Text/Breeze is Not Old

Recently I have been paying attention to the issue of entrepreneurship, and have discussed different models with people in different fields.

Many people also ask, what is needed to start a business? Or, how to start a business?

I remembered a documentary I wrote before, which told the story of three overseas Chinese entrepreneurship overseas.

The background is that decades ago, I was in a foreign country, with no original capital, no personal connections, and not even an entrepreneurial atmosphere. It can be said that I started from scratch in the true sense.

But in the end, they succeeded. What does it rely on?

Speaking of the name Wu Defang, many people may not know it, but when it comes to the name of Malaysia's "Jewelry King", he must be much more famous.

Wu Defang was born in Malacca, Malaysia in 1937. He belongs to the second generation of Hakkas who migrated overseas. When he was 4 years old, his father unfortunately passed away.

In an era when "you can conquer the world with bare hands and travel to Southeast Asia with only one pair of trousers", most of the Chinese who left their hometowns lived a miserable life overseas when they first arrived overseas. The collapse of the backbone of the family undoubtedly made matters worse. Since a young age, Wu Defang has helped his mother make a living, raising pigs and sheep, growing and selling vegetables, doing all kinds of work and experiencing all kinds of hardships.

At that time, he dreamed of being freed from suffering. But with nothing in hand and nothing in sight, what can we do?

The Hakka people have a tradition of "valuing literature and education". Even though life was difficult, Wu Defang did not give up studying. It was also the journey of studying in hardship that cultivated his independent personality.

After graduating from college, Wu Defang entered the gold mining industry by mistake. But as a layman, he did not know the professional knowledge and skills, so he could only help his third brother.

Four years later, he decided to start his own business. With a capital of RM5,000, he and three friends established a small gold jewelry factory to engage in low-cost goldsmithing contracting business. During the most difficult times, I would often set up a simple cot in the factory. When I was tired, I would sleep for a few hours, and then wake up and continue working.

With that kind of self-reliance determination, I walked through it step by step, endured a lot of hardships, and suffered a lot of fatigue, and finally established a business ranging from refining gold, producing gold jewelry, processing with supplied materials, gold jewelry design, and wholesale. , the "Kingdom of Gold Jewelry" with "one-stop" retail operation, and became the "Datuk" of Malaysia.

Looking back on his entrepreneurial journey, Wu Defang said with emotion that if a person is not self-reliant, he is like floating without roots and cannot achieve anything.

Lin Maofa was born in Xingning, Meizhou in 1942. When he was 15 years old, he followed his father to "cross the Pan" and wandered on the sea for eight days and seven nights from Shantou, which made him realize the impermanence of life.

After arriving in Malaysia, I was unfamiliar with the place and had to start doing hard labor work in order to survive. In fact, before "passing over Pan", Lin Maofa was a "top student" in a key middle school, but he worked as a "dishwasher" in Malaysia for four years and received a meager monthly salary.

After four years of hard work from dawn to dusk, Lin Maofa, who was unwilling to settle for mediocrity, came up with the idea of ????going out on his own, so he went ahead and opened a small noodle stall. Moreover, he set a small goal for himself. If he earns 30,000 yuan in the first year, it means that he has a business acumen, then he will switch to challenge other industries.

God lived up to his efforts. A year later, he earned tens of thousands of yuan. He immediately closed the stall and opened a store. A year later, he earned tens of thousands more yuan. At this time, he gained confidence in himself and came up with a bold idea.

At that time, the planting and production of palm oil in Malaysia was still an emerging industry, but Lin Maofa sensed the business opportunities in it, and with his extraordinary vision and courage, he invested all the capital he had earned before.

When Lin Maofa entered the palm oil industry, he first started with trading. At that time, he had insufficient funds, so he went to the bank for a loan of 500,000 yuan, which was an astonishing amount at the time. He said that firstly, he had no way out, and secondly, he had the confidence that he could succeed.

Because he had the upper hand and put in several times more effort than ordinary people, Lin Maofat’s palm oil trade grew bigger and bigger, and finally extended to Germany, India, Pakistan and other places, and currently owns Malaysia. The largest palm industrial park.

From a small noodle stall decades ago to today's cross-border trade, it can be said that times create heroes, or it can be said that you have strangled the throat of destiny. If he was not confident enough, how could the 15-year-old boy who was wandering around on the ship change his destiny?

In recent years, the "Heliyuan" Group has emerged like a dark horse in the Malaysian real estate industry. Its founder, Zhang Runan, is also an entrepreneurial model for overseas Chinese.

As the second generation of Hakka people who moved overseas, Zhang Runan has seven brothers and sisters, and he ranks sixth. In order to support the large family, his father worked as a driver and opened a pharmacy, while his mother repaired clothes to support the family.

Unfortunately, the burden was too heavy, so the eldest sister and the third sister sacrificed themselves and gave the opportunity to study to their younger siblings. In addition to running errands for his parents, Zhang Runan started a business of buying and selling used books at school since he was in the first or second grade of elementary school.

After graduating from high school, Zhang Runan, who wanted to study in the UK, even went to work on construction sites to make money. At that time, he was still a teenager and was often ordered around the construction site to do heavy work. At that time, he secretly vowed to reverse the economic conditions. He would never be overwhelmed by money again in this life, but would be overwhelmed by money himself.

By working on construction sites and selling books on the street, Zhang Runan raised the tuition three months later to study civil engineering at the University of London. After graduating from university, Zhang Runan returned to Malaysia and worked as a construction engineer. After working for four years, he chose to start a business overseas.

But for a person without much capital accumulation, how easy is it to start a business? What to do?

At that time, the Malay government was vigorously promoting land privatization. Zhang Runan, who was good at financial management, saw business opportunities, so he wrote ten proposals to apply to the government, and finally got two pieces of land and used the profits earned. After completing the initial capital accumulation in the early stage of entrepreneurship, he established a joint venture construction company with his friends to contract various projects.

Seeing that the company has made a lot of money, shareholders are suggesting that they should give up as soon as possible and cash out one after another. However, Zhang Runan was not content with the status quo, so he operated independently and began to enter the real estate industry. The golf course, which has been losing money for many years, was purchased for 200 million ringgit, leaving half of it as a leisure club, and the other half planned as a high-end residential and commercial development area, with a total output value of more than 6 billion ringgit. In just a few years, he became a well-known real estate developer in Malaysia.

Many people envy the glory that comes after others succeed, but they never see how hard they have worked to achieve success. Just like Zhang Runan, he was not satisfied with the status quo. When he decided to start a business, he gave his wife a sum of money, saying that he might not have any money to support the family for a while, and asked her to give him three years to work hard.

In the final analysis, this is the courage to break the boat and the perseverance to strive for self-improvement. If we didn't strengthen ourselves in the beginning, how could we achieve today's success?

In today’s era of “mass entrepreneurship and innovation”, everyone wants to start a business, but not everyone can succeed.

Many people are entangled in capital, resources, connections, relationships, and various factors, and they dare not take the first step. But in fact, the biggest capital for starting a business is yourself.

First of all, you must find out your own entrepreneurial direction, and then you must have the perseverance to not regret it even if you have nine deaths, and you must also have a far-reaching view of the situation. To put it bluntly, this is what those three overseas Chinese entrepreneurs taught us: self-reliance, self-confidence, and self-improvement.

In short, entrepreneurship is destined to be an uneven road. You must have the determination to withstand wind and rain, the courage to face difficulties, and the calmness to accept the possibility of failure, so that you can go further. .