Preparing to Fly To Shenzhen, Week Plan Aug 1-8, 2021

What is Mike Michelini Up To Now – Aug 1 – 7, 2021

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Typing in August makes me feel like 2022 is approaching – closer to the new year! Looking forward to a new way of work and living for the rest of 2021:

• Flying to Shenzhen on Thursday night to kick off the new lifestyle for the rest of the year, down in South China.
• Global From Asia – we’re working on making an event team for Cross Border Matchmaker for Sept 2021. Also, the deal flow for the broker side, will pick up speed once in Shenzhen for sure.
• Indigitus router production is underway and I will go on a factory visit on Friday.
• Flamingo Handshake is on Aug 18, plenty of time but we want to be more prepared than ever.

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 1 – 7, 2021 Shadstone Limited

We’re “over the hump” of summer and August is always a month where I prepare my mindset for the fall / September / “back to full speed ahead in business”.

I will also be flying to Shenzhen this Thursday evening with the family on a 1-way ticket. I cannot believe I am still living with the carry-on luggage I took to our Shadstone company retreat in March 2020. Life is very unpredictable. We moved the date up earlier (originally booked for Aug 15) due to more cases of COVID in Shenyang and fear that more lockdowns are coming in the near future and we don’t want to get stuck.

Some members of the team are still dealing with COVID issues from vaccines to lockdowns. Please, health and safety first. If the company can support you in any way, please let us know. We are finding the right balance as people on the team deal with various levels of issues from quarantine to negative side effects from vaccines, etc. So please, as always, communicate to me or whomever you feel comfortable with about any issues you have.

Now for the business updates:

• Team, HR updates – we built out jobs.shadstone.com to put together various job positions we are often looking to fill and we are already getting applicants. Thank you for those sending in the referrals.
• Our PPC manager also did a paid advertising training for others on the team last week to encourage more members to support him on this department. This is great to see. We’re glad we are having this training and sharing of knowledge. This is something that I hope Shadstone can do long term.
• We had a nice monthly team call last week – we encourage as many to come as you can – it is meant to be fun and our way of bonding. And a way to see who is who and “act” like we are having a company dinner or after work gathering.
• On the business updates for
  Indigitus router – I’ll be going to the factory this Friday and will get a lot of updates on the first small ambassador batch of 200 units while there. We have put “real” photos (not 3D rendered) on various social media, and once we show production happening this will make it even more “real” to the social media community. Excited to bring this product to life. The public launch is looking for early September.
• Flamingo Handshake, we are looking to have a brainstorming call this week with those on the team involved on how to continually improve the process and also be a bit “ahead” of the curve as the date for Aug. 18 comes up. Also confirming NamesCon alliance for Sept 22-24 with a Handshake track and our team supporting on that.
• Global From Asia, need to have someone helping lead the event organization, for September (date not picked still). Hoping once I get to Shenzhen it can be easier for me to find the speakers and work on this. But also I feel we need someone dedicated to talking to GFA community. Sticking to the belief once I’m back to Shenzhen – flow of communication will come faster (been really hard for a year and a half to be isolated in Shenyang, so lets see how this GFA community develops once I’m back in Shenzhen).
• Also in Shenzhen, we will have a lot of deal flow for the Broker business at globalfromasia.com/broker and may start to develop a local team there to help on community and deal flow and bridge that with our Shadstone team. For example already lining up a ton of meetings (dates not confirmed) as we talk to various contacts in Wechat (everything is in Wechat in China). Glad our Shadstone team is familiar with Wechat and we can use that to bridge China and the rest of the world with content and news.
• Shenzhen Party – some of you may have noticed it was for sale. In the GFAVIP community we have an investor who bought it and we are confirming the details and involvement of Shadstone on this business.
• Client work moving along nicely – the communication and systems are doing well. But we do need to add another person to the client services department to back each other up.

So in a nutshell:
Projects are going well.
HR/team building – need to work on this to develop more people and grow the team in our core departments (web/internet marketing/content) instead of spreading too thin across new skillsets.