Tommy Chen and I come from China, but we are from different cultural backgrounds. It is important to understand and adapt to different cultures. As global citizens, we are aware of and understand the wider world and our place in it. We take active roles in our community and work with others to make the planet more equal, fair and sustainable (Oxfam, n.d). It is very important to be a good global citizen, and this is one of the reasons why we created our own company. Many people think of migrating to a better country or how to make their lives better. However, they should think more about how to make their own country better and how to distribute those benefits to the world. For example, being an actor or celebrity will make one have more money than a scientist. Many people want to be celebrities overnight, but that is not the way people become wealthy or financially independent. Making money in real estate will take a longer time than becoming famous in social media. We always talk to each other about how young people become rich. The following are three ways in which one can become rich.
Firstly, one has to be a good student in class. Many people will tell you that passing all the college classes and getting A grades is a good student standard. However, how many companies require a GPA when they are hiring people? How many people graduate with a master’s degree and are still sending their resume through the internet? How many straight A's students have real-world work experience? We need to think deeply about these questions? I don't mean all A's students are bad; there are many straight A's students who can do better jobs than other students because they know how to study and how to solve the problems. However, real-world business is different. My ‘Rich Father' told me that they use to hire a lot of students as interns in their organization, but they didn’t know how to solve problems by themselves. When they had problems, they will go to my father and ask questions on how to solve them. They never asked themselves how they could solve it! As all we know, knowledge is very important for people, but sometimes we need many other things to be good students in real-world. Therefore, Tommy and I started our own business when we were still in college because we could learn more than other people who only paid attention to school. We didn’t fear failure because we could learn from it and make it better next time.
Secondly, as Albert Einstein opined, imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. As entrepreneurs, we are started our business when we were in college. People who want to be entrepreneurs and investor need to have a vision for the future with knowledge empowered imagination. An entrepreneur will need to be a good student first then use the knowledge to empower imagination. It's not easy to have knowledge first then to be "GOOD" student. Investor and entrepreneur will make money by money itself. That's the reason Tommy, and I started working in the field of real estate, and we invested in studying more and to learn more about real-world business.
Last but not least, individuals get knowledge through experiences and failures. One of the things people talk about is luck; I do believe some people are luckier than others. But there’s also an expression that says, the harder you work, the luckier you get. Before we started this company, we tried many businesses, and we failed many times. However, I still love to do business, and I keep working on that. Losers complain about luck, and successful businessman develops their luck by working hard. Entrepreneurs and investor should work for the dream and not the money. We make real estate investment because we love it. It is our passion to build houses and buildings. The fact is, we do it for fun and we will try our best to make the game better than other people. If people don’t like what they do, they won’t spend extra time on that. Most successful entrepreneurs and investors spend 80 to 100 hours a week on work. This is the only reason they become successful in their business. Entrepreneurial life is harder than people think the! Many pressures come with one being an entrepreneur. Can you handle all the problems that you’re going to be confronted with? There will be many problems such as financial problems and health problems. We were thinking more before we started T&J brothers group. We came out with many plans to handle pressure, but still, there were many problems even when we had prepared for them. There are many smart people, and they can’t handle that pressure. They should work for someone and have a better life. If people can’t handle the pressure, companies’ should invest in people who can handle the pressure and make money for them. That’s a reason many failures who tried entrepreneurs but failed. People should know what they want and how to handle it. Tommy and I will keep it up and make a better life for people who trust us and support us.
Written by James Yang