Lesson From Sauder Alumni
This week, we had a lesson which had three Sauder alumni, as well as entrepreneurs:Paul Davidescu (Tangoo), Paul Gill (Naked Coconuts), and Jennifer Martin (Sip Soda) as our guests to introduce us their personal and educational experience of staring up their own businesses.
Source: www.chrisgibbs.net
I was totally amazed through their speech. I can imagine how hard it was and how they struggle through all the hardness to get to their position right now. What I’ve learned from their speech and our conversation can be basically summarized as three main points: passion, start small, be conscious in the business.
First of all, it is crucial for a starter to has sufficient passion on what they are engaging in that the passion empowers them to conquer any difficulties they might confront and run all the way till success. From their speech, we can easily see that it is the passion which support him to go to every retailer’s store and introduce his products industriously again and again; it is the passion which support her to call all most every possible package producer to seek for a outsourcer over the whole North America. If people deviate their goal from the initial one of their businesses or eventually focus on the profit merely, it won’t be possible for them to get over such hardship.
What’s more, my apprehension of starting small implies that be self-knowledged. There is no doubt that every entrepreneur who starts a business is ambitious and gutty, but all often we see that some companies shut down due to they try to reach the achievements that over their capabilities. The Sauder alumni taught us to start small doesn’t mean we should not be ambitious but implies that we should absorb knowledge and keep growing our own abilities during the growing process of a company to reduce the possibility of big loss.
Last but not least, I’ve considered about this point for a long time since I am not sure about the answer. The founder of Sip Sip told us that be conscious and don’t even think of earning money through small profits but quick turnover. I’m confused from this point of view, because it is true that there are dozens of businesses which take this business pattern as their main advantage and some of them earn a lot. However, from another perspective, I do understand that for a start up company, it is difficult to raise enough financial capital and put them into the business with little return for a long time.
In all, I strongly support comm101 to invite more guests to teach us some new knowledge and talk about their experiences to broaden our horizon.