Great time at the first Global From Asia Saigon, Vietnam meetup.
Mike’s Blog 110
Got it done right off the bat here in Saigon, Vietnam. Landed literally the day before and came to a city I had never been to and did a meetup the next day. Thanks to Jon Myers and many others in the local scene for helping out. Also to the Hive Coworking space (that just opened last week) for sponsoring the space and free drinks!
We opened with a 20 minute talk on my China business story. Talking about some of the ups and downs of hiring and sourcing from China, bit of manufacturing, and the evolution of my own business. The hard part of course is being open about it, but also that I only had 20 minutes – this speech I could have done in a few hours (I have actually).
Then we switched over to a panel format, and had a wide range of questions from China business and manufacturing to Amazon FBA. Thanks to the panelists, Jon Myers, John Cavendish, Justin Cooke, and Maurice Dz for giving amazing value and ideas to the audience. About 35 people in the room, I was so happy to have a good turnout and such nice people doing business and growing.
We already picked dates for the next one, July 27, Thursday. And I’m talking to Duy about being a chapter organizer – she is a local who attended and really enjoyed her time there. Working on meeting her before I leave Saigon and getting her up to speed on how to organize and manage the events and can then help her remotely when I’m back in Shenzhen.
Its true – when I tell people about the local meetup expansion they say “now you will truly earn your name – Global From Asia”. It is always a dream of mine to have a network of local chapters to help business owners. I have done it for so many other brands – Startup Weekend – and other brands I have started – but it really makes sense to do it in the Global From Asia name.
Be that Asia business bridge, creating a community of quality international business owners.