Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

To Gain Their Hearts Listen with Your Ears

Mr. Princeton taught me quite a few things during this first meeting.  He taught me first to listen and fully understand what is going on.  To evaluate a business, you need to know some key things.  First, you need to know the employee count; this lets you know the strength of the company.  Next, you need to know the company’s cash flow; this tells you about the health of the company.  Cash is king.  Finally, go up and "sniff" the place out.  Actually see with your eyes and smell with your nose the company's headquarters.  This will let you know if they are misleading you.

Another thing we identified was that mainland Chinese don’t pay unless they think something is a great deal. I spent most of the morning there just looking around and familiarizing myself with the company. Mr. Princeton introduced me as an EA—Executive Assistant. That way I didn’t have to sign an NDA in order to hear about the business strategy.

Mr. Princeton took me to another meeting that day. We took a cab and went over to Mr. Princeton's factory in San Po Gong, which is in a building his family owns. The top floors are offices, so Mr. Princeton took me to one of these offices for a meeting about the pet food industries. There were three projects Mr. Princeton told me about while I was back in Toronto that drew my interest. The first one was a touchscreen technology to integrate into LoyalPlus, which would then be distributed in China.  The second was organic pet food, the topic of meeting number two. They were seeking a source of organic pet food in North America, in Alberta, Canada, to import to Asia because Chinese pet owners have become very picky about what they feed their pets. Also, they don’t trust anything manufactured in China, and highly value items manufactured in North America, Europe, Australia, Japan, or Korea.