What Mike Michelini is up to Now – Jan 1- 7, 2023
Listen as audio here [1.5 minutes long] (or scroll down for text)
First “now” plan for 2023. And a bunch of different memes I have been saying is “wow, I’m glad 2020 is over” – and I also feel that way – that I’ve been stuck in 2020 and each year feels the same. My gut tells me we will “be back to normal” in 2023 – at least my cross border trade world – as it seems China is opening up borders again in Jan.
The “bullet points” for this week:
* Financials – as we grow our team and businesses, financial reports become more and more important. Thinking on how to grow and improve the financial department. (More people, more software, etc)
* GFA kids IT system – pray (for personal and business reasons) the GFAKIDs tech is upgrade this coming week, too much manual entry PAIN right now. Believe this week we can do the upgrade. Idea is to make a booking system Global From Anywhere (for both kids and adults).
* Deals – close to making an incubator/ holding structure, getting initial support and interest but it is a complex thing.
For those who want to hear the full week plan for Shadstone Limited, Mike’s company (removing sensitive info) – here it is:
Sunday morning, holiday or not, new years day or not, writing up this week plan! More inspired than ever – sure there are quite a few stress points and hardship – but as a team and as a positive group – we are making progress and chipping away and fixing as best we can each pain point.
My favorite thing to see is, learning and improving.
So proud of our Shadstone ninjas.
And doubling down, looking to build even more. I love to create, not just create things – but to create opportunity for people who want to work hard and learn and improve. And that is who we have at Shadstone in the ninjas team. People who love to learn and improve and grow – so the sky is the limit. Last week we picked up another ecommerce brand – Christian and I reviewed it and it should pay back the intitial investment in less than 6 months, while also having IP (trademarks) and other assets – so a no brainer. Finding other gems and think this may be an angle we can go deeper in – finding value and maximizing that value.
This may be another shorter week plan to be honest – but some main points:
* Financials – as we grow our team and our projects and our investments – while we have made a lot of progress with Martha and others on the team in financials, we still need to double down on improving the communication and workflow and systems of financial controls and tracking.
* More distribution and synergy in our brands and content assets – we still have so much value to unlock. We are discussing the holding co structure still, but even before that, we have content sites, and we have brands. We need to better synergize those and unlock value. Also thinking about a shopping cart, do we build them on each brand site, or better I think 1 big ecomm store on NYBS selling all the product lines. But then need to streamline the logistics.
* Chinese New Year coming – now that we finished western holidays, the rush to get factory shipments out before CNY is here – EB products we gotta stay on close contact, packaging, etc to make sure it is all done before the country of China closes for weeks (mid Jan to early Feb).
* GFAkids IT – Manly been working hard and coordinating w/ Wendy and I – I feel the system is 95% what we need – kind of have to “hack” some pieces together but should hopefully remove the painful burden Wendy and Jenny are going through of manually booking classes for students (100+ students so you can imagine). The new system hopefully will allow teachers and students to coordinate directly.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download