The one event which I could seperate my life with would be my business trip to China which I took last Christmas (06). It was an experience which will last me a lifetime. The idea, which actually worked very well, was to teach SAT classes to high school kids in China who have very little current access to SAT classes. There is a huge demand for the SAT over in China, as many people want to continue their education in the United States post High School. My friend and I (he speaks fluent mandarin Chinese and had connections over in China) wrote up a business plan, and began to create the material from scratch which we would use to teach our classes. Once we actually went to China, we established many different contacts which would help fund and allow us to create a company in China. Creating a company in China is not a simple endeavor, rather, it is something which is very complicated and all but impossible to do without an influential official or contact already in China. It was a bewilderingly tough process, between writing the strategies and materials ourselves, and then procuring the funding (some from ourselves, others from sources unknown even to me), and then setting up a business under his parent’s company already there. It was so influential on me because it taught me so much about doing business across borders, especially with a country so corrupt yet prosperous as China, and tuaught me some very tough lessons about doing business with another person, creating a corporation and a partnership, and trying to mesh together over a business model. Suffice it to say, my friend and I have parted ways since then over many disagreements in implementation and to an extent ownership. The experiences, however, will last a lifetime and influence my thoughts on economics and business even to this day.
- Addison Humbert
