In May, I got an email from Albert Wolfe, sharing that he’s travelling to Fort Collins area visiting family soon, from Guangzhou, China, and that he loves what I’m doing with LoCo Think Tank, and has been listening to and enjoying The LoCo Experience podcast - and would I be interested to have him on as a guest?
Flattery will get you everywhere with me, so of course I said yes - and we had one opening during his stay here - the day before his departure. In the meantime, we shared a pair of lunches, one with my other China-expert friend Kim O’Neil, and we shared a podcast conversation full of more twists and turns than a road course in Formula 1!
The biggest pivot in Albert’s career was when he left a career in education - as Director and Associate Professor of an English language department at a university in Guangzhou - to become the GM of a long-established brand, Healthy Household, Ltd. - which had been a catalog company much like the Sears catalog of old time USA. He oversaw a transition to e-commerce, and also shifted the use of real estate to become a high-end bilingual kindergarten - where he became the founding principal. The school grew quickly and Albert exited after about 3 years, and took something of a sabbatical.
But - his contacts kept calling him to do consultancy work for their businesses, and now, 6 years later, Albert has joined the team at international coaching and training company, Adaptive Leaders - and co-authored a book Performance Leadership: 4 Keys to Extraordinary Results (https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Leadership-Keys-Extraordinary-Results/dp/B0F2Z66ZCB)
I doubled my knowledge of China during Albert’s stay in Fort Collins, and also learned that “not very good” at ping-pong in China is “better than most, including Curt” in America. There’s a ton of great business insight in this one, and a lot of laughs, so please enjoy my conversation with my new American friend in China, Albert Wolfe.