What Mike Michelini is up to Now – March 14 – 20, 2021
Listen as audio here [3.5 minutes long] (or scroll down for text)
- Still recovering on rest and “normal” work after an amazing 2 day HandyCon.promote/ or HandyCon.promote.hns.to handshake conference from late last week
- New opportunities in Handshake (HNS) deals arising from HandyCon
- New opportunity in ecommerce investments in China/Asia (still too early to announce outside of GFAVIP community.
- Really staying true to my promise to empower leaders in our Shadstone to be leaders.
For those who want to hear the full week plan for Shadstone Limited, Mike’s company (removing sensitive info) – here it is:
Week Plan March 14 – 20, 2021 Shadstone Limited
The only thing that we can be sure of is, things in life change. If we stay complacent and where we currently are, we will not stay the same, we will be left behind. Whether that is for a company (such as us here at Shadstone Limited), or as an individual person, change is a necessary evolution. Resist change and you will become irrelevant and left behind.
Maybe we are almost changing TOO much, but drastic times (COVID) means drastic measures. We have been doing our best as a company to retain our quality team while also adapting our business model (stopping complete projects and pivoting to new services) and I know it is stressful for all of us.
Myself included.
But I can say, 1 year now since the entire world started going into lockdown, and we are reborn. Well, I call it “Shadstone 4.0” (yes, we have been through a few evolutions since starting in March 2007 when I left Wall Street) but at the core, it has always been about:
- Ecommerce (selling online since 2004)
- Interent marketing (mainly to get more sales for ecommerce, but also blogging for authority)
- Cross-border trade (aka import/export, sourcing, B2B)
Sure, those are each massive categories, but we are the intersection of those 3.
Last week was a massive success as an organizer of the world’s first Handshake (HNS) conference, HandyCon. And, it really changed in a positive way, the entire fabric of that blockchain.
A blockchain is really a community. And it was that energetic and passionate community that attracted me to it when first hearing about it in October 2020. As months passed, I slowly got our team involved with the technology, and we are now a true part of the ecosystem.
It is “crypto” but to me it is the internet naming system on the blockchain. I know this may not be clear to many of you today, but basically it means no single organization is in charge of the most valuable decisions on the internet – the root zone.
We still continue to do our “normal” business of e-commerce (Amazon FBA businesses and investments) and SEO (for our own sites and client sites), and our authority blog and podcast Global From Asia can encompass all of that. We have been integrating HNS into GFA with the .gfa/ TLD (well still a lot of work there, ha!) and the podcast interview mini-series.
Just putting it all together.
And we have an amazing team.
Sure, we unfortunately have had turnover, pretty heavy turnover in my opinion in the last few months. But it is the choice of those team members to leave. The company has done everything in its power to honor the payroll commitments in this turbulent year. There were some harder payrolls to overcome but we did it.
I truly see a bright future, the one year of darkness and lockdown I believe is behind us (I truly hope) and the world will reopen.
But it will never be the same, not for individuals or for companies.
We are coming out of this 10x better:
- Building a true leadership team, where there are multiple managers who have strategic meetings and true power and authority for the teams they are working with (i.e. Not a “Mike gives me a task to do” company). We made painful adjustments for this one, and will go to the next level of growth.
- Adding a new division or SBU – (calling it “Sky Include”) that is focused on this new Handshake blockchain internet naming system. Ensuring we are a market leader as this new technology emerges in ecommerce and SEO.
- Various investments and clients in ecommerce and SEO.
This week will be even more opportunities and growth for us. Shadstone 4.0 will be one where we give developing leaders more room for growth.