Interview

A. The transcription.

1. Can you briefly tell me about your story of your early life and how you started your business?

I grew up in a small village and my parents were farmers. Everyday I had to walk for more than 1 hour to go to school. I had a clear goal since I was young, which is that I had to go to the city to get a better life. My parents can’t afford me to go to a university so I went to a college. After the college, I started to work. My first job was in a factory that produces building materials, I spent about a year working in that factory then I decided to do something else. So I decided to do sell some basic building materials such as cement, bricks, stones, wood, etc. I run this business for many years and my business scoop expanded.

2. How was your business going in the early years? How did you make it stable?

A new and small company is difficult to compete with your peers. At the first two years my company only had little profit, sometimes there’s money loss. There are too many people doing the same business. Since I used to work in the building material factory and I knew the owner, I needed to acquaint with him so I could get a stable supplier with a preferential price. So the problem of supplier fixed. My next step was to build up my social network. You know in China, you have to have strong social relations when you operate your business, the more friends you have, the less problems you need to worry about. My competitive price attracted more buyers, I also got to know more suppliers year by year. That’s how my first supply chain was built, I’m the agent. You must heard that before, “middlemen make the difference”, this is my accumulation of the first bucket of gold. 

3. How would you define “success”? Is it greed to define success with the amount of money that someone has?

Well, for me, this is different in different periods of my life. In the past I would say maintaining the stable profit of my company is success. When I earn more money, my revenue doubled, tripled, I thought that becoming a billionaire is success. Now I believe that success is to balance the time I spend on my work and my family. You see, I relate money with success, this is normal for me because I’m a businessman. Money is important, but if you look boarder, it’s clear that money is an adjunct to the achievement of self-value. A scientist is successful when he/she invents something that improves human life; a doctor is successful when he/she has excellent medical skills; a teacher is successful when his/her students get great academic achievement. People who get achievements like this will have good income. You can’t say someone is greed if he defines success with money because we all need money, he is greed when he gain money with immorality.

4. Can you tell me about some promising industries? Why?

Absolutely internet industries. There are so any new fields waiting for the pioneers. You have numerous opportunities and resources. For example, E-commerce. You use Taobao(the largest Chinese online shopping platform) right? It provides many job opportunities, and the consumers are from every corner in China. Young people know more about the internet than me, your generation is benefited from the internet. There are many business opportunities in the internet industry, what I know is that online marketing is getting popular, but I don’t know too much of it you can search some information if you want.

5. What’s your suggestions for the young people?

The most ideal way for most people is to get a job with good paid when you are young. Your education background provides you a threshold, get into a good university, get a bachelor degree or above. If you have an idea of starting up a business, good for you. But I suggest that you should do that when you have your work experience. Try to work in a big company, learn how it is operated. That’s why I let my son to work in a bigger company in Shenzhen, he will get more experience in that company instead of mine. I want him to bring more advanced experience when I need him to operate my company in the future. Also, books are important. I mean the business books, or some autobiography, learn some business nous and develop your business mind from a young age, you’ll benefit from it no matter what kind of job you do, commerce is everywhere in your life. If you’ll do business, you have to learn various business models from books, as early as possible. Information collection is crucial for a businessman.

B. An interview report.

a. The exploration of the self-made businessmen.

b. Since my topic is about the self-made businessmen, the best way to conduct an interview is to find a self-made businessman. I asked my father if any one of his friends can be my interviewee. Mr. Chen Hong is my interviewee. He is the boss of his company.

c. I conducted the interview by using a voice call. I translate the conversation into English with my words.

d. Quotes

1. “Money is an adjunct to the achievement of self-value.”
2. “I had a clear goal since I was young, which is that I had to go to the city to get a better life.”
3. “The more friends you have, the less problems you need to worry about.”
4. “Absolutely internet industries. There are so any new fields waiting for the pioneers.”
5. “Try to work in a big company, learn how it is operated.”
6. “Commerce is everywhere in your life.”
7. “Information collection is crucial for a businessman.”
8. “Learn some business nous and develop your business mind from a young age.”

e. I did learn something new. Before this interview, to be honest, I had no idea about how a company is founded. Now I know one way to start up a business, and the key is to utilize the interpersonal network, resources are really important for the development of a company. Self-made businessmen should be good at the accumulation of resources. Another interesting discovery is how success is defined. I came up with this question when I watched a tv show, it said that “do you think success is measured by how much money you have? NO! There’s more meaningful things to measure success other than money.” I was confused because I believed that the more money you have the more successful you are. After the interview I understood that success is the achievement of self-value.

f. I’m a shy person so I feel stressful when I need to talk with an unfamiliar person for a long time. So I prepared some questions which can make them talk more, and I can concentrate on what they’re talking about without responding with long answers. This is a good chance for me to learn how to have conversation with an unfamiliar person, I’m a commerce student and my future job is likely to work in commerce, I have to have social contact with different people and get to know more people, it’s good to have a practice like this.