What Mike is Up To now – Sept 20 – 26, 2020
Quick bullet points:
* Kids seem to be adjusting to full time school ok. Was a little rough making new friends, etc but going ok.
* Studying deeply online event workflows and systems. Testing out one and been getting great feedback, plan to roll it out in the GFA community more and more.
* CRM, CRM, CRM. Such a headache migrating a database, but it is “over the hump” I would say and the team is learning the new Mautic system and trying hard to optimize all the power.
* Content and IT – as always, deep in affiliate systems and shopping carts now.
* Selling a site – last week mentioned selling a site, it is on auction and getting the flow to list more sites soon.
And those that want the details – here’s MOST of what I write to the Shadstone team, each Sunday morning:
Week Plan Sept 20 – 26, 2020 Shadstone Limited
The most important thing to me is the team. I hope everyone is happy and enjoying things here – if that is true – then the sky is the limit. I know I get a bit stressed sometimes, as we are changing so much so fast in the IT and systems it is scary. Thanks for working with me and if you ever have issues, hope you can talk to me, else talk to her ; -) or find a way to get a message to us.
Really hard to believe we are close to wrapping up September and entering October (Q4).
Normally this time of year we are scrambling to prepare for the trade show season and our own events at the Global Form Asia community (Cross Border Summit, Cross Border Matchmaker, etc) – but this year – no travel plans booked.
But events, community, content – this is in our DNA. So we are testing new software, and from last week’s team building call it seems you may also agree – seems worth it and exciting!
To take all the offline events we did and move them online. We will start with the GFAVIP member calls (actually last week’s was really popular with one of our biggest turnouts yet), this week we are trying 2 more online events.
We also are working towards selling a website – as I mentioned on last week’s week plan- I want to hold all the sites, but will use this as a way to start to let go.
Also it has been a huge headache but moving the CRM seems like it was a smart move. With doing more online events, we need to get better at managing the various attendees – what topics they like. So we are studying how to better segment people so that we invite those who are most interested in that topic – and making more hyper focused events that are more valuable.
Thank you for those who made it to the Shadstone online team building – I also enjoyed it and got to know you all a bit more. We are thinking of the best way to do this going forward – how often, the format, etc. Feedback is always appreciated. I think the focus will be on table time, so we can spend time in a smaller group to know each other.
What is the team working on? This is always something I think people like and learn from:
He I need to get another infographic project soon.
He – getting the flow of as always on podcasts and videos.
She – deep diving into the CRM and how to tag and segment so we can invite the right people to the right events.
She – great work with keyword help and also content topic ideas for our investment sites.
She – getting busier here also learning Mautic and helping with campaigns and email funnels. And learning the affiliate systems
She – thanks for doing a call with an upcoming podcast guest, really helped take some pressure off me! Always finding ways to learn new processes and sifting through the overloaded email boxes.
He – making epic articles as always.
He – on client’s projects helping with the paid fb ads and strategize on the online mastermind
He – amazing help as always with our systems. Also helped her our when she was locked out of Mautic.
He – digging through our directory site. Also our directories
She – further developing the Amazon FBA research for products and investments we are considering
She – great work coordinating with the growing writing team. And the newsletters, and learning the new Mautic system.
He – son just came home, congrats! And also making things work with our website upgrades learning new processes and improving the sites.
He – discussing helping with Amazon photo graphics.
He – learning more ways to increase engagement with social media. Bugging (I mean asking) the team to help like/share various posts to support a bit.
She – always making the portal work smoothly – helping get task lists, and making sure the team is paid on time with payroll.
She – getting through the overseas real estate website
She – always making sure the podcast is online, on time.
She still overworked – because she does amazing work – others are learning to help her out a bit, and making the emails, the graphics, and website design for the new posts.
So to recap:
Working on learning and implementing more online events for the community and team
Content creation, as always, for ourselves and clients.
Working on building and selling websites – well have been building for years, but now on selling