I've Turned Tree Hugger

Sorry for the long delay in this blog post. Between working, travelling and wedding planning it has been difficult to keep up with our blog recently!

I returned from a two and a half week sales trip through Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It was terrible! Successful business wise but terrible work

Let me back up a bit before I get into the details...My latest project is managing a four day 350 person food and beverage conference and trade exhibition in Shanghai and it is by far the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. Besides the fact that Asia is just a completely different beast to do business in my company is completely understaffed. My company has 2 full time people (me and my boss) an accounts lady and another Manager who is part time who does more of running the business than project detail like me. We have two contractors who are assisting us with this job as well. One is responsible for all the artwork/design/printing and the other contractor runs the registration engine that collects all data for the delegates. Therefore only me and my boss are working on this project full time. Due to the fact that my boss’ skills do not lie anywhere in the organization/attention to detail/coordination/communication with people, implementation... this all completely lies on me. Therefore I am doing sponsorship coordination with over 100 companies (and fulfilment), creating a 3 day speaker program for the conference and communication with all speakers, working with the hotel staff about conference packages, ballroom and break out room rentals & accommodation, storage for conference materials, working with 4 external venues for the 3 social events (boat cruise, dine around on the famous Bund River and a gala dinner), all while working with 20 chefs to ensure the food and beverage completely WOWs these F&B professionals! It’s a bit intimidating when I can barely make mac & cheese and these people are some of the best chefs in the world. They come up with the most beautiful menus and drinks. It’s really incredible and inspiring to work with such creative well known chefs. I’m also working with bar tender “champions” from around the world, tea, wine and coffee sommeliers too. Did you know there is such a thing as a WATER sommelier? Weird. Anyway, thank GOD our other Manager (the part time one) used to own his own set designing company as he is designing our stage and trade show exhibition space. He is amazing and the sets he builds are incredible. We are very lucky to have him be part of the team.

So that is my project. It is pretty cool but is just a ton of work to put on one person. I have all the confidence in the world in myself to pull off an awesome experience but I am faced with challenges and questions and situations everyday where I feel like a duck.. calm and cool on the surface but peddling my feet like crazy underneath.

Back to my trip...The point of this 2.5 week trip through Asia was to meet with potential sponsors and secure some who were wavering. My boss decided a week and a half before we left that we would just do a sales trip. I had to coordinate 30 meetings in four different cities – and of course everyone is busy so it was just a whirlwind putting everything together on top of taking care of all the other things mentioned above. Fine, no worries, it's part of the job.

My boss got to Singapore on a Saturday and decided to bring his “friend” with him who he recently met online. She also happens to be a Japanese translator and told me that’s why he brought her alone. Ummm too bad we didn’t meet with any Japanese companies? She was good company but also a bit of a princess and another hotel and transportation I had to worry about 2 days before we left. I ended up taking an overnight flight on Sunday landed in Singapore on Monday morning after a 9 hour flight with 1 lay over in Kuala Lumpur. Thankfully in KL at the airport you can get a 30 minute massage for 10 ringgit ($3) so it was good to have that after sitting in coach for 8 hours overnight. I had one hour in my hotel room to get ready in Singapore and then went into 6 hours of meetings. My boss did all the talking, I all the minuting, and trying to not cringe every time he over exaggerated or promised something that I knew would give me a new 10 hour project. He is a fantastic salesman, probably the best I've heard, but at times the things we sell can be extremely difficult to do. Definitely possible but very time consuming and difficult. Remember, he has no idea what goes into implementation. After all the listening and note taking all day my job didn’t start until after the 6 – 8 hour days of meetings. I’d go back to my room to anywhere between 50 – 200 emails from potential sponsors or delegates as the registration deadline happened to be in the middle of this trip. On top of that, I had contracts to draft from the meetings and all the follow up. These weren’t just quick emails either.

I spent two days in Singapore then had another night flight to our next destination – Shanghai; a 1:30 AM flight. Oh and don’t forget my boss sat business class and put me in the back. It’s only a five hour flight but getting to an international flight at 11:30 PM at the airport, waiting, and then sitting on a plane just isn’t comfortable. Needless to say I might have gotten an hour of sleep. We landed in Shanghai and were off and running doing meetings all day and then I’d go back to my room and do all the follow up, etc. Needless to say after all this traveling and working I was very very cranky and angry by the end of the trip. I don’t know how anyone expects someone to be able to perform their best under circumstances like this. I made two pretty big mistakes on this trip too but I just couldn’t hold myself to feel bad about them because I was just exhausted, overworked, and underappreciated. I didn’t book his “friends” hotel dates correctly as they were flashed at me two days before leaving while I was thinking of a million other things. His friend flew to Shanghai a day before us so I realized while she was in the air that I messed up her booking and car transfer so I called the hotel to try and fix it and they said there were no rooms left because it was the last week of the World Expo. This was the case at EVERY hotel in Shanghai! So my boss is freaking out worrying how bad this will make him look in front of his “friend” so he used his “GM get out of free card” as I call it.. and called the General Manager of the hotel we were staying at (our conference hotel) and the GM bumped a guest for her and had her picked up by his personal car. Ugh, a good favour wasted on a chick. Awesome. Awesome. The other mistake I made was writing a company’s name incorrectly on a contract but that was quickly forgotten.

Our last location was Hong Kong which is by far my favourite place in Asia that I have been. It is clean, modern, the skyline is amazing and most people speak English. We stayed at the new W hotel – wow... WOW! It was very modern as were our rooms. I kept finding new buttons that did cool things. The staff even made me two chocolate pyramids that said “Welcome Miss Dasdjfkl;asdfkj” just one letter was out of place but I wasn’t going to make them do it again! Especially after the manager specifically sought me out and said that he had to fix it once.. hehe

I’ve been to Asia 5 times now for work and I’m going back tomorrow for a presentation I have to give on Thanksgiving. After visiting and staying in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai I have a new look on the world. I have completely become a green freak. I was never really into the green movement, I love our planet, but I guess I was always very fortunate to live in the US – where poverty, disparity of wealth, government corruption and filthy living conditions are not everywhere. Americans are so lucky and I wish more of them could see the rest of the world and understand how good they have it. Of course we always want to improve things in our country but I feel so many things have been taken for granted and people just complain to complain. Anyway, the biggest thing I have taken away from my trips to Asia is taking care of the environment. In most places in Asia the rivers and waters are untouchable because they are so filthy, government and other authorities are looking for every way to make a dollar off of you and their people (I can tell by working with local vendors), there are no public trash cans, my eyes literally hurt after days in most of these cities because of the smog, and people are running around with masks on. Which always makes me wonder.. are they sick or do they think I’m sick? I generally have had very pleasant experiences with the people I have worked with in Asia but we always have to be very careful when working with vendors. They are always trying to rip off “rich westerners.” Very frustrating for honest people!

That’s been my experience thus far. You probably won’t hear from me for another few months as I will go in total conference mode from now throughout the conference in late Feb. We are trying to get so much done now so things aren’t too crazy around the Chinese New Year! Everything literally shuts down in China for about 3 weeks in Jan- Feb. Not great for our project but we’ll make it work!