The day turned put to be quite a rushed day. I overbooked myself in 3 parts of my day, ended up accomplish much less than otherwise possible.
I know that multi-tasking does get things done faster buy nevertheless I tried. Results where then predictable.
So, the main events for the day where:
I looked over the final muse site designs and released them for production. Sites look good and this will allow me to try the focused search engine tied sites. Deadline for this will be end of march.
I looked over redstores.com and pushed for some changes and small redesign. Worked remotely with Alex, my site designer to give the site some fine tuning. Not 100 % ready for prime time but it’s getting there.
Did more research on holdcos out of HK and focusing on how to keep the overheads down while opening up what appears to be 7 holdco.
Did more research on opening up service wofes and learned that registered capital requires can be quite small, but that it’s the banking that becomes an issue, since some banks don’t want to open up bank accounts for sub 500,000rmb companies. Nevertheless found a work around, so was time well spent.
By chance met with Michael (training) and talked more about how to deliver better training given our infrastructure. He is now working with Eileen to put together a plan for us for 2010. So, having training for my team has been a long term standing goal, and it’s nice to see that’s it’s moving forward.
3 interviews got setup with CFO candidates for Friday so Friday will likely be a write off in terms of quality work time. But given that is my is 1st priority I wiling to put in the time.
Met for a couple hours with Andy Clayton to look over my proposed corp. structure. He intact has some game changing insights for me on the Chinese side.
Further in that meeting I realized that I broke rule #1 of business re-engineering and that is to 100% understand what you have. I had a gotcha moment when talking with Andy and understood where my VAT problem in china was coming from. So, I need to do bit more research into the detail books in China (detail stuff is not my specialty) and confirm an assumption I have had (that is very likely incorrect). Will do that tomorrow. My plan has been to open up a cn service company but really it seems that I need an imp/ex company. It made a lot of sense. Nevertheless a bit pissed off with myself for not following the steps that I so know are right … And that is to asses first, act 2nd!
So, I do now feel I have a solid cn plan, will need to get legal and accounting consultants to come in and give blessing.
Andy also rightly pointed out that rather than closing my existing cn entity I’m better of relicensing it. I guess changes are just work, vs. whole new entity takes a lot more ‘political’ work.
Gave notice to my current Ayi…which was heart breaking since she has been with me for a long time…. But I had found that the language barrier was really getting in the way of my productive (since I would be using company resources to mange my personal life). And so, the new Ayi speaks great English and I’m planning on using her for personal management and home management.
Lost 1 hour and got completely off schedule in the late afternoon because the driving company forgot to come. Had a tight schedule and it was very frustrating dealing with incompetent drivers. Needless to say today will be their last day.