I’m excited to start to tell the world – my wife Wendy is now formally my business partner here in Shadstone and Global From Asia. Well, technically maybe she always was – so supportive and helpful, but over the past month or so it is more formal.
Wendy Has a Ton of Experience in Events and Chinese Marketing
I’ve tried to get her in involved in the past, and we did a little bit of projects together (like China Business Workshop) – but it has always been dancing around it.
It was the Cross Border Summit that really got her engaged. She wanted to help more, but after just delivering Maggie to the world, she couldn’t fully get involved. We somehow managed to hold the event together without her full support (though she did put a ton of time and effort into it the last week or two leading up to the summit), but now she is excited to get more formally involved.
What is her role? She is Chinese (obviously) and helping on the local event management here, as well as we are growing more and more Chinese members in the new Global From Asia club!
We have also been developing the Wechat page more and more – and she has integrated payment and added more new features that I haven’t learned yet.
We hopefully can together bridge the Chinese Global From Asia club members with the Western members, and put them together like they want to be. It is such a challenge with the language, culture, and technology differences – basically every challenge you can think of – it exists when trying to bridge Chinese people with business people overseas.
Will Start To Hold Business Trips!
One exciting new project we are going to do is business trips. This means, we are going to have groups of business people join in on a trip to visit companies and areas in a new part of the world.
For example, we are working on a trip to see Chinese e-commerce companies, as well as have a lineup of seminars and speaker sharing sessions as a all in 1 business trip package. So many foreigners want to see the inside of a Chinese internet company, and it is a bit of a challenge to make that happen on a one to one ratio. When we pool together a group of 10 to 20 foreign business owners – it is an event. It is something the Chinese companies are interested to opening their doors for.
Plus the networking and connections people will make from doing this business trip.
But we will “go both ways”. We are also working on business trips in USA for Chinese e-commerce executives. We can take them to San Francisco, to see Silicon Valley, meet high level business executives in America. It will be a fun way for them to engage with Western business owners.
Building a business bridge – on a more offline level. This is going to be a ton of work! Have been mapping out the agenda and destinations for a while now, and soon will announce it publicly.
The idea is to have these twice a year. One in America, another in China. Let’s see where it goes.
And of course still have the annual Cross Border Summit – in Shenzhen, in April – next one in April 2017.
So with all this China and USA bridging, I need a hard working, intelligent, and connected Chinese partner. Who else is better than my amazing wife Wendy.
Being Careful About Work and Marriage
The main concern I always have about this if we have differences in business – how will we handle it in our marriage. I really don’t want to hurt our relationship – but so far we have been handling it pretty well.
The trick is the Chinese culture and mindset is so different. We are still learning how to balance the wants and needs of Chinese business people with foreigners. It is something that needs to be sorted out, in our business partnership, as well as in the long term success of the Global From Asia club!
I think the best way we have been dealing with it is – she deals with the Chinese member and Chinese business side, I deal with the overseas and English business side. Then we try our best to match up the wants and needs and desires of both sides in the middle.
The biggest difference I have noticed so far – is Chinese value offline events and meetings more than online. Yet a lot of these foreign members don’t live in China and can’t easily travel. I’m brainstorming ways to maximize this issue.
Excited To Announce This Business Partnership
I can’t think of anyone better to work with – Wendy has been super supportive of me and the business (all the ventures.) since the first day we met! The rock I can rely on.
She is one “tough cookie” from Dongbei (region on China) and is also helping to push the business to be more numbers driven and effective. I love content creation and connecting people – so I think this difference is a great way to put it all together.
Wonder what you think if you’re reading this? Marriage and business partnerships – I see many that work out well. It does allow us to spend more time together.
