The first ever SBC Entrepreneurship Salon themed on “True Leaders Inspire New Leaders” was hosted in the SBC English Tearoom on 28th March. Three successful entrepreneurs were invited to speak to SBC students about their professional experience, including founders of start-ups in the industry of hospitality, education and food & beverage.
The salon aimed to develop students’ entrepreneurial spirit and skills with inspiration and motivation learning from the speeches given by the successful entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, it also offered students a great opportunity to communicate with entrepreveurs.
After the warm up sessions of responding to interactive questions about entrepreneurship, our guests Joseph Lee, Simon Vogel, and Ramsay Kerr shared their stories to students at SBC. Joseph Lee started a preschool education centre after leaving HSBC Bank Canada. Today his company grows at 50% year on year since the inception, and the sales already exceeded 1 million RMB by the 4th year of operation. He shared stories on how he started in the first place and his belief to make a difference and bring people together helping each other out when starting his business.
Simon Vogel, cofounder of a food & beverage start-up, graduated from Ecole Hotelière de Lausanne in Switzerland, the world’s top business school in hospitality and travel. He had previously worked as an Event Services Manager At Hyatt Hotels Corporation. He shared his twists and turns in his start-up experience – how he adjusted his business model twice – and they both failed – until he eventually found the right formula.
Ramsay Kerr, who founded a travel agency to fill a niche market in the travel industry providing budget tours of China. So far his company has taken over 5,000 young budget travelers to China, and they have secured their place as China's largest adventure and educational tour provider. During his sharing, Ramsay said that he once had to sell a percentage of his business to a more experienced flight agency company, which was a hard decision for him to make. Therefore, he advised new entrepreneurs that start-up businesses were filled with tough decisions.
Following the speeches, the SBC student representative Bruno Paul Gargerle thanked everyone involved in making the salon a success.
The SBC Careers Service team continues to facilitate SBC students’ career development with best endeavors, and will keep working on providing opportunities to meet students’ diversified needs in terms of career preparation.
