Just Like your mother told you!

You can, you really can! I think running your own business gives you the tools and confidence to do just about anything you set your mind to. You look around and where everyone else sees problems you see solutions, you see a way to get from where you are to where you want to go – you can see the money. However a rather painful realization I’ve been dealing with is that you are ultimately just one person. You only have 24 hours in each day less the 5-8 hours you sleep every night (hopefully at least 7!!), your bound by the same limitations as every other mortal and as such so is your ability to do the things you want to do.

The second realization which paired with the first to create this blog title is that no business is ever done and there is really no limit on the amount of time and energy you can invest in one endeavor in order to ensure it is a successful one. That being said obviously the more endeavors you engage in the less resources you have to invest in the other. In addition “switching gears” bears a price as well – I’m not nearly as effective dividing my attention between a promotion task and a website task as I would be doing one or the other exclusively. Businesses that become the most successful do one or a few things and do them WELL! – that’s IT! I believe this fact of life has equal implications for the individual professional… despite my love of Emerson’s ranting about how men today are reduced to parts. If you chop your energy into too many endeavors at the same time you will fail, despite any degree of potential – no matter how fantastic, in all of them.

I need to remind myself of this daily – my goal for next year is to be involved in 1 primary endeavor with a light sprinkling of a 2nd and the year after to be focused exclusively on 1 endeavor. You can do whatever you want but you can’t do everything you want. Right now I’m cut as such: 60% Food Importation 30% Website Development 10% Event Promotions and Marketing. 3 is too many things for me to be doing but it’s not bad from cutting back from well over 10 different things I was working on and several other things I put on my plate that I simply ended up having no time to do late last year. I’ve managed to cut down on the event’s side these past 2-3 months by bartering Website services in exchange for event organizing services with my good friends at NetworkPRD.com in this way I’m able to consolidate my energies into two primary endeavors instead of a more even spread across 3. This is a step forward! – or at least I tell myself it is .

So if I had the power to spread a bit of wisdom over your cranium I would say find and focus on your value, wherever that may be, and develop it through a focused channel. Of course you’ll want to make sure your customers see the same value, and more importantly, are happy to compensate you in an agreeable fashion. Don’t spread yourself too thin over too many things, entrepreneurship has opened a lot of doors for me… too many… I have been forced to learn – in failure – how to courteously close some doors or pass it on to another when the timing is not right or the opportunity falls too far outside of my focus. Have the wisdom, courage, and resolve to execute on the rules you make for yourself in this regard. Who knows! maybe you’ll save a few more strands of hair from stress related fall out in the years to come .

I think we’re a ways off from that but in honor of the rising consumption of video content and my love of social media and it’s implications for marketing I present unto you this stat filled eye candy. Again if your experiencing internet blockage in China or other not-so-free-to-browse countries take a look at my How to Access Facebook on China article. Happy watching – social media is the future – deal with it!

Take a look at this video I found surfing around today – awesome and on point – this is what I’m talking about everyday when people inquire about social media and what to do about it! It’s legitamite, it’s real, and it’s here to stay, your not going to be able to get away with being a spectator for long – even here in China! Anyway have a look I thought it was good

If your in China and can’t access youtube (thanks GFWC!) please take a look at my “How to access Facebook in China” post – or if your exceedingly lazy you can directly download freegate – just unzip it on your desktop – double click and you should be good to go if your using IE or Chrome – if your using Firefox you’ll need to add the proxy to the plug in your using. No worries though if your using FF your probably smart enough to know how to do that all by yourself .

Priorities

Know ‘em. Define ‘em. Make sure you reference them whenever your planning out important steps and decisions in your life personally and professionally. Take them into account when defining your goals – use them to guide you when you find yourself in confusing situations and examining new opportunities. Redefine them when necessary

These are a few of the things I tell myself when I think about priorities. What are my priorities in life right now? Well, let’s see these are basically them in their order of importance:

work (more specifically, developing this new food retailing business – developing website and online marketing business – developing my event and promotions business.)


health – My body is precious, it’s the only one I have and I need to take care of it so it will take care of me. I can’t perform my best at work if I don’t exercise enough and consume enough nutrients. This also includes taking into account sexual needs

emotional health – meaning my support system, family, friends, good friends, girl friends, etc. I think I have a unique appreciation of this priority. Many might see this as a subcategory under health but I think it is important enough to consider as a category all it’s own.

It’s been really tough for me to find a way to manage all of these priorities into the 16-19 hours I have each day. I’ve had to make sacrifices to health and emotional health for the sake of professional goals several times recently. Not getting enough sleep, neglecting my personal network of friends, eating poorly and inconsistently, not joining in social events I normally would attend. We all have to do these things sometimes I suppose, I just hope that with proper planning in the next several months I’ll figure out a basic routine and schedule that will allow me to accommodate each of these priorities to a tolerable degree. That will inevitabley equate to a lot more “smart” working across the board and more time devoted to health and emotional wellness

Planning

I think I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again, my life more and more, my value I see more and more clearly is in putting together solutions. In planning out solutions using the skills I have and more and more the people in my network that have complementary skills that allow me to piece together a complete solution for my customers problems. The biggest piece of the puzzle in my current retail business is really just planning – creative problem solving and planning. How do we get from A to B, how do we measure our success along the way, what are the defined deliverables and What are their DEADLINES.

Deadlines has become a bit of a thing with me, I’ve been bad, I still am bad with them. So I’m focusing on adding them to all of my planning. I’ve migrated from the world of might and maybe into can and will but one must also apply a time-stamp and date to each of these actionable items to put together a concise and executable plan. “Sure I’d be happy to meet up with you to discuss how we can work together…” but when?. “Of course I can do that for you, if that’s what you need I’ll take care of it for you… by what time?. The process of planning in and of itself identifies and eliminates some problems but I’ve found within adding the time constraints you are forced to narrow down to a detailed enough level where you can eliminate any of the critical barriers that would require my thinking in one strike as opposed to when they came up later on during the execution of the planning.

Putting time-lines in also forces you to define actionable pieces of your plan where you may have overlooked them before. I love actionable items – throughout the last year I’ve found myself harboring a growing disdain for the ambiguous, purely conceptual, and inactionable. Sure they can be interesting and thought provoking – but I suppose I’m too focused on plowing forward in the world of small business.. I need to get my hands in the dirt. I can’t frolic in the clouds as much as I might want to most of the time. More and more of my energies are working on getting things done, getting deals made, and solving people’s problems in their terms.

Moral of the mini rant – I need to spend time developing my own planning ability and process!

Time Management

This word always pops up when at some point during the night when I’m pulling an all-nighters. Yea sure I can choose whenever I want to sleep and define my own schedule – I’m an entrepreneur after all right? Then again if my customers are unhappy and I don’t get paid I can’t put food in my mouth and living in a cardboard box, though cost effective, is a downgrade in living standard I’m not comfortable with. So if I get an excited/agitated e-mail or phone call in the early evening from a customer that requires my immediate and extended attention to fix – well then I’m going to go ahead and compromise my schedule to make them happy. I’m learning, I’m not particularly satisfied with my coping with the demands of customers at this point – in terms of time management – but I think I’m moving forward. I should note, I think it is necessary for me to be a bit unstable now – my business is just starting out, I need to ensure my current customers are happy and will bring me solid referrals. My current customers are the life blood of my website biz’s success right now.

However generally speaking I think I need to focus on developing my self-directed time management skill. Too much and too often I let the things that pop up during the day define how I will spend my time. O! My cousin wrote me an e-mail about a trip to HK that requires attention today – I’ll deal with that now! O! one of the computers in the office is having a printing problem – let me take a look at that. A phone call from a client to reschedule a meeting, and a quick request to modify something on a current project. Have to communicate that back to my outsourcing partner. I lose half hours and hours in this way constantly throughout the day. I’m aware that many of the things I do are not what I’d call.. “critical tasks” the things I write down at the beginning of the day as most important to take care of – and I’m SLOWLY getting better at saying “I’ll take a look at that ____” instead of now in cases where it’s unimportant or my relationship is particularly strong and I can get away with it. I still falter quite a bit when it comes to customers though – I need to show them a sense of urgency in all that I do for them so breaking schedules on their account is something I don’t see stopping in the near future.

I think it’s about time for me to hire a part-time assistant as well..

Some reflections on negotiating business relationships

I have to be careful, each day I believe I’m getting better and better at discerning people’s position and desire in business and putting pieces together in ways where incentives are aligned and risks are sufficiently managed in so far as each party is concerned. However, I still find myself occasionally in a position where I feel like I’ve wasted my time with someone I’m vetting. Maybe it’s when I’m most engaged with my own side of the equation that I falter – though maybe it’s of little concern as I’ve only just recently gotten out on my own. Learning to stand on ones own two feet by means of my own endeavors is no easy nor small task.

Recently I have been in negotiations with a language training center to involve my language activities into their marketing mix in return for an invesetment. Things are looking iffy at this point and here are some of the lessons I’ve pulled out of the endeavor thus far:

Find the decision maker

Yes of course! Well who doesn’t know that! well like many text based understandings this lesson has found it’s solidification in a mistake. I originally began conversations with this company through a contact I had made through a networking event several months ago – what I failed to discern immediately was that she was not infact the key decision maker in their business, a partner yes, but the real ‘driver’ of the business – No. If your talking to the wrong person your just creating more wind between ears in my opinion, if you want to get something done you need to get to the key person making things happening and making the hard and fast decisions about the company.

Listen, THINK, Discern THEIR position

Again not rocket science but something I believe you always need to be developing a real keen ear and eye for. Deducing intention, desire, and position not just through what people you are investigating doing business with say but what they don’t say and how they word it. What kind of person are they? Where are they in their career? What do they want to accomplish with their business? How do you fit into their goals?… and if you don’t why would they do business with you? The last peice fell a little hard on my head during our last meeting. It was quite clear to me at that point that the real decision maker, who was now in front of me, would not have agreed to the conditions under which I began a ‘trial’ relationship with these guys.

You really need to be able to put your agenda aside, completely, and focus on building an understanding of that key decision maker and their business. I forgot to do this sufficiently, I think I filled in a lot of the blanks myself early on because I knew what this company was, their size, their service, their position in the market – more or less. However I did not know the heart, mind, and passion of the key decesion maker and I did not sufficiently consider how she would like to work together and what problems they were currently facing. Do I have a marketing product to offer them with fantastic ROI potential? I believe so. Is that relevant to the key decision maker? Let me stress this – it depends entirely on their position and of course your relationship with him/her. Small business is messy – I have a firm understanding of this. Time is always on short supply and catering to any agenda but your own is damn near implausible. I forgot this in my blind ambition to reveal how valuable a proposition I was making them. I pushed about how valuable what I had was instead of investigating what their current plights and agenda were for the business

Watch this! Awesome insight into being a successful leader!

So as a favor to my father I filled his shoes over this labor day weekend at my ancestral village in Zhao Qing (肇庆). The following is an account of the events that transpired in a humorous, reverent, and at times frustrated tone. You try explaining to every relative you run into (that’s basically the whole village for me) that your not planning to get married right away, why, and field the usual responses!

Back to the account. My trip started late Saturday morning – my cousin Yuki and I had tickets from nearby Nan Shan Yi Yuan (南山医院) “South Mountain Hospital” to Zhao Qing scheduled for a 10:30 departure. I arrived about 10:20 and Yuki met me with a McDonald’s breakfast (Yes, i know – I’m sorry!). They were out of sandwiches, though apparently had all the ingredients to compile one. That was revealed when i opened the breakfast tray to find two English muffin halves, a flat circular mass of scrambled eggs, and a sausage patty. The ingenuity necessary to combine them was left to the customer – this did not surprise me.

The bus arrived over 20min late. We were shoved around getting on the bus despite having assigned seats – it’s habitual, nothing to be done about it. I introduced myself to the fellow next to me as it was obvious we shared something in common – he was foreign. Agus? – can’t remember his name. An Australian bloke who worked for the Chamber of Commerce in Beijing (北京) – something to do with mining and other stuffs. He lived in Zhao Qing for about 5 years between ‘02-’07 – interesting stuff. He informed me a friend had told him the traffic getting into Zhao Qing was pretty tight so i might as well forget about the estimated trip time of 3 hours.

Australian guy turned out to be right – we arrived in a little over 4 hours. A kid threw up in the general path of following disembarking passengers – then in the pit where technicians stand when performing maintenance on the buses. I thought how that might pan out at a Jiffy Lube – more eventful I’m sure. Yuki and I waited a few minutes for her brother to arrive by car. We drove to their home nearby wherein I met her Grandma, half my height and speaking with an accent I was hopeless to decipher she began the customary task of force feeding me.

I ate as little as I could in order to achieve the proper level of respect without putting myself in a bloated position for the dinner coming in about an hour. I dropped my bag off upstairs, fiddled and failed to get online and was quickly ushered back outside to Yuki’s brothers car.

We drove to our ancestral village, I’d venture a guess at, 20 minutes away. There after making my rounds shaking hands, dropping a few lines of bad mandarin, and playing 20 min of b-ball with younger relatives – I ate again. Not an incline of hunger existed before the meal as I was barely hungry when I ate at the house earlier. The whole village ate together some 20 tables of relatives that I can only aspire one day to identify in our massive family tree. Duck, chicken, a couple veggies and some kind of fatty Chinese meatballs with rice, beer, tea, and soda if you preferred. I stuck to the water I bought nearby and again ate sparingly.

The Entrance to the Village Eatery

After dinner the lights were popped on in our updated community home (next door to the community eatery). Yuki tried to tell me I might want to give money – though I’m unsure as here words formed neither questions nor statements. I called my father to decipher – she spoke with him, hung up, and provided me with no more clarification on the matter. I stewed – then wandered inside, no one seemed to be leaving yet anyway, and i sensed the mosquito squadrons were rallying to launch – and I’m typically a key target.

Inside, I came to learn, the community members were deliberating on community matters – cool! The matter at hand tonight was who was to manage the village accounting – they had an abacus on one of the two large tables inside – guess I should have known. Everything was conducted in Cantonese so I busied myself with a mini-war with the mosquitoes flying around. 1 point for me every time I killed one, 1 point for them every time they bit me. The committee voted making Yuki’s older brother the community accountant which he reluctantly accepted – an uncle in a red shirt had been passed over but he didn’t seem to upset over it. 7-0 me. Then everyone began putting cash on the table. My cousin (Yuki’s older brother) counted it and the money was placed in a plastic bag which my cousin tucked away. 15-0 + a bonus for a roach. Shortly after we departed for Yuki’s home. 21-0, i was feeling meagerly triumphant.

A Picture from the opening ceremony of the new “Ho” family house on display inside.

After getting home food was again brought to the table, and you were wondering why I ate sparingly . I dodged with a request to take a shower. Afterwords I tried again with the internet – deduced it was something to do with my system – gave up. I then returned downstairs and was greeted with a plethora of junk food. I refused politely… though that dried sweet pork did look tasty. Uncle Henry and a couple of uncles I’m more familiar with came over and were immediately served with bowls, Zongzi (粽子), two trays of rice and veggie powder based dishes, and a couple bowls of local sliced fruit. I ate a bit – despite yelling at myself not to – the apple was particularly tasty. Then I moved onto trying the butter cookies and that seductive dried pork. The fact that it only had four natural ingredients and was imported was enough for me to justify diving in.

I managed my way out of there and back upstairs to use one of my cousins computers to get online. I spent the rest of the night replying to e-mails and updating SNS sites as that was what i was limited to with the Chinese windows and an outdated IE. I hate IE. I ended up in bed around 1:30.

This morning i woke up – after ignoring a set of knocks on my door earlier – I knew all that fake sleeping I did during my high school years would pay off. I did a few sets of push ups, put on my pants, packed up, and made my way downstairs. Grandma brought food out before I even finished pouring myself a glass of water from the bubbler – she was on her game today. I managed to duck a few of the overeating offers including that dastardly dried pork before it was time to leave again for the village. I was given 5 Zongzi (粽子) to bring back with me – I knew my Dad liked them so i thought ‘aah what the hey – I’ll take a few.’

When we got back to the village a meal was being prepared. I busied myself with a little convo with my relatives before moseying over to the kids for a little fun. In my boredom I climbed the tree in their small playground and acted like a monkey to get them roused up – they loved that.

Back inside to eat, even more dishes this time. In addition to the dishes yesterday their was a pork dish, a fish dish, and a veggie w/Chinese sausage dish. I ate to about 70% and filled the rest with water. I transferred my baggage from my cousins car to my Uncle Henry’s before we set off for the day’s adventure.

The plan seemed humble enough – walk around the rice fields and climb the hills where our ancestors were buried, clean off the tombs, light some incense, bow 3 times, and chat along the way. The sun was keen on turning it into more of a trial and it waned on my tolerances. For instance my temperance for being constantly misunderstood by Yuki because in her excitement she answers my questions before they’ve been finished – averaging out in 5 wrong answers to every right one.

There were some interesting sites along the way – for instance the stocked ponds bordered on one side by a large ‘hen house’ housing nearly 1000 geese by my reckoning. The few dead fish i saw floating around didn’t make me feel real great about the food I just ate. Neither did watching the fish eat Geese droppings. At least it appears sustainable right? The highlight of the festive, if not fatiguing, ceremonies included; seemingly pathless venturing through overgrowth, firecrackers before leaving each site – try not hearing us now ancestors! – just in case the x odd billion yuan we burned over to you was insufficient, and wet rice fields with their rows upon rows of the country’s staple crop growing greenly all around me.

I did my best to help out though, just like in HK the week before, I was largely reduced to an awkwardly smiling onlooker. I bowed my bows, almost lost a leg on one of the higher hill paths – damn path was about a foot in width! – and made it back to village in one piece. I endured roughly 30 minutes of prodding about marriage and fended off invitations to stay another day before Uncle Henry was ready to leave. I was happy to get out of there as they were preparing another meal in the community eatery.

Home free back to Shenzhen!

One of my nieces – she was one of the most rambunctious

-End Story-

There’s about 1000 spaces on each side of this hall – can you smell the money? – probably not the smell of incense is quite potent

My Grandmother and Grandfather – the picture was recently updated to include both of them.

Some people gathered outside waiting for their turn to bow and make offerings to their ancestors

My Grandmother’s sister on another floor in the same temple.

There were monkeys outside the tomb on these trees last time – no luck this time.

I believe this is my father’s father’s brother’s brother but not not actually – need to ask about this one again.

This was the last tomb I went to – monk inside reciting scripture and ringing a large bell gave it a nicer feeling than the commercial or government stops

And now some words I captured that day

Up the stairs to find the remains of my Grandfather. A familial obligation I did my best to perform humbly. On stainless steel tables inside the halls the older women of the family hurriedly prepare. Fruit – oranges mostly, bananas, rice, roasted meats – pork, chicken, duck – steamed buns, sweet sesame buns, veggies, paper money, and other niceties to be better appreciated by those enjoying their afterlife. I took 3 sticks of burning incense and, in line, payed my respects to my ancestor with three bows endured through eye-searing, lung clogging smoke. I finished quickly as the line demanded so. It was an exercise in efficiency as much as one of respect. I moved to a second room to repeat the gesture to my father’s cousins daughter’s mother – then to a lower level to once again bow with incense to my grandmother’s sister. I got 4 sticks of incense for the second bowing and 6 for the last from my uncle. It seems the significance of three was lost a little in this transaction. I softly inquired with my father about the significance of the entire act. “I think i need to invent another way for my children to pay their respects to me when I’m gone.” I supposed. I thought a nice dinner over meaningful discussions about family matters and biz would suffice. My father told me some people already were utilizing alternatives. There are sites where you can go and purchase virtual incense and the like and pay your respects virtually. Much more cost effective than purchasing a spot at this shrine to display your ashes – anywhere from 30000-100000+HK. That would ring a wall of 100 w x 13 h units (at an avg of 50k/box) in at 65,000,000HKD. There is well over a billion HK decorating the walls of this shrine. My father and I speculated there was almost certainly a business behind this operation. Real estate for the dead is a fine business indeed.

A free-association piece inspired after reading this article about “Freeconomics” on the Wired Blog. Simply awesome article in my opinion – if your a young entrepreneurial type person, or have an interest in the turning tides of technology and their implications for the web and beyond – have at it!! Even if you don’t I’d still recommend giving it a read . I really should get paid for this….. well… that’s another entry all together…

This is awesome, it reminds me that what I’m trying to accomplish – or more importantly the method I’m trying to accomplish my goals in life with is right. It’s in the little things. Checking off a box in a member registration form for a free forum after actually READING the text about whether or not you’d like to receive X, Y, or Z notification. Caring and spending time considering what someone is saying because it’s clear they are are real, genuine, and offering something of value or interest with no strings attached. It’s about creating a relationship such that people are truly, genuinely interested in what you have to say, what your about, and eventually – in good time – what your selling.

Your selling yourself everyday – get used to it, everyday is another opportunity to generate leads that will eventually become prospects that will one day buy… YOU! The specific product/service is of little importance, it’s all about building relationships. I think in that way the prevailing forces at play today are forcing marketers and business people everywhere to look at their marketing models differently – more like a good sales person ought to look at their portfolio of prospects. “How can I develop my relationship with current customers and prospects?” “How can I make meaningful contributions to their lives/business such that they will in turn trust me more?”

I read “Never Eat Alone” last month and a line comes to mind… “Wealth, Health, and Children,” can’t remember who the author was talking to when he got this response but it left a mark in my mind. If your looking to build a lasting relationship with someone – these are the spaces you need to offer value. Help them build their business, help them be successful, help them take care of themselves and their body, help them out in some way with their little ones. These are the gestures and favors that leave an impression – they build a strong foundation and foster an environment of natural goodwill towards one another.

Once you have a relationship based on mutual interest – fueled by a never ending, unassuming stream of meaningful value additions going both ways you don’t have to sell them anything. It’s prequalification – your in, your good, if you say its the way to go and he doesn’t know any better he’ll take your word for it. The money’s on the table before you’ve even finished your sentence. I want to take it a step further – when the relationship is there and the pieces line up I take it upon myself to assume the position of the prospect and close. For instance I’ll be upfront and frank and say something like “just give me the money – you know it’s the right way to go,” or if an objection gingerly arises I’ll roll my eyes and assert my position even more passionately.

I’ve found that many times these objections are simply a habit born out of being screwed over time and time again – such that when the right situation arises with the right person and everything lines up they habitually hesitate. My perspective on how to handle this when you know your relationship is solid is pretty much to slap them in the face with it. I look at it as them standing in the way of themselves and their own success – that’s how I motivate myself to take such action. “Just sign the damn paper”… which translates into something like “you trust me, we both know this fits, I’ll take care of you if their are any problems, I know you know I care a lot about you and your business and would go out of my way to keep you happy because I know you’d do the same for me” sort of .

My future, my success will be born of community, customization, conversation and co-creation – Thank you “80 Minute MBA” – it’s the future of marketing as far as I’m concerned. I love it, I think I’m built for it, I love people – making things happen – putting the pieces together – adding unconditionally to my fellow human beings success – and being appreciated for what I do. I will rise or fall through my relationships as any good S/M professional ought to.

Sure Dolph Lundgren is a little off topic – but I think we could all agree he needs the love and we could use the laugh.

That was my zen moment today – I happened to write it in a chat to a friend I was discussing some sensitive matters with… Actions are truth. It’s something basic about my mode of evaluation. I think we all could benefit from taking a moment to examine the relationships closest to us, particularly where there is confusion or uncertainty, in terms of behavior. Love is as much, if not more, about what you DO to those you care about than what you say and how you feel.

Seriously! if your in a pickle in a relationship whether it be romantic, familial, friendship or anything in between – when words are lacking or failing – look at what they do. Words can be confusing and many times are meaningless but actions are typically much more telling. If someone talks with resolve but acts without conviction you can be relatively certain of their true nature is.

So how is this knowledge useful – how do I integrate it into my actions such that the lesson is rendered useful?I believe I’ve mentioned before that I believe a lesson learned that is not integrated into action is useless. People that know me know that a big part of who I am draws a great deal of satisfaction out of developing important people in my life in meaningful ways. Recently – in line with that passion – I’ve been developing ways of qualifying those areas that require attention for development and those that are of a lower priority within those individuals. So here’s how I’m using this lesson. Basically my rule is – if the result at the end of your days is you having done things that are not in line with who you are and/or want to be (as defined by you) then those behaviors are something worthy of attention. If you find yourself completely unaware why you perform these behaviors you do not condone cognitively – the phenomenon ought to be analyzed. There’s nothing quite so dangerous as a person who’s actions are not ruled by their own reasoning – to themselves and those around them.