7 Habits of Highly Effective Teh Tarik Kakis

Habit #1 Be Pro-active — 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teh Tarik Kakis

This is the first blog of the seven-part series of “7 habits of highly effec­tive teh tarik kakis.
[To have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what is “teh tarik”, “teh tarik kaki” or “teh tarik ses­sion’, please go the About page]

Going back to the 1st habit of highly effec­tive Ah Bengs, it is “Kin Ka Kin Chiew (fast leg, fast hand)”. Sim­i­larly for Teh Tarik Kakis, it should be like this:

In all teh tarik ses­sions, we should be always ready to take the ini­tia­tive to

• find and choose good part­ners (teh tarik kakis) to teh tarik or yum cha
• look out for good places to teh tarik/yum cha

Good Part­ners for teh tarik session
You would see many peo­ple just hang around at mamak stalls for the sake of killing time with no good part­ners to chat. They would per­haps just order a teh tarik and watch world cup. Does this help even­tu­ally? Most prob­a­bly not.

The ideal sce­nario would be go find and choose good part­ners to teh tarik rather than any Tom, Dick and Harry. We must be care­ful in choos­ing our teh tarik part­ners as the qual­ity of dis­cus­sion dur­ing the teh tarik ses­sion will be deter­mined by the qual­ity of the part­ners. Would you expect good dis­cus­sion to arise from some­one who don’t even know the sub­ject well?
For exam­ple, if you want to find out more about health insur­ance pack­ages for ladies. Would you just ask any Tom, Dick and Harry in the mamak stall? First ask around your close con­tacts or friends who have the best knowl­edge in this area. Then sched­ule a teh tarik ses­sion with the tar­geted partner(s). If not, your meet­ing with the other party could be just rant­ing around and junk talk.

Good Places for teh tarik session
Is the con­ven­tional mamak stall the best place to con­duct a teh tarik ses­sion? Obvi­ously no! The choice of places to teh tarik would be depen­dent on the top­ics of dis­cus­sion. Rec­om­men­da­tions are:-

• 
  
  
  
  Less seri­ous top­ics — if you are doing some fact find­ing you could just meet at mamak stall, old fash­ioned cof­fee shops, fast food restau­rants (McDonald’s, KFC, etc.), new-generation kopi­ti­ams (Old­Town, Station1, Star­bucks, Cof­fee­Bean etc.)
• 
  
  
  
  More seri­ous top­ics — if you are try­ing to nego­ti­ate or clos­ing a deal or meet­ing a highly poten­tial client, you could opt for a more decent, quiet restau­rant where the ambi­ence is more con­ducive. Of course not nec­es­sary an expen­sive place. The key is to find some place where both par­ties are able to con­cen­trate and pay  attention.

Remem­ber, always look out for good teh tarik part­ners and good teh tarik places. This is habit #1 of highly effec­tive teh tarik kakis. Be pro-active!

Habit #2 Begin With The End In Mind — 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teh Tarik Kakis

This is the sec­ond blog of the seven-part series of “7 habits of highly effec­tive teh tarik kakis”.
[To have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what is “teh tarik”, “teh tarik kaki” or “teh tarik ses­sion’, please go to the About page.]

Com­ing back to the 2nd habit of highly effec­tive Ah Bengs, it is “Ooh Tao Ooh Buay (have head, have tail)”. Sim­i­larly for Teh Tarik Kakis, it should be like this:
In all teh tarik ses­sions, if there is no pur­pose of meet­ing to yum cha or teh tarik, it will be a sheer waste of time.

First we must have an objec­tive when meet­ing with our kakis (part­ners): is it for busi­ness dis­cus­sion, nego­ti­a­tion, prob­lem solv­ing, con­sul­ta­tion, rela­tion­ship build­ing etc?? A good teh tarik ses­sion should not be just a ran­dom talk or rant­ing ses­sion where it serves no purpose.

Sec­ond, once the objec­tive is ascer­tained, go ahead to plan your time and the right place to meet. For tips on how to choose your teh tarik part­ners and good places to teh tarik, kindly read the first blog at http://tehtarikkaki.com/all/7-habits-all/habit-1-be-pro-active-7-habits-of-highly-effective-teh-tarik-kakis/

Third, time spent in a teh tarik ses­sion should be con­trolled. It is rec­om­mended that it does not exceed one (1) hour. Any­thing exceed­ing one hour could mean that either party is drag­ging his feet or topic of dis­cus­sion should be done in sep­a­rate ses­sions i.e. bro­ken down into smaller ses­sions per­haps spread over a few days unless it is super urgent to have a con­clu­sion on the very same meeting.
Remem­ber, always have an objec­tive before com­mit­ting to meet for a teh tarik ses­sion. This is habit #2 of highly effec­tive teh tarik kakis. Begin with the end in mind! 

Habit #3 First Things First — 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teh Tarik Kakis

This is the third blog of the seven-part series of “7 habits of highly effec­tive teh tarik kakis”.
[To have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what is “teh tarik”, “teh tarik kaki” or “teh tarik ses­sion’, please go to the About page.]

Com­ing back to the 3rd habit of highly effec­tive Ah Bengs, it is “chik hung chik hung lai, ban ban lai (one thing at a time, slow and steady)”. How­ever for Teh Tarik Kakis, it should be like this:

FIRST THINGS FIRST and also LAST THINGS LAST

In a teh tarik/yum cha ses­sion, there are fun­da­men­tally 5 basic activ­i­ties which can be clas­si­fied as IMPORTANT BUT NOT URGENT:

1. first being “rela­tion­ship build­ing” with your kaki. For exam­ple, if you yum cha with your ai ren (partner/lover), you are build­ing closer and more ful­fill­ing rela­tion­ship. If with busi­ness asso­ciates, you are build­ing busi­ness rap­port. What­ever your main topic of dis­cus­sion in a teh tarik ses­sion, make sure it is impor­tant BUT not urgent.

2. sec­ond being “pre­ven­tion”. A lot of time you meet because you are “fire fight­ing” a sit­u­a­tion and you want an imme­di­ate solu­tion. How­ever, suc­cess is lim­ited because “when your house in on fire, you can’t solve a prob­lem effec­tively”. The best is to sit down and do pre­ven­tion activ­i­ties, such as brain­storm­ing on how to gen­er­ate more chan­nels of income when know­ing well in advance cost is going up.

3. third being “plan­ning”. Sim­i­lar to item 2,  a lot issues or prob­lems occur in our life hap­pen due to lack of “plan­ning”. So take time to plan as spo­radic actions give unpre­dictable results.

4. fourth being “explore new oppor­tu­ni­ties”. A teh tarik ses­sion with the right part­ner (kaki) is very effec­tive espe­cially in explor­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties in business.

5. fifth being “rest & recre­ation (R&R)”. R&R here means you yum cha with the inten­tion to relax your mind which re-create your body-mind tem­pera­ment. Of course I am not refer­ring to friv­o­lous talk, unwanted gos­sip and back stab­bing kind of things.

Your yum cha ses­sion should be a Quad­rant II activ­ity which is IMPORTANT BUT NOT URGENT. Rela­tion­ship takes time. Pre­ven­tion needs effort. Plan­ning takes time. Explor­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties needs effort. Rest and recre­ation take time!

Dear teh tarik kakis, always yum cha to do IMPORTANT things but not urgent things ok ya?
FIRST THINGS FIRST = THINGS THAT ARE IMPORTANT BUT NOT URGENT

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