He is the arrogant boss from Hunan, Zhang Yue, the helmsman of Yuanda Group. From an art teacher to a billionaire, from a team of several people to an industry leader, this journey is also quite legendary.
Many industry bosses we know well are not rich children, and have no background and connections. In the process of starting a business, they have experienced all the changes of the world and encountered all kinds of setbacks, but they have also cultivated their keen business intuition and action, even Zhang Yue, who was dubbed "arrogant" by the media.
From 65438 to 0960, Zhang Yue was born in an ordinary family in Chenzhou City, Hunan Province. His parents are honest migrant workers and have no high expectations for their children. They just want their son to spend this life safely.
Zhang Yue, who grew up in this family environment, has a lively temper and always has some "deviant" ideas.
Zhang Yue likes painting very much. With his excellent painter, he was successfully admitted to the fine arts major of the local normal college. After graduating from school, he successfully entered a school as an art teacher. He thought he would live a fixed life from now on and didn't want a wave of reform to sweep through.
In the 1980s, due to the continuous advancement of reform and opening up, more and more people were dissatisfied with the living conditions at that time, so they gave up their jobs in their hometown and went into business to make money.
Zhang Yue has also been affected by this wave. He thinks he is still young and doesn't want to live a life that looks to the end. Even if he failed in the end, he had no regrets, so he decided to quit his job as a teacher despite repeated dissuasion from his family.
After going to sea, Zhang Yue worked in many industries. He has run an advertising company, sold motorcycles, worked as a street vendor and opened a small restaurant.
In recent years, although I haven't made a lot of money, I still have a little gain. In addition, after years of business experience, I have also exercised Zhang Yue's extraordinary market acumen.
One year, the south was suddenly hit by a cold wave, and Zhang Yue had to follow his elderly parents to the north. It was this decision that changed the course of Zhang Yue's life.
When he came to the north, Zhang Yue saw the heating for the first time. While observing the novel, he silently thought, "Why isn't there such a good thing in the south?" Zhang Yue not only had a brainwave, "Hey, I can take this equipment to the south."
However, when friends in the north knew what Zhang Yue thought, they dissuaded Zhang Yue. "There have been several pressure boiler explosions in the north this year, and now no one wants to do this business. If something happens, you can't afford it. "
However, Zhang Yue thinks this is a business opportunity. "Not a machine, not a machine. Just do the machine well. " After listening to this, my friends felt that Zhang Yue was whimsical. "You want to be an art student's machine. How is it possible? "
However, the questioning of friends did not dispel Zhang Yue's idea, and then he found his younger brother who was studying thermal engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology.
With the participation of my brother, they studied for several months and finally developed a "pressureless boiler" at 1988. Later, he and his younger brother set up the "Yuanda Thermal Engineering Research Institute" with a joint venture of 30,000 yuan, and applied for a patent for the "pressureless boiler" they developed.
After obtaining this patent, Zhang Yue and his younger brother didn't sell their products from street to street as before, but sold their products on a large scale. After that, they sat in the office drinking tea. They took a lot of orders, and the merchants maliciously cut prices, so they were more emboldened. "We have a lot of orders now, and you can't book them!"
In this way, in just a few months, this patent brought 65,438+0,000 yuan to the two people. You know, in those days, a worker earned only a few tens of dollars a month, which shows how successful they were at that time.
If Zhang Yue had listened to his family's arrangement and continued to be an art teacher, maybe he would have been trapped in that small mountain village all his life, and he wouldn't have such a wonderful life.
After getting the first bucket of gold, the two brothers did not sit still, but continued to look for new business opportunities.
With the gradual saturation of the market, the pressureless boiler industry is also in a state of recession, so the two brothers began to move to other industries. At this time, Zhang Yue thought that "it is a little hot in winter and there should be refrigeration in summer", so Zhang Yue turned his attention to the air-conditioning industry.
Then they set up "Yuanda Air Conditioning Company". At that time, due to technical limitations, the company did not launch the product immediately, but devoted itself to research for one year before developing the first direct-fired engine in the domestic central air-conditioning industry at 1992, and the Zhang brothers also became the leader in this industry.
This year, the first problem that the Zhang brothers faced was the technical problem of "lithium bromide refrigeration and heating". Because Zhang Yue has always been environmentally conscious, he hopes that this technology can save electricity and reduce the pollution caused by freon.
However, there are not many professional books to learn this technology, so the two brothers can only rely on their own steps to explore a little bit, and simply help those who help themselves. This technical difficulty was overcome by the two.
At the time of 1996, Yuanda has become a well-known air-conditioning brand, and no enterprise in the industry can match it. Moreover, with advanced technology, Zhang Yue also made a lot of money.
Through the continuous efforts of Zhang Yue and his younger brother, the "grand blueprint" gradually took shape. Some people say that Zhang Yue's success is because he knows how to be unconventional and always thinks of new things. In this regard, Zhang Yue replied, "Not because I am unconventional, but because I can jump out of the thinking circle and think of what everyone needs first."
Throughout history, every legend has broken away from the checks and balances of contemporary thinking, split the boundary of thinking with his sharp blade, and looked for opportunities invisible to the world with the courage of the leaders of the times.
Zhang Yue was branded as "arrogant" because he spent $70 million in the United States to buy himself a private business jet.
The cause of the incident was a heavy snow on 1996. At that time, Zhang Yue was on his way to a meeting in other places. When he arrived at Beijing airport, other flights had already taken off one after another, except that his flight was first told that the plane was delayed, and then said that the plane could not take off because of heavy snow, so the flight was cancelled.
This made Zhang Yue, who was already waiting for the fire, even more annoyed. So a month later, Zhang Yue came to the United States and chose a private jet for himself. Zhang Yue, who was worried about buying a private jet, learned that foreign rich people would buy private jets in order to improve work efficiency, so Zhang Yue didn't have so many worries.
With a wave of his hand, he booked a plane and paid $70 million on the spot, so Zhang Yue became the first person to own a private jet in the 1990s. In the next few years, Zhang Yue bought seven private jets for himself.
After experiencing the feeling of flying freely, Zhang Yue began to challenge himself again. He wanted to be the first boss in China who could fly a plane, so through continuous study, Zhang Yue got the first private helicopter driver's license in China at 1997.
Zhang Yue likes not only airplanes, but also sports cars. It is said that he has a parking lot of more than 300 square meters, which is full of various brands and types of luxury cars, including extended Lincoln, Rolls Royce and Porsche.
After Zhang fell off the plane, many people criticized him for being too ostentatious, but dismissed him. "Rich people abroad can buy it. Why can't I buy it?" .
Others think that Zhang Yue's move is to make people pay attention to him, and then promote the lofty air-conditioning brand.
But no matter for what purpose, Zhang Yue's "Hao" is still recognized by everyone. After all, at that time, he and Ma were still typing on the keyboard, but they already had hundreds of millions of assets and even made the world rich list. He was only 37 years old that year.
But just as everyone marveled at Zhang Yue's achievements, Zhang Yue was uncharacteristically and publicly shouted, "If anyone buys a private jet again in the future, I will definitely teach him a lesson!"
When I went to a meeting in Singapore again, Zhang Yue was fined S $2,000 and garbage collection because Zhang Yue threw a piece of garbage at random, which was discovered by the local environmental manager.
At that time, Zhang Yue feel incredible. "Because of a piece of garbage, he looked for me everywhere?" But Zhang Yue's friend explained to him, "Singapore pays great attention to protecting the environment, and people never litter, so the water in Singapore is clear and the air is fresh, and people here take good care of their homes.".
Zhang Yue has also been infected by the environmental awareness of Singaporeans. He said, "This incident touched me a lot. I found that even companies in Singapore take environmental protection as their concept, and I feel very good. "
Therefore, shortly after returning to China, Zhang Yue decided to define his company as an environmental protection company, and a massive enterprise transformation began.
In the early days, Zhang Yue turned his attention to the air-conditioning industry. According to his investigation, most of the air conditioners at that time were oil-fired air conditioners, which was a waste of resources and not environmentally friendly. So after continuous exploration, he finally developed a non-electric air conditioner with waste heat as energy.
After that, Yuanda developed the first central air conditioner in China. This air conditioner has been produced and sold in more than 60 countries, especially in Europe and America, and won the first place in the market share with an annual output value of 2 billion yuan.
In 2008, Yuanda even launched a "clean new fan", claiming that this product is "the world's highest level of low-consumption fan", claiming that as long as there is this fan, even if the house has been uninhabited, it can remain spotless.
He said that in subsequent interviews, Zhang Yue also permeated the concept of environmental protection.
Environmental protection has always been what I am doing and talking about. The concept of environmental protection has not only been integrated into my life, but even our products have been given the burden of environmental protection. People's consumption level is getting higher and higher. If I don't adjust the product, how much harm will it cause, so what I am doing now is the most energy-saving and environmentally friendly product. "
In response to this remark, many people sarcastically said: "Is your private jet environmentally friendly? Is the luxury car you drive environmentally friendly? Doing things that are not environmentally friendly, but calling on others to be environmentally friendly. "
In response to questions from the outside world, Zhang Yue publicly stated that "when I knew that my private jet traveled more than 3,000 kilometers from Changsha to Beijing, it would take eight trees 60 years to absorb the emitted carbon dioxide, I would never fly it again."
Because of his environmental awareness, Fortune magazine named him one of the global environmental leaders.
After the enterprise reform, Zhang Yue had a bold idea. He feels that the consumption in the construction industry has produced a lot of waste.
So he claimed that he would build the 838-meter-high tallest building in the world with his company's environmental protection building materials within 10 months.
Once completed, the building will be 10 meter higher than the existing tallest building, Burj Dubai, with a total cost of 9 billion pounds. The room can accommodate 30,000 people at the same time, and can resist a 9-magnitude earthquake. Zhang Yue also pointed out that this building will be a microcosm of the present society, including offices, houses, supermarkets, hospitals, schools and even a pedestrian street. Zhang Yue even named the building ".
After the proposal was put forward, some people praised it for its ideas and courage; Others questioned that he was glaring; Some people even say that Zhang Yue wants to build the tallest building in the world, which is simply arrogant.
However, no matter what the outside world says, in the next four years, Zhang Yue has mobilized hundreds of researchers and invested a lot of money in researching new materials.
In the past four years, Zhang Yue ran back and forth between the company and the venue like a top.
But in the end, there are still many practical problems before us. For example, what should we do in case of a fire in such a tall building? You know, the rescue ladder is only 1 12 meters, and this building is 838 meters, so the "Sky City" project was stopped by various measures.
Although the project was stopped, Zhang Yue's architectural dream did not stop. At the 20 10 World Expo, Yuanda, as the only private enterprise, built a six-story building covering an area of 2,400 square meters in just one day.
The materials used in this building are all environmentally-friendly materials developed by Yuanda, and the building also has the function of disassembly, and the garbage generated is 1% of the previous building. Later, the building was named "Yuanda Pavilion".
Perhaps it was this success that rekindled Zhang Yue's idea of "the city of the sky". In the following years, Zhang Yue first spent 500 million yuan to buy a piece of land, then reapplied for the project like the government, and finally got the approval from the government on 20 15.
So in April of 20 15, it took Yuanda Group only 19 days, and a 57-story building rose from the ground. There are not only nursing homes and kindergartens, but also a nearly 4-meter-long pedestrian street, which is called the mini version of "City of the Sky".
Today, Yuanda has fully entered the market. The group has more than 50 patents and passed 27 international authoritative certifications. With the continuous development of the company, Zhang Yue's worth has reached tens of billions.
The legend of Zhang Yue is that he never gives in to reality, he dares to challenge in the face of difficulties, he dares to overturn conventions, he knows how to innovate in the face of obsolescence, and he always remembers his responsibilities after his career is successful.
In order to protect the future of future generations, he never ignored the environment for temporary convenience, and he adhered to the position of environmental protection with great ambition.
In that backward and depressed era, he used his own efforts to promote the development of the whole industry and created his own miracle; In the flashy downtown, he unswervingly led the development of the enterprise with his initial heart, even in the face of setbacks.
As an entrepreneur, he has both the romantic tenderness of art and the coolness and sharpness of business, which blend with each other and create his own legend.
1, Yang: "Yuanda talks about entrepreneurs buying airplanes: we should restrain ourselves to protect the environment."
2. People's Daily Online: "Yuanda Group Zhang Yue: The 800-meter-high building has never been" stopped ""
3. China Daily: "Zhang Yue, Chairman of Broad Group: I will criticize whoever buys a private jet."