When it comes to taste training, I owe it to my grandfather: Taste is the prerequisite for starting a business.

I used to think that my entrepreneurial mindset was innate, but later I discovered that so-called innateness or talent are cultivated by the surrounding environment, especially family education in childhood, which has a profound impact on a person. My father-in-law, father-in-law, and father are both businessmen. I don’t have any nurturing experience, but at least when I decided to start a business, my whole family supported me. No one thought it was unrealistic or told me “it’s not easy to do so many things” or “being a professional or working in the government would be the most stable”. It was a great blessing.

As a child in a Shanghai family, with my mother and sister in the hall, I didn’t need to participate in the decision-making after repeated debates. I could only observe, understand, and think from the sidelines, and rarely participated in speaking. My judgment was already known in my mind. Self-confidence, observation skills, and independent thinking established since childhood are the most basic conditions that entrepreneurs must possess.

The next condition is taste. When it comes to taste training, I owe it all to my grandfather. In terms of exquisiteness, no one can match him: a Ningbo native who dressed like an English gentleman from head to toe. In autumn, wear a fedora hat, wear a trench coat in light rain, hold an umbrella with a horse head handle, and look elegant.

He once served as the agent for Leica camera lenses in Hong Kong. He collects nostalgic cameras and travels around the world to capture the beautiful scenery and people. The home decoration is a blend of British and Italian styles, with meticulous attention to detail in every corner. The exquisite placement of portraits of ancestors from the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, Chinese and foreign antique vases and oil paintings does not feel out of place. His photography works were hung all over the house. As a child, I admired them one by one when I was bored at my grandfather’s house. Gradually, I developed a strong concept of light and shadow, composition, color and atmosphere, which developed into my pursuit of beauty in the future.

Beauty is by no means a condition for starting a business; beauty is just the beginning of taste.

Erica Yuen

Taste is transformed from the accumulation of profound and extensive knowledge into a life attitude. It requires insight and precision and must be cultivated through continuous thinking and training. As long as you have a taste, the world will immediately become different. Things that are taken for granted become worthy of discussion, and established laws become vulnerable.

Everything that the five senses come into contact with will trigger a mental impact, and encountering high taste will trigger functional stimulation. The pursuit of taste and judgment maintain a person’s curiosity and sensitivity, and eventually he can develop a set of precise standards to evaluate everything and everyone, including himself. Taste and innovation are inseparable, and innovation and entrepreneurship are inseparable.

Some people start companies and engage in ordinary business activities that are already in the market. There is nothing new. They can only be called being a boss, not starting a business, because in my opinion there are too few creative elements.

“Entrepreneurship is innovation, creating a new business model, creating market needs, and creating new means. It requires a taste to capture the deep needs of the market in an instant, hit the target with one hit, and then execute with the determination to succeed.”

Erica Yuen

Looking back on my childhood days spent wandering around my grandpa’s house in a daze, my time was not wasted. As long as intellectual knowledge and taste cultivation have occurred unknowingly, there is no need for parents to arrange cram school and one-way learning in interest classes from 10 am to 8 pm to murder thinking and destroy children’s self-creation.