Debra Lam's Speech Analysis

The sharing made by Debra Lam did nothing more than reaffirm my faith that working in a social enterprise would be no easy task. Debra Lam the speaker was very consistent in emphasising the practices she did when she ran her Social Enterprise. Just so that students like myself would be able to capture the true image of working in one. She had spoken about many crucial points during her presentation but a midst her captivating speech this simple quote that she delivered, had the biggest impact on me and it constantly resides in the back of my head.
“Sympathy sales does not go beyond one transaction, therefore, make sure your social enterprise is sustainable in terms of selling quality goods. Do not rely on your social cause to sustain a business.”
(Debra Lam, during her sharing, 2017).

I’ve always had that predominant perception that one can always rely on sympathy sales when running a Social Enterprise, “After all we are doing a good deed, society would see our hard efforts and lend us a hand won’t they?” That was my very own opinion towards running a Social Enterprise. Thankfully, this fallacy I had in my head was struck down by Debra’s sharing. I now understand that even though it is important for a Social Enterprise to be profit-orientated and to have a firm social cause to work in. We must not only take into consideration about the social mission that we are working towards but to also consider the consumers that we are serving to always ensure that we provide a service that is worthy enough to satisfy them to ensure that they will come back to bring business to us again. So that we as a Social enterprise can achieve