the 11th hour

Been on the run since I arrived back in Shanghai at 12:30pm. Non-stop until about 2 hours ago. Long sessions trying to salvage a friend's second store from closing; his first is still successful. This second store is much nicer and WITHIN walking distance to our apartment. Initially, I recommended closing it up as well in order to stop the cash drain. Friend still wanted to keep it from closing because of the time and energy invested into the staff; plus the income from last year has increased. After much thought and discussion with him, I proposed an employee equity program. Give the staff more say and more opportunities to learn a real business. Plus what they lack in that space is marketing. Everything there was by word of mouth. The proposal was presented by this store manager; when I met him this aft going thru the plan; I knew it was bad news; the guy had no back bone. He was either not ready to take bigger leap into business or not wanting. And when he presented the proposal to the staff, only 4 showed up. I got pull into along with the owner to explain. Well, it was triple confirmed my gut feel. Close shop. There are more staff than 4 employees in that store. One wasn't really give a $hiT. The other one was pregnant, two was keen, the other via phone call said no. The store manager didn't really present it well anyway. I was stunned when he only roused up 4 staff members for the meeting with such importance. Not good. After the first 3 minutes of me meeting everyone, it was curtain call. Tonight, I could see how a good idea and energy but with a poor team could turn a good thing to a bad thing. Friend there is an idea man, he needs someone to implement the idea and keep him focus and having expansion ideas without firm foundations.