2023 Reflections & Cross Border Summit Learnings

Is “learnings” a word? Well, the truth is, learning is a continuous process – we never stop learning. I hate to admit it, but when I graduated from university, I thought I was “done learning.” Luckily for me, I quickly realized that was not the case and dove deep into eBay and e-commerce.

As this year comes to a close, I thought it would be a good opportunity to recap the year and share some key takeaways from our Cross Border Summit. Let’s dive in!

√ Peter’s VIP Page
√ Cross Border Summit 2023 –  2023.crossbordersummit.com
√ Cross Border Summit 2024 –  2024.crossbordersummit.com
√ Cross Border Summit 2023 Slides [PAID] 
√ Cross Border Matchmaker EXPO – crossbordermatchmaker.com

Peter’s recommendation:
√ AI DASHBOARD –  https://gravitywrite.com/
√ AI VIDEO EDITING – https://www.opus.pro/
√ MEDITATION –  https://www.silvamethod.com/

√ Visit our GFA partner –  Mercury  – for US banking solutons for your ecommerce businesss
√ Visit our GFA partner –  Casia Cross Better Logistics  – for your logistics needs

Thank you, Peter, for joining this podcast episode, and a big thanks to our listeners for tuning in.

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[00:00:00] All right. Thank you everybody for doing it to episode 420 of Global from Asia. We are recapping with Peter Miller about Cross-Border Summit 2023, as well as talk about the future in 2024. Welcome to the Global from Asia Podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice.

And now your host, Michael Micheli. All right. We have Tommy, the sales manager at Cross [00:00:30] Better Logistics. How are you, Tommy? Hi, am I? We just got to meet here in Sheenang China. It’s great. Uh, they support the show at Global from Asia and uh, we also use them ourself for many of our brands and e-commerce businesses.

And Tommy really caress, they always are. Uh, try to help us save money, you know, not, you have some products you keep for us in China. You have some products you keep for us in the US warehouse and, uh, I really appreciate that. And you’ll, you can talk to this seller, right? You can give [00:01:00] them your advice. You work with many Chinese sellers a lot, right?

And, uh, you can help, um, help the sellers understand more. Yeah. I’m very professional for the treatment to USA and Canada. Also, we have warehouse in USA and Canada. We can have our factories, supplies, service for the shipment. Yes. For the e-commerce. Yep. And you even keep stuff, uh, in China too. So [00:01:30] sometimes if you have the limitations about sending too much to Amazon, you can keep it here in China with, with, uh, cross Better, or you can send of course to the US warehouse.

They have many different options and they’re always trying their best to find, uh, find out what’s the best solution for you. Yeah, so definitely talk to Tommy, talk to Cross Better, and thank you for your, uh, support of the community. Yes, we have good pricing and better service. Thank you. Thank you so much.

How you doing today, Peter? [00:02:00] I’m good. Thanks Mike. Yeah, really good. Uh, well, it’s been one week, hasn’t it? Since the, yeah, I think CCB SI call it CBS. It’s ccb. Yeah. I mean we do call it CBS as well, but yeah, it’s been one week and then there was Lloyd Ong. You probably say it better than I am. It just happened.

You were. Oh yeah. Ong. Yeah. Well we was pretty mad out here. I live in a village and yeah, they in Australia. We used to have Kraken night and Kraken night was the [00:02:30] Queen’s birthday weekend. Oh. Fabulous. And, and my father used to get us all around and we sometimes got the neighbors in. And you could go down to the local shop and you’d get crackers, what we call crackers.

They were all bangers. They were, you know, fireworks. Okay. And that was fabulous. It was really a great time for me. But then the government, the no fun, Australian government came in and said, oh, you know, someone got their eye blown out. We’re gonna stop it. So the whole thing was stopped and that was a major, major thing for me.

’cause I went, this is no [00:03:00] fun anymore. They’ve taken the fun out of it and it was just a big highlight of my year and that was only about 10 years old. I started to question government then, and I’ve never stopped. Really? Yeah, me too. I think Ian we’re outside of our matrix world for sure, but here, ah, it’s still going on.

I mean, they did have a, a, a fire in Chiang Mai due to one of the lanterns, and I dunno if you saw that, but in the Chinese Chinatown Oh. And one of the [00:03:30] lanterns came down and they’re dangerous. They’re really, really dangerous. Always have been. So that might not be going on so much next year. But yeah, it’s a big fight.

But Ong is really my favorite of all the Thai festivals, lots of Thai festivals, and there’s song Crown. Of course, the in in April, everybody knows the new year. That sport going loca thg is very romantic and you’re supposed to kind of get with your partner and, and review your goals. That’s the Loy, the lawyers, the we, we made one out of a banana tree.

We’ve got banana trees here in the farm, [00:04:00] and you cut it into a slice and then you decorate it. And while you’re decorating it, you think about. The past year and, and to bring prosperity to the next year and so forth. You put the loy in the water and you float it down, and then the, the lantern after that and that you send the wishes up to the heavens, you know, it’s really beautiful.

Oh wow. Thanks for that. We’re, we’re, we’re jumping right in today, but maybe we’ll back up a little bit. It’s the first time you’re on our podcast, [00:04:30] you know, you did Mm-Hmm. It was really great. We connected as, as we got closer to the summit that was introduced to you and appreciate Steve from City Life or photographer connected us, and it was pleasure to have you MCing and coaching speakers.

You, you already mentioned from Australia, but do you wanna just give us a little background of yourself before we. Into the meat of this show. Sure. Well, I’m here in Thailand since 2014 and I was very bored in Sydney. [00:05:00] I had recently separated and, and I was just spitting my wheels. Got no, not knowing what I do.

However, when I was young, I always knew from a, an experience I had in Chinatown in Sydney. When I was about 14 that I’d always end up in Asia. It just fascinated me. Yeah. And I went to get a, a present for a gift, a birthday present for my mother, and I snuck off in the train by myself when I was only young and we lived way out of, out of town in the suburbs.

And I got into Sydney. I thought, this is the only place I’m gonna find this gift. [00:05:30] I didn’t end up finding it. I get to the markets, the Pat’s market, and I, I got lost coming back and I ended up in Chinatown and I went, oh. Oh, look at this. This is called the reds and the colors and the smells and the sounds.

And I ended up asking for directions and I walked into a kung fu kind of class. Oh. And I was just watching this and the guy said, what do you want, mate? You know, you wanna join us? I went, ah, no mate. I’m just wondering, where’s the train? You know, that way, you know, and I picked up a brochure as I walked out [00:06:00] and yeah, I’ve, and I just went back to Chinatown constantly and just loved the.

Yeah, the difference of it, the randomness of it. Yeah, the spirituality of it. You know, I’ve been to Europe, but it holds no fascination for me at all. Europe’s kind of not, so it’s boring, but it’s sort of done, you know? Yes. They’re kind of very established, developed. This is moving and, and growing and, and so as luck had it, I just remembered in, I was in a hotel [00:06:30] room in Sydney and I just sort of.

Said to whoever wanted to listen like the roof. I said, get me outta here. Just get me outta here. Lo and behold, a couple of months later, an email arrived. I was on the email newsletter list of this guy and he said, we’re looking for interns to join a, a marketing company in Chang, Mai, Thailand, and send us a video and you’ll be interviewed.

And so I was chosen out of four interns and we launched a, a product called Copy Sniper. Huh. And, [00:07:00] uh, we re, we relaunched a copy sniper. It was, it had been out a couple of years. So you just put in answers to questions and it spits out a sales page. Pretty clever. Mm. And so that was four months work. It was rebuilt from the ground up and we did the marketing and I did the videos, everything like that.

And yeah, the, the people who owned it made a lot of money, but we didn’t make anymore. We just learned from experience. And I was packing my bag to go home and. I thought, no, this is it. This is, this is, this is, [00:07:30] this is me. This is closer to who I am. You know, I feel great here. I feel really great, and I didn’t wanna go back to Sydney, so I had some work lined up.

I went back and did all the work I had to do, I was booked to do, and I sold everything except my film gear and yeah, just made this my home, you know? Oh. And managed to change my onstage income to online income because at that time, Chang Mai was the world headquarters for digital nomads. Right.

Throughout the world. There [00:08:00] wasn’t really a lot of place for digital nomads to go and, and so I started to mc the Nomad Coffee Club every Friday. Yeah. At four o’clock, you know, and it was fantastic. I met so many people ’cause I didn’t really know a lot about online. I had an ebook that I was selling.

Okay. I thought, oh, how am I gonna do this? Or how am I gonna change my online income to on star, on stage income to online? And there was help. There was lots of help. There was a Facebook group every night you could go to, and people were very generous. [00:08:30] And so, yeah, I learned about e-commerce, not to your scale, but how to do it.

And that went well. And then Udemy came along. So I make, now, I pretty much make my money from selling courses online. Udemy, about public speaking. Yeah. That’s really cool. It’s really cool. Udemy’s fantastic and there’s quite a few people here doing Udemy full time. Wow. I was in a mastermind group. I got invited in and that mastermind changed my life.

I wouldn’t be here speaking to you right now if it wasn’t about Mastermind [00:09:00] because that’s amazing. I love hearing there is power in Masterminds and because everybody here is in transit zone, you know, this is not our, our home country. There was a real emphasis on getting the Mastermind, but not doing a Zoom call, but just actually meeting up and really every week, you know, and we’d promise that we’d get something done by the end, by the end of that seven days.

And we did it. It was fantastic. And Masterminds, I really highly recommend [00:09:30] Masterminds. Okay. Yeah, I agree. They’ve even this podcast started from a mastermind. Fun fact. I joined a mastermind while starting a podcast. Right. You might know Nate Ginsburg maybe, but he was on that. Oh yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah.

Yeah, I do. Yeah. He was on that podcast, on that mastermind with me too. It was super fit. Yeah. Yeah. He is really a healthy guy. Yeah. He is doing like handstands and ice baths like every day I think. Yeah. The ice baths. Ah, they’re really popular now, aren’t they? They’re, that’s a trend. Yeah. Yeah. [00:10:00] Wow. Alright.

We’ve got one out here at Cocoon called Cocoon, and it’s a bit of a drive for Chang Maite, but I live half an hour south of Chiang Mai on a farm and cocoon’s not far from here. And yeah, it’s really nice. Okay. I, I, I haven’t been my, my friends from the Netherlands and everything, like they come out, but they can do four minutes.

I could do less than a minute. I, I’m nearly get to a minute, but I, I’ve gotta get my mind around it. I said, how do you do it? And they said, oh, you’ve just gotta kind of [00:10:30] stop thinking about it. Right? It’s like meditation, you know, stop thinking how cold it is. So I’m, I’m gonna grow into that, you know. So I think let’s, let’s jump into the, the meat of the show.

You know, it’s, so, again, like I, I think I mentioned already in this. Recording, but I really appreciate, I’m really happy we connected and, and you, you came in to help with MCing and coaching speakers, preparing them. I, I be honest, we never did that [00:11:00] before and we’ve done four mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. Um, we did 1 20 16, 17, 18, 19, all in, in mainland China.

Of course, COVID happened, so we didn’t do it, but we, when we did it there, we didn’t really, we of course had some prep calls and PPT reviews and such, but I, I really enjoyed having you involved. Um, you know, answering the questions of speakers and, and, and, and knowing them more and, and, and, and really have a nice intro for them.

So that was, that was really, really fun and first time for us as well. Well, at the end of the day, you know, the, the people [00:11:30] will remember the quality of the speakers. I mean, that’s, that’s the, the, the mark when they think about it, 12 months down the road, they’re gonna think of the speakers actually, and the quality of their presentation.

So, as an educator of. MCs and an educator of public speakers. I was really impressed by the fact that you said, let’s run some calls before. I wish more. Event organizers would do this with the speakers. They know me, I know them, and it really raised the game. [00:12:00] And I, we set a couple of little ground rules, you know, especially about timing.

Yeah, yeah. I’m sure that had a big impact on, on all the speakers. Yeah, that, so, you know, your, you as an event organizer went into my absolute A grade, you know, good books because you did that and, and you put the emphasis back on the speakers to not just turn up, you know, and, and, and we weren’t strict about it.

We just said, look, we really want you to do well. We are here for you and, and [00:12:30] offer you support and so forth like that. So it was great. Really good. Great. So, I. I know, you know, some e-comm and maybe, maybe it’s not your main thing, you know, but what would you say some of your takeaways from the speech, for people listening and that couldn’t make it, what would you say?

Some of your, your or findings? I know there’s so much, but Yeah, I, I had to kind of prepare for the next speaker, but, so I had half an ear. Oh, okay. ’cause I didn’t, I didn’t have to back announce them. [00:13:00] If you, if I had to back announce the speaker. Then I had to listen to them, but I had to prepare for the, for the next one.

But however, I did, I, I did know from researching all the speakers that I introduced, that a lot of ’em, half of them started their business by podcast, what we’re on doing now. And they, and that emphasized to me, or reemphasized to me that podcasts are really powerful. Yeah. Um. You know, they, they, they get the word out there.

I, I’m not [00:13:30] a big listener of podcast myself. I like the, the YouTuber. I’m a big YouTuber, but my daughter loves podcasts. She just listens, laps them up. And obviously my market is public speakers and MCs who wanna learn how to, how to do it. I’m, I’m pretty sure that they don’t really listen to podcasts as far as, there’s none in that marketplace.

There’s none on hardly any on public speaking and MCing. But they do watch videos and they do watch TikTok. Got it. And they do watch Instagram, so that’s where I, I [00:14:00] put my content in there, you know? Got it. Yeah. I mean, the other one besides podcasts, it’s really interesting to. To as a mc for the Nomad Coffee Club.

We had one speaker, we had quite a few speakers on what was very popular then is Fulfillment by Amazon, FBA. Yep. Really. And drop shipping was the big thing, you know, and Johnny FD had a course on it and so forth like that. So we used to get. Corporate, what we call corporate refugees, particularly from America, you know, they do the right thing.

They, they, [00:14:30] they thought the American dream was like, you gonna know, go to college and get a job with a big company, a cool name, like, you know, decia Baker you were with. Yeah. And then, and you, you were set. And then you realize, this sucks, man. This really sucks. I mean, I’ve been sold a dream here and it’s not working for me.

You know? And, and a lot of them just said, ah. Damn, I, I can see my whole life in front of me here and it’s not that interesting. So they would save up their money like you did and, [00:15:00] and they looked up, you know, online income and up came Chang Mai and we used to get a lot of them turn up and go, okay, I’ve got a fair amount of savings.

I’m here to make a online income. So we had speakers at the Nomad Coffee Club talk about FBA and, and one of them, I’m just trying to remember his name, he did. He did High-end pushbikes. And that was his niche. Right. And he gave, he gave away too much, basically. And he had, and I used to video [00:15:30] them and put them on the My own website, on my YouTube channel and also the Nomad Coffee Club.

He rang me a couple of months later and said, mate, you have to take that video down. You have to take it down. I’ve been bombarded with competitors on High-End Pushbikes. Right. And they just watched the video and stole all these ideas. Right. So I noticed the speakers at the CBS didn’t really give away too much about the products they were selling.

It was all strategy behind, you know? True. And I think that’s kind of the [00:16:00] cool thing to do is just don’t get into what sort of products you’re, you are specializing in. That’s one thing I noticed besides the podcast. Yeah, that’s fair. That’s a fair one. Yeah. There’s the, have you ever heard of Garlic Press?

No. Garlic press. It’s kind of a joke in the Amazon e-commerce community. Maybe I’m getting older, but his way is back. But there was courses that would talk about selling on Amazon and they used a garlic press, and so a lot of people would just follow, like you said, [00:16:30] follow that. And there was like a flood of garlic presses on Amazon because of that.

And it was like a huge joke. And there’s a couple other products like that too. So yeah, it, it is scary. It is a good point. And it is kind of why I even joke sometimes in my videos when I go up to the seller, I say, what’s your a asin? Which is like Amazon stock, you know, number, right? I don’t remember. And, and it’s a joke kind of in the industry, but yeah, no, I noticed none of them actually did it.

I mean. Chris Rawlings, he [00:17:00] said that he used to be into medical equipment and that was the only hint of any product that I ever heard from the in, in the two days we were there. Well, internet, internet. It would be one. Right? She does. Oh, right, right. Yes. Well, that’s actually a really good story. That was the other thing that I noticed, how people were captivated during that talk, you know?

Mm-Hmm. Because the story always sells. People just love stories, and that’s a really cool story. That one. Yeah, I like it. But I mean, [00:17:30] that’s what we should all be. I tell, I tell people you should. Not be afraid to share what you sell because you try to be such a big enough player in the space that it would be like not even thinkable to try to compete with you.

Right. But of course it’s hard and it takes a long time and you know, we’re all busy and hustling and invested heavily, so we don’t wanna do that until we have to, or we’re really confident. Right. But Annie’s done a great job with her brand, [00:18:00] so she’s done an amazing job. And that’s just her brand. She, you know, she, I, I know from interacting with her beforehand how much she had thought about that she planned.

Everything out in that whole presentation. Yeah. Yeah. She’d rehearsed it, she’d done everything and it meant a lot to her. And the smile on her face after she came off stage was beautiful to see. It was great. She really knew. She’d nailed it, you know? And she took her the shoes off. Yeah. And, and walked bare feet just to feel [00:18:30] grounded, you know?

Yep, yep. Um, um, alright. But look, all the presentations were good. Chris Rawlings showed me that. Was that app that he used, what was the app that he used? And he carried his laptop, you know. Yeah. There was a special software, a MacBook Air. What was that? Anyway, he, that was, I’ve never seen a presentation like that before where he just went in and it was like the mind map and then bang, and he went into the mind map into further, further, and he came back out again.

Wow. That was, that was pretty cool. But [00:19:00] all the presentations were very different. You know, none of them were even remotely similar to, to each other. Yeah. And, and so that there is no perfect presentation. There is no perfect way to present. It’s gotta be comfortable for you. And I think the audience got a real variety of presentations.

You know, Gian Gianni Mark, or Right. Gian Mark or his presentation was, was really practical, down to earth. Not, it was high level enough for the, for the. The people who had been doing e-commerce for a long while, but for [00:19:30] me, I really got a lot outta that presentation because it was very practical down to earth, you know?

Yeah, agreed. Another one who’d started with a podcast, right? He, he, he started his, he, he put his, well, he was a seller before a podcast, I believe, and then also a podcast. Well, of course, it’s, it’s also, you know, usually when you’re podcasting, you’re good at. You, you or learn to be good at presenting yourself, your ideas, communicating, things like that.

So it, it does help usually in speaking [00:20:00] at events. Yeah. So for me, some of my learnings, I was, I was, I was also able to in, because of your help and Ash is also able to kind of be more of a participant a bit. And I got to learn. ’cause you know, I, like you said, the speakers were amazing. Like it’s not. It’s not beginner content.

You know, there was very experienced sellers, even the speakers themselves, I think even Chris Rowlings gave a little video clip saying he learned some things and some other speakers, like Riley Bennett said, he learned some things. I think g and Marco even said he [00:20:30] learn, everybody was learning. It wasn’t just like beginner 1 0 1 content.

Same with me. You know, I, I learned quite a few bit, but I think my, my takeaways and also kind of connects to 2023 in general, which is another topic of this, of this podcast. ai, as you know, it’s not just e-commerce, it’s everything. AI is taking over every, there’s a lot of AI topics. The other one, big ones, PPC, you know, Amazon is just increasing their requirements.

Or at least for us [00:21:00] as sellers, we have to do more, more PPC, we gotta keep giving Amazon more money for advertising. Mm-Hmm. There was, you know, like Chris Rawlings showed the yellow and the blue. A lot of the full scroll of a whole Amazon results page is more ads than organic now, which was pretty fascinating and showing Right.

Also, you know, I, I feel like we’re in Red Sea, blue Sea. I feel like you know, it, it is very competitive now. You know, even the attendees, the, the space itself, there’s less sellers, there’s less Amazon [00:21:30] sellers, and it’s getting really hard, you know, it’s a mature market. Well, one, one thing I Yeah, go ahead.

Heard and it started a bit of a stream, but that. It, it didn’t continue, was how difficult Amazon has become and how important the need is to ensure yourself by using other methods, not just Amazon. Yeah, exactly. I. So I, you know, I got to share this time, I, I don’t always speak at the conference, but it did speak and yeah, like you said, I’m also [00:22:00] working on a, a, a very new idea of still not really ready yet in, but I’m testing it now.

It’s a marketplace and a protocol for people to sell on a blockchain, a marketplace that’s load, load pipe. Load pipe. Yep. That was really interesting presentation you gave and people were riveted, absolutely riveted to that presentation. Oh, great. Great to know that. Yeah. Hmm. Well, I am passionate, especially during Covid.

I got a lot more deeper into Web3 and blockchain, and I’ve learned the [00:22:30] importance of it. Of course, there is some bad reputation. There’s been some, you know, bad actors in that space. But the technology itself and, and the power of it is, is very, a very powerful and, and there’s a lot we can do. Mm-Hmm. So. So, yeah, so I was excited to, to share about that also.

I really appreciate. Do you have, do you have a launch date on, on 2024 on that or? I feel like we could even try to squeeze some beta out in December, but I feel like it’s a better to do it. We’re actually just before our record, [00:23:00] just recording, we’re talking about it. I think it’s a 20 January event. Like a new year.

New New. Mm-Hmm. New channel, new, new op, new opportunity. We’re working on a campaign. I mean, I’m testing it right now, to be honest. I, I have a, you know, the developers have it. It’s a little bit of still buggy and a little bit hard to understand, even for me, in the user experience I call it. So I, I kind of wanna get a little bit more smooth, so it’s, I feel like comfortable to say January or new, you know, new year.[00:23:30]

I’m using AI in my video editing, you know, I’ve got such. A huge amount of video footage on my hard drive, but I get to the editing stage and I know that I’ve gotta sit on my ass for a couple of hours even, and it so just doesn’t get done. And, but I found. Excuse me. The AI tool called Opus Cut. Really good.

Really good. You just, you can put anything in there like 20 minute, even an hour you can put in there and it’ll divide it up into shorts and it’ll divide it up into, really, you gotta put the [00:24:00] keywords in and then it’ll just chop it up into those keywords. It’s really good. Yeah. Wow. What was the name of that opus Cut.

Opus cut. Do you want my affiliate link? Yeah, sure. We can put it, it’s, we can link it up. The other one is gravity write. Gravity writes a dashboard of AI topics, keywords. It’s really good for blog posts, everything, and it, it divides up, it’s just a desktop. It’s a dashboard, I’m sorry. And yeah, it’s a [00:24:30] dash dashboard desktop.

And it, it, it keeps everything that you’re searching and it puts it into order, but it’s very good. Gravity right. Is really Okay. It’s top class. Yeah, it’s sort of ’cause with with OpenAI and Chat GDP, it’s kind of a bit messy for me. It’s just that thing on the side and it’s not that well organized. But this organizes everything that chat DP should have done and it’s not.

Got it. Alright. So. So maybe [00:25:00] so, you know, I think that the summit in the 2023 themes, like, I think we’re just talking about of course, AI obviously don’t, to listen to the podcast, to know AI is taking over, but 2023 is a year. The ai as far as in, in Amazon, you know, I feel like it’s true. Like it’s, it’s getting more and more competitive that the PCs going more and more expensive.

Yeah, it’s much more advanced. So yeah, everybody’s looking for new channels, like of course, TikTok. They’re looking for other channels. D two C is called direct to consumer, maybe [00:25:30] Shopify or other, other outlets. But, uh, you know, I think those are, and then of course, hopefully next year we’ll be able to start to really talk more.

I can’t wait to educate people on blockchain e-commerce, which would like this load pipe or even other ways people could use blockchain for selling physical products online. So I’m, I’m really excited for that. Unfortunately, there is gonna be some casualties on the side. We’re gonna see some businesses just, you know, wash away.

But [00:26:00] photographers have got a big challenge, a huge challenge in front of them, how they’re gonna deal with that. It’s like when. What happened to the music business and Napster came in, you know, everyone and nap. Then the music business just sort of started to disappear down the sinkhole quickly, and then Steve Jobs came along and, yeah.

Yeah, the app store and so forth like that. So the photographer, I don’t know what the photographer’s gonna do to come up with a solution, but their business is teetering on disaster, actually. I mean, you shared something with me today, you know, but those four photos of you [00:26:30] holding and then you’ve got all these different variations of you.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Isn’t that crazy? Ooh, crazy. Yeah. Otherwise, that’s four different actors or four different personalities in my game where I come from, the acting, you know, that would, that would take four different people to come into the studio and, and, and get photographed. Actually, so that was a can Chan software.

He, I sent him that one photo. [00:27:00] He made a few for me actually. Right. We’re working on doing more with him. He had an amazing workshop after he spoke there and he, you know, I was a little bit nervous ’cause he is not native English speaking of course, he’s, he’s Chinese. And I was a little bit nervous, you know.

To be honest, I had, but I wanted to, of course, I wanna welcome people from all backgrounds. That’s what I think Cross-Border Summit is about is, is knowledge and experience from all around the world. So, and I thought his English was really well and he, his content was good. So, but he’s, we’re talking about doing [00:27:30] more Ai e-commerce workshops and masterminds into next year.

I actually have a call with them after our. After us, after talking to him, say hello to him. For me, I was really impressed with him. I found him. I’ve written half a book on charisma. It has not yet published, but he has got charisma straight away. It’s his focus on you who he’s speaking to. That’s part of being a charismatic.

But yeah, he’s got a real sense of, he understands communication really, really well. And he held the audience even though he [00:28:00] was rushing through his presentation. Yeah, he has so many. I’m sorry we’re we’re out of time, you know, but yeah, he’s, he’s a good communicator. Yeah. So that’ll be something in next year.

I can’t wait, you know, even for my own. It’s my own business to learn from and also to be able to share that with the participants that want to take up this master. We’re calling it masterclass. We’re gonna have masterclasses. I think the, I, we haven’t had a chance to talk about it even together, but we’re working on that into the new year where people can buy [00:28:30] packages with membership and, and use those for some of these, these like very high value, high impact workshop masterclasses.

So work excited, right? Masterclass. It’s not an overused term, but it’s certainly a lot of people have claimed that they’re running a masterclass and they’re actually not, and it’s just a training session. You know, there’s a big difference. Masterclasses are from people who are masters in their craft, you know?

Mm-Hmm. Like masterclass.com. They’re all top of it. They’re top shelf here. There’s no other sort of one above them. And that’s what a masterclass [00:29:00] is, I believe. Yeah, I would agree. You know, but there are lots of people calling them masterclass, but they’re not. They’re kind of second or third shelf down the down the down the track.

True, true. But yeah, so. So what do you, what do you see in your crystal ball for next year? You know, generally like technology, maybe I could share after, after you, well, with public speaking, I’m, I’m a ConnectUS, like, you know, you are a connector as well, but you understand technology a lot, much, much, [00:29:30] much better than I do.

I still love communication. I love the getting in a room and, and or talking to people and the heart to heart. You know, I’m an empath, so I feel things very deeply and I, I’m able to, it’s, it’s. Good as an actor to, to be an empath, but it’s also highly inconvenient sometimes because I just, I get feeling I can stand next to someone and actually feel their fear and it’s, it’s good, but it’s not so good.

But I still believe that the best way to promote your business is either [00:30:00] be a very strong video presenter or just get in front of people and talk, get into their hearts. It’s still. You know, blogs are good and, and, and video’s still good and podcasts are good. But actually to feel heart to heart in a room, you kind of become memorable forever in that person.

You’ve gotta leave a little, what I tell my clients is leave a little mark on their heart about being vulnerable and, you know, being real, being authentic. Yeah. And. They’ll never forget you. You know, [00:30:30] my aim when I’m designing a presentation for my clients is to be memorable forever. Okay. Not just memorable for till the next day, but to do something extraordinary.

Like to change their thoughts. Oh, nice. Yeah. You know, that’s, that’s where thought leaders come from, right? Oh, thought leaders starts from changing the thoughts or the paradigm of, of that industry or that topic. Got it. That’s really cool. So I’m a thought leader in [00:31:00] my own genre, but, ’cause I’ve, I’ve been teaching that.

For public speaking, it’s really hard to get rehearsal time. You can rehearse at home, but it’s just not the same. You gotta get in front of people, but that’s really hard. If you’ve got a 20 minute or a 30 minute presentation, what do you do? So I encourage people to become MCs and, and you jump up on stage, you, you know, you’re practicing your voice, you’re using your body language, your vocal variety, your facial expressions, and then you’re back off again.

And if [00:31:30] you stuff it up, well you’ve only stuffed up a minute or two, but you get on and off, on and off. And you’re practicing your public speaking skills a lot. ’cause I don’t worry about people’s content. They know their content, they know it backwards. I worry, or I concentrate on getting people to be entertaining.

Nice and entertaining comes through your personality. So most people have got a fair idea what their personality is, and then I encourage them to bring out that personality on stage, you know? Nice. But Steve did, Steve was really good bringing out [00:32:00] his personality on Yes, he’s a really pro. Yeah. Yeah. He’s really did well, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he came up to me later and said, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for that. You know? ’cause I gave him a bit of confidence in what he was doing. He didn’t need it, but he, he, he just, he was very genuine and he, thanks for me. It was great. That’s great. Yeah. That’s great. Mm. Alright.

Yeah. That’s kind of, I just sort of really believe that public speaking is that if, if, if you. Just the local networking group. Just get up there and [00:32:30] talk. It’s not, you’re not gonna die and there’s no one has ever been died from being a public speaker, you know? Yeah. It’s, it’s the fear, but just go, likely, you know?

Well, you don’t see a world where I can just c create a second, second me, that does my public speaking for me. Mate. Your, your practiced, I mean, you started blogging in 2007 and you, you’re a, you’re a very. You know, not confident, but you’re a very skilled communicator ’cause you’ve [00:33:00] done it so much. Mm-Hmm.

I mean it’s what’s nearly 20 years you’ve been doing this? That mike’s blog.com. Yeah, that’s a long time, man. True, true. You know, so you, it’s just, it’s, it’s easy for you and you’ve got your own style and it’s very authentic and yeah. Thanks. No, you’ve got no worries about that. And people respect you. But your consistency, you’ve been extremely consistent.

Okay. I’ve read all your book. I’ve read, what’s this one here? Hang on. This one here. I’ve read that one. Oh, [00:33:30] destination China. Yeah, that one there. That’s pretty cool. Um, that was the first one. And regarding work or second one? That was the second one regarding work. Yeah, that was fifth I think. Yeah. And un unleash that.

They’re all, they’re all, yeah, they’re all good mate. Hong Kong unleashed. Yeah, but you’ve gotta, as a content creator, consistency is the absolutely the number one thing. You just gotta push it, keep pushing it out there. Pushing it out there, pushing it out there. And I’m very guilty of not recco of, I’m very guilty of recording it and not publishing it ’cause I’m just not happy with it.

But [00:34:00] I’m getting better at that. I’m just getting much better at that. The, there’s the, what’s his name? The founder of LinkedIn. He says, if you’re not embarrassed by the first version, year or two late. Something like this. Read, if you know what I read, I’m saying it wrong, but he says something like, if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your, you know, website, or your business, or your startup, your product, then you’ve waited too long.

Mm-Hmm. Something like this, I’m, I’m kind of [00:34:30] butchering it, but basically it’s meaning like you gotta put it out there if, because it’ll never be perfect. Right. My hero, Bruce Lee, he says, if you think about something for too long, it never gets done. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I really liked your book regarding work.

There was a lot of good stuff in there. I like Savers. S-A-V-E-R-S. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was really, really good. Highly recommend that book. I have my own [00:35:00] version of it. In fact, I had to do a speech one day called 10 Things I Know About Health, health and Life, and one of them is cold showers, so I don’t, I’ve never had a.

Hot shower in a couple of years now. Cold showers really the way to go. Oh, really? They, they, they work tremendously well. Don’t ever put the hot on, saves your electricity. But that’s one thing. M at Oad, OMAD, which is one meal a day. Oh wow. I didn’t know that. Yeah, it’s when, when? [00:35:30] What time is that? Morning, afternoon, night.

Oh, the later I can leave it the better actually. Oh. So I don’t have breakfast and I really don’t have lunch. I probably eat after this. Whoa. Okay. And that’ll be it. Yeah, and your body does get used to it. It takes a while, but yeah, one meal a day. ’cause as you get older you must change. You can’t eat the same as when you were 2030.

You know, you can’t do it. You just gotta eat less and less and less. Got it. As you get older, you, I believe, anyway. Um. [00:36:00] This is, yeah, I always en enjoy our exchanges. It, it’s been a pleasure to have you and I’m excited for the new year. Of course, we have 2024, we’re already thinking about CBS 2024. Mm. Same.

You know, I, I’m probably, maybe a different hotel, but Chang Mai November, didn’t pick the date yet, but probably also mid, mid-November and. Yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited for that. We already, pre-sold some tickets from attendees that were really excited and we’re [00:36:30] preparing to have a little bit more of a open sale maybe in the new year.

So I’m really excited about this. Well, AI will be two years old then. Yeah. What’s, what’s it going like? I know. What are we gonna talk about next year? Year? Wow. It’s crazy. So it’s exciting. I think it’s a, you know, some people are worried about it. I mean, that Sam Altman thing, getting, getting sort of sacked and everything from the board.

I mean, that just shows how people are either going one way or the other, you know, they’re super, super worried about it and freaking [00:37:00] out, or they’re really excited about it. And I, I think it’s amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing. Particularly, I, I, I, I, in that book, that Destination China book, you talk a lot about staff and so forth like that, and.

I used to employ staff ’cause I live next to a university and like you, I employed university students and it was great. But here in Ang Mai, even freelancers, I just steer away from it. I, I’ve, I’ve simplified my business to such an extent where I just don’t really [00:37:30] need staff anymore, you know? That’s awesome.

But ai, AI is like having a staff member. It’s fantastic. Yeah. You know, um, that’s great. And so you’ve feel as though the, you know, there’s the, all those freelancers in India and the Philippines, you’ve gotta be, start thinking about something else. I don’t know about the Yeah, doubt it is. Good point. Yeah.

We’ll see. I mean, there’s always evolution, but you still, I still think you need, I said that the summit too. You still [00:38:00] need somebody to have the, the request, the question to ask the ai, the answer is there, but the question is not the prompt. Mm-Hmm. Right. There’s the prompt engineering, like you have to have the creativity to think of what to ask.

Right. The question is the valuable part, knowing what to ask. Mm. And you know, even with podcasting, they say like, it’s one of it’s very valuable skills to know what to ask. ’cause you’re saying with ai, if you know what to ask, you can get the answer. You just gotta know what to [00:38:30] ask. Yeah. Change the future now.

Right? The future is unbelievable world. Yeah. But as I don’t know who one of the speakers said, look, you know, you probably may remember who it was, but a couple of them said, look, you can’t just cut and paste. You must put it in your own voice. Yeah. Who was that that kept saying that? I, I, I can’t remember now, but yeah, I can’t recall.

But yeah, it was a theme. One thing you did, Mike, which was really [00:39:00] powerful. It was kind of silent, but it was very powerful message to everybody there is that you didn’t video. This conference at all, and most conferences are videoed. Nearly all of them are, and you didn’t do it. And I thought that was really impressive.

That gave this kind of a whole, not secrecy, but speciality, you know, everyone in this room that could reveal a lot more. Yeah. And. And that was a really interesting kind of concept to be [00:39:30] honest. We got, that was one of, we posted it I think in the summer and you know, we’ve been preparing this for eight months, this event.

And we were preparing and we put, made a blog post and put it out on socials and it was one of our more engaged posts. People were thanking us, we emailed it out to our newsletter and people reply saying thank you. They would just say thank you. Like Right. They, the other, you know, the other thing you did, which every event organizer wants to do but doesn’t really achieve it, is to get everyone together many [00:40:00] times and for long round table talks where, yeah, I think a lot of people went away with a lot of lifetime friendships.

Long, long term friend were, were solidified at that meeting, you know? Yeah. That’s it. It was really good. Yeah. It’s my favorite thing to do, to be honest in the world, right? So speed networking is really good, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course we did four and we took a break for Covid. We’re back now. But you know, over the years we were learning, everyone likes to [00:40:30] networking at any event, right?

They, they came out. So what we try to do is make sure to get some as relevant related contacts. So that’s why we break it up by topic or we do the speed dating, or we have different types of events so people really get a chance to try to meet as many. Relevant context as they can. Yeah. But it wasn’t just with the delegates themselves, it was through the speakers, the experts.

Yeah. Yeah. We, they, they were involved. And that’s rare. You don’t, you don’t often get that. Yeah. That is also feedback. [00:41:00] We get, we got also, you know, thanks for helping get us this testimonials. We’ve got great testimonials. But even previous years, people would just say they like it because they get to talk to the speakers.

Mm. Because usually the speakers come up on st. They, you know, they, they drive in with their car, they go in, they speak, they leave. Right. Like they’re gone. Yeah. Or they’re in the vi, they’re hidden in the back or something behind or something. But we try our best and I think the speakers even like it ’cause they get to connect.

And the attendees are also, you know, relevant [00:41:30] and, and quality too. So it’s not like they’re just unqualified people. I think even the attendees could be speakers. They have, they’re such experienced people that were there. Right. It was great. Alright, well we we’re kind of at the mark now. I mean, I, I think so.

You also have website speakers coach.com Right. Is that the best place for people to find you? Yeah. Basically you can get, get in contact with from there. Okay. We’ll just usually do it like we’re doing now on Zoom, and [00:42:00] there’s a, every, every client is different to me. I don’t have a sort of a formula that I follow, but the one thing I do say is, you know, I’m not that interested in your content.

You give me your content. I’m not gonna tell you how to do your content. I’m gonna just make it entertaining. Help you make it entertaining. Cool. And that’s kind of what I, what I, what I say, and they’re happy about that because, you know, we’re all left brained. Everyone’s kind of doing the, the left brain thing that that’s not, that’s not hard to put information in a logical kind of [00:42:30] sequence, but the creatively on the, on the right brain part of it is, is a challenge for most people.

Okay. And, and there’s three things I say, use your body language and I get them to sort of, you know, there’s a couple of exercises I get them to do and we can do it on Skype, use vocal variety and facial expressions. And they are the magic three that’s called the three freebies that you’ve got. And you can practice it anytime, right?

You can practice it when you’re. At the [00:43:00] shops with your partner anywhere, you can practice focal variety and facial expressions and body language. It just sells your message so well. Yeah. You know, you get your body involved. A picture is worth a thousand words, so if you can exemplify your message just in the just.

If it’s frustration, you go, oh, I was nearly there. That sold your message really, really well. You know, great. And, you know, get excited and so forth like that. So allow yourself to, to get that. And that’s, [00:43:30] I am able to push people beyond their comfort zone on stage, you know, revealing themself. Perfect. All right, Pete.

Well this has been fun. Thanks for coming on the show. Okay, thanks Mike. And thank you to our sponsor, our returning sponsor, mercury.com online bank. Well, it’s a real bank, but you can totally online for us. Our Blimp program participants are going through this as well. Thank you Mercury, Travis, it’s great there.

It’s been on our show, it’s been in our events. We’re gonna have another [00:44:00] event where we will have them attending as well. And if you wanna get a little bonus for you and us, if you sign up and do some special circumstances, you can go to global formation.com/mercury. I also have a video tutorial that we use even for the people.

Will use the same exact video to learn how to use it. Hope you can check it out totally free. Why not you there? To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website@ww.global from asia.com. That’s [00:44:30] ww.global from asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.