UTAR Department of Soft Skills Competency (DSSC) and Junior Chamber International (JCI) Kinta organised a Youth Entrepreneurs’ Mastermind Series titled “Coffee Chat 1: Journey of an Entrepreneur’s Partnership” on 4 June 2021 via Zoom. The webinar recorded a total of 55 views in total.

Invited to deliver the talk were Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Site Expert Samuel Beh, Site Expert Global Operation Officer Ansen Lee and Site Expert Chief Marketing Officer Teo TC. The webinar was moderated by DSSC lecturer Fong Kah Hoong.

The webinar aimed to provide a platform for the speakers to share their experience and insights and enrich participants’ learning and understanding. As the speakers were mainly from the digital marketing background, it gave participants a better understanding of how they could build their companies and strive in the industry especially during this pandemic period.

Beh started the webinar by introducing the company Site Expert and their services. He said, “The Site Experts mission is to digitalise and globalise the traditional businesses, as well as educating people on the importance of the digitalisation era. Due to the pandemic session, the technology era has grown rapidly and swiftly across the world, and we need to be equipped with technological knowledge while learning and working.” He also said that due to the expansion of technology use in marketing, business owners and merchants are switching their approaches to be accustomed to e-commerce and the digital market.

Furthermore, Beh listed the general services offered by Site Expert which include store operation (pop-up stores, merchandising, campaign setup and analysis), digital marketing (social media, copywriting, and content marketing), customer service (pre-sales and post-sales enquiries, refund and return, logistic coordination), data analytics (standardised reports, competitor monitoring), content creation (graphic design, corporate video), and internet technology (order management system, automatic order processing, marketplace integration). Moreover, Beh also emphasised that Site Expert leverages on the footprint of mature courier partner and provides a professional and one-stop solution for local small and medium enterprises (SME) to expand greatly in the e-commerce market.

The webinar continued with Lee advising the participants not to feel embarrassed or feel demotivated by the challenges faced in the working journey, as it will teach you the value of patience in achieving life success. “We need to be brave to face rejection, at the same time be innovative and different while projecting ourselves in completing a certain task,” he said. Lee also said that the good key element of success is the companies’ cultures, especially when the management executes the works that allow the employees to share their ideas and insights. This increases their communication skills and promotes a healthy working environment among staff and superiors.

The coffee chat session continued with Teo briefing about the digital marketing history and providing examples of digital marketing channels. He defined digital marketing as the use of the Internet to reach potential customers. In addition, Teo categorised digital marketing into eight different categories, namely search engine optimisation, pay-per-click, website, social media marketing, mobile marketing, content marketing, retargeting and email marketing. He also shared a quote from Sun Tzu, Art of War, saying, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Teo also said in order to have effective digital marketing channels, an entrepreneur needs to do research about market issues, source the funds and resources, develop solutions to any marketing issues, promote the products or services in an appropriate digital channel, develop branding and recognition, and build trust among customers.

Fong said, “From this session, the students were able to understand how the digital marketing industry works as well as the opportunities that arise within the industry. Besides, they also learned about the necessary soft skills needed in order to survive in the current pandemic situation. We hope that more sessions will be organised in the future”.

The webinar ended with interactive Q&A and group photography sessions. The webinar is associated with SDG 4: Quality Education, as this webinar provides inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities for all. All the profits from this webinar will be donated to UTAR Hospital.