prompt #8 2

One hand on experience of business I had was on the field of sales and marketing. I got the opportunity from the Entrepreneurship Club at school. There was an event during Halloween for the small businesses in town, and the students, including me, opened stands at the town fair to sell the products of the shops in town. I represented a craft shop and sold handmade soap for them. Single handedly, my three-person team was in charge of both marketing and selling the soaps. This hands-on experience was unforgettable because it was the first time for me to use my knowledge in business. I learnt that graduating with good grades as a business major means different from being skilled at doing business. When I put the marketing knowledge in action in the real world, I found out that it seemed so much easier on the books and a lot harder in action. It is true to say that the books leave out a determining element, people. People’s actions and thoughts are unpredictive and various. So, it requires the ability to make your knowledge adaptive to all kinds of situations, which is a knowledge that is not offered in books, but only in hands-on experiences. During that event, I realized that there are no business textbooks that could tell me what to do with a big load of floral soaps and a group of town people who recently went on a cactus trend.

            After my experience of selling handmade soaps in a town fair, I learnt that to truly be good at doing business requires grabbing every practice opportunity along the way. 

riki chen