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Jul 6, 2013

How to Mix Business and Pleasure


When my boss told me, SEA Marketing is going to go Bali for an F2F training and workshop. I was like.. yaaaay!! Exotic place, beautiful island, cheap shopping, and all the sexy beach clothes with fashionable sunglasses, big hat to protect your face and ... spicy food! But wait! Honestly... those were not the things I most cheered about. Meeting my SEA team was the most exciting news of all. And to see them in Bali, was a great bonus.

And since it's Bali .. my boss and I had to play duet to be the hosts. So yeaa... I was  the one to prepare the logistic plan and she was the one to approve it. LOL! oops, I'm not complaining, boss, You know I really love doing it. She said: you plan and arrange everything for us, but on the D-day, Melly (her secretary) will be in charge and you will be just a participant. I like that :)

So, the plan was to mix between business and pleasure, and based on our experience, here are few tips for a successful mix.

#1 - REST
No matter how pack your agenda looks like, better make sure everyone gets a decent rest before starting the fun. Especially when your guests are from overseas.. long hours of flight, rush connecting flights, delays, sucks foods at the plane .. airsick, maybe :p

For team arriving from Jakarta, agenda Day One looked easy, too easy.. but maybe not for some of our overseas guests. Arrival batch 2 was supposed to leave the airport to GWK at around 3:30 pm.. but, we missed Vietnam team. I still don't get it, why they're missing for more than 1 hour while the Thailand team who were on the same connecting flight were easily found and safely sent to the meeting point. Anyway, they said, we couldn't find the person with HP signboard, and we have waited for almost 15min near the HP banner, but noone was there. So we decided to go to Burger King. Hehe .. while the others were tired and waiting at the meeting points, our Vietnam team were having Burger King. Lol! I was like almost going nut trying to get to their phone. None of both phone was switch on. How can I found them? were they also trying to get in touch with us? So I decided to sms one of them. And I got a reply 5 min later: this is Xuan Dong's wife. He's with other phone number xxxxx.

But honestly, do you actually believe that we were all tired?







#2 - HOST
Try to do the mix at your boss's home country so that everyone wouldn't dare to say how lousy the event was. LOL!!

We had our lunches at the hotel due to packed meeting schedules but there's no way we would want our dinners there too. So we arranged local exotic foods for dinner. Day One went well, since we all went together from GWK to Warung Made. But Day Two and Day Three were somehow not as planned.

Day Two: we had a heavy rain while having group tour to Tanah Lot. While the team from the other bus had arrived and had their dinner, the bus I was in ...somehow stuck in bad traffic. By the time we got there, I was 100% sure that I didnt know what I was eating and how it tasted. Haha!

Day Three: it was supposed to be a surprise party for my boss, but instead.. I was the one who's in shock. Dinner was scheduled at 7:00 PM with all the group  Baliness dance performances and a little bit of  valentine's surprise party, but we started the dinner at around 9:00PM. Even at 8:00 PM some were still taping for the Coffee Coaching, some were still busy with their kebaya and sarung, and some were still practicing their Baliness dance.

I cant believe everyone said the event was very good, scored 10 out of 10 and Melly and I even got presents to organize such a messy schedule. Haha!




#3 - SHOP EARLY
I arranged the group to do shopping on the arrival day for one simple reason which was to make them stayed focus during the business meetings. This worked perfectly well not only for normal people knowing that the souvenirs were safely kept inside their luggage.. but also for some shopping-freaks because they knew they could shop again on the following day on a spare time.

Surprisingly, my SEA team didn't seem to enjoy shopping that much. We finished shopping in an hour and... only few were back to the store on the last day of our trip. So, now we know who's the shopping-freaks.







#4 - DRINK & GET DRUNK
oh yeaaa... it's legal in a business trip, haha. But do it only on the last day/night of the trip. Doesn't matter how silly you will look in the morning or how bad your headache is, the business meeting are over. Hurray!!









#5 - SPOIL YOUR EYES
We all know how would it be to be in a packed meetings schedule, even when it's done in a nice place such as Bali. Cold meeting room, uncomfortable chairs, heavy discussion, and... sleepy eyes. You need to look at something pretty to keep your eyes open, right? RIGHT!. So here's the trick. Get a handsome or pretty speaker!







If you tried those tips but it's somehow not working... my last tips is: 

GET AN AWESOME TEAM LIKE MY SEA MARKETING TEAM!!! 
I LOVE YOU ALL, GUYS...





1 comment:

Unknown said...

This Great video Ema... I really loved it... Thanks for Sharing...

Made me remember all the good time we had... SEA Marketing team Rocks....