Po Chung, co-founder of DHL International Asia-Pacific, discusses his "entrepreneurial life journey" and describes the attributes of a successful entrepreneur, particularly during what he calls "the first 10 yards". The Nation's Pichaya Changsorn reports.
Even if you have never been a business manager, you are already the manager of your own life, says Po Chung, co-founder of DHL International Asia-Pacific, who now teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Hong Kong.
"Every one of us is the entrepreneur of our own life," he told a group of students on a recent visit to Bangkok. "Nobody has lived your life before; you're the first one. So, you can do anything. You can start-up. You can manage [a business to become] a good asset or you can be as poor as you can be, not only in a money sense but also in a spiritual sense."
Chung, who co-authored the book "The First 10 Yards: The Five Dynamics of Entrepreneurship", was lecturing to about 40 students from 13 European countries who took part in the Asian University's "Summer University" programme.
"Many people are very rich in money but very poor in spirit," he said.
"Since life is an entrepreneurial journey and you're the entrepreneur of your life, by understanding, designing, creating and managing your journey, you can control your future."
Giving his life as an example of an "entrepreneurial life-long journey", Chung said his early life was not so affluent because his father lost his businesses during the Communist "liberation war" and the family had to escape from China to Macau. He had to drop out of school and went fishing for two years because his father ran out of money when he was in the third grade.
Then life became better. Chung moved to Hong Kong and was eventually able to join a well-known boarding school, St Stephen's College, and later went to Hong Kong University. He was doing well until he overslept and missed a history examination. His father then sent him to study at the University of the Seven Seas, which was actually a ship that hosted teachers and students who had to sail around the world while studying.
However, Chung had to change his university again because his father wanted him to study science subjects, instead of history or geography. So he signed up for fisheries management at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California.
Chung said that although he never practised fisheries management one day in his life. He was able to apply the knowledge he gained to his life's work.
"I stole shamelessly everything I knew about fisheries and used it in my businesses. I was able to make the 'cross over', and I've been stealing even since: when I talk with people, I asked them questions, [get them] to tell their ideas, and I convert [these] into my businesses."
The courier business was not his first job after graduation. He worked for Topper Toys, a toy manufacturer which he found gave little attention to its workers because "everything she had to do, she could learn in 15 minutes. So, if she didn't come to work, they could easily find someone to replace her.
"In courier services, you can't do that because the courier drives the truck and he's out for three hours. [And while he's out] he can decide either to smile or not to smile. It's not like in McDonald's, [where] everything is under one roof. If a staff member doesn't smile, his supervisor can see he doesn't smile. But if [the courier] doesn't smile, nobody at our company knows.
"So we have to make sure the courier is happy in his life when he walks into a customer's reception area. He has to remember the name of the lady at the reception desk, and pretty soon they will remember his name.
"We paid attention not only to how they were dressed, but made sure they were dating - I had to attend a lot of weddings," Chung said, with a grin.
The opportunity to launch the courier service came after two and a half years with Topper Toys. Chung had been promoted to operations manager, with responsibility for logistics and supply chain management. The skills and knowledge he gained from the toy firm readied him for the moment when Adrian Dalsey, a co-founder of DHL, flew to Hong Kong to offer Topper Toys a cutting-edge delivery service.
After only a few meetings, Chung succeeded in persuading Dalsey to fly back to his US headquarters and convince his partners to award Chung the rights to run DHL's business across the Asia-Pacific region. Chung began his entrepreneurial journey with DHL with US$50,000, only two customers, a secretary, no car and basically nothing else.
During DHL's first 15 years, from 1969-84, the firm expanded into 125 countries - or a new country every five weeks, on average. One of its key success factors was picking the right kind of employees.
"There was one formula in picking our people: we were hiring the kind of people we were willing to follow, others were willing to follow; others were willing to partner with."
Chung said DHL "scanned for viruses on the candidate's personal operating systems" such as their beliefs, values, behaviour, likes, dislikes, integrity and character.
"Basically, [it's about] who are you. Can people trust you? Are you unkind, unfair, shameless, corrupt, rude, a liar, unwise, disloyal, cowardly, a repeater of mistakes, or unforgiving? "
There was also another lesson: getting the right name is very important. Unlike some of its competitors, Chung said, DHL had an initial advantage because its name was easy to pronounce in any language.
"That's why, when I picked the names for my children, I made sure people could see them and were able to read them. Yet they are not common names."
Chung said entrepreneurs had to have a basic quality which he called a "sleep factor".
"Many people think about risk factors, and I admit risk taking is important. But you also have to be able to 'silo' your problems, [leaving yourself the capacity] to go to sleep, even when you get caught," he said, citing his own experience during an initial stage when he was arrested by the police for infringing the Hong Kong Post Office's exclusive right to carry letters in and out of the colony. DHL successfully defended the case.
"There are two things that business school cannot teach an entrepreneur: the first is focus, or 'staying with a problem until it gets done', and the other is passion. An entrepreneur must have enough of these two qualities," he said.
"We have also found that most business schools teach marketing, but do not teach selling. If you're an entrepreneur and you don't know how to sell, it won't work out, because you won't have money or anything else."
Also, Chung advised, don't take an MBA course.
"If you want to become an entrepreneur, don't study for an MBA. Do it [become an entrepreneur] first and come back to take an executive MBA later, because MBA [studies] fill you with all kinds of junk. It's wrong timing - like teaching you to drive when you're 60," he said.
"Me, Inc": Looking at life as a business
People regard as "business" only that part of life that involves money. But, in reality, everything is business, Chung said.
"Your life is business and you're the entrepreneur. You're in the business of providing personal services to anyone around you. You're your most important customer and supplier."
Chung suggested that his students write a "business plan" for their lives, taking into account the needs of their "customers" and "suppliers", who can be anyone from parents to offspring, siblings, friends, business partners or bosses, and all of their "suppliers".
"Consider what they want. Is it moral support, physical help, mental help, social help, advice, companionship, just being there...?"
He said the students' business plans should include a marketing plan for managing their "personal brand", which took into account their "service quality", as well as their tangible and intangible assets.
"The management team is you and your 'tribe', and the returns are 'psychic income' and 'emotional profit', he said.
Chung also urged students to give and take, while staying away from "net takers".
Ten pieces of advice, in hindsight
In concluding his lecture, Chung looked back on his years as an entrepreneur to offer 10 pieces of advice, in hindsight:
1. Spend time with your loved ones before they go away.
2. Follow my life's secret formula: understand, design, create and manage. Then you will control your future.
3. If you want to be an entrepreneur, don't get an MBA - get an EMBA.
4. Don't be in a hurry to get married, to either a spouse or a company. Ninety per cent of your misery or happiness will come from one person, so you want to know more about people in general before you select the one with whom you will spend the rest of your life.
5. Set up a life-long learning programme.
6. A bad break is not the end of the world.
7. Hustle while you wait: luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.
8. Leadership is about trust. Everything else comes second. People will follow you only if they know you will not hurt them.
9. If you don't want people to know about it, don't do it. Live by the golden rule: "don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal."
10. Live off your parents for as long as you can. Buy a house as a multigenerational effort. Property prices will continue to go up. You will need all the money you can make to do the things you would like to do in your life. There are three Fs for investors: friends, family and fools.
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