Name: Christine Lu
Age: 32
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Education: Bachelor’s degree in International Relations with a focus on East Asian Studies from Boston University
Job Title: Founder and Chief Creative Officer of The China Business Network, “a LinkedIn for people interested in doing business in or with China”
How She Got Her Gig: During her 13 years of conducting business in China throughout and after college, Christine became very attuned to the cultural barriers between the Eastern and Western countries that often cause expensive business mistakes. Putting her expertise to use, in 2007 she created and hosted “The China Business Show,” an Internet show from Entrepreneur Magazine that profiles people and companies doing business in China. When she was flooded with comments and questions from viewers, she realized a need for something more: a place where people could connect, share resources, and learn from one another’s successes and mistakes. “The only other alternative was Googling ‘how to do business in China,’” says Christine. “So I decided that we could take the show a step further and create a network.”
First Things First: When launching the start-up, “the smartest thing I could have done was bring on a partner with more experience than myself,” Christine says, referring to Janet Carmosky, a China business specialist with whom Christine worked in Shanghai. “She has a lot of connections and experience running start-ups. And she’s comfortable with the traditional ways of business, whereas I live online with Facebook, podcasting, and new media—so we’re a good combination of the two.” The next step was to partner with a tech company to create a networking directory (which will launch on their website this November). Christine says approaching people for partnerships in a male-dominated sector can be difficult, but sometimes they find it to their advantage: “People want to figure out if we’ve got what it takes. And the second they see Janet and I together they say, ‘Okay, I guess we’d better take them seriously.’”
Why China?: To put it simply, Christine equates doing business in China to “getting into the hot nightclub in town and knowing the bouncer. We’re trying to get rid of that secretive system and have a free flow of information so people can come together and solve big problems,” she says. So far, the media has been her largest obstacle. “Here, you can’t find any story on China that’s positive,” she says. “So the hardest part has been trying to establish a voice that doesn’t attempt to convince people to fall in love with a Communist country, but opens their minds—because it’s a lot more complicated than what the news feeds us. It’s kind of like being a Republican in a room full of Democrats.”
Two Timer: Given that her business exists globally, Christine must work in two time zones. “My son is my alarm clock. I get him ready for daycare and then it’s nonstop e-mailing and calling until about 4 p.m., when it’s time to pick him up. When he goes to sleep at nine it’s noon in China, so I start working again. I get about four hours of sleep.”
This Job’s for You if: “You’re the type of person who doesn’t back down from your vision before seeing it through all its possibilities,” says Christine. She admits that a certain amount of naïveté has served her do-or-die attitude well. “When you’re trying to do something no one has done before, you get a lot of people telling you what’s wrong about it. So my whole motto is: People who are not interested in trying to change the world—please step aside, because there’s a lot of work for the rest of us to do. I like challenging the status quo and I accept with full responsibility that if my business idea fails, it has everything to do with me. And if it succeeds, it also has everything to do with me.”
