NICOLE CHEN ｜ VALUE CREATION
By Nicole Chen (陳宇芹) ・ Marketing Strategy Consultant ・ September 28, 2026
Over a recent holiday, I rewatched "StartUp," an American series about a new venture that's a few years old now. Watching the characters pulled between capital and human nature, struggling and breaking through, I drifted into thought and began looking back on my own path as an entrepreneur. I realized that at different ages, we really do think about "survival, business and human nature" in completely different ways.
I'm Nicole Chen (陳宇芹), a marketing strategy consultant, and I became who I am today because of the many mentors who, at different stages, opened my eyes, stood by me and lifted me up, along with several role models in business.
Growing up, I moved between different families and environments. Outsiders were often confused by my story, and some even felt my life sounded made up, like a drama. I never bothered explaining. None of it was a script; it was all real life, and I don't feel much obligation to prove it.
My memories begin at age three, when I was given to a family that ran a business. I spent about five years with my adoptive parents. My adoptive father was a businessman who left early and came home late, and I rarely saw him in my memories. But on his days off, he would take me, just the two of us, shrimp fishing. Shrimp fishing takes enormous patience: you watch the water quietly, you can't rush, and the instant the float goes under, you pull the shrimp up with precision. Looking back, perhaps my calm first took root with that fishing rod, beside that still shrimp pond.
When I was eight, my birth mother took me back. Her social circle was a tangle of politics and business, show business and finance. In that world, she raised me with almost free rein. She barely kept tabs on me; I could stay away from home for days over a weekend, and she might not notice for a week. Yet when it came to everyday manners, she had strict rules: how to hold a bowl, how to sit in a chair, how to speak, how to present myself. She was very clear about social etiquette. I learned painting, dance, computers and cooking, and these became the first professional skills I built up.
"Go make one new friend every day" is the only thing I remember her telling me. What she probably didn't expect was that all this friend-making often left me unable to stand scenes where people praised someone they knew was rotten to the core. I could never bring myself to say things against my conscience, and that mix of directness and polite distance is still who I am today. My ability to make friends and my instinct for breaking the ice grew slowly out of that free-rein upbringing.
My first art teacher, once I was old enough to understand, was the Chinese ink painter Huang You-sheng (黃有勝). He was extraordinarily delicate with the brush, and the first person to see my talent for painting. Many people sketch an outline first when they paint, but he told me:
"Nothing in the world actually has an outline."— Huang You-sheng (黃有勝), Chinese ink painter
So I let go of outlines and learned to observe, using ink to express the gradations and layers between black and white. That is where, bit by bit, my power of observation was formed.
Later, when I chose industrial design in high school, my homeroom teacher Tseng Tai-yang (曾泰洋) and sculpture master Chen Tzu-ming (陳字明) guided me to shift perspective in my work and bring different materials into products. They also trained my patience and steadiness.
This artistic training deeply shaped who I later became in business. Whether in product development, brand visuals, or dealing with customers and partners, I always step back three steps first, take in the whole picture, and only then decide. My basic sense of aesthetics was also set in those years.
The person who truly brought me into the business world and showed me how capital works was the elderly owner of a tech company, whose daughter-in-law I nearly became. His company had several hundred employees. I went with him to hotels in different cities to meet government officials and attended all kinds of business gatherings. I'll never forget that era, when the streets were full of car horns.
He didn't just show me the world. He let me try to sort out the company's internal management, handing me the rollout of company policies and the ERP system. I was too young then, naive about how people work, and with an even weaker presence than I have now, I went head-to-head with factory managers over the rules. Of course the factory managers and supervisors weren't happy. It was an extremely painful period of being shut out every day while having to hold my ground. He didn't shield me. He let me face it, and even put me in charge of organizing the Mid-Autumn Festival event so I'd engage with the staff. I remember he loved the life story of Wang Yung-ching, the founder of Formosa Plastics. Every morning after group exercises, he had me stand before hundreds of employees and read aloud from Wang's books. It was training on a stage.
He recruited talent from all over the world, and he once told me:
"Don't look at a person's past. Look at their professional ability."
Those words became the most direct logic I've applied to business ever since.
In the winter of 2009, I had returned to Taiwan and was running a cross-border e-commerce buying service. Online, I came across a talk Rose Tsou (鄒開蓮) gave at Yahoo, and it moved me deeply. I clearly remember how, during a reshuffle of senior international leadership, she went straight to the big boss and asked: "Haven't you considered me?" She went on to take on that major role.
That story left a deep mark on me. It taught me that you have to go after what you want, to have courage, and even to believe you can do it well. Rose became the first person I looked up to for career ambition. She taught me: once you've thought it through, act, and speak up for yourself.
In 2010, I stepped onto the real front line of e-commerce and retail, working for companies in bedding and beauty and skincare. In the fast-paced world of e-commerce and TV shopping, I met the boss who treated me exceptionally well and taught me the most. He bought a big cake for my birthday and told me with a smile, "Think of this place as home." Raised in a household with strict social rules, I was used to deferring to others and following the rules, but this boss woke me up in the plainest terms. He told me:
"At the dinner table, if all you know is to let others go first, you won't even get a drumstick. In business, you have to grab the drumstick that's yours first. That's how a company earns the means to survive."
The most concrete lesson came when I accidentally listed a wrong price on Books.com.tw, and orders poured in like crazy. Facing that, I brought some money to the accountant to make amends, but they didn't accept it. Instead, the boss taught me how a real adult bravely takes responsibility for a mistake and cleans up properly afterward.
Around the same time, I also met Editor-in-Chief Liu of a publishing house. As a woman of letters, she carried a quality completely unlike marketers' hunger for quick wins. When I was being chased by numbers and became impatient and restless, she would say to me unhurriedly: "You're too restless, and it will affect your decisions. In the world of letters, some things can't be rushed. Slow your pace down." Through a writer's eyes, she taught me to leave some space for the heart beyond cold, data-driven decisions.
It was around that period, in 2012, that I took Professor Chen Tsung-hsien's (陳宗賢) business management course, which gave me my most solid foundation in management. Later in my e-commerce career, my former boss Sharon Peng (彭思齊) had an equally profound influence on me. Gentle and soft-spoken on the outside, she had remarkably decisive execution inside. She showed me that in the face of challenges and setbacks, you need the mental strength to get back up at any moment. When I brought a work problem to her, she would ask back:
"Do you want me to answer from the boss's point of view, the employee's, the supplier's, or the customer's?"
She guided me with multidimensional thinking. In the middle of a conversation, she would help me untangle my messy thoughts thread by thread, instantly reshaping the way I framed a problem.
In 2014, I founded my first company, and in 2015 I went back to Fu Jen Catholic University to study business management. Tseng Cheng-chung (曾正忠) was my industry mentor in industrial innovation. He opened up my exploration of business models and helped me build my first framework for strategic thinking.
In 2017 came the darkest low of my entrepreneurial life: I watched, helpless, as my two children left together. During that time I fell apart in grief. I didn't want to work at all, and I had to hand my company to others for a while. Seeing me like this, my mom said, "Go out and get a job. Don't stay at home." So I joined a lingerie company.
Those three months became a turning point in my life. On one hand, the intense workload kept me from being trapped every day in the pain of thinking about my twins. On the other, the company happened to be starting to experiment with advertising. I dove into the hands-on work with them and ended up figuring out how to run ads myself. My personality just isn't suited to working inside someone else's company, so after three months I left and returned to my own. For that period, I especially want to thank Dr. Ko Tsang-ming (柯滄銘). His warm, steady encouragement gave me the courage to start over, and that is how the son you all know later came into my life.
During the pandemic, I decided to step away from my company, and during the handover I started trying to teach courses on my own. I'm truly grateful to Wei Shih-fen (魏世芬). I was drawn to her voice, her tone and her relaxed, effortless command of a room, and in 2022 I invited her to be a lecturer for my course. Over several conversations, I confided in her something that had bothered me for a long time: I look too young, everyone describes me as "cute," but I knew deep down that wasn't the real me. Wei understands not only voice but also how to see into people's hearts. She looked at me and said:
"Actually, that's not a bad thing. It lets people accept you first, and then see your ability. And it happens to filter out the people who aren't right for you along the way."— Wei Shih-fen (魏世芬)
That started me on the path of learning to accept who I am.
Around that time, I attended a talk where the guest speaker, Chien Shih-chieh (簡士傑), founder of 親親口罩 (a Taiwanese face-mask brand), shared how he left UNT, founded his mask company, and then got back on his feet after the blow of the pandemic. His business resilience became a mental benchmark for me.
I was also watching Lee Kun-lin (李昆霖), founder of TTM 提提研, the "Brain Boss." He has a drive to charge ahead, break through and pursue excellence to the extreme, yet through meditation he also gained a clear-eyed understanding that "you have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of the people you value." He showed me how a mature business leader settles their inner self amid the storms and finds their way back to being responsible for themselves and others.
During the time I went through my divorce and was learning to adjust and move forward, I met another mentor: Ms. Juan Chiu-hsia (阮秋霞), vice chair of the 中華海峽珠寶交流協會 (a cross-strait jewelry exchange association), whom everyone calls "Big Sister." Years ago she came to Taiwan from Vietnam with only NT$2,000 to her name, and went on to build a jade business. In Sister Juan and the assistants around her, I saw the highest form of women's strength: a hardness that never bows even in desperate situations, and yet an utmost softness toward the people around them. What I remember most is what they said:
"Be understanding of others, because everyone has a family of their own to support."
Truly successful people can always see the hardships of others.
I'm always drawn to the confidence and eloquence of people who have truly mastered their field. Take Jamie Lin (林之晨), president of Taiwan Mobile: no matter what setbacks he faces, his writing carries the resilience to get back up, and he consistently makes sharp calls for entrepreneurs at the crest of each wave. And reading Wang Chih-shang's (王直上) book 《強勢品牌成長學》 (on how strong brands grow), with its ideas on brand value, brand strategy and the "three haves" of a brand, completely opened up a multidimensional view of how brands and ideas connect.
In 2023, while studying business management at National Taipei University of Business, I had the honor of meeting Vice President Liu Han-yu (劉瀚宇). A legal scholar by training, he is also deeply cultivated in art and the philosophy of life. He once talked with me about Millet's painting "The Gleaners," telling me that for those people bent over to survive, the darkness may lie ahead of them, but behind them there is light. With his philosophy of life and legal expertise, he taught me wisdom I'll use for a lifetime:
"Whenever we face a confrontational situation, we should place ourselves in a passive position."— Vice President Liu Han-yu (劉瀚宇), National Taipei University of Business
His calm, together with his ever-present smile and the stage presence he radiates when teaching, showed me what passion for education and giving back to society look like. And it was thanks to his recommendation that I had the chance to speak at the National Taipei University of Business EMBA program on marketing strategy planning and short video.
After finishing the series, I spent six hours looking back on the road I've traveled and wrote this piece. From the shrimp pond of my childhood and my free-rein upbringing; Huang You-sheng teaching me that nothing has an outline; Tseng Tai-yang and master Chen Tzu-ming teaching me to shift perspective; the old tech company boss whose daughter-in-law I nearly became; Rose Tsou's courage to speak up; the bedding boss's lessons on grabbing the drumstick and owning mistakes; the editor-in-chief's slower rhythm; Professor Chen Tsung-hsien's foundation in management; my former boss Sharon Peng's multidimensional questions; Tseng Cheng-chung's business models and strategy; Dr. Ko Tsang-ming's steadfast encouragement; the three months at the lingerie company that tempered me in my darkest hour and taught me advertising; Wei Shih-fen teaching me during the pandemic to accept the contrast between how I look and who I am inside; the "Brain Boss" Lee Kun-lin's drive to charge ahead alongside his clarity about caring for the inner self; Chien Shih-chieh's brand resilience; Sister Juan's compassion and generosity; all the way to the resilience in Jamie Lin's writing, Wang Chih-shang's brand thinking, and Vice President Liu Han-yu's philosophy of life and wisdom of passivity. Connecting all of this, I think I'm starting to understand the life of Nicole Chen.
Across my 18 years in e-commerce entrepreneurship, brand management, customer relationship management and integrated marketing services, at every turning point in my life, there were mentors online, in books and in daily life. Thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom so generously. And I, Nicole Chen (陳宇芹), want to turn this inner strength and wisdom into nourishment for my work in marketing strategy, and through expertise and hands-on practice, pass these values on to more people who need them.
I dedicate this piece, on Teacher's Day, September 28, 2026, to every teacher who has taught me along the way.
Founder of VALUE CREATION. 18 years in e-commerce marketing and 12 years as a serial entrepreneur, focused on helping SMEs, aesthetic clinics and traditional businesses build marketing strategy systems that close sales. Invited speaker at the National Taipei University of Business EMBA program on marketing strategy planning and short video.
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