After seeing Joseph Liu’s blog about our COMM 101 class on entrepreneurship, I am so inspired and decide to write some of my own thoughts down. We were given a chance to hear the president and CEO of energy aware, Janice Cheam share her experiences about starting a business of her own after graduation last week in the COMM 101 class. Energy Aware is a company focusing on the development of power tab right now. Its power tab shows the energy each individual household is using and also displays the costs of such energy explicitly. The power tab increases people’s awareness of energy-saving and environmental protection greatly.

According to Janice, so many people have spent money on energy and they could make a huge saving by just making few adjustments to their habits. For instance, one of Janice’s employees found out his base low (the energy someone uses when he or she leaves the house), shown by the power tab, was unexpectedly high. It turned out that he had turned his heater to the highest power when he thought it was not working and had opened it 24/7 for three months when the heater was actually functioning. Although the heater was not producing heat yet it was using up large amount of energy. By figuring out this, Janice’s employee saved almost 300 $ a month on his energy bills.

The power tab is now being tested by BC Hydro and it has been applied to several countries like Australia and Finland. The Energy Aware company is now expanding and Janice shares with us her hope of making Energy Aware a hundred million dollar company by the next few years. Janice sees the potential of the energy industry and make use of it.

I am really inspired by Janice and her company. Instead of applying for jobs, she chose to take the risk and start a company of her own, this is something I admire very much. And she also made her idea in a class in UBC come true. I believe we all have many great ideas in our daily lives and we need to be brave enough to believe in ourselves and try to carry them out and make them come true. And more importantly, I learn from Janice about the practical practice of entrepreneurship. Where are we headed after four years from now? Do we want to work in a large firm or start our own company like Janice? We need to start thinking about those question and explore more options.

Think big and Do big. We can make a difference and we will! : )