Education: Bachelor's Program, Department of Economics, National Dong Hwa University; Master's Degree, Graduate Institute of Industrial Economics, National Central University

Current Position: Manager, Shun Cheng Agency, Nan Shan Life Insurance

When I was choosing university programs in high school, I simply regarded economics as one of the many business-related fields. It was only later that I realized that the Department of Economics belonged to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Unlike accounting or finance, which teach knowledge that can be applied directly in practice, economics trains our ability to reason and think logically. These abilities later helped me tremendously in graduate school and at work. Whether I am learning in a class or organizing information during a meeting, having clear logical thinking often enables me to see the causal relationships behind things.

Only with knowledge can you judge whether what others say is correct. With critical thinking, you can identify problems, improve them, and create opportunities for innovation. These abilities in logical reasoning and critical thinking will be among the most important skills as we face a rapidly changing society and an era of information overload. I am very grateful that when I was choosing universities, I had the opportunity to enter the Department of Economics at National Dong Hwa University. The abilities I developed in the classroom have benefited me throughout my life.

My years at NDHU were the most vibrant and fulfilling period of my student life. In addition to my academic studies, my classmates and I joined the Kaohsiung Students Association and served as officers. We founded a table tennis club and served as its officers as well. I also joined the Student Association as Director of Activities, organizing concerts, freshman orientation camps, and other events. We also organized the Department of Economics' first Economics Camp, working with classmates and younger students to serve high school students from all over Taiwan. I can still vividly remember seeking sponsorships and organizing all those activities. I was very fortunate to enter NDHU when the University had only recently been established and resources were still limited. At NDHU, it seemed that anything you wanted to accomplish was possible~

I later spent two years in the Graduate Institute of Industrial Economics at National Central University. Looking back, those were years spent constantly working with data. From university through graduate school, I kept wondering: What direction should I take for my first job? Where should my life go? Should I become an industry analyst? Or should I, like many economics graduates, pursue a stable and secure career in banking?

My first job was as a Brand Specialist at Unilever, where I was responsible for the Knorr brand. Marketing work is essentially about everything consumers can smell, touch, and feel. This was my first job, and it had a tremendous impact on my life. It showed me how many talented people there are in a multinational corporation and gave me the opportunity to work alongside many outstanding colleagues. However, working overtime until 11:00 p.m. was completely normal. I experienced how different working life was from campus life: the pace was fast, and I had to adapt to differences in language and working styles when collaborating with foreign colleagues. I realized that in a high-pressure environment with long working hours, adaptability and resilience are extremely important. Just as I was beginning to feel comfortable with everything, my mother called me home during the Lunar New Year to help save our family business because it was facing a serious funding shortfall. Our family business traded dried foods and groceries, so running the business required both purchasing and sales skills. Every small and medium-sized business owner starts out as a salesperson and ultimately becomes one of the company's most important salespeople. At the time, it felt like a disaster to me. Not only did I know nothing about sales, but I could not even tell how to judge the quality and prices of dried shrimp, squid, scallops, mushrooms, or dried daylily buds!

At the age of 25, with only a little over a year of brand management experience, I suddenly went from working for an upstream brand owner to becoming a salesperson for a distributor. I went from having everyone come to me asking for budgets to having to go out and negotiate business deals myself. During my three years in the family business in Kaohsiung, I worked in warehouse management, accounting, sales, and eventually became the person in charge. Because the company was in debt, we were constantly racing against time and money. This taught me how valuable time is and allowed me to see firsthand the risks and profits involved in running a business. At the time, this life experience felt like a disaster; looking back now, however, it was a gift.

After the company had paid off its debts, I began thinking again about the next step in my life. I was 28 that year and wondered whether I should continue developing steadily within the familiar environment of the family business or step outside again and explore what else I might be capable of. By chance, I learned about the system of the insurance industry. For someone like me who wanted a stage on which to perform and greater control over my own time, it was very appealing. Despite my mother's objections, I asked her to give me one year to explore my potential. In fact, having only that limited one-year period pushed me to bring out even more of my potential.

After the initial period of exploration, I wanted to help more people succeed in this industry, so I continued helping others advance in their careers. In 2014, six years after entering the industry, I established my own agency office and developed more standardized operating procedures so that successful methods could be replicated. I also helped members of my team establish their own agency offices, which led to interviews with numerous magazines early in my career. When Taiwan entered Level 3 COVID-19 restrictions in May 2021, I was leading a team of more than 100 people and constantly thinking about how to guide the team through the difficulties. When we could not meet clients in person, what else could we do? These approaches helped the team overcome adversity, and instead of declining, our performance actually improved. Our achievements attracted the attention of Business Weekly, giving me the opportunity to join its Top 100 CEO Advisory Group and become an in-house training instructor for Business Weekly. I later compiled these standardized procedures and methods into the book “The Remote Closing Queen's Winning Sales Strategies,” published in August 2022, which became a bestseller in the business and management category. Because these methods remained applicable in the post-pandemic era, I was later invited to the United States in June last year to serve as a Mandarin-language speaker at MDRT and to Malaysia in March this year to share my experience. An optimist sees an opportunity in every crisis; a pessimist sees a crisis in every opportunity. When something happens, facing it proactively is always the best decision.

Finally, I hope that all younger students will make good use of the University's resources to enrich themselves while they are still students. If your living expenses are adequately covered, try not to spend all your time doing jobs that simply exchange time for money. Instead, seek out as many opportunities and platforms as possible to take on different challenges. Developing these abilities and soft skills will give us the wisdom and courage we need when facing the many choices that will arise later in life.

If you seek only “stability” immediately after graduation, before you have even begun striving for your future, that stability is merely an excuse for mediocrity.

True stability is the calm that comes after experiencing the ups and downs of life. Only by developing reliable abilities can you thrive wherever you go.

Life is the result of a series of choices. I therefore encourage all younger students, when making career choices, to first choose paths that are highly challenging or even highly uncertain. Only by giving yourself the freedom to explore and fully test your potential can you find the career that is truly meant for you, rather than allowing conventional ideas about job hunting to limit the possibilities of your future.