What Is Mike Michelini Up To Now: October 4 to 10, 2026

We are deep into the busy season now, and I hope you are prepared.

Last week I survived another Amazon account suspension. This was one of the hardest reviews yet, including a video call that lasted more than 30 minutes. I came through it, but I would be lying if I said it did not scare me.

I do not know whether these platforms are using more AI to scan accounts, whether larger accounts naturally receive more scrutiny, or whether this is simply the new normal. What I do know is that platform risk stops feeling theoretical the moment an account goes dark.

It is a good reminder to keep documents organized, ownership clear, and recovery procedures ready before there is a crisis. Hopefully we have passed these checks for the foreseeable future, but hope is not a system.

One Month Until Cross Border Summit

We are now one month away from Cross Border Summit 2026, November 3 to 5 in Chiang Mai.

The team and I are working hard to make it better and more special than ever. We are using new technology, better systems, and a few surprises. But the core is still simple: good people in cross-border ecommerce sharing openly and building real relationships with each other.

Technology can help with coordination, context, follow-up, and the attendee experience. It cannot replace the feeling of being in a room with people who understand the strange combination of opportunity, pressure, and uncertainty that comes with building across borders.

A Full October Travel Run

The calendar around the Summit is filling quickly.

• Thursday, October 8: Advanced Ecommerce Seller Dinner in Chiang Mai.
• Tuesday, October 13: Advanced Ecommerce Seller Dinner in Bangkok.
• After Bangkok: a quick private meeting in Cambodia, then back to Chiang Mai.
• October 17 to 26: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou with my son during the trade-show season.

I am also helping connect people around a couple of friends' events. Howard Thai is hosting the Elite Seller Society 2026 Paris Castle Mastermind from October 26 to 30. I plan to join the event live online. Howard invited me at no charge, and I may receive a commission if someone joins through my referral.

Lyden Smithers, who is speaking at this year's Cross Border Summit, is also hosting China Magic 2026. While I am in Guangzhou, I plan to guest mentor one or two sessions. I may receive a commission if someone joins through my link.

I like seeing these communities connect. The best part of travel season is not the number of cities or events. It is the chance to deepen relationships across different groups of sellers, product builders, sourcing operators, and entrepreneurs.

Making Product Development a Process

Behind the travel, we are also working hard to make new product development more systematic across our ecommerce brands.

Physical product work can look simple from the outside. In reality it involves opportunity selection, customer evidence, supplier qualification, samples, testing, packaging, compliance, commercial review, and a clear handoff into launch and learning. We have been living this through our recent Bangkok sourcing work, and now the goal is to turn those lessons into a repeatable process.

The bigger pattern is the same across the company. We are continuing the long upgrade of workflows, teams, and systems for this agentic world. It is exciting, but it is not automatic. Every new capability creates another question about ownership, review, quality, and what should remain human.

Learning to Work on Two Rails

I work in pomodoros each day: 30 minutes of focused work followed by a five-minute break.

In the past I often separated creative or maker time from management time. A friend challenged that assumption. This is a different world, and we need to learn to do both.

I started calling the idea dual rail. One rail is building and creating. The other is managing, reviewing, communicating, and moving people or decisions forward.

Agents make the second rail more visible because several bounded threads can move while I focus on one thing. When an agent returns with a draft, a decision, or a piece of evidence, I need to switch from maker to manager. Then I may switch back into building again.

This is harder than it sounds. I do not want every work session to become fragmented attention. The point is not to juggle endless tabs or supervise a swarm for the sake of feeling busy. The point is to keep two named rails moving, while preserving human judgment and enough focus to make something good.

I am still adjusting, but I feel good about the direction. Busy season, platform reviews, product work, events, and travel are forcing me to practice it for real.

How are you adjusting to the new way of working and creating with agents? Are you still separating maker and manager time, or are you learning to move between both?