https://www.sustainaffiliate.com/
Entrepreneurial journey told by two students
Story written by, Tianyu Han Han
A freelance journalist, marketing manager, or project manager, I am a person with multiple identities, but today I will tell my story from the perspective of an entrepreneur. In the past many years, I have travelled to Southeast Asia all year round. I also published about 200 traveller journals on the Altruistic Traveller. My main aims and goals in life are to “explore, educate and share ways that we can bring compassion and ethics into our lives. “I have worked in several international organizations, and we are committed to promoting the idea of social and environmental awareness. My former position (2016-2021) was project manager and digital marketing strategist for Matter Design, until 2015 I had a 14-year career in retail operations, buying, and marketing before I leave a company unaligned with my value. I‘m never afraid of challenges because I’m personally rewarded for the risks that I am taking. I trust in my intuition here and I feel like learning things every day, so I don’ t feel like I‘ m not necessarily achieving as long as I try to do it, that’s enough. Now I have taken my passion for social impact into a startup venture and founded SustainAffiliate, an affiliate network for ethical, sustainable brands and content creators. My company theme is sustainable, and I think it’s just taking that accountability as a founder and as an enterprise that it would. We will also put the customer experience in the first place. We are not just building one affiliate network, we are a warm company and a team with an attitude. This project is currently in the alpha phase of development, and I just always take one step forward and knowing that sustainability is still my priority, but it is like it’s going to be a longer journey than what I originally thought it was going to be. I will improve my plan step by step to achieve my goal.I continue to take a heart-led approach to my work, focusing on what I am passionate about and upholding my values of empathy and compassion. Passion and purpose are what drives me.
Story written by Hong Ni Suen
I feel glad to have an interview with Bianca Caruana, who just started her business called Sustain Affiliate in Feb 2021. Through the interview with Bianca, I feel interested about the way she generates the business idea. Through the rich working experience and her inner passion for vlog shooting, which enabled her to better understand the market and customer trends. Her expertise and her motivation help her to have creative thinking and to generate good business ideas. But for a start-up business, she also faced a serious problem, which is financial funds. However, she discovered the problem immediately and decided to employ more part time jobs and utilized the connection effectively to seek more financing opportunities for herself. I feel the other interesting thing is the focus of the Sustain Affiliate, she said “I noticed that user experience has not really come into the business, and that really can change customer convergence and to create competitive advantage. I don’t scare of competition; it is healthy for my business to encourage me to run fast and think of other ideas.” I was shocked when I heard that, it made me admire and respect her even more. I feel that confidence and courage of herself is more precious than knowledge, which gives the better attitude of life and likely to have the ability to put aside her fear of failure and take the next steps. Also, when I asked her about the business plan and goals, she said “Taking one step at a time and working on architecture solutions.” Also, when we discussed the impact of Covid 19, she took it in stride and saw it as a new opportunity as she said, “it helps brands to understand there is a huge market space to consider.” She gives me a feeling of an optimistic and positive attitude, which makes me realize that one’s success is closely related to one’s attitude. The last thing that attracted me was her motivation. She said “I am easily motivated by achievement and inspiration, and tend to surround myself with people that inspire me. Also try to find inspiration and help me to know why I am doing and how to connect with people with deep conversation.” This makes me understand that she is always looking for self-improvement and is not afraid of failure. She makes me understand that a person who is always looking for self-improvement enables that person to get ahead of himself and to find new opportunities.