Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

Opportunity Comes for Those Who Are Ready

I told you previously about how Mr. Mineral and I were very professional throughout our trip in Hong Kong. Because we dressed professionally, we were invited to meetings with lot of people. I had two meetings. The first meeting that I had was thanks to dressing professionally and going to the organization where a person named Mr. Gem was, also a massive shark. He is almost a retired shark and he is so big now.

Mr. Gem founded Hive and made millions importing and exporting jewellery. We had a chance to meet briefly before we went to this dinner. I made sure to really pay attention and give a really good impression. I really listened and led with my ears more than anything else to pay really attentively the highest compliment, which is complete attention to somebody.

So that's what I did for Mr. Gem and he was quite impressed by my ability to listen and also by how attentive I was. During the actual dinner, I spoke up a few times and really illustrated to the room that I'm quite capable of talking and expressing myself even amongst such wealthy and powerful people.

There were 20-some people that Mr. Gem invited to this lavish dinner. The one sitting directly to my right was a former secretary of Hong Kong and he held multiple positions in the government, but the key one was either the secretary or the main guy behind the public image. He told me this interesting story about how for 15 years he had to read all three newspapers in the morning to catch wind of what the media was saying and basically do damage control. The biggest issue was a lot of departments would not tell him in advance what they had done wrong and he was looking at the newspaper to find out and make a response in reaction to these things.

He said he'd wake up at 5 a.m. in the morning and start reading the papers. By the time he got to the hotel, he would already be informed about the damage that the day had wrought. He told me that the job could be described in one sentence and if you forgot your heart medication at home, you could easily just go down the hall and pick some up from anybody in the area unit or in the department.

He told me a lot of very interesting things about some political sharks and he taught me about the politics of Hong Kong very briefly. He taught me that if I actually wanted anything done, I would have go straight to the secretary and message her and not go through underlings as everyone in the government in Hong Kong has been bred down essentially to prevent rocking the boat.  However, the higher ups are much more willing to listen to new and potential ideas. He taught me that I should get in contact with the environment secretary, the main secretary for that department, because she was a kind lady and would give me a fair hearing about this particular venture that I was trying to push, which was very good.

This is advice that is useful for dealing with governments around the world.

To my left was Ms. Marketing, a foreign-educated mini shark in Hong Kong. When she does communication, she's a very strong communicator. Hive had training events and one of these training events they had was a public speaking initiative to explain to Hive members how to be better at public speaking. I really covered all those major points just to accept silence, to listen to responses, to remove words such as aah, uhm, like preaching words. These are actually some great things she imparted to us, though I've been exposed to these concepts by acting classes and other organizations. It was good to once again hear her session and drastically improve the presentations of all the pitches.

If you can present like a superstar, you will make money like a superstar.