Amazing Start To Our GFA Experts Platform: Successful Experts Meetup & Experts Workshop

I’m happy to report that our new Global From Asia Experts (GFA Experts) initiative is off to a roaring start! Off the momentum of the amazing second annual Cross Border Summit, we have responded with a new platform for high quality experts and attendees to come together in the cross-border e-commerce and business community to learn, network, and share together. Today I want to report back a bit about some of the results and happenings.

Global From Asia has been holding back from doing regular meetups as we want to make sure the value is high for those coming. Starting back up now, branding them under the GFA Experts division, our first one delivered!

We invited logistics experts Nicolas Sepulchre de Conde from In2Log – a Shenzhen based cross-border e-commerce logistics service provider and technology company. Logistics is always a pain point for many and the 20 attendees were happy to have a small, casual, discussion about it.

Before having Nicolas start, I welcomed everyone and shared some of the history of Global From Asia. What started out as a HK business podcast in 2013 has grown into an extensive blog library, courses, Cross Border Summit, GFA toolset (jobs, market, and now experts). I introduced everyone our re-branded membership site called GFAVIP and invited those attending who are not yet members to signup.

And then Nicolas delivered his amazing content with complex charts and flows of how international logistics happens. The highlight for me was deciding when to use Shenzhen (Mainland China) or Hong Kong ports. He re-iterated my feeling that the Shenzhen port is becoming massive and overtaking Hong Kong by leaps and bounds. Made a lot of us in attendance feel like we are in the right spot here in Shenzhen, China.

We got into some audience questions and feedback, and then everyone’s favorite part (as always) – networking. Because this event was invite only and we didn’t post the location publicly, we limited seats to 20 people and had to turn people away last minute. While it is tempting for me to make these events bigger and let anyone in the world come, having this barrier actually really improved the quality of the event. We got to open up more, and it was a more high level networking.

Others noticed as well as me, we couldn’t get people to leave! What was supposed to end at 9pm went on until about 10pm, where our private venue (my good friend David’s amazing apartment duplex) had to wish everyone a good night.

It was an amazing start to our new GFA Expert Meetup series, and we are now planning our next one in Shenzhen for Thursday night June 29. New venues being considered, or may stay in David’s in Futian.

The GFA Expert Workshop was immediately following that Friday morning at 9am, so we really were pushing the envelope. The reason we hosted the GFA Experts meetup so close to the GFA Experts workshop was a lot of the attendees for the workshop requested it! They were flying in from Singapore, traveling from Hong Kong, and other parts of China and requested to put the meetup together so they could make the best of both events during their trip.

Bright and early Friday morning close to 10 people gathered for a full day Amazon Leverage GFA Experts Workshop with Meir Simhi. He was a top rated speaker at the Cross Border Summit and had a lot of interest for this workshop immediately following his talk that day.

We hosted the workshop in an amazing “speak easy” style private venue in OCT Loft (Meir’s great recommendation). The venue helped everyone get more comfortable with a sofa area and a dining table both in the same room with private bathroom. Each attendee signed an NDA to protect themselves when disclosing personal information to us. We wanted to make sure the trust was there and also to make sure everyone was taking this serious and felt comfortable.

The morning kicked off with introductions as well as mindset. We had each person open up a bit about their Amazon business, what their current business state is, and where they want to take it. In the introductions alone we all were learning new tips and tactics, as well as success and failure stories.

Lunch was amazing (we always try to have great food at our GFA events), but we all noticed it was another level. While we had some vegetarians and special requests, we accommodated for all. Many’s favorite was a massive lamb drumsticks (mine too).

In the afternoon it was back to business and this time Meir was showing his screen of how he optimizes Amazon listings, finds opportunities – and as the topic of the workshop was titled – “leverages Amazon”. These are experienced business owners who had been on Amazon quite a while and I was a bit worried they would know these already – but everyone was furiously writing down notes and thanking Meir over and over.

A very intense afternoon we had snacks and drinks constantly provided to keep the energy as high as possible. Wrapped up the day a bit over 5pm and had no problem getting some amazing video testimonials from attendees.

Thank you Meir for being our first GFA Expert – and everyone was so happy to have your session. It was a premium price, but for sure it delivered well over their investment of time and money from the tactics and strategies everyone is implementing.

We have the next GFA Experts Meetup planned for Thursday June 29th, and a few people are already asking to be speakers. Meir and I are discussing more followup workshops on Amazon from him.

The plan is to hold a GFA Expert Meetup (evening for a couple hours) once a month in Shenzhen – and hopefully in cities in Asia and around the world for the long term. GFA Expert Workshops (half day, full day, or multi-day) may not have such a recurring schedule, based more on the supply and demand of topics and experts.

I am so happy to have this positive report of our first meetup and workshop in the GFA Experts platform. We want to keep the momentum going and have more high level business executive meetups, in English, in China and Asia. While I (Mike) am actively organizing them, I do want to pass the baton over to others. If you are a networking guru and in a city where you think a lot can benefit from these GFA Experts meetups and/or workshops, I’d love to talk to you and work a deal.

Just want to attend? The best way would be to signup on https://vip.globalfromasia.com as an attendee and then we’ll email you as events come up. We don’t want to bombard you with irrelevant events in various cities, so have to organize people based on where you want to do it – this is a budding new project, so you patience – as well as generous feedback – is greatly appreciated.

Comments, suggestions, hate mail, and even some trolls appreciated in the comment section below!