Quote: (12-03-2015 10:26 PM)betterasianbrother Wrote:
For anybody that's part of the EC group, is it still fairly active? I've heard that the Elevator Life guys Tim and Nick have now left China and moved onto pastures new.
The "forum" itself is pretty dead, however there are still a bunch of threads and guides about product development, forming your business, networking and how to settle into life & business in China, available. We have an active Facebook group with over 100 members and a WeChat group (anyone interested in doing business or living in China SHOULD download that app) as well.
As for Tim & Nick's direct involvement in EC..
Tim is peripherally involved, he's in Cali and focused on building up their other brands i.e. Vincero Collective
However, Nick is in Hong Kong, running a multi-million dollar IoT startup accelerator called, Brinc.io. Even though he's busy as fuck, if you're in the group you have direct access to him via WeChat and Facebook and he always responds within a day. During the Canton Fair (twice a year) he organizes a meetup in Guangzhou, where he'll sit down with the attendees and break down their businesses give advice and invites 2 or 3 other successful EC members to make a speech or have a Q&A.
If you pop over to Hong Kong, you can go meet him and work out of his 10,000sq ft office. I can attest to that as I'm running a sourcing company in Guangzhou and I go to HK on a regular to meet potential & current clients.
A year ago Nick introduced me to my business partner (who's also an EC member) which, no doubt fucking changed my life and I can't overstate the value of being able to get advice on my business from someone who's operating on the level that Nick is.
That being said, I don't think the value of the group at this stage is necessarily Tim & Nick.
I see the new members gaining more day to day value from the community of "seasoned" EC members. It's pretty awesome to land in China and on Day One, immediately have 5 or 10 similar business minded individuals around you, who were in your shoes a year or two ago and know exactly what you need to get settled or set up your own business.
When I joined EC about 16 months ago and paid the 500 bones, my perspective was that if I made $501 from it, then it would be worth it. Considering I started a business with one of the members, we've hired 8 people and our company became profitable within 5 months - I'm pretty goddamn happy I joined.
PM me if you want any more details about the inner workings of the group.
Cheers,