Japan | The Audacity to Try Again
"You know Japan isn't going to happen, right?" ~ VP of R&D during final interview... [My External Voice] "Oh ya... I don't have any expectations in that space."
[My Internal Voice] "Watch Me Work..."
I haven't posted recently about Japan because from a career opportunity perspective, it represents both my greatest asset and liability.
An asset, because for three years I Directed Front End Innovation from Japan at Johnson & Johnson MedTech ...
Traveling the region extensively to connect with Japanese top tier surgeons, understanding the nuance of their clinical unmet needs and directing an ecosystem of 32 Global Innovators to develop new technologies on their behalf.
A Liability... because MedTech organizations have falsely perceived me as a flight risk... ready to bail as soon as an expat Japan opportunity comes along.
While holding these two perceptions in tension...
... my main goal with this week's episode of 🍵 Sunday Sips is to bring you into proximity with my family's journey to, in, and from Japan.
We'll put Global MedTech Engineer/Leader/Entrepreneur Joe on a shelf for a bit, and explore how my journey as a father has expanded over 16 relocations in 5 years with 4 kids.
We have a lot of ground to cover...
... so grab your favorite beverage worth sipping on and let's get to work!
A Quick "Hey":
Context
Today's "Sunday Sip" is inspired by Shelina Ramnarine PhD a PHD Statistical Genomic Researcher, Pharma Health Care Equity Dynamo, trusted friend and founder of Zenzele Leadership.
She recently shared this beautiful encouragement during her guest appearance on 🍵 Sunday Sips
- "In the past I was so busy trying to be liked and successful, so I climbed the corporate ladder because I thought if I climbed I could make an influence. I didn't realize I was making an influence all along... and the greatest influence that I needed to be... was on Me. Owning Me. Accepting Me... and fighting for what I believed in."
Shelina is remarkable and it has been a privilege to be a part of her journey. I remember during one of our calls she shared, "I want to be Me... without the Consequences of Being Me."
It was a mic drop moment, not only for her... but also for me personally.
There was a moment when I hit Zero in Japan, that forced me to face the consequences of "being me".
To recognize that the decisions I had made and the risks willfully taken had led us to financial calamity in a foreign country...
...ripping my kids out of the stability of international school and putting us on a failure plane to Chicago, where we settled in the basement of a four generation home with our in-laws.
"... without the consequences of Being Me"
Yet at the same time, during a recent chat I had with Harel Shachar [Smith+Nephew ]...he shared that during his interview process for a surgical robotics opportunities he filled every spare minute consuming content from:
- Joe Mullings [Leading Voice in Medtech ~60,000 followers],
- Steve Bell [Leading Voice in Surgical Robotics Startups ~ 25,000 followers]
- ...and me [yes... me?]
... that my story, my smile amidst challenge, and my deep surgical robotics expertise were an encouragement to him on his quest for a purpose-filled career in medTech.
"I want to be Me..."
So as we explore the deep nuance of my passion for Japan, know that it represents both a core aspect of my identity and yet it is still an open wound... as I heal from my most public failure on multiple levels.
Huge Thanks:
Note: This week's Episode of 🍵 Sunday Sips is Caffeinated by Moonlight Medical, Kinetic Vision, and Nerdian Inc..
Learn more about what I'm building towards at Moonlight Medical -> HERE.
Learn more about Kinetic Vision capabilities and my personal experience partnering with them -> HERE
Learn more about Nerdian Inc.'s Founder Ian McEachern -> HERE
Japan | Early Foundations
For those of you who don't know, I'm a third generation Japanese American... hence the last name Isosaki.
I'm named after my grandfather Hisashi "Joe" Isosaki who was second generation Japanese born in Hawaii.
He was on the island during Pearl harbor and while many Japanese were put in internment camps, he fought for America on the German front in the Nisei Japanese division of the military.
He was stationed in Germany after the fall of Berlin and met my grandmother who was half German and half Swiss. They fell in love, came back to America and repressed many aspects of their cultural heritage based on aggressions against the Japanese and Germans following the war.
They had eight kids and gave them all very white American names and only spoke English in the home. It wasn't until my father was in his forties that he actually heard my grandpa speak Japanese to some of his World War II buddies.
Growing up with the last name Isosaki carried a weight and confused cultural identity.
Just about every teacher butchered my last name my... yet it has always been deeply meaningful to me... even if it took me two decades to learn how to write Isosaki in Kanji [磯崎 -> which means rocky cove].
My whole life I identified as Japanese, I studied the culture, learned the language in college [to a sub-intermediate level] and even did 7 years of bi-vocational missions work in Japan leading up to our move there...
I've always carried my grandfather and grandmother into the room with me as I lead globally in medTech, and I've been afforded so many privileges because of the sacrifices they made two generations ago.
They did so much more with so little.
All four of my children have Japanese names... Akari, Emiko, Akio, and my eldest son is Hezekiah "Hisashi" Isosaki ... named in honor of my Grandfather "Joe".
12 Moves in 1 Year -> Unicorn Job:
My journey to Japan was intimately tethered with Johnson & Johnson MedTech in many peculiar ways.
When I was a co-op [intern] at Ethicon LLC progressing Lifecycle design changes on surgical staplers and clip appliers, my wife watched an episode of house hunters international that changed our life.
At that time I was networking with different colleagues to land a fulltime gig in Ohio at JNJ, and Felicia called me with a change of plans.
She had seen an episode that took place in Australia and asked if I could find a global opportunity with a beach for the first few years and then we'd have our kiddos in the States...
Thus awakened one of my most challenging global networking seasons of my life... leading me to the office of the legendary Hector Chow.
The Director of Ethicon China R&D, he had stood up that entire business unit over the course of his career, and when I shared my aspirations of leading globally out of college... he utterly shattered my dreams.
I remember him candidly grilling me, "Why the hell would I send you to China? Those roles are for senior level engineers with years of experience and niche skill sets that we need in global markets. What could you actually do in China? It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to relocate talent globally. No way."
That 30 minute meeting which was compressed to around 8 minutes [lol] changed my life, and I remember thanking Hector for it ten years later during his retirement party.
So it appeared global opportunities were a no-go out of college, until I learned that two Japanese pastors [Fukui-sensei and Kishio-sensei] were staying at my parents home in Chicago during a US trip raising support for a network of churches in Japan.
Note: I come from a Christian context and faith has always been intimately interwoven into my vocation as a Global Healer... that said I aim to make all my content accessible to folks from a range of faith contexts, spiritualities, and lack there of. Missions work also has many connotations [both good and bad] associated with it that I don't have time to unpack in this episode.
I told my mom that we had a narrow 8 week window between graduation from The University of Illinois and starting full time at Ethicon so we could serve in Japan... thus began a journey that transformed the trajectory of our lives together.
My wife had majored in Elementary Education with a focus on ESL so she began lesson planning for various English kids camps that we would lead at five churches in Tokyo, and one in Shingu Wakayama (rural fishing town 6 hours south of Tokyo). I started prepping sermons and learned acoustic guitar to lead bilingual worship.
We really felt called to this trip yet we failed to raise enough support to make it happen. Just weeks before our planned departure, $7500 unexpectedly showed up in my bank account from Johnson & Johnson as an early relocation and signing bonus for my full time offer. We leveraged it to buy tickets to Japan that same day.
It gets stranger...
On the very first day in country, Fukui-sensei and Kishio-sensei brought us to a hotel in Chiyoda... across the street from Johnson & Johnson headquarters in Tokyo.
Here's the pictures I took in 2015... 7 years prior to my first day of work there in March 2022.
So every year we returned to Japan for missions work and the rest of the year I matured into a "Senior Engineer with years of experience and niche skill sets that we need in global markets" -> Thanks Hector.
One day while working on OTTAVA... I glanced over my manager's shoulder and saw him exploring my website for Missions in Japan... he was pretty coy about it as shadow conversations we're happening around me.
For years Japan had been on my development plan, where I was looking for an "impossible" hybrid role between Global Strategic Marketing and Engineering in Japan to lead globally inclusive innovation.
Eventually that day came.
Kevin brought me into a closed office, presented me a piece of paper to Direct Innovation from Japan... and he told me, "you can say no to this offer once... if you do, you'll never see this piece of paper again".
It was truly a unicorn job.
I called Felicia, and in February 2020 we said yes to a global opportunity with life shaping consequences we could hardly fathom from living a simple life in Cincinnati.
We would end up relocating 12 times over the course of 1 year with 3 kids based on COVID, bedbugs, and unexpected boarder closures challenges.
Besides hitting Zero in Tokyo in 2024, this was by far the most refining season of my life as I pressed in to the needs of my family and Shepparded them across massive uncertainty. All the while doing the role 100% remote and delivering critical business results.
Imaging having no bearing on where home was for a full year, saying goodbye countless times, moving your children across multiple schools, living out of suitcases, battling bedbugs & COVID lockdowns, all the while trying to anticipate what life in Japan will really be like for your big family.
Stepping into the unknown...
When we finally settled into our JNJ sponsored Tokyo Mansion [expat housing is wild] we had become a completely different family than when we had started the journey in Cincinnati a year prior.
Evaporation & The Jump:
Life in Japan was beautiful, wild, scary and more than we could have ever dreamed.
Our children went to one of the best international schools in Tokyo and after multiple years in country they began to heal from all the instability. Their sense of self became more rooted as they made real friends, and the same could be said for Felicia and I.
Connecting with Expat parents on international assignments and Global Entrepreneurs completely reframed what I believed to be possible for us as a family. Our friends were building incredible lives, living where they wanted, loving what they did, and being paid well for it...-> Which became the vision for The Big Brain Club.
We opened up our home for huge potlucks and holiday parties... as JNJ had provided us the biggest home on the block... and it became a mini-community center for expat families to connect. Our home had a beautiful open concept kitchen and at its peak there were 40+ families there for a Thanksgiving event we did with all the fixing and four turkeys.
We had so much joy doing life on life with our friends in Tokyo and we traveled Japan together exploring Okinawa, Kitakyushu, Kyoto, Yokohama, Osaka, Nara, Lake Yamakako, Nagano, Myoko [skiing], Hakodate, Sapporo, and so much more.
I miss my friends dearly and look forward to our next trip together.
As a family we loved living on the boundary of cross cultural experiences and every day held both fear and adventure in tension. It was a gift to live in such proximity to a beautiful people group even as it put us outside our comfort zone more times than I can count.
But after 2.5 years in the role I felt executive leadership's focus on the region atrophying.
Japan was deprioritized and even as my family had navigated 12 relocations on behalf of JNJ [and just had our 4th child in country] we were told the assignment was over and a return path to the US was set for us in the "enchanted land" of New Jersey [where we had no support network].
For months we agonized as a family... bracing for the pain of a thirteenth move, and losing the people and country we loved.
But something crazy sparked in us...
...a willingness to take bold risks and bet on ourselves.
The audacity to believe we could continue life in Japan and that we weren't hopelessly tethered to the whims of an indifferent organization's shift in business priority. [Finding Agency]
So in May 2024 I made a contingent resignation... hopeful that final interviews for a JNJ Director of JPN Business Dev role would work out before my last day on June 30th 2024.
To my surprise I didn't get the job... and thus began a wild 7 months of all-in entrepreneurship in Tokyo to keep the dream alive.
Prior to my exit I pulled a $75,000 personal loan to give us some runway and also completed our 13th relocation to attempt to live within our projected means in Tokyo.
This Japanese style 3-bedroom apartment was a miracle in itself as its incredibly difficult for foreigners to receive lease approval without a formal executive sponsor [such as JNJ].
Our friends rejoiced with us as we found an uncommon path to stay in country, and we had the perception of stability for the first 4 months until our burn rate began to overtake us.
The Fallout & Loss:
Like many new entrepreneurs, I made the mistake of chasing 2 rabbits and catching none...-> well actually 4 rabbits.
Rabbit 1: High ticket brand consulting based on half a decade of content creation experience... 2000+ videos, 20,000,000 Views and a following of over 40,000.
Rabbit 2: Consulting Founders in the growing Tokyo Startup scene.
Rabbit 3: Founding my own Startup PaPa to help fathers be more present with their children.
Rabbit 4: Building a Community on Skool to help Engineers "Find their way".
Everyday I was scrambling to get traction in a given venture while aggressively upskilling on my gaps (such as sales).
Here's how the rabbits got away...
Rabbit 1: Signed a deal with a massive baking influencer "The Pancake Princess" to gain 30% of downstream revenue from her YouTube channels Monetization... she was incredible to work with but all revenue of the partnership was "downstream" so our burn rate kept driving to zero every day that I partnered with her.
Here's a Focaccia Bakeoff edit I did for her (24,000+ views) -> HERE!
Rabbit 2: Consulted two cofounders who were technologist first. They had bootstrapped an interactive language learning platform over three years but were out of sync with user unmet need and commercial viability. I did a milestone based shared success deal with them to help them get their first 10k in sales. We failed and I burned through the initialization deposit but never realized revenue from months of work [my bad].
Rabbit 3: Founding PaPa was a means of gaining legal residency in Tokyo through a "Shibuya Startup Visa". While I was really passionate about this potential startup, it would have required me to raise capital or bootstrap it with cashflow I didn't have... so that pathway died after a few months of work.
Rabbit 4: Build a "community" on a platform called skool focused on connection with me with a terrible offer and no goodwill value. The launch completely bombed right before we hit Zero in Japan. Took me a year to figure out how to clearly communicate value, and build an interconnected community that moves together towards a common vision and is commercially viable.
Missing all four rabbits was a devastating loss and I remember posting on LinkedIn...
"I think we're dead in the water...
Burn rate depleted, and after a few hours at JETRO [Japanese External Trade Organization], it doesn't seem feasible to secure a Business Manager Visa.
It's a chicken or the egg kind of thing. I need 5,000,000 yen to start the business in Japan. I need a business in Japan in order to collect payment from Japanese businesses. So while I have lots of promising leads who are interested in working with me, it's incredibly challenging for them to route payments to a US-based LLC. Not impossible but challenging.
Another fun learning, even if I land a job in Japan as an engineer/global leader I still need to gain "special permission" from immigration to do "special work" as a consultant. So our cashflow would be locked to a Japanese job impacted by low Yen rank."
In just under 20 days we pulled our kids out of international school and did a scorched earth transition to Chicago. A trail of glass. A messy exit from a life "we had once loved in Japan"
The three months leading up to this failure were the most miserable, vulnerable and damaging days for us as a family. Marriage was strained and suffering. Our children, and particularly our oldest Kai, we're navigating so many layers of trauma as they we ripped from their friendship with little notice.
For weeks we didn't even know if I would be able to exit Japan with my family... or if I would be stuck in country based on relocation logistics and impossible lead times.
We had a white board with 200+ check boxes that we needed to triage in order to "end our journey" in Japan, and compared to all the technology platforms I directed in JNJ... stewarding my family through this 14th/15th move to Chicago was the most challenging project management experience of my entire life.
The intro of this Tokyo Legacy Marathon video shows the checklist days before our exit -> HERE.
The Reset [Chicago]:
So on October 30th 2024 we miraculously crash landed into a 4-generation home in Chicago to live with the in-laws [my father in-law, and grandma/grandpa-in-law].
We arrived with the clothes on our back, suitcases, and some barebones content creation equipment [so I could keep building].
Tricker treating in my hometown was psychologically dissonate for me. There was somehow this relief that we had made it against all odds... yet there was also deep grief, shame, confusion, and brokenness.
It was a season of facing who I was, the choices I had made, the risks I had taken, and where they had brought us as a family. To take extreme ownership of my reality, while also acknowledging the extreme circumstances that had impacted our family.
As a family we have navigated impossible conditions and yet somehow, we've remained intact. We've continued to fight, persevere and build out an uncommon amount of resilience.
The last 17 months in Chicago have been remarkable as I've lived in the tension of needing help [a roof over my head, prescriptions for my son's eczema, WIC, Food Pantries, etc]... while also giving help [caring for my grandfather who's dying of kidney failure, and my grandmother who's navigating the gradual loss of her lifelong partner]
Its been a season of deep work and refinement as I've continued to learn what it means to be a father... regardless of the home and experiences that I can/can't provide for my family.
Its also been a season of deeper risks and embrace of the entreprenurial journey.
When we first arrived in Chicago we pulled our entire 401k [retirement savings] to get some initial financial traction. As an engineer, the math and loss of compounding interest was soul crushing... the consequences of being me. But a necessary sacrifice to double down on entrepreneurship
For the last 11 months I've worked 3rd shift at Amazon to root my family in their own home and extend my burn rate while doubling and tripling down on my ventures.
A few days ago I officially "launched" Moonlight Medical ... where Ideals [of global healing] keep us up at night. I'm already building out a team and I'm excited what kind of impact we can have on both stealth mode startups and front end innovation at large strategics.
In parallel to this I've been receiving incredible shoulder tap opportunities for CTO, Head of Product, and even CEO roles in various medTech startups.
I've invoiced more in the last two months than I have in the first two years of entrepreneurship and I'm excited to see what comes next.
Its been a season of fully embracing who I am... the parts that I love, and the parts that I don't.
To hold in tension my greatest successes and most brutal failures.
To keep getting better.
To keep bringing value every day.
To keep building amidst risk.
To keep being the father and husband I know God created me to be.
So with that... what comes next concerning Japan...
Japan | The Audacity to Try Again:
In honesty Japan and other global opportunities for the next 1-3 years is contingent on a few factors.
First of all is grandpa's health.
We are currently a core part of his care team and he's on in-home dialysis which is quite challenging. At 7 percent kidney function, diabetic, and with a wide array of other co-morbidities our international future is tethered to his journey.
That said, we are open to open to opportunities that are high travel, require split living, or possibly a new city.
My first Japan facing goal is to aggressively reverse out of some of our financial liabilities from the scorched earth relocation to Chicago. That way we could get an airbnb for the summer in Japan and put our kids in international school again for the summer terms.
So US 10.5 months/year and Japan 1.5 months/year. This would likely require me to scale Moonlight Medical with a decentralized team of heavy hitters, in parallel to landing a global leadership position in MedTech.
In the 3-10 year window things are much more interesting:
Path 1 - I land an expat role in Japan that covers housing, international schooling, and tax/immigration support... basically what I had with JNJ from an expat package perspective
Path 2 - My wife lands a teaching role at one our children's schools which deeply reduces tuition rates for all four of the kids. I transition to remote work from Japan and keep building Moonlight Medical
Path 3 - Moonlight Medical scales to the extent that I can self sponsor myself through a Japanese Business Manager Visa [5,000,000 yen in the bank] and we can live in country bringing our business along for the ride.
All that said we do have an openness to other expat opportunities in countries outside of Japan... so who knows what the future brings...
...but a boomerang to Japan is what we have the audacity to believe in.
So to bring this story home... in response to the VP who said, "you know Japan isn't going to happen right?"... -> Watch me work!
Benediction:
So may you...
Have the audacity to build the life you desire...
Living where you want. Loving what you do. & Being paid well for it.
And may you be emboldened to take action towards building this life every singe day, regardless of what others may think of you.
It's your life... not theirs.
And as always friend...
Keep Changing the World!
Some Actions You Can Take:
Join the Largest MedTech Community on Skool: https://www.skool.com/medtech
Join the Big Brain Club on Skool: https://www.skool.com/thebigbrainclub
Join the Sunday Sips Waitlist: https://joseph-g8b40bp4.scoreapp.com/
Learn a bit more about me and How I Can Help: https://joseph-fm0niixt.scoreapp.com/
A Quick Note on Ai
These writings come from the heart, my experience and are 100% my own words.
I don’t use ChatGPT or any SEO optimization in Sunday Sips, because I think capturing my authentic voice is more meaningful than catering to LinkedIn's almighty algorithm.
That said, if you find my writing helpful, please consider subscribing below so as well as forwarding this newsletter along to your friends, colleagues... heck, maybe even your grandma.
She's old, so I bet she still loves emails, especially from a young, Pretentious Engineer such as myself.
I would rather see this Newsletter grow by word of mouth through the power of community and subscribing HERE helps me remain connected via email vs being dependent on when LinkedIn wants us to cross paths again.
🍵Sunday Sips Episodes Still Percolating:
There are No Rules in Business with Omar M. Khateeb from MarketCraft [Estimated Release Sunday 4/19]
Reverence for the Craft [medTech Design] with Ian McEachern from Nerdian Inc. [Estimated Release Sunday 4/26]
From Surgical Unmet Need to MedTech Startup with Eran Shlomovitz and Liam J. Burns from Qaelon Medical [Estimated Release Sunday 5/3]
A Century of MedTech Commercialization Wisdom with Kashif Ikram [MicroPort MedBot], Tetsuya Nakanishi [Medicaroid] & Steve Bell [How to Startup in Medtech] [Estimated Release Sunday 5/15]
Legacy Episodes of 🍵 Sunday Sips:
The Future of Physical Ai in MedTech | Santosh Iyer | EP8 https://youtu.be/GeYmITdJrU0
Disrupting a Century Old Standard of Care | Liam J. Burns | EP7 https://youtu.be/w2IOfDbpG3A
Commercializing Solutions that Heal | Harel Shachar | EP6 https://youtu.be/xCRblF0pw24
Surgical Robotics Build to Buys | Steve Bell | EP5 https://youtu.be/-aYK2w299d4
Adaptable Prosthetics That Move With You | Sydney Robinson | EP4 https://youtu.be/WA6eIJ_E9yw
Unapologetically Me | Shelina Ramnarine PhD | EP3 https://youtu.be/ZkZR8Dh0RDs
Mumbai Roots. Global MedTech. Aligned Leadership | JP (Juthika) Pal | EP2 https://youtu.be/GMWvKQim6-0
How to Startup in Surgical Robotics 2025 | Steve Bell | EP1 https://youtu.be/lqgBDDq6l1Q
Legacy Episodes of 🍵🍵 Second Sips [Breakdowns]:
Zimmer Biomet + Monogram Technologies + PeritasAI | Santosh Iyer | https://youtu.be/NVKhI8DZpC4
The Future of Air Leaks Digitalization | Liam J. Burns | https://youtu.be/fPcloY0Cgyg
Breaking down Dialysis Treatment | Harel Shachar | https://youtu.be/J_rCKOF7H6U
Everything I Know About Surgical Robotics | Steve Bell | https://youtu.be/sczUYInqMxI
Stanford Bio Design Masterclass | Sydney Robinson | https://youtu.be/W0gInwUAV7g
Living Life on Your Own Terms | Shelina Ramnarine PhD | https://youtu.be/x0gvXeuWxIE
Global Strategic Marketing at it's Best | JP (Juthika) Pal | https://youtu.be/QQqRs2258lM
CMR Surgical Breakdown | Steve Bell | https://youtu.be/sczUYInqMxI
