What Mike Michelini is up to Now – Aug 14 – 20, 2022
In photo: Kids between government bureau meetings.
Listen as audio here [2 minutes long] (or scroll down for text)
Stressful last week with Thailand visa / China exit procedures. Knee deep in documents, PDF, and bureaucracy! Reminds me of why I love blockchain – transparency in the procedure!
But keep fighting – keep sending the documents to various government agencies – and hope they rubber stamp to allow us to leave China (the whole family, together!), and enter Thailand. Seems 90% likely we will all be able to go (family of 4) on August 30. Nerve racking to say the least – on top of “everything else”.
So – the “everything else” – here’s the bullet points for this week:
* Marketing team coordination across all brands and projects – had a great marketing department call last week, and discussed ALL the projects. Need to synergize
* Crowdfunding workflow and team – as mentioned in week plan – we have the flow going, but need to further refine the process and team structure on it .
* Logistics process – more imports for Excalibur Brothers and Esatto, thinking of a calendar system.
* Ninja pay – hope to make more progress in the HR/payroll process for Shadstone.
For those who want to hear the full week plan for Shadstone Limited, Mike’s company (removing sensitive info) – here it is:
Week Plan Aug 14 – 20, 2022 Shadstone Limited
The strong sun in my window tells me we are ending the summer heat soon! Mid August and as always we at Shadstone are grinding ahead – pushing out limits – learning – and growing.
Last week we made some big updates and training to the new client services team – as always a lot of overwhelm and learning. Thanks team – especially LJ – for ensuring the new team members are getting up to speed, the tools, access, and information they need. Lets all try to continue to improve the SOPs and the documentation – that is what will save us and help us withstand any challenges.
Some other accomplishments:
* Upgrade to the Shadstone Portal (still in progress) – Manly working hard on getting new add-on modules as well as a new version update done. I’m so excited for this as we can hopefully use it for the highly anticipated “Ninja Pay” program.
* Marketing team coordination – we are a marketing company, when you boil down our core – and having an organized and strong team in the marketing department is a core part. Anne helped arranged a department call, and we are opening our minds to say “marketing” more than “SEO. Realizing with the new Amazon brands and the new projects – we need to double down on the tools, team, and growth here. Its exciting and a dream coming true. May need to add more hours to our current team – or more likely – hire more people in the marketing department.
* HR, Finance, management – again, since we consciously made the decision in early 2021 to grow the team and grow leadership – we have been investing more and more into HR, finance / accounting, and management. Martha may be the first EVER to help get our financials organized to a per project basis (still some tweaks I can see, but very impressed). Nessa is constantly making more HR procedures and documents – core and fundamental for any company (and something years lacking). LJ is a fearless leader and Manly, Anne are doing amazing in their departments (Manly on IT, Anne on marketing). Still need more to join our leadership department and see a lot of potential of many in our growing team to fill those shoes.
Some project updates:
* NowShenzhen – putting more creative energy into new income streams for it (due to the never ending lock downs) – such as adding services and a new page – www.nowshenzhen.com/work-with-us/ the idea being we have amazing team here who can service the NowShenzhen client base and business community at large with the NowShenzhen sales and BD team.
* BeckyAI – 4 weeks to go! But feel the marketing and business development processes and team members are getting the flow. Crowdfunding service in general is new for Shadstone, and w/ Don’s coaching – this is a very exciting service to add to the portfolio.
* Excalibur Brothers – 2 products / franchisees products scheduled to be going live early September – https://go.clktrack.com/ebflask and https://go.clktrack.com/ebcase – truly amazing and we are blessed with such a talented content team – shout out to Luciano, Phenie, Alvin, Dino, and so many others on our team. Its been years and years of putting these amazing people together, and we are pushing the limits. Discussing adding a group of new products with the new Blimp batch (vs many individual people) – turned down a couple applicants, as we want the right matches.
* Esatto – the 40 foot ocean container should be arriving in Los Angeles this coming week, and Christian is working like crazy to update the listings, coordinate with the content team, and we need to do a lot to prepare this launch. On the marketing call, I mentioned – let’s use our NewYorkBarStore.com distributor brand for marketing and launching this , instead of starting with 0 fan social media accounts (NYBS has accounts on most platforms with content and followings – let me know if you need me to add you to the twitter, IG, Facebook page, or others)
* Akitai – Andres will be back to Thailand end of month, as well as me! Need to get onto the “new product development” stage – but in the mean time – it is great to see our marketing department (shout out to Ariane and Walter!) for creating content, schedules, posting, brainstorming and more. We need to think of more engagement campaigns and ambassador campaigns to balance the schedule (in my opinion).
* Handshake / web3 – had an amazing Handshake.mastermind twitter spaces, getting the hang of it (but need to figure out microphone feedback issue)
* Amazon hustle Shenzhen meetup last week – filled up the venue even on a night of heavy rain! Organizers and restaurant was surprised – I love to share to a full house!
I’m missing a lot I am sure!
In all of this is – new software, new team members, more Sops and systems.
This is the most important – as I believe Anne said on the marketing call – “Mike loves his team” – yes – it is true. Over the years I have studied management (reading books mostly) and there are 3 main parts of a business – customers, employees, owners (CEO) – and some favor one of those 3 over the other. I favor the “employee” (we call each other team members here, technically – or Shadstone NINJAS) – and I believe – sure – we need customers and we need owners (investors) – but the right team is what will last longest.
Hope you are all enjoying what you are doing – I truly believe that is the most important. Right people, but also right SEAT. If you are not working on what you are passionate about, you won’t work to your full potential. I’d love to help make sure people on the team are working on what they are truly passionate about – so please do not be shy to bring it up to me or others on management if you have feedback.
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