From a Low Base: Media Entrepreneurs in a Global Industry by Douglas Crets

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Breaking from Old Routines: Part 4 of the 12 Things I Learned about Business from Living in Asia

Across the street from my apartment is a barber shop owned and operated by a Mexican family.

It is a place where people from all over the neighborhood, including children, come to talk and hang out. I see the roots of business in that barber shop. It is a place where conversations happen. It is a place where things are learned. Perhaps they are not learning about collateralized debt obligations, but they arelearning things. It's a community center.

Offering people a place to speak

The company where I work specializes in creating neutral conference platforms for financial executives. I recently started two blogs for two different industries in which I work, and I did so in order to make sure that the community had a place to speak, or retrieve information. What was needed was a place where the constantly evolving conversation of the finance world had a place that was attached to the brand and that was influenced by the brand, and the people, me and the marketing team, who make the brand.

I knew that my company's old way of doing things was so rooted in a traditional view of content as delivered singularly along one channel, that there would be great resistance to it. This impulse came from my experience in Asia.

In Hong Kong, when someone wants to launch a business idea, they don't do it on the phone or in a single power point presentation at a big board meeting. The seeds of the new idea are planted so much earlier, in word-of-mouth conversations held strategically with the most effective players in a future plan. Business stems from conversation. Ideas stem from conversation. New opportunities stem from conversation.

So...

The business climate is nurtured by ideas that are unique to conversations. If we are a company creating a product that is a conversation, then we need to be the leaders in conversation. We need to do more to be a conversation. Blogs do this better than anything. Because blogs are not a unidirectional brand identity. Blogs are the result of a back and forth between brand makers and brand identifiers (the people who connect to the brand).

One of the blogs has gained over 1,500 page views, and it's only one month old. Without spending any money, we have already exposed the brand to a potentially bigger universe -- given time of campaign in theory-- than we would using traditional means. The old routine was to compile information, use resources and produce a one-time product. Now the product is long-lasting, continual and permeated by other people's ideas.

It is exactly what a conference is, but it is being a conference before the conference starts. It is a part of the warp and weft of the community and it is now a piece of the industry. Whatever stems from this will feed the conference that is presented next year.

And afterwards, the knowledge that goes into that conference will add to the blog from now on.

Douglas Crets is the director of two financial conferences with blogs and a third, the InBuilding Wireless Solutions conference, which does not yet have a blog. It will.

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Pace Yourself: Part 3 of the 12 Things I Learned about Business from Living in Asia

When there are many opportunities, it is best to choose the opportunities that speak to your personal interests. It is even better to manage the opportunities by only agreeing to accomplish what is reasonable and by taking on responsibilities that provide concrete results. By having concrete results, you are able to work at a pace that keeps parity between effort put in and reward taken from employer / partner. In Asia, the start-up mentality and the entrepreneur lifestyle is often confused with making reckless promises to people. Since relationships are sometimes obscure and because not all people are open to questioning, someone will always have a story to tell about how so-and-so is just around the corner with money, or next quarter an agreement with someone else will be finalized, making way for your promises to be met. Many people will hold out these kind of half-filled stories and they will string together a narrative that has no real starting point and no end. They will want you to help them, or will offer you a chance to help them, and sometimes these offers come thick and fast, with no real solid promise of payment or resolute compensation. Say no. Pursue your self-interest, no matter how grand the big plan looks. You can become so busy doing what other people want you to do that you can lose track of what you want out of the experience. You will reward no one if this happens, least of all yourself. As an entrepreneur you know that your abilities are endless and your potential for change and creativity is infinite. Absolute ability should not mean absolute disregard for enjoying your life and seeing your productivity bear fruit. It is better for you, the person who best knows how you manage time, your work, your ideas, and expectations, to do only what you know you can achieve at that moment. Do not reward their promise with promises of your own. Instead, ask them to clarify exactly how that promise they are giving you will be made concrete. The ultimate lesson to be learned from managing your own desires and your own expectations is that you see that by working in the present, by limiting your grasp to what is right in front of you, you will build a future where more opportunities come into your grasp.

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De-Adversify: Part 2 of The 12 Things I've Learned About Business From Living Abroad

I hate to read something like this, about a boy in South Carolina who was punished because he decided to use his broken pencil sharpener.

But sometimes this happens. When you can't get the help you need for something, you have to make your own way.

The sharpener had broken, revealing the small blade found inside. He was suspended for ingenuity in the face of adversity. Again, this happens. Fate throws you a curve. But can you create your destiny?

That brings us to Lesson 11, in a 12 Lesson Series about what I've learned about entrepreneurial business thinking from living in Asia.

Identifying when you need help is the first step in the process of De-Adversification

Always ask for help. It's a first step in self-awareness, of notifying yourself of your own needs, and your own potential solutions for a problem. That's how you meet people and that's how you grow your network, and that's how you innovate.

This is most true when living abroad. For years, I struggled. I would look to find work at a newspaper or a magazine, and find that I was an interesting fellow, but they simply could not hire me. I didn't know Chinese. Or, I didn't know somebody important.

I ended up making my way by tutoring. US$60 an hour teaching English to middle class Hong Kong families. That's how I became a company unto myself.

What's a Nice Boy Like You Doing in a Metropolis Like Hong Kong?

In my 5.5 year journey in Hong Kong, I learned that needing help is a common occurence, and that in the process of looking for help, one can often create his own answers to a problem. But you don't really know what you need, until you are aware that you really need something. Something, perhaps, is not working in your search to succeed. 

Help!

Help! It's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign that you need more resources, and you alone cannot solve the problems that at the time seem like all the world's problems. It's a call to action for yourself. Nobody is going to help you for your own good.

Herein lies self awareness. You've called out. You are aware you lack a solution. You are actually at your most vulnerable point, and at the best point for starting over and gaining new knowledge. Lack is filled by invention.

Entrepreneurialism is all about finding new knowledge, where it appears nothing exists. To be an entrepreneur, you need to be in the process of finding help. you need to be in a searching mode. Only then can you build.

For example, I couldn't find a job after I quit working for a newspaper. I wanted a job. I couldn't find one because I didn't know Chinese. I was not useful to anyone. The universe, if you will, was forcing me to recognize that fact.

Here, without resources, I searched. Nobody was going to "help" me get a job.

I realized, "Now is the time to learn Chinese!" I took a tutor, twice a week, reading and writing. Tones and memorization.

There is a certain spiritual belief present here, and I have alluded to it: Around every storm cloud is a silver lining, as the Chinese say. The larger forces of life are revealing to a person in this situation that the answer is in the search. Recognize the search, and find a solution. You will de-adversify if you give into this helplessness. I believe very strongly that even without a job, spending the money learning Chinese was what I was meant to do at that time, even though fiscally it was most uncomfortable. Being without help, having to strive to learn something new was my fate. but I created my destiny, as small as that was at the time.

That is the Way of the Entrepreneur.

I was able to put on my resume, "Learning Chinese." One month after I started lessons and began acquiring new language skills, I was offered a new job, which enabled me to take on an entrepreneurial role in a new company. I was tasked to work with a team to build their new media and online advertising analysis division. That company is Media Partners Asia, a Hong Kong-based independent media consulting company.

12:08 pm | 1 recommendation | 2 comments

The 12 Things I've Learned About Business from Living Abroad

This morning I was reading the New York Times Sunday Business section and I noticed that there was only one article out of 18 that explicitly referenced international business, and that article was really about one Indian immigrant who had made a fortune from starting up two online businesses. That article is not even on the online front page of the business section, but every other article for Sunday is there.

His story, written in the first person and written very well, is focused on what happens in America. 

His name is Gurbaksh Chahal, and he's 26, a multi-millionaire and the son of a police officer and a nurse, and he grew up in the Punjab of India before emigrating to America and settling in Silicon Valley. This man used this experience and wide-eyed wonder in America to navigate through a strategy to offering online services to advertisers. 

At last count, he had sold his second company, BlueLithium, to Yahoo! for US$300million. 

Why do I bring up Mr. Chahal? Because as a recent returnee to America from China, I look at America with wide eyed wonder, as if I was an emigrant to the country. Some things confuse me. Like how individualistic everyone behaves. But, let me tell you, I think I have brought back a few lessons about business from my time there. 

Here is the first of twelve lessons I have learned, which I will try to post once or twice a week till they are all present and accounted for, to you dear reader: 

12. OTHER People are More Important than you and you should do your damnedest to meet them -- Learn about other people and their interests, their scope of vision, their background, how they grew up, their favorite foods. In Hong Kong, there is a saying: My inner circle is very large.

This is a different mentality than what we are used to in the United States, where we tend to think that everyone is open, transparent, and eager to help us. In Hong Kong, there is the sense that one must really make an effort to know someone before one can begin to depend on him or her for the smallest of things. By taking the extra time, and by treating them as if they belong in your small circle, you will win some small favor for yourself and they will expect to be paid back in return. 

This may sound manipulative to first-timers in Asia, but it's actually more focused on mutual benefit. We don't have to love each other, but we should be able to trust each other as far as we can throw the other. 

4. 

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Tilzy.TV Renewed and Re-Invigorated

A few months ago, I interviewed the founders of Tilzy.tv about their web site, which was designed to do for web video content what the three big networks did for content on television when they were created.

That exclusive interview with the two media entrepreneurs can be found here.

They launched a new version of their site sometime two weeks ago, and the update is much nicer than the previous incarnation.

I especially like the video interviews section.