Emotions, Business, and Life.

Been so slammed that I’m way behind on my regular blogging. Also been wondering what to make the next blog post. The past week, so much has happened.

• My buddy, I’ve known since I’ve arrived in China, is moving back to America. – his name has to be held on his own request. But a good American friend of mine who has been living with me in China since I arrived here in 2007 is moving back to America. He did get married, he is making some life decisions for the best for him. But again seeing expat friends come and go from China is hard on me ….I think living outside of your home country is a constant struggle…the feeling of not belonging, missing friends and family back home….and the food / culture of your home country. Living outside of your home country is a priceless experience I recommend everyone to try…it really builds character.

  I was also supposed to be business partners with him back in 2008…but I backed out rather deep into our discussions. So I can’t help but wonder how our business would be today if we had gone forward as business partners.

• Newest issues w/ my bar products e-commerce business – I have been holding onto this business for years now. More for emotional / sentimental value, also at the request to some of my staff who love working on it. But there has been constant turnover with pregnancies in the staff, moving of operations from USA to China to Philippines and around and around with new potential business partners.

  Turnover…staff leaving, hard to replace….being too reliant on some people….the wind has been kicked out of me in this business…and I’m advised either I personally spent 4-6 months on it to bring it back before getting a new manager, or let the business go….

  Also, I shared admin access to the google analytics to a few people when looking for partners…and I forgot to un-share analytics….not sure why … but one of these guys deleted all my google analytics data!!! I don’t know if he meant to do it – or was thinking it would delete it from his dashboard / account….I can’t imagine him purposely trying to destroy my 8 years of analytics (website traffic / visitor information). And I know who it was, never met him, don’t think he’d do it on purpose.

  Oh, and still a supply chain mess.

  I think its all a sign….I have to let go.

• Being a tour guide is exhausting! – promoting all these events, I’m getting more and more visitors from America and other countries who have never travelled to China. Its my own fault, but I didn’t make things clear about who is paying for what expenses, and whose responsibility it is to show these visitors around – is it me personally, or is it the trade organizations?

  Just learning the boundaries between my consulting company, Shadstone, from these trade organizations and conferences I am promoting.

• too many events – Thursday morning I fly to Xiamen, China for the biggest China SEO conference, thousands of Chinese internet pros will be there and I’ve been going for years now, since 2009.

  Startup Weekend Shenzhen is coming April 6 to 8, and Shanghai Team is helping out, the team here in Shenzhen, Kawai, Nik, Remus are doing great to support it. But its still overwhelming on top of everything.

  Startup Tuesdays every week are tiring, speaker coordination, promotion, moderating the night….but I do have people backing me up for Startup Tuesday ….but still, I feel the pressure on me a lot still. Need to standardize it and build a bigger team. Also seems we’ll need to charge a per person fee to get in.

  Last week multiple e-commerce meetings, a massive Shenzhen government e-commerce meeting and a focus group meeting for Doug from SKUtouch

• Not having a laptop for almost a week!, It was a pretty popular blog post, mobile phone / bluetooth keyboard combo…but another reason I got the bluetooth keyboard was to help me out while I was getting my Mac Air from August get a new screen replacement (has a line through it). I was only planning to be “laptop-less” for a day while in Hong Kong picking up Doug…. issues with price of the monitor, coordinating a rendezvous point to pick up my laptop…and then getting it back without wifi working…and still having the same “line in my screen” …..

  This is all while I’m being a tour guide through Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Dongguan.

• Gabree is standardizing things – Which is AWESOME and very much needed ….but still hard for me to “give up some power” and make some standard operating procedures that I may not really like to comply with. But I will force myself…its for the greater good, and for scalability and growth.

  Its about time….SOP, policies, standard contracts. Gabree, keep it up! Don’t let my whining get you discouraged!

• “Toughening up” and turning down some deals – I guess this is a positive, but still an emotional thing for me, but I am turning down business. I am trying to focus. I am maybe losing some friends or relationships, but I am going to stay strong and do projects I want to do, not what projects people want me to do

So typing this over my friend’s house, going away drinks and video games….buddy leaves tomorrow.

I’m also told “you are famous now” (being on GDTV, speaking at events), this will help your business. And it is. Business is growing up, focusing, developing.

But still….its emotional for me to get past some of the past….

If it was easy, everyone would do it.