Entrepreneurship and Leadership

This Saturday, I had the privilege of attending Dannielle Sakher’s Think Tank on “Entrepreneurship and Leadership ” as a part of the Associate National Lead program. As associate national lead, aside from getting to build and host my own conference, I also get to build connections with industry professionals and leaders.

Leadership Lessons

Danielle shared her personal experience from being a high school student to joining Junior Achievement and how that helped her land a career in sales today. In sharing her story, I was able to learn how a single opportunity can cause a dominoes effect by opening doors to multiple other opportunities. Thus, inspired from Danielle’s story, I am now more motivated to take risks and go outside of my comfort zone because the multitude of opportunities waiting to be discovered will be neglected otherwise.

Conversely, Danielle was also able to share some leadership lessons that she learned from her experience:

1. Most People Know Better Than You - ask for help

• People who have already been through the experience can help you avoid making some mistakes to make the journey just a little easier for you

2 . Make the most out of mentorships

• Find a mentor with accomplishments that you hope to achieve in the future

3. Be ready to enter an open door

• Moment of change and/or challenge often open doors to opportunities

• Be ready for unexpected opportunities and challenges

4. You will not know what to do until you try

• Explore different careers and interests. Your passion(s) doesn’t have to be static: it is likely to change with new experiences and knowledge

5. Sales is a highly transferable skill

• You don’t have to be interested in pursuing a career in sales to be benefitted from it. The skills that can be acquired from it are applicable to any career.

• It is something that is really foundational

Pitching an Object in Your Room

Aside from sharing her story, Danielle was also able to make the session interactive by making us practice our sales skills by pitching any object of choice in your room. With a 20 minute time for preparation, I had the opportunity to pitch an EcoCube to Danielle and the rest of the participants. Not having done something like this before, it was a wonderful learning experience to discover my sales skills and to receive feedback from Danielle and the attendees.

On the other hand, I also had the opportunity to listen and watch other pitches from my peers which allowed me to learn about the different approaches and strategies to which an object can be pitched.

Overall, today’s Think Tank was engaging and challenging at the same time. I was able to learn a lot about sales and the importance of taking risks. After all, it is by taking risks that one can move forward from a static position in life.