I've been meaning to write more about some of the interesting food experiences I've had whilst in Saigon. As today is Fun Friday, I thought I'd try to write about something else on my blog to change things up a bit.

As a sidenote: one of the noticeable changes I've seen over the past year is the increasing number of young Vietnamese using Foursquare to check-in at their favorite spots. I don't have the actual numbers but I can tell from the number of check-ins at different venues around town that have been added to Foursquare.

Enough of my rambling.

The place is called: Quán Xá Sài Gòn

Photo credit: Kenh14.vn

Skip here if you want to see the link (in Vietnamese).

This place specializes in: bun mam, bun thai and hu tieu nam vang. I dig all three of these dishes.

So if you've already frequented this place, I'd love to hear your thoughts below. Even better, if you know of other places, please share with other readers.

I'm going to give this place a try sometime this weekend and give my thoughts later.

You can follow me on Twitter here. Foursquare here. LinkedIn here.

Watching all of you makes me extremely excited about this year. I am amazed at all the truly interesting companies, projects and events going live every day. Now that I’ve had a chance to settle into 2012, I thought I’d share some lessons I’ve learned from the past year.   

I’ve always seen the work that I do as more than retail sales. That is our main job and we need to do it very well. But we also need to make sure the macro environment of our activities remain sustainable and attractive.

Circumstances make things tricky. That’s true regardless of the industry you work in. The biggest competitor in this market is the economy. In a tight market, your most powerful growth engine and your best protection from competitive inroads is putting everything you can into cultivating true customer loyalty. It calls for bringing about a culture of customer service excellence like Zappos. It’s easier said than done and few companies get this right.  

Hindsight offers no guarantees. By looking back on the past year, you can connect the dots but that’s no guarantee that you’re going to pull through tough circumstances that challenge your business to offer a better product or service. Some businesses don’t get this or they make decisions in a vacuum of their own corporate culture. Go Daddy experience huge backlash when they supported SOPA and then quickly rescinded their vote only after public outcry. Whether or not it serves their customers better or not. Hindsight allows for an opportunity to reevaluate prior decisions made over the previous year but there are no guarantees.

I learned from the get-go that I needed to find a way to connect with other people from diverse backgrounds that had information and strategies that proved useful in solving problems.

Not everything I did was a hit. But it was the best experience for me. And I’m still learning that.

Here are some of the lessons:

Ownership is more than just being the big boss that calls all the shots. It’s also in the recruiting of staff, handling the day to day operations, marketing/advertising, as well as, getting things fixed when something breaks.

Let’s face it. It’s Vietnam and that’s going to happen.

Referral Network.

Having a good network of professionals, and local friends certainly help. Not having this can leave you in the dark – such as when the electrical system fails and you’re left scratching your head.  

Operating Budget

A good owner has these experiences in his/her back pocket and sets aside an operating budget to take in account when business is staggering and needs to be changed.

Retail Add-ons. Not every product we carried was a hit. In our case, having a product like men’s accessories that offered enough of a compelling value wasn’t enough to lure shoppers. Increasing brand recognition through traditional advertising and marketing is expensive. It does pay out if you’re patient enough but you’re going be outspent by the incumbents. We expanded our entry-level offerings to attract more shoppers, as well as, found ancillary add-ons. This brought some short-term gains.

Cross Promotion

I like to tie things together. It makes things easier for me. That works in the retail space as well. Say I wanted to promote my brand, I’d focus on working with other non-competing businesses; say a fitness gym, where I know people are conscious of how they look.

Focus

I eliminated some time sponges that had me spread out too thin in 2011. In an increasingly busy world we live in, it is sometimes hard to unplug and step away from the mobile phone (text, IM, email etc).

I’d love to hear some of your success stories and ideas that you’ve applied towards your own journey as an entrepreneur.

You can follow me on Twitter here. Foursquare here. LinkedIn here.

I got called out recently that an @tweet "was not real work."

Here’s the context of my story and reply.

A few weeks back I sent an @tweet to a friend about an idea I wanted to share and possibly collaborate on. I was busy at the time and realized I didn’t have his contact readily available. So I fired off a quick tweet before I left the house hoping to hear back.

I’m sure he was busy and didn’t catch my @tweet for him and well time passed by. I could’ve looked him up using Google or LinkedIn but the fact was I didn’t. That was my bad.

We know people whom we’ve sent long elaborate emails to tee up a nice referral and they either don’t reply back in time or at all. This drives me nuts.

It happens to some of us at one time or another.

Again, I’m sure there was no mal-intent in him not getting back to me.

I recall bumping into that same person and invited him to sit down for a cup of coffee on a separate occasion. We talked about working in Vietnam, getting clients to pay on-time, not getting screwed by clients wanting to do the work they originally hired you to do.

I asked for his phone number before walking away. He didn’t have one. And well, he didn’t grab my number either. I don’t think there was any bad intentions, both of us figuring we’ll meet again.

I was laying the foundation to work with him directly or passing along a referral at some point in time.

Another friend of mine named Bao has an IT service company selling hardware in town. He’s often busy out finding new customers. My referral resulted in him selling a security camera system directly to the owner. When he went out there to do an installation, the shop owner next door also asked for the same solution.

It was an easy sale based on a personal relationship I had developed over my years living here.

Bao will sell another system later this month at a different site. When that’s done, there will be another referral to a mutual friend to create a customer relationship management software/inventory system to handle the point-of-sale system for a multi-location retail store.

I haven’t been doing enough of this type of work due to my hours. Nor do I tweet enough. But I do enjoy both. It allows me to connect with people in ways my current work doesn’t allow and discover hidden opportunities.

@emporio found me using Twitter. He’d been following my tweets and when he came to visit, he sent me an invitation via a tweet to sit down and have a conversation with him. Fortunately, I do read my Twitter stream. While my time with @emporio has been short, we were able to identify areas of synergy where we could help one another. This is exciting to me.

But it started with a short little tweet of less than 140 characters.

Artists need consumers.

Retail stores need customers to buy their new inventory.

An @tweet? Well, that’s not real work.

But in the context of holding down a retail job working seven days a week, working eight straight months with zero days off and managing two different locations, that is real work.

Add the heat, humidity, rain and traveling back and forth while suited up, I’d say a lot of you reading this out there can relate on what it takes to get shit done.

There's this Bulgarian proverb.  "From walking -- something; from sitting -- nothing, but carpal tunnel and hemorrhoids." 

Eight straight months getting stuff done is no joke.  Soon it will be nine.

You can follow me on Twitter here. Foursquare here. LinkedIn here.

My former partner gave me some sage advice.

What it boils down to is “small but strong”.

Lean.

Let me explain.

I’ve been tinkering around at Andrew’s Ties using the same approach the past two months and I’m very pleased with the results. When I first took over Andrew’s Ties, we had a staff of 4. Not wanting to rock the boat, I kept the same head count. Shortly thereafter, one staff got married and decided to relocate.

My initial reaction was to find a replacement. I spent time interviewing and recruiting. I allocated time towards evaluating the overall performance of each staff, created a new commission plan, a lunch compensation incentive, as well as, individually recognizing the star performers. To measure how we were doing, I implemented customer service and sales metrics to evaluate our store performance.

Three months into it, another staff abruptly left the company to pursue other interest. I let another go due to poor performance. And so the cycle of having to hire and train began. That’s pretty normal in any retail business.

The second hiring cycle ended up exhausting a lot more of my time than expected.

If your company is highly profitable and has lots of cash to spend, then this whole issue is not as important. However, as we’ve seen companies can go from profit s to losses pretty quickly because of a bad economy, product cycle transition or some other bad fortune. When that happens being lean is always a good idea.

What I learned was during times of uncertainty or when things are moving very fast, it helps to be lean to take advantage of sudden market correction. In a slow retail economy like the one we are experiencing right now, that is an advantage to have.

I hope this helps those of you facing similar situations. If you know of other alternatives, please share them below.

You can follow me on Twitter here. Foursquare here. Linked here. 

In a recent exchange with Ario Tamat (@barijoe), I was seeking a solution for a friend that needed to wire transfer money from Vietnam to Indonesia fast.

Below is an excerpt of the email that @barijoe replied to my tweet. He does a good job of describing what worked for him. Your situation may be different.

Nevertheless, I think it's useful to share this information, in case, you or someone you know comes across this in the future.

Because of my job, I have a contract, work permit etc and a Vietcombank bank account from the office.

I then brought my work contract etc to Commonwealth Bank, where I opened a VND account. They asked for contract, temporary resident card, passport to open the account.

Any time I want to transfer money to my Commonwealth Bank account in Jakarta, I withdraw the money from Vietcombank (keeping the receipts/ATM slips), and bring it to the teller and fill out a deposit form and a remittance form. The  receipts/ATM slips are to prove that I withdrew money from my Vietcombank account (sometimes they photocopy my ATM card as well), following my work contract of which they have a copy, and I am allowed to transfer as much as my salary every month. I usually use AUD as the remittance currency as USD is a bit tricky in Vietnam... and by the end of the day, the money is received in my Jakarta account.

That's pretty much it. I've researched alternatives through HSBC, ANZ, Citibank etc, and the Commonwealth Bank is the most consumer-friendly (i.e, don't need USD 2000 just to open the account).

For one-off transactions, though, it's a bit tricky. There are several forms you need to sign and basically you can't send over USD 5000 if I'm not mistaken, but services like Western Union usually can help you.

I hope this helps those of you facing similar situations. If you know of other alternatives, please share them below. 

You can follow me on Twitter here. Foursquare here. LinkedIn here. Google+ here. 

Woot! I just got early access to @rapportive. Strangely I feel like I won the NERD lottery. 

Go to gplus.to to make short URL for Google+

You can follow me on Twitter here. Foursquare here. LinkedIn here. Google+ here.

ANDREW’S TIES brand name was established in 1991 from an idea of Cravattificio Zadi S.r.l, a family-run business which, thanks to the combination of ideas, enthusiasm and passion for “Made in Italy” products, revolutionized the tie market with an outstanding quality/price ratio. Andrew’s Ties registered great success in just a few years, becoming the Italian market leader in the production of ties and accessories. The brand soon became popular abroad for its unique style, the ongoing research and competitive prices confirm the leadership of what is known as “Italian Style” in the world.

We're proud to be named to Forbes™ magazine's ‘The Finest Ties’. The accessories found in every Andrew’s Ties shop provide the sartorial details that push a man from forgettable to timeless.

Andrew’s Ties Vietnam, located in Diamond Department Store in Saigon, is a fashion specialty retailer founded on a simple idea: offer each customer the best possible service, quality, value and selection. We're looking for exceptional salespeople to provide outstanding customer service, develop strong customer relationships and build individual sales volume.

From attentive salespeople to meticulous tailors and innovative merchants, our teams are comprised of talented people who work hard to delight the customer. When you join an Andrew’s Ties Store, you are welcomed into a family dedicated to creating memorable and rewarding shopping experiences for our customers.

Andrew’s Ties currently has two sales openings. The ideal candidate is motivated, enjoys working one-on-one with customers and thrives in a commissioned sales environment. If you share our love for the customers we serve, the merchandise we sell and the work we do, this is a place for you to build a rewarding career.

Responsibilities 

• Set and achieve personal sales goals while supporting the goals of the team
• Greet customers in a timely, professional and engaging manner
• Understand and communicate the latest fashion trends in the industry with specific knowledge on new designer and current runway collections
• Provide honest and confident feedback to customers regarding merchandise style and fit
• Build lasting relationships with customers by contacting them to follow up on purchases, suggest new merchandise and invite them to upcoming events
• Consistently seek new fashion and product knowledge to act as an expert for the customer
• Work as a team player to ensure each customer receives the best service possible
• Perform daily department maintenance tasks including stock work, re-merchandising, display, price markdowns, and light cleaning

 Qualifications

• Proven ability to set and achieve sales goals
• Competitive drive and entrepreneurial confidence to succeed in a commission-based environment
• Demonstrated ability to develop relationships with customers and coworkers
• Knowledgeable and enthusiastic about high-end, designer fashion
• Ability to positively and proactively handle customer concerns and prioritize multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment
• Ability to quickly learn new procedures and processes
• Strong organizational and follow-through skills
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• High level of ownership, accountability and initiative 
• Bilingual Vietnamese with English or Korean speakers highly desired.

As an Andrew’s Ties employee, we offer a competitive compensation plan, a generous merchandise discount, and profit sharing plan and much more.

If you’d like to be considered, please contact us via email dylan @ andrewsties dot vn or share your LinkedIn profile here and use the “cover letter” to provide links to your web presence plus a way to reach you. We can’t promise to respond to every inquiry, but you can be sure that if the links you share show off your contributions, we will get in touch.

By the way, we are not prudes. We expect your web presence to represent who you are, not who you think an employer wishes you were, so don’t waste a lot of time sanitizing your web presence before sending us there. It will just confuse your friends.

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to providing a diverse environment.

The above information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. No visa sponsorship is available for this position.

You can follow me on Twitter here. Foursquare here. LinkedIn here. 

Photo Credit:  Max Murta

Photo Credit:  Max Murta

(cc) Creative Commons 

Click here to download:

VN-CA_Wordle_8D.pdf (112 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

VN-CA_Wordle_8D.pdf (112 KB)

I created a wordle from @caligarn’s ‘Vietnam vs. California: 12 Small Differences in Lifestyle’. 

California, Vietnam and People stood out to me.

AND YOU?

What three words stood out to you?

If this is not enough Dylan for you, please feel free to connect with me here.

(CC) Hugh MacLeod www.gapingvoid.com

“The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running.”    –Anonymous

I love these days before the New Year. It gives me time to not only reflect on the past year but feel inspired to take even more action in 2011. 

There are many things I’m sure we all would like to accomplish or wish we had accomplished already. Looking back on 2010, I made my share of investment mistakes. I’ve learned from prior experience that sometimes the better part of valor in any situation is to move on.

In basketball, you train and position yourself to anticipate where the ball is going to bounce off the rim while blocking your opponent out. Even with the inside position, you are guaranteed the rebound. If you’re on the outside looking in, you fight like hell to grab the board even if it means getting scraped up in the process. You hustle and work your ass off because you want it more. 

In track and field, the last 160-something meters is where you run right through your personal wall. Even when your legs feel like jelly, you keep on. We make that hideous face in order to power ourselves through the finish line; you don’t stop at the line. You lean into it.

No matter what, all we can do is the best we can, and just keep getting out of bed every morning and going about our daily business.

So what's your big plans for 2011?

If you would like to keep in touch, please follow here.