Ingredients For Business Success In China

In China, Guangzhou, jogging along the Pearl river, I came across a group of midnight fishermen casting fishing lines into the Pearl river.

One middle-aged man, had his stained shirt pulled up revealing his visible round belly, which while he lay on his back on the wall between Pearl River and the footpath, reflected the dim moonlight from the skies.

Strikingly, he was sleeping there while with a fishing rod beside him reeled into the water.

Business in China is very funny to me.

I am thinking, “Wow, even when you are asleep and not even making effort, you can still harvest produce and make money out of it.”

This fisherman’s fishing rod did essentially all the work.   He makes money out of sleeping.

The Tire Shop Business Example In China

The next day, as I strolled around Shayuan （沙园）, I spotted, in a tire shop hidden behind a bunch of stacked car tires, an old lady in her late 60’s seated on a plastic chair, bored （发呆）.

Again, I am thinking, “Wow, this woman probably knows nothing about tires, but one day, her and her husband decided…”

“What can we sell?  Let’s just sell tires?  Okay, why the hell not?”

Then, having no experience as a startup whatsoever, they sold tires.

Doing Business In China

The great thing about business in China is that as soon as you open a shop in China, people will come in and buy products from you.  It is that simple.

In China, I have come to know that “brand” is meaningless.  In China, business is a matter of opening up a shop in a populated area, and waiting for people to just come in and buy whatever you have.

You could throw a blanket on the city footpath floor to sell corn from your village farm, and people would buy your products, regardless of how dirty your hands are.  It adds character to the product over here in China.

What Is Necessary For Business Success in Australia

In Australia, appearance is important.

If you look untrustworthy, then people will not use your services or come into your store.

The only people in Australia who would sell products on a city street would either be homeless or thieves who want to hock a stolen mobile phone.

Australians will not buy just anything from anyone.  The product has to have value.

In Australia, quality is also important.

Australians have become accustomed from buying face-to-face from trusted big business with trusted wholesalers.

For example, we would rather buy clothes from within a shopping complex or a mall.  We would place much less trust in buying products from flea markets because the quality cannot be trusted.

Australians are also slow to trust sites like Amazon and Taobao, because we value the ability to test the product’s quality rather than the convenience of Taobao.

A business name is also essential.  If a shop has not made an effort to prominently erect their business name, most Australians would not see the store.

An Australian looking for a mobile phone to buy, would train their eyes for an iPhone shop, and ignore all the brand-less shops with iPhones selling inside.

Business in Australia is also not easy to establish.  You need to have an establish reputation, otherwise Australians will mostly ignore you.

In China, blind people could find you and do business.