What Mike Michelini is up to Now – April 25 – May 1, 2021
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May day is coming! It will be a long holiday in China next week. But work like normal here as location is irrelevant.
Working on:
- Building a marketing and community team. It has been a few months of transition in the team but I believe we have made some great new hires and will start to develop a leadership team in the marketing and community of Global From Asia. I love the community and we need this structure and team. It will be taking a bit of time and investment in training and tools, but we need it.
- Apply the NFT crazy to our community. I don’t want to say we are “jumping on the bandwagon” because we are not doing NFT just to “make a quick buck”. We are investing in this as a whole new model for supporting our content and our community. We are working on a “drop” of NFTs in the Global From Asia ecosystem and will release them at our first major online event – Cross Border Matchmaker – on May 21.
- GFA Kids – We’re finally doing it, many have asked, and our team is also pushing it forward. We are going to make an online learning program for kids under the Global From Asia brand. The idea is, so many in the community are parents, and with the lockdowns and even before that, the non-ecommerce experience that our current kids are getting, we are making an online learning program that of course has the normal ABC, 123. But also, we will add the insights and mindset of being a business leader, an ecommerce seller, an online marketer which will make the program unique and attractive to our community and their kids.
For those who want to hear the full week plan for Shadstone Limited, Mike’s company (removing sensitive info) – here it is:
Week Plan – April 25 – May 1, 2021 Shadstone Limited
We are entering May. Time is flying but we are making huge strides and positive steps forward.
We have done a great job re-structuring our content team over the last few months, to build a leadership team and phone calls for teambuilding and better collaboration.
REMINDER – team call is this Wednesday, April 28, 7pm Manila time. MORE SPEED DATING and fun XD
Now, it is finally time we start to rebuild our front office, marketing team.
Many of you have gotten to know our client services over the last few weeks (is it over a month already?!) and I hope all agree she is doing great. For sure, for me she has stepped up and help find emails that are urgent, that are important for our clients and our team to do and getting those moving forward as well as communicating well to our clients.
Next is the community, our GFAVIP and members across all kinds of social platforms. It has been lacking since December and I think now we are adding some great “power” to that with our recent additions:
- A new Social Media Manager is heading up the Social Media Management (western/international) such as Facebook, Instagram, and others. She has great experience with this and has impressed us a lot with her interview and proposed plan for the upcoming Cross Border Matchmaker and ongoing social media marketing. Thank you for introducing her to the company.
- A fan of ours in China is heading up the WeChat Marketing and Community Management. She has been following our GFA community for years and we are so excited to have her onboard to help with posting our GFA content on WeChat official account, engaging in WeChat groups, moments (wall), and keeping current members happy while finding new ones.
We will be working hard to develop this team, and Social Media Manager will be heading up this department.
Truly, there is so much opportunity to reignite the GFA community. But of course, the community is very distraught with the lockdowns while everyone in the world is. I believe it has especially hurt our community of “ross border business owners” and it inspired a new initiative.
BROKEN BORDER series.
We are not in a cross border world now. The borders are BROKEN. So we are making an art series (NFT) that our graphic designer is working hard at with all my stories and ideas (based on the podcast I recorded a couple weeks ago too) to show off these pieces of CULTURE.
Truly, I am so excited about this, to capture this in a group of art that represents the hardship and nightmare that so many of us in this international business community have been through.
And the idea is that we “drop” (that is what people call NFT releases – drops) this during the Cross Border Matchmaker – on May 21. If you follow Gary Vee, you’ll see he is dropping his first NFT series on May 5 (he keeps tweeting 5/5) and is building up the momentum and the interest as it comes up.
So it seems to fit perfectly with our online event and then instead of charging a ticket fee to enter (boring and old), we sell NFT there. Using our experience w/ Flamingo Handshake, and our amazing team, and our knowledge on blockchain, this seems like a perfect combination.
Honestly, even I am still not fully 100% sure how to do it. NFT is so new, but the idea is, people can own a piece of art we sell on the blockchain and we show off this full collection on one of our websites like other artists and “give face” and recognition to the current OWNERS of each art piece because that is what it is all about – art collectors INVESTING in the artist and the community.
And, we will structure these NFTs so that they can be resold, and used to get bonus and utility in the GFA community (special events, special perks, access). So many ideas. I will research the possibilities more and more as we approach the Cross Border Matchmaker event.
GFA Kids
I am so excited to say we will kickstart the program with Anne and I doing a podcast together (audio only) this coming week. We moved the dates to early June due to CBM + Flamingo Handshake. To be honest, I’m not happy with my kids school here in China. And, I feel stuck here until at least Jan 2022. So I want to use this “summer program test” to do a bigger, formal one for the Fall. Thank you Anne for your insights and sharing and we’re looking forward to making a kids education program with of course the “normal” kids learning but also ecommerce / online business built into it too.
We’re also going to be an advisor / business development arm of a big Amazon seller company for a long term alliance. More to come soon on that.
For the Amazon brand, the container is being prepared and hopefully shipped to Amazon early May, which means June, it will be online. Unbelievable this has taken 9 months or more to get to this point. But it will be a big Amazon seller company for sure. We have done our homework.
And so many more, I hope I don’t leave anyone or anything out. But the main point is, we have worked so hard at this point. It is hopefully coming to bear fruits after all the rain.
And also, we are building a team of LEADERS. I appreciate Janette’s pushing me and the company to foster leadership and I believe we are heading in the right direction.
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