"Women's Fan" interviewed Lin Shaowei, the founder of "Social AED" and co-founder of "Conlin Life", when the post-epidemic era comes, how can personal brand management change?

With the arrival of the post-epidemic era, what are your imaginations for future career planning?

"Women's Fan" interviewed Lin Shaowei, the founder of "Social AED" and co-founder of "Conlin Life", to talk about his personal brand management method, how to find a balance between entrepreneurship and life, and how two people should move forward together when their relationship partners are also business partners?


Photo courtesy of | Lin Shaowei

Q1: First of all, I would like to ask Mr. Shao Wei, when he first entered the workplace, what was his personal career imagination?

Within a few years of graduating, I and a few friends founded the social enterprise "Smart Manufacturing World Affairs Institute" in 2015, which aims to identify social problems and solve them through the collective "wisdom" and our product development capabilities.

In other words, the model of people coming up with solutions and we making products is because we believe that anyone should have the opportunity to pay attention to the needs of society.

One of the social issues that the company was concerned about was health in a village in a third world country: we discovered that because of the poor economic conditions, the local area often used poor wood for cooking, and there was smoke that endangered its own health.

One of the proposal teams, hoping to create efficient burning cookware, encountered the challenge of limited resources, and if they invested money in an iron factory to make a product, but went in the wrong direction, they would face a huge failure.

During the low morale period, we decided to "try it out" ourselves, make the prototype ourselves, talk to the market, learn from users, and gradually we learned how to develop a product that really met the needs, accidentally using a practical and innovative design process: try fast, fail fast, learn from it, etc. And all this is progress achieved by "embracing failure".

Q2: What was the opportunity that made you decide to switch your runway and start running your own brand?

"Intelligent Manufacturing World Affairs Institute" made the product focus on the needs of users, but could not solve the problem of how the company wanted to make money, and we did not find a business model that worked effectively.

In order to break through the difficulties, we began to bring the "method" of solving the problem back to major enterprises and colleges in Taiwan, and became an education and training service to support the short-term financial needs of the team.

Later, the service slowly started, but we began to squeeze out the time and effort we wanted to do product development, and the company went to a different direction than our vision, so in 2017, we decided to close the company.

However, after the end of the company, there were still many invitations for education and training cooperation, so I decided to transform myself into a personal brand, continue to share innovative design processes and practice sustainable development.

This work has come all the way to the present, with new partners, the establishment of the "Conlin Life" brand, which has also become my career.

In addition to training in Pei Li, I still want to achieve social impact like the original social enterprise, so two months after the company ended, I began to prepare and form a new social innovation team "Social AED".

We no longer operate as a social enterprise, but as an amateur/after-school community.

Through the innovative design process, a 60-person organization spanning five counties and cities in Taiwan has been developed, and the innovative design process has been integrated into every article, audio-visual and activity business, allowing the public to understand social issues through the lowest threshold and participate in sustainable development actions, shaping our "social design incubation system".

(Same scene plus screening: husband and wife start a business together, but only the wife is asked: how to maintain a balance between family and work?) Reflections of PopChill co-founders)


Photo courtesy of | Lin Shaowei

Q3: "Women's Fan" will encourage everyone to "break the framework" at  the GWIS Global Women's Impact Forum next year, and I want to ask what is the biggest life-impacting change in the teacher's career?

In the years I've been running the two brands, Life and Soical AED, I've often seen my framework.

For example, in the early days of running Social AED, I was very tired of striving for perfection, and often felt that I had a clear vision in my heart, but I encountered a lot of difficulties and began to complain: Why can't we move forward together? Why not get things done?

Then I realized one thing: no one is obligated to give for free, everyone is here for some kind of gain, even if it's not money.

"Motivation" is very important, believing that the same vision must also be acquired continuously in order to be able to go on for a long time.

So I started to separate myself from each business and focus on "how to shape a sustainable organization and brand", not just how we provide good service to users.

In order to make the team sustainable, we have developed corresponding functional groups, responding to the motivation of every cadre participating in Social AED, and positioning the growth direction of each person, so that everyone can achieve their own "personal brand" in "Social AED", so that individuals and "Social AED" become a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship between clownfish and anemones.

Q4: Looking back now, what was the impact of this shift?

Everyone has a framework, just as projects have limitations, and people are limited by their own knowledge, experience, and perspective. After several years of teamwork, I learned two things:

  1. Learn to empower: Allow teams to make tolerable mistakes and let everyone learn from their mistakes, rather than always fighting fires with the posture of a superior person. After making mistakes, people will naturally learn from them, and next time they get better, innovative thinking will begin to take root.
  2. Learn to trust: After the organization developed many functional groups, because of the cross-domain and diversity of the team, we began to do many action plans that I could not have imagined myself, each partner has its own framework, but because of our diversity, we began to expand each other's framework, and the team began to evolve organically.


Photo courtesy of | Lin Shaowei

Q5: We are curious, is there any partner or noble person who is your box-breaking catalyst and helps you grow in the process?

This person is undoubtedly the co-founder of "Conlin Life", the life design director of "Social AED", and my emotional partner - Kang Hanci.

Our work and life are inextricably linked, both good and bad, and being close together makes it difficult for us to get to know each other better, but it is difficult to have quality rest time.

However, after several years of hard work, we believe that everything is moving in a good direction. Everything in "Kang Lin Life" and "Social AED" was created by Han Ci with me, even "Kang" and "Lin" Life are brand names decided by the surnames of our two families.

Hanci's communication background allows me to smoothly digitally transform and sublimate the entire service when facing the challenges of the epidemic, and also become my strongest backing in every task, without her, there would be no complete "Conlin Life".

I am rational and think about the innovative design process and how to implement the value of sustainable development; Without Hanci, I might not be able to return my gaze to my partner, and I would have given up long ago in a full of setbacks.

(Guess you like: [Pick up the New Year, Real Anniversary] Times Lecture Hall "Entrepreneur's Dream": If you can't find the answer you like, create it yourself!)


Photo courtesy of | Lin Shaowei

Q6: Just talked about the challenges you faced during the epidemic, how did you adjust yourself at that time?

When the pandemic first hit, many collaborations were canceled, and I lay in bed, losing motivation and pessimistic for a while.

In addition to encouragement, she designed a light and short online short talk for me, which not only continued to maintain the brand, but also allowed me to continue to feel the sense of achievement brought by creating value, and slowly accumulate the lost kinetic energy.


Photo courtesy of | Lin Shaowei

Q7: How did the team respond to the impact of the epidemic?

The biggest shift is to start mastering various digital tools, and more and more people are investing in the development of related resources, so that we can enjoy the convenience of digital tools at a lower cost.

The training of "Conlin Life" has also begun to develop a full-online curriculum that maximizes the physical experience through a combination of various digital tools and our own new lesson plan development.

Social AED's various social innovation activities were transformed to be conducted online, allowing participants from all over Taiwan to transcend geographical restrictions, communicate and co-create with partners in different regions, and master online operations, which made both brands more flexible and possible.

But of course, there are disadvantages, such as online operations, there are a lot of pre-preparation costs; Even if the online interactive experience maximizes the simulation of the entity, it still cannot replace the temperature and feeling brought by the entity, so now we have entered the mode of virtual and real integration, so that the advantages of physical and online can coexist, and adjust as appropriate.

(Read more: Painless entrepreneurship: Choose between "stable work" and "leaving business")

Q8: In the post-epidemic era, what are your different views on your career?

Looking back on the 10 years since I graduated, I was always burning myself, rushing to do everything, hoping to make my own stage, and now I have the stage results, the two brands I created can create value and at the same time get enough finances for myself, but there is a huge imbalance in life.

For a freelancer like me, being able to work and rest freely is a happy thing, but it can also become very unfree.

If I can't set a boundary, I will become infinitely trapped in various communication messages and business execution, so I now modify my online status (such as LINE's status) when I am on vacation, and write "on vacation" so that I can take good care of my body and mind, and this method is really effective, I recommend you to try it.

Good adjustment is necessary so that we can recharge well and start again, so that our careers can go longer and more sustainable.


Photo courtesy of | Lin Shaowei

Q9: Finally, what would you like to tell readers who want to build an individual or team brand?

Building a brand, whether it is a personal brand or a team brand, requires people who convey the belief, and there need to be people who support the transmission of this belief.

Find partners who share a common vision, sincerely create with the right and across domains, and bravely try in the face of difficulties and challenges, and embrace the setbacks and growth brought by failure, then even tests such as the epidemic can become an opportunity for sublimation.

The most important thing is that in the process and learn to cooperate and form partnerships with "people", then whether it is building a personal brand, a team brand, or doing anything today, you can take root in "innovative thinking" and continue to improve to become a better version of yourself.

【Kanglin Life| Lin Shaowei Enterprise Professional Lecturer Introduction

【Social AED| Facebook Fan Page