A letter to our family

Hey family,

I wanted to go over this in our family call but it hasn’t worked out the last couple weeks so I’m going to use email and we can follow up with conversation later. First of all, I’m guessing that most of you noticed that we got a Facebook account for Zeke & Anna and I want to tell you about that but I can’t really explain it without unraveling Japan. So here’s the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) as Charles would say: We are very likely going to move to Japan for 1-2 years for Boston Scientific!

Japan info

Yes, this is real and yes it is insane. We would be going abroad through my company’s expat (expatriate) program, where they provide financial support for housing, transportation, cost of living adjustments, schooling, etc. Details are still being refined but things look very exciting and our whole family is thrilled.

Here’s a few details that we are pretty sure of:

•         The kids would go to an private international school where English was spoken
•         We would rent our current home while we are abroad
•         We would stay in an apartment in Tokyo with a likely size of 2,000 square feet (BIG for Japan)
•         We would have an allowance for return trips home but not sure how many (maybe just 1 per year)
•         There is also an international church near where we are thinking of setting up shop

Here is a map of some current locations we have scoped out if you are interested. It also has the BSC Tokyo office on it. As for timing, we would not relocate until after the kids are out of school or almost done (early June).  Jenny would stop doing daycare around May to prepare for the move and I would likely be traveling back and forth to Japan a little.  We’ve talked to the kids and they are excited, Jenny and I are really excited and everyone we talk to encourages us to go for it.  I’ve had meetings with 10-15 people already to gather input and research the expat idea and everyone is strongly supportive. I’ve even talked to someone that is an expat in Japan from the US with their family of 2 kids in middle school that have been there for 18 months. So we are still researching and learning but this is around a 90% sure thing.

The Japan Job

The Rhythmia product that I have been working with for the last 8 months is revolutionary in the EP market. In Japan we have struggled for a long time with EP and Rhythmia is getting Japan approval in the middle of this year and the next generation of the system likely mid-next year. However, they do not have anyone dedicated to the EP commercial strategy or knowledgeable about Rhythmia and the complexities of its launch. My job would be to lead the commercial strategy for EP Japan, using Rhythmia to grab market share and blow open the EP market for BSC. The Japan EP market is ~$550M and we have a 2.5% share today (~$13M). With Rhythmia and the supporting products that come along with it, I think we could grow that to a 10% market share or more. This is an opportunity of a lifetime as it relates to my career. It may or may not come with a promotion to Director (still being negotiated) but it adds international experience, strategic leadership, commercial strategy, and owning a “business unit”, which is a really big deal. I believe that this is the type of springboard that launches big-time careers.

We’ve been praying about this a lot and really feel that God has set it all up. The thematic verse for us lately is Proverbs 16:9 “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.” We have been planning to move to Seattle for about a year and it is like God just changed where our steps lead. Nearly all our plans and everything still fit very well in this and add a bunch of strange “coincidences” (including that I took 3 years of Japanese in high school) and we are amazed.

It is heartbreaking for us that Japan will be even further from family and that this puts our long term plans of getting to Seattle further in the future but the opportunity for our family is too good to pass up.

Facebook

So that’s the Japan part. And that’s the reason for the kids being on Facebook.  We wanted them to have a good connection pathway to friends and family if we were moving out of the country and FB really does that well. We just set ground rules and gave them access Sunday night so you can message them, etc. but they are still learning. Be warned: they love emojis and gifs! 🙂

One other thought about Facebook and Zeke and Anna: please either be very careful about what you are posting since they are still quite young. Please consider making them “Restricted” friends. If they are on your “Restricted” list, they will only be able to see posts or information that you make “Public”. If you want help on how to do this, just let me know and I can walk you through it.

Thanks and we love you all. I’m sure we will talk soon but email works fine too if you want to shoot some questions at us.

Caleb & Jenny