First step, complete

“The hardest step is the first one.”

This is one of the quotes that I have often see in books, movies, or even TED talks. I truly believed that this quote is true. Most of the time, everyone often thinks that the hardest part of creating a startup company is to succeed but truth is, the hardest part is to “start”.

SOPet has been with me for a little more than 1 year. I think SOPet is a great example of how this quote is true. This semester was one of the major changes in SOPet. Since the beginning of the semester, SOPet was still operating on our SOPet Facebook page and LINE official account but towards the end of the semester, SOPet had successfully published our first website online.

It was a rough journey but we managed to overcome it with the help of our mentor, P’Tan. He is one of the greatest mentors that I’ve know since he does not mentor us because of work but mentors us because he actually wants us to succeed in what we do. Throughout the semester, P’Tan would always give us advice on what we should and should not do. First, from the separation of roles that he clearly assigned to us so we would be able to focus on only our roles. This really helped because it made it more clear to see the bigger picture of what we want this part of SOPet to be like. Along with giving us a better idea to work and collaborate with other team members to come up with a solution. Next, P’Tan met with us separately by the department to go over the specific works assigned and gave precise advice on the following tasks. Lastly, the website that all of us had been working months on is almost finally completed.

To be specific, P’Tan gave me great advice, ideas, and tricks on how to design the marketing strategy. What was really hard about this semester was that what SOPet needed the most is the increase the basket size so that SOPet can earn more income. And increasing the basket size belongs to the marketing department. But thanks to P’Tan that gave me great insights and ideas which resulted in many great basket size ideas and brand image rebranding.

Lastly, I would like to use the space to say thank you to P’Tan and all of my colleagues that made this happen. That made the hardest part, complete.