Welcome Gabree to the Shadstone China Team!

Been really getting to business…especially since the Chinese year of the Dragon started….I was tempted to go to Bali with my Shenzhen buddies for a holiday / TropicalMBA meetup…but locked myself in my “cave” and worked the majority of Chinese New Years. Making a plan, meeting my “Ace in the pocket” friend Xing Gao who really motivated me to re-build my consulting team in China and make it happen again. Not be afraid, stand up for myself and come back stronger than ever!

And thing started off so fast creating a monumental week post getting into Social Media training, startup networking, USA clients visiting for China business. Really overwhelming, but really “biting off more than I can chew” and chewing it.

So back to the point of today’s post. Another “new years resolution” is adding Gabree Kwan to the Shadstone China consulting team. I have known her for a couple years now, she has always been interested to work with the company on E-commerce and SEO. But we were also getting into our talks when I was closing my Shenzhen office and I put hiring on hold.

Gabree has a lot of experience in project management, working in Huawei electronics (one of the largest electronics brands in China). She did well in the company, and I’m really excited to have her join the team.

She will be COO (Chief Operations Officer), and is already making some awesome project plans, workflows, and “digesting” all the crazy scatterbrained ideas and processes I have been throwing around the company for the past few years.

Its been a breath of fresh air, and I feel like the company may be “able to stand on its own 2 feet”. I keep worrying I am “scaring her away” with all the crazy ideas and ramblings throughout the day. But she is hanging tough, soaking up all the insanity and from the excel spreadsheets I saw over her shoulder today – KICKIN’ Butt!.

When she first started, she was assigned to a new consulting project in Futian district of Shenzhen, which ended up not working out. It was also when I was in the Philippines, and talking to Gillian of SEOmoz who gave me CEO coaching in the backseat of a taxi. She taught me so much in that 1 hour (in traffic) ride…and also like my buddy Xing Gao, started re-building my confidence on re-building a team. I’m confident on being in China, consulting, e-commerce.

What I’m also confident on, is I have learned about myself, my weaknesses, and finding the right people to complement those weaknesses. Amy has been a rockstar too (she’s translating this to my Chinese blog now, awesome!), as well as the rest of the team. Even those who are no longer active with the company -sometimes personal / life changes, some career changes, some my mistake, some their mistake. I have learned so much, and just keep on moving forward.

But we are re-building, re-organizing. and re-creating ourselves. In addition to Gabree, we are talking to many others, clients, and future staff…. trying to do something amazing….bridging e-commerce between USA and China, and the world. its global commerce

Rock on…