them. And finally when s/he starts nurturing the idea and giving it attention, it flourishes and eventually blooms into something that is no longer the child’s — it belongs to the world.

Sometimes things move us in unexpected and extraordinary ways.

I want to say my husband finds my emotional softness for a moving story to be endearing. My son doesn’t quite understand the difference between happy tears and sad tears. Into this morning I was still thinking about this wonderful story, and wanted to thank the author for creating something that can resonate powerfully with audiences of all ages, case in point (right here).

Going through this journey over the past several months of trying to create something from nothing has given me a different perspective on what’s possible. As a parent, it’s influenced how I approach my son’s inquiry and ideas, and I find myself enjoying getting lost in his creative spirit that’s not yet mired by the challenges and frustrations of the “real world”. This story is a welcomed reminder that magnificent things can happen when you give the ideas of yourself and those around you the attention they deserve.

So next time you’re at the library, bookstore or browsing online, pick this wonderful book up… for your kiddo or for yourself.

Any parent will tell you that there is never enough time in the day. That wretched morning routine though… it can easily get the best of us. It always feels like I have half as much time as I really do and twice the number of things that I need to do in order to get everyone where they need to be and my butt working.

In the rush of it all, when was the last time you made a decision on behalf of your child, without giving them a chance to make a choice?

When was the last time you were rushing through your morning routine and picked out their outfit for the day? When did you last buy a pair of shoes for your kiddo that you found on a flash sale because they happened to have the right size, and thought to yourself, “Yeah, s/he’ll probably be okay with this.” When did you last throw out a toy that was old and sort of gross looking, even though your kiddo keeps it by his or her pillow at night, thinking “They won’t even notice?”

For me, I did all of these things today.

Is it a bad thing? Not really. But these were three moments in time where I could have slowed down and taken the opportunity to both learn something about my child and help my child learn about how to make decisions in every day life. And they were missed opportunities.

As adults, we make dozens, if not hundreds of decisions on a daily basis. Many of these decisions are packed away to our subconscious, we’ve done them so many times. Which route should I take to work? What should I eat for breakfast? Am I going to read my emails the second I wake up or wait until after I’ve brushed my teeth? All of those decisions, automated away into pockets of preference folders in our brains, in service to saving time.

This past week, my son had started prefacing his questions to me with, “Mama, do we have time to…” and every time he says it, it breaks my heart. I started wondering why. WHY is this incredible four year old so obsessed with time? He doesn’t even know how to read the clock.

It’s because of me.

As busy parents, we make the mistake of applying our knowledge — stuff that we’ve learned over the years through trial and error — to the decisions that we make for our children and to the decisions that they are actively working through.

Oftentimes, we don’t even give them the chance to build up their own bank of personal stories that their synapses can recall. I caught myself the other day telling my son that he shouldn’t do something because so-and-so would be the outcome. How would he have known? Would he have remembered that mom told him so? Maybe. Probably not. I really don’t know. But I didn’t even give him the chance. Was he going to hurt himself? No. Was he going to irreparably damage something important? No. Was this going to go somewhere kind of interesting? Maybe. So… what’s the rush?

This post is less a call-to-action to parents than a reminder to myself to slow down. The journey of discovery — of finding one’s voice, of having an opinion, of learning how to tell a story, of developing a sense of humor and style, of watching butterflies break from their cocoon, of testing a hypothesis, of figuring out how to break a toaster oven — these things take time. So tomorrow, I’m starting a new tradition with my son. And that is for ME to wake up a few minutes early and think about how I need to prepare myself and the things I need to do in order to not let time get the best of me… so I can take the time to learn about him with him when the opportunity arises. Even if it happens when I’m trying to get his butt to school on time.